Commercial Photography: Types, Salary & Career Guide

Commercial photography is the art of creating powerful images that sell products, promote brands, and capture attention. If you pay attention to things around you, you can see them everywhere, from magazine ads to eye-catching billboards and product catalogs. 

But what exactly is commercial photography? What are its different types? And what does a commercial photographer actually do day to day? In this article, we’ll explore all of that. Plus, we’ll guide you through the journey of becoming a commercial photographer, even if you’re starting from scratch.

What is Commercial Photography?

Commercial photography is the industry of taking and using images for business purposes to bring personal or organizational profits. More specifically, this can be an advertising photo for a product line, or it can also be the brand image. Thereby affecting sales and developing the brand.

Depending on each type of product, commercial photographers often have their own specialized equipment. Besides, there will also be specific requirements for skills when taking photos of each type of product. For example, fashion photography is often very different from food photography.

What are the Differences between Media Photography, Art Photography, and Commercial Photography?

To clarify the unique features of commercial photography, let's compare it with media photography and art photography.

What Types of Commercial Photography are There?

As you continue to learn more about commercial photography, you will realize that it includes many different genres. Now, what you need to do is learn and clarify them so that you can orient yourself in depth about your career path.

Fashion Photography

Fashion photography is a field that focuses mainly on fashion style and art. Fashion photography products can be costumes, models on the catwalk, fashion magazine shoots, street fashion art, etc. Most of them are for the purpose of advertising new collections for the brand through magazine images.

Skill requirements: To be able to undertake the job of fashion photography, the photographer needs to have a good knowledge of fashion and personal aesthetics. At the same time, he or she needs to know how to pose, set up lighting scenes, and the art of space arrangement.

Product Photography

Companies will need you when they want to take photos to advertise their products or to optimize and highlight the features, visuals that words cannot bring. An impressive product image plays a very important role. They are more attractive and convincing to buyers than words.

Skill requirements: due to the specificity, photographers must be familiar with the working space, mostly in the studio. You must be proficient in setting up the background and using artificial light sources.

Food Photography

Next is food photography, where you will capture the most attractive and delicious food frames. For food photography, you need to pay special attention to cooked food. You will need to pay attention to the time aspect and be ready to capture the most eye-catching food moments.

Skill requirements: Photographers also need to pay attention to the use of light and background to optimize the kitchen or restaurant space. In some cases, you also need to use some artificial props to deal with the enemy's "time" to help food stay as fresh as they were originally.

Architectural Photography

Taking photos of buildings and offices gives the company a clearer presence at its location. This will be especially important for new businesses, new headquarters, or a new workplace. The photographer must certainly highlight the unique features as well as the ability to recognize the project.

Skill requirements: at this time, the most important skill set will probably be choosing the camera angle and exploiting natural light sources to bring out the outstanding features of the subject.

Portrait Photography

It can be said that portrait photography is the most popular type of commercial photography. Portrait photography is often organized in studios. The purpose of this type can come from the need for beauty or taking photos of models as the face of the product. At that time, the images will be provided to media companies and advertising agencies to use as model photos, propaganda, etc.

Skill requirements: Requires high portrait shooting skills, helping the model pose appropriately for the context to have a beautiful photo.

What are The Job Opportunities in Commercial Photography?

It can be said that commercial photography is one of the hot professions that many young people are pursuing today. Especially in the context of the rapid development of digitalization and e-commerce. Images have become an important communication tool for businesses to attract customers.

All products need beautiful, quality photos. This has helped for commercial photography to have the opportunity to develop in many fields.

What Does a Commercial Photographer Do?

In general, there is no specific description for the work of a commercial photographer. Depending on the requirements and culture of the business, you will be ready to press the shutter. But you can also imagine some of the following tasks to become a commercial photography expert:

Building customer data

A commercial photographer is like a business that sells a type of service, so you also need to build a list of potential customers. This will help you be more proactive in your work and bring in a stable source of customers.

Understand your customers and products

The more you understand your customers, products, goals, the more successful you will be and the more time you will save. A successful commercial work will require both the beauty of the art of photography as well as high economic efficiency in the business.

Propose ideas for implementation

After grasping the characteristics of the customer, it is necessary to proactively propose sample ideas. This helps the photographer better navigate the artistic style of the photo set, bringing creative thinking into the product without depending on the customer's implementation.

