---
title: "Cinematographer"
description: "Leads the camera and lighting crews and creates the visual style of a film, series, commercial or music video."
canonical: "https://nuecareer.com/careers/cinematographer"
last-updated: "2026-10-09T10:57:55.138Z"
---

# Cinematographer

**Category:** Arts, Design, Entertainment, Sports, and Media · **SOC code:** 27-4031 · **O\*NET-SOC code:** 27-4031.00

Leads the camera and lighting crews and creates the visual style of a film, series, commercial or music video.

Also advertised as: Director of Photography; DP; DoP; Director of Photography (DP); Film Cinematographer.

## At a glance

- **Median annual wage:** $74,990 (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
- **Median hourly wage:** $36.05/hr
- **Wage range (10th–90th percentile):** $38,520 to $135,180, with the middle half between $50,920 and $106,660
- **Total US employment:** 21,550
- **Typical entry education:** Bachelor's
- **Preparation required:** Some preparation — O\*NET rates this "Job Zone Three: Medium Preparation Needed"
- **Projected growth:** +1.3% over 2025–2035 (BLS EP, 2025–2035)
- **Annual job openings:** 2,500 openings a year
- **AI-resilience score:** 62/100 — a NueCareer heuristic over O\*NET work activities and context, not a BLS or O\*NET figure

## Pay

National wage distribution, BLS OEWS, May 2025, across 21,550 US jobs.

| Percentile | Annual wage |
| --- | --- |
| 10th | $38,520 |
| 25th | $50,920 |
| 50th (median) | $74,990 |
| 75th | $106,660 |
| 90th | $135,180 |
| Mean (average) | $83,210 |

### Pay by state

The 15 highest-paying states, by median annual wage. The cost-of-living-adjusted column divides the state median by that state's BEA Regional Price Parity, so the columns answer different questions: the first is what the job pays there, the second is what that pay buys there.

| State | Median annual wage | Cost-of-living adjusted | Employment |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| CA | $106,900 | $96,550 | 4,700 |
| IL | $100,170 | $100,212 | 1,060 |
| DC | $98,300 | $89,444 | 240 |
| NY | $93,410 | $86,554 | 2,930 |
| GA | $85,050 | $88,324 | 570 |
| AK | $83,620 | $81,693 | 50 |
| CO | $74,990 | $72,769 | 300 |
| UT | $73,450 | $74,294 | 240 |
| AZ | $68,250 | $67,791 | 520 |
| MD | $65,870 | $62,758 | 290 |
| CT | $65,630 | $63,343 | 170 |
| OH | $64,860 | $69,912 | 520 |
| TX | $63,110 | $65,024 | 1,100 |
| NC | $62,720 | $66,493 | 380 |
| FL | $62,220 | $60,166 | 970 |

32 more states with published wage data are omitted here. The full table for all 47 states is at https://nuecareer.com/careers/cinematographer/salary-by-state, or as JSON at https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/cinematographer.

## Outlook

BLS projects employment to move from 32,600 in the 2025–2035 base year to 33,000 by the end of the cycle — a gain of 400 jobs, or +1.3%. Slower than average: 1.3% against 3.5% projected for all occupations over the same cycle. About 2,500 openings a year are expected on average, counting openings from growth as well as from workers leaving the occupation permanently. Source: BLS EP, 2025–2035.

## How to get in

- **Typical entry education:** Bachelor's degree (BLS Employment Projections).
- **Preparation level:** Some preparation — O\*NET's preparation band for this occupation is "Job Zone Three: Medium Preparation Needed".
- **Related work experience typically required:** None.
- **Typical on-the-job training:** None.

### Education people in this job actually hold

O\*NET surveys incumbents, so this distribution describes who is in the job today and can differ from the BLS entry requirement above.

| Education level | Share of workers |
| --- | --- |
| Associate's Degree or other 2-year degree | 60.7% |
| High School Diploma or the equivalent (such as a GED) | 17.8% |
| Some College Courses | 14.6% |
| Bachelor's Degree | 6.9% |

## What the work involves

- Develop the visual style of a project with the director
- Choose cameras, lenses and formats
- Plan shots, lighting and camera movement
- Scout locations for light and camera positions
- Lead camera, lighting and grip departments on set
- Set exposure and approve framing for each take
- Supervise the final color grade

## Skills and knowledge

### Essential skills

- Active Listening — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Reading Comprehension — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speaking — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Critical Thinking — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Monitoring — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Writing — importance 2.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Learning — importance 2.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Learning Strategies — importance 2.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Transferable skills

These are the skills that carry into other occupations, and they drive the related-occupation and career-change rankings on this site.

