We opened Paul Wilkinson Photography in 2008, which anyone with a memory for these things will recognise as spectacularly poor timing. The country was falling into a recession and we were asking people to spend money on photographs of themselves.
It worked anyway. Not quickly, and not without some fairly bleak months, but it worked, and the studio now supports Sarah and me along with Katie who works on our Mastering Portrait Photography videos. The greatest privilege of my life is that I earn a living doing the thing I would be doing anyway.
The bit nobody tells you is that being a brilliant photographer and running a photography business are two different skills, and only one of them is fun to practise. Pricing, marketing, working out who your people are and how to talk to them, building an experience clients want to tell their friends about, and staying reasonably sane through all of it.
We have made most of the mistakes available. This section is what we learnt from them.
WHAT YOU’LL FIND IN HERE
Being a photographer The business and the mindset. What to charge and why charging too little hurts everyone including your clients. Building a client experience that starts before the shoot and doesn’t end when the images land. Finding your story and the people who want it. Whether you actually need a studio. Shooting what sells while keeping room for what you love. And the honest stuff too: deliberate practice, the ten thousand hours question, and where ideas come from when you have run out.
The shoot Planning, scouting, wardrobe and running the session itself. Everything that happens around the pictures. It has its own page, just here.
The Working Pro
The Shoot