• Photographer guide
Keywords: photographer, photography
How to become a good photographer
A photographer takes photographs with his camera. You can differentiate between a professional, who earns his living with photography, and an amateur photographer, who takes pictures for fun and his or her own appreciation of the object. Becoming a professional photographer is difficult in today’s times. You can study photography and only few professionals have managed to build up their business without actually studying anything at all. More than 50% of all photographers worldwide are self-employed and therefore have to run their own business. Only few have well-paid jobs and even fewer are famous.
Most photographers have irregular working hours and often have to work during weekends, for example at weddings. Usually, they have specialized in fields such as portrait, celebrity, commercial, landscape, industrial, fashion, documentary or war photography. If working as photojournalist, the photographer usually works for television stations, magazines or newspapers. He/she usually takes picture of people during community, sporting, or political events. A portrait photographer takes portraits of people, usually in his own studio. The commercial or industrial photographer takes pictures of objects for catalogues or websites, such as for example household items, laboratory equipment and hospital equipment and supplies. Scientific photographers often have acquired specialized scientific knowledge in fields such as engineering, physics, medicine, biology, or chemistry. They record scientific procedures and data.
Any person in this job must be hard working, creative and patient and should have a good technical and business understanding. If self-employed, also called free-lancer, he/she has continuously look for new jobs and clients. It is therefore of highest importance to always updating the portfolio of picture to be presented to potential clients.
Photographers should have their own, always updated website, and assure that they can be found easily by search engines such as “google”. They further need good business and marketing skills, since they have to run their own business, sell their work to potential clients, keep financial records and deal with tax, and know how to fix prices for their work. A business analysis and business plan helps to find potential gaps in the photographer’s coverage in the region by field and then fill in this gap.
A photographer does not only need good technical and business skills, but also very strong social skills. He/she must look neatly, be able to do small-talk with clients and make people feel relaxed in front of the camera. Depending on the job, he/she must be well dressed, for example for photographing weddings.
Networking, membership of different photographer associations as well as taking part or organizing exhibitions can be very helpful, not only to learn to know other photographers, but also to learn from each other, professionalize further and procurement of jobs.
Good quality equipment is of highest importance to remain competitive on the tight and difficult job market. Equipment usually costs several thousands of Euro and knowledge of professional computer imaging programs is essential.