Weddings, portraits, products, news, sport. Most photographers run a small business, not a job.
Click through it
Pay, the path, pros and cons and the facts on one printable page. Counsellors: send it to a student from your own email in one click.
Programs in the fields this career usually comes through. Each has its own page: what it takes to get in, the courses you need and what it costs.
The median pay is about $50,000 a year. Across everyone in the job it runs from about $36,000 at the lower end to about $101,000 at the upper end. The source is listed under Sources at the end of this page.
Up to 4 years after high school, on the usual route.
$3,000 to $46,000 all in for tuition, fees, exams and kit. Living costs are not counted.
No. There is no licence to hold, though many employers still ask for training or a certificate.
Limited demand nationally, from government outlook data. Demand varies by region, so check your area.
Or read the whole thing here
What you earn and what it costs to get there.
Median
$50,000
Lower end
$36,000
Upper end
$101,000
Job Bank's national median is $24.04 an hour, about $50,000 a year at full-time hours. The lower end ($17.50) and upper end ($48.63) are the bottom and top of the range for everyone in the group. The median hides a lot: an employed studio photographer gets a steady cheque, while a self-employed one bills by the job and then pays for gear, insurance, software and the weeks with no work.
$25.12 an hour
The Job Bank median in Nova Scotia, the highest of any province
Quebec is $24, Ontario and BC (British Columbia) $21, and New Brunswick is lowest at $18.64. Commercial photographers earn more by charging a licensing fee for how the client may use the images.
Roughly, all in
$3,000 to $46,000
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.
Prints and albums
Portrait and wedding studios sell these on top of 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.
Quebec offers photography at two public levels, a vocational diploma you can start at 16 and a 3 year college diploma.
Finish Secondary V
Age 16 or 17
Or stop at 16 with Secondary IV language, second language and math, which is enough for the vocational photography program. Shoot constantly either way.
Option 1: DEP (Diploma of Vocational Studies) in Photography (5326)
About 19 months
1,800 hours, about 19 months, at vocational centres in Montreal (Lachine and Verdun), Quebec City and Trois-Rivières. In French. Commercial, event and portrait work.
Option 2: Photography DEC (Diploma of College Studies, 570.F0)
3 years
A 3 year CEGEP (public college) program at Cégep du Vieux Montréal and Cégep de Matane in French, and Dawson College in English. Dawson asks for a portfolio and a letter of intent.
University, optional
3 to 4 years
Concordia's BFA (Bachelor of Fine Arts) in Studio Art, in English, includes photography as a discipline. It needs a DEC and a portfolio of 15 to 20 pieces.
Build the business
Ongoing
Quebec counted about 3,000 photographer jobs in 2024, and most are in advertising, public relations and related services. A portfolio and a niche matter more than the diploma.
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.
Video as well as stills
Many clients now want both.
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 can mean a full day on your feet and more than that again at a screen choosing and retouching photos. 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.
About 22,400 people worked as photographers in Canada in 2023, Job Bank says, and only 19% of them are 50 or older.
Every list is built from the same numbers shown above, so you can see where this career sits next to the others.
Film, TV and music first, then the rest of the field. See every career in creative.
Last checked October 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. How every figure on this site is sourced and checked.
Tell us about this page. A person reads every message.
No email app on this device? Use Gmail instead: report a mistake in Gmail or say what you like in Gmail.