For many ambitious and creative minds, the freedom, satisfaction, autonomy, and flexibility of freelance work make it a dream career. But no matter what our calling, we’ve all got mouths to feed and for photographers, a healthy income is important.
In the UK, 15% of freelance photographers earn between £20,000 and £30,000 a year. With most falling below this figure. In fact, freelance photographers have traditionally earned an average of £18,821 annual profit (and average starting salaries are estimated as low as £12,000). Compare this with the average UK salary, for any job, of £27, 531. And suddenly, a flourishing photography career could start looking like a pipedream. And for photographers following low-paid (or unpaid) leads from infrequent sources of work, it’s likely to stay that way.
But neither a lack of frequency nor low pay are problems for the property market. It’s on the up, and with a growing property industry comes growing career opportunities for photographers. We work with many of the UK’s biggest estate agents to improve the standard of estate agent photography across the country. There’s a thirst for quality photography that comes from both estate agents and potential renters and buyers. This means this career path has become the route to success for many photographers. To give you an idea of how fast this niche is growing, we receive over 2,000 orders every week from estate agents, after professional property photography. That’s 2,000 opportunities for the UK freelance photographer economy to grow.
