What's the point of being a photographer?
“That’s the point of being an artist, right? You feel something and you have to get it out.” - T-Boz, of the band TLC, as interviewed by James Altucher
Some folks I visit with here on PTP are money-first: they got into professional photography to make money with their cameras.
But for the vast majority, there's something inside that burns like embers, just waiting on a little air and fuel to ignite.
That deep internal fire - creativity, expression, vision, fulfillment - is what makes us artists. Like T-Boz says - you feel something and you have to get it out. We photographers do this with our cameras, lenses, and Photoshop.
What's the point of being a professional photographer?
Money is good.
Creativity and service are better.
Fulfillment is best.
The resistance hits us when the art we make doesn't come out the way we hoped, and our phone doesn't ring with new clients. It's a long, confusing, windy road from where we are today to the art and business we dream of making. And every time we hit an obstacle - unhappy client, panicky photo shoot, art well below our expectation - it's like a raincloud forms and douses that fire burning inside.
"Why can't I figure this out?"
"I shoot and I shoot, but I don't feel like I'm getting any better."
"I will never be as good as I dream of being."
Do you feel like you're running on steam right now? Or is your internal fire raging, and you just need help directing that powerful energy?
Drop me an e-mail today and I'll help you figure out what's next.
- James Michael
"I feel guilty making the same photos for different clients..."
PTP reader Aimee writes:
---
Hey there - I finally had a light bulb go off (and it's 'easier' to ask here than in one of the thousands of social media platforms where I would be subject to potentially hundreds of different opinions...): I think I overthink changing things up with every single shoot.
I try so hard to find different, unique spots and different poses but maybe that's not even necessary? Sadly to the point where it causes a lot of undue stress. Do I really need two dozen 'go-to' spots and countless different poses to pick from?
---
I know exactly how Aimee feels - I've felt guilty about repeating the same photo with different clients, especially at the same location. Not very creative of me!
But that said...
There's a fence line at the City Park in Bandera, Texas, and I have shot hundreds of the exact same photo on that fence line. Kids, seniors, families, couples.
Not only has no one never complained...I've had many ask me, "I love this photo you made with the Smith family. Can we shoot there, too?"
It's the inside ball thing...
Us photographers cus and spit and holler about a thousand topics that mean absolutely nothing to our clients.
At least when you're early-stage, consistency beats creativity. Far more important that I can consistently reproduce one, three, ten specific shots with any client, than to be 'wildly creative' and fresh with every single client. If I've got an hour with a client, I'll spend 45 minutes getting my must-have shots, then 15 minutes just freestyling and having fun.
Aimee told me this advice was exactly what she needed to hear.
"I only wish I would have saved myself a few extra gray hairs and realized this much sooner in this journey... I feel like I was nearly killing myself with trying to be fresh every - single - time. Those days are officially over!"
What internal stories are holding you back from growing your art and business with peace and grace?
E-mail me today and let me know.
- James Michael
P.S. If you don't already subscribe to my newsletter, drop me an e-mail and let me know you'd like to join. It's been free since I started PTP in 2009, and I respond to every single e-mail. Don't hesitate to reach out and let me help you get unstuck. Your art and business are important, and bring blessings to your family and community. It's my honor to help.
How to charge for your photography without confidence
Shush and smile.
This is how you charge for your photography without confidence.
The Holy Grail for many startup photographers is "confidently getting paid what you're worth." This is a noble cause, one you definitely work toward in the Photographer's Journey, but there's a chicken-egg conundrum here - how do you feel confident about something you've never done?
The transition from free 'portfolio-builder' shoots to paid shoots is a HUGE one. It takes so much bravery, and the internal battle rages:
"How much do I charge? I don't feel like my art is worth anything."
"Why would anyone pay for my art? I'm going to look foolish for asking."
"Every time I try to tell people my prices, I chicken out, and immediately start apologizing and discounting."
I had a great conversation with PTP reader Sherry yesterday. In my last newsletter e-mail, "You have what you need to get started as a pro photographer," I asked as always for readers to Hit Reply and let me know what was holding them back.
Her response?
One word:
"Confidence."
This led to a great exchange about pricing, clarity, self-worth, and how to overcome those deep-seated demons that tell you "you're not worthy."
Here's a two-part solution:
Step 1: Shush.
Step 2: Smile.
These are the two steps you take immediately after sharing your pricing with a potential client.
"I charge no session fee and have no minimum order - you just buy what you love. Prints and files start at just $10, and my average client invests around $100, but again there's no minimum."
And then you SHUSH, and SMILE.
EVEN THOUGH your gut is clenching, you can't find air, sweat is forming on your brow, and your tongue is RACING to wag and begin apologizing and discounting and offering your art, heart, and soul up for free.
