Hiding Photographers

And just for fun, here’s the reverse angle:

A Toronto dentist recently told me that when he graduated from dental school in the mid-1970s, there were about 1,300 dentists in Toronto. He said that number has since increased at least 600%.

When he opened his own practice in Toronto, there was one other dental office within a one-block radius of his office. Today there are eight other dental offices within that same one-block radius and those eight dental businesses collectively employ about 18 dentists.

Toronto’s population from the mid-1970s to 2022 has increased about 1.6 times (from 1.8 million to 2.9 million) but the number of dentists has increased at least six times. Canada has more dentists per capita – 6.63 dentists per 10,000 people – than many other countries. The US has 6.1 dentists per 10,000.

Of course, almost everyone complains that there are too many people in their chosen occupation.

Too Many Photographers

The population of Canada, over the past 26 years, has increased from about 29M to 39M (a 35% increase). The number of Canadian professional photographers has increased by about 100% during the same 26 years.

1996 – 11,515 photographers (On the linked web page, choose Census year 1996)

2001 – 11,710 photographers (On the linked web page, choose Census year 2001)

2003, 2004 – sub-$1,000 digital cameras introduced

2005 – sub-$700 digital cameras

2006 – 13,335 photographers

2011 – 18,250 photographers

2018 – 20,900 photographers

2022 – No data yet but without a doubt it’s higher than 2018 despite the 2020-2021 pandemic.

These numbers seem to include only those people who self-identified as a photographer in a census. I can’t remember the last time I did a census but I’m listed as a photographer on my tax returns. Canada Revenue Agency doesn’t seem to publish data on occupations.

Professional photography is one of the fastest growing occupations in the US and I would assume it’s the same in Canada.

Using US Bureau of Labour statistics and Canadian census information, there are far more photographers on a per capita basis in Canada than the US. These numbers are very rough because they’re based on self-reported information and probably don’t include “weekend warrior” photographers:

US: 125,600 photographers / 335,000,000 population = 37 photographers per 100,000

Canada: 21,000 photographers / 38,500,000 population = 54 photographers per 100,000

Toronto’s population is expected to grow by an average of 800 people per week as the city’s population is predicted to reach four million by the year 2046. It took 40 years for Toronto to go from 2M to 3M. It’s expected to take 25 years to go from 3M to 4M. More people faster.

What to do?

There will be more and more photographers and the rate of increase will be faster than the population. In other words, far too many photographers.

You have to work harder and more effectively to get noticed by customers.

Photographers in hiding

Now to the point of this post.

A client recently asked me to recommend a corporate photographer in another Canadian city. I know several photographers across the country but I don’t know any in this particular city. So I did a web search.

My search turned up less than a handful of slightly qualified photographers even though I went ten pages deep in search results. Are there really so few non-wedding photographers in that medium-sized city? I ended up emailing other photographers I know and asked if they knew anyone in that city.

Many web sites that I visited didn’t mention what city, what province or even what country the photographer is located in.

Most sites didn’t have a headshot of the photographer on the About Us page. Jeez, if you’re a photographer, why not use photography?

One photographer’s portrait showed them drinking at a bar. You could only see their eyes because the rest of their face was in a glass of booze. Would you hire this person?

Yes, there was even one web site with black pages, red and yellow text, and animated bouncing images.

Why make it so difficult to find you? Why are you hiding? You should be yelling, “Here I am!”

SEO is your friend

Search engine optimization (SEO) was considered black magic back in the late 1990s and early 2000s. But it’s now 2022 and SEO is a reasonably known art. And it’s extremely important.

Many photographers use pre-packaged portfolio sites. These web sites are designed to look pretty and be easy to operate but they aren’t usually SEO effective on their own. In some cases, the site can actually be anti-SEO and cause the site not to rank at all.

If you’re a new photographer, you’re somewhat excused. But if you’ve been in business for more than five years, wake up! You may have just lost a $4,200 job because you were hiding.