How to become a professional photographer

It is a widely held dream among many amateur photographers to turn their passion into something much more by learning how to become a professional photographer.  

What could be better than making a living from what you love most in life, achieved while working as your boss and to your own rules?

There is good and bad news for those wanting to make that leap. The good news is, firstly, that with our lives filled with imagery, there appears to be an almost insatiable demand for photography. 

Secondly, in the UK, photography is a completely unregulated business. Anyone with or without training can declare themselves a professional photographer and start promoting their services. There is no requirement for any initial time-consuming and expensive training and qualifications. 

The bad news is that professional photography has become a hugely popular area to move into, making it an extremely competitive field that is difficult to succeed in. For those that do manage it, however, it is a hugely rewarding field to work in, providing very flexible work and personal lifestyle. 

Let's look at some steps you can take to make it happen.

 

Choosing photographic genres

Before making any significant moves towards becoming a professional photographer, you must decide exactly which form or forms of photography you want to specialise in. Photography is a wide-ranging field, and it is just about impossible to be skilled in all of them – or enjoy all of them. 

Decide what areas of photography you're best at and which you most enjoy (the two usually coincide), and opt to focus mostly on those. 

Do you like to photograph people? Do weddings appeal? How about product photography for advertising projects? Or maybe buildings, both inside and outside, for architects or estate agents. 

Or perhaps you'd rather cover some international destinations, whether tropical beaches or icy fjords? Or maybe you want to capture the beauty and diversity of the world's wildlife? Or you might fancy the adrenaline rush of breaking news photography, whether close to home or far away? 

The type(s) of photography you decide to move into will greatly impact the types of clients you'll appeal to. They generally fall into two broad categories: the public and business. 

For example, most of your clients will be the public if you opt to become a wedding photographer. In contrast, if you go into product photography, they'll be almost exclusively businesses. 

In some genres, you're likely to attract a mix of both: a social or portrait photographer, for example, may be of interest to both members of the public and certain types of business.

 

Who buys photography?

The genre(s) of photography you decide to specialise in will have a huge influence on the types of clients you market yourself to. 

If you intend to be a wedding photographer then, of course, your clients will be not only members of the public, but most especially younger people. At the other end of the scale, a news photographer will deal mainly with news outlets, agencies, newspapers and magazines (both print and digital).

The lesson is to ensure that as you make your photographic genre choices, you understand what your probable market will look like, how it functions and how you can insert yourself into it. Understanding how to make those first steps and who to is critical to maximising your chances of success.

As already mentioned, wedding photographers will be of greatest interest to younger members of the adult public. This will overlap to some extent with portrait/social photographers, who, of course, can be of interest to a wide range of adult age groups and corporate bodies looking to have staff portraits and publicity shots.

Suppose you decide to head for fashion or advertising. In that case, your clients will be businesses, not just those companies producing or importing products or services, but also the advertising and design agencies representing them. 

It can sometimes be difficult to know who to market yourself to in this field: some manufacturing or service companies source photography themselves, and others leave it to the advertising or design companies they outsource to. The obvious answer then is to approach both sides of this equation.

Travel photographers may find themselves in a similar situation, wanting to directly promote themselves to travel companies (including hotels, airlines and tour companies) and their advertising/design agencies. 

Quite often, however, travel, landscape, nature and news photographers will need to approach publishers (magazines, books and newspapers – both print and online) and photo agencies/libraries as some of their main outlets. 

I have to say here that, unfortunately, magazines and newspapers have declined in recent years. The number of publications and the pay rates available has dropped significantly due to an oversupply of images, high competition and a drop in demand for publications (particularly print).

 

Selling through photo libraries

One of the most popular professional or semi-professional photography routes for those working in the travel, lifestyle, landscape, wildlife and news photography fields is to supply photo agencies/libraries. 

These work as a resource for photography buyers by holding a photographer's images and then licensing their use to those buyers, who can include a huge range of clients, including magazines, newspapers, advertisers, designers, travel companies and academic institutions. 

It can be a huge boon to photographers who want to photograph and not be bothered with the hassle of marketing to an enormous body of potential clients. In contrast, a library allows clients to source a huge selection of off-the-shelf images in just one place. 

Some popular online libraries include:

• iStock
• Shutterstock
• Alamy
• Adobe Stock

Any photographer thinking of going down this route must remember that making headway with any library requires thousands of images. Having just a few dozen images to offer up won't even get you in the door, and to become visible on most libraries' websites requires at least 500 images. To start making reasonable sales requires at least a couple of thousand.

Each time an image is licensed, the client receives a license to use it (with or without certain conditions on the image's usage), while copyright remains with the photographer. Depending on the type of license granted, any given image can be licensed many times over, resulting in the potential for some good earnings.

Those earnings are shared between the library and the photographer. A few years ago, that was almost universally a fair 50-50 split. But, recently, the libraries have become increasingly greedy, repeatedly cutting the photographer's share. It is as little as 20% with some of them. 

They cite their high costs as justification for this, conveniently overlooking the fact that the photographers have high costs too!

Furthermore, although demand for photography is extremely high, supply has become even higher, resulting in a major decline in fees available from this kind of library licensing model, making it – for the time being at least – a difficult area to make a workable income.

 

Important considerations when becoming a professional photographer 

Before taking the plunge, there are a couple of general points that you need to bear in mind so that you're well prepared in advance.

 

#1 - A step-by-step transition

No matter what genre(s) of photography you decide to specialise in or who your clients are likely to be, your transition from amateur to professional photographer is unlikely to happen overnight. Don't give up the day job too quickly! 

You'll need to build an attractive portfolio and body of work and increase your profile and visibility with a range of possible clients. To achieve the former, you may need to undertake some personal projects or do a few jobs for free for friends and relatives. 

