I receive questions about photography & about being photographed almost daily. I share some of my favourite questions on the blog, so that everyone can benefit from the answers.

Q: I’m an aspiring children’s portrait photographer and have spent the past 2 years learning the basics of my camera and Photoshop at home. Do you think it is important to have photography qualifications to get into the business or is a great portfolio enough?

I don’t think qualifications are crucial when it comes to getting work. Your ability, and confidence level in that ability, matters a lot more. If you feel like you can deliver a quality product to your clients and charge for it accordingly, qualifications don’t matter. However, if you don’t feel entirely comfortable with your equipment, or the level of work you produce, then I think the right thing to do is to get some training, and practice, practice, practice before you start charging money.

It’s also important to realise that just knowing the rules, or having a qualification that says you do, does not necessarily mean that you are able to translate that knowledge into a working situation. That’s why constant practice and shooting a LOT in order to push your skills is so important. A camera is a tool through which you translate how you personally see, and want to present, a scene. You’ll have to be able to make technical decisions based on, not only the external circumstances, but also on what kind of aesthetic, mood and message you want your image to have. There are no universal rules or settings that would work for every situation, especially if you want to make work that is distinctively yours.

Spending a lot of time with your equipment and learning how to use it to deliver your specific vision is the most important thing on the road making work that gets noticed.

Are you a photographer or an aspiring creative business owner? Her Lovely Heart is my way of helping heart-led creatives to run their businesses with purpose, freedom, and joy. By subscribing to the Inspire Your Inbox letters, you’ll gain access to a library of free resources and worksheets, plus regular letters of inspiration from me straight to your inbox. Click here to join and receive instant access to The Library.

I receive questions about photography & about being photographed almost daily. I share some of my favourite questions on the blog, so that everyone can benefit from the answers.

Q: I sometimes go into a shoot thinking my clients will be good fun only to realise they are very awkward in front of the camera, which then causes me to freeze. What’s your number one tip for approaching a photo shoot in order to get the most natural results?

Great question! Reading this really took me back to a time when I too struggled with similar things, and it makes me truly appreciate how all the work I have put into this are has paid off, seeing how I’m able to fully enjoy pretty much any shoot situation and client interaction these days without worrying about things such as freezing or ‘difficult clients’.

You asked for my number one tip? Here it comes. Have no expectations. Having expectations on how the shoot will go, or what you want the outcome to be, is the quickest way to guarantee the kind of situation you describe. Based on what you (think you) know about the clients you might be expecting for them to act in a certain way.

You might, for example, go into a shoot with the expectation of a great success where your subjects naturally reveal their inner beauty in front of your camera, while perfect sunlight illuminates them in a magical way. Or conversely, you might have a client who you have pre-judged to behave in a certain negative way (perhaps based on an experience with someone who they remind you of) and you go into a shoot dreading it in advance, which doesn’t really pave the way for a successful session. In both of these scenarios, you are setting yourself up for failure.

The only way to truly allow your clients the safe space they need in order to reveal their true selves is to not have any expectations, and just be prepared to go with the flow and with an interest in learning more about who they are. By all means go in fully prepared in all the areas you can affect (time of day for light, gear for the type of shoot, logistics, backups and workflows) but always remember to clear your mind when it comes to your clients. Most of all, keep in mind that the session is about them and what they are comfortable giving, not about what you want out of them.

And those awkward moments? Get comfortable with them. When you learn to just stay calm through an awkward or silent moment, your clients will feel that and mirror you. Likewise, if you panic or freeze, your clients will take a cue from you and feel similarly.

Are you a photographer or an aspiring creative business owner? Her Lovely Heart is my way of helping heart-led creatives to run their businesses with purpose, freedom, and joy. By subscribing to the Inspire Your Inbox letters, you’ll gain access to a library of free resources and worksheets, plus regular letters of inspiration from me straight to your inbox. Click here to join and receive instant access to The Library.

I receive questions about photography & about being photographed almost daily. I share some of my favourite questions on the blog, so that everyone can benefit from the answers.

Q: I get really nervous when doing consultations. Can you please describe your first meeting with a potential wedding client?

These days I get so many wedding enquiries that I don’t generally get to meet the couple in person before a booking, as it would be a bit of a logistical nightmare, especially when there are more than one couple interested in the same date, which often is the case. I do try to meet with my wedding clients before their big day, though, whether at their engagement session or at a book consultation where we’ll look at some samples of albums and get to know each other better.

My main prerogative is to learn more about the client and their story, and to educate them about my process (although I do this with my material prior, so generally in meetings it’s more of a reminder), and to connect with who they are. Quite a few of my clients are based abroad, so sometimes meetings take place over skype, technology really has made such a difference to our lives in such a short space of time!

If you’re just starting out, and nervous about consultations, I think the best thing for you to do is to try to focus completely on the people in front of you and ask questions about them, rather than going in with a sales pitch and thinking you need to impress them with who you are and what you do.

