There can only be one start to this piece, and that is to state how ridiculously privileged I feel to have the life I do. Without a doubt I am living my dream, and I’m guessing if you’re reading this, it is likely to be one of your dreams too. I’ve received so many kind messages of support and encouragement upon taking the hugely exciting, but frankly terrifying the step into freelance work. A fair few people have also expressed to me that they hope to do the same one day. And good on ‘em. There’s a massive sense of freedom when you work for yourself. You get to apply your creative ideas and watch them grow, with no-one else to veto those moves. However the reality, for me at least, has been far from a bed of roses, and the motivation for doing this very open and personal blog is to hopefully give you some sort of benchmark and advice if a similar move is on your career roadmap.
In the years leading up to this point, I would constantly ask myself, how will I know when I’m ready? Bryan Schutmaat has talked of the ‘snowball effect’ of time in the game, and despite having 11 years of obsessive photographic practice under my belt, I was still far from the point at which I felt I was ready. The leap of faith for me was precipitated by re-locating from Northampton to Torquay without specifically having jobs to move for. Six months in, I still feel that I am another 5 or 10 years or so of hard graft away from my snowball being anywhere big enough to do this as a job… so until then I need to keep on rolling or risk melting into the ground.
Like many artists I don’t have a business head stuck on my shoulders, so when watching YT video after YT video about how to set up a business, one of the key questions that kept on coming up was, how do you set yourself apart? What is your niche that will make others part with their hard-earned for your services? Post pandemic, I suspect more and more people will look to monetise their talents, in search of the elusive ‘better way’; some because they’ve had time to reflect on the direction of their life, and others out of sheer necessity. But here’s the thing: there is SO much talent out there! The internet has accelerated our connectivity but also our influence on each other. I increasingly see a more homogenised photographic ‘look’ when I scroll through my Insta feed. Years ago, Street Photography was the genre du jour for the masses, but even street stalwarts such as Matt Stuart have begun to photograph people-less scenes with more regularity. Have a look at his #nothingfromnowhere series on IG, no doubt a future book in the making. The hard truth is, in photographic circles at least, the ‘overlooked’ or ‘neglected’ is perhaps becoming a cliche… which in turn makes it tougher to make a dime from photographing a slab of banality.
The honesty is going to get a little more raw from here, but when stuff needs to be said…
Here it is: there is absolutely no way I could’ve sustained myself, let alone my family, solely on the fine art photography income thus far. Admittedly, more than stubbornly, I was fixated to pursue the purely ‘artistic’ side of photographic practice, rather than venture down the commercial route. The vast majority of professional fine art photographers do so using commercial work as the backbone of their income. Only the superstar ‘household’ names in the game can truly earn enough by doing what they love, but even they have augmented incomes from University lecturing and eye-wateringly expensive workshops.
I realised that setting up the business during the pandemic was always going to be a tough gig, but as a family, we’d planned for years to get to this point so the ship had already left the port. I firmly believe things are likely to get tougher for us all yet, which in essence, was the subject of my last blog. The only way I have managed to make this happen so far, is to continue my nursing work in the NHS two days per week, invest time and effort into gaining passive income streams and, above all, have without doubt the most supportive wife on the planet. We essentially live off her wages and, as she also works in the NHS, we’ve both had to make huge sacrifices for me to follow my dream. I’ll say it again, I am truly privileged to be doing what I’m doing.
During the last six months, it has been a rollercoaster consisting largely of highs, but there have been unexpected lows to contend with too. The feeling of packaging up my zine or signing the back of a print to post around the world have been the sparkling highlights for me. It’s during these moments where I feel like I’ve ‘made it’. Here I am, doing the job that I’ve yearned after for close to a decade, with people willing to shell out their precious dollars for my art. It’s an incredible feeling. However, it would be remiss of me to not mention the feelings of insecurity, even worthlessness creeping in at times, despite the fact that I consider myself to have a very resilient brain forged in the fires of the NHS. I’ve already mentioned the jaw-dropping skills of other artists in the Instagram community. What gives me the right to charge what I do for my prints, when I see hugely talented folk selling theirs for a fraction of the price? All I can think is that they don’t need to make any living wage from their endeavours as they must be selling at near cost price for the print materials alone. Tax, gear upgrades, insurance, pension payments… these are all expenses that I haven’t even priced into my work thus far. This is a message for you all - if you ever have aspirations of doing photography as a job, you need to consider how you’re pricing your work today. If your fans and collectors are used to paying £30, £40, £50 for a print, why would they pay 5x or 10x that in a years time when you decide to make a go of it? Bottom line: all of our work is worth more than we are selling it for, of that I can be certain. Here is a stark warning that I too need to heed - by charging low prices for our creativity, we are devaluing the photographic ecosystem for us all.
Finally, despite how one might imagine, the actual time spent photographing hasn’t gone up since turning professional. I work office hours during the week on the business side of things, but I think I’ve only ventured out three times in the last six months to take any photos during these hours. The day-to-day reality is taken up writing this blog, optimising SEO for my website, sequencing / designing / packaging and posting zines or searching for hours on various hard drives to fish for images for an interview or feature. The photography still takes place late on a Friday night or early on a Sunday morning, same as it’s ever been.
I’m genuinely sorry if this comes across as a bit of a depressing read. The very last thing I want this blog to do is to discourage you from following your passion. I need to end on conveying how happy, lucky, fortunate I feel to do what I do. I could’ve showered this text with the superlatives of the life I now lead… and, truly, I’m pinching myself on a daily basis. I just wanted to show that it’s perhaps not the skip in the park you might think it is. Despite this, am I worried? Am I feck! We’ve got this, and I’m excited to continue navigating the ups and downs over the next few years… after all, for me at least, a rollercoaster is a better existence than flatlining. My brother, who has been freelance for years, said there’s a common acceptance amongst the creative community that you don’t make any money for the first two years. If that’s the case, I’m doing just fine.