Don F. answered • 01/19/25
40-years working as a commercial photographer. 10-years teaching
After working exclusively as a still photographer for 35-years I made the move to offering video production. I am now entering my fifth year providing video production services and video production now represents half of my business revenue. It's expensive and the learning curve is pretty steep, but there are many things that an experienced photographer brings to the table that can make the resulting video producer a serious competitor.
What parts of the process of photography are most useful to know when shooting video? There are a lot. I would put at the top of the list, lighting. There are many people that become videographers because they want to tell stories, which is fine, but they skip past learning how to light and head straight to learning how to shoot and how to edit and how to record sound, and they only know how to get enough light on a set to get it exposed correctly. These videographers buy a few lights and they poke them in here and there without much thought and away they go. I knew this before I started in video because I would be hired to shoot stills on video sets, and I was appalled at how they were lighting ( or not lighting ) their scenes. On more than one occasion I ended up doing the lighting for them. To be fair there are a lot more things to consider with video, but lighting is still key, and experienced still photographers, especially studio photographers know this stuff, your just using continuous lights and not flash, but the light modifiers are the same, and so are the lighting principals. Other obvious skills like composition are helpful, but for the most part video is locked into two cropping formats 9x16 horizontal and more recently vertical for social media, and this can present a new challenge. Working with talent, directing, and working with clients are all very similar and the experience as a photographer will prove very helpful. Basic things like understanding when to use what type of lens, and the principals of the exposure triangle, are also a plus. Pro still photographers shoot in RAW and use PS or LR as their digital darkroom. Pro videographers shoot in "Log" format, which is the equivalent to shooting in RAW, and the finished videos are "processed" through a process called grading. It's very similar.
And what things will a photographer find to be very different and confusing? There are a lot of new terms to learn and to wrap your head around, terms like Codec, FPS, Bitrate, Overcranking, Non Linear Editing, Scrubbing, and a whole host of things involved with audio, that photographers will find to be a whole new world. And then of course the whole video editing thing is much more complicated ( but it's a lot of fun!). I am self-taught when it comes to video and I learned the most by reading articles, and a lot of practice. I had the good fortune of having photography clients that knew me and trusted me and they were patient as I did my first few video projects with them.
How do rates for the production of stills and video compare, and why? This was surprising to me. Day rates for a pro photographer and for a videographer in my area are pretty much the same. But Video jobs are bigger, so it takes fewer video shoots to equal the revenue over time. There are of course exceptions. Strangely as well, there is more competition in the video segment as long as you don't count the portrait photographers when comparing the competition for commercial photographers. Video equipment is more expensive and the process is more of a "Team sport" with multiple cameras going in most circumstances.
I am just scratching the surface, but it's a good topic to discuss, and I am definitely not the know it all on this subject, but I have made the transition, and it was necessary in my market to keep up with the demands of my marketplace.
