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09/21/2008 09:54:23 AM · #1 |
I've been toying with the idea for years now about turning my life upside down and opening a photography business.
Right now I'm working as a chemical engineer for a nuclear power plant and making good money, but I hate my job. I love photography, so it only makes sense for me to do what I love for a living if I can support myself while doing so. I never really liked my job, so I never let myself fall into a lot of debt or overspend so that if the time came one day I could leave my job, take another making half what I make now, and still be able to survive.
I did another wedding yesterday, and had a great time doing so. It was a difficult one. Done in a "chapel" that was actually just a small building inside a shopping center with 8.5 ft ceilings, fluorescent lighting, and the groom was an extremely dark African American wearing a bright white tux. Back to the point...
My new brother-in-law's parents own and operate a very successful wedding business where they plan, cater, film, and do everything except photograph weddings for people. His parents are constantly telling me that if I decide to do photography full time they can give me all the wedding business I could handle. They said most of the time when people come to get their wedding planned they don't know who they want to take the photos and just use whoever they suggest. They are a big business and do weddings almost every weekend. One day this year they planned 5 weddings that were all on the same day and sent teams out to all of them.
We have a very small town of maybe 1500 people, and already have two practicing photographers. I would post, but they don't have websites. They're typical small town photographers, with cheap equipment, low overhead, and cheap prices. I'm just not sure how I can financially make this work.
The question: Are any of you working full time in a small town and successful doing so even with competition? |
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09/21/2008 06:37:13 PM · #2 |
Ok, ok. I get it.
back to the lab. |
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09/21/2008 08:09:04 PM · #3 |
Don't get discouraged that no-one replied. Fact is, it sounds like you have a good job/career, even if it isn't exactly what you want to do. I can't offer any advice in the matter of the Photography business, but it seems to me if your work surpasses that of the two photogs in town with the cheap equipment, word will get around. Why not take on a wedding per weekend from your brother-in-law's parents? Sounds like there's a hotbed of potential business for you right there.
You're only 24, and you've got some great images in your portfolio and website. Plenty of time to save up, get yourself some kick-ass gear, go out and...well...kick some ass with it.
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09/21/2008 08:17:01 PM · #4 |
| I've read some very excellent advice in other threads here re making money w/photography. Things like having a business plan, knowing your expenses, knowing how much you have to charge to cover your expenses & also make enough money to live. Do a search & find these threads, you will be interested, & you will find some names to send a PM to also. After a few years shooting weddings, your old job might start looking very good to you! |
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09/21/2008 08:21:53 PM · #5 |
| Why not just go for it. You can always go back to your nuc job |
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09/21/2008 08:22:25 PM · #6 |
Don't give up, but do have a plan before you attack, or your battle for a business will be destroyed the first year.
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09/21/2008 09:00:23 PM · #7 |
If you can deliver good photographs, have the personality to work with people and deal with the unexpected (like a DJ not showing up and you're still expected to produce reception photos, bride planned an outdoor event and it rains like Ike, etc) and like sales as well as accounting, editing, and taking pictures, and can live on $30,000 a year then perhaps you too can be a professional photographer.
It's great you have a built in way to get business. But will it pay you enough?
Don't know about your small town, but here in mine things are cheaper than in a city, on average, and brides expect to pay less for everything. Generally the reception is 50% of the budget and the photog/video is to be 10% of the budget. So if it's 150 people at the Marriot where it's $90/plate (in the city) it's $13,500 for 50%, or $27000 for the whole deal, so 10% is $2700. Here in this town you can get a reception for $36/plate. Do the math and the photog is slated to get $1080. For pretty much the same work, although there might be less product delivered.
So you need to find out what is the going price for a wedding in your neck of the woods. There is room for all price ranges of course, but the most business is in the middle. around here that's $2000 plus or minus $500 (smaller to bigger budgets).
