Being endlessly positive is hard.
In anything. In parenting. In love. In friendship. In work. Looking at our working life and saying "It's AWESOME!" all the time is nearly impossible....not to mention not realistic. Nothing is awesome all of the time.
Except for things like, I dunno, ska music or delicious Italian food. That's awesome all of the time.
But I'm getting off track.
I think when you're a professional, full-time photographer...the majority of your job is convincing yourself (and others) that you're "okay".
Maybe it would be better if we were just HONEST, for once....and took that honesty and made what we could of it.
These are my bitter truths. Yours may be different. But, after 8 years of full-time camera-slinging, I've learned a little. I, by no means, know it all....but here's some conclusions I've come to.
Feel free to comment and add your own :)
1. There are too many of us.
You're going to hear all the time "there's enough work for everyone" but that's just bad math and bad business. There's never enough work for EVERYONE. That's not the way the free market works. The work goes to those who succeed in persuading the market to go to them. Those who don't persuade the market or attract their "tribe", as Seth Godin has taught, will fail. Their studios will close. That's business. That's capitalism.
Right now, in the Wisconsin Photographers Facebook group, there are over 7000 people. SEVEN. THOUSAND.
Yes, there are too many of us. The supply has far overtaken the demand. It's not "negative thinking" to admit to that. It's just simple numbers. Small towns don't need 20 "professional photographers"....there's not that much demand for those type of numbers.
2. You can still make a living doing this, but you better "werk".
This does not mean that no one is making it as a full time photographer. I've been full time for 8 years....and managed to successfully support my family.
Easily? No. But, we haven't lost our house yet. So, there's that. Silver lining. It CAN be done....still. For how much longer? Who knows.
What the truth is, this job looks a lot different to people who are supporting their families as the breadwinner than it does to someone who doesn't have that hanging over their head. That's true for most jobs. No one really talks about that. They want to hear about the travel, the beauty, the "cool", the fat cash. They don't want to hear that it's slow as molasses in January and sometimes I'm one "we went with someone else" email away from standing on a street corner with a "Will Shoot for Food" sign.
3. Gear matters.
People will tell you that a "real" photographer can take a disposable camera and make incredible art.
People can be a bit thick. Let's face it, the majority of us are not slaving away in a darkroom, mixing chemicals and creating amazing art. The majority of us have never been IN a darkroom.
If you can afford a top of the line $6000 camera body, your pictures are probably going to be better than the person who can only afford a used, say, D40 with a kit lens.
4. Being "cool" matters.
This is a simple marketing reality, so there's no use in bellyaching about it. "Cool" brands succeed, lame brands do not. They end up on clearance racks at Dollar General.
But, if you want to insist your WORK is all that matters....and that creating better work will lead you to succeed over the cool chick with the great wardrobe and the adorably "twee" quips.....yeah, no. Cool chick (or cool guy's) work can easily be mediocre or even forgettable. It can look EXACTLY like everyone else's work. Because their work really doesn't matter as much as the persona. People are going to pay cool chick $8000 to shoot their wedding because of who she is, not because her work is something especially...well...special.
There are those rare times when you can be a complete humorless, personality devoid jerk....but your work is absolutely incredible so people will hire you. However, you...my boring friend...are the exception.
It's something I've struggled with since starting. I didn't realize the overwhelming emphasis on "cool" until I started paying attention to social media and realized that my "mom wardrobe" and my affinity for geek culture probably wasn't going to cut it on the photographer circuit. I probably needed my husband to grow a beard or something.
I was never cool in school. Right Ben Folds?
I'm not cool now either.
5. Very few clients TRULY care about the technical aspect of the work.
This is not to cut on the clients. Our clients are not photographers. We know that. Deep down, we GET that. They want pretty pictures. They want a snap of their kid smiling. They don't care HOW we go about doing that OR if it was done correctly. The majority don't care about white balance or f/stops.
But, I have to tell you, we die a little inside when we get a perfectly lit, sharp-as-a-tack, beautifully composed image.....we post it....and crickets. A like or two. Then we see some out-of-focus, muddy garbage get 1000 likes and a bunch of shares. There's no science to this. Seriously.....it's about emotion. Sometimes it simply comes down to the subject of the crap picture has more friends that the subject of your picture. They're maybe more apt to "like" things. The shooter is "cooler" than you. Marketing!
But, we sit at our computers and we say "I don't get it. I did everything right".
6. Most of us care....a LOT....to a detrimental degree.
Even after 8 years, I'm sometimes going to get that dreaded email: "I'm disappointed"
If someone tells you they have never had a disappointed or unhappy client, they are lying liars from Liar Town. It's bound to happen. We are working with a myriad of personalities with a myriad of issues....we sometimes have an "off" day.....we are human.
Whenever I have a client who isn't 100% over-the-moon about their images, it HURTS. Bad. I stress over it ALL. DAY. LONG. What could I have done better? What can I do to HELP the situation. How can I fix it.
Is this going to destroy my business?
Yeah.
The silver lining here? The fact that I (and others) still care THIS MUCH means I truly care about my clients and their happiness. I would start to worry if I got to the point of "Whatever....they don't get my ART" because that's when I need to quit.
That leads me to.....
7. It's not really about art.
Let's be honest with ourselves for a moment. Most of us aren't really making heart-stopping art. Most of the time we are too worried about fulfilling our contractual obligations or churning out what Pinterest-loving clients expect from us. We are in customer service. It's ALL about what the client wants and how we can deliver that to them.
When we DO get a chance to be creative....a lot of us come up with some pretty incredible stuff.
But the 9-5 stuff? That's the bread and butter. As much as we'd like to think we are "artists"....we are probably, most days, closer to assembly line workers. There's NOTHING WRONG WITH THIS....as it's how we feed our kids and pay our mortgage.
But striving to portray ourselves as deep-thinking artists online....it's not always authentic.
There are exceptions to this, of course. There are people out there who can live out of an camper van making wet-plate prints of their hipster friends holding plants and make six figures.
99.9% of us are not those people.
8. Facebook has created a monster.
At one point, you needed a website....a strong presence on the bridal show circuit....or a stellar level of customer service to make it in the industry.
Now, you need a Facebook page....and BAM....you're "in business".
You would not believe the bitching and moaning about this. And I'm going to put a hand to the sky and admit that I have taken part in the rabble rabble. Because it's annoying. But, it's the nature of the beast. We ALL jumped on the Facebook/Instagram/Twitter train and we beat the hell out of it. Poor, poor dead horse.
Now it's a SUPER noisy room with everyone yelling their pitch at one another and you're stuck in the corner trying to be heard above the din.
It's hard, dude. It's really hard. You post something....a picture you're proud of. A promotion. Anything....and you get engagement at about 200 people.
There are workshops out the ying yang out there to teach you how to be heard. But if thousands are taking these workshops and employing the same techniques....isn't it still noise?
9. This stuff's expensive.
