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Comment by steveBK123 | Hacker News Reader

Summarized as "making a hobby your job might make you no longer enjoy your hobby".

Hobbyists photographers quickly discover this when they do a paid shoot for a wedding for example.

It turns out that running a business involves a lot more of "running a business" than the creative hobby part you thought it would involve. Doing Sales, marketing, accounting.. dealing with suppliers, employees, landlord.. etc. All the things that have nothing to do with the hobby you thought you enjoyed & were good at.

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Not really! My uncle is a wedding photographer, it is a side gig he does on weekends. He has no sales, marketing..all based on recommendations. Accounting is dead simple. It is actually pretty good compared to his other gigs (taxi driver, plumber).

I think key is to have realistic expectations. Trying to scale it up into "real" business, or insert some artistic stuff would be mistake.

As a pretty decent hobbyist photographer this runs through my head every time someone suggests I do it for a living. The only happy wedding photographer I know is by his nature more business oriented and I don't have that edge.

Even back in the day when photography was far less democratized, being a pro photographer almost certainly did not mean being a staff photographer for Life Magazine or even working for AP. It meant working for some school's news office and shooting pictures of alumni receiving awards or various small town newspaper stuff.

Yes. And with weddings, it's not just making 'sales'. It's managing complicated families and personalities on the day. E.g. getting them all together for a group shot, and a lot of group shots.

I think the hardest part for a creative amateur going pro would be bringing client after client through the same poses and scenes, albeit in various shooting locations. You innovate here and there but generally you'll need a lot of repetition. It's more like being a pianist than a composer.

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