Hopefully, you'll also be able to start doing a few jobs that earn some money as a sideline to your daytime job but increasingly become more significant as you work towards being a full-time professional.

 

#2 - The professional mindset

It is often assumed that the way you go about your photography is the same whether you're an amateur or a professional, but nothing could be further from the truth. 

I have seen many amateur photographers labour endlessly and exhaustively to ensure they get their subject's perfect composition and exposure. This is fantastic if you want a single perfect, stunning image. 

However, while this might also apply to some forms of professional photography some of the time, more often than not, there isn't the time to labour over a single image. 

Shooting professional projects often requires collecting a wide range and number of high-quality, though not necessarily perfect images, shot to a tight deadline and an even tighter budget. 

They'll often be designed around a client's brief, not your own personal tastes. Much of the time, you don't have the luxury of being able to indulge yourself in creating the perfect image of a single subject. This can be a hard lesson to learn, but it is essential in the drive to please clients, pay one's bills and make a profit.

For this reason, many professional photographers will run their own personal projects on the side, ones in which they do spend the time to create the perfect single image. 

Such images usually don't contribute directly to the income stream, but posted in the right places can help get the photographer noticed among the hordes of professionals, helping – in theory at least – to attract further clients.

 

#3 - Being a business

The great majority of professional photographers work by themselves in self-employment. No matter how much you consider photography a vocational or artistic calling, this is a business, and you'll need to present yourself as such. 

Quite apart from the public window kind of material, such as websites, logo, letter heading, branding and so on, there are also all the legal and financial things such as accounting, tax and professional insurance that have to be put in place then managed. 

It can be time-consuming stuff that takes you away from the very thing that got you into this in the first place, but it has to be done.

The work to get noticed and attract clients is even more time-consuming, potentially. Multiple social media accounts all have an important role to play, but exactly which ones work for you will depend on who your clients are (e.g. public versus business).

Then there is the labour of making direct approaches to potential clients, especially business clients, all of which can be time-consuming and stressful. 

Linked to all this is the need for a tip-top website, one that showcases the best of your work and acts as your universal portfolio to which you can direct would-be clients. You must have a website (preferably with your own domain name) that you have complete control over and can fully update at any time as new, better and more up-to-date photography comes on hand. 

Hopefully, as you become more established and well known, you'll be able to reduce the amount of promotion needed, freeing up more time for actual photography.

But it will always be there as an ongoing part of your business. Best to try to enjoy it – especially the social media aspects that involve posting your latest photography.

 

#4 - Training

It is quite common to come to professional photography as a self-taught photographer, but increasing numbers arrive via various academic photography courses. 

These are hugely useful in rapidly learning techniques, often done using equipment and facilities that the lone photographer would struggle to afford. However, just how good many of these courses are at really preparing someone for life in the business of photography is open to question.

Training is not something you do just while preparing to become a professional photographer. As in many walks of life, there is a need for training to continue long after you've entered the professional world. 

There are always new techniques and equipment to learn about, and alternative possibilities for ways to get noticed. 

Membership in professional photography bodies can give access to certain types of courses. However, many one-day and evening workshops are still available even if you don't join any of these. 

It should be borne in mind that those courses put on by equipment manufacturers aim primarily at persuading you to buy their latest kit, which is not necessarily the right avenue for you. They may, however, contain nuggets of important information that make them worthwhile.

Remember that many of the most useful workshops are not specifically about photography but about how to run and promote a business, which local government bodies may put on.

 

#5 - Motivation and persistence

Finally, a word about the drive you need to succeed and keep going no matter how difficult things might sometimes be. 

As already mentioned, most professional photographers are self-employed and work mostly alone. This works well often, but it can sometimes be hard even for a true loner. 

Success doesn't always come easily; even when you achieve success, it is not guaranteed to continue all the time. 

There will be ups and downs, and through it all, it is essential for you to believe in your work and creativity, to have confidence that you are producing top-quality imaging and that success is simply a matter of finding the right clients for your style of work. 

Motivation, persistence and self-belief can greatly benefit from getting access to a network of supporters, people like you who believe in photography and your work in particular. 

Quite apart from friends and family, that should also mean other photographers. Membership in one of the professional photography bodies can help greatly with this, as can some online social media groups or loose affiliations with fellow photographers in your neighbourhood. 

Professional photography bodies in the UK include:

• British Institute of Professional Photography (BIPP)
• Association of Photographers (AOP) 
• Master Photographers Association (MPA) 
• Society of Wedding and Portrait Photographers (SWPP) 

So if you want to make that step from amateur to professional photographer, get stuck in. 

Don't expect it to happen overnight or to be plain sailing, but if you're good at what you do and believe in yourself, then the right preparation, steps, and a positive outlook will carry you through to success.

 

This blog was written by Nigel Hicks, a hugely experienced Devon-based professional photographer. Nigel works with the USA's prestigious National Geographic Image Collection, among many other bodies, and is a Fellow of the British Institute of Professional Photography.

Nigel runs regular photography workshops in southwest England. To find out more about these, go to https://www.nigelhicks.com/photography-workshops-courses/.

To learn more about Nigel's work in general, feel free to take a tour of his website at www.nigelhicks.com.

 

Specialist camera insurance with Ripe Photography

Becoming a professional photographer is exciting, but the unthinkable can happen when you're constantly using your equipment on the go. That's why you may want to protect it with specialist camera insurance. 

At Ripe Photography, we arrange theft and accidental damage cover up to the value of £30,000 for portable equipment you use when shooting on location and up to £60,000 in total. 

You'll also benefit from EU or Worldwide cover as an optional extra, so your equipment is covered against theft and accidental damage while travelling. 

Click here to learn more about specialist camera insurance, or hit the button below to get an instant online quote today. 

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