How do you make money with your medium format camera?

Ric Trexell · Nov 25, 2011

[If you are looking for a career change toward photography, probably babies and weddings are the easiest money if you do it well and a good reputation spreads by word of mouth. Digital would likely accompany film for situations where it does the job better or is sufficient (such as reception photos).]
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The original question was about using film cameras (preferably MF) in making money. I would not think of doing a wedding today without using a digital camera, but that is not the question. I hope to do stock photography in the near future, but that will be if I can ever buy a digital camera (DSLR). What I'm wondering is, is anyone still using film to make money? That is why I asked in the OP if film cameras are now just toys to take pics of family or can you still make some money with them? I never wanted to be a full time photographer (film or digital) but would like to pick up a little extra money with my cameras before they put me in the box. Hopefully to pay for all the stuff I spent on those things over the 40 years I have been playing with them.

Rick A · Nov 25, 2011

I have in the past, do currently, and plan to continue to make money using film only as my medium of choice. Film gives you the opportunity to revisit the negative and reprint, or change how it is printed for a different look, and is tactile. I love to handle film, love the smell of the chemicals needed to process it. I love making prints for the same reason, it's tactile, not just visual, touch, smell, taste it if you want, it's like a mistress that demands to be handled, but no rough stuff, stare longingly at it, it is fulfilling. I sell prints through a number of outlets locally, and donate some for fund raisers(which actually brings in extra money for me).

Ric Trexell · Nov 27, 2011

Rick A said:
I have in the past, do currently, and plan to continue to make money using film only as my medium of choice. Film gives you the opportunity to revisit the negative and reprint, or change how it is printed for a different look, and is tactile. I love to handle film, love the smell of the chemicals needed to process it. I love making prints for the same reason, it's tactile, not just visual, touch, smell, taste it if you want, it's like a mistress that demands to be handled, but no rough stuff, stare longingly at it, it is fulfilling. I sell prints through a number of outlets locally, and donate some for fund raisers(which actually brings in extra money for me).

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Good for you. You sound like you are a real film man and are still bucking the trend. As to the kid in the photo that is in the Navy, it was in that Navy that I got interested in photography. I went all over the Pacific with a 110 pocket camera but got talking with a photonut as we were coming back to Hawaii. He had a Nikon F and I remember saying that if you want to take a quick picture, you have to deal with all those numbers. He said I can guess at these numbers and get a better picture than your 110. As for the Navy, I went in a kid and came out something close to a man. I think when some guy in Vietnam blew the radar off my ship, while I was eating breakfast 30 feet below it, I started to look at life a little different. Thanks for your input, and thanks that your son is in the Navy, (and I'm not).
Check out my former ship at www.usspreble.org.

Rick A · Nov 27, 2011

Ric Trexell said:
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Good for you. You sound like you are a real film man and are still bucking the trend. As to the kid in the photo that is in the Navy, it was in that Navy that I got interested in photography. I went all over the Pacific with a 110 pocket camera but got talking with a photonut as we were coming back to Hawaii. He had a Nikon F and I remember saying that if you want to take a quick picture, you have to deal with all those numbers. He said I can guess at these numbers and get a better picture than your 110. As for the Navy, I went in a kid and came out something close to a man. I think when some guy in Vietnam blew the radar off my ship, while I was eating breakfast 30 feet below it, I started to look at life a little different. Thanks for your input, and thanks that your son is in the Navy, (and I'm not).
Check out my former ship at www.usspreble.org.

My son is a PO1 on The Big Stick, he's one of the top men in nuclear propulsion on her, and only 22yo.

rolleiman · Nov 28, 2011

Film is my preferred medium. I shoot medium format for stock libraries. Film still has a certain "vibrant" quality over digital. However, income from stock library images has greatly reduced over the past few years. As one library editor put it to me, "With digital, everyone's at it, magazines etc., have become less particular over quality, now that foolish amateurs are providing material for free, just to see their name under the picture".

Here in the UK it's impossible to work for the news media unless you shoot digital. I'm happy shooting with superbly made twin lens reflexes from the 60's & 70's, delivering the kind of quality you'd have to spend several thousand pounds to equal with digital.

Income from stock pics. is too spasmodic to earn a living from, but I would not wish to take the digital route and be shooting the kind of celebrity rubbish that news photographers have to do these days to earn a living.

PKM-25 · Nov 29, 2011

Mary Ellen Mark uses hers for Fine Art, David Alan Harvey for book projects. Michael Kenna for both....
I use my Hasselblads on more editorial and advertising assignments than ever before, but that is because I do those regardless of format, film or digtal. I bought my now extensive medium format kit for fine art which is ramping up nicely, just sold some 20x20's from the first year of a 5 year book project.

