If you’ve ever considered becoming a professional photographer, you couldn’t pick a more exciting or colourful career. Indeed, beyond nurturing your creativity and celebrating your unique perspective, this position may appeal to you for a number of reasons.
Firstly, it is a career where no two days are the same and your scope of work can vary drastically from project to project. Secondly, this job invites the opportunity for you to collaborate with numerous individuals and travel to countless stimulating locations, meaning you can quite literally work anywhere you choose. And thirdly, perhaps one of the most appealing elements of all, is that you can be your own boss and define your own way of working.
Whilst the average salary of a professional photographer is $54,354, it can also reach as high as $106k when incorporating commissions, overtime pay and bonuses. Unsurprising, then, that job growth for this role is also projected to increase +13.5% by 2024.
These statistics are certainly impressive, yet what does it actually take to build a photography business? Here, we explore the essential steps you need to take in pursuing this professional pathway.
Table of Contents
Master the fundamentals
Before you can consider making a splash in the world of professional photography, you must first master the fundamentals. By this, we mean both the technical skills to capture flawless photos and also the essential education to establish a solid business structure.
Completing a professional photography business certificate can help you to grasp all these key skills and more, with experienced tutors guiding you through the core techniques and technology. A certificate will also enable you to explore how to effectively set-up your business, to ensure you have a firm platform from which to launch your services.
Indeed, as a professional photographer, your clients will expect you to have an extensive understanding of best practices for lighting, aperture, shutter speed, composition, colouring and the like. Online photography business courses will not only equip you with these skills, but they will also support you in mastering the various intricacies of post production too. This means you can develop total confidence in your ability to deliver top-quality creative collateral to your clients.
Your responsibilities will typically include liaising with clients and defining project briefs, scoping out the ideal locations/studios, preparing suitable lenses and equipment (depending on the desired style of shots), post production photo touch-ups and delivering the polished, edited photos.
This is why it’s crucial that you first and foremost complete your training, so you understand exactly what to do to execute your services successfully.
Find your speciality
Once you’ve grasped the basic principles of professional photography, you can next identify exactly what style of photography you’d like to specialise in.
Whether it’s nature, wildlife, pet, travel, portrait, wedding, event, sport, food, journalism, fashion, advertising, commercial or artistic photography; this is the prime time to discover exactly what style appeals the most to you and what industries you’d like to collaborate with.
Of course, a number of professional photographers decide to offer their services across multiple industries. Yet by identifying your ‘niche’ and specialising in a certain style, this then gives you the opportunity to build a more powerful portfolio whilst gaining extensive experience in this particular genre of photography.
In general, professional photographers share similar attributes in exhibiting an eagle eye for detail, superior spatial awareness, adaptable and creative mindsets, and an ability to collaborate effectively. However, if you are able to demonstrate all these traits and position yourself as an authority in a particular photographic style, you’ll be much more effective in promoting your services and standing out in what can be a competitive market.
Market yourself
Which brings us onto the third step to becoming a successful professional photographer: marketing yourself. It’s a step that many fail to consider when starting off in this career, yet the importance of being able to market yourself is essential if you want to build a lucrative and thriving business.
Digital platforms and social media, in particular, can be incredibly useful tools to utilise for self-promotion, precisely because of how the algorithms tend to favour striking visuals and engaging graphics. Again, you can learn how to market yourself on platforms such as Instagram and Facebook through completing an online photography business course.
Building your digital presence can help to strengthen your visibility, develop the legitimacy of your photography business, and give you an accessible format through which to smoothly promote your portfolio to prospective clients (for example, it would take only moments to email a client a link to your website.)
What’s important is that before you do publish any marketing material, you first ensure you have a concrete marketing strategy in place which is well-researched and deliberately designed to generate a positive buzz around your business.
Conclusion
Building a successful career as a professional photographer will take time and dedication. Yet if you are creative, committed and ready to undertake all the essential training, you’ll be sure to succeed.
What’s best is that to learn photography in Australia doesn’t necessarily mean committing to a course in-person. In fact, online courses offer flexible study formats and full tutor support, meaning you can comfortably access them whenever and wherever.
The world is your oyster and as a professional photographer, it’s up to you to get out there and capture it.
