Hello. I’ve been working as a photographer for years. Since it used to be one of my hobbies I was thinking a lot about photography as an art. I imagined my photography journey as a long way of art exploration. My ambitions in my photography career were to become a full-time artist-photographer. But when I came to the working process, I realised that there are a lot of things involved besides photography.
I realised that when you start working as a photographer you often spend more than 50% of the time doing anything but photography. Sometimes I got too much into marketing and business management and did not do a single creative photoshoot within months. Still, I’m not really interested in the business, I’m interested in photography. That’s what I would do if I don’t need money. That’s why I’m writing this blog.
How I started my photography journey and the difficulties I encountered
Around 8 years ago I took my first camera in my hands and started taking pictures of everything. Several years ago I moved to the UK (I’ve spent there 3 years and now I live in Berlin) and I was doing photography for about 4 years by that time. I had to start everything from the blank list and decided that I will try to work only as a photographer and will try to focus solely on that since that’s my passion. I had some experience working as a freelancer before and I knew that I’m not going to build my business in one day.
Ways of income I tried
1st thing to do is to create a good portfolio
That it’s better to make sure that it’s good. I would suggest arranging 10-20 or even more free photoshoots and doing them in the first month. Even when you have some good photographs – do more, and you might get even better ones. Do it as your job push yourself to do these photoshoots every day
The best would be to brainstorm ideas for photoshoots in different styles until you get some 20-35 concepts and then do most of them. Some won’t work out but some will.
If you want to start your business, don’t forget about self-representation. For that, you would have to do some personal branding photography. Try to first pick the colours (3-5) that would suit your style and then do some lifestyle and portrait shots of yourself(or ask your fellow photographer to do that). Of course, you can order it from a photographer too but doing a personal branding photoshoot for yourself is another reason to practice a whole photography project.
1st mistake I did when I decided to work as a photographer
So I started searching for a job in photography agencies and spent about 3 weeks sending applications to different ones. I probably almost never received any replies and when received – they were negative.
If you recently started doing photography – don’t waste your time applying for photography agencies. You will find your way there probably a couple of years later and through networking. Otherwise, you will waste your time getting some templates saying that maybe you will be contacted sometime later.
You have to get ready for hard times, at some point you will encounter them. I did it all during covid times, unfortunately. Sometimes I did better and sometimes I had to work night shifts in warehouses. Sometimes I had only 1-2 photoshoots a week.
Then I went searching for a part-time job so at least half of the time I could dedicate to photography. I worked in a pub for 1.5 years. Later after messaging all of the companies I could find, I started working with a few, sometimes. So I advise you not to expect anyone to be interested in your services. Someone, maybe, a bit or if you are really lucky…
How I went along my photography journey selling prints
So once in a while, I sold prints, maybe 4-6 times a year. Because what I do is not what is sold regularly. There are two types of prints: cheap ones(with pictures of the main square of your city or with a cup of coffee and a dumb quote) or more artistic but also much more expensive. I also sold some photos of manchester through a print company for instance. So if you try that, make sure you know which one you want to sell.
If you sell good art for cheap, that most probably won’t work.
For cheap you have to sell prints of cups of coffee, quotes or superheroes and cats. A famous concept but not your original art.
As expensive ones, there can be complex concepts shown through photography medium. The only problem is that even if your work is good, it won’t sell. Unless you’re famous and have some people who’re following you.
Try local art and flea markets.
It might be an option if you know a marketplace where thousands of people will see your works. For example, you can check your local markets and flea markets. I tried it a few times and didn’t make much money. I realised that you have to find the right market in your city, and you have to go there regularly. You have to update your art by adding more and more new works and removing the ones that are not selling. Put your contact details on each print you sell and try to give away something like postcards with your personal details on the back side as well to get more exposure.
Get ready to work almost for free some of the time when you are starting out, most probably you won’t get a lot of sales straight away.
How I tried to get orders for photoshoots
I’ve struggled a lot with that. I offered my services in the pubs where I worked. I told to everyone that I’m a photographer and I continued to send emails to different companies. In a year or so I started receiving more photoshoots from a chain of restaurants, a couple of local businesses and a couple of agencies.
By the way half of the jobs I found rather by accident but when I emailed restaurants, of course, no one wanted my services. The chain of restaurants that I mentioned above (Barburrito), started ordering photoshoots for me only because I had a chat with their main chef.
The agencies I worked with are companies which work with big clients and work with a number of freelances. They offer cheap and easy photoshoots but it’s not consistent and you shouldn’t rely on them.
The rest of the profit I got from my website and other agencies and businesses.
Basically to get enough work you need to be able to constantly contact many people and tell them that you are a photographer. What helped me too is Facebook and groups for photographers.
Basically, at some point, you start to receive a lot of mini-jobs and together, bit by bit, it creates a flow of orders that you receive
I also tried ads but it didn’t work consistently(one month it works and another doesn’t).
Most of the clients I had from ads were people who were searching for cheap services but not high-quality ones. I was always into quality over quantity and I think ads won’t work if you want to become an artistic photographer with your own unique style.
