The Art of Business: Lessons from a Photographer's Journey

As I sit down to write this article, I am reminded that starting a business is a daunting task, especially for those with little formal training. As a photographer, I have always been drawn to the creative side of things, and my journey into entrepreneurship has been a trial-and-error process. In this article, I will share some of the lessons I've learned along the way, from the importance of transparency in business to the power of personality in branding.

Coming up with a name for your business is a challenging task, no matter what industry you're in. As someone who has always struggled with this, I can attest that it's a process that requires patience and careful consideration. For me, having a name that reflects my brand's personality and values is crucial. It's not just about coming up with something catchy or memorable; it's about creating a sense of identity that resonates with your target audience. As I've navigated this process, I've realized that transparency is key. Being open and honest about the process behind your business can be a major selling point, especially for those who value authenticity.

One of the things that has struck me as I've been working on my business is the importance of education in building trust with customers. As someone who has always been passionate about photography, I know how much goes into creating high-quality prints. From the dark room to the printing process, every step is crucial in bringing out the best in an image. By sharing this process with others, I hope to build a sense of connection and community around my brand. Whether it's explaining the cost of print or providing insight into the creative decisions behind a particular piece, I believe that transparency is essential in building trust with customers.

Speaking of branding, I've always been frustrated by the way the term is used. In my opinion, "branding" has become a buzzword that's often misused and overhyped. As someone who values personality in their business, I prefer to use the term "personality" instead. To me, it's about creating a sense of authenticity and character that resonates with customers on a deeper level. When people can connect with your brand on a personal level, they're more likely to become loyal fans and advocates for your work.

Of course, starting a business isn't just about creating a great product or service; it's also about understanding who your target audience is. As someone who has always been passionate about photography, I know that there are many different types of photographers out there, each with their own unique style and niche. By taking the time to research and understand my target market, I hope to create a brand that speaks to them on a deeper level.

As I continue on this journey, I'm excited to share more of my experiences and insights with you. From the highs and lows of entrepreneurship to the lessons I've learned along the way, I hope to inspire and motivate others who are considering starting their own business. Whether you're just starting out or looking for advice from someone who has been there before, I invite you to join me on this journey into the art of photography.

Over the next few weeks, we'll be exploring some of these topics in more depth. We'll dive into the world of branding and learn about how to create a strong personal brand that resonates with your target audience. We'll talk about the importance of education and transparency in building trust with customers, and I'll share some tips and tricks for creating high-quality prints that will make your work stand out.

So thank you for joining me on this journey into the art of photography. I'm excited to see where this journey takes us, and I hope that my experiences can inspire and motivate others who are considering starting their own business. If you have any questions or comments, please don't hesitate to reach out. I'd love to hear from you and continue the conversation.

