How to Become a Professional Photographer
Types of Pro Jobs, Building a Portfolio, Gaining Experience
Oct 24, 2009
The best way to become a professional photographer is to slowly ease into it. Amateur photographers who wish to turn their hobby into a full-time job are best served by taking a gradual approach.
Types of Professional Photography Jobs
They are different types of photography: with different business environments, market demand, camera lenses and skill sets. While it is possible to cover more than one area, it isn't practical to stray too far.
Photographers need to match their personal interest with market demand. Landscapes might be a photographer's passion but he might not necessarily be able to find gainful employment as a landscape photographer.
Some examples of different photography jobs are described below:
- There are three main types of wedding photography: studio portrait, pre-wedding location shoots (parks and gardens), and "actual day". They can be considered separate specialties and some photographers only handle one or two of the above.
- Event photography covers exhibitions, seminars, conferences, concerts, plays. Customers are usually business corporations.
- Corporate and industrial photography means taking photographs for annual reports, brochures and instruction manuals: portraits of senior management, location photos of factories and machinery.
- Portrait photography means studio work. It covers weddings, university graduations and anniversary photos. The photographer will need to be good at dealing with small children, babies and perhaps a few famous personalities.
- Sports photography requires a heavy investment in high performance cameras and lenses: high frame rates, fast autofocus and large aperture telephoto lenses.
- Bird and wildlife photography requires patience and skill in stalking, and long focal length telephoto lenses (longer than sports photography).
- Photojournalism can range from taking photos for the local daily to going on foreign assignments for national magazines.
- Fine art photography means selling large poster-sized prints, often in black and white. Photographers may have to develop relationships with art galleries, just like other artists. Good darkroom or Photoshop technique is useful.
- Stock photography requires creativity, constantly thinking up new ideas for the types of photographs that advertisers and editors are looking for to illustrate their advertisements and publications.
How to Gain Experience and Build a Photography Portfolio
Becoming a professional photographer is a chicken and egg deal: it is difficult to get hired without a portfolio, and it is difficult to build a portfolio without getting hired.
One good way to gain experience and build up a portfolio is to work for free. While it isn't a good idea to "spoil the market" for professional photographers, there are circumstances where a professional isn't going to be hired anyway:
- Charity events.
- Local community events.
- Parties organized by friends and family.
When volunteering, the photographer should make it clear that:
- He is not a professional.
- The quality of the photographs is not guaranteed.
- He is volunteering in order to build up his own portfolio.
For fashion and portrait photography, new models are often willing to pose for free in exchange for copies of the photos for their own portfolio. This is known as TFP (Time For Photos/Prints) or TFCD (Time For CD): the model doesn't charge the photographer for the modeling time and receives the photos (or a CD of the photos) from the photographer in return.
Portfolios can be displayed on the photographer's website. Owning a dedicated website domain name (such as www.johndoephotography.com) is preferable but not strictly necessary. Aspiring professionals can start off by using a free photo hosting or sharing service such as Flickr.
It is easier to get started in stock photography. There are free stock photography websites (stock.xchng, morguefile) where anyone can join and submit photographs. There are also paid websites (such as iStockphoto) where photographers can sell their stock photos (iStockphoto does require a relatively simple application process). Some photographers build up a portfolio of stock photographs and use the portfolio to leverage themselves into other types of photography.
Becoming a Professional Photographer
Being a professional photographer isn't for everyone, even the most skilled and enthusiastic amateurs.
Turning photography into a paying job means working under pressure, accepting full responsibility for mistakes (the buck stops at the photographer), dealing with (sometimes unreasonable) people, marketing, living without a steady income and being exposed to legal liability.
The good news is that it is possible to slowly ease into it: starting off as an unpaid volunteer, then a part-timer. And building up a portfolio and a list of business contacts at the same time.
Becoming a full-time professional photographer doesn't have to be the only goal. After experiencing the pressures of real-world photography, a photographer might decide against "turning pro". He might instead find a happy balance by becoming a permanent part-timer and keeping his day job.
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