still-life-4

I read all about “overnight success” and usually I just smile to myself. Of course I do not believe them, but that’s OK – they are always great entertainment.

I remember an interview with the band “Foreigner” where the gushing interviewer mentioned their meteoric rise to the top of the charts. “Yeah”, the band said, “it only took ten years of playing college venues to get that overnight success thing…”

And that is so true. Not only for arena bands and jazz orchestras, but for poets and photographers too.

Overnight is ten years.

Prepare for a lot of ups and downs in those ten years as well. A lot.

They are formative years, discovery years, learning the craft years.

Understanding marketing years.

You can rush them if you want.

No you can’t. I was lying to you just above. You can’t rush the process at all. You can work harder and speed it up a bit, but you ain’t gonna put ten years into a couple of months. Not gonna happen.

And look, I know photographers who have had some pretty big successes in shorter amounts of time, but it is rare – and it is usually discovered that they were banging around in the craft, or a similar discipline, for years before the camera purchase.

A friend of mine was a designer for 8 years before becoming a photographer. He did pretty well his fourth year out, and then struggled for a year or two before getting his feet back under him for a serious run at bigger gigs.

And remember, we aren’t really focused on moms with cameras or weekend wedding shooters here. We are talking to commercial and editorial shooters who work the B2B circuit. Budgets are scary in this arena.

And in order to get someone to entrust a budget of $50K on a photographer, that AD / CD needs to be really comfortable that something wonderful is going to come of it. Too damn much money for newbies who screw up.

You screw up, right?

I do… although I don’t on gigs. I screw up when I am testing ideas and shooting for concept. When I accept a gig, I KNOW I can do it and do it well.

Because I SCREWED UP ENOUGH TIMES TO LEARN NOT TO SCREW UP.

And that takes time and effort and a lot of blood, sweat and tears.

How long does it take to be a player in this business? Let’s look at a typical situation.

It takes a couple of years playing with photography before it becomes an obsession.

And that obsession takes you from clueless wannabee to a confident shooter with a day job. You may not even have a style yet, just a very high level of competency. And that may be enough to start a business.

So we are already in to it for about 4 years or so.

Now we quit the day job and get to making some money… and the jobs come from all over. Some industrial work from one client, editorial portraits from another, and a catalog or two help make the rent, buy the food and put a bit away for slower times. If we work hard, market hard, we can see those gigs increase. Of course this takes into effect that you are not screwing up and delivering top notch, A1, killer work. If not… well, it may not progress any further.

At some point a style starts developing. And that style begins to define a lot of what you do. You become known locally as someone who can really do a great job, and especially with the style you have worked so hard on.

Local brings regional… and regional brings national.

This can take three to four years IN BUSINESS… even longer in smaller markets.

And we now have 7 – 8 years before we are putting our stuff in front of national clients with national budgets. Our eight years of experience helps give them the warm and fuzzies about our capability to get the gig done, while also providing a solid base for why we are charging very high fees.

IF…

The work is consistently top drawer, the clients are consistently impressed and there is a plan in place to make something happen. Without a solid plan, it is simply luck, and unrepeatable. We need repeatable successes to help drive us forward.

And that my friends takes a plan.

Just like starting out when you first made the decision to become a commercial photographer took a plan, going from local to regional takes planning and more planning still to go from regional to national.

Strategy and implementation. Marketing and story definition… MAKING something of your work and business is not left to chance.

And sure, look… I know and you know someone who is really scoring big time on Model Mayhem, and knocking them dead in the headshots for actors market. Yep, fine… nothing wrong with that.

But that work will not lead to much of anything without a plan for how to market it into a viable client base.

I have seen many ‘glamour’ photographers with huge Model Mayhem and Facebook followers. I ask them one simple question…

“Where are there clients for this kind of work?”

Not that it is bad work, or carries any connotations other than what it is, tell me who is going to hire you to make photographs like this?

Answer is that there are few to none. Other models? Maybe, but there is no career there. Local ad agencies? No way… and showing this kind of work to an ad agency, local magazine, design shop or MarCom director is going to get you on the fast track to “never come back here again”.

It is not viable in most areas. Yeah, it’s fun, I get that.

But once again, I will remind you that doing stuff ‘for fun’ is not necessarily part of the plan – unless it is alongside the stuff you do for getting clients. And unless topless girls with hand-bras are all you are ever going to shoot, you will have to start creating images that are marketable.

NO, I am not saying shoot what you think THEY will want to see… NEVER do that.

But know your channels, and know your specific breakdowns within those channels and MAKE marketable work.

I am not a patient person, in fact I am impatient to a fault. But some things take what time they take, and so I live with what I call “Impatient Patience”.

Impatient patience means we work as hard as we can at doing what we want to do, and we expect the work will pay off in time. Impatiently working to create, but patiently knowing that it will not be an overnight success.

Worst case scenario, we DO have some unexpected early success. And that is great as long as we remember the words of the great Han Solo; “Don’t get cocky, kid.”

Keep on the fast track even if you cannot see the next turn… it is there. It is always there. It just takes as long to get there as it takes.

And never let yourself ask, “are we there yet?” With a good plan and some impatient patience you will know when you are there.

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