Erwitt said, “It’s a hard road right now, with so many people, and less opportunity. My best advice is to be an heir, and failing that, to take pictures because it’s great fun to do so, and with digital it’s not that expensive. And have a day job and have a wonderful hobby. Photography is just a great way to spend time.”

Elliot Erwitt

and from Alex Soth

“Elliott’s advice was the advice I was following. It seemed impossible to make a career as a photographer,” he said. So Soth (rhymes with “oath”) took a job in an art museum, and used his vacation time over the course of several years to pursue a personal project photographing along the Mississippi. That turned into his monograph, Sleeping by the Mississippi, and the rest, as they say, is history.