How can I achieve my goal to live an adventurous, fulfilling life?

I've always known what I want to do with my life. When I was younger, I would look at the pictures in National Geographic magazines and imagine what it was like there. I'd pretend I was an adventurer in the rain forest, discovering new species of animals, or an explorer of the arctic tundra. I want to know how to become my dream, how to escape the boring suburban life that I am doomed to live.



I'm a freshman in high school, and I come from a middle class family with four other kids. I've been into photography for about three years, and I want to become an adventurer. I want to travel the world and experience and photograph different cultures and far away places as a career.

What steps should I take now to achieve my goals in later life?How can I achieve my goal to live an adventurous, fulfilling life?
The best way to get hit by a train, is to go where they are and stand in the middle of the tracks...



Take your camera and explore your own city. There MUST be places where you would never go... Go there..! Take pics. Learn to handle your self in uncomfortable areas and situations, but keep taking pics of things. Make a personal documentary,



After you do this a few time and now have hopefully a good # of human interest images, see if a local art center or gallery will let you hang, or find local places that will.



Next, your State. It MUST have areas too of major curiousness and places of adventure. Explore them. Look close to get your adventures, at first. Learn to handle yourself, take images in harsh environments and deal with people. Especially people. Here they speak English, for the most part.. and you both can understand one another. Wait till you have a crowd around you saying things you don't understand, and their faces don't look none too happy..and your 4,000 miles from home..!



Hardly anyone is but a few hours from yet another State or large city. Start to photographically explore these areas too, all the time honing your skills as a outdoor photographer and adding photos to your portfolio. Keep pressing galleries in your area to hang your work so others can see what your doing. Get or make your own web page documenting your street photography and local travels. Keep a on line blog and notes to be read by others. Add some of these images.



If you can become an accomplished photographer, your work will speak volumes over and above a pig skin on your wall. However, nothing beats a education either, except experience. Bill Gates was a 8th grade drop out if I remember right. Steve Jobs didn't get too far in school either..



What you can do, and make of your self, IS entirely up to you. There are thousands of people with degrees, flipping burgers. I have a friend back in Michigan with 2 Ph D's.. He assembles cars on a assembly line because no one wants to hire him cause he is way over qualified for virtually anything. Too much schooling is like a double edge blade. It can cut both ways.



I am self taught in photography. I read book and went out and did it. Read more books and went out and did some more. This started in the mid 60's. Today I have a house on some desert land west of Tucson bought 10 years ago, but paid off 2 years ago. Paid cash for a new Harley Christmas of 04 and put a few grand down on a used 2nd one in my wifes name so she could build some credit, but paid cash for a Jeep Cherokee. And ya know what..? I'm lazy.. I don't like to work..



Remember, if you say you can't do it - your right..!



You come to a fork in the road.. Take it..! You don't know where your going anyway, so it don't matter, right..?



Live with your camera. Take it EVERY WHERE.. Take pics, every where. Go and step in the way of "traffic" to get your pics. Push your self and your equipment and see where the weakness are. Fix them (correct them) and push again..



If some lazy ol' fart like myself can do it, you can too...!



Bob - Tucson
Fhotoace mentioned something about this. He said you must do well in school. Then off to college, majoring in art %26amp; photography.



One thing the original questioner said was that he (or she?) thought it would be "fun". I added that I hardly thought it is "fun" to be in the mosquito-infested forest.



But as you said about being adventurous--it will certainly be so.How can I achieve my goal to live an adventurous, fulfilling life?
goto photography school and learn the craft, then spend 10 years or more shooting world class images, then wait for NG to callHow can I achieve my goal to live an adventurous, fulfilling life?
MAKE A FILM...... You can all of you dreams in a fantasy movie! that's what i do