How Many Photographers Are Making Over $300,000 a 12 months?

How many photographers are males? What are the commonest kinds of skilled pictures? How outdated are photographers within the biz? The State of the Photo Industry Survey 2024 considers all these questions and lots of extra.

The complete state of the pictures trade survey was carried out by Professor Heather Morton, who works within the Photography program at Sheridan College in Ontario, Canada, with help from Rob Haggart of PhotoFolio.com and thephotographersunion.com. The survey, carried out over six weeks in May and June 2025, contains responses from 1,294 photographers from 43 completely different nations, with the bulk situated within the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom.

The full 12-page report is available for free on Morton’s new Substack, the place Morton additionally supplies a more in-depth have a look at key survey outcomes. It is properly value testing, however listed here are a couple of fascinating highlights to contemplate.

71.4% of respondents establish as male, and simply 27.3% as feminine. Across all respondents, the commonest age vary is 40-49 years outdated, representing one-third of all working photographers who participated within the examine. The subsequent largest age teams are 50-59 years outdated (23%) and 30-39 years outdated (22%). Only 30 photographers aged 29 years outdated and youthful responded, which is lower than 3%.

Unsurprisingly, given the older age skew of the respondents, lots of them have intensive expertise within the picture trade. 32% of respondents say they’ve 25 years or extra {of professional} expertise. Although the least frequent response, nonetheless 15% of the respondents say they’ve lower than a decade of trade expertise.

Worldwide, most respondents report incomes beneath $50,000 in internet revenue from pictures every year, though 27.2% and 21.5% earn between $50,000 and $99,000 or between $100,000 and $199,000 yearly, respectively. 4.2% of respondents report incomes over $300,000 per yr from pictures. In the U.S. particularly, 6% of respondents declare they make this amount of cash. In reality, throughout 714 American photographers who participated within the survey, 14% of them make at the least $200,000 a yr in pictures.

Unsurprisingly, there’s a sturdy correlation between a photographer’s degree of expertise and their revenue. Interestingly, these with probably the most expertise — 25 years or extra — don’t report the best total revenue.

There can also be a gender disparity, like in lots of industries. A better proportion of girls report revenue beneath $50,000 than males, and lots of extra males report incomes greater than $100,000. However, the revenue rift could also be defined by demographic variations, as Morton notes that the feminine respondents are, usually talking, youthful than the male ones. Photography has lengthy been a male-dominated discipline, and it’ll take time for extra various generations to work their method by means of the sector and achieve the expertise ranges that sometimes result in greater charges.

For the practically 68% of respondents who report having a base inventive price, the common each day charges are fairly excessive, particularly within the United States. There, photographers with a base each day price cost a mean of $3,034, although the median is $2,500.

Another fascinating query involved how completely different photographers cost for utilization. 27.3% of respondents cost an extra price for utilization, whereas 29.4% say the social media and internet utilization is included with their base price. There isn’t any clear consensus on licensing preparations, and completely different photographers make use of very completely different approaches to dealing with picture licensing.

What about video? 47.3% of responding photographers say they do principally stills, however some video, which is by far the most well-liked response. However, 39% of photographers say they completely do stills, even in an more and more hybrid pictures trade. 12% say they do about half of every, whereas 1.7% of respondents do principally video and a few nonetheless pictures.

The hottest pictures genres for respondents to do professionally are portrait and life-style work. Each of those classes had greater than 400 respondents, though respondents can — and lots of do — work in a number of genres. Corporate headshots and branding had been the next-most frequent solutions, adopted by meals, occasion, product, and structure. Very few of the respondents work professionally in sports activities, landscapes, automotive, and actual property.

The full “State of the Photo Industry Survey 2024” report is on the market on Morton’s new Substack. There, Morton breaks down many extra matters, together with optimism concerning the trade, probably the most profitable skilled picture advertising methods, and way more.


Image credit: Heather Morton