For example, if you are a mid-level sports photographer, you have to factor in the equipment you are carrying onto the field (approx. $3,500), your post-processing equipment (approx. $2,000-$3,000), and then added liability/risk if you or your equipment get ran over or hit with a ball. If you are one of the higher-level sports photographers, add $30,000 to your equipment costs and you're all set (more info here http://www.sportspictures.com/sport/sports_photography_equipment.html). So, if you want to be a sought after (aka working and hired) professional sports photographer, you have to shell out more money than the average American makes a whole year. If it's your "hobby," then going $7,000 in the hole is pretty average. But regardless, most people don't know or take the minute to figure out how much all this costs. And while sports photography may be on the high end as far as cost goes, their midlevel standard is what you can plan on spending to be a professional photographer in any arena.
Now, you may be thinking, "Well, my cousin so and so and his friends just went to Costco and bought a $600 camera kit and they take really beautiful pictures. I don't understand why some photographers go and spend thousands of dollars more if they don't have to. So, I'm not paying all this money for a photographer, my cousin can cover my event for free and the pictures will look the same." Ok, good for you - so lets look at this a few ways. Your cousin may be a part of what I call "Fad Photography." You may have seen what I'm talking about. American Apparel clothing company uses this style of photography almost exclusively. What these photographers do is cover their subject simply, plainly, non-flattering, and realistically. They use the kit camera, the built-in flash, and usually no other prop. This is pretty much as bare bones as you can get these days in photography. So, maybe your cousin may be wanting to be a part of this trend and honestly, in my own opinion, this style is a pretty cool style. What these photographers do is capture the moment and make it look interesting. But wait, listen to what I said. They make it look interesting meaning they don't do a bunch of fancy camera techniques to get the "right" image - they make sure their composition is effecting and attractive to the people they want to see them. Random guy and photographer CobraSnake is a prime example of what I'm talking about. This falls into (C) of what I mentioned before: raw talent and ability. Not everyone's "Fad Photography" looks great, you still have to shop around and hire somebody that knows what they are doing. They gotta recognize a moment, be able to be in the right place at the right time, get around rules and regs for places that don't allow photography... they have to sometimes be creative rebels in how they work. For some, all of this comes naturally. For others, they gotta work at it but either way, an effective photographer makes an image interesting one way or another and not every Tom, Dick, and Nancy can do that.
So, from here on out, I'm not going to post that much of my personal work on this blog. I post some periodically on my facebook page and my website, so posting them here too seems a little redundant. If you are interesting in seeing my work, head over to one of those. Instead, I'm going to focus a little more on being more informative on what at least I go through in being a photographer. And that's ranging from public misconceptions about being a photographer (that you don't really get until you are one or until one explains it to you), some of the difficulties I run into in my on-site workflow (which usually involves oblivious people), equipment issues you probably wouldn't know about, and just the general effort it takes to do what I and so many others do. This should be an interesting discussion...!!! :)
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