Making money taking pictures of birds?

Plain and simple, how to make money taking pictures of birds? Where to sell? How to get started? When to start? What to think about? What does it take (equipment, skills, time, education...)? How did you start?

Not so plain, nor so simple. Read a lot, especially anything by Artie Morris and Moose Peterson, plus a lot of the big guns on here.

Where to sell? It depends.
How to get started? Read, Read, Read.
When to start? Now, at least now is the time to start getting the images.
What to think about? Wow, there are tons of things, Maybe you need to do some more research until you get more specific questions.
What does it take?
- Equipment - that depends on your subjects, big birds, little birds, shy / approachable, etc. Don't get caught up in the equipment race. Just look at all the great images that were turned out by folks using DSLRs a couple generations of technology ago.
- Skills - Nature skills, people skills, marketing skills, oh and photography skills.
- Time - You get what you give, the more the better
- Education - No real formal education, but all the photography, nature and business knowledge you can aquire

How did you start - I got my first DSLR and needed a subject to practice on. I happened to be in hummingbird heaven at the time so I started with them. Been hooked ever since.

Avian photography is an intensely competitive market. That's especially true with the advent of digital. While the top avian glossy mags are very, very selective, the lower end of the publications market is not so picky, and those publications have been flooded with image after image from amateur digital photographers and those wanting to break into the the market professionally.

For publication, my best advice is to subscribe to a few of the top birding magazines and study the images they select. Meanwhile, shoot, shoot and shoot. You won't break into a top publication until you have a pretty comprehensive library of species, and that whole library better be really good. That is years of work.

You will stand a much better chance of breaking the barrier with some of the top pubs sooner if you have excellent photographs of rare wild birds or birds in unexpected locations.

Meanwhile (I don't really know what's available in Sweden), check out regional outdoor publications, local newspapers and tourism guides. Those are markets that, if you have decent work, will get you into the world of selling your images, and those markets, low-paying as they are, can help sustain you as you build your library.

Selling prints of birds at art shows and fairs or in galleries generally isn't a viable alternative (at least in most places in the U.S.) unless the photographs are gorgeous. Bird-on-a-stick doesn't in general sell well to the public, where birds interacting with each other in fine light with wonderful backdrops will.

While avian photography is my first and best photography love, I don't fool myself that I can make a living at it. The market is too competitive and my library too small and not good enough for the top pubs. However, I started offering guided photo excursions three years ago in the wilderness around Ely, and those have really taken off.

Many pros make the bulk of, or at least significantly supplement their income, by offering guided tours. That also takes enough years of work so you've got a library of images and a bank of knowledge about species and locations to make someone looking at your promotional material (Web site or printed) say: "Gosh, that's really excellent. I want to hire THIS guy so I can get pictures like that."

Typical gear for avian photographers tends to run to fast-thinking cameras and long telephoto lenses. Yep, that spells big dollars. You don't need to start that way. Canon and Nikon both offer camera/lens systems that are mid-price range but can get you quite a long way toward where you need to go. A Canon 40D with Canon's 100-400L IS or a Nikon D300 with Nikon's 80-400 VR are affordable for most who are serious about things, and both those combos offer excellent image quality, just enough telephoto reach for some tight portraits of certain birds with the flexibility inherent in zooms allowing quick zooming out to capture birds in habitat or environmental portraits.

There is no easy way into it. Best by far, unless a person is independently wealthy, to have a good-paying job and devote one's spare time and money to building the gear and the library and the knowledge needed -- not to mention the client base -- to eventually break the ties with the full-time job with confidence that you can feed yourself.

Steve, Excellent advice and well written.

I run into this question quite often and in most cases it comes from people that have just dropped $70,000 usd on new "professional" gear, then they want to become a photographer full time. Its hard to keep a straight face when asked.

It really depends on how bad you really want to make it in the trade. It would take tons of time and money just to be able make a living and pay off that 500mm lens and a 1DMKIII as a nature photographer! It would be best to keep your day job and keep your photography just a hobby unless you are willing to give up a lot.

Find a niche in the market and make a business plan and be prepared to invest a lot of money and time before you buy anything. It would be best to have a trust fund, line of equity on your home, or a well paying day job as 90% of photographers out there do now.

I started out in commercial photography and worked in that field for 5 yrs or so and decided to make the switch a few years ago. The income in nature photography is a fraction of a gig in the commercial field, unless you are on the Geographic staff (national geographic magazine)

Good luck!


Robert

Robert knows what he is talking about here and I agree with him.

As some of the others have mentioned, a big key to getting started (and getting noticed) is to find a smaller niche that you can carve out of the larger category (whether that is bird photography or nature photography). Maybe you focus on birds of a particular ecosystem near your home, a particular behavior of birds (flight, courtship displays, etc.), or something else...be creative! In particular I would encourage you to not overlook opportunities close to home where you have the chance to photograph some species much more completely than someone who might just visit for a few days. Good luck, it's a super competitive (but very fun) pursuit!

Thanks guys for really awesome posts!