What Kind of Photographer are You
Self-portrait at the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, Spain
When it comes to what niche photography style suits you, there are hundreds of different options that you may call your specialty. It could be wedding, landscape, wildlife, street, portraits, real-estate, expressionistic, and many more options. What it often comes down to is two different areas, what is that you enjoy shooting and what are people are willing to pay you to shoot.
If you are simply a hobbyist photographer, you are not bound by any kind of niche style. Simply you are free to shoot whatever you like whenever you like. However, if you are like me who would like earn a profit from my hobby then its much different. Regardless, we all have our preference of what we like to shoot and it often comes down to what are other interests are. For example, a landscape and wildlife photographer probably love to spend the free-time in the outdoors while a studio photographer rather stay in the comfort of the indoors. Myself, I love exploring new cultures and traveling to different countries so naturally, travel photography is my passion. To find your style of photography often you may just need to evaluate your other interests. Above all else though, experiment! Try different styles, you may find that you enjoy one niche over the other. Now, getting paid for the niche you enjoy may be a little more difficult.
It’s no secret that most forms of portrait photography is the most lucrative styles, often encompassing weddings, graduates, and family photos. If this is your enjoyable niche, congratulations go make some money! If not, then unfortunately your enjoyable niche may be harder to earn money from. Simply put, the demand for travel, wildlife, street, and artistic photography is not as high. The middle ground is possibly real-estate, but still a really hard market to get into. However it is not impossible to make money from others styles than just portraits, it just may be harder. The key is to correctly identify your target audience, or who you are trying to reach when you are marketing your services. Of course your target audience will change depending on what niche you decide to try to turn profits on. Best marketing practices say to make a persona, or a fictional profile of your ideal customer. This persona should include their age, gender, income level, location, occupation, behaviors, motivations, pain points and any other detail that may be important in defining your ideal customer. You will probably find that you need to make multiple personas to represent your different ideal customers. Each persona will be able to help you craft your marketing strategy of your photography services to be more personal. The more personal you make your marketing strategies the more success you will have.
Finding the style of photography that best suits you will often come down to what other things you may enjoy doing. While it may not be the most profitable, it is not impossible to make good money if you market yourself well while showing your passion for the art.
