Professional photography can be a really secretive world. Finding out what your competitors charge, who they are shooting for and how they got the contacts, and the way they managed to light that epic image can be a real challenge.
However, I don't think that us professional photographers are necessarily secretive for the reasons one might assume. I would be happy to (and often do) tell other photographers exactly how to perform a certain task, use a bit of kit, or simply how I lit something that they need to produce a very similar image to.
Likewise when it comes to quotes. The reason we don't share them isn't because we are worried about price-cutting or the like, but for a legal reason, which I go into in a little more detail in this video. The same goes for sharing our commercial projects. Although sometimes, we shout it from the rooftop because we are proud, other times we were simply collecting our paycheck, or as I have recently had, the product got pulled after I had shot it.
In this video, I go over a few areas in which I have noted folks in the comments section asking why us photographers who make a living from taking pictures won't share certain information.
So, although professional photographers don't publish every aspect of their life online for free, it's usually not because they are hiding it, but more likely because it wasn't viable or they simply didn't have time.
Are we really a secretive bunch though? I feel like nearly every photographer I've spoken with has been happy to share everything from pricing to business advice to techniques.