Thank you for being so transparent! This helped me refocus on my career as an accountant vs chasing photography. Sort of a dream crusher but I really needed to see this video. Looks like photography will simply remain an expensive hobby for me.
That should not be the lesson. No it's *likely* not worth it unless starting out or doing to branch into wedding and portrait or videography. And as he basically alludes it is dependent on the amount of hustle involved. Landscape is a saturated field and has the least amount of interest lacking humans in the scenery. Many say "oh I like landscapes" but we're very vain creatures which is why people-oriented subcategories do better overall. It's a viable starting point but research ahead of time for career branches, learn to hustle (a good skill in itself, learn to market yourself (not as a brand, and a good skill), and plan to spread into different photography and video aspects. And plan on having a secondary job or two for lean times. And most of all... it's a job, not a hobby. If you want it as a hobby, find another main job for life.
The video is not even about photography. It's about nature photography. It's like saying that becoming a curling pro is not lucrative, therefore sports is not lucrative. Differen thing.
Love the transparency. I am planning to "retire" into full-time landscape photography. I am realistic that I am not doing this to make a living but rather to do it because I love it. I will live off my pension whilst pursuing my passion. If I make a buck from it it will be a bonus.
An honest and somewhat sobering video. Mark Denney on his channel in a very similar video discussing the realities of trying to "make it" as a landscape photographer cites this bit of enlightenment he received in an email as the course correction his photography career needed: "the market for landscape photography things is small, but the market for the landscape photography experience is massive." In other words, don't sell prints, sell knowledge.
A solid summary and insight to the challenges of being a professional photographer. This video summarizes what I thought - it's not 1 thing, but a group of 'jobs' within the world of being a photographer that will help pay the bills. Folks have to be extremely dedicated and creative in setting themselves apart. To me workshops are the way to go. Whether they be in person in-field trips where you guide others or directly peer-to-peer editing sessions online, showcasing your personality and skillset is the combination to being successful, imho. I was in Costa Rica this past January. I went with a guide and one of the biggest reasons is she has private access to a chunk of land so it was her and I exploring with her explaining and guiding me to different species to photograph. It was great and not overly expensive ($100 USD for 4 hours'ish). Worth it to me being my 1st time there. Printing is something I believe can make a comeback. We're in such a digital age where people want things yesterday, but there seems to be a growing desire to have a tangible physical product hanging on a wall. I'm not a fan of photo contests either. Most of them, from my experience, want rights to your entered photographs and I'm not paying to enter anything. That doesn't make sense to me. Paying seems to only benefit the contest. Best of luck Nickolas!
Checked out your galleries. Great work brother. From personal experience time in the game plays a big factor in income. The first few years are low, but as your audience scales exponentially, so does your income. Many photographers quit before they get to that exponential takeoff point. Keep crushing it!
I work for a portrait studio 3 days a week . I make 55,000 a year It’s a multimillion dollar business. My boss who owns the company once told me, Victor, the reason photographers don’t make money is because they don’t know how to sell their work. So I think as photographers we must learn to sell our work.
Fantastic video man I love it when content creators get real! Personally I considered photography as a full time carrer option but have opted to keep it a side hustle just because I don't wanna burn my self out on something I love
4 days from the upload of this video I already think that this channel will explode and as a consequence you will explode as a photographer, the quality of what you do is insane and you will deserve every single cent you'll earn!
It seems like the trifecta nowadays is UA-cam, Website and Socials. Film yourself creating your content and put it on YT. Use that to drive customers to your website where you sell and pound the socials to direct traffic to your website and YT channel. Sell calendars, coffee table books, prints and tours - Rinse, repeat. Unfortunately, only about 5% of your time is being a photographer. I wish you the best!
Ive been shooting portrait, commercial, and editorial work for almost 40 years. I might get 6 or 7 big commercial shoots in a given year and that is where the real money comes from. The rest is just pin money. Editorial shoots can be lucrative or not depending upon the customer. AI is about to destroy editorial/fashion photography because it's a lot cheaper to use AI to generate a human model than pay one. That said, most social media is a total bust if you rely on it for publicity/advertising. The best approach is to get put there and schmooze with potential customers and aggressively putsue leads and contacts by going door to door selling your various genres. In person cold calls get you further than actual virtual or physical advertising. Emails are perfuctory, impersonal and end up in the deleted folder. Physical mailings are better and more personal. But legwork is how you get noticed. One warning is that the bigger a customer is or the more money the customer has, the more they will try to cheap you. The biggest mistake one can make is not charging enough. And never work by the hour. Offer complete packages to meet their budget.
