Here’s a minor pet peeve of mine. (I know, I know.. who the hell cares, but bear with me for a moment).
I often hear people say something along these lines.
“Photography is a business. You have to treat it like any other business.”
With all due respect, while it is indeed a business, it is far different than ‘any other business’ in more ways than we can count.
Typical “Business Plans” are rubbish. The world of the photographer cannot be broken down into how many hours you have to work to become profitable based on some list of facts and figures.
Typical “Business School” information is, in many cases, useless. The rigors of spreadsheets and margins and profitability based on output/inventory blah blah…
Nope.
Being a photographer, a working commercial photographer, is part marketing department, part HR department, part product development department, and a big production department.
We make photographs… not cans of peas. We have only the value we place on that photograph, not cost of materials + markup. We don’t discount our ‘inventory’ or create a glut of product that necessitates a ‘sale’ or reduction of price.
Photography IS a business. A damned hard business to be in. Damned hard.
The goal posts move seemingly every year, and the competition is fierce. There are not established routes to success, no ‘credential’ to open doors for crony participation. We don’t have a set of pricing guidelines set by the market. A can of peas costs between a buck and two bucks… pick a range for your peas offering.
Photographs can be free to tens of thousands… taking the same amount of skill, time, effort and excellence… but with vastly differing price points.
Plug that into your fkn “CODB” calculator…
Photographers who keep the doors open learn to navigate the most murkiest of business waters. Nothing is nailed down, nothing is carved in stone, nothing – I repeat NOTHING, is like “most other businesses”.
(And yeah, that guy over there with the guitar… he is shaking his head in agreement.)
Now… explain why you are going into a hundred thousand fkn dollars in debt for a “degree’?