One-Year Portrait Photography Mentoring With Paul & Sarah Wilkinson

Twelve months, one-to-one, with both of us. The photography and the business, side by side, because you need both and almost nobody teaches them together. Most of what holds a photographer back isn’t technique. It’s the sense that you’re going round in circles. That you’re busy but not moving. That you can see, quite clearly, the pictures you want to be making and the business you want to be running, and you cannot work out what sits between here and there. I know this because I’ve been there, and because we’ve now sat with enough photographers to know how common it is. The good news is that it shifts. Not with a trick or a preset or a weekend that changes everything, because none of those exist. It shifts with two people knowing your work well enough to tell you the truth about it, and then checking in on you often enough that you actually do something about it. That is what this year is.

The Two Of Us

This is where our programme is different from most, and it’s worth being clear about it. I’ll handle the photography. Lighting, posing, expression, the craft of it, the eye. Twenty-odd years of making pictures and rather a lot of mistakes along the way. Sarah runs the business side, and she’s better at it than I am. She’s the reason this studio works. Pricing, sales, the client journey, the numbers, the systems, all the bits photographers tend to avoid until they’re in trouble. She’ll look at how you actually run things and tell you, kindly and precisely, where the money is leaking out. She’s on every single call, she coordinates the whole year, and for most of our mentees she turns out to be the one who changes things most. Photographers arrive wanting to fix their pictures. They usually leave having fixed their business, and finding that the pictures got better anyway once the pressure came off. You get both of us for the year. Not a course with a bit of business tacked on the end. Two people, every month.

Who It’s For

You’ve probably been at this a while. You may be earning from it already, or you may be about to make the jump. You’re good, and you know you’re good, and you’re also quietly frustrated, which is usually the sign of somebody about to get considerably better. You want people in your corner for a year. Not a course. Not a Facebook group. Two people who know your name, your work, your business and what you’re aiming at, and who will tell you honestly how you’re getting on. If that’s you, we should talk.

How The Year Unfolds

The shape is simple and it’s the shape that makes it work. Four full days at the studio, one a quarter. All day, with the lights and the space and whatever we need. These are the backbone of the year. We might spend one on lighting, one on your pricing and products with Sarah, and one entirely on the thing you’ve been avoiding. They’re intense, they’re good fun, and no question is too daft to ask. A call every month in between, with both of us. An hour on Teams to keep things moving. Sometimes we look at pictures. Sometimes Sarah takes you through your numbers. Sometimes you just need to have a good moan at people who understand, and that is a perfectly good use of the time. Two portfolio reviews. One at the start, to be honest about where you are and to set the direction. One partway through, so you can see for yourself how far you’ve come, which is surprisingly hard to notice from the inside. Our ears in between. Email us. That’s what it’s for. Membership of the website for the whole year, so the library, the diagrams and the videos are all there whenever you want them.

What We Actually Work On

Every programme is uniquely built around the person, so this varies enormously. Over a typical year we’d cover some or all of:

Lighting

A diagram only tells you what worked once, in my studio, on that day. What I want you to walk away with is the ability to read light: to stand in a room you’ve never seen before, look at where the light’s coming from and what it’s bouncing off, and know roughly what to do. Start above the eyeline, start with the catchlights, and work outwards. The rest is just moving things around until it looks right. Once you understand why you do things, you won’t need diagrams or cheat sheets. Including mine!

Posing and directing real people

To be honest, I’m not much of a poser, that really isn’t my skill. What I do is watch. While we’re chatting, people fall into the way they naturally sit and stand, and I park that away to be used later. Because it’s something they already do, they can do it without thinking, and it doesn’t look posed. It just looks like them. Over-pose someone, and you’ll see it in the picture forever.

