Whenever you attend an event, you will find several people with cameras. It seems like everyone took up photography overnight. Having phones that give you great quality photos is part of the reason for this. You see how fun photography is and decide to venture into it as a business.
The professional photography industry can be a scary place for anew photographer trying to earn a living. Competition is fierce, there’s a lot of book keeping involved and sometimes interacting with people is not a pleasurable experience. You may ask yourself “why am I doing this?” on mor than one occasson.
But if you have a deep passion fot the craft, you won’t give up. All you need is a few tips to help you stay the course and do what you ove.
Here are some tips that will help you be a great photographer while making your business a success.
1. Have passion and LOVE what you do.
It goes without saying that you should love what you do. There’s nothing worse than hating your job. You may see someone taking photos and think it’s cool and so easy. The reality is that it takes a lot of hard work and long hours on the clock are a regular occurrence. If you want to venture down this road, the only way it will be a success is if you absolutely love what you do.
Love what you do and the clients will love working with you. If you enjoy taking photos of them, they will be more likely to ask for your work, something that will bring you profits in the long run..
2. Know how to shoot and practice if you don’t.
A successful professional photographer knows his or her equipment in and out and knows how to shoot in every lighting situation. A good pro can walk into a room, notice problems with the setting and work around it to still produce great quality photographs. Getting to be this way is all about practice. Have as many shoots as possible to perfect your skills. It’s the only way to stay at the top of your game.
3. Focus on what you know.
Know your strengths and weaknesses. Work mostly with clients where you can do it according to your strengths. Spend your free time improving on your weaknesses. Once you know what you can do and how well you can do it, you can make that your niche. When most of your work is based on you strong points, your business is bound to be a success
4. Differentiate yourself.
Photography Is a highly-competitive field. To succeed, you have to stand out, but in a good way. Find ways to differentiate yourself from the rest by having a unique style. Think outside the box and don’t follow what other photographers have done. Bring your own ideas to a shoot and make them work for you.
5. Have a compelling website
One way of ensuring you get constant business as a photographer is to display your work. Having shows, is quite expensive, so the next best thing is to open a website.
Maintaining a fast, HTML-based website wit in your home-page or portfolio, choose the best 5010 images. Make it something that will show how great your work is and prompt people to want to call you up. People will judge you based on what you have on the website. Make sure that everything is perfect and represents your brand of photography.
6. Learn to tell the story
When at an event, learn to capture the key moments of the gig while still keeping an eye out for anyithng juicy that you can get from there.
Think of the Obama photos at Manela’s memeorial. The photographer managed to get a story out of it. Just a few seconds and a story on “how to keep your man from straying” was making rounds on the internet.
As a professional, you should be able to spot such small details form a far and capture them. Be able to tell a deeper story of what is going on around you
7. Know business as much as you know photography
Most photography businesses fail simply because the person running them has no knowledge on how to run a business. Having good photography sense is not enough to run a business. You also need to have as much business sense as well.
Take a few marketing courses or business classes. Learn the essentials to make your business a success. As much as it all depends on you photography skills, if you don’t know how to make a business a success, it won’t work.
At the end of the day, photography is a business just like any other. Know how to run it, have fun and be unique in what you do. If you enjoy it and put all your efforts into it, you should get some great results from it. Don’t be discouraged by stories of failed businesses. Find out what they did wring and follow these tips. They just might help you out at some point.