Maybe it is Time to Reconnect
Trying to decide how to change your business? Thinking about how to find new clients and reach into new markets? Stop for a minute. Walk over to your book shelf, dust off your books and look at the pictures that you love. Go online and look at pictures from contemporary photographers that you have never hear of. Look at imagery that you don’t really like or understand. Go to a local museum, or sit with a few friends and talk about creating and not about making images for clients.
Maybe the way to revitalize your business is not with one more e-mail, phone call, or mailer, maybe it is time to let your work grow and change a little. Maybe it is time to put the heart, love and passion back into your work that brought you to this profession in the first place. Take some new pictures, make some mistakes, shoot things that are not perfectly resolved, fail, and find new paths within that failure. Think about why you chose this profession, and why you still need to do it beyond the need to make a living. Remember your desire to create and let it run free again, but let it happen in a way that you have not done before.
Over time you may be surprised at the reaction you receive when people begin to see your new images in addition to your current work. How people will react to imagery that feels more personal and connected. More important, how your clients react to a photographer who is positive and passionate about his or her work in all the best ways. We all love to work with someone who is caring and creative.
Maybe this is the time to change your business, but maybe that change needs to start inside of you instead of out in the world. Maybe it is time to remember why we do this, create some images for yourself, and challenge your friends to so the same.
2 Responses to 'Maybe it is Time to Reconnect'
Subscribe to comments with RSS or TrackBack to 'Maybe it is Time to Reconnect'.
I’ve been drawing a lot of photo inspiration from the 3D Computer Graphics community lately. http://www.cgsociety.org/ In fact, talented artists in just about any media tend to spark new things in me all the time.
Great advice, Thomas.
I had a great experience a couple of months ago when I attended a local high school open house (we have a son who is graduating, and a daughter who is just starting). There were a hand full of teachers who made short presentations to the parents and prospective students.
Two in particular stood out. One had been teaching for about 20 years, and another for six or seven, but both had such a passion and a love for what they were doing that they just shined far above the others in the room. They talked about their approaches to working with the students, and how they weaved their own outside passions into their work as teachers.
Having seen our share of good and bad teachers for our kids over the years, my wife and I would have quickly chosen either of these two as a teacher for our daughter during her coming high school years.
It made me think about the parallels in the business of photography, and how much more any of us would stand out to potential clients if we exuded similar passion about our work, rather than just presenting ourselves as yet another capable photographer doing the same old job for our clients year after year.
We each need to find — and keep — that spark alive for ourselves. Shifting gears as time passes is one way to help this happen.
Scott Highton