LOADS of food for thought since last week’s issue about the seemingly industry-wide problem of bookings being down. I’ve spoken to people with a quarter of their usual bookings, and I’ve spoken to people with twice the usual number of bookings and flying.
So whatever we all think, it’s not necessarily an industry problem.
This week I want to talk about the hardest thing to talk about and that’s this question:
Is your work good enough?
The reason it’s the hardest thing to talk about is that it’s quite obviously subjective. There is no right or wrong answer to this. So please – PLEASE – don’t come at me for anything I say, all I really want to do this week is get you thinking about this.
This particular issue means leaving your ego at the door.
Ok? Let’s go.
Last week I talked about the market itself. And I finished by saying with “the market” all you can do is be aware of it and reactive to it. You can’t ignore it but you can’t solve the market.
Today and the next 2 or 3 issues will be focused on the stuff we can do something about, starting today with: THE WORK.
It can be mega hard to accept this but it might be your work that’s letting you down in the quest for enquiries and bookings. So let’s break that down.
When I talk about “the work”, I think of it in these terms:
– The photos we take and how we take them (PHOTOGRAPHY)
– The post processing we do (EDITING)
– The photos we choose to show the world (CURATION)
– The way we show them to the world (PRESENTATION)
And yes, some of this crosses over into marketing which I’ll talk about next week.
So let’s start with the photos we take and how we take them. The PHOTOGRAPHY.
I’m sorry for activating your imposter syndrome here by the way.
I’m going to take you on a relevant tangent. Camera phones. They’re improving exponentially with every release. I personally don’t rate the quality of phone photography but you can bet on one thing, within a few years they’ll be incredible especially with the advances in AI. They will be able to do stuff we can’t even predict and my personal prediction is they’ll make the fact we use big expensive cameras and big expensive lenses almost irrelevant from a client perspective.
So that means our big differentiator of owning really good camera equipment and the resulting image quality, RAW capability yada yada… well those days are numbered.
So coming back from the tangent, that means our focus has to be on how we see the world and how we use the equipment we do have to turn that into something more than a phone will be capable of doing within a few short years.
Because of phones, the general appreciation of ‘photography’ has eroded. That will only continue. So your vision will be what sets you apart.
Average snapshots won’t cut it, and I’d argue they already don’t with a huge swathe of the market.
Clients need to see that we can do something they can’t.
Next in the work we produce is the post-production or EDITING.
Now, as usual I have some opinions here which are borderline controversial.
I know most photographers hate culling, and hate editing. I wouldn’t say I love them either, but I love the whole creative process of getting to a final image and that massively includes culling and editing for me.
I have watched with interest as companies like Imagen and Aftershoot have revolutionised the editing portion of our job. But I’ve never gone there.
Why?
Because if AI can do it for you, why should someone pay you for that? I’m just asking.
I think we’re going one of two ways with this…
AI is only going to improve. Things like Imagen and Aftershoot will soon be services available to our clients extremely cheaply. Clients will be able to upload RAW files and then pick an edit from a catalogue of options, batch it through and end up with the edited collection. So that means we might just get asked for RAW files. That means we can’t charge for all the time we say we spend editing, and then the respect for the editing process is also lost.
The other option is as photographers and editors we do more, not less. We put more effort in, not less. We craft something that is so unique for our couples, an AI program could never recreate the look, feel and quality of our final images.
I’ve watched the industry come under the spell of AI editing companies and it’s worried me and continues to worry me as it devalues the overall craft.
There’s a place for it absolutely – depending on your own life circumstances, how much time you have available to sit at your computer, and I know for many people sitting at the computer endlessly editing is mental wellbeing torture.
But it’s sold as a way to get the work done without having to do it yourself. And that worries me.
You also don’t learn much/anything about yourself or your work or how to edit if you’re just running it blindly through software.
Next up, and it’s a big one. Probably the most underrated of all: CURATION.
How do you choose, from the thousands of photos you deliver each year, which ones to put out into the world?
I have opinions.
There’s an old adage and you’ll hear it at every workshop and conference. Show what you want to shoot.
I used to agree. Well I still agree in a sense. I’ll explain.
What I want to shoot is 25 weddings a year. What I want to shoot at those 25 weddings are 500+ photos that my couples will absolutely adore. What I want to shoot within those 500+ photos are photos that will help me achieve 25 weddings a year.
The “show what you want to shoot” mantra is far too often promoted selfishly. Without dwelling on it because I don’t want to judge certain styles or approaches – remember who your client is. It’s not other photographers and weddings aren’t about us.
If your style is niche then your market is smaller. You will have to work hard to find where that market exists.
I don’t think you can make a strong business around impressing other photographers. I’ve tried. It didn’t work.
You can absolutely make a strong business around a niche style of photography if you pursue it unselfishly and with the total unwavering belief that there’s an actual market for it and in your curation you 100% go after it. And I mean 100%. When you’re niche, dilution is the marketing devil. More on that next week.
Finally, PRESENTATION.
So you’ve sorted the photography, the editing and the curation and you have this handful of photos you truly believe in, you truly feel represent who you are and what you want to create, and you truly feel are something that clients should see and book you to take…
What next?
You have to find somewhere to put them, and you have to decide how to show them off.
Yep, instagram and (maybe) blog posts.
But HOW do you present them? And why? Single images? Series? Slideshows? Hip hop reels? Capcut templates where people can see each image for about 0.000003 seconds?
Like it or not, weddings are romantic comedies for the most part. They are. When it comes to the presentation of your work you’re the director. Not all rom-coms are the same, and there’s still room to play and fit into different styles. Nancy Meyers (Father of the Bride) was a very different rom-com director to Judd Apatow (The 40 year old virgin). I know we’re all cinema obsessed people, but most weddings aren’t The Batman or Dune II.
Again with presentation, just as with curation, I think too many of us either follow what other photographers are doing or present our work in a way to impress our peers, or both, instead of thinking about our actual potential client audience.
In summary:
With the PHOTOGRAPHY work on your vision and ability to capture something that joe public with a phone can’t.
With EDITING, make it a product that is valuable and unique and not something software can do because then our clients will very soon just ask for RAWs and do it themselves.
With CURATION, remember who your audience is and show them your vision and ability to capture something that joe public can’t, edited in a way that software can’t easily replicate.
And with PRESENTATION, show your work in a way that is compelling to your potential future clients and forget about showing off to your peers. What photographers love is very different to what normal non-photographers love, on the whole.
As ever, these are only my opinions and what I’m thinking about in my own business. It’s not answers or solutions or anything. Think on it, ignore it, accept it, reject it, whatever.
Thanks for reading.
Adam
