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Where Your Time Should Go as a New Photographer

When you’re first starting your business, everything is shiny and exciting. You want to do EVERYTHING and go at a million miles an hour so you can be fully booked and have all the experience you need. I get it, I was the same way when I started.

After years of running my own business, I didn’t really see growth until I started focusing on the things that actually mattered. To be fair, I had no idea what I actually needed to be doing when I first started, so I did it all. Years later, I can confidently look back on my own experience and tell you exactly what grew my business and what didn’t. In this blog post, I’m going to walk you through exactly where your time should go as a new photographer.

Practice

The most important thing in the beginning is to practice EVERYTHING.

Practice shooting in manual mode by getting out your camera and capturing everything: nature, pets, landscapes, your surroundings, everything. Learn how to shoot in different kinds of lights and environments.

Next, practice posing. Take photos of your friends and family. Look on Pinterest for inspiration. Feel out what you like and don’t like. Try moving poses and prompts and still poses. Try shooting single females, single males, couples, families, and whoever else you can get in front of your camera.

Next, practice your editing. Don’t go out and immediately buy a preset you think looks pretty. Get familiar with Adobe Lightroom and what each of the settings and buttons do. Figure out what you like and what you don’t like. You can get a few different types of presets and figure out which one you like, or create your own.

Along with this, practice your workflow. Practice what it’s like to talk to your “clients” (paid or unpaid), get your gear ready, run a session, pose, edit, and share the photos.

Along with this, if you want to get into wedding photography, you should “practice” being a wedding photographer by second shooting as much as you can.

After years of running my own business, I didn't really see growth until I started focusing on the things that actually mattered. To be fair, I had no idea what I actually needed to be doing when I first started, so I did it all. Years later, I can confidently look back on my own experience and tell you exactly what grew my business and what didn't. In this blog post, I'm going to walk you through exactly where your time should go as a new photographer.

Learning from others

As you’re practicing everything on your side, you need to be learning from others both officially and nonofficially. Here is how you should learn from others nonofficially.

Follow a bunch of photographers on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, or wherever else you hang out. Pay attention to what they post, how they post, what they say, and how they interact with their audience. How do they talk about their clients? How to they talk directly to their audience? What do they do on their Instagram stories? What is their workflow?

This is a great starting point to see what your industry looks like and how you should set the bar for interacting with your audience and clients. This is also a fantastic way to find your niche and to figure out how to make yourself stand out (more on this further down).

After years of running my own business, I didn't really see growth until I started focusing on the things that actually mattered. To be fair, I had no idea what I actually needed to be doing when I first started, so I did it all. Years later, I can confidently look back on my own experience and tell you exactly what grew my business and what didn't. In this blog post, I'm going to walk you through exactly where your time should go as a new photographer.

Connecting with others

As you’re following others and unofficially learning from them, try to connect with them too! Find other photographers who are at the same stage as you or are further along and interact with them online! Follow them, comment on their photos, respond to their stories, and talk with them in your DM’s. Don’t expect anything in return, just make a connection.

If you can, try to meet up with other photographers for a headshot swap or coffee! I’ve meet so many photographers through Instagram from around the world, and when we’re close by or in the same area, we meet up and it feels like we’re already friends. Meeting them in person, whether you’re taking headshots for each other or shooting a wedding together or just grabbing lunch, will tighten your bonds to the community and make you feel a little less alone.

If you can, I recommend finding your local Tuesdays Together group and attending their meetings. It’s a fantastic way to make friends and network within your own community!

Putting yourself out there

When you’re starting your own photography business, you need to put yourself out there. Tell everyone that you’re a photographer. You have no idea how far those connections will go! I got my very first wedding because I told my teammates that I was a photographer, and the news spread to other teams, and the coach for one of those teams was a bridesmaid for a wedding and the couple was looking for a photographer. Now, I have friends from years past and their friends of friends who reach out to me to photograph their weddings.

Tell. Everyone.

You can start by creating social media channels for your photography business. I suggest starting with an Instagram profile and/or a Facebook page. Start by posting first who you are and what you do, and then take us along for your journey.

After years of running my own business, I didn't really see growth until I started focusing on the things that actually mattered. To be fair, I had no idea what I actually needed to be doing when I first started, so I did it all. Years later, I can confidently look back on my own experience and tell you exactly what grew my business and what didn't. In this blog post, I'm going to walk you through exactly where your time should go as a new photographer.

Free Education

As you’re building up your business, one of the absolute best things you can do for yourself is to find free education. There are limitless possibilities for free education, and here are only a few of them.

Before we get into the education, here’s my number 1 tip: IMPLEMENT THE THINGS YOU LEARN instead of just learning them. When I started out, I loved learning, so I spent every day taking in as much education as I could. However, I never actually did the things they were teaching me. This caused my business to stay the same, even though I was getting “smarter” in terms of my business. I suggest that you take in one piece of education at a time and really sit down and practice and implement it before moving on. Your business will literally get bigger and better every single day when you do this.