Take commercial photos

What you need to remember is that the ultimate goal of the photo is to sell the product or service. Therefore, the photographer needs to pay attention to highlighting the unique features and functions of the product according to the customer's requirements. For example, when taking commercial photos of sun protection equipment, the most optimal setting should be outdoors on sunny days.

Post-production

This is always an important stage, especially to perfect the product and optimize it to meet the customer's requirements. Note that at this stage, you will need to prioritize the business's opinions. Your customers will be more satisfied, the product will be more successful in their eyes.

Customer care

Surely you will not want to miss the opportunity to re-collaborate and promote your service for free. Show interest in the results of the photo set when deployed commercially, is it successful or not? This will help the photographer score points, showing dedication and responsibility when providing the service.

What is The Salary for Commercial Photography?

For the commercial photography industry, your income will depend largely on your experience, ability, and reputation. You may take on a lot of work to increase revenue, but remember that this is still an art industry. So, focus more on the quality of your products as well as your reputation.

Surely, commercial photography is one of the hottest professions today, as the demand for digitization and online sales is increasing. At this time, the demand for commercial images in the market is increasing day by day. 

As of 2023–2024, the global photography services market ranged roughly between USD 33.5 billion and USD 37.4 billion in value. It is driven by rising e‑commerce, social‑media content creation, and disposable income gains. Over a longer horizon, forecasts anticipate expansion to USD 60.8 billion by 2032 (at 6.0% CAGR) and USD 64.7 billion by 2034 (at 6.1% CAGR).

Some analyses even see the market reaching as high as USD 85.4 billion by 2033 (4.4% CAGR) or USD 77.4 billion by 2031 in the business‑photography segment (5.1% CAGR).

Commercial photographers in the United States earn on average between $59,420 and $71,772 per year, with hourly wages around $20–$22, while freelancers report median total earnings near $81,000 annually. In Canada, the national average is about $39,523, rising to over $71,000 in Ontario. The United Kingdom’s average sits at around £27,345, and in Australia, it’s approximately A$89,213. Day rates for commercial shoots can range from $800 to $5,000.

The Path to Becoming a Commercial Photographer Starts from Zero

To become a commercial photographer, when you are just starting out, you will need a specific roadmap to prepare your luggage and the ability to practice your skills well. You can refer to the roadmap in the following order:

Clearly define your goals and the type of photography you want to pursue

Clearly defining the type of photography you want to pursue will help you have a reasonable learning and development path. Avoid studying too much, taking on too much knowledge, making your learning ineffective. After determining the type of photography you are pursuing, you need to set goals and a suitable study plan.

Learning knowledge and practicing skills in photography and design

Preparing basic knowledge and practicing good skills is indispensable. Especially knowledge about design, color, painting, how to build layout, design skills, skills in using photo editing software, etc. A solid foundation will help you go further and faster in the competitive field of photography.

Prepare working tools

A photographer needs to prepare and master his own working tools. You should start with a camera and some favorite lenses. Then building your own studio is not a bad idea if you have enough conditions. This will help you gain confidence in developing your own abilities with your first works.

Create your first products

Starting by practicing and creating your first products is a great opportunity for you to improve your skills. Before starting to work for businesses or clients, they often ask you to send samples first to evaluate whether to decide to cooperate or not. Therefore, you should improve your skills to continuously create impressive works.

Build a portfolio

A portfolio, or in other words, a summary of your shooting experience when participating in many projects. Businesses will be more convinced if you have had a lot of experience participating in specific projects. A quality portfolio will help affirm your skills and increase your value.

Find customers

After preparing the basic steps, it is time for you to start your business with your first customers. You can find connections with them through social media sites. Another way is that you can also become an assistant photographer for skilled commercial photographers. This is a good opportunity to rub shoulders and gain the trust of customers when you are just starting out in the profession.

Continuously improve your knowledge and skills

Continuously improving your knowledge and skills will help you quickly catch up with the rapid changes of the times. The most important thing is to consolidate and create a solid foundation of knowledge and skills for yourself.

During the process of implementing projects, add them to your portfolio to affirm your skills and techniques. After that, you can join photography companies, open your own studio, and start looking for customers for yourself.

Conclusion

Hopefully, the article that Mosyne shared has helped you better understand what commercial photography is. From there, you will have the right direction to choose a career and have a suitable personal development path.