Photography is one of fastest ways to beat unemployment in Egypt

The Arab states have high and fast growing unemployment of young people worldwide due to Covid- 19 pandemic according to a report released by the international labor organization which is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. It confirmed that this virus has hurt young people more than any other age group.

Be unemployed for a while makes youths lose their skills, depressed, can’t get married without source of income. Free time enforces some youngsters to waste their time watching TV, playing video games, smoking whole nights at coffee shops; while others try to find sources of livelihood.

Egypt as one of Arab states, suffers from unemployment, many of its youths decided to overcome this problem by taking to the streets to work as photographers to have a source of income instead of staying home. Egyptian youths accept the reality that finding a job is not that easy especially Covid-19 pandemic is continuing to spread around the world as well as fresh graduates find themselves with few job opportunities due to their zero experience so photography business which doesn’t require experience nor special skills, just having camera makes it easy for youths to find a job.

Egypt is full of landscapes, its streets and squares are flooded with newbie photographers recently drawn to cash source by simply pressing the camera button while Bluetooth and Wifi-direct facilitate fast delivering of photos to clients. Even if newbie photographers are not talented enough, they are able to develop their skills later by learning how to shoot better and how to edit.

Photography helps youths overcoming depression, boosting self-esteem, confidence, memory and decision making. At the beginning, photography is stressful for many, if they don’t know how to get shot they want or client don’t pay them or camera is broken but by the time they get used to such things.

Taking photos of people hanging out in streets and squares is an easy job, it is not hard like wildlife or underwater photography but the big challenge here is the difficulty that youth photographers face when they deal with clients who are not convinced they are beautiful enough in photos or they try to beat photographer’s price down.

Photography career is growing faster in Egypt due to many reasons as portrait, couples and family photography is constantly in demand as well as capturing memorable moments of people with their pets are highly required by pet’s lovers while photographers work independently so they can set their work hours and their own price. The price of one photo is so cheap but the real gain is in the number of photos taken if the number of photos increases so the profit is so high. Some photographers achieve high profit per week or month while others are clever enough to attract more people per day to be photographed so their daily profit is high.

By time, youths could upgrade their photography job level from just taking photos of people into streets to collaborating with brands, searching on social media platforms for models, influencers, or business owners who are in need of photographers.

Photography could be a good future career, if youths are willing to be creative, they can run their own studio or working for magazines and taking freelance projects. They have to spend more money at first because good cameras and gears are not cheap but good income could come later.

Eventually, no matter how great photographer you are, if you are not smiley, good at speaking with the folks, you will struggle as photographer.

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