[Leica] Making a living as a photographer

[tedgrant at shaw.ca (tedgrant at shaw.ca)]

Well he sounds like a whiner! Oh and shooting for Hollywood and a nice 
payment?

How be I tell you I was hired to shoot the promo photography for the John 
Travalto movie "URBAN COWBOY!" Oh yeah and on the 5 day shoot? I was paid 
$9000.oo plus expenses! Damn life is tough being an independent shooter. :-) 
Yep didn't get those every month or so. WHY?

Well hell man I was shooting on other projects that paid better. :-)

So maybe you and your buddy Ken missed the boat some how!! ;-) :-)

cheers,
ted

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Lawrence Zeitlin" <lrzeitlin at gmail.com>
To: "Leica LUG" <lug at leica-users.org>
Sent: Sunday, December 05, 2010 11:10 AM
Subject: Re: [Leica] Making a living as a photographer


> After I wrote my little polemic, I came across this article by Ken 
> Rockwell.
> He says it better than I could.
> Larry Z
> - - - - - -
>
> *Professional Photography*
>
> Ken Rockwell
>
> Would you like to photograph anything you want, anywhere you want, anytime
> you want, any way you want, with a great professional camera system? Would
> you love to travel to luxury destinations and photograph whatever, 
> whenever
> you want?
>
> *The only way to do this is to keep your real job and do photography on 
> your
> own time.*
>
> If you want to photograph professionally you'll make less money, have to
> shoot the boring stuff in crappy
> locations<http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/crappylocations.htm>for
> which you're hired, shoot it the way the client wants, and probably
> have
> to shoot everything as if it's some big emergency every time. You'll
> probably only be able to afford beat up old gear that's "good enough."
>
> Making a buck in photography is a lot tougher than keeping a real job. The
> photo jobs and locations that pay the most are the most boring. Think 
> you're
> going to have people hiring you as a travel photographer? Guess again.
>
> It's *exactly* like golf or surfing. Golf is fun, and it's almost 
> impossible
> to get people to pay you to do it. Only one guy in ten million makes lots 
> of
> money in surfing, photography or acting. Everyone else who makes the money
> does it in something allied to the field, like making or selling product 
> or
> the dream.
>
> We all know the few actors who pull in $20 million per movie. Did you know
> the average annual income of the many SAG <http://www.sag.org/> (Screen
> Actors' Guild) members, the majority of whom we've never heard, is 
> something
> more like $20,000? The SAG website's FAQ page offers this advice on how to
> become a performer: *"Develop another career to supplement your
> income."*People pay photographers less than actors.
>
> A person who studied stage lighting in college and worked in Hollywood
> discovered that almost no one makes it in the fun job of lighting. The
> people who make more money more regularly are those who become lighting
> salesmen.
>
> Who makes more: an actor, or an agent who earns 10% from each of the 20
> clients they represent?
>
> If you want to make money in photography, it's probably not by doing
> photography.
>
> You can become a super star photographer, but it's all in your
> self-promotion and luck. If you want it hard enough you can do it. In
> America you can do anything you can imagine, however if you want to make
> money and have fun making photos there are easier ways to live.
>
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