For years I’ve heard people saying, and probably have said myself, that if you chase your dreams, find your passion, and only do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life. But do you really have to? Should you? This video provides an interesting counterpoint to that concept.
I find this video to be very relevant to the fields of photography and video, especially as I’ve seen more and more people go independent and try to turn that passion into a career. Fstoppers’ own Jeff Rojas wrote this fantastic article back in April about his experience, and I too quit a stable in-house job to chase my own projects a few years ago.
What Jeff does a great job of pointing out is that it’s not for everyone. And supporting his comments are the points made by Mike Rowe in the above video that suggests that passion does not equal ability.
I think it’s great to have dreams and have goals, but there is nothing wrong with having a job or career that sustains you and your family, while pursuing your hobbies in your free time. You don’t have to love your job — if you do, great, but it could be for a myriad of other reasons besides it being the same as your passion/hobby. Honestly I’ve had blue-collar warehouse type jobs that I enjoyed immensely because I made some great friends and when I went home, work stayed at work. There's something to be said when it comes to keeping your passion true to your desires and interests, and not diluting it by making it the same thing that's used to make money in your life. Writer Mark Manson makes several good points about not having to make money doing what you love in this article titled "Screw Finding Your Passion."
So go have fun. Do what you love. But don’t confuse enjoying a hobby for something that you must make your full-time work because — as Jeff said — it’s simply not for everyone. Abe Lincoln once remarked that folks are usually about as happy as they make their minds up to be, and let me tell you, earning a sustainable career doing precisely the thing you love is not a fast track to nirvana.
The question should be do you have the skills to own a business. A recent survey showed 80% of the people asked thought they were good photographers. So thinking your good and enjoying photography percentages are quite high. The real question is do you enjoy running a business? Ultimately at the end of the day the photography business is just that, a business. You must enjoy marketing, advertising, administration, logistics, accounting, retouching, and a host of other hats you must wear to be in business for yourself. All things that take you away from actually shooting. And if you don't enjoy all those aspects you must be willing to delegate and pay someone else to do those things for you. Ultimately the choice is up to you, but sometimes a well paying job in another industry might be better than owning your own business. Sometimes you have do something you don't love as much, in order to have the freedom to do the things you do love the best.
I think you've hit the nail on the head and without demoralising.
This. Well said. Most people think photography is all about the right side of the brain, that good photos will keep you going. It won't. You have to be able to use the left side and think like a businessman.
A great business person with good photography, will trump a bad business person with great photo work, every time.
Very true. Business acumen is actually much more important than photography skill if you are running a photography business.
Think about the best restaurant you know of and how good the food is there....now compare that to the quality of the food at McDonalds. Which one is more financially successful? That is because McDonalds had a killer business model and was run very well, certainly not because of their tremendous food quality.
I enjoy running a business and I love photography. But I hate business of photography.
The last seven years have honestly given me the best crash course in business 101 than I probably would've learned at any business school. Plenty of colleagues with whom I'm acquainted with run successful photo studios, and some of them have never held a camera in their life. In fact, I would say that running a financially successful photo studio has much more to do with one's business experience than taking photos.
To draw a comparison, a successful restaurant owner might never have cooked a meal in his life, yet he may run a number of highly successful restaurants. His ability to understand his market segment, what type of cuisine is in demand locally, and draw on the talents of chefs that can fulfill them is more important than arguing over how to prepare his signature dish with his peers.
Photographers often get caught up in silly debates, and argue over gear and technique, because it's the foundation of photography. Photography is a creative process, and certainly art all its own. Expecting every person who takes amazing photos to run a successful photography business is like expecting a housewife who's good in the kitchen to have the ability to operate a successful restaurant. The skill set required goes beyond what you know, or what you can learn (book smarts?), and is mostly tied to character traits (ambition, drive, taking the initiative, calculated risks.). Unfortunately, creative and business types don't often go hand in hand.
Luckily, I was always a photographer, and consider myself quite lucky to be able to apply my creative skills to our family photography business, in which I continue to learn, day after day. I never thought I'd be photographing children for a living!
