Creative Careers in Photography

Making a Living with or Without a Camera

Michal Heron

• Publisher: Allworth
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781581158151
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Performing Arts & Business

Find the right job in photography. For anyone who loves working with photographs, here is a comprehensive guide to turning that passion into a career. Author Michal Heron, a veteran photographer, reveals the full range of possibilities, from shooting pictures to jobs that don't even require a camera. Corporate settings, editorial, media/audio-visual, fine arts, buying and selling, support services, set and location services, computer imaging, gallery and museum, teaching, writing, and many other career choices are presented. Readers will learn to assess their motivations, pinpoint their favorite areas of photography, explore lifestyle choices, understand required skills, and ultimately find the area of the industry that best matches their talents and their goals. Extra resources include listings for photography schools and professional organizations. Anyone looking for that perfect niche in the rich and rewarding photographic field will need this comprehensive book. • Examines dozens of career possibilities—many that don't require a camera • Self-assessment tools to pinpoint the perfect job, plus school and organization listingsAllworth Press, an imprint of Skyhorse Publishing, publishes a broad range of books on the visual and performing arts, with emphasis on the business of art. Our titles cover subjects such as graphic design, theater, branding, fine art, photography, interior design, writing, acting, film, how to start careers, business and legal forms, business practices, and more. While we don't aspire to publish a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are deeply committed to quality books that help creative professionals succeed and thrive. We often publish in areas overlooked by other publishers and welcome the author whose expertise can help our audience of readers.

Part I
The World of Photography

The most basic division in the photographic world is between those who create new photographic images, the photographers, and those who work with those images after (and sometimes even before) they are created, the picture professionals. Following that fundamental difference, this book is divided into the career paths of photography with and without a camera. Many persons who start out being photographers move into ancillary photographic fields and find great satisfaction. Others make the journey from the opposite direction, perhaps starting as a photo researcher or photo editor and ending up shooting pictures full time. Though you can start with the most fundamental choice—do I want to shoot pictures or work with them?—you’ll see it’s common to blend several aspects of the photographic world to create a satisfying career.

CHAPTER 1

Understanding the Profession

The emotional power of a photograph flows to the viewer. Those who work with pictures may experience the same love in viewing photographs that photographers feel in taking them.

This chapter provides an overview of the work of a photographer and of a picture professional and gives some insight into how each of them function.

BEING A PHOTOGRAPHER—CAREERS WITH A CAMERA

A photographer is one who creates new images—but you already knew that. Since this book is concerned with ways to earn a living creating those images, we have to look at the types of uses for the photographs we take. And, more to the point, how do we earn money for making photographs? Often, we earn money by being hired to take specific photographs for a client. This is generally termed assignment or commissioned photography when we are generating brand new images. Stock photography is the term for earning by selling rights to existing photographs, ones you have already taken and own. Significant earnings can come from selling prints of photographs. They might be prints of portraits, weddings, and events—or as fine art gallery prints where signed limited editions can affect their value.

What Are the Pictures Used For? Who Are the Buyers?

Whether the photo income is from assignments, stock photography, or sales of prints, we can break down the purpose of photographs into general, sometimes overlapping, categories based on the type of use of the final photograph. These are photography for publication, consumer photography, service photography, and fine art photography.

Photography for Publication

These photographs are used by a client and “published” in many ways. Getting work published can be more than being featured in a magazine or newspaper—that’s a narrow definition of a publication. Publication as it’s used here indicates that the image is made available to the public through many vehicles. Indeed, images may be reproduced in a publication such as a newspaper or magazine article as part of the story, the editorial content. Also, the photograph may be published by being used in an ad for a product in a magazine or in other advertising uses as far-ranging as on a billboard, product package, or point of purchase display. Photographs are also published in brochures or annual reports prepared by a corporation for its stockholders.

Publication photos are generally reproduced for a large audience. Their purpose in being published can be to give information, to advertise a product, or perhaps to highlight the activities of a corporation. Don’t forget all the other places we see photographs “published”—in calendars and greeting cards, on posters, mugs, or placemats. Essentially, at the risk of oversimplifying, published can mean simply to reproduce for the public.

The photos themselves may come from being assigned (commissioned) by a client for a specific use or researched from existing photos on file in photo archives. The thread here is that in most cases a client will actually license rights to use a photograph for a specified purpose, not buy a photo outright. This is quite different from consumer photographs, as you’ll see. As to licensing rights, you’ll learn more about copyright and licensing rights in chapter 17.

Consumer Photography

Consumer photos can be said to exist primarily, or even exclusively, for the use of the consumer who paid for the photograph. The physical print is usually the final product and goes from the photographer directly to the customer. Portraits, wedding photos, or photos of pets or even of a house are among the common types of photographs that have virtually no other life but in an album or on the mantelpiece of the customer. It’s rare that these photographs are used for publication. Essentially these photos are for private use.

Most portrait, wedding, and event photographers retain the copyright and certain control over the reproduction of these consumer photos, generally for economic reasons, since billing for additional prints may be a significant source of income. A photographer ordinarily does not put consumer photos to any other use except for display in a Web site or other portfolio promotion of their professional work.

Service Photography

These are photos that serve a particular industry or institution, sometimes for documentation purposes or sales reference. Examples are real estate (pictures of houses for real estate sales companies), forensic (documenting a crime scene), museum (photographs of paintings or sculptures in a collection), colleges or universities (recording every imaginable aspect of college activity), and government (with all the variety one can imagine). These photos generally do not have further use beyond what the institution needs them for. However, there can be some overlaps, as in museum photographs of artwork that might be used also as publication photography. You could say these photos serve a primarily pragmatic purpose.

Fine Art Photography

This category is self-explanatory. Fine art photographs can be said to exist for their pure artistic merit. Their purpose, depending on the point of view of the photographer, is to be beautiful, meaningful, express an intellectual or emotional concept, or make a graphic statement.

Fine art photography comes in many styles, from an elegant documentary to luminous, quiet landscapes and can include incisive portraits as well as outrageous statements. The fine art photograph is intended to delight the eye, arouse the intellect, or shed light on the human condition. The imagery can be subtle or over the top. The photograph may serve any purpose you, the artist, choose.

The final image is intended for display in galleries or museums, and it showcases photography as an art form. The work is usually available for sale to collectors, whether individuals, galleries, museums, or corporate collections.

The type of artists working in this field is changing. It’s not only photographers doing fine art photography but also, with increasing frequency, you’ll find that a fine artist trained as a sculptor or painter may create works for which they happened to choose photography as their medium.

SPECIALTIES

There is a further breakdown in these four areas (publication photography, consumer photography, service photography, and fine art photography) where a photographer may carve out a specialty niche.

As a photographer in publication photography, you can work as a generalist—one who wears many hats and can offer a client services in such varied areas as editorial, product still life, medical, lifestyle, and portraiture. Or you can develop a specialty in a topic or branch of photography that you find especially appealing or to which you are well suited. Examples of specialties include: architecture, nature, children, travel/destinations, food, fashion, glamour, beauty, sports, aviation, or underwater—and that’s the short list! The decision may be forced upon you by the demands of the market in your geographic region, or you may decide to buck the tide and carve out a niche in the specialty of your choice.

As a photographer for the consumer market, you may need to be a generalist based in a studio that offers portraits, weddings, school groups, or social events like bar mitzvahs or sweet-sixteen parties. Or you may concentrate just on weddings or solely on schools portraits. This may be decided by your geographic location and a need to provide all services to all customers. Sometimes in a large metro area, specializing is more feasible. But deciding to do, for example, only event photography as opposed to studio portraits isn’t limited by geography.

Service photographers generally stick to the special needs of an industry or institution. It’s less likely that a photographer of paintings ends up photographing real estate. But it can happen.

