Making money with your camera doesn’t require the most expensive, professional-grade equipment or having the skills and experience to compete with the top professionals in nature, portrait, fashion, sports and the many other types of photography. You do need some skills and an aptitude to use them correctly to create images that many sources are seeking, and are willing to pay you to provide. For example, you can make money with stock photography or as an event photographer or shooting photos to accompany press releases or standard portrait work for corporate executives or professionals, such as attorneys, physicians, etc.
The opportunities are many and varied; and the following 10 photography books, as recommended by PhotographyTalk, will help you find and profit from those opportunities.
Making money with your camera may start with knowing how to produce the kinds of photos that are saleable, but at a practical level, you also need to understand the marketplace and who is apt to buy your images. Thousands of photographers just like you have relied on Photographer’s Market to provide them with the contacts: magazines, book publishers, greeting card companies, stock agencies, advertising firms, contest organizers and the myriad of other sources looking for images daily. The latest edition of Photographer’s Market is filled with all that information and much more, including how to start a photography business and market it.
Until recently, many would have thought Fine Art photography was reserved for a small group of photographers who had the equipment and knowledge to capture the kind of images that people would buy. Make no mistake: quality still rules this market niche, so camera skills and a creative eye are still requirements. Even beginners and amateurs can acquire the appropriate skills; however, the challenge they typically have trouble overcoming is taking control of the selling process. As a fine arts landscape photographer who makes a fulltime living from the sale of his images, Alain Briot has been able to write a practical guide to the successful marketing of your “products.”
Becoming a family portrait photographer may be one of the easier commercial photography opportunities available to amateurs to start a photography business. Proper technique still rules the genre, but you’ll learn all those and so much more in Bill Hurter’s The Best of Family Portrait Photography. You have ready-made subjects on which to practice your new skills, be they your family or your neighbors, and your community is filled with potential customers that can be solicited with rather basic, and inexpensive, marketing methods.
One of the advantages of making money with your camera is that you don’t need an elaborate or expensive business structure to start selling your photos. You’ll save an enormous amount of time and money if you operate it from your home. The 6th Edition of How to Start a Home-Based Photography Business is the practical guide to all its aspects, from starting part-time to the legal and tax ramifications of being self-employed to financial management to writing a business plan. Everything you need to know is contained within its pages!
Making money with your camera, even on a part-time basis, is still a business by definition. A common error of the photographer who makes a few hundred dollars a month is that he or she fails to understand what it means to operate a business, even of the most casual kind. Better Business Practices for Photographers teaches you what you need to know and do before those few hundred dollars a month become a full-time business…and it could happen much quicker than you anticipated. Regardless of what kind of business you operate or its size, you still need the skills to work with clients, calculate a pricing structure and manage a business.
Photographing beautiful women (with or without clothing) takes a very special kind of photographer, but you may be that photographer; and How to Make Money with Glamour and Nude Photography will help you determine if you’re right for this photographic opportunity. It’s more than learning how to pose models and compose great photos. You must also acquire the professional attitude to work with nude women and know how to approach modeling agencies, adult publications and other potential buyers. You’ll find all this practical information and much more from an experienced photographer working in this market niche.
Every successful professional photographer has a unique story to tell about how to build a photography business; and Vik Orenstein is happy to share what he has learned with you in the Second Edition of his book, The Photographer’s Market Guide to Building Your Photography Business. This book is valuable for both the new photography business owner as well as the experienced owner who needs to revitalize his or her business with new ideas, strategies and marketing methods.
A written business plan may still be a good idea, but to start and operate a 21st-century photography business requires a new kind of mindset. Dane Sanders has created the “plan” that has proven successful for many of the photographers who attend his workshops and seminars. The Internet has changed many of the rules and made most of the others obsolete. The Fast Track Photographer Business Plan will help you avoid the pitfalls and focus on the methods that work in today’s marketplace.
One of the biggest challenges for photographers who want to make money with their cameras is finding the right combination of creativity and commercialism. As a successful working photographer, David duChemin has been there and has developed a method to achieve that balance. Maybe, the most important lesson is that photography allows you to define success for yourself and VisionMongers: Making a Life and a Living in Photography has the tips and ideas to help you be the success you want to be.
You may have decided that your ultimate goal in photography is to make a living as a professional, or you may suddenly find opportunities to make money with your camera, which was never your intention. Regardless of what path you’ve followed to the brink of becoming a professional photographer, Going Pro: How to Make the Leap from Aspiring to Professional Photographer is the one book that will carefully guide your through the transition. The authors provide advice from their experience, but they also share tips and business-building ideas from 25 of the most successful pros in the world today.
Image credit: stokato / 123RF Stock Photo
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