After you’ve gotten to know a little bit more about the couple, do invite them to ask you questions, and then try to provide solutions for those answers. When it comes to talking about your pricing, practice makes perfect. Make sure you know your prices and are comfortable with them. You can even practice saying your prices out loud, so that when it comes to a consultation situation, you are able to do it confidently and calmly.

Don’t worry, after you’ve been meeting with potential clients for a while, you won’t even remember why it made you nervous in the beginning!

Are you a photographer or an aspiring creative business owner? Her Lovely Heart is my way of helping heart-led creatives to run their businesses with purpose, freedom, and joy. By subscribing to the Inspire Your Inbox letters, you’ll gain access to a library of free resources and worksheets, plus regular letters of inspiration from me straight to your inbox. Click here to join and receive instant access to The Library.

I receive questions about photography & about being photographed almost daily. I share some of my favourite questions on the blog, so that everyone can benefit from the answers.

Q: What advice can you give about setting prices for those of us who are new to the photography industry?

Congratulations on setting up your photography business! And welcome to the never-ending deliberation over pricing… Pricing is quite a big & stretchy topic, and there’s no one-size fits all answer. It depends so much on your market, your business model, your experience and your own goals. But I’ll share some simple tips that will hopefully help you in the right direction.

First of all, you shouldn’t look at other people’s pricing too much, as everyone’s business is structured differently, and their life situations and needs are different from yours. While not ideal in the long term, a still much healthier place to start is a cost-based pricing model, which looks a little bit like this:

1) Work out your own annual cost of living. When doing this, add up everything you can possibly think of from your basic bills to other expenses which add up to the kind of life you would ideally want to live.
2) Work out your costs of running a business, including all your overheads and expenses you can think of.
3) Think about how many shoots you are comfortable doing in a year.
4) Divide the number you arrived at on the costs side with the number of shoots, and you’ll have your minimum that you’ll need to charge per session. Then add a margin for when things go wrong, and you’ll arrive at a sum that should at least keep you in business, and surviving in life.

If the sum you end up looks scary, realise that this is your issue, not necessarily your client’s. In order to justify what you’re charging to yourself, make sure your craft is at a level you are proud of, and that you are offering an exceptional experience and service to your clients.
When you set realistic prices from the start, you will have a much better chance of keeping your business alive, and you will eventually be ready to move on to a pricing model which will leave you with some more breathing space, too.

In order to understand your market, and what kind of pricing would work in it, I would also encourage you to have a business plan in place, and to keep updating it as you and your business evolves. If you feel like you could use some help with your plan, you might be interested in the 30-day Business Plan Refresh course, which I developed to guide you through the process. Good luck!

Are you a photographer or an aspiring creative business owner? Her Lovely Heart is my way of helping heart-led creatives to run their businesses with purpose, freedom, and joy. By subscribing to the Inspire Your Inbox letters, you’ll gain access to a library of free resources and worksheets, plus regular letters of inspiration from me straight to your inbox. Click here to join and receive instant access to The Library.

I receive questions about photography & about being photographed almost daily. I share some of my favourite questions on the blog, so that everyone can benefit from the answers.

Q: Do you feel that in order to start charging for photography I should have the highest quality of gear? I work with a Nikon D80 as it was all I could afford, and feel guilty about charging people, even though I do a good job?

It depends a lot on what you do. It’s definitely a fact that the equipment doesn’t a photographer make, and I know cases where, for example, people have sold pictures taken with a compact camera (or even an iPhone!) for huge billboard ads. I think if you’re doing editorial or fine art, or even portrait sessions, you can definitely start with low-end gear and just make sure your work speaks for itself (that’s what people pay for – your eye – not your megapixels or the paper pictures are printed on).

Another matter altogether is if you do something such as working as a photojournalist out in the field or shooting weddings. Weddings demand a lot from your gear. You need fast lenses and you need high ISO capacity for dark churches and dimly lit receptions. You need flashguns to be able to shoot in any conditions, no matter how dark or rainy it gets. And most of all, you need backups for all your gear. You’re in charge of the memories of a once in a lifetime day in your client’s life, and if you’re charging money for capturing those memories you will have to be able to guarantee that your gear is appropriate and that failure of any equipment is not going to stop you from doing your job.

Probably the most challenging thing about weddings is to somehow manage to not think about the challenges and relax. It’s really easy to feel the pressure of everything that could go wrong on a day that’s so important to the couple, but if you feel stressed about it, you’re not really able to fully concentrate on bringing your A-game. The trick is to be well prepared, of which good quality fully working equipment is a big part of. On the day you know that you are prepared for anything and then… let go. Just can then go with the flow and concentrate on finding the best frames you can.

Are you a photographer or an aspiring creative business owner? Her Lovely Heart is my way of helping heart-led creatives to run their businesses with purpose, freedom, and joy. By subscribing to the Inspire Your Inbox letters, you’ll gain access to a library of free resources and worksheets, plus regular letters of inspiration from me straight to your inbox. Click here to join and receive instant access to The Library.