One of the most famous photographers alive today is Annie Leibovitz. She takes a lot of celebrity portraits for magazines like Rolling Stone and People. She went to the San Francisco Art Institute, here’s a little blurb about her from Wikipedia:
If your daughter is really interested in pursuing photography as a career, you should encourage or even help her talk to professional photographers in the area, see where they went to college(if at all), how they got started and perhaps what advice they would have for her. A good place to start would be those photographers who come to her school to do annual school pictures.
While a few top photographers may make a good living, I don’t think the rest make much. I recall once reading in the NYT about a girl who graduated from NYU with a degree in Religious and Women’s Studies, after $120k in debt, the only job she could get was as a photographer’s assistance for $27,000 a year - in San Francisco. After paying rent and her loan, she barely had enough to live on.
IMO a degree in Photography today is a luxury that only the rich can afford. If one is going to spend 4 years of one’s time and a hundred thousand dollars on a college degree, might as well get an employable degree out of it, if not STEM than accounting/business/finance. One can always change one’s mind and pursue photography after college, but at least one will have some options.
I too have a son who has all the grades but is for the moment, “passionate” about digital photography. I gave him the same advice. He intends to major in mechanical engineering.
I know of a guy who was laid off mid-career from his high paying IT job. He decided to make a career out of his passion for photography and became a wedding photographer. It was probably hard to make a living though. When the economy came back he eventually went back to work in IT. But the point is she can always go back to photography later on, after achieving some financial stability with a “real” job, or married to someone with one. 