It’s interesting the conversations that I get into revolving around photography. Something I’ve thought about lately that has been reoccurring is the idea of focusing, and I’m not talking about the camera’s focus. I’m talking about focusing on one business to become successful at that. Creating a successful business that one can live a sufficient lifestyle on takes a lot of time. In my post about the 10,000 rule, we talked about how it roughly takes 10,000 hours to start to hit your tipping point in what you are practicing. Now, getting more specific, of those 10,000, where are they being focused?
There are many different genres of photography such as commercial advertising, editorial, fashion, model testing, journalism, weddings/portraits, etc. If you want to have a successful business then you must focus on one of them. If we’re talking 10,000 hours to hit your tipping point, think about how long it will take you if you are splitting your time. Not only splitting your time between another job, a spouse, a family, etc. but splitting your concentration between different genres of photography. I talked about transitions, passions, and sacrifices in just getting into photography and this goes even deeper.
There are so many day to day business things to do that pertain to each business, from developing your work within that specific genre, to marketing, building a network, building your name, crafting a solid business structure, accounting, PR, etc. that one won’t have the time to run more than one business. Something is always going to be sacrificed. Developing a business to it’s full scale requires your full attention.
Lets take my story for example. My goal has always been to shoot lifestyle advertising work, and that goal developed after a year or so of shooting to figure out what I wanted to ultimately do. During my beginnings, I started shot a few weddings, a few model tests, and whatever I could to make money clicking a camera, while developing my lifestyle work. By focusing on advertising, I never had the time to put my full attention into any of the other genres and make them successful. I was just taking what came in the door, and eventually I had to leave them behind. Sometimes you have to juggle smaller things to pay the bills while you’re running for your vision.
My point: Focus your time(10,000 hours) specifically in developing your work and business for one genre to be more successful.
Focusing is one of the hurdles when starting out, like you said. In the end, I think it helps to experiment a bit to find the right fit and style, but once a strong pattern is developed that aligns the goal, it’s important to buckle down and learn to say no to the other things.
Noticed your site has been cleaned up and no longer has the assortment of categories. Is that something (the editing) that your agent helped with?
Man. Focus is hard. I am still trying to figure out what I am passionate about shooting. I love people, so I narrowed it down to that, but from there everything else has been up for grabs. Hopefully I can find my niche and get in my 10G’s.
hey, I really needed to hear that. I know that my two favorite things to shoot are weddings/portraits. But as one starting out and is still in their first year, I am still haveing to hold a second job too. I understand now that Focus is extremely important but do you have any tips for one in their first year? Thanks for the inspiration brotha.
chantz
This has been one of the harder things for me to figure out because my wife and I have already somewhat established ourselves as Wedding/Portrait photographers but at the same time, I see your Lifestyle Ad work as well as others and I love it just as much. I know now I can’t do both so instead, I’m really trying to shoot all our Weddings/Portrait sessions with a “lifestyle” approach. Haven’t quite figured it all out yet but I guess it’s all part of my 10gs.
This is something that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately.. It’s really nice to see your opinion on it. I see a lot of assistants struggling with this too, and it seems like the most successful ones are those who decide to come to a full stop on their assisting work and throw themselves 100 percent into shooting.
I’d be interested to hear how the transition was for you, Nick. How did you know when it was time to start turning down those jobs that weren’t your main passion, even if they were good money?
After reading this post, it seems like you are stating the obvious… but sometimes you need to hear it from someone else for it to really click.
It just clicked for me. Thanks
@terencepatrick Yeah, my agent helped me clean up the site and lose the categories. I think it’s definitely helped.
@chantz The key to focus is not losing site of your goals and vision, then doing everything you can to get there. But beware, it’s a journey to get there and it’s one that spans a few years. So you gotta push through it.
@jacob Well, that all depends on how much it costs you to live. When you feel like you have enough money to pay for your overhead and lifestyle then you can start turning jobs down that aren’t creatively what you want but pay well. Truthfully, I would believe that 90% of the jobs you end up shooting won’t completely fill you creatively, but that’s why you take the bigger jobs, so you can put your time and money into what you’re passionate about. Sometimes you gotta suck it up and do jobs you don’t love to fund the work you are really passionate about. Just make sure you are making time to actually do that. Afterall, you’re getting paid to click a camera. Sure beats making coffee. Stay tuned for a post to come. I still do jobs, I’m not 100% passionate about, but I’m just making sure I get paid more per click so I have more time to allocate to other ventures.