Business side of becoming professional photographer?

My dream is to become a professional photographer, and to have my own business. I have bought a camera (rebel xti) and am taking free pictures at this point, to gain the experience and develop my personal style, but what do I have to do on the legal business side to open my own business?

First get some experience as a pro by working for one as an assistant.
You did not mention where you learned how to use your camera (like school?) You will need at least a few semesters of this to have the skills necessary to be a pro and develop a good book (portfolio) to get a job with a photographer.

Shooting for fee tells everyone how much your work is worth ... not a good thing ... you can flip burgers for $8 an hour, so your work has to be at least that good.

It takes years of working in one of the specialties in photography to develop a style that photo editors and art directors will associate with you.

Look here to see what the pros in your area are doing:
http://www.asmp.org/findaphotographer/

Maybe you can get one of them to hire you.

Then, once you have your education, experience and all your gear make an appointment with SCORE and have them help you develop a business plan and marketing plan. From there you will want to start an LLC and build a website. You can see if your business idea passes the "giggle" test and later the "smell" test by building a P&L spreadsheet. That will tell you more that any other business tool in a very short time.

In five to six years, you may be ready to go out on your own.

LLC is a type of business (Limited Liability Company), P&L is a profit and loss statement and SCORE is run by the Small Business Administration. You can google all three Report Abuse

I would recommend going on youtube and researching your camera and lenses, there are alot of great videos to help learn. Also find your specialty, that is very important. You definetly need to save your money because it gets very costly, but to answer your question. You can go on the IRS website and look up small business and they have alot of information. Hope that helps! Hope you are successful! :)