  • Podcasts – I listen to podcasts every week while I’m in the car, on a walk, doing laundry, doing dishes, and every other time when my body is doing something but my mind is free. My favorite podcasts are Jenna Kutcher’s Goal Digger Podcast, Amy Porterfield’s Online Marketing Made Easy, and Evie and Lindsay’s The Heart and Hustle Podcast
  • Blogs are an awesome source of free education! These are basically written mini trainings on certain topics and can be super insightful. You’re on my blog right now where I have tons of photographer education, but you can search for other photographer blogs too!
  • Instagram is a fantastic source for free education. With the creation of reels, the photographer education sphere has gotten huge and viral! Check out my Instagram to see what I mean!
  • Facebook groups are another amazing place for free education. Sometimes Facebook groups are run by one photographer and they lead weekly or monthly trainings or just give free education and insight. Other times there are local or national groups filled with photographers meant for us to connect and help each other. I suggest searching for groups that are local to you as well as a few national groups
  • When a photographer is really good at teaching one subject, sometimes they’ll do free webinars. These are free 1-2 hour trainings on one topic, and usually it ends with a promotion of their paid product on that subject. That leads into our next topic…
After years of running my own business, I didn't really see growth until I started focusing on the things that actually mattered. To be fair, I had no idea what I actually needed to be doing when I first started, so I did it all. Years later, I can confidently look back on my own experience and tell you exactly what grew my business and what didn't. In this blog post, I'm going to walk you through exactly where your time should go as a new photographer.

Paid Education

If you want to learn everything for free, you can do it, it just might take a lot of time to find the best material and figure out how to implement it. When you pay for education, you get all the material in one place as well as a step-by-step way to implement it. You’re trading money to save you time, and often it’s extremely worth it.

There are two types of paid education:

  • Courses – These are usually self-paced pieces of content that you buy once then have access to forever. You can go through it at your own pace and learn what you want to learn, then implement in your own time. I have bought dozens of courses (most in the beginning when I was excited about learning), and now I’m going back and retaking the courses and implementing everything they teach. This takes some time in the forefront, but my business has soared because of it.
  • Mentoring – This is when you hire a specific photographer to either give you one-on-one teaching or group teaching. Some photographers (like myself) offer sessions where you can ask questions and we’ll tell you everything you need to know. Others (like myself) offer sessions where you practice at an actual session with models and they help you pose and learn light and anything else you need. Some (like myself) offer year-long mentorships where they help you for a full year to grow your business every single month. Check out my photographer education page to learn more about mentorships with me! Group mentorships can be workshops or conferences with anywhere from a few people to a few thousand. They can sometimes include portions of the day where you take pictures at styled shoots or they can have networking events. Sometimes these are half day, full day, or even full week events, and they’re hosted all around the world. They can be absolutely amazing opportunities to meet other photographers, network with vendors, and learn about business.
After years of running my own business, I didn't really see growth until I started focusing on the things that actually mattered. To be fair, I had no idea what I actually needed to be doing when I first started, so I did it all. Years later, I can confidently look back on my own experience and tell you exactly what grew my business and what didn't. In this blog post, I'm going to walk you through exactly where your time should go as a new photographer.

Developing Your Brand

The last thing you should be focusing on at the beginning of your business is developing your brand.

You need to be figuring out what you like, what you don’t like, what your message is, what your “why” is, what your voice is, what your look is, how you interact with clients, and what your business is like. This is where you develop what you say and how you say it, what your brand visually looks like, and what you care about.

Most photographers start out photographing everything and everyone and don’t have a clear direction of what they want. That’s ok! Everyone starts here.

I started shooting families, seniors, babies, sports, events, and anything else people would hire me for. As I practiced and figured out what I wanted, I realized that I loved seniors and couples, so I starting only sharing about those sessions.

Over time, I slowly developed my brand towards the outdoors, adventures, and the Shenandoah Valley, and I made it official last year when I completely rebranded my visual components (my logo and whole website) to fully embody the mountains and the sense of adventure I wanted to niche down into. Now I primarily shoot weddings, engagements, and seniors out in the mountains and at beautiful local venues.

While you’re figuring out your brand, it’s ok to experiment and try new things. Over time you’ll figure out what you love, and that may even change with time. Your brand should grow with you, so don’t be afraid to rebrand a few times over the years.

If you want more help finding your photography style, check out this blog post!

I hope this blog post has helped you focus on what will move your business forward the most at the beginning!

If you’d like to see more photographer education, check out my photographer education tag on my blog!

If you’d like some one-on-one attention, fill out the form on my photographer education page and we can set up a mentorship for you!

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