Making a good living - Is photography a good career choice?

[kiwi]

Any service at all that you can do remotely, eg call centre, development, this sort if thing, etc is way cheaper there

you'd have to think that a photo that's completely retouched would have to take anyone at least 30 minutes, so that gives an hourly rate of $16 per hour and i guarantee the worker probably sees maybe 25% of that, maybe

[James T]

There are a lot of places where it's a matter of cents for each image you want processing. Depends on the work though, of course there are other retouching businesses where the fees are hundreds of dollars or more.

As for the article, very geared towards the social wedding photographer of course, but still a handy read for most people. Although I think portraits is still the easiest business in photography to make serious cash from, you just need a bit of capital to get it going, then the right business brain and determination from there. Get a few studios up and running and you can be quids in pretty early on.

A lot of successful photographers to my eye, are business people who happen to sell photography. They could be selling anything really - but for whatever reason, chose photographs.. probably they saw a specific market that made sense. The very successful often have both the business and the photography skills. Again, depends on the business though. For example, some school photographers, I would barely class as photographers - yet they run extremely successful businesses turning over more cash than I probably ever will. Same for cookie cutter portrait shooters. Harder though in something like advertising, fashion or dare I say documentary - try making some money there.

[aussie girl]

Yes you are right, niche markets can work. There is one business in my city who sells old historic photographs. He advertises for any really old photos of areas, buildings and scenes, buys the photos from the people and then reprints them and sells them as prints with or without frames. He always has lots of people milling around looking through the prints and seems to sell quite a few, clever business idea because he is just reselling photos that were taken many many years ago.

Or you could start up a photography website, where all the wouldbe photographers can discuss anything they like about photography, get hints about how to take proper photos, and show off all their skills Get little commissions here and there for links to other photography sites, who want people to look at their sites, how hard could that be????
Oh.....wait a minute......someone else has already done that..... bloody Ricktas

[Redgum]

Laurence Kim's blog needs to be read with one eye closed and the other shut. His investment advice is reasonably straight forward and sound but focussing on photography as a wealth earner at the bottom of the heap is tongue in cheek. Any work that earns money is a wealth builder if you manage it right. Okay, 90% of people never manage to break the survival level, that's a fact of life, but 10% do. So how do you get there?
Photography is no different to banking, car salesman, garbologist or public servant. It's all about opportunity, skill level (not necessarily education) and an element of luck (I guess that's opportunity). Funny thing is we are all born the same way, broke and until we are mature enough rarely see opportunity, skill or luck and sometimes that's too late and we've squandered the wealth opportunity. Time is a big factor and contributes significantly to the degree of wealth.
The important part of what Laurence said is to reduce the urge to outspend the income irrespective of occupation and invest the difference in true, not imaginary assets.
It certainly can be done because 10% of us achieve that level to some degree, even photographers.

[ricktas]

Yes you are right, niche markets can work. There is one business in my city who sells old historic photographs. He advertises for any really old photos of areas, buildings and scenes, buys the photos from the people and then reprints them and sells them as prints with or without frames. He always has lots of people milling around looking through the prints and seems to sell quite a few, clever business idea because he is just reselling photos that were taken many many years ago.

Or you could start up a photography website, where all the wouldbe photographers can discuss anything they like about photography, get hints about how to take proper photos, and show off all their skills Get little commissions here and there for links to other photography sites, who want people to look at their sites, how hard could that be????
Oh.....wait a minute......someone else has already done that..... bloody Ricktas

Ah yes, but if you think you can do that professionally, you won't get far. AP basically pays its own way, and any extra goes back to the site as prizes etc. Let's just say if I gave up my day job, I wouldn't make it through the first home loan repayment, if I relied on AP for my income (and I make weekly home loan repayments).

[aussie girl]

Mortgage payments - now they suck dont they????Keep plodding away Rictas, the weekly payments will bring light to the end of the tunnel and ,yes, one day you will be making your last payment and that is such a nice feeling. We paid ours off about 5 years ago, but that doesnt mean we are not struggling. We thought we would have all this left-over money!!! Nope, every other bloody fee and charge went up and up and up, ( and is still going up) and hey presto, no money left over. I doubt very much if I could afford a mortgage payment now!!!


Oh and by the way.. I certainly wasnt suggesting that you had become some sort of overnight millionaire. Now that IS a pipe dream, that only the very very few, (or very very lucky) seem to achieve. For the majority of us mere mortals, it is off to work for 40-50 years and hope you end up with something for your trouble at the end.

[Aljenau]

Photography a career choice?

Change the word photography to marketing and you might have a better chance.
Being a good photographer is simply not enough - it all comes down to promoting yourself and your work.

We all have thousands of images on our computers or in our filing cabinets but unless people know you exist you are simply NOT a professional photographer!

Promote, market and get the word out there.

Sure not many of us will be full time professional photographers but how many here want to be?
I run a farm, operate a graphic design business, work as a tour guide and take photographs.
I consider myself to be a good photographer (newspaper and studio trained) but I simply don't have the time to be a full time professional.

I do shoot the odd (some of them very odd) wedding and cover a number of sporting and other events. Am I a professional photographer?
Insofar as money goes then no I am not but when I am out there working for a client then I conduct myself in a professional manner. Now am I professional?

The thing that really gets up my nose are the 'photographers' that turn up to an event (lets say motor racing as an example), photograph everything that moves during the day, download the pics to their laptop, burn CD's and sell them for $25.00 a pop at the end of the meet.
I will scout the location, pick the best spots, wait for the best moment and use years of experience when my finger presses that shutter button. Why I have even been known to adjust the settings on the camera!
Then at the end of the day I can produce 8"x10" glossy prints showing the best moments from the event and hopefully sell them at a reasonable rate.
Pretty tricky when the drivers have just bought a CD of everything for such a ridiculous price.
Ah well, as long as the other 'photographer' sells 10 of his disks then I am sure he is happy... Covers the next repayment on his DSLR I guess
So which is the professional?
Beats me...

[JamesDoylePhoto]

Yes well, I always tell people when asked how do you turn professional in nature photography; I tell them to stick with your "real" job and just keep working at your photography as a hobby. I've been scaping a living as a professional natural history photographer/cinematographer for almost 30 years but I knew from the very beginning I was never going to be famous or rich....it was a life style choice and many of the "normal" things in life become secondary. As a nature photographer you spend many many hours in the field, usually camping or driving from location to loacation chasing the best shots, hardly a family activity year after year.

There are no regular pay cheques or benifits such as sick leave or long service, you just keep going because you love what you are doing, it is driven by passion and if your lucky you might make a few dollars along the way!

When I was living in the US, I have meet some of the big names in Nature Photography and they will tell you the same thing, it's not a get rich scheme being a nature photographer. Most will admit part of the reason they are where they are today is more to do with when they started eg; late 70's early 80's when being able to supply good photographs was a little easier because the cost of buying film and paying for the processing showed commitment, so there wasn't as many photographers trying to make a living. But these days with digital, anybody that has the time and "some experience" can produce a stock pile of images and flood the internet or market with images.

Also it has to be looked at from the buyers viewpoint, with so many images available to them and they also are running a business where time is money, they have to sift through all these images to find the one they want which just makes your image like a grain of sand on a beach.

Nature photography is a life style choice and not a way to become rich or famous!