THE GREAT DISCONNECT
Seems that lately those memes about how much it costs to be a photographer so you owe me more, and “only a professional” can be a photographer worth value because of blah blah blah… are floating around again.
Photographers are passing them around in a self-congratulatory frenzy hoping that clients will see them and re-evaluate their photo buying experience.
Will it work?
Nope.
The fact that your gear costs a lot of money, or that you spent a lot of time learning your craft means exactly bupkiss- nada – zeeero – to someone who would be in a position to purchase your photography.
Believing it does is a huge, HYUGE disconnect.
The value of your gear has nothing to do with whether or not you are a good photographer. Ever heard of a credit card? Get a CC and get gear. NOT a ringing endorsement of anything. Well, maybe your credit rating.
Spent a long time learning the craft? Awesome – who cares. That was a choice you made and really, you can spend a lot of time learning and practicing and playing around at stuff to only become mediocre at best. (You should hear me play jazz piano after goofin around on the keys for a couple of decades. You ain’t gonna be that impressed.)
No one cares about YOU, your cash outlay, your long nights learning, your ‘investment’, or your ‘awesome talent’.
What they care about is what you can do for them. What problem you can solve for them. What challenges you can help them overcome.
Can you do that?
With a photograph?
You better be able to, because that is what is needed and YOU are the professional that can make that happen.
This means understanding their brand, understanding their market, understanding their demographics, and what sells, and what creates attention, and how to leverage that attention with visuals.
If you cannot do that, you have no value to them.
And no amount of megapixels can ever make up for that.
No amount of study or investment or ‘awesome gear’ will ever make up for that.
Being a photographer these days takes much more market awareness, brand vision, style, and deliberateness than it ever did.
If you stagnate, you die.
If you stop learning, you die.
If you think you know it all, you die.
If you think it isn’t important to keep adding to your skills…
Well…
I know when we all signed up for this crazy creative life we did so knowing there was no contract with the future. Things change, even more rapidly than we expected or planned on.
But if we love what we are doing we must adapt.
It is not easy and it demands so much more than when we just had cameras and a few rolls of film.
We have to create value that can be seen, measured, monitored, and used.
For them… our clients.
If we fail to understand what is needed in this new era or continue to think it is somehow about US, we will perish.
ADDITIONAL WAYS I CAN HELP YOU SUCCEED
