My photography journey # 7

Starting to take off as a kids and family photographer, welcoming Canon 5D Mark III (and a new lens) + a dream shoot for Freunde von Freunden. (2014-2015).

If you are new to this series and would like to read the previous posts, I have made a menu item at the top of my site. All you have to do is click on My photography journey, and all previous posts will magically appear.

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I have to admit that I am a bit stuck with this series, and it has taken me some time to start writing this post.

The reason for this is, that I have reached a point on my “journey”, where I feel like I don’t have a whole lot of new things to share, but I guess it’s normal. You make the biggest steps at the beginning of your journey, because you start from scratch, and once you are well on the road, things start to move a bit slower.

I hope you won’t find it boring, because now that I have started, I obviously have to end this series, and we still have ten more years to cover!

All photos in this post are from my shoot with Emiliano Laszlo and Carlotta Forasassi for Freunde von Freunden/Friends of Friends (see more below). They were shot with Canon EOS 5D Mark III + EF 50 mm f/1.4 USM and EF 24-70 mm f/4L IS USM.

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2014 was the year, where my photography business began to take off. I didn’t become rich or famous, but I doubled my yearly number of paid family sessions, and I had slowly made a name for myself as a kids and family photographer around the expat community in Florence.

As something new that year I had started to also offer mini sessions at a relatively low price on specific weekends. I would arrange to meet 2-3 families at a park in Florence, and then I would do a 20-30 minutes session with each family.

It was a great way to get new families to know about me, and it was especially useful for getting new Italian clients, since most of my clients in Florence were still expats.

At this point I was also beginning to get some requests for lifestyle business portraits and private events such as birthdays parties. I happily accepted to do it all, and I liked the variety of the jobs.

Most of my clients still found me through Facebook groups, or they had been referred to me by other clients, but very unexpectedly I also started to get some clients through my blog, despite the fact, that I didn’t really share my work as a family photographer in that space.

I had a website, of course, and my social media accounts. That’s how I marketed myself, and if I have to be completely honest (and I have to, because otherwise this series wouldn’t make sense), marketing -and sales - was, and still is, something I am not very good at.

While I have always enjoyed creating and designing my websites and blogs myself using simple templates such as Wordpress and Squarespace, somehow creating marketing material, networking and reaching out to people trying to sell myself through ads etc. has always been very hard for me for two reasons: 1) I am way too introvert for “selling” myself and 2) I find it so boring…

There, I said it.

I want to make photos, edit them, publish them, make them appear beautifully together in little series in blog posts and on my website. I want to deliver them to (hopefully) happy clients in online galleries and as gorgeous prints in little wooden boxes. That’s what I want to do.

I don’t want to reach out to potential clients trying to convince them to book me, invent marketing strategies, create ads etc. etc. Even posting about my services in a Facebook group requires a certain effort from me.

I want clients to magically appear in my inbox. But of course they don’t. (Well, some do actually, but not enough!)

I am writing all this, because I am very much aware of the fact, that one of the reasons (not the only one), why I have never been able to make a full time income as a photographer, is that I have been horrible at selling and promoting myself, and my guess is, that I am not the only one.

I think, that many photographers are introvert people, who would rather hide behind a camera than doing self-promotion to potential customers. Does it sound familiar?

While I doubled my number of paid sessions in 2014, my average price per session was still rather low. (Just above €250), but over the next years I slowly increased my prices, until I reached a price per session, which I felt reflected the time, I spent on each client, and my current level as a photographer.

It meant however that my annual number of sessions decreased a bit over the following years, as some families couldn’t or wouldn’t pay the higher fees, but my total yearly income went up, and that was of course my main goal, since I also had to pay my bills.

When I look back today, I am happy, that I increased my prices to a level, where I felt, it was worthwhile doing, what I did, but maybe it would have been wise to wait another year or two in order to do more sessions in the beginning and build a larger client portfolio, especially since I had seen very clearly, how one happy client would often lead to new clients coming my way because of referrals.

2014 was also the year, where I finally upgraded my Canon EOS 40D replacing it with the Canon EOS 5D Mark III.

What a change! Suddenly my 50 mm lens was indeed a 50 mm. No more crop sensor. So much space in the frame to work with. And the quality of the images was just amazing.

The year after I also got a new lens, Canon’s EF 24-70 mm f/4L IS USM, which also had a macro mode. (Not that I really needed that, but it was fun to play around with).

I never really got to love this lens. While the image quality was great, I needed more aperture and… well, zoom lenses are just not for me, so I ended up selling it after two and a half years, and I have to say, that I am happy, I did.

I have always been good at getting rid of camera gear, as soon as I stopped using it. I don’t want a lot of unused equipment laying around, while it slowly decreases in value, and I am totally comfortable with having just one camera body and one or two good lenses. I guess I am also a minimalist in this aspect.

(As a funny side note, I had actually completely forgotten having owned this lens until some weeks ago, when I was preparing one of these posts. Apparently it really didn’t make a big impression on me!)

In 2014 through my blog I also started getting a few requests from magazines, who wanted to use some of my images for travel articles, or who wanted me to write pieces about my “favorite places” in Rome, Florence or Copenhagen. It was a great way to (sometimes) earn a little extra money, and if nothing else it was good publicity for my blog.

During summer 2015 something amazing happened. I was on vacation in Copenhagen, when I received an e-mail from Freunde von Freunden (now Friends of Friends), who asked me, if I would like to do a shoot for them in Florence for their interview series about creative people. I was to photograph an Italian couple, a designer called Emiliano Laszlo and a pianist called Carlotta Forasassi, in their home.

I was already a big fan of FvF, which is an international interview and lifestyle website focusing on the creative scene of various cities, and it had been a dream of mine for quite some time to shoot for them.

We did the shoot on a very warm summer day at the beginning of August, and it was such a great experience.

Because I had followed FvF for quite some time, I knew exactly what kind of images they wanted (of course I had also received some guidelines), and it fit my own style and way of working so well. On top of this the couple was super nice (as was their dog), and it was just a very pleasant experience to capture them and their home.

If you are curious about seeing the article, you can still find it on the website of Friends of Friends.

That was all for today! As mentioned I still have ten (!) years to cover in this series, but I have decided to fit the remaining years into only three posts. I need to set some boundaries for myself, or this will go on forever :-)