Hi Guys

Stand easy- not a shimano 12sp issue this time.

My wife is am amateur photographer. She’s done some courses, and
is actually quite good. At school and at work she does a lot of stuff.
Many people ask her to do stuff for free. She is a very social person
so she’s happy to be a free photographer. – atm she has a high demand.

I guess the long term aim is to morph this into business. Any ideas on how to do
this. I guess this should not be so difficult, but prior experiences would be v. helpful.

Matt

Money is important. It’s how we live in the main.

Don’t do stuff for free. Does my head in, in the creative industries that so many people expect you to work for nothing to ‘build your portfolio’… It damages the industry for those that need to earn a living.

Charge a fair rate.

I guess this should not be so difficult

Ha! Yeah, OK.

Does she want to start up her own business, or get a job employed by a company as a photographer?

The former, incredibly hard. The latter not so much, but still very hard.
Wedding photography is one way, however that’s not exactly in a good place at the moment, and with the advent of the camera phone, very much less in demand.

Does she have a website with a full portfolio, to start?

Source: my experience, in my younger days I was a pretty good photographer – was the tog for my Sister’s wedding (not paid, as a wedding present to her and my BiL). It was the most stressful thing I have ever done, and I vowed to never do it again.

Getting your work out there, even if it’s of a high enough quality, so much so that someone is willing to pay you for it, is, I’m afraid, extremely hard.

This may sound pessimistic, but it’s just a reality check.

Here’s an article from a few years back which is still very relevant.

https://erickimphotography.com/blog/2017/06/16/why-you-should-not-pursue-photography-as-career/

so she’s happy to be a free photographer. – atm she has a high demand.

And watch that demand fall off a cliff once you are charging enough to live (and prosper).
Once up and running she will be up against people who are ‘quite good, work for free and in high demand’.

Free photography is very desirable, trying to charge for it makes it more difficult.

I’m currently working in the industry. I shoot editorial, corporate and Weddings. Would be happy to help with Any questions you have. Drop me a PM if you like.

Very hard to make money as a freelance photographer now, pre CV-19 you could do wedding stuff, but takes a while to get a reputation (good enough for people to pay several £k per wedding).

Biggest problem is with modern DSLRs the barrier to entry is pretty low, so loads of amateurs who are half decent and do stuff for free e.g. I’ve shot four weddings now (IIRC) and given all the originals away for free, which is hard to compete with if you’re charging £3k for the same thing!

My sister in law is a professional freelance photographer, does fashion stuff for magazines in London – pays a pittance and endlessly expected to work for ‘portfolio work’ for commercial jobs!

I am/was a wedding and festival photographer, currently looking to retrain in cyber, or something.

currently looking to retrain in cyber, or something

How could you possibly know?

Not wanting to have a go BUT every one doing work for free is putting someone out of a living! This is the issue with creative industries always someone willing to do it for free or beer! If she is good then charge for it, i am sure you wouldn’t work for free! After 20 years as a sound engineer I gave it up as everyone had got used to having a mate who worked for free/ beer or students working free for experience and it didn’t matter that the job was not as good but just cheaper as that’s what most people care about!

If she’s happy to be a free photographer and wants to turn that into a business then these are mutually exclusive. If she’s in high demand then your answer is very simply “start charging.”

Many many years ago I used to chip Playstations. I charged near-cost because I enjoyed doing it and wanted the practice. I bought the chips for like £4 and charged £5 for the service. I must have easily done several dozen before I grew tired of it. When I didn’t want to do it anymore I just ramped up the price: £10… £15… I got to 35+ quid and people were still going “yeah, OK” at which point I suddenly realised, why didn’t I do this in the first place?

Don’t underestimate your worth.

Specialise… and in something either very niche, or very dull.
a friend of mine was a great portrait photographer, but made most of his money shooting photos of tanker lorries for corporate brochures.
another friend was a World Cup photographer, but would pay for each weekend by doing the cheesy ‘Team riders in team kit in front of the team car’ pics for the sponsors.
Do stuff that can’t be done well by camera phone or ‘mate with a camera’ – macro stuff, studio stuff, food, kittens, corporate headquarter photos…

In an attempt to diversify a bit I started a new photo business in the new year working in the hospitality business. A few good lights, some decent wide angle and perspective shift lenses on top of my usual gear and an upgraded camera. I had customers I had persuaded to pay rather than rely on phone shots.
And then this all hit.
I can’t see that industry being happy to pay decent prices again for a while.

TL:DR – I sold my camera gear and stick to colouring in for a living.

As said above start charging a commercial rate, you’ll soon find out how good you are.

