When you are a young person you wonder what you will be when you grow up, what is the advice your elders always gave you? It was, “Do what you love to do and you will always be happy.” And that has to be true because if you can spend your work week doing what you love the most, it really won’t be work as much as it will be play that people pay you to do.
If your desire is a photography career, it makes sense to start your own photography business. But how to go about it? You see so many small photography shops that seem to spring up from out of the blue. What is the best way for you to go about starting your own business like this?
The place to start when it comes to a photography business is how to do it in a legitimate way. You want a business that will last a lifetime so you want to start it out right. So don’t fall for the “get rich quick” internet schemes or books that claim they will spill the insider secrets of other successful photography business. There are no insider secrets to this business other than what you need to know to run any business. To succeed you have to…
* Pay your dues
* Get your education.
* Learn from the pros.
* Have knowledge of your craft
* Attend Photography Conferences
* Take pride in customer service
You can accomplish the first five of these practices by attending photography classes in somebody else’s photography shop. You may be astonished at the idea of more school. But your photography business will be about more than just cameras, photo shoots and dark rooms. You have accounting principles to comprehend and execute, taxes to be paid, a facility to rent, employees to pay, insurance to worry about, contracts to sign and all of that other “stuff” that goes with running a business. So start early and get some basic business classes under your belt such as accounting and economics. It will keep you ahead of the game and up to date on running a photography business
Many trades have an apprentice system where you tutor under a master of the craft. But it might be a good thing for you to take this matter into your own hands. Think about becoming a part time assistant on the weekends long enough to learn the ins and outs of running a small business and of running a photography business. This gives you the chance to build your knowledge and exposure to equipment, learn technique and how to work with your subjects.
In fact, it might be a good idea to deliberately apprentice at a number of different different type of photography businesses before launching out on your own. So you can learn the ins and outs of wedding photography, baby photography, fashion photography and others from specialists all before you spend a dime of your own money to start your own enterprise. In this way, you build skills, you build knowledge, you build experience and you can watch and take notes of the great things others do and the mistakes to avoid.
Your employers will be thrilled to share their real world knowledge with you if you are open to them that you want to learn from the masters how to do this with the goal of becoming their competition in the future. Above all, you can build a client base from the many customers you work with before you start your own business. Buy taking care of someone else’s customers, they can become your customers when you finally get your business of the ground. And that is good business.
Richard’s Photography in San Antonio specializes in Studio Portraits
