Careers in photography can be some of the most rewarding and financially stable careers you can pursue in your lifetime. People will always need photographers and want great photo’s that the average person simply cannot take with their skills and equipment. If you’re interested in photography and looking to make a career from it there are several paths available to you as you move forward. These include: schooling, starting your own business and freelance work. In this article I will address all these avenues and the benefits and challenges presented by each.
Photography schools and degree’s is often the path people start down when they consider careers in photography. After all photography uses a specific skill set and having the technical skills to compliment your natural artistic eye can be one of the best ways to start your photography career. Especially if you want to go to work for someone else as a photographer having a degree or certification will really open doors that may have been shut to you before you went through the school phase. Even someone looking to start a photography business can benefit from some form or schooling or another. Often you will learn things that will help you gain clients and take killer shots from the education. However schooling is only the first step, and perhaps even one you could skip if you wanted to jump right in to starting your own business.
Business careers in photography
Running a photography business can be a fantastic and life-long career. You work for yourself, set your own hours and if you want to later on you can expand and have people under you making you money also. However running a business isn’t all roses, you will need to have some idea how to set up a business. You will need to know how to get clients, advertise and if you intend to run a big photography firm you will need to have some training and management skills also. A course in business management would be a great place to get these skills if you don’t possess them naturally, however if you just start small you may be able to develop this skill set as you go along. Or you could always hire someone to take care of that side of the business for you.
Freelance careers in photography
Freelancing is a very popular way to get started in photography. A lot of the people who have careers in photography are freelancers. This is to say they go around to businesses that already have clients and offer their services. This saves the hassle of needing to find clients all the time yourself. You only need to find a business, such as a magazine or newspaper and offer your services to them. You could also place an advertisement in the local paper too and get some freelance work this way. If you are going down the freelance road it is best to build a portfolio of your works so that when you approach a business you can show them the standard of work they can expect from you. Or alternately you could take some pictures related to their business and offer them for free as a sort of trial before they buy type deal. The best thing about freelance work is you can choose how much or how little you want to work. It is a very unique type of freedom.
There are many paths open to you if you wish to pursue careers in photography , some you can even start today with no experience at all!
