How long does it take to become good enough to be a professional photographer?
***I asked THIRTY, outstanding, WORKING photographers to audit this process.
Some could only participate on a limited basis,
but all thirty contributed to at least parts of the discussion***
Well, if we start by assuming that you SHOULD…… be some version of EXPERT to be a professional, we could start by asking “how long does it take to be an EXPERT?”
One often used threshold for being an expert on ANYthing, is practicing for 10,000 hours.
If you work at something 40 hours a week, for 5 years, you’ve done 10,000 hours. If you used those hours EFFECTIVELY, it’s a fair argument that you’re likely an EXPERT.
But that feels like a very long time and whole lot of hours.
If you get a degree in something…..a 4 year degree….that’s 120 credit hours, at 45 hours of ACTUAL work per credit hour, you have to invest 5400 total hours. If some or even much of that is practical, real world experience, there’s a good argument that you come out the other side an EXPERT and ready to be a professional.
But that’s still FOUR YEARS of work. If we argue that photography really only needs a TWO YEAR DEGREE, the time investment would be 2800 hours.
If you had some kind of MENTOR system, where an expert or experts were overseeing your development, and instead of a college you just put in the work, the equivalent of a two year degree would be 40 hours a week, for 70 weeks…
…or a little less than a dedicated year and half.
But when I asked my panel of EXPERT photographers, they found flaws in most of these approaches. The 10,000 hours version they typically said was a random HUGE number that didn’t have any tested value. I think they’re right.
They also found fault with a FOUR YEAR DEGREE, for three reasons:
- too much of a 4-year degree is NOT focused on photography or business
- typically NONE of the photography is REAL WORLD PRACTICE
- there is SIGNIFICANT evidence that you can get a degree in almost anything, and still
SUCK at it.
There was a similar problem with the 2 year degree. There is very little to ZERO evidence that a two year degree in photography equates to being a good, REAL WORLD photographer. Some people come away from college and succeed, many do NOT, proving that a two year degree alone doesn’t guarantee anything.
Opinions were HIGHER for the mentor version of a two year degree. All of the work is focused on photography, some or even most could be real world practical, and there is an EXPERT, who is not YOURSELF, deciding when you’re ready.
The next thing we did was try to create some kind of a ground-up plan.
-what would be involved in learning to be a GOOD photographer?
There were THREE things absolutely everyone agreed on:
- you have to assign an EXPERT to devise the training, and you have to let the EXPERT decide when you’re ready, and “ready” has to include performance in REAL WORLD scenarios.
- you have to learn from an EXPERT who is REAL WORLD functional. You can’t just learn from an academic. Real world photography applies demands over time that alter our understanding of PROFESSIONAL photography. You can’t learn these things through observation alone, you have to experience these stresses. An EXPERT in photography isn’t useful if they haven’t ALTERED how they work as a result of REAL WORLD stresses.
- the learning/training has to be SYSTEM based, so that all the tools are learned in the right order, with the right emphasis, because having a COMPLETE TOOLSET is what enables the future photographer to solve problems and to create NEW COMBINATIONS of tools, to produce NEW RESULTS.
Photographers that simply mimic what others have done, fall well short of the potential of being a professional photographer, and one of the keys to moving PAST mimicry, is being proficient in ALL OF THE TOOLS, and to understand how they effect each other. - the process has to take TIME. Not just in hours, but in extended time, so there are periods of REFLECTION. Time to develop foundations that become habits. And to get good enough at the fundamentals that they stop being distractions.
In the end, we simplified the recommendation to two things. You can be an effective, professional photographer if you learn photography in a structured way, from a real world expert.
And, invest a minimum of 1000 hours over at least a year. A good portion of the 1000 hours should be REAL WORLD PRACTICAL, and we settled on a rough estimate of doing at least 50 complete photoshoots.
BEFORE you’re a professional.
Some people absolutely can’t do it that fast. But it’s unreasonable to expect anyone to do it FASTER.
If you’re not using an EXPERT, if you’re not learning with STRUCTURE, if you’re not LEARNING over time and investing considerable time, and if you’re not doing REAL WORLD work, it’s not reasonable to expect you’re qualified to CHARGE PEOPLE MONEY to do photography.
When we compare these MINIMUM recommendations, to what the AVERAGE person does before they announce “I’m a photographer,” the difference is huge.
Most people just DECIDE, “I’m a photographer.” They buy the least expensive camera that LOOKS like a professional tool, they make a Facebook page, they name their business after themselves, or something with “memories” or “captured” and they shoot their own family and a couple friends then start trying to charge money.
The GAP……between what most people call “enough experience” and what a panel of thoughtful, experienced, WORKING professionals call
“enough experience…
…is, unfortunately, very wide.
Very grateful to those who put in hours helping me process all the opinions and experiences into something that made sense to all of us. We couldn’t ABSOLUTELY agree on everything, but we could have a consensus agreement on most things…and photography as an industry DESPERATELY NEEDS THIS.
We DO need standards, and right now we have none.
Work completed December of 2022 thru April of 2023
Updated, spring of 2024