Just SHUSH, and SMILE.
(Pro-tip: When you do next speak, the only thing you say is, "Would this Saturday or Sunday be a better day to set up a shoot together?" ... then shush, and smile!)
Let me challenge you to test this this month. If you're Post-Launch in the Photographer's Journey, but you're struggling to say your pricing out loud to potential clients and stand by it, just test this method for 30 days. Every time you have the chance to share your pricing, do so then SHUSH and SMILE. Commit to letting the world explode into a million pieces around you. May velociraptors gnaw at your elbows before you say another single world. But whatever you do, SHUSH and SMILE.
You'll be amazed at how many of your unspoken fears of judgment and rejection don't come to pass.
What's the biggest challenge holding you back today? E-mail me today.
- James Michael
How to get a photography mentor who will change the course of your career
When I launched Outlaw Photography in 1999, the online photography forums were a wild and dangerous place. The digital revolution had just begun, and established photographers were out for blood - the blood of the newbies, the unwashed masses, the "shoot and burners."
I got cussed out, discouraged, run off, and hated on.
There are a lot more photographers out there today willing to help (99% "for a price...").
But still today, most established photographers aren’t going to mentor you.
That’s okay - they’re busy, like most folks, for a thousand reasons. Add on the opportunity for them to a) see you as competition, b) hate your guts (unreasonably) for ruining the industry, and c) probably give you terrible advice that does more to hurt your success than encourage it, and truly - it’s okay if they don’t respond.
[I'll never forget the one PPA-approved photoguru whose entire business model was doing whatever it took to ensure no client left the sales session with money left for groceries. I all but wretched.]
But the one?
That one photographer who, with just a few wise words, could change your life?
They're worth fighting for.
So we’ll play a volume game. If you have to reach out to 250 photographers, 80 respond, 10 respond more than once, to get to one photographer who will really take an interest in your success, and become a key part of it...would you do it?
If so, here’s Ramit Sethi’s advice [not an affiliate link] for that first-touch e-mail to a potential mentor:
“Hey James, I love your article about XYZ.
I noticed you said I should XYZ in that article, and so I tried it. I’m stuck due to XYZ. So I’ve come up with 3 possible routes:
Option 1
Option 2
Option 3
Which do you think I should do?”
The topic can be your artistic technique, sales funnel, portfolio, whatever is your greatest immediate challenge - a place where you truly, after all your best and creative efforts, are stuck.
Whatever their response, DO IT - there’s nothing mentors hate worse than taking the time to invest in someone who never even attempts the advice.
Then, once you’ve done it, and really exhausted your efforts with it, e-mail a follow-up. Report back with your results. Research what your mentor photographer’s current project is (professional or personal), and make an offer to help them with it based on your unique skillset.
If you make homemade jerky as a hobby and your mentor is trying a slow-carb diet, offer to send a batch of your best. If you know a guy who’s a whiz with responsive web site design and your mentor’s site comes up all snickerdoodled on your iPhone, make the connection. If you’re a stay-at-home mom who has mastered math games for elementary-age kids, and your mentor has kids, show them a few of your favorites.
Is your biggest challenge today artistic or in business?
Have you exhausted every idea you can in solving that problem?
If so, identify as many photographers as you can from anywhere in the world whom you think could solve your problem. E-mail all of them. See who responds, what value you can give, and with whom you build the rapport needed for a real, mutually-beneficial mentorship relationship.
250 e-mails; 80 responses; 10 who go deeper; 1 who changes the course of your photography career for the rest of your life.
That's the challenge.
As in, yes - right now, or in your next time block, start collecting e-mail addresses and sending those e-mails. Reading this post won't change anything until you take action.
What’s the biggest challenge holding you back today? E-mail me at james@banderaoutlaw.com and let me know.
5-step process to get camera time with the clients you want
Here's a simple (not easy) 5-step process to get camera time with the clients you want:
(This applies more to business clients for commercial work, or buyers for editorial, landscape, or travel work, but is a great exercise for portrait photographers as well. Try this on local politicians, big wigs, and influencers.)
- 1. Make a list of potential clients (for free or paid work, either way).
- 2. Approach, show portfolio, make offer.
- 3. If yes, book it! If no, ask, "I want to work with you guys in the future. What can I do to be the perfect photographer for you? Better art? Better ideas?" Let them give you invaluable feedback on why they said no instead of yes, so you have real, specific goals you can work toward to make yourself more valuable to potential clients. (pro-tip: Keep asking "And what else?" until that feedback is exhausted.)
- 4. Tell them you'll follow up in six months. And then do it. Show your work; show how you listened and improved.
