My last blog post was about my feelings regarding how to price my work as a wedding photographer, and this post is linked, in that I want to talk about building a name and a business for myself as a wedding photographer. I have enjoyed taking photographs of people for almost as long as a I can remember - way back to my school days, when I would carry my father's old Pentax S1a around with me at any opportunity (a fantastic tool to learn on, by the way, as it was entirely manual!) And the photographs I got the most satisfaction and pleasure from taking were of my friends, having fun and enjoying themselves - I got good at being both a participant and an unobtrusive chronicler of social gatherings. Unfortunately, it turns out that just being good at taking photographs which people are happy to see themselves in, rather than cringe at the memory of, is not enough to become someone who takes photographs for a living. I mean, you might indeed be the best in the world, but nobody's going to hire you if they've never heard of you!
And this brings me to my current situation, of having photographed a goodly number of weddings, but by no means having a solid or dependable income from it. The problem is that I enjoy almost every aspect of wedding photography, even the pressure of getting those really important set-piece images, but the one thing I've never got comfortable with is the business of actually finding clients. I have always felt that slight reluctance and ambivalence due to the market prices I was putting myself against. Combining that with having a full time job meant that I never really committed to putting the necessary work in to market myself. Time to change that though! I have decided that I really do want to combine teaching and photography as twin parts of my work, which means that I need to start being serious about finding clients. Now, how to go about it...?
And this brings me to my current situation, of having photographed a goodly number of weddings, but by no means having a solid or dependable income from it. The problem is that I enjoy almost every aspect of wedding photography, even the pressure of getting those really important set-piece images, but the one thing I've never got comfortable with is the business of actually finding clients. I have always felt that slight reluctance and ambivalence due to the market prices I was putting myself against. Combining that with having a full time job meant that I never really committed to putting the necessary work in to market myself. Time to change that though! I have decided that I really do want to combine teaching and photography as twin parts of my work, which means that I need to start being serious about finding clients. Now, how to go about it...?
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