Before we go, I just want to say thank you again for watching. It means a lot to me that you're taking the time to listen in on my journey, and I hope that it's been informative and inspiring. If you found this article helpful, please don't forget to subscribe to our channel for more content like this. We'll be back next week with another episode of The Art of Photography.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey everybody my name is Ted Forbes welcome back to another episode of The Art of Photography and today I want to talk I want to revisit and talk a little bit more about this gallery that I told you on that I'm going to start and I talked about this a couple podcasts ago and what I want to do the main drive for doing this is I want to start thinking of my work differently on another level than what I've been operating on in the past I'm talking about my own photography uh I want to start thinking more in series type projects and I want to start really upping the ante of coming up with uh stuff that I believe is presentable and let me give you kind of a metaphor for that you know if you you think about it like you know in music terms if you're starting a garage band and you know it's one thing to like you know you and your friends or maybe you're practicing solo guitar or piano or something and and you're just jamming and practicing and and at some point it's like okay what kind of definitive work are you doing are you making records are you doing concerts are you playing gigs um you know that type of thing and so I think this is a really important thing uh to discuss here on the podcast and basically what we are doing or what I am doing is starting a business and I want to be transparent about doing this uh and there's a couple reasons why one uh it's very valuable feedback that I get sometimes on stuff um I don't have a full disclosure here I don't have any formal business training so this is going to be very experimental and I'm perfectly willing to fail on this and I have failed on stuff in the past and I've started businesses in the past and you learn from those mistakes and it's very valuable so my whole feeling is is that that there's nothing to be afraid of in doing these you should do it uh if you were remotely interested in starting a business and seeing where that goes go for it um anyway where I am right now and I want to show you this is very preliminary here but I've been basically I'm using Google Docs and I've got that up here on my phone and Google Docs is a free service if you have a Gmail account and it's basically an office suite and I like it because it's online and I can go check my stuff from any computer that I happen to be on and anyway so I've I've used Google Docs I've started a document although I'll have to be more organized than just one document later but I've just been like throwing ideas in when I have them and when I'm thinking about the business and just random stuff and anyway I wrote down some things I'm going to share these with you and basically these are kind of topics that need to be considered uh naming and branding what am I going to call this what is the URL going to be is it easy to remember uh how am I going to brand that into maybe a logo or a tyght face or whatever it is that I end up using on that uh marketing is a big deal um I think marketing is huge we're going to have to figure out or I'm going to have to figure out uh if I'm going to sell my work my photography uh who is the person that would be buying that and I think that's the hardest part and I think that's where a lot of artists in general fail is they're not really considering uh who is it that would be buying their stuff and why would they uh it's one thing for the ego to take over and a lot of artists to think oh because my work is so good people would love to have it gracing the walls of their apartments and homes and you know what that's not good enough um you're going to have to dig deeper than that and so anyway marketing is going to be a big deal in here and you know what are we going to do with that uh there's obviously going to be content planning um with the website building the website uh making videos I'm I do a lot of video as you know uh with this podcast and video is a great way of showing behind the scenes and in my day job I do a lot of video process stuff too so I want uh what I'm doing I'm going to come back to that to be video based and very transparent in a lot of ways um having an email list uh having Google analytics social media Twitter flicker Facebook Pinterest Instagram Etc um funding is a big one how are we going to fund this and and with any business that you start I think this is another catch that people get right off the bat is that it's hard you have to have some funding to go into this and how are we going to find it what are we going to do are we going to find am I going to finance it myself am I going to look for something different um there are things like Kickstarter Kickstarter is interesting if you're not familiar with kickstarter.com Kickstarter is a place where anybody you may whoever can go sign up for a project and look for funding people to fund it and you would have Financial backers and basically what it does is it gives you enough money to start something the thing I haven't got my head around yet is Kickstarter there's been a lot of very successful projects on it and you can't start a business on Kickstarter they're very particular that you you have to have a project that is not open-ended there is a final product that comes out and so it has to be reduced down to that somehow um you can't just say okay hey we're going to start a business because there's really no end to that hopefully no end unless you go out of business and that's not something to sell on so you can't just start a business at a Kickstarter you have to have a project in in mind uh but it can be a way to fund so anyway so we're going to talk about that cuz I think that is something that keeps people from starting their own businesses most of the time is is lack of funding and how to find that and how to get that going so we'll we'll we'll discover all that uh business plan uh product planning uh that's a big one and then the launch and coming back to product playing a little bit I think it's difficult because where I've started right now is kind of starting to think about names I could use um what domain I could use for this what domain name and this is all kind of difficult because uh you know I I'll give you an example because I'm not going to use this and I will be happy to share with you as I'm going on what I'm willing to use um one of the first ideas I had was to call my gallery obscura I like the camera obscura it's a it's kind of a cool name it's catchy uh it's it's kind of mysterious in a lot of ways and it describes most of Photography um however you know there's several domain names you can find that have obscura in the title but if you hit Google and Google obscure Gallery you will be amazed because there's about a million in Five results that come up of various galleries scattered around the world that use that in their title and so I kind of pulled away from that cuz I don't want to do it so anyway there's a lot of process involved with that uh coming up with a name for your business you know no matter what you're doing whether it's a gallery or whether you know you're going to use your own name or whether you're doing something that's service-based uh a Galler is very difficult you know compared to a service-based kind of industry and so anyway uh all that to say so that's another you know uh thing I'm having to work out so um