- 5. Repeat this process until you get to yes, or you get a no so definitive or outrageous that you can very comfortably write them off as someone you don't even want to work with. (Set this threshold pretty high...)
It takes some organization and calendar scheduling to work this process well, but boy does it get results.
Then once you feel you've got the experience you need (and you may never 'feel' that, but you can get yourself there intellectually) and you're ready to charge, you'll have contacts, portfolio, testimonials, a network, repeat clients, referrals, everything you need for a successful launch.
Is this useful to you? This is exactly the kind of content I send out to my e-mail subscribers every week for free. You can subscribe in the top-right corner of any page on this site, or just drop me an e-mail.
What's the biggest challenge holding you back today? E-mail me at james@banderaoutlaw.com and let me know.
- James Michael
P.S. Know that if you're the type to wait for the clients to come to you, the photographer across town who deploys this process is going to be taking food off your dinner plate within 6-18 months. If you have social anxiety that's a different ballgame (e-mail me and let's talk about your unique photography sales funnel), but if you're just being lazy or uppity about hustling for clients and feedback, tough love: GOYAKOD.
The one thing you have to do to be a professional photographer
Emphatic doesn't mean honest.
And passion doesn't mean truth.
What almost anyone tells you you need to... have to... must do... is partisanship.
"You need to get a better camera or you're not a real professional!"
"You have to be on the top social media venues multiple times every day!"
"You must do these three things [read: buy my training] or you'll never be successful!"
Here's your permission to let go of all that horsesh*t; the expectations, the pressure, the discouragement.
You have one requirement as a professional photographer:
Be honest.
This translates to every corner of your business:
- Don't put art in your portfolio you can't create with reasonable consistency.
- Don't not perform due diligence to get legal when you start charging.
- Don't make promises you can't keep.
I know how scary it is to just...be honest. As a startup photographer, there's so much fear that people will reject you if you don't puff up your art and abilities and presence to look bigger, better than you feel you are. These are the same fears we had as teenagers trying to act smarter, stronger, prettier, and more confident than we really felt.
Separate yourself from those masks and expectations.
Let your unique, worthy, true light shine.
And let your community see the reality of you and your art, so those who are in alignment with you today - and this will change with time and growth - can choose to be blessed by your work, today.
This is the secret to peace as a professional photographer.
NEXT STEPS
- BRAINSTORM SESSION: Get out your pen and paper. Make a list of 10 ways you're holding yourself back from making art and asking people in your community to do business with you. File this away in your Brainstorms folder.
- SUBSCRIBE TODAY: Book yourself solid shooting clients you love for pay you're worth. Don't miss out on my best stories and ideas: subscribe to my e-mail newsletter today at the top-right of any page of this site.
- DO THIS NOW: What's the biggest challenge holding you back? E-mail me at james@banderaoutlaw.com. I read everything, and I look forward to helping you make a breakthrough today.
What's your (distraction) drug of choice?
“And so I began to peer into the darkness, that plunging sense of deep inadequacy. It’s always been there. Frankly, I didn’t know other people didn’t have it. I thought that at the center of all of us was black liquid self-loathing, and that’s why we did everything we did - that’s why some people become workaholics and some people eat and some people drink and some people have sex with strangers To avoid that dark sludge of self-loathing at the center of all of us.” - Shauna Niequist, Present Over Perfect
What’s your drug of choice?
I spent two evenings in fellowship with drug addicts, alcoholics, and criminals at a halfway house in Ingram, Texas. Every introduction ended the same way:
“What’s your drug of choice?”
I felt like the most sane, smart, responsible person in the room until my new friends started talking about how they experienced their addictions.
“The craving became so strong I couldn’t think of anything else. I couldn’t work, I couldn’t function, until I satisfied that craving.”
“I’d suddenly realize, like I just woke up from a dream, that I’d been on a three-day binge. I didn’t even remember the first hit.”
“I do good for a while, but then old memories, old relations, old feelings come up and my first thought is to make the feelings go away as quickly as possible, and the only way I know how.”
...food.
Food is my addiction. I’m a hundred pounds overweight and have been since my early 20s when I injured my lower back. As my new friends talked about their addictions, I realized how I use food as self-medication: Bored? Eat. Upset? Eat. Happy? Eat.
Maybe you can relate.
When I read the above quote from Shauna Niequist, it struck me how many photographers I’ve visited with over the last 8 years who start with superficial questions like, “What should I name my business?” or “What camera and lens should I buy?”, and by the end of the conversation are asking, “What’s wrong with me?”
What’s wrong with me…
What a damning question, right? Convicted without trial. We’re our own worst judge, jury, and executioner.
Some (many?) of us working artists are addicted to the superficial. To busyness, to excuses, to feeling ignorant and unable.
Two important questions I’ll be working to answer this holiday season, and I invite you to try them on for size:
- What questions are you asking, what are you staying busy with, so you can avoid dealing with your more serious, central pain?
- Why are you scared and resistant to opening up your heart and healing that pain?
You aren’t holding back from launching your photography business, or taking that next step with your art or your life, because you don’t think your art is good enough, or your camera, or your web site.
You’re holding back because you don’t think YOU are good enough.
You don’t feel worthy of clients. You don’t feel worthy of their money. You don’t feel worthy of the success you dream of.
A hard truth: your art, your business, your work is never going to be good enough until you learn and accept that YOU are good enough. Because a failure to take action toward your dream is almost always an emotional problem, not an intellectual one. You don’t lack knowledge, or ideas, or dreams. You lack confidence. You lack a feeling, a faith, of your worthiness.
If you think this message doesn’t apply to you, take 30 minutes of undistracted time to journal on the idea and play “What if?” What if what’s really holding you back is a lack of self worth? Why would that be? What feelings and thoughts do you have because of this? How is that lack of confidence stopping you from taking brave, tangible steps forward with your art and business?
A good therapist could take apart your heart and find the broken pieces, then give you the tools and blueprints you need to rebuild stronger than before. And you don’t have to have a mental illness to get a good therapist on your team. All of the successful people I know count coaches, therapists, pastors, counselors and other professionals as a vital part of their lives. But the odds of you seeking out a therapist because of this e-mail are one in a hundred.
So here are a few ways to start breaking and rebuilding yourself from the comfort of your own home:
- Journal nightly. Explore your feelings. List your accomplishments and failures in the day. Choose three words to live by, each with special meaning to you and your goals. Answer nightly, “How did I honor or fail in these goals today?” Take conscious account and control of your life.
- Start a morning routine that sets your mindset for the day. Meditate, read affirmations, visualize your goals and your habits to achieve them, exercise, read inspirational books, and journal your thoughts and feelings and intentions for the coming day. Even just a few minutes spent with each programs your heart and brain for the entire day.
- Listen to the voices in your head. Most people spend most of their day suffering negative internal dialog. The gremlins never shut up for some people, or in hard seasons of our life when we’re hurting or weak. Stop letting these voices run as constant background chatter and bring them to the front of your thoughts. Write them down. Share them with a friend. Recognize how violent and abusive these thoughts are, and how little connection they have to reality. Disempower the gremlins by shining a spotlight on them, to be seen as the mean, ugly, powerless little horsesh*ts that they are.
- If you’re an introvert like me, you spend a lot of your time “in your own head.” Start sharing your fears, your pain, your worries, the things you don’t yet understand about yourself and how you hold yourself back, with close friends, or a good group of people like Live Your Legend members. Be a little more honest, open, and vulnerable. Let your friends help - it’s a blessing to them to be there for you.
- Practice self care. The little things: slow down, say no, build margin into your life, let yourself sleep, let yourself rest and recover, take breaks, take walks, feed your body and brain healthier food, phone a friend, read, figure out what makes you happy and purposefully get more of that into your life.
We’re all addicted. We’re all broken. We’re all hurting, and scared.
And we all have the agency and opportunity to seek help or begin helping ourselves to heal.
Start today. Start with any small thing that helps.
Are you here for a reason?
Do you have a responsibility to do the best you can with this life?
Do you want your life to have purpose? A legacy?
“I used to believe, in the deepest way, that there was something irreparably wrong with me. And love was a lie. Now I’m beginning to see that love is the truth and the darkness is a lie… I can’t hear the voice of love when I’m hustling. All I can hear are my own feet pounding the pavement, and the sound of other runners about to overtake me, beat me… Most of my regrets center around being overwhelmed or stuck in my own head, worried and catastrophizing, endless loops of proving and shame, pushing and exhaustion.” - Shauna Niequist
No more regrets. Make a change.
NEXT STEPS
- BRAINSTORM SESSION: Get out your pen and paper. Play "What if?". What if there's a deeper reason behind your failure to launch? What's holding you back? Now...what's really holding you back? Go deep. If you don't believe it, pretend. See if some truth doesn't pour out in your words. File this away in your Brainstorms folder.
- SUBSCRIBE TODAY: Book yourself solid shooting clients you love for pay you're worth. Don't miss out on my best stories and ideas: subscribe to my e-mail newsletter today at the top-right of any page of this site.
- DO THIS NOW: What's the biggest challenge holding you back? E-mail me at james@banderaoutlaw.com. I read everything, and I look forward to helping you make a breakthrough today.