Surprising Valuable Things Schools Never Teach New Photographers

If you're hoping to have a career as a professional photographer here is a list of really surprisingly valuable things schools never teach you as a photography student.

Things Schools Never Teach New Photographers

The cost of photography school is higher than ever. Plus the prospect of opening a photography business right out of school is less than affordable. So, why is it that photography schools fail to teach the following 10 critical things to you, a future professional photographers?

1. Business Administration
2. How to find and land clients
3. Successful photographers are successful business people
4. Good photographers are everywhere
5. Pricing to avoid burnout
6. More businesses choke rather than starve
7. Collaborate, don't compete
8. How effective communication sells photos
9. The photographers first role is as problem solver
10. You need to create and strive to meet goals

Photography Schools Are Not Business Schools

This might not be surprising but photography schools are not business schools. As a result, they do a terrible job teaching you how to run a photography business. Therefore, you're much better off to get a business degree than to go to school for photography. In fact, working as an assistant to other photographers while getting a business degree will help you succeed far more than any photography school program.

Schools Never Teach You How To Get Clients

Finding and landing clients is essential to all businesses. However, photography schools never teach you how to find and land clients. Why is that? I wish I knew. Still, this is an essential skill that involves marketing, the ability and desire to cold contact people, and more.

Therefore, create a marketing plan. To do so, first you need to understand your target client. So, create an ideal persona of the person you'd most like to work with. Of course, they should be someone realistic and obviously they should need the type of photography you're interested in providing.

Next, find out where to meet people who come close to your target client. If you're doing weddings a wedding show makes sense. On the other hand, if you're interested in real estate, visit open houses or cold call real estate offices. Don't wait for them to find you - find them.

Successful Photography Businesses Are Successful Businesses

There's no difference between running a successful pizza shop, landscaping business, and your photography business. In fact, your business should have more in common with them than you might think.

Success in business requires understanding your market and meeting the needs of your clients. Additionally, it means running the day-to-day business successfully. In the beginning, 70 to 80 percent of your time might be spent on non-photography tasks. That is, until you can afford to pay someone else to do them.

Good Photographers Are Everywhere

It's not enough to be a great photographer. No matter what your photography school taught you, there are good photographers everywhere. If you're going to rise to the top you'll need to do so by being a good business owner.

Photography schools often focus so much on photography skills that they forget that you need to understand so much more to be successful. After all, you need to be able to talk to customers and meet their needs, meet deadlines, and deliver what you promised. No matter how good you are, if your clients are unhappy you're not going to succeed.

Price To Avoid Burnout

Photography schools never teach you how to avoid burnout. The number one way is to price yourself to avoid it. How? I wrote an article on profitable pricing here. Therefore, I'm not going to go into too much detail.

That said here is a brief explainer. First, figure out what you need to make. Then, figure out how many clients you can reasonably sell to. Now, divide the first number by the second. That is what you should make, on average, per job. Of course you might not hit your target each time so adjust accordingly.

More Businesses Choke Than Starve

If you're not successful at finding clients then you might starve. But, you're more likely to burnout trying to do too much. Therefore, price according to the above section and don't take on more than you can do. After all, you're better to under-promise and over-deliver than the opposite.

Pace yourself. Your photography school may have never taught you this but you're work is good enough for people to pay you for it. Therefore, charge what you need to live. Hustle culture is not healthy.

Collaborate, Don't Compete

Far too many people open their photography business up and try to beat the competition, undercut in pricing, and out perform. While that can work to a limited degree, what they never taught you in school is how that will earn you a bad reputation.

Generally, photographers are very friendly and nice to each other. Therefore, we usually don't steal from each other or do underhanded things. Instead, if you work with the other photographers in your area you'll find ways to improve the local photography scene for everyone. In fact, this is the principle that Pittsburgh.photography was founded on.

Learn To Communicate

Communication is critical. However, most photography schools don't teach effective communication. In fact, I find a lot of new photographers struggle to communicate in a myriad of ways. Your photography business is largely a sales job. Unless you've hired a sales and marketing manager you've got to do the selling. Even if you have, on the job you need to effectively communicate.

To be clear, I'm not talking about not wanting to talk on the phone. Trust me, I don't like that either. However, I'm talking about in person communication. Talk to people. Show an interest in them. Get them to talk about themselves. This is how you relax them and make them more open to working with you.

You're A Problem Solver Now

In a way, I hope you always were a problem solver. After all, it will make this part easier. Schools never want to teach this. However, you need to understand how to solve problems. Plus, you need to keep your cool while doing so. Things will go wrong. You will forget something critical. These things happen. How you solve for them is the difference between long term success and quick failure.

Set Goals and Track Them

Owning a business is a lot of day-to-day grind. However you need to set goals and to track them. First, you need sales goals. How do you know you're going to be able to pay your bills without them?

In addition, you should set goals for other aspects of your business. For example, landing a cover on a major publication. Or, making enough to save up for a house or a once-in-a-lifetime vacation. I promise you that your school never taught you that you can (and should) do that.

In Conclusion

There are so many things that photography schools never teach new photographers. However, you must learn those things. The 10 listed above are just a few. To learn more find a mentor or two. Alternatively, if you can, find a group like this one, Pittsburgh Photographers where you can learn from many working photographers in Pittsburgh.