What Do Pro Photographers Do When Not Shooting?

It's not all jumping out of helicopters and shooting worldwide campaigns for household names. Sometimes, we just have to take the bins out and change the loo roll.

It was 2008 when I decided that I wanted to be a professional photographer. I was going to travel the world and shoot every day for Nat Geo or some independent arty magazine. Well, I manged to make it as a pro, but along the way, I quickly realized that my romantic notion of being a photographer didn't really exist, at least not for 99% of professional photographers. 

I went through a phase of about seven years where I was shooting almost every day. It was grim. Yes, it was what I thought I wanted, but I slowly realized that I was wrong. I decided to keep upping my price until I found a manageable amount of shoot days where the quality of my work wouldn't slip. If we want to create great work, for most of us, that means limiting the amount of days that we spend shooting. It was the best thing I had ever done. I now shoot work that I am proud of and for a price that I feel is correct.

Nowadays, I work as a commercial food photographer, which is much more fitting for my personality and the way in which I like to control everything I do. For me, a super-busy month may have 10 shooting days. There have been the odd, unavoidable 20-day shooting months, but where possible, I like to keep it sensible. There is a lot of pressure in the jobs that I shoot and often a lot of preparation and research required. 

Although, even if you decide that shooting daily is for you, there are a host of other tasks that need to be completed in order to keep a running business moving forward. In this video, I go through a working day where I don't have any photographs to shoot for paying clients, from marketing through to making sure I am suitably caffeinated. 

What do you all get up to when you are not shooting?