In the spring of 2023, I took a Photography 1 course for an art class requirement that was taught by Gary Samson
https://www.garysamsonphotography.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/gary-samson-17171519/
I became really, really invested in the art to the point where I regularly nagged my school librarian for all the photography books regardless of how lewd.
I'm writing on the subreddit because I want to try and make this into a side job and I need recommendations.
Where should I go to advertise myself?
What camera and equipment/lenses should I aim to get eventually? I wanna try to be as versatile and general as possible. At the moment, due to my academic standing, I'm able to keep using the camera I've used during the course (Canon Rebel T6 with 18-55 mm and 75-300 mm lenses) I wanna aim to get the model above it (Either Rebel T7 or 8/ T7I or T8I)
During the course, I was also given hands-on experience with Adobe Lightroom classic and photoshop (or adobe photoshop lightroom if you wanna be specific), and at the moment the school is covering my adobe license for creative cloud. I want to know of any other alternatives I can get that are on the same level as photoshop and lightroom that I don't have to pay a subscription for.
Preferably I would like a program that is constantly getting updates and well-supported that I can own for myself on multiple devices. As cool as Adobe is, I really don't like their practices of constant cloud saving, lack of flexibility, and general ignorance when it comes to fixing bugs. That and I'm a broke boy so buying a software is the more economical solution.
Any and all help is greatly appreciated.