Appreciate your honesty, Brother! I always tell everyone to just do it as a hobby. Very, very few people make a good living (422.6'K+ per yr) doing this.
Know exactly how much time goes into this to make it work, that is why I’d never consider it as my career. Love photography and filming way too much to turn it into my profession. I’ve heard your story way too many times from others. Appreciate transparency, good luck with whatever you choose to pursue.
From my perspective it’s definitely worth it. I own a struggling garage door company. I bust my ass running the business and installing and fixing doors. It’s dirty and makes my body hurt. I can only afford to pay myself about $35k a year at this point. So to make $50k a year doing what you love is a pretty good deal. Don’t take it for granted, just keep working hard and making improvements
You were a great tour guide / workshop leader. ☺️ Hopefully with continued UA-cam traffic that stream will increase Thanks Nickolas! Interesting video.
Very interesting video thank you. I have sometimes been considering trying to make some money of my photography, but I have just in my head concluded that it must be near impossible with all the competition out there these days. Cool to see that you are making at least some money off of it!
Thanks for the honesty in all of this. I'd love to be able to do this 100% of my time but I'm definitely a noob. And you've confirmed that the landscape of money-making photography opportunities (not weddings) is tough. I still want to do this because it's been a passion of mine for years but I've never been super serious until recently. At least I know what to expect. Between the advent of AI generated photos and the ubiquity of camera phones, it seems hard to justify my "hobby". Regardless, I still need to improve my wildlife photography skills before I even think of venturing out. Anyhow, thanks again for being honest, makes me happy to see honesty these days. I'm subscribed :)
Hey Nickolas. Interesting and informative video. You are an excellent photographer, but more importantly an outstanding teacher in both photography and editing techniques. Hope we can shoot again sometime.
Wow, your video is a breath of fresh air. Thank you! I am still passionate about photography though, lol. This will help me make plans for the future. Thanks again!
I spent 25 years making decent money as a commercial/advertising photographer. It took a lot of marketing and time meeting people to get started, and some luck. Nature photography is great but I probably spent more in expenses than I made with print sales. Stock is a total waste of time at this point, it's so oversaturated. I never did weddings but there is money in that profession, but it's competitive too.
Painful, but appreciated. The amount of work you've put in is evident, and props for pulling it off... but really sends home the message that ill be working the corporate life forever 😢💀
I haven't looked at this video but I'm a people photographer and I sure hope nature photographers make more than I do. The floor gave way on people photography a few years ago and I doubt it will ever be rebuilt. So, if you or anyone can make money from nature photography or any other genre, do it.
i spent 28 years earning a fairly decent ($60k pa) income as a photog/writer for several magazines. Quite simply, they all died off due to 'free' on line content, and I would not recommend anyone to pursue this career path! Sad but true, times and technology have changed, quality does suffer because too many are happy to accept mediocrity because it's 'free' or self made.
Set up interviews with your friends that make big bucks selling prints! That would be groovy video to watch! Ask them how! How come they do well and many others struggle.
I have a buddy who makes good money taking real estate photography. He just takes HDR photos of the interior of houses that are being put in the market. Perhaps this is something to look into?
I think Printer really difficult and I'll tell you why guys and I'm a very good photographer in Australia. If anyone seen my work they will advocate to my work is very good for landscapes people just not putting landscapes on their walls any more. That's the key. bit to all of this if you go into an office now or you go into someone's house, they've got very funky abstract style art on their walls that's not so obvious. I don't think it's AI images are necessarily taking away from our landscape that are going on the walls. What I do think it is the type of art that people are putting on the wall. That would be my first Point.. As good as my Photography is I will have to keep my day job and that's okay because I do enjoy my day job and it reinvigorates me Photography. I think it is very very unwise to become a full-time Photography these days because even Young guys coming through the system can pretty much teach themselves in six months especially with the technology available in editing the new lenses and auto focusing of some of these Sony and Nikon cameras. It is not difficult to become a photographer. Now it is not the technology makes it so much easier, back in the film days it was a really difficult thing to be a photographer and there wasn't many pro photographers around pretty much now within six months. You can call yourself a professional photographer so that there is so much competition now so your work has to be good, but I'm not gonna sit here and say you're gonna be a millionaire out of this because you're not going to become a millionaire out of Photography. It's just not gonna happen.
Have you thought about galleries???? Back when I shot with my Canon, I worked only with models and magazines and made a decent living. Then I switched to screenwriting. Last year I switched to iPhone photography for my photography and short movies. Plus now, I’m looking at placing some of my work in galleries for sale. I’ve shown my portfolio to some galleries and they asked for a few to be displayed for sale. Maybe that might help? I also do custom wall art (even back when I used my Canon) and got a pretty decent response as well.
