already own. See Why Your Camera Doesn't Matter . Jobs in Photography There are very few full time jobs in photography. The few out there are working at a photo lab or running the portrait booth at Wal-Mart . Your local paper might have one spot for a photo editor. Everyone else are stringers. Big city papers may have a couple of photographers on staff. Great; that's five jobs in a city of a million. Most newspapers get much of their photos from people paid by the shoot or the shot, typically $100 to $150 per. Newspaper work is fun, but pays poorly. Why Jobs in Photography Pay Poorly According to Education Portal in 2002, the average annual salary of people employed as photographers was $24,040. Photography is not a profession . Anyone can call themselves a professional photographer. There are no licenses and not even a college degree required. See my page on Why Photography is Not a Profession . More people do photography for fun than do it for money. Because it's fun, people looking to hire photographers can always find someone to do it for less. Jobs pay based on how badly the jobs are needed and how many qualified people are available to fill them. If a job makes the employer money, he's going to pay more to fill the spot. There aren't millions of experienced, successful mutual fund managers out there. The few that are out there can make hundreds of millions of dollars each