You can't just decide you are going to make money in photography any more than you can look at your guitar in the corner of the room and decide you are going to be a rock star tomorrow, it does not work that way.
And unless you shoot stock like I do, totally niche, off the radar, off the Internet, no amatuer laden BS like Flickr or Getty, you are not going to make a dime off of stock nowadays, not even a penny.

I have been doing better and better lately because of new marketing that is a new underground approach, hardly any images on the web, great people skills, getting into phenomenal social settings and doing kick a$$, cutting edge work. I have been shooting for a living over 23 of the 35 years with a camera in front of me, I am 44. Like Chris, I have paid my dues, been homeless as a teen, had to work for a year mowing lawns and washing cars at age 9 to get my first camera.

To make it in photography, you have to commit more than ever, you have to be VERY talented and convincing in your marketing....you need to be a rock star because everyone has a camera, but very, very few are photographers in the fullest sense of the word.

I am one of the lucky ones, after all this hard work, suffering, politics and pain, I get to call the shots, literally. My clients and my customers relish in that because no one attends a rock concert wanting to hear nothing but requests...they attend to see the performance in the artist they know and love.

That is making it....are you up to that...?.....in a line of a million people trying out for "American Idol"....are YOU that good? Because people will always pay to see the star.

Talent, drive and commitment, not format.....that is the bottom line.

Steve Smith · Nov 29, 2011

PKM-25 said:
You can't just decide you are going to make money in photography any more than you can look at your guitar in the corner of the room and decide you are going to be a rock star tomorrow, it does not work that way.

Damn!!!

Steve.

E. von Hoegh · Nov 29, 2011

By selling it.

rolleiman · Nov 29, 2011

PKM-25 said:
Mary Ellen Mark uses hers for Fine Art, David Alan Harvey for book projects. Michael Kenna for both....
I use my Hasselblads on more editorial and advertising assignments than ever before, but that is because I do those regardless of format, film or digtal. I bought my now extensive medium format kit for fine art which is ramping up nicely, just sold some 20x20's from the first year of a 5 year book project.

You can't just decide you are going to make money in photography any more than you can look at your guitar in the corner of the room and decide you are going to be a rock star tomorrow, it does not work that way.
And unless you shoot stock like I do, totally niche, off the radar, off the Internet, no amatuer laden BS like Flickr or Getty, you are not going to make a dime off of stock nowadays, not even a penny.

I have been doing better and better lately because of new marketing that is a new underground approach, hardly any images on the web, great people skills, getting into phenomenal social settings and doing kick a$$, cutting edge work. I have been shooting for a living over 23 of the 35 years with a camera in front of me, I am 44. Like Chris, I have paid my dues, been homeless as a teen, had to work for a year mowing lawns and washing cars at age 9 to get my first camera.

To make it in photography, you have to commit more than ever, you have to be VERY talented and convincing in your marketing....you need to be a rock star because everyone has a camera, but very, very few are photographers in the fullest sense of the word.

I am one of the lucky ones, after all this hard work, suffering, politics and pain, I get to call the shots, literally. My clients and my customers relish in that because no one attends a rock concert wanting to hear nothing but requests...they attend to see the performance in the artist they know and love.

That is making it....are you up to that...?.....in a line of a million people trying out for "American Idol"....are YOU that good? Because people will always pay to see the star.

Talent, drive and commitment, not format.....that is the bottom line.

Agree with your points, some of the experiences you've gone through ring true with my own. I retired early from many years of working within the media here in the UK, for reasons that are too many to list. (The Leveson inquiry currently running here, into falling standards and various scandals involving newspapers cover most of them).

There must be many more openings for photography in the US then here, for instance, I recently read of a magazine there; "Arizona Highway", which not only insists on film over digital, but will not use anything smaller than 4x5..!! ......This would be unimanaginable here, so many of our publications have taken advantage of the "digital revolution" to accquire pictures "on the cheap" or for free from misguided amateurs. Many others, existing on greatly reduced budgets in these financially difficult times, are no longer able to pay professionals realistic fees. The very status of photography here is in crisis. To many newspaper editors, a picture that doesn't contain a "celebrity" has no meaning. The onset of digital has lead many media executives to believe that it is "easy" and "anyone can do it"...it has therefore become devalued, along with photographers themselves.

In other fields too, new technology has been the downfall of the professional. Computer aided design programs that are nowdays photo-realistic, have done away with the market in both car and architectual photography.

Fortunately, early provision of a private pension and careful investments over the years, mean I am no longer reliant on income from photography to survive, and am content to shoot stock library material almost as a sideline.

