Creating a career in photography requires long-term planning and short-term adjustments. It requires the focus to remain in demand for decades without becoming the equivalent of disco or tube tops. It requires removing the expiration date from your portfolio by finding a style that can sustain a career over the long term.
Nearly every successful photographer I know has selected at least one shooter from which to borrow, steal, sample, appropriate, or use as inspiration the lessons someone else has learned. And to be clear, it’s not their pictures that should be appropriated, it’s their wisdom. Modeling is the compass that anyone trying to navigate the business of photography will wisely use to reach their destination with as few detours as possible.
The reluctance for photographers to place emphasis on their value is often the exact thing that prevents them from having a sustainable career doing something they love. It’s a mindset that leads to photographers competing solely on price rather than competing on the superior value of their work. Negotiating value requires deliberate practice and strength, but nothing is more rewarding than hearing the client to commit to a figure that was higher than you were willing to take.
Probably the most frequent conversation I have with photographers is about how to make a consistent living in photography. In those conversations, the subject of working for free to gain exposure or experience is definitely a hot topic. Few people are able to go from just starting out to landing an assignment for Coca-Cola or […]
The first thing you notice when you enter a cavernous photo studio is the stark emptiness of the space. It can be an incredibly intimidating experience because you can’t escape the fact that it’s all up to you to create something. It’s very much like the writer staring at a blank page or a painter […]
Everyone becomes a photographer for a different reason. We each see something different when we raise a camera to our eye and we each want something different from the resulting picture. The deeper you go into a photography career, the more apparent these differences are. Photography can be whatever you want it to be. And […]
