When some students decide to study photography in college, they are not sure exactly which field they would like to pursue. Fashion, wedding and portrait photography are the most popular types of photography that students try to pursue a career in. Fashion photographers have the hardest time getting started in the industry. You have to get lucky with an assistant job from another already established photographer and it takes many years to have a career on your own. Wedding photography is one of the most stressful and exhausting fields. You have to deal with very difficult clients and long work days. Portrait photography is less stressful than the others but harder to make a decent living doing. The portraits are routine and not difficult to do but other than children, not many adults take portraits of themselves to hang up in their house or to give to others.
Fashion photography is one of the highest paying fields of photography you can succeed in. Fashion photographers get paid thousands of dollars per photo shoot. They mostly work freelance and are hired for jobs by the name that they make for themselves with their portfolio. To get started as a fashion photographer, you must first get a job as an assistant. It is very hard to be the assistant of an already established photographer. The assistant is responsible for doing almost everything but actually taking the photographs. The assistant is responsible for getting all the equipment to the location, setting up all the equipment, assisting equipment changes during the shoot, cleaning up the location and sometimes even post-production editing. The purpose of having an assistant job is to learn as much as you can from the photographer you are working for. In the little bit of time that you have not working, you are to apply what you have learned to your own portfolio work. A portfolio is a book of your best photographs you have taken in your career. When meeting with agencies and models, you want to try your hardest to network your name and form professional relationships with people. This will help you when trying to branch out on your own. For some people, it will take years before they can start to do photo shoots on their own. Even if you go to school and study photography for years, it is rare that you can have a great fashion photography career before the age of 40.
Wedding photographers also have a hard time getting to the level of success they would like. With all the expenses that couples have to worry about when planning a wedding, the photographer is usually placed towards the bottom of the list. Most couples want to have a photographer at their wedding, but if they are on a tight budget, they are not as willing to spend that much money on the photographer, compared to other expenses. It takes years to get a great reputation and it is hard to get a couple to choose you for their wedding. Most couples will trust a recommendation from another couple, so it is imperative that each couple is completely satisfied. When a couple is getting married, they believe that they will get married only once in their life. The pictures of their wedding will display the memories of the happiest day of their life. The moments that a wedding photographer has to capture, cannot be redone. This is why wedding photographers are under so much pressure to make sure everything is perfect. Weddings have a very tight schedule so when the photographer is taking photographs, he or she has to be ready to shoot when everyone else is and pose everyone perfectly in a very short amount of time. Getting started as a wedding photographer also starts with an assistant job and a portfolio.
Portrait photographers have an easier start than the others do. You can get a job working for a local studio or even working for department stores like Sears or JCPenny. If you have the money for it, you can open your own studio location. All you need is the proper equipment such as lights and backdrops and editing software. You can display work you have already done or advertise low prices to get people to come in. With portrait photography, you have a lot more creative freedom than the other fields. If it is your own studio, you can better satisfy the customers with unique poses, props and post-production editing. If you are working for a corporate studio like sears, you will have requirements and guidelines for each sitting but you are still encouraged to put your own style into the shoot. Portrait photographers do not make as much money as other photographers. Up selling is one of the hardest parts of being a portrait photographer. You have to convince an individual to buy more photos than they intended. You can also up sell by getting them to purchase a fine art photograph, which can be anything from a square size to a Photoshop effect.
Photography has many different fields that you can start a career in. Some people will often do many different fields but most will stick to one that they like the best. Fashion photographers make the most money per shoot. Wedding photographers have a more stable income because people rarely get married without a photographer to capture all the moments. Portrait photographers have more creative freedom with the shoots they do with their clients. All fields have the potential to make a lot of money, have a great client basis and be a lot of fun. Some photographers might pick a field solely based on the people they get to meet or the type of photographs they are best at. My suggestion to new photo students to help in their deciding process would be to try all different fields. Some people end up liking a field they did not think they would. Some people find that the stress level of a job might be worth seeing a happy client when they get proofs for their photographs.