Galleries take MASSIVE commissions... think 40-60%. After costs of printing/mounting/framing or whatever (and logistics of getting and delivering the prints) plus enough mark up to cover the commission and make a profit... you'd better be selling very very high $$$$ work to get anywhere.
Good to hear you've managed to impress a few gallery owners: I live in the UK's most popular holiday county & mostly shoot surfing & local wildlife. A couple of years ago, during an off-season week of lousy weather, I decided to take a portfolio of A3 sized mounted prints around to the various small galleries in one of the most popular coastal towns in our county; offering a 'sale or return' deal... Not One of them would even take a couple of minutes to look at my work - Not that they didn't like what they saw, because they didn't see anything, but most simply said "We don't deal with local photographers".
@@calebplumleeoutdoors really? Yeah no… I have mine matted and framed and presented and they sell???? I mean, who are you going through to have that much commission????
@peterjackhandy this is pretty common in my experience. Galleries say they only want artists with proven records of gallery sales... how do you do that?... get into galleries... who won't take you till you've been in galleries. I'm 99.99% convinced galleries are only interested in artists who are already rich, or perhaps are just pure money laundering
Only wedding photographers make any money with print sales. And Instagram hates still photographers. Stock photography has changed dramatically over the last 10 years. No money there.
Really appreciate the transparency here! Best of luck in your journey going forward!
Thank you for being so transparent! This helped me refocus on my career as an accountant vs chasing photography. Sort of a dream crusher but I really needed to see this video. Looks like photography will simply remain an expensive hobby for me.
Summary: dont expect photography to be your main job.
That should not be the lesson. No it's *likely* not worth it unless starting out or doing to branch into wedding and portrait or videography. And as he basically alludes it is dependent on the amount of hustle involved. Landscape is a saturated field and has the least amount of interest lacking humans in the scenery. Many say "oh I like landscapes" but we're very vain creatures which is why people-oriented subcategories do better overall. It's a viable starting point but research ahead of time for career branches, learn to hustle (a good skill in itself, learn to market yourself (not as a brand, and a good skill), and plan to spread into different photography and video aspects. And plan on having a secondary job or two for lean times. And most of all... it's a job, not a hobby. If you want it as a hobby, find another main job for life.
i said dont EXPECT photography to be your main job, go into it as a hobby. and if you are ready to hustle. and you are talented. go ahead and try.
The video is not even about photography. It's about nature photography. It's like saying that becoming a curling pro is not lucrative, therefore sports is not lucrative. Differen thing.
@@EktorTsolodimos So you think photography in general is a easy job? alright buh
Love the transparency. I am planning to "retire" into full-time landscape photography. I am realistic that I am not doing this to make a living but rather to do it because I love it. I will live off my pension whilst pursuing my passion. If I make a buck from it it will be a bonus.
An honest and somewhat sobering video. Mark Denney on his channel in a very similar video discussing the realities of trying to "make it" as a landscape photographer cites this bit of enlightenment he received in an email as the course correction his photography career needed: "the market for landscape photography things is small, but the market for the landscape photography experience is massive." In other words, don't sell prints, sell knowledge.
A solid summary and insight to the challenges of being a professional photographer. This video summarizes what I thought - it's not 1 thing, but a group of 'jobs' within the world of being a photographer that will help pay the bills. Folks have to be extremely dedicated and creative in setting themselves apart.
To me workshops are the way to go. Whether they be in person in-field trips where you guide others or directly peer-to-peer editing sessions online, showcasing your personality and skillset is the combination to being successful, imho.
I was in Costa Rica this past January. I went with a guide and one of the biggest reasons is she has private access to a chunk of land so it was her and I exploring with her explaining and guiding me to different species to photograph. It was great and not overly expensive ($100 USD for 4 hours'ish). Worth it to me being my 1st time there.
Printing is something I believe can make a comeback. We're in such a digital age where people want things yesterday, but there seems to be a growing desire to have a tangible physical product hanging on a wall.
I'm not a fan of photo contests either. Most of them, from my experience, want rights to your entered photographs and I'm not paying to enter anything. That doesn't make sense to me. Paying seems to only benefit the contest.
Best of luck Nickolas!
Checked out your galleries. Great work brother. From personal experience time in the game plays a big factor in income. The first few years are low, but as your audience scales exponentially, so does your income. Many photographers quit before they get to that exponential takeoff point. Keep crushing it!