National averages in the studio biz show that a photog spends 20% (of sales) on goods - as in prints, albums, etc. I find it's a tad lower in most areas of photography, but higher in T&I. So take 20% to be safe, 15% is maybe about right.
You'll need to invest $20,000 to get it going (less if you own most of what you need - an office w/ file cabinet, copier, computer for ediing, backup out the wazoo, editing software for pics and albums, samples (albums, prints, etc), camera and backups, lenses, etc. This figure is based on what it cost me and it's probably low, but it's a reasonable figure to start with.
It can take 3 to 5 years to generate enough business to have a full schedule. You might get up to speed sooner as you have a built in referral base, but remember what you book today will not pay you till next summer or even fall or perhaps 2010. Not having a track record/history will hurt bookings in the beginning a bit. Remember that some brides will be slow in picking their album pics...book now and get $400. Shoot next fall and get $1500 more. But it could easily be winter 2011 before they order their album - and you'll need the $300 then to pay for it. And still be in business.
Shooting 40 weddings a year is possible, so that's $84,000 ($2100 x 40).
So if 20% is product, 10% can be called advertsing (samples, cards, website, etc) of the $2100 wedding package $700 is gone off the top. You'll have other expenses - office, postage, software upgrades, etc. $15,000 a year easy by year 2 or 3.
So 84k minues 15k, minus 28k or product and advertising, take away some more if you hire an assistant or do bridal shows. That's $43k spent leaving you $41,000. Being self employed means you'll pay about 1/3 of your 'profit' or 'salary' as taxes (over 15% of that is in FICA alone). So you get to have $27,000 for your efforts.
And you'll be a photographer! BUT wait, there's more! 75% of your time will not be taking pictures. It's accounting, graphic design, web design (or talking to your web designer), blogging, meeting with clients, talking to them on the phone, ordering prints, assembling albums, attending conventions/seminars/etc to know what's out there to sell and what's current in styles, etc. If you meet them at your house then you'll at least save the travel time to meet them at Starbucks or someplace. To book 40 weddings you'll talk to perhaps 50 clients (80% close rate is ideal). If you meet for an hour and have to prepare, drive, wait if they're late, drive home, unpack the car...each meeting can take 2 hours of your life. To shoot, edit, meet the bride, etc can take 25 to 30 hours of time for an entire wedding. Add up the hours in a year and figure all the time you'll spend shopping for gear, learning/trying things, doing the books, making samples, etc, etc, and 40 weddings is a pretty full year.
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09/21/2008 09:00:41 PM · #8 |
Originally posted by Man_Called_Horse:
Don't give up, but do have a plan before you attack, or your battle for a business will be destroyed the first year. |
Sure, but remember, no plan survives contact with the enemy. :D
 david_c's advice sounds very reasonable. Another option might be to get your current employer to agree to a sabbatical. Take some time away from your job to give the photo thing a shot, but retain the option to return to your old job.
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09/21/2008 09:08:41 PM · #9 |
| have you thought about keeping the day job and shooting 1 wedding a week (Sat night)for 6 months .... to see how it goes and what kind of money you might make? |
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09/21/2008 10:10:42 PM · #10 |
Well I would say pick one of these options:
- Stay in the lab, grow more miserable by the day until you get fed up and decide to blow up the Nuclear Plant and take us all with you.
- Quit the nuke job and open your photog business. If it fails, you can always go back and it will just have delayed our inevitable demise.
- Keep the nuke job and do the photography on the side (as suggested) and wait til you reach a safe jumping off point.
Prof_Fate always provides a huge amount of detail in these threads, but I would say (with utmost respect to the Prof) that there are a large amount of variants in people's experiences and results, so take what he says as coming from someone who knows, but also as someone who speaks from his own experience.
I wish you the best of luck! ...unless you pick option 1. |
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09/22/2008 09:13:26 AM · #11 |
Originally posted by Art Roflmao:
Well I would say pick one of these options:
- Stay in the lab, grow more miserable by the day until you get fed up and decide to blow up the Nuclear Plant and take us all with you.
