Research Outline

Fashion Photography Market Size in the U.S.

Goals

To provide the market size of the fashion photography industry in the U.S., with a breakdown in the sizes of the freelancing, in-house studios, and corporate services fashion photography market sub-sectors.

Early Findings

Commercial/Industrial Photography Market Size in the U.S.

  • Industry reports such as Market Research and IbisWorld present the statistics in the photography market in the U.S. under the following categories: commercial photography, portraiture, special events' photography, wedding photography, and industrial photography; with no specification on fashion photography.
  • The commercial photography industry includes “companies primarily engaged in providing commercial photography services, generally for advertising agencies, publishers, and other business and industrial users.”
  • The commercial and industrial photography may consist of photography of such specialty areas as “food, architecture, and fashion.”
  • The photography industry in the U.S. is provided as $10 billion in 2019.
  • The commercial and industrial photography market in the U.S. makes up 23.8% of the photography market. This could be estimated at $2.38 billion (23.8% of $10 billion).
  • “Over the past 3 years, the commercial photography industry in the U.S. has averaged annual growth of 1.9% to reach $1.8 billion in revenue,” in 2019.

Freelancers in the Photography Industry in the U.S.

  • According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, "more companies contract with freelancers rather than hire their own photographers."
  • The employment of self-employed photographers is projected to grow 10% from 2018 to 2028.
  • Corporations will continue to require the services of commercial photographers to develop compelling advertisements to sell products.

Summary of Findings

  • In our first hour of research we were not able to find compiled data on the size of the fashion photography market in the U.S. We were also unable to triangulate the exact size of the market from the publicly available data on the photography market in the U.S. Consequently we were also not able to provide the sizes of the sub-sectors of in-house studios, freelance, and corporate fashion photography markets. We provided the size of the commercial/industrial photography market size, in which the fashion photography sectors falls under; as well as some insights from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics on freelance photography, in general, in the country. Based on our findings, we propose to continue with the research as below: