How to Make Photography as a Profession
Set your own hours, work from home, choose only the assignments you want. Sounds like a con or a scam, but starting your own photography business can give you just that. No boss but you, no hours but what you set. If you like weddings, shoot just weddings and work only on the weekend. If you don’t like weddings, don’t shoot any. It’s your choice when you own your own photography business.
1) Get a basic professional camera. A film or digital single-lens reflex camera is ideal because it allows you to choose different lenses for different assignments or switch lenses during assignments. It also gives you more control over exposure from shutter speeds to aperture settings. The camera body can be either the 35mm-style or the 2.25-by-2.25 medium format type. Standard 35mm-style film and digital cameras are made by Nikon, Pentax, Canon and others. The medium format-style camera is made by Hasselblad and others.
2) Get a good set of lenses to handle a variety of situations. Standard for the 35mm-style camera are wide-angle, normal and telephoto lenses. A good wide-angle lens range for film cameras is 18mm to 28mm. The same lens on most digital cameras is multiplied by 1.5, so an 18mm to 55mm zoom will give an effective focal range of 27mm to 82.5mm. Normal lenses are about 50mm. These give the same magnification as human eyes do, hence the “normal” label. Telephoto lenses begin with the portrait style, about 75mm to 80mm, and go up to about 1,000mm. At least one company, Nikon, has produced a single zoom lens that goes from 18mm to 200mm, giving a very wide range of focal lengths.
3) Set up a studio. This can be a room in your house, a garage or a separate space. While a lot of most photographers’ work is done outside a studio, one still is necessary as a workspace. The basics will include studio lighting and reflectors; some furniture such as chairs, couches or stools; some photo backdrops; a tripod; electronic flashes; and flash slaves. This all is for shooting photos in the studio, generally portraits. Whether you shoot in the studio or not, the following also are necessary for digital photography: digital media cards, card readers, a computer, a photo manipulation software package such as Adobe Photoshop and a printer. For film, you will need a darkroom with film-processing tanks and spools, an enlarger, print developing trays, film dryer, light table, chemicals, and paper. If you shoot on film, but process on the computer, you will need to develop the film, then scan it with a professional-level film scanner before working with it in Photoshop.
4) Design a business card, a website and a sample portfolio. You can do all of these yourself or you can contract them out. If you have a computer, design skills and a desktop publishing program, you can design your own business cards. These can include a photo or be more traditional. Simple website design can be done online with a service such as Homestead or on your own computer with your choice of software. The portfolio should consist of your best 50 photos in a photo album. These photos should represent the kind of work you do so clients can extrapolate it to their own job. You can have several photo albums for different types of clients, such as weddings, events, architecture, glamor, etc.
5) Begin to market by putting your website online and taking out an advertisement in the local yellow pages. You also can advertise in professional magazines if you want a wider-ranging clientele. If you have a storefront, the window is a good marketing tool.
6) Shmooze. Have business cards on you at all times. Many photographers get assignments by shmoozing at their current assignments. Talk to people about their kids, the grandkids, their anniversaries or whatever they want to talk about. Chances are some of them will need a photographer for an upcoming wedding or bar mitzvah or some other social event. Talk to them about their businesses. Give them a card, and if a good idea for a photo shoot that will help them comes into your head, pitch it on the spot.
7) Don’t forget the business end of your business. Price your work reasonably, but don’t lose money. In fact, there’s lots of free digital prints you can choose. While shooting photos for a living is fun, it still has to pay for you to live. Don’t buy that super nifty new lens if you don’t need it yet. Plan for equipment purchases. It’s better to put money into a backup camera body than a lens you may use once a year. The backup camera body can save your bacon if your regular camera fails during an assignment.
