**The Art of Photography and the Business Side**

As photographers, we often get so caught up in our passion for creating beautiful images that we forget about the business side of things. However, if you're looking to make a career out of photography, it's essential to consider the financial aspect of your work. A well-thought-out marketing strategy can help you stand out in a crowded industry and attract potential clients.

However, not many photographers are naturally good at PR and business management. We're often too focused on our craft to think about how to promote ourselves or our work. This obsession with our art can be both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, it drives us to create our best work and push the boundaries of what's possible. On the other hand, it can make it difficult for us to see beyond our own work and think about how to get it out there to the world.

**The Importance of Marketing**

Having a passion for photography is just the starting point. To succeed as a photographer, you need to be able to market yourself and your work effectively. This doesn't mean sacrificing your artistic vision or compromising on quality, but rather finding ways to reach new audiences and promote your work in a way that feels authentic to you. For many photographers, this means working with a PR agent or manager who can help you navigate the business side of things.

Take Ansel Adams, for example. He's one of the most famous photographers of all time, but what many people don't know is that he had a full-time PR guy named Bill Turnage who helped him get his work seen by the world. This partnership allowed Ansel to focus on his photography while leaving the business side of things in good hands. Similarly, Vivian Mayer, a contemporary photographer, has been able to build a reputation and attract new audiences through smart marketing and public relations.

**The Role of Marketing in Career Success**

Marketing is not just about promoting your own work; it's also about understanding what makes you unique and how to communicate that to others. For photographers, this means finding ways to tell your story and showcase your vision in a way that resonates with potential clients or audiences. It's about creating a brand that reflects your artistic style and values, while also being able to adapt to changing trends and technologies.

Take GoPro, for example. They're not the most well-known camera company out there, but they've managed to carve out a niche for themselves by focusing on high-quality products and effective marketing campaigns. Their ability to connect with outdoor enthusiasts and adventure-seekers has helped them build a loyal following and establish themselves as leaders in their industry.

**The Power of Grassroots Marketing**

In today's digital age, grassroots marketing can be a powerful way to get your work seen by new audiences. Social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook have created new opportunities for photographers to showcase their work and connect with potential clients or fans. By using hashtags, collaborating with other artists or influencers, and sharing behind-the-scenes glimpses into your creative process, you can build a community around your art and attract new followers.

Vivian Mayer's story is a great example of this kind of grassroots marketing in action. Her work has been widely acclaimed, but it wasn't until she was featured in a documentary film that her reputation as one of the leading photographers of our time began to spread. From there, her book sales and public speaking engagements skyrocketed, allowing her to build a loyal following and establish herself as a major player in the photography world.

**The Importance of Business Skills**

While passion and creativity are essential for success as a photographer, business skills are equally important. Whether you're working with clients, managing your finances, or promoting your work, you need to be able to navigate the business side of things with confidence. This means being able to negotiate contracts, manage your time effectively, and adapt to changing trends and technologies.

Peter Lik is an example of a photographer who has built a successful career through his marketing skills as well as his artistic talent. His work is highly sought after by collectors and museums, and he's been able to build a loyal following through his social media presence and public appearances. While some may view his approach as overly commercial or manipulative, it's undeniable that Peter Lik has built a reputation for himself as one of the most talented and successful photographers working today.

**Conclusion**

As photographers, we're often so focused on our craft that we forget about the importance of marketing and business management. However, if you want to succeed in this field, you need to be willing to think outside the box and explore new ways of promoting your work. Whether it's working with a PR agent, building a social media presence, or using grassroots marketing tactics, there are many ways to get your work seen by new audiences and build a loyal following.