It is hard to see how the professional photographers of the future are going to fare. Media work here is very much on the decline, and photo studios are largely a thing of the past. Perhaps the "new photographers" are actually going to be primarily computer design artists.........I'm glad not to be young today.

pbromaghin · Nov 29, 2011

This thread is fascinating. I have a real career, make a good living, can't imagine trying to do it with a camera, and admire the hell out of you who do. It is good to be reminded how much talent, dedication, and hard work it takes to be successful at it.

May I never be so foolish as to have any pretension beyond being an enthusiastic schlep-hobbyist.

fmajor · Nov 29, 2011

pbromaghin said:
This thread is fascinating. I have a real career, make a good living, can't imagine trying to do it with a camera, and admire the hell out of you who do. It is good to be reminded how much talent, dedication, and hard work it takes to be successful at it.

May I never be so foolish as to have any pretension beyond being an enthusiastic schlep-hobbyist.

^+1 !!!

Mike Wilde · Nov 29, 2011

There have been lots of fine opinions expressed here.

I have a day job that pays me quite a fine salary. I am presently 45. It is my hope to retire from this job in about a decade, and let photograhy fill more of my time.
I do not hope that more hobbyist photo assignments will pay anything that approaches the funds needed for day to day retired living.
I am saving now to let me chase ideas on my dime, and others in the future.

I use my mad photo hobby in the present to keep my day job from consuming me every waking hours, and surprisingly a fair number of the dreaming ones at times as well.

When I do the odd portrait sessions, I furnish a traditional contact sheet for a client to select prints from.
I charge a nominal sitting fee so if they never come back my material costs are covered, and if they don't show up for their session I am not as totally disgusted.
I actually usally collect the sitting fee via paypal if it is not a face to face booking.

I get a fair more number of print orders from 36 6x6 medium images printed onto three 8x10 pages than I do when I provide 1 36 exposure 35mm film on one sheet of 8x10 photo paper.

I now have a neg carrier that allows me to print 9- enlarged 35mm frames onto a sheet of 8x10.

I have not yet had a chance to use it to present enlarged contact sheets to clients to see if the sell though rate goes up with 35mm use.

I.e I am not sure if it is the ability to pick images out without needing a loupe on 6x6 that affects the current sell thought rate, or if it is the superior image qualtiy of the larger negative.

waynecrider · Nov 29, 2011

I think there is no reason that you can't make money in photography using film. The difference nowadays is the percentage you'll make over costs; Time delays if your not souping it yourself (mostly due to finding a lab in some spots); Cost again behind a computer if necessary (this really kills a lot of photographers hourly wage), and if you can make a liveable wage. I think youth is a big plus in "the business" and I don't look at fine art as a means to an end; At least not at the start. I too hear a lot of grumbles from pro photographers and it's really not a cake walk for the 99%. Start on the side and when it gets to the point that you can go full time do so, but keep the day job and work hard at your passion; VERY HARD. Hopefully breaks and opportunities will come.

Sirius Glass · Nov 29, 2011

pbromaghin said:
This thread is fascinating. I have a real career, make a good living, can't imagine trying to do it with a camera, and admire the hell out of you who do. It is good to be reminded how much talent, dedication, and hard work it takes to be successful at it.

May I never be so foolish as to have any pretension beyond being an enthusiastic schlep-hobbyist.

This is why I keep my day job!

Ric Trexell · Dec 2, 2011

OK, I see there are still some using film for profit.

From what I have read in these posts, some portrait and fine art is still being done in film and specifically MF or LF. To rolleiman, who said that one magazine, Arizona Hiways, only excepts film in LF, that is about the only one I know of that does that. If you ever can get a copy of Jack Dykinga's book called Large Format Nature Photograpy, you will see why he is a contributor to that magazine. I read of an aquarium magazine in last years Photographer's Market that only excepts film and I think they only wanted 35mm. Basically, it sounds like those that want to really get the best picture are using film. Thanks for the replies to all that did reply. Ric.

j-dogg · Dec 2, 2011

chriscrawfordphoto said:
The market is just to small and every fool with the $300 it takes to buy a digital SLR or a used film camera thinks he can be a pro.

This.....omg this.

I'm actually going to be shooting a wedding soon for a member here with an Rb. In this day and age, as mentioned when ever high school girl with a Rebel XT and kit lens is a professional photographer (Friend of mine is like this and I rip his ass daily for it when he posts crap to Facebook) you have to be able to bring something to the table that those kids can't.

Your ability to make money on any type of photography is based soley upon your ability to market yourself.

Sirius Glass · Dec 3, 2011

Hint: Keep your day job.

NJS · Dec 5, 2011

The market is just to small and every fool with the $300 it takes to buy a digital SLR or a used film camera thinks he can be a pro.

not even D/SLR is necessary, mobile phones are good enough these days: Dead Link Removed

Jeff Kubach · Dec 5, 2011

Because I'm a pro photographer I'm a millonaire!

