Transitioning to a Professional Photographer

Posted August 3rd, 2009 / By whitman in Beginners, Tips

The past five to ten years have seen technological advances that have made photography more accessible and therefore more competitive.  Shooting digital bests the old Polaroid in providing a rapid feedback loop.  It has also done away with chemicals, that can grow you a third arm, at least for purposes of generating proofs.  At the same time, this means everyone from Uncle Bob to the infamous Mom with a camera believes they can create professional photographs.  Hey, how do you think I got into this business?  After pouring many late nights and weekends into what was previously a hobby, I’ve come across a few truisms and a warning that I’d like to share for the many budding professional photographers out there.

Work hard but not too hard.

There are two traps when photography becomes your business.  The first is to think that throwing up a website will make you visible to the world and have people begging to take your photos.  On the contrary, there were many lonely nights waiting for emails in my inbox or for the phone to ring.  A year long concerted effort was required to market myself to potential clients and build my portfolio so they’d hire me once they found me.  And therein lies the second trap.  Photographers are amongst the most passionate folk around and because of that it’s easy to burn out, or worse, lose sight of your goals.  My wife and kids hold me accountable and remind me that it’s okay to leave the camera behind on our family outings.

Charge for your work and keep your day job.

Even when building up your portfolio – charge for your time, expertise and personality.  If no one is willing to pay for your work, then, “Houston we have a problem!”.  My biggest competition hasn’t been other photographers, it’s people who take pictures for themselves.  To get business, a potential client has to look at my portfolio and say, “I need to hire this crazy guy to get photographs like that.”   Early on, my friends complimented my photography, but only two were willing to pay for my services.  Looking back, those two friends were really supportive, but it’s also possible that they were just terrible photographers which made me look like a god.   It was a humbling lesson, but a priceless one.  Since then, I regularly read the latest techniques, practice them, have my work critiqued and correspondingly my book of business has steadily increased.  After doing a ton of work for strangers, many of my friends and family have circled back as paying clients.

Having a day job, even an unpaid one like being a stay at home mom, forces you to prioritize your work.  For me, there were many mundane tasks that just had to be done to establish my business from getting a business license to automating my workflow so that I could scale my business.  Having two jobs help me avoid spending unnecessary time with Facebook, the bazillion photography chat rooms or twitter (gotta be honest, I have an account but don’t know what to do with it).  It also allowed me to stay firm on my prices since it made no sense to take on business that earned me less per hour than my day job.

Help the community.

This is a much higher bar than Google’s “Do no evil” which is analogous to raising kids and saying, “I won’t kill them”.  In fact, actively helping the community is the opposite, more active approach of seeing what you can do to provide benefits to those around you.  Very early on, I decided that the litmus test would be if the community actually missed Phat Baby Photography were it to go out of business.  The company is not there yet, but it’s always in the back of my head.  Can I auction my services for a benefit or charity (the education system can use all the help it can get)?  Should I buy from the local camera store Keeble or Amazon?  And because I fundamentally believe that my competition are people taking their own pictures, that frees me up to help my fellow photographers as well.  So I spend time each day answering questions on Flickr, providing tips on my blog or writing articles like this at midnight.

One thing not to worry about – your equipment.

Despite the ultimate compliment every photographer yearns to hear, “Wow, beautiful work, I need to get a camera like that”, the latest equipment helps you take pictures faster (e.g. more shots/second, faster autofocus, shorter shutter release, faster flash exposure calculations…) but rarely better.  Frequently, my client’s favorite pictures are the most deliberate, not the one they could have taken with auto everything on.  Technology progresses so quickly (i.e. Moore’s Law and all) that you can buy a very capable used SLR and 50mm prime lens for less than $500 and be off to the races for most portraiture work and you only need an extra backup body (which you can rent) for wedding photography.  One of the silliest things I ever did was buy two new lenses in rapid succession.  It takes me time to learn the nuances of each piece of equipment and I would have been much better off waiting at least a few months between them.

Have fun out there.

About the Author:

Whitman, head (and only) artisan at Phat Baby Photography, is an amateur daddy and professional photographer working out of the San Francisco Bay Area.  He has a B.S. in engineering from Harvey Mudd College, an MBA from Columbia University and jack for photography.  Despite that, his clients love him and his kids consistently praise his work (both as a father and as a photographer).