Making a living photographing aircraft

Making money from photographs is noy easy. As Albert points out, the majority of peaple with the right digital equipment can take great pictures, where as in the past with film this was not the case. Getting pictures published is the best route of gaining recognition, which may in term gain interest in your work. This said however, getting them published is not easy. It is near imposible to make a living by concentrating on just aircraft, unless you have access to unique oppertunities such as air to air. Working for a magazine company is one of the best routes to getting images in print but the aviation titles are run by publishing companies who will require you to photograph a number of things other than aircraft for other magazines in thier portfolio.

Don’t however give up if thats what you want to do, because the John Dibbs of this world had to start somewhere.

In the ’50s and 60s there were very few people with top quality cameras shooting top quality photos of aircraft for publication etc. In the mid-60s, one of these was Brian Stainer who started Aviation Photo News. He published lists of photos and slides and had many published. I joined him and this association got me started publishing material, but I knew it had to be exclusive and top quality. I could see that there was very little money to be made in this business and that you have to have ‘ a day job’ as your main source of ‘bread and butter’. Others have tried to make a go of it and find it VERY difficult to make it their main source of income. One person is Brian Pickering of Military Aircraft Photographs, who has an enormous b/w and colour library and works VERY hard at it, but it must be an awful struggle at times and I do admire him for his enormous effort. Now digital photography has come along, anyone can take top quality photos and they all think they could make money at this! Alas, EVERYONE wants to and so there is now fierce competition and it is no longer ‘the few’ that are capable of top quality photos. Unless you are contracted by a newspaper or magazine, you will find a hard job to make this your one-and-one income source!

Corsair

If you dont want your message to be read then dont put it on a public forum. Isnt that obvious or am I missing something.

I have removed my message from this thread because SOMEONE on here passed it on to someone else that I wish they had’nt…..I will not comment on this subject anymore. And I have a good idea who it was.

Mark

Depends on your chosen career paths horizon…starving to death or serving behind the counter at MacDonalds!
Even the good ones have other. main, jobs. And do you really want to kill your hobby?

Flood

Many moons ago when digital photography was only beginning to be taken seriously by the professionals (circa 2001), I thought about creating an online aviation stock photography website, charging newspapers, magazines and other advertising agencies £10-25 for using my images.

Now that was ages ago and the idea has probably already been done by many a serious amateur photographer armed with the latest DSLR (I was planning on using an Olympus C700 – a 2m pixel compact camera).

Question: has anyone succeeded where others like me have only dreamt? Oh, I’m not talking about John Dibbs – rather the man on the street (like those who frequent this forum).

I think you would have needed to get a better camera than the OlyC700!!
I have one and I almost ended up drilling it into the concrete at Duxford through frustration at the shutter lag and slow autofocus.
It is a good camera for snaps with its 10x optical zoom – just forget anything moving faster than a snail!!
I have now got a Nikon D70 to satisfy my photo bug.
I think that the career field is full of great photographers, those who think they are good and plenty who wished they were.

😉