I would take a different tack. As she already has a job, and apparently is talented, why not focus on the artistic side of photography rather than attempt to become another hack in an overcrowded marketplace? Approach it as an artist, do something interesting/different/unusual that expresses creativity. Maybe try to get some work into a local gallery/community space etc. Nothing more depressing than turning a hobby into a profession & having to march to someone else’s beat IMO.

I only know a handful of pro photographers but they’ve all had to diversify to some extent (even more so with COVID!) One has got into tuition/coaching which apparently has been quite successful. None of them would recommend getting into it as a full-time thing! If you can make it work as a hobby or side-gig though then great.

Dont ruin a fun hobby by trying to make a business out of it.

You cant compete on price when others do it for free. Right now there is close to zero promotional stuff happening. Plus the internet is full of cheap / free images in Stock Photo Library’s.

So you either do live, or niche and have to compete on price.

Sure, there will be someone doing well, but that’s like all the people in Drama school saying that Tom Cruse has done well out of it, so could I.

It is a crowded market and you have to have a great reputation and/or spent a lot of time building up a wealth of clients and contacts. Neither come quickly.

Equally photography as fine art is just as hard but perhaps more rewarding for the person concerned; I’d personally go down that route as I’d always have a back up job until it pays its way and I’d get much more out of the end result.

As above, speak and go to local galleries, look at photographers you like, understand the course they took to get to where they are. I’d suggest maybe even a residential week or weekend but guess they’ll be off for a while yet.

All of the above by the way on the background of not being a photographer but the son of a lifelong photographic lecturer and immersed in his network of photographer colleagues, some of whom were frankly superb (Fay Godwin for example).

And best of luck, my dad never considered it a job as he still loves it to this day.

Gah, professional photographer here – imagine if someone in your business came along and said they’d do your work for free. It’s infuriating.

Having said that, I agree with Trimix above – it removes most of the fun out of a hobby if you’re trying to make a living from it. Just ask any wedding singer. Either commit to a professional attitude and charge appropriately or enjoy your pastime. Don’t get in the way of everyone else by half heartedly doing stuff for free that others could charge for.

Not wanting to have a go BUT every one doing work for free is putting someone out of a living!

Well yes and no, if you can’t offer a service which is significantly better than someone else’s free service, you probably ought to think about doing something else.

Photography is a good example. There is a set of superb pros who are very well paid and a large number of pretty mediocre pros who are no better than amateurs (who will do it for free). Fundamentally the market is over supplied, so wages are low. It’s not a moral argument, it’s just economics.

I took some pics for a friend’s wedding once. It went really well, got great pics. Then some years later I did another having learned way more about cameras, done way more photography and owning much better kit; it was a complete and total nightmare in every respect.

This isn’t supposed to be advice, more of a moan. Things can be unexpectedly very difficult; their reception was in a restaurant with a long narrow low ceiling room with a window at one end, in front of which was the top table. Zero room to move around for either flash or camera, and they were back lit the entire time! Learning how to deal with stuff like that is the kind of think I suspect you’d need to be able to do as a photographer. I think you need to visit venues first and.. I dunno.. arrange some curtains or something! That’s probably where you’d earn your money.

Yep, weddings are very stressful, esp if you’ve not been to all the locations before hand and figured out how you’re going to handle it with regard to angles, flashes, lighting etc. Even after all that, people stand in the way and you miss the shot you wanted. Probably the most stressful photo gig you can get. Although, eventually I guess you just get so good you can cope with anything (well the well paid ones do).

Gah, professional photographer here – imagine if someone in your business came along and said they’d do your work for free. It’s infuriating.

True enough, but also it makes me weep when I see some of the work that people have paid for, especially people like actors who have little money to start with but shell out for terrible “headshots”.

Zooming off at a tangent – AI editing software “replacing” retouching skills. Umm no. You can smooth someone’s skin (for example) but the skill is in deciding if the skin needs smoothing in the first place (etc.)

You’d have to be mad to take on the stress/responsibility of a wedding for no pay IMO!!

Zooming off at a tangent – AI editing software “replacing” retouching skills.

You could argue that retouching has NO place in photography (certainly as an art form). I guess I’m not a purist though as I’m very excited to be receiving my new phone today, mainly for the ability to take cool pics easily – which it accomplishes by using said AI in realtime, so you probably aren’t even really aware what it’s doing 😃

My nephew is a professional photographer.
He had to move from a small village in Nrth Yorks to London.

He’s done well and has a good reputation. However this has been over a good few years and hard work.

I may be biased but he’s good with people and has his own style, which is so important as one has to stand out in the crowd in this type of work.

Even now he’s still doing the odd free job, if he needs to learn new techniques or trying out the lastest gear.

Atm he’s making a film and has done several music videos in the past.

