Professional Photography Career Guide - Self Motivation

Self-Motivation as a self-employed professional photographer

One of the most valuable characteristics for any self-employed person, is self-motivation. That’s the ability to get off your butt and do the things you need to do to succeed. As a professional photographer, you will find yourself with unoccupied time on your hands. If you use that time wisely, you will succeed. If you do not, you will fail. It’s that simple. The key work here is wisely. There are “useful” things that you could be doing, but they might not necessarily be the MOST useful activity you could be engaged in. You will need to recognize what’s most important and be able to prioritize among your activities. Sure, cleaning the floor is important, but it won’t bring in new work. And if you don’t have new work, no one will see the floor anyway.

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Down time

Probably the biggest factor I see that separates the successes from the failures is what the photographer does with his “down time”. If you’re not shooting a project, you need to be doing one of two things; marketing or portfolio development.

Portfolio development is basically practice. The more you practice, the better you get, just like in everything else. The big advantage with shooting for yourself verses shooting for your client, you get to push the envelope. And if you fail, nobody’s upset. If you succeed, then you’ve not only learned something, you now have an excuse to show people what you’re done. You’ll find that new images, weather from real shoots or test shoots, are extremely valuable as excuses to keep in touch with new, existing, or even potential clients.

If you’re not shooting in your down time, you should be spending that time in marketing efforts of some kind. If you have little interest in marketing, your business has little chance of making it for very long. What is marketing? Calling clients to say “hi”, sending emails of your new images, sending out postcards of you new images, updating your web page with your new images, is all marketing. Do you see how important new images are to your business? It’s the life’s blood. No new images, no excuse to market.

Off Time

The difference between “down time” and “off time”, is that “down time” is normal business hours when your not shooting with clients and “off time” is when your not supposed to be working, like evening and weekends. I find that I come up with some of my best ideas related to my business during “off time”. The shower is a great place to think about work and if I’m thinking, I’m usually not singing, and my wife & kids appreciate that. I find that if I can keep my subconscious thinking about work instead of other meaningless activities, my business flourishes.

Balance

Having said that… Business is much better if you have someone to share it with. If all you do and think about is work, then you’re making a really big mistake. No matter what, remember that you work to live and it shouldn’t be the other way around. It’s all about balance. Sometimes that balance leans one way or another for a while. Maybe there are times that work requires more attention that you normally would like to give it and maybe sometimes the wife and kids need your attention more. You have to have the ability to recognize what’s most important at the time and what’s most important in the long run. If you don’t you’ll either have a crappy business or a crappy marriage. It’s about balance.

Sacrifice

There will be times that require sacrifice. For example, my daughter recently had a Regional championship soccer tournament in Maine that I felt that I just had to miss. If anyone knows me, they know that missing that tournament was TRUE sacrifice for me. Just before the tournament, I was awarded a really big dollar project for a new client with a ton of potential. If I had turned down that project, it not only would have meant I’d have passed up thousands of dollars right then, I would given the client the opportunity to find some other photographer that they may have formed a lasting relationship with instead of me. I just couldn’t afford that. So, what did I do? Well, I missed the tournament. Actually, I missed some of the tournament. :+) I used some of that money I was making to fly up to Maine on the weekend and catch a game or two. I had to fly back and miss the semifinals (which we lost by one stinking goal, in double OT, to the team that eventually won the tournament and then advanced to, and won the national championship!!!!!), but it was better than nothing. It was about balance. (One stinking goal… If I would have been there we might of won. I am a good luck charm, ya know… :+))

Portfolio pieces

While we’re on the subject, I wanted to talk about portfolio pieces. I mentioned that new work was very important, Well, new Portfolio pieces are even better. Portfolio pieces are those pictures that you’ve take that you count among your very best pictures ever. The only thing better than a portfolio piece is a NEW portfolio piece. And if that portfolio piece is for a big-name client, and gives you a lot of exposure, then it’s even better. To be perfectly honest with you, portfolio pieces are more important than the paycheck from the project. If you know how to market properly, you can parley that image into a lot more money down the road. To me, portfolio pieces are a great motivator. And they will be to you too.

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