I work for a portrait studio 3 days a week . I make 55,000 a year It’s a multimillion dollar business. My boss who owns the company once told me, Victor, the reason photographers don’t make money is because they don’t know how to sell their work. So I think as photographers we must learn to sell our work.
55k a year is better paid than 70% of people out there.
Fantastic video man I love it when content creators get real!
Personally I considered photography as a full time carrer option but have opted to keep it a side hustle just because I don't wanna burn my self out on something I love
4 days from the upload of this video I already think that this channel will explode and as a consequence you will explode as a photographer, the quality of what you do is insane and you will deserve every single cent you'll earn!
bet, this year the income will be at least twice of what it was, if it is please buy me a sony alpha 7 III 😂
I've been extremely fortunate to have made my living in photography for 31+ years. I just subscribed 😊
It seems like the trifecta nowadays is UA-cam, Website and Socials. Film yourself creating your content and put it on YT. Use that to drive customers to your website where you sell and pound the socials to direct traffic to your website and YT channel. Sell calendars, coffee table books, prints and tours - Rinse, repeat. Unfortunately, only about 5% of your time is being a photographer. I wish you the best!
Ive been shooting portrait, commercial, and editorial work for almost 40 years. I might get 6 or 7 big commercial shoots in a given year and that is where the real money comes from. The rest is just pin money. Editorial shoots can be lucrative or not depending upon the customer. AI is about to destroy editorial/fashion photography because it's a lot cheaper to use AI to generate a human model than pay one. That said, most social media is a total bust if you rely on it for publicity/advertising. The best approach is to get put there and schmooze with potential customers and aggressively putsue leads and contacts by going door to door selling your various genres. In person cold calls get you further than actual virtual or physical advertising. Emails are perfuctory, impersonal and end up in the deleted folder. Physical mailings are better and more personal. But legwork is how you get noticed. One warning is that the bigger a customer is or the more money the customer has, the more they will try to cheap you. The biggest mistake one can make is not charging enough. And never work by the hour. Offer complete packages to meet their budget.
Appreciate your honesty, Brother! I always tell everyone to just do it as a hobby. Very, very few people make a good living (422.6'K+ per yr) doing this.
Know exactly how much time goes into this to make it work, that is why I’d never consider it as my career. Love photography and filming way too much to turn it into my profession. I’ve heard your story way too many times from others. Appreciate transparency, good luck with whatever you choose to pursue.
Thanks for sharing your photography journey! Looking forward to the workshop with you in March!
Me too! I'm super excited for that.
From my perspective it’s definitely worth it. I own a struggling garage door company. I bust my ass running the business and installing and fixing doors. It’s dirty and makes my body hurt. I can only afford to pay myself about $35k a year at this point. So to make $50k a year doing what you love is a pretty good deal. Don’t take it for granted, just keep working hard and making improvements
Thank you for the insight. I really appreciate it. For most of my life I made less than 20k a year, so this is still big to me. :)
You were a great tour guide / workshop leader. ☺️
Hopefully with continued UA-cam traffic that stream will increase
Thanks Nickolas! Interesting video.
Very interesting video thank you.
I have sometimes been considering trying to make some money of my photography, but I have just in my head concluded that it must be near impossible with all the competition out there these days. Cool to see that you are making at least some money off of it!
I see it as being a “career” for those who are wanting either a second job or have resources from other places to supplement.
Wow. Great video.Nickolas.
Thanks for this brutally honest video Nickolas! Very informative.
Love your transparency! Great video, subscribed!
Thanks for the honesty in all of this. I'd love to be able to do this 100% of my time but I'm definitely a noob. And you've confirmed that the landscape of money-making photography opportunities (not weddings) is tough. I still want to do this because it's been a passion of mine for years but I've never been super serious until recently. At least I know what to expect. Between the advent of AI generated photos and the ubiquity of camera phones, it seems hard to justify my "hobby". Regardless, I still need to improve my wildlife photography skills before I even think of venturing out.
Anyhow, thanks again for being honest, makes me happy to see honesty these days. I'm subscribed :)
Thank you so much! I really appreciate it. :)
Hey Nickolas. Interesting and informative video. You are an excellent photographer, but more importantly an outstanding teacher in both photography and editing techniques. Hope we can shoot again sometime.
Wow, your video is a breath of fresh air. Thank you! I am still passionate about photography though, lol. This will help me make plans for the future. Thanks again!
Glad it was helpful!
I spent 25 years making decent money as a commercial/advertising photographer. It took a lot of marketing and time meeting people to get started, and some luck. Nature photography is great but I probably spent more in expenses than I made with print sales. Stock is a total waste of time at this point, it's so oversaturated. I never did weddings but there is money in that profession, but it's competitive too.