- Quit the nuke job and open your photog business. If it fails, you can always go back and it will just have delayed our inevitable demise.
- Keep the nuke job and do the photography on the side (as suggested) and wait til you reach a safe jumping off point.
Prof_Fate always provides a huge amount of detail in these threads, but I would say (with utmost respect to the Prof) that there are a large amount of variants in people's experiences and results, so take what he says as coming from someone who knows, but also as someone who speaks from his own experience.
I wish you the best of luck! ...unless you pick option 1. |
True, there are a number of variables. Some I covered like what product costs. Mine run about 13%. Prints or DVDs are cheap, albums are not. Depends on what you sell.
The 'budget' for photographers is what BRIDE magazine and others publish so it's what the brides that are paying us see. Some value photography more than others, some less. I've seen home made (in a good way) dresses, $99 dresses and $3500 dresses, so each wedding is a bit different.
Only you can decide what you need to make to pay your bills. Based on industry surveys and my own research the average mom and pop studio in the US has sales of 175k and does a mix of seniors, weddings, portraits, etc. It has the full time photog making $40k (if that - that's with no mortgage) and 1 part timer plus extra help during the busy season. My research? Call people selling studios and ask about sales, employees, etc. Look into buying a running studio and you'll see real world numbers.
I have a couple of close friends in the biz of course. One does only weddings. He needs to support his wife and 8 kids (3 in college). He started his biz at age 51 after a career in banking. He figures he needs $60,000 before taxes, and that will take 30 weddings at $3000 each, on average. Shoot one this weekend and you need to book another - if you don't keep a reserve of bookings ahead of you you will have a problem. It's taken him about a year to get enough bookings to feel confident he's going to make a living at it. That has meant spending a LOT of money on advertising - doing every bridal show he can get into in a 70 mile radius for example. Following up every lead my email, mail and phone. He second shot 41 weddings, for free, before he started booking - he wanted samples, experiences, education, stories to tell brides that made him appear to be in business for a longer period of time. Confidence I guess is it. So yeah, in a 14 month period form start to a living is true - but there's 18 months of work he did before he hung out his shingle.And then almost a year till teh wedding dates arrived and that's when he started making enough money to actually get a paycheck.
Like the other thread around here today 'how do i get the bride to sign the contract'. Experience. Really, do it 50 times and it's easy to get them to sign. I used to get questions like 'how many weddings have you shot?'. No more though. I have a level of confidence, experience, and it comes across in meetings and conversations. If you're talking with someone (in any business) and they know they're sh!t you can tell. If they're friggin clueless you know that too. call it a vibe if want. It makes a difference in sales though, and you need to be able to sell your self and your products if you want to make a living at this.
The only way to get confidence and experience is time. You're also starting a company from ground zero. Where does this go? How do you file that? How do you answer the phone? Do you send out a personal thank you after a meeting? What does your invoice look like? What color will your sample albums be? How often will you back up? CS3 or should you buy 4? What about LR? Do you get the new 50D or 5D2 or perhaps a used 40D? There are TEN MILLION questions to answer and no one to ask. At your current job you can ask the other employees, your boss, or perhaps there's a manual on your job to refer to. Not if you start from scratch. There isn't a form for that unless YOU make one up. Which bank has the best deal for a small business? (that can take 1/2 a day or more to research.) What web provider? Online gallery to sell prints? Gonna take credit cards? How are you going to dress to sell, shoot, etc? Accounting, taxes, business licenses, insurance...
That is why you need a plan. And it will evolve. Mine has - even this week. I have 18 clients currently 'in process' in my studio. I've hired help to help process images. I need to have the same quality and look regardless of who edits the pics. I need to know what he did yesterday so I can answer the customers question on 'where are my pics?'. This require a whole new level of organization.
My quote of the day (saw this on a website this morning)
Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art. Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art. -Andy Warhol
Message edited by author 2008-09-22 09:17:44.
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