Should I get into this industry?

[yellowbull]

Hi there, my name is Dave. I need a little advice if possible. I was in the computer graphics industry for 20 years. I lost my job last December. I've been having a hard time finding work. So, with that said I'm kind of find myself at a crossroads in my life/career. I have been a hobby photographer for about 10 years and thought maybe now is the time to change career paths. What kind of advice would you give someone who wants to get into this career. I dont have any buisness or marketing education, so I am willing to take some classes. I love to shoot landscapes, cars, old buildings, abstract things. I know this industry is competitive and probably oversaturated but I want to do something I love. Any thoughts or advice would be appreciated!

Thanks,
My website is below
www.davedwire.com

Dave

 

[Valvebounce]

Hi Dave
First I'm an amateur so not worried about you as competition.
You say you want to do something you love, my personal experience is don't turn your hobby in to a career/profession, you could find it takes the fun and enjoyment out of it! Ambling round taking some pics of this or that whatever takes your fancy, a bit of post processing if or when it takes your fancy is a lot different from shoot this crappy product and make it look good, and by the way I want it yesterday, then having the customer trying to move the goal posts when they are unhappy.

I trained at college as an engineer and couldn't find work in that field so I thought I'm a good vehicle mechanic, I love doing it for a hobby, I'll get a job in a garage, some vacancies for that available.
Trouble is when you have spent all day under a car the last place appealing for r and r is under another bloody car.
I was in the garage a year before the opportunity to work in a tool room arose, it then took about a year before I wanted to be under a car again.

I'm sure there will be some who say go for it, and if you do it may work for you but do you want to take the risk of ruining your hobby.

I would say if you do go for it try to not end up doing landscape, cars and the other things you like.

Good luck finding work it is a real low point finding yourself unemployed.

Cheers Graham.

 

[Don Haines]

If you want to make a living doing photography you're going to have to learn how to market yourself. It doesn't matter how good your photos are if you can't sell them. It doesn't matter how skilled you are if you can't convince people to hire you.

 

[risc32]

i wouldn't suggest photography as a job to anyone. well, not anyone i cared for. I'm also against turning something you like to do into a job. it sounds good, but in reality it's not. not in my exp anyway. photography isn't my 9-5. i dislike my 9-5 and i think i want to keep it that way.

 

[corey.kaye]

I agree with risc32. I'm sorry about your job but you're good at it and people have a need for experienced graphic designer. Open your door to smaller shops, maybe they don't pay a 1D salary but that's OK. They need your help and you've got experience coming out your ears by the sounds of it.

That said, I played with the idea of going full time on wedding photography. Been shooting for myself for years....
I did a few "on the cheap" weddings to get my feet wet and it went very well. The clients loved it! I LOVED IT!!! I found a few "full price" gigs and like a proper self-employeed dude I tracked my time closely. Meetings with the client, setup time, shooting time, processing and organizing time, delivery and exit meetings... I found I could make more / hour packing groceries. Sorry to say it but unless you're a big shot in the wedding biz, it's been watered down so much it's really had to produce quality work at the going rate.

Landscapes too are my passion, it's what I shoot 70% of the time. iStock and Corbis have your shot and they pay pennies.

Do your hobbie because you love it, do what people will pay good money for as a job. I'm just back from a hike in the mountains and have about 50 shots to go though, all for free, because that's what I love to do on a Saturday. Monday, it's back to the grind.... to pay for more lens's.
: )

Keep hunting and keep shooting.

 

[Krob78]

It's a fun industry and demanding as are most. Somebody told me one time that "anyone can make money in photography, not everyone can make a living in photography" Consider it well...

What about starting your own Graphic Design shop?

 

[Zv]

Sorry to hear you lost your job Dave. It sucks that there are hardly any good photography related jobs. The market is oversaturated but mainly with poor quality photographers. With 10 years experience behind the camera you could bring something new and unique to the scene. You'll have to market that the best you can. Offer something no one else around you offers at a premium price. Don't sell yourself short whatever you do. Think about it - why do people hire a limo for a wedding? Why not a taxi? People will pay premium for quality. Also customer sevice and word of mouth will help your business. Be quick with delivering your product and do follow ups. Keep in touch with customers. They'll go to you rather than the other guy if you deliver a better overall customer experience - start to finish.

I would love to get into pro photography but to be honest I make decent money from my day job working in an office twiddling my thumbs. How annoying is that? The actual work takes a fraction of the 9 hours I need to be there! What a strange world we live in where hours of post processing is worth jack and sitting in an office drinking coffee pays you $$$!

Anyway good luck to you I hope you make it as a pro or otherwise get another job doing something else and continue doing photography on the side.

 

[Matthew Saville]

I love to shoot landscapes, cars, old buildings, abstract things.

