Meet Bob O’Lary | Life-long professional photographer

We had the good fortune of connecting with Bob O’Lary and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Bob, what was your thought process behind starting your own business?
I was tired of working a state job to support my desire to be a commercial photographer, so I quit it, and turned my part time photography job into my only source of work and ENJOYMENT.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
From elementary school I wanted to be a musician, and followed the music bug through high school participating in band and chorus. I earned a scholarship to college studying music, but along the way I caught the photography bug, due to my college assigning me to work in the Audio-visual department at the school, doing photography for them. Even as I was working freelance music gigs at school, I noticed that the freelance photo jobs I also accepted, paid much better. When I completed my Music Education degree, and was prepped to finally teach music, I learned that a Batchelor degree in music education (in 1977, my graduation year) only paid $9,000.00 per year. I was making more than that doing part time photography jobs putting myself through college! I was seriously disappointed, as none of my college professors mentioned the salary scale to us during our classes. Luckily, the very weekend I learned this disappointing news, the local daily newspaper (Tallahassee Democrat) called me and offered me a full time photojournalist spot on their staff, with a starting salary of $22,000.00. I never looked back! I worked for 2 years at the Tallahassee Democrat as a staffer, while learning more about professional photography, then opted to open my own commercial photography business. I also learned that professional photographers in Tallahassee don’t work a 40 hour work week, and had a lot of spare time, so I chose (on my own time) to dive into the Apple/Macintosh computer use and repair. This side-line interest blossomed into me being able to tap into the booming home computer market that hit America in the 80’s and 90’s. Along with my photography work, I now also took on Apple and Macintosh repair and use training as a freelance venture. This set me up nicely for the eventual jump into digital photography, being one of the FIRST in my town to professionally switch from film based photography to digital based imaging. This step positioned me at the cutting-edge for both digital photography education as well as digital imaging training with the advent of Photoshop. Today I teach digital photography, and teach digital photo editing as well as continuing my work as a top flight digital photographer.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
Tallahassee, being the Capitol of Florida has its share of interesting locations to visit, but its population is only 125,000 so it’s not really a tourist attraction. Our airport is out-of-the-way, and does not possess many flights to interesting places either. The main routes are to Atlanta and Charlotte, even when flying to other Florida based cities, so my city is not that much to crow about. State government, and 2 state universities (Florida A&M University, and Florida State University) are the main financial engines here. the FSU Seminoles are often a national powerhouse for Football, and Florida A&M (FAMU) ended this year’s season as national champions of their football league, but football season is only 11 games long, and the rest for the year is relatively quiet for this town. Right now, political campaigns, and the local music scene is what is keeping my camera busy. I’d not recommend a friend come to visit for 1 week, and expect to be entertained every day. We might trek 20 miles down to the Florida coast and visit Wakulla Springs, the world’s largest fresh-water spring, or maybe go out on the salt-water flats and fish for redfish or trout, but otherwise, Tallahassee is a quiet community.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
All the people, businesses, companies, organizations and corporations that took a chance by using me as their creative image producer.

Facebook: Bob O’Lary

Other: I have over 500,000 images posted to my ALBUMS area on Facebook.

Image Credits
I own all rights to the uploaded images.