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| *SoulEyes Photography>>>Photography Equipment |
Photography Career Help? |
I'm in school to be a special ed teacher but I love photography. Should I keep it as my hobby or change to make it my main career path? If so how do I go about having my own studio and equipment? Anyone know the cost of getting it off the ground? Photography as a profession is becoming tougher. the advent of digital cameras makes everyone with a spare 500 bux a "professional", and many of your customers will take the lowest price, because they don't understand that it takes more than equipment to make a snapshot a work of art. Neophites and part-timers will low bid just to get the experience or some fast cash, do a horrible job, and not care, because they have nothing to lose, and no reputation to protect. basically, if you have to ask, prolly the answer is "no". it's not an easy way to make a living, and I know a lot of pros that have left the field. I still love it, and despite it's many negatives (pun alert) I'm still going. If you can't be happy unless you're doing it, go for it. If you think it's an easy fun way of making a ton of money, you should meet some pros and see what they have to say about it. Source(s): years of experience as a pro photographer freelance! best thing for you! you can take pics and sell them on the side! especially while you're in school! I worked for a photography studio for four years. I loved it! I would have loved to buy the studio and do it as my career, but the cons outweighed the pros for me. It is a very demanding and tough career. It is cutthroat competition and only the top notch photographers truly make a decent living. You also have no retirement or health benefits as you are self employed. In the summer and around holidays you will be slamming busy and won't even have time to breathe. Then in the winter months you will be begging for customers. That can create unstable salary. I still enjoy photography and I do shoots on the side. But for me having a more stable and secure career was more important. Good luck with whatever you decide. It really depends on where you live and what type of photography you are interested in. I worked in photography business for over 8 years and my boyfriend has worked in the business for over 15 years. We specialized in weddings but we did many other events as well. We turned our garage into a studio so we didn't spend any money on rent. We did have a separate phone line (which you could use a cell phone service) so we didn't have an overhead cost or at least it wasn't much. Our pricing was roughly 100 - 200 dollars an hour (each) - we offered packages, not hourly rate so we pocketed (after purchasing wedding albums, enlargements, film and development costs, etc.) about $1,500.00 - $900.00 per wedding (that's just for this area we live in...I know in the city, their rates are much higher). We usually did about 2 - 3 weddings per week from March - October...sometimes even more. We tried not to spend too much money on advertisements but we did go to a couple of bridal shows per year, there are many wedding sites that you can exchange links with for free and the rest was word of mouth. The wedding photography business worked quite well for us but because our weekends were shot during summer months and we both do have a job outside the photogaphy business, we did cut down on the amount of weddings we book for this year. I am completely stepping out of it and my boyfriend is going to continue with photography, sparingly. It just so happens I teach photography Technical Photography and photoshop here at our small local college. been in the biz for 30 years now... Cant say anything has really changed biz wise... Its always been hard to start off... most people I know who are successful did Photography as their part time gig... Holding down a regular J>O>B> ( just over broke) Until they had enough experience and equipment collected up to start their own studios... cant say that's a bad way to start off... If I had to do it over now... It would most likely turn out the same way... lot of bad gigs with a few good ones sprinkled in to keep my hopes up... If you ask me if it was worth it? my answer would be yes! but remember I did a lot of crappy things to get here... and I do mean crappy! Spent a whole summer in AZ as a roofer to buy a new 4X5 field camera! keep that in mind too... source me...school of hard knocks |
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