Unfortunately Dave, along this particular path you are 80-90% likely to wind up making $2.15 per month selling to a half-dozen different microstock agencies. Woohoo!

Okay, it's not really that bad, but you get the idea. Shooting those things in particular is probably one of the worst career ideas anybody could ever have. Sure, if you have insane talent and get famous, you can earn a comfortable living. I'm not going to say that there is absolutely no room in the various industries that you could pursue. However there are definitely already millions of photographers out there who are shooting amazing photos and happily flooding the market with them for pennies in compensation...

There is a little better luck out there for you as a general portrait or wedding photographer, because there is a little more money in selling actual photographic services than in simply selling single images.

Want a glimpse into my life as a full-time professional photographer? For many, many years I could barely afford a minimal kit that barely got my jobs done, and worked all day every day with zero vacations just to barely pay my rent.

At the same time, I watched the white collar types (And even plenty of blue collar) pre-order all the latest new equipment the day it was announced, switch systems entirely on a whim, or own BOTH systems just for fun, ...and plan their next safari in Africa or cruise in Alaska. All while, of course, they piss and moan about how they hate their day job. I'd have loved to bash them over the heads with their D3X's that they pamper and worry about whether or not the weather sealing will hold in a slight drizzle, but I was far too busy dealing with tough clients while hoping and praying that more clients would come in my door soon.

Things are a lot better now for me of course, but it's still not a career I recommend to anyone who doesn't have exactly what it takes including both talent and endurance.

So, the best thing I can encourage you to do is to get yourself a nice successfull career that has a health plan, retirement options, vacation days, etc. A job that you only have to worry about for ~8 hrs a day, 5 days a week. A job that will fund a bag full of gear and occasional trips to beautiful places for photography...

If, however, you are keenly bent on turning photography into a career, unfortunately my best advice is to still get another steady job, pay your bills with that, and slowly grow a photo business on the side. Because it can take years to properly master all the marketing tactics, branding, etc... The worst thing you can do is try to dive in overnight and pay your bills with your camera too soon. That will only lead to burnout. Even if you want to quit a day job cold turkey and dive right in, you should probably have 6-12 months worth of emergency funds saved up...

So, there you have it! BTW, your CGI portfolio is pretty awesome; I'd like to think that in today's age that is a healthy, growing industry? Maybe head in that direction...

=Matt=

 

[MrFotoFool]

I concur with everyone here. I work at a photo lab that serves both consumers and professionals - I have been there for 20 years. For the first half of that time, the bulk of our income was from professional photographers and we had close to 50 employees. Our pros have completely dried up over the last decade. They are not getting jobs, we only have a few full time pros still making it, and our lab now employees about 10 people.

Furthermore, the type of photography you describe would only be profitable if you can market yourself as a high end fine art photographer. This is exceedingly difficult and is in fact what I would love to do but have not figured out how.

It seems to me the best way to make money in photography currently, if you want to do nature or artsy stuff, is to lead photo tours and workshops. Even this is iffy, though, because our lab gets the course brochures from the well known Arizona Highways workshops and even they told me their registrations were down the last couple years.

To wrap it up, you are hearing from all of us here that photography is not a good way to make a living in the current climate. Sorry to be negative, but just trying to be realistic. If you want to get a foot in the industry you could work at a camera store or a photo lab like I do, but the pay is lousy. (Maybe a busy camera store that gives commission on high end sales would be better).

 

[alexanderferdinand]

Dear Dave!
Sorry to hear you lost your work.
Sure it would be a nice thing to make a living from doing what you love to do.
I had my weddings and made pictures for a travel agency, some nice jobs, BUT: I wouldnt like to do this everytime.
First of all, although they were well paid, it was to less to live from it.
Second: some of the "ideas" of my contractors were simly s...., but you have to give them the feeling, this is pure genius.
Third and most important: I dont want to loose photography as my favorite hobby.

My 2 cents.

Good luck whatever you choose as your way!

 

[bycostello]

you said it yourself industry is full of people in your situation.... at the commodity end of the photography scale there are plenty of people working cheap or even free..... but if you can offer unique and quality you can make a career of it....

 

[Sith Zombie]

Hi, sorry you lost your job.
First off, I would say that if you really want to make a living off photography, now is the best time because you don't have the 9-5 to sap your time and energy. I know a few people who have been in your situation and they ended up being better off, so try to turn a negative in to a positive.

Secondly, Unfortunately the style of photography you do will probably not make you much money, unless perhaps you live in a 'touristy' area and can sell images of the area or portraits of tourists next to landmarks etc and even then you might not make much.

The way I see the industry now is that with film, photographers could make a lot of money because nobody knew how cameras worked or how to develop film etc, so a photographer would have a skills that people were willing to pay for.
Now with digital, the skill set was diminished. People can figure out how the camera works more easily because they can see the results instantly, they no longer need people to process film or print images as they can view on computer screens etc.
Also because digital has made photography more accessible, the market has become over saturated, further lowering the perceived value of photography.

