I worked at a music video shoot last week and noticed something really interesting about the artist. While in hair & makeup, she was trying to center herself and focus inward before performing. She was listening to music that inspired her even though the music she was listening to wasn’t anything like her own personal style.
You know what us photographers have a tendency to do? Question our personal style when we see the work of photographers we admire. And then beat ourselves up because our work doesn’t look like theirs. Haven’t you ever sat down at your computer to gain a bit of inspiration before shooting and, instead of gleaning the essence of the photography, you focus on the style?
The singer from the music video didn’t change her style or voice or the way she moved because of the music that inspired her. And I don’t know what she was actually getting from it, but watching the process from afar was a beautiful experience.
I’ve been struggling since day one to establish my own personal style. I’ve been inspired by so many photographers over these years and each time I find a new one who makes my heart leap, I sink down in my chair and groan and think “grrrrreat. Now I have to change again.” This wishy-washyness has made it really difficult to find paying sessions and steady work because, although they might have admired all the work on my website, potential clients couldn’t really tell what they were actually going to get if they hired me. There were so many styles to wade through that I think I became a photographer people would always admire, but never hire.
I tried some things to escape the reality that I had to buckle down and sort myself out. One of the things was a page on my site called ‘Your Options’ to show different styles I could produce for clients. I’d never seen a successful photographer do that before and you know why? Because it doesn’t work.
So one evening after opening my studio, I was crying allover my keyboard after editing a disaster family session shot in my too-small-for-families studio on a backdrop I hadn’t yet tested. I cried to my husband that I “haaaate (sniffle) shooting (hyperventilating) families!!!!!” At that moment, my close friend and assistant, Toyha, messaged me on Facebook and said “you have to see this photographer”. At first, I cried some more because the last thing I wanted to see when I was ready to throw in the towel was someone doing it better.
I kept going back to that website and found that the photographer, Skye Hardwick, had a blog for photographers with a workbook and posing guide. I bought them both and they put me back on center, gave me direction, inspiration and freedom to be ME and not anyone else. In her bio, Skye makes it very clear that she’s not the photographer for everyone. She only photographs children and she largely photographs them alone which is exactly what I want to do.
I saw a status from a fellow photographer on Facebook that said something like “what do you photograph when you’re doing it just for you?” And Skye answered, “Even my paid work is for me.” (clearly, I’m stalking the woman).
Finding her website and soaking in all of the materials she had to offer made me certain of the things I needed to do to change the face of Glacier Cake:
- Stop taking photos just to pay the bills.
- Stop shooting things that aren’t in my heart to shoot.
- Decide once and for all on my style. Admire others, yes…copy them? No way.
- Pose more. I bought the posing guide and if you are wondering why you’d pay for that instead of just ripping out magazine pages, just know this: there’s a big difference. Back when I was haphazard, I took pride in being the anti-posed photographer. And from the posing guide and workshop workbook, I learned that you can pose without being static and looking like posing. You can use poses as a foundation to build on for beautiful, calculated and precise portraits that look exactly how you wanted them to look.
- Charge more and work less
The realizations above caused a huge dilemma for me. The best work I’ve ever produced didn’t fit this mould. For example, the maternity session that blew my mind and made me really truly believe in myself as an artist. I sat before my website, watching the slideshow roll before me and felt the pain of knowing that those images which formed me as an artist just had to go. And then I began to cry. I knew that this moment for me was do or die. All or nothing. Change what I was doing or give up.
And like with anything that needs doing, I buckled down and did it. I spent two entire nights building a new website for Glacier Cake which no longer would be on the amateurish blog platform, but an expensive flash one. I did away with the stark, white branding and warmed things up to match the feeling I wanted to evoke with my work. And -hardest of all- I made a folder on my computer and only dropped the images in that I felt were pure me and nothing else. The ones that still move me. And, moreover, the ones that fit my newly tailored business strategy.
I’m very lucky that before this all happened to me, I had decided to separate my two businesses. I created Glacier Cake for doing photography and kept Elizabeth Halford Photography a blog for empowering other photographers so I can still share other stuff here with you and keep Glacier Cake as purely business.
I won’t stop shooting the things I love just because they don’t fit the Glacier Cake mould. I still love shooting couples and maternity and I will gather these opportunities from among my closer circle of friends and acquaintances. But as for Glacier Cake, it’s all about kids. My style is defined and clear and clients will know exactly what they’re going to get.
Some tips for maintaining and providing a consistent product:
- Use the same locations over and over
- Remain consistent in your editing style
- Be very calculated with what you display on your website. Don’t roll too many photos in your galleries. Just enough to show what you do. You don’t have to keep adding new stuff. Show the best of the best and nothing less.
- Don’t start offering yourself as a professional until you are getting consistent results in your work. You can’t be a luck or haphazard shooting-spree photographer and produce the results that your clients expect.
- Don’t publicly display the kind of work your business isn’t built on. I would share things here on this blog that I wouldn’t share on Glacier Cake because I don’t want to confuse my clients about what I offer. Find an outlet for sharing your other work and getting the satisfaction of going public with your pride and joy shots. For me, Clickin Moms has been a great community for this.
Other things I’ve decided are helpful:
- Stop looking at other photographers for inspiration more than you look at yourself. Before a session, I’m now looking at a folder of MY best work.
- Listen to more music. On my way to a session, I listen to music that gets me in ‘the zone’ for my session. For country locations, I love listening to Priscilla Ahn, Mumford and Sons or Norah Jones. For urban and edgy, I get in the zone with Pink or the Slumdog Millionaire soundtrack. And I now listen to music while I edit more than ever before.
I’ve been meaning to write this post for such a long time and I feel so relieved and cleansed now that I have. I feel that sharing my decisions with you all has actually made it even more final than when I made all those changes in the first place!
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