What Different Careers Can You Have in Photography?

If you have a good eye for composition, color and lighting and want to take your shutterbug skills from a weekend hobby to a full-time career, there are many avenues open to today's photographers. Whether you choose to work freelance from home or be part of a corporation's creative team, there are many options for putting your future in focus.

Fashion Industry

Fashion photographers are in demand by magazines, designers, cosmetics manufacturers and clothing stores to take pictures of models for their advertising campaigns, display ads and retail catalogs.

Journalism

Pictures in the news help sell stories whether the topic is a news conference, a natural disaster, a crime scene, or a puff piece about someone interesting in the community. Photographers (many of them freelance) are generally on-call to cover late-breaking stories and/or are assigned to work with staff reporters.

Memorializing Special Events

Weddings, graduations, christenings, anniversaries, family reunions--what all of these occasions have in common is that the participants not only want to create a visual record for posterity but they're also willing to pay a little extra to have everything done professionally.

That's Entertainment

The film, TV and music video industry is a natural match for photographers who know their way around video equipment. Celebrities--as well as aspiring actors, dancers, and singers--are always in need of dazzling headshots for album covers, auditions and magazine photo spreads.

Industrial and Corporate Careers

Though not as glamorous as photographing fashion models, the pay for photographers is competitive in the fields of real estate, insurance, medicine, science, architecture/construction and occupational safety.

Publishing

Book publishers--including the nontraditional routes of CDs, ebooks, and print-on-demand--utilize freelance photographers to shoot and design book covers, participate in trade magazine layouts, and take headshots of authors.