but anyway I'm going to be very transparent about all this once I do decide on some of these things I'm going to start a blog on the website cuz I completely believe in being transparent and I jotted down a couple other ideas on here and these are just some sentences that I wrote things that you know I was going through businesses that you know things that I buy online and companies that I trust and that that I am a patron of and I was trying to think about you know maybe some philosophies I could bring in to my own business here and I just wrote These down uh one of them is transparency of process is important and I believe that I think transparency uh is very important obviously being very transparent here but I think having a Blog on the website that shows exactly what goes into making prints I'm going to do these in the dark room and what is involved with that uh process is important and I think transparency of that is important um why is a print cost what it does um education to the process is important it's kind of the same thing and here's a big one I think personality is important and the reason I wrote this down is because you know having been a former graphic designer I've always hated the word branding uh branding is something you do to C in the state of Texas in the 1800s branding is not you know it that word is so thrown around and misus today uh and one of the things that bothers me about it is branding doesn't seem to have a personality associated with it even though that's what you know any really good agency or designer will tell you today but I like to use the word personality because that ultimately is what you're selling with people I think if people can identify and connect with that I think you're going to have some success this is all you know just kind of where I am without much formal training but anyway so that's where we are and like I said we're not going to do this every week um or every episode I mean we might hit it once a week and I will give you hopefully we'll start gaining some more momentum I think the the early stages of this is the hardest part um you know how do you start a business and how do you keep it from failing hopefully and sometimes I think it's a little bit you know kind of cart before the horse because I I I've defined the business I know what it is um we can come up with a name I I have this idea in mind of of what the business feels like what it it it you know what that personality is but I don't have the product ready yet and so it's kind of like okay cart before the horse and what I'm going have to do is figure out what the cart's going to be put it on hold we're going to go over to the horse I'm going to figure out what my work needs to start looking like and what kinds of things I am going to sell and based on Research that I'm going to do so we'll get into that later CU like I said you know you need to know you know who is it that's going to buy your work and why would they want to buy it so anyway that's important then come back to the cart and then hopefully be ready to launch so anyway that's where we are right now um I have not abandoned ship on this I think this is a very important cool thing and I hope it's worth sharing with you guys um I think most photographers fancy having a business or making money off of it somehow and what I'm looking for right now is just something that I can do on the side and really the push is is to start thinking about my work differently uh is number one and two if if I can make a little bit of a profit doing it and uh provide something that somebody could buy that would you know make their lives more enjoy enable you know that's great too so anyway that's where we are on all this and if you have any questions leave them in the comments shoot me an email I'm pretty open to having emails sometimes I get backed up so you know forgive me if I don't get back within two minutes but uh it takes a couple days but anyway guys thank you again for watching once again this is the Art of Photography I'll see you next timehey everybody my name is Ted Forbes welcome back to another episode of The Art of Photography and today I want to talk I want to revisit and talk a little bit more about this gallery that I told you on that I'm going to start and I talked about this a couple podcasts ago and what I want to do the main drive for doing this is I want to start thinking of my work differently on another level than what I've been operating on in the past I'm talking about my own photography uh I want to start thinking more in series type projects and I want to start really upping the ante of coming up with uh stuff that I believe is presentable and let me give you kind of a metaphor for that you know if you you think about it like you know in music terms if you're starting a garage band and you know it's one thing to like you know you and your friends or maybe you're practicing solo guitar or piano or something and and you're just jamming and practicing and and at some point it's like okay what kind of definitive work are you doing are you making records are you doing concerts are you playing gigs um you know that type of thing and so I think this is a really important thing uh to discuss here on the podcast and basically what we are doing or what I am doing is starting a business and I want to be transparent about doing this uh and there's a couple reasons why one uh it's very valuable feedback that I get sometimes on stuff um I don't have a full disclosure here I don't have any formal business training so this is going to be very experimental and I'm perfectly willing to fail on this and I have failed on stuff in the past and I've started businesses in the past and you learn from those mistakes and it's very valuable so my whole feeling is is that that there's nothing to be afraid of in doing these you should do it uh if you were remotely interested in starting a business and seeing where that goes go for it um anyway where I am right now and I want to show you this is very preliminary here but I've been basically I'm using Google Docs and I've got that up here on my phone and Google Docs is a free service if you have a Gmail account and it's basically an office suite and I like it because it's online and I can go check my stuff from any computer that I happen to be on and anyway so I've I've used Google Docs I've started a document although I'll have to be more organized than just one document later but I've just been like throwing ideas in when I have them and when I'm thinking about the business and just random stuff and anyway I wrote down some things I'm going to share these with you and basically these are kind of topics that need to be considered uh naming and branding what am I going to call this what is the URL going to be is it easy to remember uh how am I going to brand that into maybe a logo or a tyght face or whatever it is that I end up using on that uh marketing is a big deal um I think marketing is huge we're going to have to figure out or I'm going to have to figure out uh if I'm going to sell my work my photography uh who is the person that would be buying that and I think that's the hardest part and I think that's where a lot of artists in general fail is they're not really considering uh who is it that would be buying their stuff and why would they uh it's one thing for the ego to take over and a lot of artists to think oh because my work is so good people would love to have it gracing the walls of their apartments and homes and you know what that's not good enough um you're going to have to dig deeper than that and so anyway marketing is going to be a big deal in here and you know what