Building a body of work 

A folder of nice pictures is what you end up with by accident. A body of work is what you end up with on purpose. Twenty good images that have nothing to say to each other will always lose to twelve that belong together, and the difference is intent: going back to the same idea rather than chasing the next shiny thing, and being ruthless about what doesn’t belong even when it cost you time and money to create. I see this constantly when I’m judging panels. Somebody will bring twenty perfectly good images that are completely incoherent, and you can feel the judges trying to find a common thread or aesthetic. Because twenty good pictures is not the same thing as a body of work. Twelve that belong together will beat it every time.

Post-production, and finding a look that’s yours.

There usually isn’t much to say about my post-production, and that’s the point. If the light was right, what’s left is tidying. And your look isn’t a preset somebody’s hidden from you. It’s the residue of making the same small decisions the same way, over and over, until they stop being decisions. Don’t go hunting for it. Go and make two hundred pictures, notice what you keep looking for, and then do it on purpose.

Your pricing, and whether it’s anywhere near where it should be

Undercharging looks like modesty, and it’s almost always fear. And the damage isn’t only the money: cheap wins you the clients who want cheap, and they’re the ones who haggle and buy the smallest thing on the list. Put your prices where they should be, and the work gets easier, because the people who say yes actually want what you do. This is Sarah’s department, not mine, and she’ll ask what you sell before she asks what you charge. But somebody needs to say the blunt bit out loud: you’re probably too cheap, and you’ve probably known it for a while.

The client journey from first enquiry to framed print on a wall

You’re not in the business of taking pictures. You’re in the business of a journey that starts when somebody first wonders whether they should, and ends when a print they love is on a wall they walk past every day. The photography is one afternoon in the middle. The leaks are never dramatic: an enquiry that sat for two days, an email that never asked for anything, a client who arrived nervous because nobody told them what to expect, a gallery delivered as a link with no conversation about what to do with it. At every stage, ask whether the client knows what happens next. That’s usually the whole answer.

Products, sales conversations, and getting comfortable talking about money

Photographers are lovely people, and lovely people find it excruciating to talk about money. But apologising for your prices isn’t modesty; it’s making your discomfort the client’s problem. Most people don’t know what they want, because they’ve never seen it. Someone who’s held a real album doesn’t need talking into anything. So put things in front of people, say plainly what they cost, and then stop talking. The silence will feel like an age and it’ll be about four seconds, and if you fill it you’ll fill it by talking your own price down.

Marketing that suits you, rather than whatever everyone else is shouting about this year

Every year there’s a thing you’re supposed to be doing, and every year photographers exhaust themselves on a platform they quietly hate and conclude they’re rubbish at marketing. Marketing works through repetition, not brilliance. A decent thing done for three years beats a clever thing done for five weeks. So be honest about what you’ll still be doing when the novelty’s worn off and you’re tired and busy, and then be relentlessly, boringly consistent with it. That’s the whole trick. Everyone wants it to be something cleverer, and it isn’t.

Competition panels and qualifications, if that’s where you’re heading

I’ve judged a lot of panels, and I’ll tell you the hardest thing to hear: most of the ones that fail don’t fail on quality. The photographer can clearly shoot. Every image would hold its own on a wall or in a client’s album. They fail because twenty good pictures were put in front of a judging panel hoping to be told something, and instead they got a smorgasbord (by the way I LOVE that word!)  A panel’s job is editing, and editing means cutting pictures you love. That’s nearly impossible on your own, because you know what each image cost you to make and the judes never will. They’ll assess it cold. Which is the real value of having someone alongside you: not the pictures, but somebody with the experience and hard eyes of a judge who’ll tell you which one is holding you back.

Goals, progress and pep-talks

Getting better is really hard to feel, because your taste improves at the same rate your skill does, so your work always looks to you like it’s falling short. That gap never closes and it isn’t meant to. But it does mean that from the inside it feels like nothing’s happening, for years, while from the outside you’re changing enormously. So we write down a few honest markers, and then we look back at them. Sit down in October with what you shot in February and you cannot argue with it. Nobody can see the ground moving while they’re standing on it, which is why we stop every so often and look down.

