the most common question i receive via email is “i’d love to be a photographer but don’t know how to start. how’d you do it?” i wrote a post two years ago about the beginning of my photography story but haven’t written much since — and two years is a long time. so i thought i would take us back to the very, very beginning and what i’ve learned in the four and a half years since launching my business in june of 2007.
in 2006, i started using my dad’s d-slr camera, a canon rebel XT. i had never used a camera before [that i really remember?] and we took it on a family vacation to the east coast and i had some fun. i used it in automatic mode the entire time and came home thinking, i wonder if i can find out what all these buttons do? i went to google and i read everything i could find about camera basics. i read my manual cover to cover. i bought a book i found on amazon about wedding photography. i practiced taking pictures of lamps and chairs and stuffed animals and my dog. in the winter of 2006, i found a photography forum called the opensourcephoto forum — i was googling for wedding photographers [i liked looking at their portfolios!] and OSP popped up. i signed up and started reading.
it was amazing. page after page of this forum was filled with full-time photographers making a living shooting weddings and/or portraits. there were threads about marketing, engagement sessions, wedding timelines, initial consultations, album predesign, album companies, camera gear and lenses, off-camera lighting, websites, blogs, literally every single part of the business side of photography. i read every forum. kid you not. after a few months i was convinced i could do this. at the same time, i practiced on a few friends — my youth leader had a cute little toddler and i took some photos of him one afternoon. i took one of my best friends out on her farm to photograph. i bought a bludomain website for $200, put up a bio and a few galleries and i was open for business. i booked my first paid portrait session in june 2007, the same month i launched my website.
at the same time i launched my website i started a blog. i knew from reading OSP that it was important to make yourself different, to show why a client would need to hire you to take their family portraits for $300 over another photographer for $100. similarly, i started a facebook page — started linking to my blog and website, uploading every shoot, tagging photos, inviting my friends, inviting my brother’s friends, inviting my mom’s friends. come one, come all. news spread fast. i started emailing other photographers in my area, asking them if they needed assistants, asking them if i could take them out for coffee or out for lunch. i was still involved heavily in OSP forum and i started making online friends all over north america. these photographers gave me some great advice and inspired me through their work and many are still my close friends today! i ended up second shooting two weddings in august 2007 and that started my wedding portfolio.
i put those two weddings up on my website and added a section to my website that said “wedding prices” and listed them for $1000. i got an email, a bride wanted to book me. i shared up front that i had not shot a wedding by myself, but had second shot two of them and was “very confident i could do a wonderful job.” she booked me and it was an incredible experience: love love love dean + tamara to this day. that was in may 2008 and that summer, the year i graduated high school, i photographed 10 more weddings — making it a total of 11 my first year. every 3-4 weddings i would book, i’d raise my prices a couple hundred dollars. at the end of 2008, i think i doubled them: my goal was never to be a $1500 photographer — i knew where i was headed and i knew what quality work was worth.
but it didn’t come easy. every vendor i worked with, was about to work with and wanted to work with got a personal email. they all received images after the wedding on a disc with a handwritten note and a folder with my business cards. i would look up their facebook pages and post, i would comment on their blogs and post, i would email them after the weddings with a link to the blog post where i linked to their site.
behind the scenes, when i wasn’t shooting or editing, i was marketing. i was thinking about how to make my website better, how to increase the consistency and quality of my blog posts, i was improving packaging and scheming up client gift systems. i was making a list of vendors i’d love to meet with, i was emailing offering vendors complimentary sessions for whatever they needed. i read every business book i could get my hands on, including going through david jay’s [founder of OSP forum and Showit Sites] list of recommended reading — about 50 books total. i soon realized i couldn’t be the kind of marketer i wanted to be if i was doing my own editing and album design: so i outsourced both of them and suddenly had 12-15 more hours in my week to work on the things that mattered.
in the 2009 season, i managed to book 15 weddings by repeating all of the above paragraphs. i added in steps like creating sample albums for wedding venues, organizing styled shoots to create portfolios for dress designers, florists, etc., submitting to online blogs and magazines for increased exposure. in 2010, i booked 28 weddings and in 2011, i scaled it down to 21 weddings. there have been no secrets and no new strategies, there has been hard work and a lot of learning and above all, God’s incredible blessing on my business. i love a quote i heard once… that we are to pray like it depends on God but work like it depends on us. i have certainly done that. i am such a firm believer in God being the one who gives us the ability to create wealth [deut 8] and to this day, every wedding i book is a gift. this may seem crazy to a non-Christian, but literally every exciting email i receive, my heart thanks the Lord. always.
if what i’ve described above doesn’t sound like fun…. full-time photography probably isn’t for you. i’ve been asked before, how did you get motivated to work? sometimes i find it so hard to be self-employed with no one to keep me accountable. — that’s honestly not a question i’ve ever had to ask myself. i don’t need to get motivated because this is what i love to do. this is a decision i have made, to work for myself, so every morning i get up and i work because self-employment is a gift, not a free ride. if you struggle with motivation and self-discipline and “putting in the effort”… the reality is you may be better off in a job where you’re not your own boss. there is no shame in that — some people thrive in a career with more structure. i am not one of them, so i’ve done what i’ve had to do to make it work.
well, then, who is full-time photography for?! people who LOVE business, who also LOVE photos — if you don’t love the first one, chances are you’re going to be a starving artist. i get to enjoy and love taking photos [and making a living off of it] because i first and foremost love the creativity of the business side. if you are highly self-motivated, love setting a schedule for yourself that you will stick to, love the idea of being able to work where you want, when you want then boom, maybe you should look into this. however, if you’re asking questions like, “i want to learn my camera but don’t know how” i’m just not sure if it’s going to work out — because in the time it took to email and ask a few people, you could have watched five youtube tutorials and been on your way.
i hope this post was helpful — i can be a straight shooter and tend not to sugar-coat things especially when it comes to deciding to start a business. if you’re going to be a photographer, i want to see you succeed, i don’t want to see you frustrated with a massive headache in the end because you can’t seem to make it work. thoughts/comments/questions?