Ultimately, success as a photographer requires a combination of artistic talent, business skills, and a willingness to adapt to changing trends and technologies. By embracing these principles and being open to new ideas and approaches, you can build a successful career as a photographer and share your vision with the world.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enI want to talk a little bit today about careers in fine art photography and I think of all the years that I've done this show this is probably one of the questions that just gets asked the most in fact I had two emails this week basically asking me about that and I think part of it has to do with the fact I used to work in the museum world and also interestingly enough and I'm going to speak a little bit to this today about the fact that this year I have gotten to spend time interviewing eight very successful photographers and so I'm going to kind of talk a little bit about that and bring that into the equation because I think this is something that people it's very hard to get your head around and particularly if you look at the contemporary art world and you look at some of the big names in contemporary art and a lot of these people are rock stars there is no rhyme or reason or one way any of them became popular or their work became collectible sometimes it's debatable whether the work is actually decent has any merit to it or not when you come down to the gallery level the quality goes way up but still if you do a survey of people who are successful it doesn't seem to be any kind of one pattern or one way to go about it and I think that becomes very frustrating for photographers that want to pursue that is a direction so I want to talk about some thoughts on that a little bit today and as I mentioned of the photographer's that I spoke to this year I didn't ask it the same way in every interview but that is a topic that I kind of tried to get around to with everybody is what would their advice be for photographers who are trying to have a go at this and it's interesting because there were two photographers that I think really gave the most logical answers to this one of them was Graciela Davide who I interviewed in Mexico City two weeks ago and she put it very simply and we were towards the end of the interview and I you know post the question and she said well the only two things that you have to have are you have to have talent and you have to have a passion and the rest will all fall into place and that is an oversimplified answer and it's not particularly unique or original but she's not wrong I think you do have to have those two things you do have to have a talent and you do have to have a passion and a drive to do it it is particularly hard there is no one way to do it there's no one way of no one path to go down to come up with a result of having a career as a fine art photographer um the other person that I interviewed that I thought put this in much more detail and I actually put it very well was Laura Wilson in that video I have released and I'll link all this stuff up in the show notes if you haven't seen it but she gave a lot of advice in that video towards younger photographers or people in general who want to have a go at it now Laura is very successful she was Richard Avedon assistant in the 80s her son herbs sari her husband was a very successful executive for public TV station here in Dallas at the time and all three of her sons are famous actors her sons are Andrew Wilson Owen Wilson and Luke Wilson so I think if anybody understands pursuing that passion it probably would be her and she put it very eloquently the first thing she said was that rather than call it a career or you know something like that to call it leading a creative life and I like that because it takes some of the pressure off of trying to either put a financial goal with that or some kind of income related thing but it's to live a creative life and this means sometimes you have to have a job that allows you to pursue this creative thing on the side and that's a sacrifice that you have to make but what she said you know you have to be single-minded about it and you have to be persistent and I think those two things are really important too now I'm not really telling you anything groundbreaking here these are really more motivational or inspirational ideas behind what one would do if they were pursuing becoming a photographer and I'm not talking about in the commercial world in the commercial world it's different because you can figure out where this money to be made but you know my father is an artist he's painter and one thing that he always told me it's no matter what it is that you do and I think this is interesting you have to figure out where there's an audience and somebody who's willing to pay you for it and how do you reach that person so for instance if you want to sell work in a gallery how do you reach people that might be interested in your work well you really kind of need to have that gallery in there to make that happen so how do you do that well speaking from experience most museum care Raiders won't talk to unknown artists and most galleries won't either because they are in this to make money or not so much museum world at the gallery world the museum world is in two established artists so neither one of them are going to go out of their way to help anybody's career you won't get discovered per se but one thing you can do is historically look at how artists have evolved over history and how that works most people do it through connections and through mentorships and through studying and one thing that's kind of debatable right now it's kind of this trend that people like to debate is whether or not the college system is actually worth the money that it costs and I'm not going to get into that debate here however if you can pick the right school you do have the talent you're able to develop you have access to teachers who are in that world and that can be a huge benefit to you now not all schools have very successful photographers on their faculty really the only the best ones do but that is something that might be worth pursuing in favor of that education because there's another thing there that you're actually going for so that's one way of looking at that another thing is participating in shows knowing other photographers all these things they're going to kind of lead up to an end result and I see that and I'm not trying to single anyone out I've had a lot of people ask me this question but usually the people who asked the question tend to be more isolated in their approach they are not necessarily talking with and hanging out with other photographers who are more successful than they are and so I think that's a big gap that's missing if you are living in a vacuum it's going to be very hard to get your work seen and get the word out it's going to be very hard to have any shows on your resume and that makes it very hard to talk to galleries so like everything is a little bit of a chain that leads up to the next now of course if you don't care about financial reward or you just want to shoot for personal reasons then all you do need is a passion and a drive and go and you're going to be in good hands but if you're looking at actually making a career out of that it becomes a little more difficult and a little more and at but I think you have to pick it apart like that the one last thing I want to say about this and I think this is going to be fairly obvious to most people but photographers and artists in Jen creatives are not necessarily really good at PR in the business side of things I'm not most people aren't and there's a lot that goes into that and I think mainly because if you're an artist most of you understand this it's an obsession we never stop thinking about it it's something that we're constantly trying to improve on it's the last thing we think about when we go to bed at nights the first thing we think about in the morning it's something that is on our minds all day no matter what we're doing and so that obsession is what is required to get really good at whatever it is that you're doing and I think that's important however having that obsession you don't really see what's beyond that in terms of getting the word out now there's nothing wrong with that and I always kind of take a little bit of offense