Photographers work varying amounts of hours depending on several different factors, including the area of photography they specialize in, whether they are self-employed or work for a specific company full-time, and the individual demands of each photography project or client.
Here are several different types of photographers and their typical work schedules:
Commercial, advertising, and fashion photographers
Many of these photographers work on a freelance basis and have multiple clients in one or several of these areas. This means that these photographers can dictate their work hours to a degree, because they manage the amount of photography projects they take on.
However, some projects might demand them to work overtime, and not just shoot the project, but also commit considerable time to the editing and color correction process. This means photographers in these fields might find themselves working anywhere between 20 to 60 hours per week, depending on their project load and other factors.
Journalistic photographers
This industry sees both freelance and in-house full-time photographers. Freelance journalistic photographers work similar hours to their colleagues we just touched on, while in-house full-time journalistic photographers would tend to have a more traditional and set schedule of around 40 hours per week, but sudden news events can cause them to put in overtime hours
Wedding and event photographers
These photographers also can be considered freelance or self-employed and work on a project-to-project basis. This means if they only line up one project in a week it might cause them to only work somewhere between 10 to 20 hours, including photo editing.
However, this also means if they line up several events or weddings within one week, that could cause them to work for well over 40 hours. Another factor here is that events can sometimes last all day or be multiple days long, resulting in longer hours.
Fine art photographers
Photographers who are considered fine art professionals, such as those that do landscapes, portraits, and other forms of fine art, tend to have the most flexible schedules out of all photographers. They have a great deal of freedom in determining how many hours they put in per week; some might only do 10 to 20, while others could choose 40 hours or more a week.
The bottom line
In conclusion, the amount of hours that photographers work is highly varied, and depends on many different factors, including the area of photography they specialize in, if they are self-employed or work for a specific company full-time, and the individual demands of each photography project or client.
