Who's Day Job is Photography?

[Don Dudenbostel]

42 years as a commercial photographer. I love the work and would follow the same path again. The business has been very good to me.

[Greg Blank]

Long time, to do this stuff Don. But are you self employed?., Not to pick a fight, I am eager to know the secrets of being self employed and being a millionaire photographer PM me

42 years as a commercial photographer. I love the work and would follow the same path again. The business has been very good to me.

[Lynn Jones]

Hi Kirk and all,

I've been a photographer for money since 1947. I've been a professor of professional photography for a bit over 20 years, Brooks Grad, USN Med Photo School grad, lots of other things. Still photograper, motion picture photographer, photo writer 450 magazine credits, photo advertising person, inventor/designer, gen mgr of a pro motion picture lab, created our digital photography, and in addition to teaching 5 college classes per semester, 2 in the summer, I still shoot for myself fairly often and still write occasionally.

I confess, I still love photography after all of this (including being 9 years a Navy Hospital Corpsman before during and after the Korean war.

I think you told me Kirk that you are not related to the late and famed Paul Linwood Gittings, that's OK, you can be the new famed Gittings.

Lynn

[Don Dudenbostel]

Greg I've been self employed for the past 28 years. My work has been for major corporations including Phillips Electronics, Arco Petrolium, Union Carbide, Exxon, Miller Brewing, Bristol Myers and dozens of others. I did ads, annual reports, catalogs, pop and other advertising projects. I was in it during the golden age of advertising and photography.

In the past few years budgets have dried up even with the big clients. During the golden era it was common to have budgets of $10-40K and budgets for a single project of six figures. I've had many day projects in the $10K range. Keep in mind these budgets covered all expenses including assistants, models and sets. One of the larger single day shoots ran almost $20k which covered assistants, film and my fee. The client covered rent on a 4k sq ft studio, construction of a back yard, lawn, fully size trees and landscaping including walkway and picket fence. Fund story here, the client selected the models themselves. We did a day shoot and the film looked great. The art directors were delighted so the had the set torn down and the several truck loads of soil, grass and trees removed. When the folks in charge of the project saw the shots the felt the models were too young and we had to do the entire construction and shoot again with older models. Total cost was probably $50-60k.

Those days are over.

[Don Dudenbostel]

One additional comment, making good money takes a very good head for business and the ability to deliver top quality work. It also takes time to build clients and constant work to keep them. My studio was 6k sq ft and my yearly materials, lab and film costs exceeded $200k. I downsized 11years ago when I saw the big budgets drying up and now have a very lean opperation. Its much nicer with overhead at a tiny fraction of what it used to be.

I've worked tword replacing the commercial work with my art and have done quite well with it. In four years I plan to retire from the commercial and do only my xray art and documentary work.

[Brian K]

My day job has been photography since 1977 when I left SVA to assist full time. I also started shooting for magazines then, and by 1979 officially opened my NYC studio, a studio share, previous to that I rented studios on a daily basis. I out grew that shared studio and by mid 1980 I got a 2000sf studio of my own. I out grew that studio and in 1984, at the age of 26, I built a 5000sf studio. I was there for 15 years, until 2000 when I partnered with another photographer to build a 7500sf studio.

Over those years I shot a mix of advertising and editorial. Most often still life but enough people and location work thrown in to keep it interesting. I shot a lot of food, beverages, cosmetics, electronics, tobacco and off figure fashion. In my early days I did some fashion and beauty. Being based in NY my clients were almost always major corporations and the work was usually national.

At the end of 2002 I changed the focus of my business to my personal work and the sale of prints, and closed the NY studio. I still work everyday as a photographer and will most likely never retire from it. I had to sell off a lot of the large bits of gear, i had little use for 4 camera stands and enormous boom arm banks lights. I still have a lot of the smaller gear although much of it I haven't used in years. The last time I shot a still life was for a drug company ad, by this point, 2003, my NY studio was gone, my new home studio was under construction, so it ended up getting shot in my living room. The lab processing the film 45 minutes from my home. Quite a different experience from having the NY studios, where the lab would send a messenger by in 15 minutes and have the film delivered back to me in a little more than 2 hours.

The only use my lighting gear and my rather substantial studio camera systems get is the occasional exercise I give them just to keep them functioning properly.

I miss the scale of the shoots, I miss the camaraderie of working with a crew, I miss the paychecks, boy, do I miss the paychecks, but I can't complain about the course my life has taken. I sometimes wonder just what my life would have been, and what work I would have produced, if I had forgone the studio route and just did my personal work from the start. The most productive 25 years of my life having been focused on the production of commercial photographs.

[emmett]

Started in photography in 1976. I was an assistant in a catalog house, a professional color printer and a still life photographer. Sometime in 1987 I got into exhibition design and gave up professional photography. That was the best thing I ever did because It made me love photography again.

[David R Munson]

I majored in photography and was a freelance assistant for a while, but haven't exactly made the transition into full time shooting for various reasons. I still intend to, and in fact have a goal to be fully freelance (photography, writing, design) in another year, but the path from here to there has been a lot less direct than I had originally expected it to be. Had to make a lot of mistakes and figure things out. Now I know a lot better what I want to do with it.

TL;DR: Not yet, but almost.

[Kirk Gittings]

Resurrecting this thread for 2012. The recession drags on. I'm still a full time photographer, but "fulltime" has a different meaning these days (used to work 80 hour weeks)-now barely enough work, commercial prices have largely plummeted, magazine market has tanked, print prices are up but volume down.................so I spend more time at less profitable ventures, speaking, teaching, artist-in-residence gigs and much, much more time for my personal work!

[John Brady]

I wasn't full time when you started this thread but I am now. I spend full time at my photography and part time overseeing another business to help make ends meet. Been at it full time for a few years now and each year continues to get better but I am still climbing the ladder.

www.timeandlight.com