So - who here is a professional photographer?

Very interesting question! I'm just taking photos for fun and do not generate any income through that. Although I love to learn about photography I'm not in the position to spend money on that since I'm still a student. In Hungary everything is expensive as hell. Espacially imported gear. Even my camera (Canon 1000D) is lend from a friend :-D

 

For me its a serious hobby and sometimes i make money from it. I spend money regularly on educational stuff and presets actions etc. between 50-100$ a month. I use licensed softwares and some panels. I can't afford all the stuff i hoard from internet. And if it was not possible to get them this free way i'd not buy most of them, i grab it because its free. otherwise i'd be very selective.

 

I'm a professional photographer.
It comes down to priorities to me. My first one is buying the expensive gear that I want for bigger, more complicated jobs. I am buying more and more of this stuff also(software, tutorials), but I'm still not at a place where I can get whatever I want. The plan is to get there =)

 

I just got a Godox AD400 PRO and AD 200 for strobe work, but I also do underwater work over the summer, so those housings, and lens ports don't come cheap. Drones either haha. So in terms of equipment, expanding the scope and possibilities of shots, since I'm going in that direction.

Edit:

A few other examples:
Using a Sigma 24-35 lens, and want to get the Canon 16-35 f/2.8 III. Have a backup Canon 6D, want to get another 5D mark IV body, etc.

 

I am a professional photographer and i have learned a lot from tutorial like Lighting Series, Frequency Separation and the Fashion and Beauty Photography - Beauty Retouching.

Photography is my sole income and i've done it for 2 years by now, planning to do it for the rest of my life if possible, obviously.
Tutorial like those are very expensive for a photographer without a proper income when you are trying to live by your own, pay rent, buy groceries etc. so i buy it with groupbuy when i can, but when i can't i just search for them on internet (the way that i found this forum, like many others)

This is not the right thing to do, i know, but when we talk about groupbuy, sometimes i think that some tutorial has an higher price than others because photographer is taking in account that many of the buyers are, in reality, groupbuy of photographers, because prices are just too high sometimes.

In the end, i hope one day to be able to buy all the tutorial that i want without searching them on internet, reddit etc. to support the photographer.

 

I too am a professional photographer. I shoot and retouch product photos. Why am I downloading from this forum? Because I can't afford to buy them all.. Even tho I work as a photographer, in Romania the salary system is shit, and so far I work for someone else - Hope I can open my own business this year. I have spent some money on tutorials, mostly Phlearn, but I can't afford to pay 130$ /tut (3-4 per month). Also because I consider myself above average, I'm not learning that much from a tutorial now, so I need to consume more and more to up my skills a bit.

And the other reason is because I don't want to pay 150$ for a crap tutorial. You can't trust the reviews from the websites, so I don't know what I am paying for. In the past I have bought tutorials and books that I regretted after watching/reading..

 

Very true, it's a big difference if you're working in the Uk or Romania.

 

Here in Italy, where i live, near Florence, the big problem is that nobody understand how much effort we put on work, and everyone think that it's not a work that has to be payed so much, someone just not want to pay at all or few bucks because "everyone can do it", there is no culture about this type of work, so it's difficult to live if you have to pay taxes that take a big of your income on its own, and customers doesn't help

 

I think that's why the most valuable tutorials right now for me are about business.
Psychology is very much a part of that, so working in a way to "make it seem" that your product and effort is premium is the key.
Social media is a great platform to try and show that.