It is entirely possible to create many kinds of careers without skills or talent. In fact, I've hired quite a few people who've demonstrated that. :-/
It's too bad they don't have some kind of mandatory talent show for tradesmen, executives and, yes, photographers.
Personally, though I love photography, and run a photography business "part time", I don't have any plans to ever quit my "day job" as a firefighter/medic. Not only do I love my career (which definitely helps), I have a good income, pension, and benefits I would not likely have if I stuck to a photography career. Not to mention that not having to worry about making money on my photography lets me have more time for personal projects (which I find important), and to pick and choose only the paid jobs I want to do, both of which help keep photography a "passion" as opposed to "work". Sure, there are downfalls. I miss out on or decline some jobs and opportunities that I would otherwise love to take advantage of for various reasons, and I don't shoot enough or for big enough clients to ever be well known, but I think these down sides are far outweighed by the benefits.
So much this!! I settled on the exact same line of thought a few years ago. I feel like if I ever turned this into full time, It would become work (finding clients, now knowing where my next paycheck is coming from, etc). And the personal projects is my favorite part. Going full time could very well eliminate what I love most about photography.
I agree with the comment below. I started by full-time photographic career after an MBA, as well as starting ,building and selling a successful start-up in the tech sector. Running a business was the best training I could have had in becoming a pro photographer, it taught me that photographs are just another product. Running any business has the same demands, marketing, product management, selling, customer management, accounting etc. If also gave me a financial cushion to start without the pressure of wondering how to pay the bills.
One of the things I do is to mentor young photographers, many straight out of college and it is obvious to me that not many schools are not teaching the "job" I have many kids who really have no idea about taking and executing a brief from a client, they have no idea that the client is always right and if they want a certain shot, that is what they get, no matter what you artistic sensibilities tell you. Professional photography is NOT art, it's finding clients, understanding what they want and producing a product the client will pay for. I know straight away who will make it and who won't. I can help, but sometimes it's a bridge too far for some to realize that shooting what you want to shoot all the time does't keep the lights on.
I'm working on building a photo "incubator" along the lines of the tech sector incubators. This project will provide photographers with the business resources they need, marketing, accounting etc along with access to equipment such as high end computing and printing which they can't afford. I don't intend to teach any photographic techniques or talent,that is what they bring, I'll provide them with the environment to create and grow a viable business because at the end of the day, that is what it is, a business.
I've heard tell of photographer collectives, but not an incubator. I would be very interested to hear how that goes, sounds like a great resource, there needs to be more of this.
I would mostly agree with your points, except for the part where you say the client is always right.
You can make them feel as though they're always right as long as you are clear about what they're getting and the value of the work you're delivering. Inexperienced photographers have trouble setting the appropriate expectations, and in return get unhappy clients because they haven't educated their client about what's reasonable in a given situation. You also need to know when to cut ties, there is a small minority of people who are bound and determined to find problems in any situation, and these folks are toxic to continually try to please.
Agree about cutting ties. The I ran the tech company, we "fired" our biggest customer..despite being a top 20 bank in US, every invoice was past due or wrongly disputed, month after month...I got tired of lending interest free money to a bank ! Was tough and our revenues took a hit, but the pain and arguing every month wasn't worth it..
Thanks Mike. I hope that people will take your article to heart.
I've got a serious problem with the "you-can-be-a-pro" photo industry that is constantly trying to sell photography as a career. People should be happy to pursue photography while having something completely different as a career and source of income. We need to stop thinking that photography is only legitimate if it makes a profit.
Good points.
There are two kinds of Passion:
1 - Jesus getting nailed to a cross
2 - making love to a beautiful woman
Photography as a career resembles the first kind of passion.
Photography as a hobby resembles the second kind of passion.
Technically those both involve nailing something.... so your point is invalid. :P
This comes up the crafting community as well. People love knitting or jewelry making, and say they'd love to do it as a career. They don't think about how doing a craft on your own as a fun hobby is different than doing it for clients, day after day, and spending a lot of time finding new clients, managing the money, promoting your business, etc.
I also believe that if you are really passionate about doing something for a living, you will train HARD to be able to do that. Few of us are good at stuff right off the bat, but much of our "natural talent" comes from practice and training and persistence.