Jeff

Mark Minard · Dec 8, 2011

Paint the fingernails of one of your hands black. When asked about it, explain that you're a photographer, an artist, and this is the price you must pay for your art. Mention Amidol if you want, what the heck... Checkbooks will suddenly appear out of nowhere, the holders eager to cover your mortgage payment, car note, etc. Try it, it works!

ambaker · Dec 9, 2011

Mark Minard said:
Paint the fingernails of one of your hands black. When asked about it, explain that you're a photographer, an artist, and this is the price you must pay for your art. Mention Amidol if you want, what the heck... Checkbooks will suddenly appear out of nowhere, the holders eager to cover your mortgage payment, car note, etc. Try it, it works!

You have to be older when you do that. Otherwise they just think you're goth... ;-)

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I am here: http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=36.790896,-90.481106

Mark Minard · Dec 10, 2011

ambaker said:
You have to be older when you do that. Otherwise they just think you're goth... ;-)

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I am here: http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=36.790896,-90.481106

LOL! Good point

Ryuji · Dec 10, 2011

MaximusM3 said:
Which again brings me again to the the undeniable truth that format (or cameras) have absolutely nothing to do with commercial success. Yes, there needs to be talent but it's mostly about marketing and finding one's niche. It's a lot harder now because digital has brought a dilution of talent (meaning that it is a lot tougher to stand out simply by originality and quality of images) and therefore marketing and carving one's spot is 99.99% of the battle. It is certainly not about whether MF is better than 35mm or digital at the quality level. The question one has to ask him/herself is 1) does anyone care and 2) how do I market myself, successfully, to those who do, if that's the route one choses to take.
I personally feel that most don't care, therefore, the choice of format or a particular camera is simply a choice for the photographer and nothing more.

I totally agree with you.

It is the talent and the perceived value of one's work that matters.

I get annoyed by people who ask me "What do you shoot?" so I answer "I shoot commercial and fine art." Most people repeat their question "I mean Nikon or Canon." My answer is why does it matter to you. The reason is they are an amateur photographer who shoots either of those, and they just wanted to see which one I shoot. If one allows to charge more fees every pro would be using it!

There are lots of no-talent, low value people out there on the interweb so it's impossible to compete in the price front. When people ask, I keep saying, no matter what you do, your work must appeal to clients who are willing to pay anything (thousands if not more) not just a few hundred bucks, because those people will go to craigslist after hanging up the phone and try to spend $20 at the end of the day. Don't deal with those.

Ryuji · Dec 10, 2011

Ric Trexell said:
The original question was about using film cameras (preferably MF) in making money. I would not think of doing a wedding today without using a digital camera, but that is not the question. I hope to do stock photography in the near future, but that will be if I can ever buy a digital camera (DSLR). What I'm wondering is, is anyone still using film to make money? That is why I asked in the OP if film cameras are now just toys to take pics of family or can you still make some money with them? I never wanted to be a full time photographer (film or digital) but would like to pick up a little extra money with my cameras before they put me in the box. Hopefully to pay for all the stuff I spent on those things over the 40 years I have been playing with them.

Don't do stock photography. Stock agencies project it as a profitable business but it is not. It is the agencies that are making profits. Stock photo kills creativity in the mind of not just photographers but also designers and art directors. You're killing the source of your future income as well.

Ryuji · Dec 10, 2011

jp498 said:
If you are looking for a career change toward photography, probably babies and weddings are the easiest money if you do it well and a good reputation spreads by word of mouth. Digital would likely accompany film for situations where it does the job better or is sufficient (such as reception photos).

The one benefit I forsee regarding earning money as a photographer is that your hobby could become a business and receive the tax benefits of a money losing business and purchases could be deductible business expenses, rather than your taxed income going out the window to paypal, cl meetups, etc... Things like insurance and bookkeeping would probably erase most of the benefits of doing this small scale.

A lot of people think wedding is good and easy money. It is not, so an emphasis ought to be on "if you do it well and a good reputation spreads". Only a few handful of talented photographers with good marketing skills can ever charge more than $1500 in Boston area. There are a lot of losers who are charging $1200 or less and not doing well. My friends charge $4000 or more and they are doing well, really over booked, but I saw how that happened (I knew them since when they couldn't set focus and exposure!). Tough market. And don't say $1500 is a good money.

IRS will not allow you to count loss from money-losing business for more than a couple of years. They really expect businesses to make profit in year 3, and national median income of a photographer is $48k. Many photographers are in high risk of getting audited.

The only way I see to make money doing photography is to make aim very high end market. Don't just provide photographic service. Use photography to produce many happy clients who need you more and more.

How do you make money with your medium format camera?

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