I agree with the above about working mainly for free. As with a lot of self employed people it’s getting harder and harder (this was before the pandemic) to earn a living, as too many customers expect work done for nothing or at a mates rate.

as too many customers expect work done for nothing or at a mates rate.

I don’t get all this whingeing about people doing stuff for free, if you are doing a job that other people do for enjoyment or hobby then that’s part of the market economics of what you do, just like bands starting out (or fizzing out) playing for beer down the local. Very few people want to work on a checkout till* as a hobby so the starting pay is greater than zero.

* or any other job you might mention

I don’t get all this whingeing about people doing stuff for free, if you are doing a job that other people do for enjoyment or hobby then that’s part of the market economics of what you do, just like bands starting out (or fizzing out) playing for beer down the local.

I know what you mean, but as bands get bigger, release more albums, play bigger venues and bigger festivals, their ticket price goes up and (hopefully) they get a bigger pay cheque out of it.

For photography, people don’t see any value in it at all, because so many people do it to a vaguely acceptable base standard, because digital cameras and editing software are so good and so cheap nowadays. You’d never get someone say to Mick Jagger “Why should I pay £100 to see you lot play when my mate Fat Bob and his lads do a passable cover of Sympathy for the Devil?”, but as a photographer you will get people say “Why should I pay you to shoot my wedding when my mate Fat Bob’s just bought a little Canon camera and a couple of lenses from Cash Converters and he’ll do it for a pint?”

*Disclosure: have done a handful of weddings for friends, do insist people pay me for them…

For photography, people don’t see any value in it at all,

Probably because in many cases the value of the work really is close to zero as an average wedding photographer is no better than a good amateur (who will do it for fun).

The really good guys market themselves well and can easily demonstrate that their work is a cut above and therefore worth paying for.

If you’re a really good pro and can’t market yourself, then you unfortunately get tarred with the same brush as all the mediocre guys and have to compete against ‘do it for free’ – which must suck.

I suspect there’s also the fact that in the Instagram era, all people really want are nice iPhone snaps with a good* filter on it, which they can post instantly….

* ‘good’ as in utterly shit

For photography, people don’t see any value in it at all,

This is why as a photographer I never have anything to do with the general public and stick to agencies/brands that appreciate quality and have some kind of budget.
At the end of the day they are using your imagery to add value to their business and if what you do is not something Dave in accounts who ‘does a bit of photography and has a nice camera’ can do then there is a good living to made. (if you have the talent and know how to deal with client expectations)
As for working for free?
I have a rule: a job has to satisfy at least 2 of the following. Pays well, is really interesting and gives me access to things that mean great imagery or gets me introduced to the right people.
I did shoot lots of free work for a friends new magazine that meant my shots were in all the cafes frequented by art directors/creatives in central London, ended up shooting for Wired and GQ off the back of that.

I know a few people who started out with little background in photography and ended up shooting for reasonable money, more than their day job.
But as guaranteed mortgage paying for life job shooting ‘social’ type photography for joe public? There’s an awful lot of fish swimming in that pond searching for scraps.

This is why as a photographer I never have anything to do with the general public and stick to agencies/brands that appreciate quality and have some kind of budget.
At the end of the day they are using your imagery to add value to their business and if what you do is not something Dave in accounts who ‘does a bit of photography and has a nice camera’ can do then there is a good living to made.

Tangentially its probably less flattering than you make it out to be paid. Dave in accounts is probably too expensive to take away from doing the accounts!

Also, people probably quite like the idea of helping friends out at a wedding, and being fed and watered.

OTOH you have to pay someone a few hundred quid to take some corporate mug shots because “tea from the machine and free lunch in the canteen” isnt quite as appealing as drunk bridesmaids. Even if any any monkey with a smartphone could probably have taken the middle managements phonebook photos whereas the wedding might have taken some skills.

as a photographer you will get people say “Why should I pay you to shoot my wedding when my mate Fat Bob’s just bought a little Canon camera and a couple of lenses from Cash Converters and he’ll do it for a pint?”

The answer is easy. If you want top notch, pay me good money. If not, don’t. Just as I could go out to a great restaurant for amazing food, or I could go to my Mum’s for some decent but free nosh.

If not enough people want to pay top dollar for their food, fancy restaurants have to close unfortunately.

Source: my experience, in my younger days I was a pretty good photographer – was the tog for my Sister’s wedding (not paid, as a wedding present to her and my BiL). It was the most stressful thing I have ever done, and I vowed to never do it again.

This, I did my sister’s and my cousin’s weddings and had less hair after each…

I did photography A level and did my cousin’s wedding about that time, that put me off going Uni to do it and try and make a career in it, plus I didn’t think I could make enough money of photos of old buildings and collapsed mine workings….. I’ve kept it as a hobby and enjoy it.