Being Honest About It

There’s no silver bullet in this game, and anybody who tells you otherwise is selling something. A year of this is proper graft. There will be a session where one of us tells you something about your work, or your pricing, that you don’t especially want to hear. There will be a month where you’ve done none of what we agreed, and you’ll be sheepish about it on the call, and we’ll have heard it all before, and we’ll get on with it. What we can promise is that we’ll be straight with you, we’ll be kind about it, and we’ll both be there every month for a year.

What It Costs

£3,760 for the twelve months, or four quarterly payments of £940, one alongside each studio day. For context: four one-to-one masterclass days, booked on their own, come to £3,980. Everything else in the year comes with them, including Sarah

How Many People We Take On

There are never more than a dozen or so people on the programme at any one time, and that isn’t a sales line. Four days each, twelve calls each, and reviews in between adds up quickly, and the moment we take on more than that we stop being any use to anybody. So it starts with a conversation. Tell us a bit about where you are and what you want the year to do, and we’ll talk it through properly. If it isn’t right, we’ll say so and point you somewhere better. Nobody benefits from us taking money for the wrong thing.

Not Quite Ready?

That’s a perfectly sensible place to be, and we’d rather you came at it sideways than jumped. A one-to-one masterclass day is the best way to find out whether we all work well together. It’s a full day, built entirely around you, and it’s how most of our mentees started.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I have to come to the studio?

For the quarterly days, yes, and it’s worth it. We’re in the countryside between Oxford and London, easy on the train or the road. The monthly calls are on Teams from wherever you are.

Can I pay in instalments?

Yes. Four quarterly payments of £940, each one falling alongside a studio day, so the year pays for itself as it goes.

Is Sarah really on every call?

Every one. She coordinates the whole programme and she leads the business side of it. Most of our mentees end up talking to her more than to me.

What if I can’t make a quarter?

Life happens. We move it. The year is a rhythm, not a timetable.

Do I need to be a professional?

No, but you do need to be serious. Plenty of our mentees earn their living from it and plenty don’t. What matters is that you’ll do the work between sessions.

What if my business is a bit of a mess?

Then you’re in exactly the right place, and you won’t be the first. Sarah has seen every version of it and she’s never once made anybody feel small about it.

How is this different from doing four masterclass days?

The days on their own are four brilliant days. The programme is a year: the calls, the accountability, the business work running alongside, the fact that we know your work by month five and can see what’s changed. The days are the lessons; the year is what makes them stick.

What if it isn’t working?

Tell us, early, and we’ll change it. It’s built around you, so if the shape is wrong we reshape it.

How do we start?

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I have to come to the studio?

For the quarterly days, yes, and it’s worth it. We’re in the countryside between Oxford and London, easy on the train or the road. The monthly calls are on Teams from wherever you are.

Can I pay in instalments?

Yes. Four quarterly payments of £940, each one falling alongside a studio day, so the year pays for itself as it goes.

Is Sarah really on every call?

Every one. She coordinates the whole programme and she leads the business side of it. Most of our mentees end up talking to her more than to me.

What if I can’t make a quarter?

Life happens. We move it. The year is a rhythm, not a timetable.

Do I need to be a professional?

No, but you do need to be serious. Plenty of our mentees earn their living from it and plenty don’t. What matters is that you’ll do the work between sessions.

What if my business is a bit of a mess?

Then you’re in exactly the right place, and you won’t be the first. Sarah has seen every version of it and she’s never once made anybody feel small about it.

How is this different from doing four masterclass days?

The days on their own are four brilliant days. The programme is a year: the calls, the accountability, the business work running alongside, the fact that we know your work by month five and can see what’s changed. The days are the lessons; the year is what makes them stick.

What if it isn’t working?

Tell us, early, and we’ll change it. It’s built around you, so if the shape is wrong we reshape it.

How do we start?

Tell us a bit about yourself using the form, and we’ll set up a call. No pressure either way.