Wildlife photography is a passion that delights and inspires photographers around the world. Capturing the beauty and essence of animals in their natural habitat is an art that requires not only talent and skill, but also a significant investment of time and resources. In this post, we'll explore in detail all the costs involved in taking wildlife photography, from time spent in the field to equipment and technology costs.
HOURS IN THE FIELD
The first thing to consider when calculating the cost of wildlife photography is the time spent in the field. Wildlife photographers spend hours on end in the field, sometimes needing days or even weeks to get the desired photo, waiting for that perfect moment. Spending so much time in the field not only requires dedication, but also includes some extra expenses, such as accommodation, food and transportation. Unless you are photographing close to home, where the car journey is never more than an hour, any other location involves staying in the area. Suppose I spend a week in a park or nature reserve. For each day there, I end up dedicating around 10 hours to photographing wildlife or looking for animals. This totals around 70 hours of fieldwork that week. In other cases I can spend a week going to the same place close to home, "losing" only the morning photographing or filming. Averaging per year, it works out to around 25 hours a week. Which is equivalent to 1,300 hours a year in the field watching animals.
For all these hours in the countryside, you have to add up the kilometers covered. I do more than 20,000 kilometers every year. Since I have a jeep that uses a little more, but it allows me to travel on dirt roads. Doing the math on the current fuel price:
- Fuel: €3.424
- Tolls: €500
PHOTOGRAPHIC EQUIPMENT
Photographic equipment is an essential part of a wildlife photographer. And today's advances mean that to stay on top, we also need the best equipment. High-quality cameras, specialized objectives and different accessories such as tripods and camouflage are essential to obtain clear and detailed photographs of the species we want to photograph. However, all this equipment is not cheap and requires a significant investment. In these accounts of mine I am leaving out all the equipment that I acquired, and which in the meantime has become obsolete, has broken down, has been sold or is in a drawer waiting to be sold (or used).
To make everything clearer, I will list the amounts I spent on the different equipment I use to photograph, leaving aside the equipment dedicated exclusively to filming:
- Camera Sony A7R IV a: €3.695
- Camera Sony A7 IV: €2.490
- Lens SONY FE 200-600mm f/5.6-6.3 G OSS: €1.899
- Lens SONY FE 90mm f/2.8 Macro G OSS: €1.039
- Lens SONY FE PZ 16-35mm F4 G: €1.399
- Flash SONY HVL-F60RM2: €645
- Tripod MANFROTTO Tripod 055XPRO3: €259
- Tripod Head Gimbal: €170
- Bag LOWEPRO Whistler BP 450 AW II: €425
- Bag LOWEPRO ProTactic BP 450 AW II: €259
Totaling an initial investment of €12.280.
EQUIPMENT WEAR
Equipment Wear In addition to the initial cost of the equipment, it is important to consider wear and tear over time. Especially because we are constantly photographing in wild environments, it is more stressful for the equipment, because we subject it to extreme weather conditions, such as dust, humidity, rain, sand, mud and physical impacts.
Assuming that the photographic equipment has a useful life of 5 years and requires annual maintenance of approximately 10% of the equipment's initial value, the annual maintenance cost would be €1,200.
COMPUTER AND SOFTWARE
It is not enough to just take photographs, it is also necessary to process them. It usually means that we need a computer with high processing capacity and a good graphics card. This may require a larger investment than normal, looking to acquire a fast computer with a lot of RAM, in addition to being necessary to purchase professional editing software.
- High-performance computer: from €3,000
- Photo editing software (Adobe Cloud Annual Service): €852
Totaling an initial investment of €3,850. The software is paid annually.
EDITING HOURS
The amount of time I spend editing varies depending on the type of animals I photographed. But it's an essential part of the creative process and can consume a significant amount of time. From selecting the best photos to adjusting colors and cropping, editing can take several hours for each photo I take. Let's assume that each 1000 photographs take an average of 3 hours to be edited, this includes the selection and editing period. If I take 10,000 photos in a week, that means I'll spend about 30 hours on the computer the following week. This is almost equivalent to 1 week of work. On average, I spend around 780 hours editing photos every year.
EQUIPMENT CLEANING
The part that many photographers fail. Clean the equipment! After each photography session, the equipment needs to be cleaned and maintained properly to ensure that in the next session everything is working as it should and that we guarantee its longevity. This involves cleaning all dust from the lenses, cleaning the camera body well with a cloth, checking that there is no potential damage anywhere, cleaning or washing the tripod legs, checking that the backpack is still in good condition and after transferring the photos, don't forget to format the cards. Assuming that each cleaning session takes an average of 30 minutes and that it is carried out immediately after each trip to the field, I would say that the average per week is 2 hours of cleaning.
IMAGE STORAGE
Photographs are any photographer's most precious asset and therefore need to be stored securely and accessible for future references and projects. It is, therefore, normal for us to have lots of external hard drives spread across our drawers, as well as subscribing to cloud storage services and dedicated online platforms.
To make everything safer, I always keep a backup copy of all photographs and videos, therefore using two external hard drives, in addition to having a cloud storage service for additional backup. With current cameras, between photos and videos, I use around 3 4Tb disks per year. The advantage is that discs have become increasingly cheaper. In addition to these external disks, when I edit photos or videos, I do so on an external SSD disk. In this case, I use 3 discs. One for videos, one for longer projects, and another for photographs to be edited immediately. With the exception of the SSDs that I don't need new every year, the rest are always missing.
