Weddings, portraits, products, news, sport. Most photographers run a small business, not a job.
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Pay, the path, pros and cons and the facts on one printable page. Good for a wall or a guidance counsellor.
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What you earn and what it costs to get there.
Typical
$50,000
Starting out
$36,000
Busy commercial shooter
$101,000
Job Bank's national median is $24.04 an hour, about $50,000 a year at full-time hours. That figure hides a lot: an employed studio photographer gets a steady cheque, while a self-employed one bills far more per day and then pays for gear, insurance, software and the weeks with no work.
About $17.50 to $22 an hour
Assisting, school photos, event shooting, a studio job
Second shooting at weddings for an established photographer is the usual first paid gig, often a flat $200 to $400 for the day. It is also the fastest way to learn.
About $48 an hour and up
Roughly $101,000 a year at full-time hours, Job Bank's high figure
Commercial and advertising photographers quote day rates plus a licensing fee for how the client may use the images. The licence is often worth more than the shooting day.
Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel
There is no licence and no required school, so the low end is skipping school entirely and buying a starter kit: a body, two lenses, a flash, a tripod and cards. The high end is a four year photography degree at the top of the tuition range plus better gear. What you cannot skip once clients are paying you is a second camera body as backup and liability insurance. Editing software subscriptions, backups and a website are ongoing business costs rather than the cost of getting started, so they are not in the figures.
You can start with no school at all. What you cannot skip is gear, a backup camera for paid work, and insurance once clients are involved.
Session or day rate
The classic wedding, portrait or commercial booking.
Licensing
Charging for where and how long a client can use an image. Where commercial money really is.
Prints and albums
Portrait and wedding studios often earn more here than on the shooting fee.
Salary
Newspapers, universities, retailers, police and government agencies all employ staff photographers, though fewer than they used to.
The exact path from high school to qualified.
Nothing here is required. This is the route most working photographers actually took.
Shoot constantly
From now
Friends, sports teams, events, anything. The only way to get good is volume.
School, or not
0 to 4 years
A two-year college diploma or a four-year degree such as Sheridan College's honours bachelor of photography, which runs eight semesters with a 14-week internship. Plenty of working photographers skip this.
Assist a working photographer
1 to 2 years
Carrying gear, setting lights, managing files. You learn the business side that no course teaches.
Build a portfolio and a niche
Ongoing
Weddings, food, real estate, sport, newborns, products. Clients hire specialists, not generalists.
Register a business
A few weeks
A business number, invoices, liability insurance, contracts and taxes. This is the part that ends most photography careers.
Visual arts or photography
Composition, light and critique.
Business or accounting
You will be self-employed. Bookkeeping is the job.
Computer studies
Editing and file management take more hours than shooting.
English
Pitches, contracts and client emails decide who gets booked.
There is no licence and no protected title. Anyone can charge for photos tomorrow. Two national bodies are worth knowing: Professional Photographers of Canada, which runs voluntary membership and image competitions, and CAPIC (the Canadian Association of Professional Image Creators), which works on copyright, licensing and pricing standards. Membership at CAPIC runs from $39 a year for students to $249 for a full member. Neither one is needed to work.
Things you don't need, but that help.
Commercial and product
Brands pay for studio control and licensing, not for a pretty photo.
Architecture and real estate
Steady, repeatable, technical. Good money per hour.
Video as well as stills
Most clients now want both. Photographers who shoot video book more work.
Aerial work
Needs a drone pilot certificate from Transport Canada for most paid flying.
A second camera body
Most wedding contracts assume it. Gear failure on the day is your problem, not the client's.
Liability and gear insurance
Many venues will not let you work without proof of coverage.
A booking and invoicing system
Saves hours a week and makes you look like a business.
Basic retouching skill
Fast, clean editing is what keeps repeat clients.
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
Two or three shoots, then two or three times that in editing. A wedding is 10 hours on your feet and another 15 at a screen culling and retouching. The rest of the week is answering enquiries, quoting, meeting clients, backing up files, chasing invoices and marketing. Saturdays are work. Summer is busy and January is empty, which is why most photographers keep a winter side income.
The good
The hard parts
Things people don't tell you.
Under Canadian copyright law the photographer normally owns the copyright in a photo, even one taken for a paying client, unless a contract says otherwise. That is why photographers sell licences instead of files.
Weddings are the most common first paid work in Canadian photography, and the least forgiving: there is no second take of the ceremony. Most commercial photographers started as a second shooter at one.
A rough rule across the field is two to three hours at a computer for every hour holding a camera. If you dislike sitting and sorting files, this career will grind on you.
Last checked September 2026. Pay figures are typical full-time annual amounts in Canadian dollars, based on Government of Canada Job Bank wage data and published salary grids. They vary by province, employer and experience. Tuition is for domestic students.