Not exactly professional here, but I do have a darkroom and sell silver gelatin prints here and there. Right now it's mostly word-of-mouth, people I already know or acquaintances. I don't even have a real website yet, though, but I'm working on it.

I occasionally take classes not really to better my skills, but to open myself to new ideas and to interact with others pursuing film photography. I like to get feedback from not just my peers, but more professional photographers too, as they have been all around and have fucked up a lot of shit in the past to get where they are today. We all start at square one, but there will always be others that seem behind you while others will seem light years ahead of you. And you just gotta remind yourself to not be too hard on yourself.

Whether you're shooting film or digital, photography can be a very unforgiving master. You gotta be able to suck it up when everything seems fucked beyond salvageable, learn from your mistakes, and hopefully not keep making the same ones. It's an endless learning process, and the one thing to avoid is to get too comfortable and stop testing new boundaries. And you will either never develop or lose that edge that makes you stand out from others.