The fine art photographer will create a specialization defined simply by his or her vision. The style will determine a specialty to some degree. Subject matter can also define a specialty. Some fine art photographers do nothing but close-ups of flowers; others do allegorical photographs of women nudes, while another might shoot haunting vignettes of industrial decay.

Overlap

Many photographers work in more than one area of the profession. Though you may specialize in an area in terms of content, the uses for those types of photos may be many. For example, here’s what can happen with the same photo or types of photos:

• A nature specialist might find his photograph of a deer in a snow-covered landscape chewing tree bark used with a scientific journal article on feeding patterns, or the same photo might be published as an illustration in a children’s book on the seasons (winter).

• A sports photographer might see a basketball photograph of two players fighting for the ball used in a publication such as a magazine covering the sport, or it might be used for an ad for a financial institution with the tag line “determination.”

• A photographer specializing in animal or pet photography might find the same image of a perky pup in a specialty magazine on dog training and in an ad for dog vitamins.

Those were examples of particular images having overlapping uses. The same holds true for photos you will shoot on assignment. You can serve a variety of clients outside your primary assignment area.

• The photographer who runs a consumer portrait studio may also shoot product still lifes for local corporate clients.

• Someone who shoots consumer photography for weddings may also photograph lifestyle stock with a romantic or glamour approach.

• The person who shoots fine art portraits with a unique style might be hired by a client to use that special style on corporate portraits in an annual report or for a head office gallery presentation.

Really, you are limited only by your imagination and determination from expanding on your original specialty.

Types of Photography

Publication photography. Photographs reproduced in magazines, newspapers, advertisements, and company publications, and on products like mugs, calendars, or billboards. Public use.

Consumer photography. Photos such as portraits or wedding photos whose end use is usually reserved to the customer who bought the photos. Private use.

Service photography. Photos that serve a particular industry or institution for sales reference or documentation but have little further use. Practical use.

Fine art photography. Photographs intended for display in galleries or museums to showcase photography as an art form and available for sale to collectors. Aesthetic use.

STOCK

As a major specialty that crosses all of the boundaries, stock photography is given an entire chapter later in this book. This is just an overview. Stock photographs are existing photographs (ones you own) that you can license for use by lots of different clients. These existing stock photographs are distinguished from assignment photos a client hires a photographer to do; i.e., photos yet to be taken.

When drawing the distinction between assignment and stock, particularly in the area of publication photography, it’s mostly a matter of how you like to work as well as how you earn money with your photographs. Is it through being hired to shoot new work, by selling existing stock photos, or a combination of both?

Assignment photography can be appealing because it is an opportunity to create new work. It provides the challenge of working with different people and the stimulus of shared ideas as you work to solve visual problems. It also offers the inviting benefit of knowing there will be an immediate financial reward. For the client, commissioning assignments provides the opportunity of fresh, never-before-published work for their project. There can, however, also be a great deal of risk. For the client, the risk comes from having to pay out money without first knowing exactly what the results will be. The photographer, on the other hand, is constantly gambling that all of the preparations, equipment checks, model selection, and lighting design for an assignment will work out as planned, and that the final images will contain the drama and excitement envisioned at the outset.

Stock photography offers an alternative to the pressure of assignments, which some photographers opt to avoid. Instead, stock photography provides the same opportunity to produce exciting work without many of the limitations presented by clients. You are free to create photographs as you see them, without a client’s restricting your creativity by nagging about budgetary discipline. This doesn’t mean, however, that stock photography allows total and unbridled freedom. You, not a client, will front the expenses of photography, and the financial rewards may not appear for many years. Therefore, to make a go of stock, you must be stricter than any client in controlling time and costs. The risk for you will be in producing photographs that clients will want and pay to use. Many photographers find that a blend of assignment and stock provides a satisfying combination, each complementing and rejuvenating the other.

For now, just understand that whatever your area—publication, consumer, service, or f...