are we going to do with that uh there's obviously going to be content planning um with the website building the website uh making videos I'm I do a lot of video as you know uh with this podcast and video is a great way of showing behind the scenes and in my day job I do a lot of video process stuff too so I want uh what I'm doing I'm going to come back to that to be video based and very transparent in a lot of ways um having an email list uh having Google analytics social media Twitter flicker Facebook Pinterest Instagram Etc um funding is a big one how are we going to fund this and and with any business that you start I think this is another catch that people get right off the bat is that it's hard you have to have some funding to go into this and how are we going to find it what are we going to do are we going to find am I going to finance it myself am I going to look for something different um there are things like Kickstarter Kickstarter is interesting if you're not familiar with kickstarter.com Kickstarter is a place where anybody you may whoever can go sign up for a project and look for funding people to fund it and you would have Financial backers and basically what it does is it gives you enough money to start something the thing I haven't got my head around yet is Kickstarter there's been a lot of very successful projects on it and you can't start a business on Kickstarter they're very particular that you you have to have a project that is not open-ended there is a final product that comes out and so it has to be reduced down to that somehow um you can't just say okay hey we're going to start a business because there's really no end to that hopefully no end unless you go out of business and that's not something to sell on so you can't just start a business at a Kickstarter you have to have a project in in mind uh but it can be a way to fund so anyway so we're going to talk about that cuz I think that is something that keeps people from starting their own businesses most of the time is is lack of funding and how to find that and how to get that going so we'll we'll we'll discover all that uh business plan uh product planning uh that's a big one and then the launch and coming back to product playing a little bit I think it's difficult because where I've started right now is kind of starting to think about names I could use um what domain I could use for this what domain name and this is all kind of difficult because uh you know I I'll give you an example because I'm not going to use this and I will be happy to share with you as I'm going on what I'm willing to use um one of the first ideas I had was to call my gallery obscura I like the camera obscura it's a it's kind of a cool name it's catchy uh it's it's kind of mysterious in a lot of ways and it describes most of Photography um however you know there's several domain names you can find that have obscura in the title but if you hit Google and Google obscure Gallery you will be amazed because there's about a million in Five results that come up of various galleries scattered around the world that use that in their title and so I kind of pulled away from that cuz I don't want to do it so anyway there's a lot of process involved with that uh coming up with a name for your business you know no matter what you're doing whether it's a gallery or whether you know you're going to use your own name or whether you're doing something that's service-based uh a Galler is very difficult you know compared to a service-based kind of industry and so anyway uh all that to say so that's another you know uh thing I'm having to work out so um but anyway I'm going to be very transparent about all this once I do decide on some of these things I'm going to start a blog on the website cuz I completely believe in being transparent and I jotted down a couple other ideas on here and these are just some sentences that I wrote things that you know I was going through businesses that you know things that I buy online and companies that I trust and that that I am a patron of and I was trying to think about you know maybe some philosophies I could bring in to my own business here and I just wrote These down uh one of them is transparency of process is important and I believe that I think transparency uh is very important obviously being very transparent here but I think having a Blog on the website that shows exactly what goes into making prints I'm going to do these in the dark room and what is involved with that uh process is important and I think transparency of that is important um why is a print cost what it does um education to the process is important it's kind of the same thing and here's a big one I think personality is important and the reason I wrote this down is because you know having been a former graphic designer I've always hated the word branding uh branding is something you do to C in the state of Texas in the 1800s branding is not you know it that word is so thrown around and misus today uh and one of the things that bothers me about it is branding doesn't seem to have a personality associated with it even though that's what you know any really good agency or designer will tell you today but I like to use the word personality because that ultimately is what you're selling with people I think if people can identify and connect with that I think you're going to have some success this is all you know just kind of where I am without much formal training but anyway so that's where we are and like I said we're not going to do this every week um or every episode I mean we might hit it once a week and I will give you hopefully we'll start gaining some more momentum I think the the early stages of this is the hardest part um you know how do you start a business and how do you keep it from failing hopefully and sometimes I think it's a little bit you know kind of cart before the horse because I I I've defined the business I know what it is um we can come up with a name I I have this idea in mind of of what the business feels like what it it it you know what that personality is but I don't have the product ready yet and so it's kind of like okay cart before the horse and what I'm going have to do is figure out what the cart's going to be put it on hold we're going to go over to the horse I'm going to figure out what my work needs to start looking like and what kinds of things I am going to sell and based on Research that I'm going to do so we'll get into that later CU like I said you know you need to know you know who is it that's going to buy your work and why would they want to buy it so anyway that's important then come back to the cart and then hopefully be ready to launch so anyway that's where we are right now um I have not abandoned ship on this I think this is a very important cool thing and I hope it's worth sharing with you guys um I think most photographers fancy having a business or making money off of it somehow and what I'm looking for right now is just something that I can do on the side and really the push is is to start thinking about my work differently uh is number one and two if if I can make a little bit of a profit doing it and uh provide something that somebody could buy that would you know make their lives more enjoy enable you know that's great too so anyway that's where we are on all this and if you have any questions leave them in the comments shoot me an email I'm pretty open to having emails sometimes I get backed up so you know forgive me if I don't get back within two minutes but uh it takes a couple days but anyway guys thank you again for watching once again this is the Art of Photography I'll see you next time\n"