[Leica] Making a living as a photographer

[henningw at archiphoto.com (Henning Wulff)]

I'm not doing that much paid photography right now, but the majority 
of my income came from photography for over 20 years between the 
early 70's and late 90's.

The only way I was able to make decent money was to constantly 
re-invent my business and try and stay ahead with new 
techniques/angles that others didn't or couldn't do yet. As soon as 
others could, profits went down and I had to look for something new. 
In the late 90's I didn't bother any more as most areas that I had 
been working in started paying a lot less or didn't exist any more.

However, over the years I made more money as a photographer, and 
later as photographer/photoshop artist than I made as an architect.

For a number of years I worked as a consulting architect to other 
archtectural firms (actually, that's still what I do) and therefore 
had the ability to take time off for photographic assignments. The 
shooting I often did on short stints away from the office, but the 
pre and post shooting stuff I did in the evenings and weekends. For a 
number of yeards I worked 40 to 45 hour weeks as an architect and 15 
hours a week as a photographer (counting shooting and non-shooting 
time). During that time my income from photography was greater than 
that from architecture. For about 6 years I spent more time on 
photography than architecture, and during that time my total income 
was higher than before or since.

My work was all on assignment from architects, magazines, 
municipalities, developers, contractors and building material 
suppliers. Nothing on spec or for stock.

I don't think I could make that kind of money today in architectural 
photography, but 20-30 years ago it was certainly possible.

So now I do 95% architecture, and charge for my experience :-).




>In the "Same Sh*t, Different Day" department:
>
>http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2010/12/kelty.html
>
>The article isn't about this per se, but
>
>     "...Anyway, like many photographers, his life in the business really
>wound down far before his talents did, and he spent the last part of his
>life living in a small apartment in Chicago, working at Cubs games at
>Wrigley field selling beer, soda, and the rest..."
>
>Sobering thoughts - if you want to make money, don't be a photographer (or
>artist, or actor, or...).
>
>
>--
>// richard <http://www.imagecraft.com/>
>// icc blog: <http://imagecraft.com/blog/>
>// photo blog: <http://www.5pmlight.com>
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-- 

       Henning J. Wulff
  Wulff Photography & Design
mailto:henningw at archiphoto.com
   http://www.archiphoto.com