The Secret Behind the Glamorous, Enviable Life of Wedding Photographers

The International Society of Professional Wedding Photographers (ISPWP) recently released two sets of data that let people understand the ideals and realities of this profession through how photographers plan their time:

1. How people think photographers spend their time: the “ideal”; and
2. How photographers actually spend their time: the “reality.”

In everyone’s ideal, photographers spend eighty percent of their time shooting, fifteen percent traveling, and the remaining five percent partying wildly. Yes, such a schedule is indeed alluring, and this is how most people see photographers. So what is a photographer living in the real world actually like?

According to the ISPWP survey, wedding photographers actually spend only 12.2% of their time shooting! Yet as much as 28.4% of their time is spent like a homebody, buried in post-production and computer work. The rest of the time includes:

• 10.5% album design and production;
• 9.7% meetings and client liaison;
• 8.9% bookkeeping, taxes, insurance, and banking;
• 8.7% social media and blogging;
• 6.2% printing and technical research;
• 5.9% advertising and marketing;
• 5.5% internet; and
• 3.8% camera and computer maintenance.

From the pie chart above, one can see that the wedding photography profession is not as relaxed as we imagine. But for genius masters with a talent for both photography and operations, these fragmented hours are instead a kind of pleasure.

I privately think that the ISPWP releasing these photographer time statistics was really just to show off their own work (laughs).

Original article: “The Secret Life of Wedding Photographers”