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I am a software engineer and would like to get into digital photography. As such, I wanted to know how fellow photographers make money to support themselves?

Philip Kendall
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Bhuwan Bhatt
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Making money is about providing people something that they want more than the money you are asking for it. So you have to figure out who do you want to be your customers, and why would they want to pay for your work. For example, the value proposition could be about

  • capturing their personal memories,
  • appealing images of stuff/ideas they want to sell,
  • extraordinary beauty to decorate their spaces with,
  • imagery of newsworthy stories/persons, or
  • emotionally/sexually arousing footage.

In any case, almost anyone who can afford to pay for photography already has a camera smartphone, so you have to invest time to deliver clearly better results than average for people to see the value in your work.

As a fellow software engineer, let me note that photography is a much tougher field to succeed in. There are much more hobbyists doing it just for fun and not asking any money. I have tried my hand at photographing sports events (value proposition: personal memorabilia from a high emotions event). While it did bring in some money, I was barely breaking even after deducting fuel and web site hosting costs. Not even counting investments in required gear, or my time spent.

Imre
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    One thing I didn't consider until recently is that with the rise of AI generated images, stock photography will be one of the first things to fall. When you can can have a custom image instantly created for you by computer, there is no need to troll through a library of stock images - and hence no need for the photographers that created and sold those stock images in the first place. – Peter M Feb 07 '23 at 16:19
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    Stock photography died over a decade ago when usage fees for images went from x0 dollars per image to x cents per image. – Michael C Feb 08 '23 at 03:47
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I believe a lot of photographers do software engineering on the side to make money. If you want to make money, photography isn't a growing field.

Davepix
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  • What makes it difficult for photographers to make money? Especially, with digital media and e-commerce, isn't it easier for photographers to make money? I mean you could print t-shirts, sell canvas/wallpapers, etc. online to anyone in the world? – Bhuwan Bhatt Feb 08 '23 at 12:57
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    @BhuwanBhatt And so can everyone else do that, and someone will do it cheaper than you. – Philip Kendall Feb 08 '23 at 13:25
  • I'm curious about the source of this claim. I'm not saying it's not true, but where are the stats on photographers also being software engineers? Also, are you talking about photographers in general, or only photographers specialising in a particular area of photography? – osullic Feb 08 '23 at 14:47
  • @osullic I'm pretty sure a large proportion of the posters on Photography SE are software engineers. I'm also aware of what a selection effect is :) – Philip Kendall Feb 08 '23 at 15:37
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    @PhilipKendall And steal your and anyone else's images to do it... – Michael C Feb 09 '23 at 18:32