Shoot for Yourself
June 11, 2011 
7 Comments
I never imagined that having 12-16 clients a day was a bad thing.
But for my students Dani and Apple, a day of 16-18 clients means 10 hours of shooting and sometimes, processing up to 200 portraits in a day. It means constantly being bombarded with emails about bookings, dates, schedules, where-are-my-photos demands, and no free time.
That these two portrait photographers are working is a very good thing. They are able to earn their living from doing what they love: making images. But when I speak with them these days, what I hear is the pressure in their lives to juggle family and friends and very long working days. I hear the struggle to keep up with clients who don’t read the contract they signed and demand something outside of it, and the feeling that they are being overextended. And I see that they are unhappy, unhappy because they are good photographers and their services are in high demand.
How can that be a bad thing?
Copyright Aloha Lavina.
Apple writes to me, “I’m done with this business. I’m going back to what I love—travel photography.†She’s coming to Asia again, she says, and would I take some time to shoot with her then, like we did in Bali four years ago? Dani and I spend a day walking around and making photos for no reason except that we want to, and she ends the day laughing and telling me, “I think the reason Apple and I are so unhappy is that we never get the chance to take pictures just because we want to.â€
Bingo.
Working 16 hours a day on repetitive tasks that are below the threshold of challenge is—to be blunt—boring. In the spectrum of creativity and learning, there are two extremes: the end where your skills don’t match up to the task and you get frustrated, and the end where your skills surpass the task and you get bored. The balance rests in finding challenges that are fairly new but allow you to stretch skills you already have. For my two students, they are doing the same thing day in and day out—the same lighting, the same poses, the same processing, the same tasks. Because it’s their bread and butter, they have to, but somewhere in the mad crush of building a business, they’ve forgotten to take walks and just shoot.
Copyright Aloha Lavina.
Shooting for yourself can do wonders. Engaging in tasks that are challenging but not frustrating is enjoyable. This is, I suspect, what draws you into a career in photography in the first place, the thought of doing what you love and being paid for it. But neglecting your own need for artistic expression has the potential to damage your passion and burn you out. Even if it’s just a few hours a week, taking time to shoot for yourself can balance out the repetitive tasks that you have to do because it’s ‘work.’
This is all well and good, but what about the money? Can you be creative and make money too?
Copyright Aloha Lavina.
I have to be honest and say this: creative vision is a precious commodity. At the risk of sounding snobby, I have to say that there is photography that you can do which produces work that looks like it’s been mass produced by a photo booth, and then there is photography that you can do which looks like only you could have created it, with your unique creative vision. This creative vision should be what clients seek you out for, and pay you to express.
Think back on the photos you made that made your heart leap and gave you the dream of doing this for the rest of your life. This should be where you begin your business plan. Any other compromise is just going to kill your art.
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I’m so happy you wrote about this !! Seems like everybody writes about how to get more clients, better SEO, marketing, money money money….
I’m learning as I just discovered my passion for photography 2 years ago and because my friends want to hire me, I was forced to reflect upon the decision to become a business. I just don’t feel it at all and wondered if learning to shoot like a professional obligated you to do it for others ? I’ve always said no to everybody and it’s becoming harder and harder to make them understand.
So any-hou, thank you for writing this article !! ha ha ! Sorry, for the life story, this stroke a cord !
Hi Sophie, thanks for the comment. I don’t think there’s an obligation to become a paid photographer, and I agree that you really have to want it to put in the amount of effort it takes to launch a professional career. A lot of photographers I know are semi-pro and they only do the work that they really enjoy. Others are like my students who depend on their portraiture business to pay the bills. I think in a perfect world we’d all be doing what makes us happy, but c’est la vie, right? Maybe balance is key–balancing the bread and butter stuff with projects that make your heart happy. Thanks for the insight and sharing.
A wedding photographer in Singapore once told that his enjoyment in photography has ceased since the day he became professional.
By the way, I enjoy reading your blog, Aloha.
Hi Ronnie, Thanks for commenting. Maybe the wedding photog in SG chose the wrong genre to go into? I think it depends on what you have to do to keep your fire for photography going. I think personal projects really work. What do you think?
Lovina, I guess the SG photographer strives too much and fixated more on the future instead of the present moment, the “Here&Now”… He worries about what the clients would think, bills to pay, and million other things in the future…
Yes, I think so too that personal projects would really work.
Hi Ronnie,
When you’re trying to make a living, pay bills, etc it’s hard to slow down and just shoot for yourself. But it’s definitely worth it to figure out how to give those personal projects some time. Time that will be invested in the care of your artistic soul.