I have been asked many times how to become a professional
nature photographer: is it actually possible to make a living with
nature photography?
Working as nature photographer is not easy
(how many professional nature photographers do you know by person? I
guess you know some studio or wedding photographer, but not many pro
nature photographers). But it is not impossible!
It is essential to have a great passion...and
determination! Arthur Morris, when replying to a similar question, once
said "Work as hard as humanly possible"...and I 100% agree. I
don't think you need to be born with special talent; overall photography
is not so difficult, but you need a lot of determination if you want to
make your dreams a reality.
I highly recommend to make your personal website where you show your
photos and your work to the whole world! Internet is a great window on
the world, and it is by far the best way to make you known. Avoid flash
animations and excessively elaborated layouts; you have to make a
website that is simple and easy to browse, and you have to update it
often to create constant interest for your visitors.
I recommend
to write, too..writing articles about your photos and about photography
helps a lot to make your website more interesting; moreover, it is
easier that a magazine buy photos with text rather than just photos
(even though it is difficult to get a good income from magazines, as I'll
explain later). If you are not English speaking, try to learn English as
well as you can: it helps to sell your work outside your country, and it
helps a lot when you travel.
Unlike wedding and studio
photography, it is rare to begin a career of nature photographer by
working together with a professional...usually a nature photographer works
by himself, and often he does not even have a studio (nature photography
is done on the field, you don't need a studio...you just need a computer
to post process the photos)!
How to learn? Personally, I have
learnt a lot from internet and from forums; if you are not registered
yet, I highly recommend to join the JuzaForum, it is better than tons of
magazines or expensive schools! :-)
What are the sources of income for a
nature photographer?
. Don't hope in magazines.
Usually they pay little money (in particular in Italy!). Sometimes you
may sell some photos or articles at a good price, but it is an
exception.
. Avoid as the plague the micro-stock agencies! These
agencies often accept easily collaborations even from beginner
photographers, but they pay you 0.50 $ or 1$ per photo...at the end of
the day, the agency get a very good income because they sell a lot of
photos at ridicule prices, while the photographer get something like
30-40$ per month if he is lucky...avoid, avoid, avoid micro stock
and royalty free!!! You won't make a living from it, and you
will contribute to make this work even more difficult to all other
photographers (many times I have been told by magazines... "you have
great photos, but we won't buy from you because we can get almost free
photos on Istock...they are not as good as yours, but they are almost
free!").
. Serious agencies as Corbis or Alamy allows to get a
better income, but 1) to get a good income you have to submit a lot of
photos 2) sometimes they have ridiculous requests about file size, for
example 5000px on the longest side...as if you need 20 megapixel to make
a good photo! (now I use the Canon 1DsIII, but in the past I have made
excellent 60x90 centimeters prints even with the 8 megapixel files of
the old Canon 350D...)
. If you are a good teacher, make
workshops and photography courses...it is the best and the
easiest way to work with nature photography! And if you are not a good
teacher...work to improve your teaching skills :-)
. If you decide to avoid
stock agencies (as I did), you can sell by yourself the
photos and you will get a better income from every sale (obviously you
don't have to pay commission to the agency); on the other hand you have
to contract directly with the client. Learn English! I have sold more
photos outside Italy than in my own country!
. Prints don't make
a good source of income; if your are lucky you can sell 3 or 4 prints
per years (a bit more if you do mainly landscape photography or a bit
less if you do mainly birds and macro).
My career :-)
Another question I receive many times is about my photographic
career...here is the story :-)
I have
never made photography schools...I have studied at scientific high
school here in Italy, and at 18 years, when I finished the high school,
I decided to not go on with university and to try working with
photography. At the beginning I was not able to make a living from it,
so I ended up doing other works (manual, poorly paid works). In 2004, I
bought a Nikon D70 digital SLR and I begun to publish several photos on
my website. I tried to contact some magazines, without much success.
Some months after, I got my first "almost photographic" work - I was
contacted by an Italian photography magazine called "Fotografia Digitale
Facile", that at the time was directed by Danila Paonne. At the beginning my work was just to translate
articles from English to Italian, but with time I begun to publish my
own articles. Even though this work don't gave high pay, it was much
better than my previous manual works (that I left), and I really worked
a lot, so I managed to get a decent income.
Thank to the work
with the magazine I bought some more equipment - Canon 350D, 17-85, 180
macro; in the meantime I continued to publish articles on JuzaPhoto and
the interest in the website grew. Thanks to the increased number of
visits I got more contacts and I managed to sell few photos. After a lot of saving, I managed to buy the fantastic Canon 600 f/4 L IS
and other components of my equipment; one year later, I had left the
work with magazines and I begun to work on my own, selling photos and
teaching photo workshops.
Nowadays, in late 2009, the work is
going strong :-) I get the majority of my income - 90% or so - from
workshops, and the rest from selling photos. For sure the website and
the forums helps a lot! Again, if you want to become a pro nature
photographer, I want to highlight these two things: create a website to
promote your work and teach workshops!
Do you have comments or questions?
If you have comments or questions about this article, feel free to
ask in the Juza Nature
Photography Discussion Forum!
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