For the most part I’ve trended toward keeping the educational side of what I do as a photographer away from my blog. I find it doesn’t do a lot of good to loop wedding clients into workshops, patreon content, presets, etc. BUT, this is something I’m incredibly proud of. For two years in a row I’ve sourced data from independent wedding photographers not just from washington dc, but all over the world. My goal with this project is to enlighten photographers with data that enables them to make informed decisions. Most of us operate totally on our own, and it can be nearly impossible to know where you sit in context with everyone else. My hope is this report will help.
www.stateoftheindustry.photo ← share w/ this link
45-page report derived 1,156 surveyed photographers worldwide
Topics include:
- Profession
- Prices
- Deliverables
- Trends & Strategies
- Clients
- Growth
- Gear
This 2020 report is freely available thanks to the support of my patrons.
Please, share it and discuss it far and wide. The more respondents we have from one year to the next… the more helpful this data becomes.
Download 2020 State of the Industry PDF
Download 2019 State of the Industry PDF
1,100+ photographers from all over the world responded to the comprehensive state of the industry survey from Jan-Feb of 2020. That’s a meaningful number of people from which you can actually start to draw informed conclusions.
Then (as you all know) Covid-19 hit.
I worked so hard to reach my goal of 1,000 photographers to respond so that we could all benefit from meaningful insight using real data, and not just our anecdotal observations.
It felt like with each new day the survey results were becoming less and less relevant to the new state of the world. Honestly, I was devastated.
But slowly, it started to dawn on me that this might actually be some of the most valuable data I could have ever collected. It’s actually sort of tricky to look at a set of numbers from a single year and draw complex conclusions. That’s because it’s just a picture of the state of things as they are at that moment.
The real value comes from comparing the state of one year to the next. The entire point is making this an ongoing project so that we can identify trend lines over time. Yes, it’s helpful to see a static set of data like this:
Or data like this:
Or this:
But the solid gold will come once we have 3-4 years of data to compare against itself.
What better data to compare against then the exact time before COVID-19 hit?
That’s not to say we can’t take each year’s data and compare it against itself in ways that are meaningful. I’m including the (anonymized) raw data so you can do just that.
Huge thank you to your fellow patron supporter Jason over at jasonswitzerphotography.com for putting together a few interesting cuts of the data!
Geography is a huge part of identifying which data is most relevant to you, and it really requires a spreadsheet review to do that. I’m going to make a patreon exclusive tutorial video early next month that actually walks through how to explore the raw data and draw your own conclusions, but it’s here for you to start on that now if you’re curious.
My hope is that next year I’ll have the budget to invest in an interactive dashboard on a dedicated websiteso that it’s easier for non-data inclined people to play around and reach their own conclusions.
Thank you so much for your support; just being here is such a huge help. Patrons make projects like this possible. I would not have the time or resources to invest in something like this if it weren’t for you, and believe me… our industry absolutely needs an impartial report like this year over year.
If, like me, you have some new free time on your hands, I’d love for you to review it and let’s start a conversation about what this means. Share what aspects you find most interesting, or have questions about. Give me feedback for next year. I want to hear from you.
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Discuss in the comments, or over in the group forum!
www.stateoftheindustry.photo ← share w/ this link
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