This September marks 2 years of being a full-time freelance photographer, and it has been an incredible journey so far! I wanted to celebrate this anniversary the same as the last one, by sharing a little bit of what I have learned over the last year.
Be Grateful - Every morning I wake up and I am excited and grateful for what I get to call a career. It was a long hard road just to get to this place and now that I have arrived I am somewhat shocked at how incredible it actually is. You never really know how long you have, so make the most of every day and stay grateful.
There is no such thing as "Overnight Success" - It's been two years, and I have been privileged to work with some really cool clients...but I didn't just wake up and have those clients 2 years ago. It's everyday, it's looking for clients and showing them your work, being rejected, looking and showing your work again. You send out e-mails, mailers, make phone calls and show your portfolio to anyone who will look at it...then slowly, you start to get clients. The point is to keep creating for the reasons that first got you started, because you love it, because you have something to say.
Never say Never - I am finally starting to realize that I shouldn't say never, because you never know. Lately I have been working on tutorial videos like crazy, I said I would never do video. There are a million other examples, but be open, open to collaborate, open to new opportunities, open to someday...not never.
Be Where You Are - I live in Colorado Springs, this is actually hard for me to tell people. I don't live in LA or San Francisco. I have found that by embracing where I live I can use what I do to help my community, not for money, but for my community. I can travel to San Francisco (we just got back from there actually) and in this day and age it's not hard to send files or jump on a plane. We have been stoked to work on some really cool local projects in the last few months, and that's only because we were willing. If you spend all of your time dreaming about where you aren't it makes it really hard to live where you are.
Always Ask - As the saying goes "If you never ask, the answer is always no". I was recently talking at a local gathering for creatives called "Connecting Things" and I talked about how most of the mistakes I make can be associated with fear in some way. Even now, when I am really proud of the work we have done, I have trouble showing it to people because of fear. Some of the best clients and coolest shoots we have done came from walking up to someone or making a phone call, after hours of trying to talk myself out of it. We really are our own worst enemy when it comes to this, so be bold, go ask!
Push Yourself - I once heard someone say "photographers are basically problem solvers", we are hired to solve other peoples problems. It's hard to solve problems if you are not constantly creating them for yourself to solve. This is where personal work comes in. As we have grown over the last year I am continually pushing myself and my team to create something new, to push the limits of what we did last time and to become better at solving problems. As I sit and write this I just came back from a scouting trip for a shoot that will hopefully create a new vein of images for my brand, and I am excited to do it.
There's no doubt about it, being a freelancer is hard work, but it's great work. I am so stoked to be a part of such an incredible industry, and to create something new every day. I wanted to finish with some of my favorite images from this year and of course remind you...be awesome!
