How Personal Work Can Save your Business

You are Bigger Than Your Brand

As creative professionals, we can get stuck in a cage of our own making. We build up our business on a particular kind of work, clients start to know us for it, and before long it’s been 2 years and we feel trapped doing the work we dreamed of when we first started. But here's what I've figured out after all these 10+ years in the industry: you're so much more than what you sell.

The photos you take for money and the style you have developed don't have to be the only photos you take. Your camera skills and your eye for images go way beyond what clients pay you for. Owning this can be the difference between burnout and longevity.

When What You Want to Shoot Isn't What Pays the Bills

I've talked with hundreds of photographers who feel burnt out. They have all these cool photo ideas but feel like they would be letting their clients down if they didn’t deliver work the way it was when they booked, so they go to the wedding, photograph that campaign and spend the whole time wishing they had done it differently. If that sounds like you, you're definitely not alone. This push-pull between "photos I want to take" and "photos that pay my bills" is something pretty much every photographer deals with at some stage in their career.

When this happens we need to start following our interests again, take time to think, plan and then go out and make the photographs you see in your head. That could look like learning a new way of lighting, trying a new lens, meeting new people or traveling to a new place to expand your horizons. Those personal photo adventures aren't just messing around - they're actually super important for keeping you growing as a photographer.

Listen to your intuition, follow that thread.

Why Personal Projects Make You Better

Those projects do a lot more than just make you happy. They're a way for you to experiment and try new things, develop your visual identity and your unique voice.

When you spend time on your art you naturally learn new ways of seeing, on your own time, get better at it, and eventually bring those skills back to your client work.

When you apply that to your work, it’s an excellent way of making your photographs feel like you.

Mixing What You Love With What Makes Money

The happiest photographers I know found ways to unify their personal photography into their paid work. Making experimenting part of your work doesn't happen right away, but it does happen when you keep up with both your client’s needs and your own creative intuition.

Just try setting aside a few hours each week to research projects you might want to pursue or get out to shoot whatever you want! This isn’t going to make you money right away (in fact I’d recommend you invest in these projects to really make them stand out), but they'll keep you excited about photography and keep you thinking like an artist.

After that, it’s all about being strategic about how you introduce that into your practice; sometimes it’s going to need you to pivot to include new clients in your practice, other times it can bring you into closer alignment with the clients you have.

The key is to understand what lights you up, find the people that might benefit and show them clearly what you can make.

The Bigger Picture

If you're feeling stuck because what you like to shoot is different from what you can sell, that's totally normal. I mean it - everyone goes through this. It's really important that you build yourself up beyond just the work clients hire you for.

You as a photographer are always changing and growing. The work you sell to clients is just one part of who you are with a camera - an important part, sure, but not the whole story.

Once you get this, you free yourself up to explore, grow, and build a photography career that actually feels like it fits you. Because in the end, the photographers who stick with it longest are the ones who keep taking pictures that matter to them, not just pictures that sell.

Just remember: you're always more than what you sell. Keep shooting what gets you excited.

TLDR - Main Takeaways

We all need to know that our creative identity extends beyond the services they offer to clients. Personal work and exploration are essential aspects of growth as a photographer, even when those pursuits don't immediately translate to marketable services.

• Continue creating photographs that follow personal interests
• Use personal work as an opportunity to develop new skills and techniques
• Eventually incorporate these new capabilities into client offerings when appropriate

Feeling creatively constrained by commercial work is a common experience among photographers. Building your creative self beyond your brand offerings is not just acceptable but vital for long-term growth and satisfaction in the profession.