- Coordination — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Judgment and Decision Making — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Social Perceptiveness — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Time Management — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Complex Problem Solving — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Persuasion — importance 2.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Service Orientation — importance 2.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Operations Monitoring — importance 2.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Knowledge areas

- English Language — importance 4.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Computers and Electronics — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Communications and Media — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Telecommunications — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Engineering and Technology — importance 2.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Public Safety and Security — importance 2.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Abilities

- Visualization — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Near Vision — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Far Vision — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral Expression — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Problem Sensitivity — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral Comprehension — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

## Who it suits

O\*NET rates every occupation on the six Holland (RIASEC) interest areas, on a 1–7 scale. This occupation's strongest areas are Artistic (A), Realistic (R), Conventional (C).

| Interest area | Score (1–7) |
| --- | --- |
| A — Artistic | 5.33 |
| R — Realistic | 4.89 |
| C — Conventional | 3.65 |
| E — Enterprising | 3.22 |
| I — Investigative | 2.00 |
| S — Social | 1.80 |

### Personality fit

These scores are **derived by NueCareer**, not published by any government agency: they are cosine similarities between a personality type's trait profile and this occupation's O\*NET interest and work-style ratings, expressed 0–100. Treat them as a starting point for exploration, not as evidence that a type belongs in a job.

| Type | Fit score (0–100) |
| --- | --- |
| INTJ | 60.8 |
| ISTP | 59.8 |
| ISTJ | 58.3 |
| INTP | 58.2 |
| ISFP | 53.5 |

Best-fitting types: INTJ.

## Related occupations

O\*NET's primary related occupations, in its own ranked order.

- [Camera Operator, Television, Video, and Film](https://nuecareer.com/careers/camera-operator-television-video-and-film) — median $74,990
- [Electro-Mechanical and Mechatronics Technologist and Technician](https://nuecareer.com/careers/electro-mechanical-and-mechatronics-technologist-and-technician) — median $73,900
- [Broadcast Technician](https://nuecareer.com/careers/broadcast-technician) — median $59,570
- [Audio and Video Technician](https://nuecareer.com/careers/audio-and-video-technician) — median $58,100
- [Media Technical Directors/Manager](https://nuecareer.com/careers/media-technical-directors-manager) — median $90,360
- [Avionics Technician](https://nuecareer.com/careers/avionics-technician) — median $82,280
- [Camera and Photographic Equipment Repairer](https://nuecareer.com/careers/camera-and-photographic-equipment-repairer) — median $52,720
- [Lighting Technician](https://nuecareer.com/careers/lighting-technician) — median $68,060
- [Motion Picture Projectionist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/motion-picture-projectionist) — median $38,270
- [Sound Engineering Technician](https://nuecareer.com/careers/sound-engineering-technician) — median $73,130

## Sources

- **O\*NET** — O\*NET 31.0 Database, August 2026. https://www.onetcenter.org/database.html
- **BLS OEWS** — BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. https://www.bls.gov/oes/
- **BLS EP** — BLS Employment Projections, Table 1.2, 2025–2035. https://www.bls.gov/emp/
- **BEA RPP** — BEA Regional Price Parities by State, 2024. https://www.bea.gov/data/prices-inflation/regional-price-parities-state-and-metro-area

---

This bank includes information from the O\*NET 31.0 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). O\*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. NueCareer has transformed the data by joining it to BLS wage and projection data and deriving facet, personality-fit and AI-resilience scores. BLS and BEA data are public domain (17 U.S.C. §105).

O\*NET content is used under [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). How these figures are sourced and derived: https://nuecareer.com/careers/methodology

JSON representation of this page: https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/cinematographer