You can still make some good money from stock sites but you have to have a huge catalogue and be constantly adding to it. You also can't just put up loads of landscapes and expect money, you have to do you kinda things blog sites etc will be looking for. So for example a cooking site might be looking for things like heaps of spices or some fresh vegetables to go with an article.

If your good with people, I would suggest wedding photography as people are always going to be getting married for the foreseeable future.

Money can be made with product photography but a lot of small business/ebay/websites do their own nowadays because cameras are so cheap and get them instant results. Sure most are really bad at it but then they'll pay someone a few bucks to spruce them up in photoshop, or again, do it themselves because the tech is cheap and accessible.

but like others have said, if you are good at what you do and work HARD, you can still make it. Just consider that making money from photography is more about being a businessman than it is being a photographer. If you think you can do that, then go for it.

If I were you however, I would start my own design company because that is your real skill, take some business courses or research on the internet.

Anyway, best of luck.

 

[Pag]

I've been slowly looking into turning photography into a full time job for a while now. While I'm not making a living out of it yet, here's some of what I've learned about making it work:

• Being different is more important than being good (but you must still be good). If what you offer is the same as any number of other photographers, then the client will choose based on price. It becomes a race to the bottom to see who can ask for the lowest price, and that's just a bad place to be as a businessman.
• It's hard to make money with landscape, wildlife or similar photography because these subjects don't really change over time and everybody can take the same pictures. Somebody who needs a photo of the Grand Canyon can use one from 5 years ago and there are only so many good vantage points, so a lot of pictures end up looking the same. People, products, pets -- these are things that change or evolve over time and that need a lot of photos. There's more business there.
• It's a lot easier to be different if there aren't half a million other photographer doing exactly the same type of photos that you are. I see a ton of family photographer on Facebook (it's easy to get started and requires limited skills TBH), but very very few pro pet photographers. I would rather become a pet photographer in that situation -- even though the market is smaller, the competition is much smaller too so you can become the reference in your field.
• Being a specialist is good. If you just had a newborn, who would you rather go to for a picture: the photographer who takes wedding, products, event, family and baby photography, or the specialist who only takes pictures of kids between 0 and 2 years old? You know the specialist will do a better job, even if he's more expensive.
• The high-end market is a lot less crowded than the low-end. If you have the skills to pull it off, doing high quality photos for a high price is much better than doing cheap work for a cheap price. You want your services to be considered as a luxury with a price to match, not as a commodity. Think of your business as the Audi of photography, not Honda.
• Sell to clients who have money. The average Joe doesn't want to spend thousands of dollars on photos when he can take photos of an acceptable level of quality with his point-and-shoot. The rich banker may be more than happy to pay a large sum to immortalize his second wedding though. Rich corporations may be willing to spend large sums to promote their products and services in the best way. If I were to become a wedding photographer, I would do high-end wedding photos for high-end clients. There's more money that way.
• If people don't know you exist, they won't hire you. Make sure you have a good marketing plan to get your work in front of your potential clients. "Build it and they will come" doesn't really work in the real world unless you're very lucky.

I hope you found that useful. At worse it helped me organize my thoughts on the matter a bit

My photos on Flickr, for any interested

 

[Mt Spokane Photography]

Dave, the comment below is not aimed at you, just something to think about.

I have observed that whenever times are tough, those who have lost their job or need extra income buy a new DSLR and try to setup shop. They advertise on Craigslist for low prices, and deliver even lower quality products. It has become very difficult for people who want high quality images to sort things out. Imagine hiring a incompetent photographer to do a once in a life time Wedding shoot.

As a result, good photographers are forced out of business and there are tons of poor ones.

This means that its not a good field to start in. Now add to that, magazines are going out of business and newspapers are firing all their photographers and relying on amateur images that they get free, and a few free lance images.

Video is picking up some of the slack, it is possible to do broadcast quality video using DSLR's, but the DSLR itself is a tiny bit of the financial outlay needed for broadcast quality equipment.


Its a really tough business.


Get into HVAC The global warming trend is increasing the demand for air conditioning, its a growing area.

 

[mvrbnsn]

Dave,

Hi, your work is beautiful and very polished. I have a suggestion that I hope will be helpful. There are some not so obvious companies that need Artists/Designers. I am an Art Director and have worked as a Senior Graphic Designer and Illustrator over the years. For most of the past two decades I have been in an area I would have never thought of on my own--working for a large company that primarily serves the federal government. Depending on the geographic area, there are many corporations that have in-house graphic departments. Some of them employ large numbers of Artists doing everything from presentations and marketing materials, animation, to information and technical graphics for use in proposals that they submit. You may already be aware of this, however many Graphics people limit their searches to design firms, ad agencies and the like; all of which are much more subject to economic pressures. To be sure government contractors are in a time of immense pressure as well (I experienced a layoff myself some years ago), but they still need the work done. If you are in or near a good size city it can also be worth checking with temporary employment agencies. That is how I got my current job. Often it can be less complex work say using Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, InDesign, even Powerpoint, rather than all 3d work. It can still be rewarding. All the best to you!