- External disc 2.5" Toshiba Canvio Basics 4TB USB 3.2 Preto: €120
- External SSD Samsung Portable T7 1TB USB 3.2 Gen2 Preto: €120
Totaling an initial investment of €720. It also has an annual renewal of €360.
TIME ON SOCIAL MEDIA
Finally, we cannot ignore the time spent on social media to share our photos, our adventures, interact with followers and promote our portfolio. Creating our own website and managing it can be quite challenging. Forcing the photographer to learn new tools. Managing different profiles on platforms such as Instagram, Facebook and YouTube can require several hours a week. Although this value varies from photographer to photographer, and even from week to week.
Assuming that I spend around 8 hours a week dedicated exclusively to social media and creating content for my website and videos for YouTube, at the end of the year around 416 hours were spent dealing with issues related to networking. social. This is all so I can show you my photos.
- Website A: €300 for two years
- Website B: €150 for two years
- Smugmug: €250 per year
Totaling an initial investment of €700.
QUANTIFYING TOTAL COSTS
Having finalized all the aspects involved in the process of taking wildlife photographs, let's quantify it all:
- Hours in the field: 25 hours per week (weekends included) | 1,300 hours per year
- Travel: €3,924
- Photographic equipment: €12,280
- Equipment wear: €1,200 per year
- Computer and software: €3,850
- Editing hours: 780 hours
- Equipment cleaning: 104 hours per year
- Image storage: €720 initial and €360 per year
- Websites: €700 per year
- Time on social media: 416 hours per year
Adding up all these costs, we can calculate the total cost of taking a wildlife photograph in one year:
Total cost = 1.300h x ?€/h + 3.924 € + 12.280 € + 1.200 € + 3.850 € + 780h x ?€/h + 104h x ?€/h + 720€ + 700 € + 416 x ?€/h = 22.674 € + ?!?!
(Hours in the field x Hourly rate) + Travel + Photographic equipment + Equipment wear + Computer and software + (Editing hours x Hourly rate) + (Cleaning hours x Hourly rate) + Image storage + (Hours in social networks x Hourly rate)
YEARLY RATE
To determine the hourly rate, we can consider the total annual cost of the photographer, including overhead expenses such as insurance, accommodation, appropriate clothing, protective equipment and other expenses related to the wildlife photographer profession. Let's assume that the total annual cost is 30,000 euros and that we work 40 hours a week, totaling 2080 hours per year.
Hourly Rate = Total Annual Cost / Annual Working Hours
Value per Hour = 30,000 / 2080 hours
Value per Hour = €14.42
We can now calculate the total cost of taking a wildlife photograph in one year:
Total Cost = 1,300h x 14.42 €/h + 3,924 € + 12,280 € + 1,200 € + 3,850 € + 780h x 14.42 €/h + 104h x 14.42 €/h + 720€ + 700€ + 416h x €14.42/h
Total Cost ≈ €18,746 + €3,924 + €12,280 + €1,200 + €3,850 + €11,247.60 + €1,499.68 + €720 + €700 + €5,998.72
Total Cost ≈ €60,156
Therefore, the total cost of taking a wildlife photograph for a year, including hours in the field, equipment, wear and tear, computer, editing hours, equipment cleaning, image storage and time on social media, is approximately €78,912. This value is for those who start, that is, year zero. For the second year, we can withdraw some values:
Total Cost = 1,300h x €9.62/h + €3,924 + €1,200 + €852 + 780h x €9.62/h + 104h x €9.62/h + €360 + €700 + 416h x 9.62 €/h
Total Cost ≈ €12,506 + €3,924 + €1,200 + €852 + €7,503.60 + €1,000.48 + €360 + €700 + €4,001.92
Total Cost ≈ €32,048
HOURLY RATE
Although it is almost impossible to determine the value of a single photograph, I will try to arrive at a value based on all this data. Please note that these values vary from year to year, from photographer to photographer. And all of this just serves to show a bit of the behind-the-scenes of wildlife photography, and all the associated costs. So that when they think about buying a product from a wildlife photographer, they understand the investment behind that product. First, you have to quantify how many photographs I take per year, and how many are used. These values will be based on the last year, in which I took 100,000 photographs, knowing that I had two trips abroad. And of these, only 20,000 were used. Many were small records, or tests to photograph a certain animal. Or they were simply too bad, I made a mistake, they were blurry, out of focus, among others.
Value per Photography for the 1st year: €3.0078
Value per Photography for the 2nd year: €1.6024
In other words, every time I take 1 photograph that I'm going to use, I spent €3.0078 in the first year and €1.6024 in the second year. If I take around 50 photos in one day, that's practically €100 that I "spent" to get them.
CONCLUSION
Although taking wildlife photographs may seem like a simple activity at first glance, detailed analysis of the costs involved reveals the complexity and significant investment that is required to be successful. From all the time we spend in the field, to the specialized equipment, to the post-production work that needs to be done, all of these aspects contribute to the final value of a photograph.
It is important to recognize and value the work of wildlife photographers, not only for the final result, but also for the effort and dedication they invest in each photograph. By understanding the costs involved, the idea is that we can all appreciate the work of all wildlife photographers even more and support mine and the work of other colleagues, thus ensuring the continuity of this art of wildlife photography for future generations .
