Building a Successful Career As a Generalist Photographer With Viktoria Haack

As competition in the photography industry becomes tighter and tighter, the challenge of building a successful career with the camera is ever growing. In response to this, the industry continued to fragment into an array of smaller, niche, industries where each photographer specializes in a specific area of expertise. In an vocation once filled with photographers who were focused on shooting nearly anything, the classic, generalist, photographer has become a rather rare breed. Viktoria Haack is an example of a young, rising, star who has not only chosen to buck this trend, but who has also managed to build a successful career in the process.

Haack’s career began when she was living on a small island in the United Kingdom and first found herself exploring Photography as a passionate hobby. In the beginning, Haack was first drawn to shooting the beautiful landscapes near her home. Her hobby started to transform, however, when she landed her first big job for the largest national conservation charity in the United Kingdom, The National Trust.

As Haack’s career took shape she made the decision to move halfway across the world to a small town in the Shuswap region of western Canada called Salmon Arm to be near family. Small towns don’t often make for the greatest markets for highly specialized photographers, in fact they don’t make great markets for photographers as a whole because there just aren’t enough customers to pay the bills.

Haack, however, was undaunted by the business challenge of a tiny town and jumped into building her business with fervent enthusiasm. Haack quickly realized that the only way to really bring in enough business to be successful was to generalize yet retain the quality of a specialist.

As a self taught photographer by nature, Haack focused on creating a style and skillset that would allow her to blanket a wide variety of photographic services while making sure she could create world class images in each genre that she pursued.

Haack’s passion lies in nature and that passion influences every photo she creates. The subject of the photo may change from image to image depending on the client but the images always speak to the beauty of the natural world. This passion gives a voice to her work that has become a magnet that has attracted the majority of Haack’s customers.

Haack initially began to find success by targeting clients who normally would require a variety of different photography styles. To those clients, the norm would be having to deal with many photographers who Haack was able to replace by simplifying the lives of her clients without them having to sacrifice quality. Tourism proved to be one of the best industries for Haack’s approach as it often requires photography of everything that an area has to offer ranging from events, and weddings to adventures and more.

As time has progressed, Haack has been able to build a successful career by focusing on and maintaining a standard of excellence in both her work and customer service that exceeds other photographers in her area. This focus has allowed Haack to stay ahead of her competition despite her diverse focus.

Over the past year Haack’s career has continued to move forward by partnering with Banff Photo Workshops to offer some of the most exclusive and exciting, adventure based, photo workshops on the market. Haack joins other amazing photographers to lead students into the beautiful backcountry of the Canadian rockies to shoot some of the world’s most exclusive landscapes.

Moving forward, Haack is eager to add action sports to her ever expanding repertoire so make sure to keep an eye on her website to see what is next from her and learn from the road she is paving. Check out more of Haack's work below.