2025 State of Photography: More Pros Are Using Smartphones and Drones

Zenfolio’s annual State of the Photography Industry survey shows how photographers are adapting to a continually changing landscape, handling artificial intelligence, and finding new ways to make their photography businesses successful.

Looking first at some general trends and takeaways, it has long been the case that photographers have relied upon multiple revenue streams to stay afloat, and that has only become more true as photographers continue to diversify their businesses. Approximately 10% of this year’s survey respondents said they now operate across multiple business models: client-based, event/sport-based, and art/production-based. Photographers are wearing many more hats these days.

They are also utilizing more personalized services to help set themselves apart, especially in fields where AI is, or could, steal work. In these situations, a more hands-on approach can make a big difference and help photographers maintain a strong client base. Zenfolio notes that photographers who offer in-person viewing appointments after photoshoots are seeing up to a 20% increase in their revenue, for example.

A more personal approach also carries over to final product delivery. Younger, less experienced photographers surveyed tend to rely heavily on digital file delivery. However, established photographers who still utilize print sales as part of their business model reported significant revenue from selling prints.

Although not unique to the photography industry, photographers are grappling with increased business costs. While approximately seven in 10 photographers reported increased business costs in 2024, product prices did not follow suit, reducing profits.

Digging a bit deeper into the data shows some interesting patterns. Video has played an increasing role for photographers in recent years, but slightly more respondents — 68% — say they consider themselves exclusively photographers and don’t shoot any video. This is up slightly from last year. Unsurprisingly, those who consider themselves photographers and videographers — 21% this year — are down year-over-year.

Although photographers face challenges, including the increased costs mentioned earlier, the number of full-time, self-employed photographers has continued to trend upward in 2023, 2024, and now 2025. Photography specialties have remained steady over the years, although baby and newborn photography was the biggest riser, increasing nearly 2.6% from last year. Longtime stalwarts in architecture, portrait, landscape, wedding, and documentary photography all decreased, although only by 0.4 to 1%.

Zenfolio’s State of the Photography Industry survey asks photographers about their gear. The majority of photographers use just a single camera for their work, although that’s followed by two cameras in a reasonably close second place. Interestingly, people combining their traditional camera with a smartphone for their work has increased significantly since 2024, reaching nearly 15% after it was about 5% last year. Mirrorless camera usage is down too, which is a surprising result. Another interesting find is that just over 17% of responding photographers use drones as part of their workflow.

The survey also asks photographers how they use AI as part of their workflow. AI is an increasingly important part of the latest photo editing software, providing faster and more effective ways to remove distractions, retouch people, and make precise masks for localized editing. Just 11.6% of respondents have a negative sentiment toward using AI, and about 13% never use it. 32.2% of photographers say AI is part of their regular workflow, and the most common uses are automatic subject or sky selection, background removal, content-aware fill, noise reduction, and sharpening. People also use AI for metadata tagging, photo culling, caption generation, and, most commonly of all for non-photo tasks. Over 30% of respondents use AI to write social media content.

There is a significant amount of data in the complete survey, much more than can be covered here, but one more section worth taking a closer look at is pricing. This is a hot topic for photographers, and especially newcomers to the industry often struggle to dial in the right price. Based on the survey responses, Zenfolio has established some clear pricing benchmarks for 2025, including for client-based and event-based photo jobs.

For family photography, prices range from $600 to $800, while portrait photography has a much wider range from $175 to $1,500. Wedding photography, the highest-priced specialty in the industry, ranges from $2,400 to $4,000, although some photographers certainly charge much more than that. On the event side, sports and school photography ranges from about $20 to $75 per unit.

The compete 2025 State of the Photography Industry survey results are available on Zenfolio’s website, and are well worth checking out for photographers who either work professionally now or would like to learn more about how to get started on the right foot.

Image credits: Zenfolio. Featured image licensed via Depositphotos.