Overall I started to work as a full-time photographer after contacting many people and meeting more new friends so networking possibly helped me the most. One very good website for networking is Meetup. If you want to find friends, clients, and connections to companies and businesses to work with, try visiting different Meetup events.
How I Tried To Do Stock Photography
That started in the year 2018. As probably many people do, I uploaded some of my pictures on Shutterstock. It seems very nice to have some income on the side. I found some 200 pictures that I thought will be suitable and uploaded that. Of course, it wasn’t bringing me a lot of profit. You need to have at least a few thousand good stock images to have noticeable income. Over some time I was coming back to it and did some pictures specifically for Shutterstock. It was bringing me about 2$ a month and stopped doing it because I don’t like this type of photography but to really make money from it you need to upload about 100-300 good images every month for a couple of years. Only then if you continue doing that you will make money.
How to find the best ratio between managing business and doing photography
A lot of times I was even forgetting that I’m a photographer because most of my time was spent doing marketing. Depending on what you want to achieve you can find the best ratio for yourself. Probably the easiest would be to not depend on income from photography but to do that on a side and network a lot. But I would say for me the best one will be about 75% of the photography and 25% of everything else. Remember that a very important part of your photography journey is passion. You should keep gaining passion to not give up.
Of course, you need to remember what you want to achieve in the result, it should be actually a photography journey and the process should sustain you and give you joy.
There are two ways to achieve something:
Business way of your photography career
This is rather about making money than photography. This is rather about your photography career rather than about art. Most probably you can do 80% of types of photography. So you need to learn how to provide these services at a good standard of quality and that’s what your photography journey will look like. A lot of types of photography do not involve much creativity or knowledge outside of how to use your camera.
Since people tend to choose a photographer of a certain type of photography you can make some separate types of business cards or accounts on social media or web pages. These separate accounts will represent you as a photographer doing a certain thing like food photography for example and another one as a birthday or event photography…
It is also good for SEO since you can create a separate specific page about a certain type of photography. For this way of doing photography, you need to create a portfolio in all of the genres you want to shoot and create your brand. After you can start sending your portfolio to different businesses. Aim to put the lowest prices to work with the most number of clients. It’s better to work a lot for very cheap at this stage since people in your area need to get to know you. You can also order google ads and mention in the ad that your services are cheap. Later, once you get a lot of orders, you can raise your prices and make good money. So you will have to spend 60-70% of the time developing a business.
Artist way of your photography journey
You have to find what you like the most (not what is sold the most, do not get into that trap) if you want to do photography as an artist. Start your photography journey by networking and doing more artistic photography. You will find people who like what you do and over time you will improve more and more. Do a lot of photoshoots for free and then you will start getting paid jobs and you can open your studio and work with more prominent clients and so on.
If you try that, you are going to have less profit and a harder way ahead. So try to first find any type of source of income to not depend much on the money. Then you can create art and organize art events or join them. You need to network a lot to find people to collaborate with and to find clients. That way over the years will bring you to know photography better and to create really great artworks. Your work will be valued more once you get there but you might struggle for a long time. So you will have to mostly focus on improvement at photography and only 20% of the time on the business.
disappointing things on the way to becoming a successful artist
What makes me a bit disappointed in art is the lack of consensus. There are photographers whose work is quite mediocre. But they are good businessmen. They tell some epic quotes next to ordinary photographs and tell everyone how cool they are. And they are making a lot from selling weak photographs and are also becoming famous. And there are great photographers who have less exposure but make a lot better art. I love when art speaks for itself but sometimes I see that the public praises the quotes. I feel like I still have lots of things to learn but I am definitely not the best businessman.
What successful artists-photographers do
If photography for you is a journey and you want to constantly improve, not just make good money but do some input. Then there is a great way to do it. I noticed that there were some photographers who did photography not for profit for a long time, but their works were so good, that people started paying for their services. I realised that that is the path I want to follow. Because if you desperately depend on income from photography you end up not learning photography but making lots of cheap photoshoots just for money and you spend the rest of the time searching for more jobs.
Working as a photographer try to not get into the commercial trap. Try to create cool photography first and then do the business
I’ve seen a lot of times that over a couple of years photographers did the photoshoots that they liked for free and then found orders in that field because they got better at it. Think of famous people. How did they become famous? Because of the great works they did. So you might think: why would I go and spend my whole days and sometimes money doing photoshoots or other activities for free? But it’s a way to get better at what you do, no one will value your work until you have created it. First, you have to create impressive photos that everyone loves and then people will order from you. That’s the way to go through your never-ending photography journey
I’m telling all of that because I know that sometimes new photographers are waiting to receive an order and from that, they try to create a portfolio. The way to become a great photographer is to constantly do photoshoots in your own style and while doing so you will share your work with the most people you can find and you will start to get orders.
I hope you found this post helpful. If you did, please consider subscribing to my newsletter which will help you to improve your photo skills. In the newsletter, I send notifications about new posts and photography tutorials and sometimes updates about my photography projects.
Comments are closed.