 

[PVS]

You can always try with stock sites such as stocksy or gettimages. It is better than being wedding photog.

 

[Haydn1971]

Weddings, kids, portraits and dogs is the way to making a living in my opinion... If you aren't brave enough to do a wedding, you won't make enough to pay the mortgage :-/

Many Internet pundits say that making money at photography is easy, but making a good living is easier elsewhere. I worked up a business plan a few years ago and it scared me silly how much I'd have to charge and how much work I'd need to do to earn a similar amount to what I did at the time as a freelance civil engineer. I now work for a big "services" firm in the UK as a Senior Consultant (traffic engineering) earning slightly less, but with almost an assured future workload, so I don't have to spend time marketing myself as much, which is nice because I don't really like the networking aspect of my industry.

If your a good networker, photography as a career might work for you, if you see it as just a way of getting lots of cool new kit, it won't, but there is a lot of ground inbetween - sit down, work out your costs and by that I don't just mean the camera, lenses and lighting, I mean cost of running transport - fuel, tires, servicing, finance, cost of living, mortgage, food, utilities, socialising, cost of marketing, website, portfolio, trade shows, then look at what you need to fund holidays, how much tax you will pay, liability insurance, personal injury protection (you are the main business asset), then look at how much you think you can charge locally and a reasonable estimate of workload - most people get married on Saturdays in the UK, so you might expect a maximum of 40 weddings a year, you might expect a might expect a couple of portrait sessions a week over say 40 weeks, maybe a outside shoot every other week, then there is the business stuff, product photos of anything from cakes to Diesel engines depending on what's close by...

Seriously, I'd look at your current skill set and think, what's the market value vs what I'd need to learn new with photography - I stayed in Civil Engineering myself

 

[aj1575]

I think that with the right ideas and some understanding how bussines is done you could make it a career. Unfortunalty I think you won't make enough money with landscape photography, there are just too many people doing this for a rather small market.
What I would do is events, not only weddings (also crowded), but there are many other events you could think of. At most of these events there are people taking photos, mostly dads, moms, friends, partners and so on. Their pictures are maybe okay, but as a photographer you can do better, and this is worth something.
I'm not a pro, but I like to show you what I mean. I was asked by a friend of a friend who saw me taking pictures at kids birthday party, if I'm interested to take pictures at the show of their sportsclub (some kind of gymnastics). I said yes, I just can't guarantee anything, because I never did anything like this before. The event was indoors with colorfull lighting; I shoot the whole thing with my 350D and a 50mm f1.4 (the only thing fast enough I had back then). The pictures turne out quite good; I asked them If I should make calenders from the best shots; they agreed, and I organised everything, sent the calenders directly to them they paid them. And even though I did it because they were friends of friends, they paid me, it was 200$. I did this 2 more times, until they reorganized the event, and somebody else took care of a photographer. They just asked a friend of them with a camera, but the pictures didn't turn out well, so after one event they asked me again to do it.

I think there are many events you can shoot, and there are many people willing to pay some money for that. There are pet shows, car meetings, dance events, many kinds of sports. There are a few important points you should look for:
-your pictures must be good (not perfect, you need many good pictures in a short time)
-sell yourself; go out to an event, ask if you can take pictures, show them some, and sell the rest (it is not analog time anymore, where film and printing cost money, If you can't sell them, throw them away)
-be creative with your ideas about things / events you could photograph
-good service, react fast to the wishes of customers, offer them many things (nowadays you can print pictures on almost anything), show them what you could organize them, and do not wait until they ask
-organize your workflow; time is money, and as a pro you don't have time for a lot of PP and organizing, do it once and to it right.

I know, it is a big decission to start a new bussines, but photography is something you can start small; you basically need only a small kit (with some quality in it), good photographic skills, some idea and a bussines card. If you have some free time just go out and try it.

 

[AcutancePhotography]

Hi Dave
First I'm an amateur so not worried about you as competition.
You say you want to do something you love, my personal experience is don't turn your hobby in to a career/profession, you could find it takes the fun and enjoyment out of it!

+1

I personally think that being a professional photographer is a tough way to make a living and an easy way to ruin a hobby.

But best of luck to you!!

 

[Grumbaki]

I personally think that being a professional photographer is a tough way to make a living and an easy way to ruin a hobby.

Best post thus far. I don't want to ruin my hobby by trying to cash from it. "don't sh!t were you eat"