Interesting video! Thanks for the transparency.
Painful, but appreciated. The amount of work you've put in is evident, and props for pulling it off... but really sends home the message that ill be working the corporate life forever 😢💀
I haven't looked at this video but I'm a people photographer and I sure hope nature photographers make more than I do. The floor gave way on people photography a few years ago and I doubt it will ever be rebuilt. So, if you or anyone can make money from nature photography or any other genre, do it.
i spent 28 years earning a fairly decent ($60k pa) income as a photog/writer for several magazines. Quite simply, they all died off due to 'free' on line content, and I would not recommend anyone to pursue this career path! Sad but true, times and technology have changed, quality does suffer because too many are happy to accept mediocrity because it's 'free' or self made.
Set up interviews with your friends that make big bucks selling prints!
That would be groovy video to watch!
Ask them how! How come they do well and many others struggle.
thank you for this rundown
I do recognize it, be your own in this business is hard as hell, all the small incomes is super important but well paid, nope :)
I have a buddy who makes good money taking real estate photography. He just takes HDR photos of the interior of houses that are being put in the market. Perhaps this is something to look into?
I think Printer really difficult and I'll tell you why guys and I'm a very good photographer in Australia. If anyone seen my work they will advocate to my work is very good for landscapes people just not putting landscapes on their walls any more. That's the key. bit to all of this if you go into an office now or you go into someone's house, they've got very funky abstract style art on their walls that's not so obvious. I don't think it's AI images are necessarily taking away from our landscape that are going on the walls. What I do think it is the type of art that people are putting on the wall. That would be my first Point.. As good as my Photography is I will have to keep my day job and that's okay because I do enjoy my day job and it reinvigorates me Photography. I think it is very very unwise to become a full-time Photography these days because even Young guys coming through the system can pretty much teach themselves in six months especially with the technology available in editing the new lenses and auto focusing of some of these Sony and Nikon cameras. It is not difficult to become a photographer. Now it is not the technology makes it so much easier, back in the film days it was a really difficult thing to be a photographer and there wasn't many pro photographers around pretty much now within six months. You can call yourself a professional photographer so that there is so much competition now so your work has to be good, but I'm not gonna sit here and say you're gonna be a millionaire out of this because you're not going to become a millionaire out of Photography. It's just not gonna happen.
hi nickolas warner hi do you need thumbnail designer at cheap rates?
Have you thought about galleries???? Back when I shot with my Canon, I worked only with models and magazines and made a decent living. Then I switched to screenwriting. Last year I switched to iPhone photography for my photography and short movies. Plus now, I’m looking at placing some of my work in galleries for sale. I’ve shown my portfolio to some galleries and they asked for a few to be displayed for sale. Maybe that might help? I also do custom wall art (even back when I used my Canon) and got a pretty decent response as well.
Unfortunately I live quite far from any galleries. I've been looking into it though.
Galleries take MASSIVE commissions... think 40-60%. After costs of printing/mounting/framing or whatever (and logistics of getting and delivering the prints) plus enough mark up to cover the commission and make a profit... you'd better be selling very very high $$$$ work to get anywhere.
Good to hear you've managed to impress a few gallery owners:
I live in the UK's most popular holiday county & mostly shoot surfing & local wildlife.
A couple of years ago, during an off-season week of lousy weather, I decided to take a portfolio of A3 sized mounted prints around to the various small galleries in one of the most popular coastal towns in our county; offering a 'sale or return' deal...
Not One of them would even take a couple of minutes to look at my work - Not that they didn't like what they saw, because they didn't see anything, but most simply said "We don't deal with local photographers".
@@calebplumleeoutdoors really? Yeah no… I have mine matted and framed and presented and they sell???? I mean, who are you going through to have that much commission????
@peterjackhandy this is pretty common in my experience. Galleries say they only want artists with proven records of gallery sales... how do you do that?... get into galleries... who won't take you till you've been in galleries.
I'm 99.99% convinced galleries are only interested in artists who are already rich, or perhaps are just pure money laundering
Only wedding photographers make any money with print sales. And Instagram hates still photographers. Stock photography has changed dramatically over the last 10 years. No money there.
Hello, i don't know Instagram pay money
Does insta still pay?
Are you planning workshops of your own? If so, how can I get on your mailing list?
Yes, Head over to warnerwildernessphotography.com Thank you! :)
Zero, nothing. I’ve tried and these videos don’t help.
If they have to be on UA-cam and be watched by kids, they make nothing.
Good data.........I hear Walmart is hiring................maybe you should get a day job and do photography on the weekends..........