I have heard the question posed before, “When do you know you are ready to charge?” What the question is asking is, when is a photographer who is new to photography ready to start charging for his photography. That is a good question with many answers I am sure. I feel that too many people who are interested in photography, buy a digital camera and take a few shots that they think look cool, learn how to turn their photo to black & white or up some contrast, if they even learn to do those couple simple things and then they think that they are ready to put out a sign in front of their door that says “John Smith Photography”. Well, as those who have photographed at all for any length of time, we have learned that it takes time to learn first the basics of photographic composition, then timing, then the technicals of the camera, then lighting, then interacting with subjects and so on. It isn’t, “I have a nice digital camera, so now I can take professional portraits”. The truth is you can only obtain professional results consistently through persistence, hard work, continuing education, a humble attitude that is willing to learn, and many thousands of photographs shot to start becoming consistent in taking professional quality photography.
The word professional has a simple meaning. It simply means to be paid for the work that you do. So if you take “professional” quality photography, yet aren’t paid, you aren’t a professional, but on the other hand if you are paid for your photography but are not taking “professional” quality photography, you are still a professional, but that does not mean that people will view you as a professional. The idea is to charge when people view your work as professional. That is the time that I personally believe it is time to charge. There are those who begin to charge to early. And on the flip side, there are those who do not charge well after they have plenty enough talent and skills to be charging what experienced working professionals charge.
My suggestion to those just getting started is to shoot, shoot, shoot. Learn as much as you can about photography by reading articles, books, and blogs such as this one. Also, photography critique websites are great because they promote the idea of posting photos for the purpose of getting honest, sometimes brutal criticism about your photography. One great site that I have been a part of for years is www.photosig.com. This community of thousands of photographers world wide, range from amateur to working professionals. The community encourages critiques by rewarding you with points for the more critiques you write and the more helpful they are, the more photos you may post for being critiqued themselves. When I first joined photosig, I believed that I was a good photographer. I had been professionally shooting for several years at that point and thought that I knew my stuff. I found out very quickly that I was not nearly as talented as I thought that I was. I have learned and continue to learn on that website specifically from professionals and amateurs even. An amateur or beginner can tell you what they do and don’t like about a photo. A member of photosig once said, “You don’t have to be a chef to tell someone what you do or don’t like about a meal. If you ate a steak that was too salty, you don’t have to be a professional chef to say so.” The same comes with critiquing. You just have to be willing to be humble enough to accept criticism from anyone. That is one thing that will immensely help anyone to become a better photographer.
Another suggestion I have for beginners is offering to photograph friends, family and coworkers for free to practice photographing different groups and different ages and different personalities. Most people have friends and families, but in the unlikely case that you do not have any or you have very few you can even put up fliers offering to give free prints or free CD-R of all the photos in exchange for being able to practice. Trust me you will get bites on an offer like that. People will want to bring their kids to you or may take you up if it’s been a while since they had a family portrait taken. Offer to photograph your volunteers in different locations, different times and dates. Offer to take them indoors and outdoors. Ask them for their input on ideas and you’ll be surprised at how creative even the most non creative person can be if you start brainstorming ideas. This is a very easy way to get lots of practice and not have the stress of having to perform if you mess up and don’t get a single good shot. But the likeliness is that you will get at least a few good shots. You then have the chance to work on your editing and post production skills because you’ll have images at your disposal that you’ve taken. This is somewhat how my wife and I got our start. How we really got to shooting families. Because we practiced, practiced, practiced and made all the mistakes, and very embarrassing ones at that, before we dared to start charging. We still continue to improve and we do look back at photos we took when we started charging and see how we could have improved, but the point is that we were not charging for photography that was totally terrible. It was actually pretty good, though nothing like what we do nowadays. But had we started charging from day one, we would have been hurting ourselves business wise rather than helping ourselves and this way we were able to build up a nice portfolio before we really started our business. Ten years later and we still have some of those original shots in our portfolio.
One last point I would like to make, when people other than your mother tell you that you take great photos, that’s when you know that you have a skill. It is easy with our own human natures to think more highly of ourselves that we ought. We by nature are prideful creatures. And we don’t like to be told that we are not good at something that we enjoy doing. I know people that love taking pictures, but they aren’t any good at it. But I can’t imagine how I would tell them that I don’t think they are any good. I think they couldn’t possibly take it the right way. They are convinced that they are wonderful. It is that attitude of blindness that we must clear ourselves of before we can truly be successful in a photography business. If you have a real skill for capturing expressions, composition, exposure, artistic vision, dealing with people positively, etc. you will become a successful photographer. But until you get somewhat comfortable with these aspects and confident in your own self that you know that you have the ability to perform the mission given you, then I would not suggest charging for your photography. You must know your limitations, continue to improve upon them and take the best photographs possible. Then and only then should you begin to ask money for snapping the shutter. I can teach a monkey to push a button. But I cannot teach a monkey to be a photographer.
