Documentary Photography - making money at it?!

i am interested in documentary photography, and have a few projects in mind, one of

which i have started. my end goal is to turn the project into a book, however, the subject

really lends itself to the proceeds of the book being donated.

i am wondering what the guidelines are for making money from documentary projects.

granted, i realize many photographic projects exist without financial backing, but as a

career choice am wondering if there is a model for making money doing documentary

style work.

Tamara-- There is very little chance of making much money off of documentary photography, though you might be able to make some. Even people who put out glossy coffee table books year after year don't make much off of them, but use them more for promotional purposes.

And that is a good use for documentary photography, too. Pick a subject that might get popular or exciting. Shoot it for ten years or so. Apply for grants and give exhibitions (that will be your major income stream). After five or ten years, if you have chosen well and done an absolutely outstanding job of documenting whatever it is you're documenting, it's possible that some publications might pick up on your work.

After that, you will have a successful base to promote yourself from. Jump into commercial photography and you can start feeding yourself again.

Estimated annual income stream for the first five to ten years is $10,000 to $20,000 if you can get a bunch of grants and sell some prints. The work will be extremely hard to get that much money, and between shooting and travel and trying to get people and institutions to cough up some grant money, you will put in very long hours. Grant money is drying up lately and the number of people applying has gone up. Your costs may suck up all of your income, they will definitely suck up most of your income.

Best of luck. -BC-

Tamara:

It really all depends on what you shoot and what you mean by documentary photography. One great venue for documentary type photographs is editorial stock. Image usage in textbooks, career-type books, magazines and newspapers is all editorial type use and most commonly stock, ads and assignments aside.

To give you a rough idea, one-time inside image usage of up to 1/4 page size in an average US textbook should bring you approximately $150 to $300 depending on the printrun and a few other factors. That is if you do the licensing yourself. If you work through an agency expect them to take roughly half of that.

You can absolutely make money shooting documentary style editorial stock. I do this for a living and it's all in what you pick as "your" area of coverage and how deep and wide you manage to cover the topic(s) you pick. I'm not making a million bucks a year but money isn't my main objective. I do what I like to do, I enjoy my work and I make enough money to be comfortable and to me that's more important than trying to make as much money as possible.

The best way to make money from documentary photography may be to learn to write grant applications and then successfully apply for them.

A very successful documentary photographer I know (Aperture monograph, etc. etc.) makes his money from postcards that don't have his name on them. Mary Ellen Mark does celebrity portraits - I assume she would rather be working on her projects, but doubt the projects pay anywhere near what celebrity photographs do. I have a print from another successful documentary photographer - his book on Guatemala was recently published - and I believe he makes his living as a master printer for other photographers.

One thing to think about is finding a commercial angle related to your documentary projects. I've been photographing kickboxers as documentary subjects and making good money from photographing fights, photographing training classes, etc. It's going to be a while before I have enough documentary-style shots that would make a good show, but I'm making OK money at the commercial side.