Do You Need to be Fit to be a Photographer?
Post updated January 2018: For many topics such as landscape, studio and stock photography etc, I would say no. Although a good landscape photographer will become fit by default. All that running up and down hills and valleys!
However, if you are commercial or wedding photographer, you may well be on your feet all day. Travelling from location to location for 10 hours or more? I would say fitness plays a huge part.
You may well be lugging a lot of heavy camera gear around. Then spending many longs hours sitting on your a** processing images and marketing your business. If you are overweight or not in your best shape, that can take its toll…I should know.
Fatty bum bum
Back in 2006 I had spent well over a year writing this website. 15 hours a day, 7 days a week never (or rarely) leaving the house. My weight ballooned and I became rather unfit to say the least. The things I sacrifice for All Things Photography : )
The following year, I was shooting a wedding in Gibraltar. At one point, I had to run back to the hotel with all my gear as the Groom had made a mistake in his plans. As I was running down a hill, with my new super-size me and a fully loaded camera rucksack on my back, something "popped" in my ankle.
I later discovered it to be a Superficial Calcaneal Bursitis on the rear of my right ankle.
Anyway, the long and short of it was that I was overweight. I was not coping well shooting weddings with all that gear and extra weight so I did something about it. And I did!