when people will pigeonhole artists is just being bad business people and that is frustrating to hear because it makes it sound like it's just an insult but I'll give you an example if you consider Ansel Adams who is a household name if there is one and you look at photographers who are I think Vivian Mayer is certainly coming into that fold now even though she's no longer living Ansel Adams did it in his lifetime what a lot of people don't know about Ansel Adams is that he had a full-time PR guy that he worked with gentleman named Bill Turnage and Bill was responsible for making sure that that Ansel Adams was in the news that his prints and shows were known he probably would not be a household name had he not had that partnership with Bill and I think that's really important to recognize and I'm not saying that to devalue Ansel at all in fact I'm saying it to complement Ansel because what this did is bill turns wouldn't have been able to do it if Ansel wasn't a good photographer Ansel Adams was incredible photographer but that freed Ansel up to make better work and become great and Bill took care of the rest you look at any commercial entity today for instance Apple look at their marketing department how strong that is you know another one GoPro does GoPro make the best cameras available that's very arguable they make a very specific niche camera but they have an incredible marketing campaign around it and that's why they're popular and so I think a lot of it is you need to figure out what you can start doing to start making strides in your career but having somebody helping you do the marketing is not that bad of an idea and Ansel Adams was one of the most intense at that and obviously Bill was was really good at marketing him but you don't see a lot of other people doing that necessarily and unless it's somebody like you could argue Peter lik who is questionably one of the great living photographers but he runs a good business and he has a way of marketing himself is it work that I'm interested in not necessarily but I do have to commend him on his business skills and I think there is something to be learned there I mentioned Vivian Mayer a second ago and I think that that is a single thing that's a single photographers come along and it's turned the photography world around in some ways because her work is great but there is a mystique about her I mean they're people that have never been interested in photography or vintage photography or fine art photography that are very interested in her but look at the way she's been marketed and I think it was very smart there was a really well done film on documentary on finding Vivian Mayer there's been a lot of books that been put out the PR has been good it's a grassroots thing there is a story that's being told there this obscure nanny who left this amazing photography collection behind but anyway those are the things that you know you need to look at and I think as photographers we need to embrace and realize that maybe we've been marketing this the same way too long anyway those are just some thoughts I'd like to know yours so feel free to leave a comment if you enjoyed this video please remember to like it share it with your friends and it's always subscribed for more videos I'll see you guys in the next one laterI want to talk a little bit today about careers in fine art photography and I think of all the years that I've done this show this is probably one of the questions that just gets asked the most in fact I had two emails this week basically asking me about that and I think part of it has to do with the fact I used to work in the museum world and also interestingly enough and I'm going to speak a little bit to this today about the fact that this year I have gotten to spend time interviewing eight very successful photographers and so I'm going to kind of talk a little bit about that and bring that into the equation because I think this is something that people it's very hard to get your head around and particularly if you look at the contemporary art world and you look at some of the big names in contemporary art and a lot of these people are rock stars there is no rhyme or reason or one way any of them became popular or their work became collectible sometimes it's debatable whether the work is actually decent has any merit to it or not when you come down to the gallery level the quality goes way up but still if you do a survey of people who are successful it doesn't seem to be any kind of one pattern or one way to go about it and I think that becomes very frustrating for photographers that want to pursue that is a direction so I want to talk about some thoughts on that a little bit today and as I mentioned of the photographer's that I spoke to this year I didn't ask it the same way in every interview but that is a topic that I kind of tried to get around to with everybody is what would their advice be for photographers who are trying to have a go at this and it's interesting because there were two photographers that I think really gave the most logical answers to this one of them was Graciela Davide who I interviewed in Mexico City two weeks ago and she put it very simply and we were towards the end of the interview and I you know post the question and she said well the only two things that you have to have are you have to have talent and you have to have a passion and the rest will all fall into place and that is an oversimplified answer and it's not particularly unique or original but she's not wrong I think you do have to have those two things you do have to have a talent and you do have to have a passion and a drive to do it it is particularly hard there is no one way to do it there's no one way of no one path to go down to come up with a result of having a career as a fine art photographer um the other person that I interviewed that I thought put this in much more detail and I actually put it very well was Laura Wilson in that video I have released and I'll link all this stuff up in the show notes if you haven't seen it but she gave a lot of advice in that video towards younger photographers or people in general who want to have a go at it now Laura is very successful she was Richard Avedon assistant in the 80s her son herbs sari her husband was a very successful executive for public TV station here in Dallas at the time and all three of her sons are famous actors her sons are Andrew Wilson Owen Wilson and Luke Wilson so I think if anybody understands pursuing that passion it probably would be her and she put it very eloquently the first thing she said was that rather than call it a career or you know something like that to call it leading a creative life and I like that because it takes some of the pressure off of trying to either put a financial goal with that or some kind of income related thing but it's to live a creative life and this means sometimes you have to have a job that allows you to pursue this creative thing on the side and that's a sacrifice that you have to make but what she said you know you have to be single-minded about it and you have to be persistent and I think those two things are really important too now I'm not really telling you anything groundbreaking here these are really more motivational or inspirational ideas behind what one would do if they were pursuing becoming a photographer and I'm not talking about in the commercial world in the commercial world it's different because you can figure out where this money to be made but you know my father is an artist he's painter and one thing that he always told me it's no matter what it is that you do and I think this is interesting you have to figure out where there's an audience and somebody who's willing to pay you for it and how do you reach that person so for instance if you want to sell work in a gallery how do you reach people that might be interested in your work well you really kind of need to have that gallery in there to make that happen so how do you do that well speaking from experience most museum care Raiders won't talk to unknown artists and most galleries won't either because they are in this to make money or not so much museum world at the gallery world the museum world is in two established artists so neither one of them are going to go out of their way to help anybody's career you won't get discovered per se but one thing you can do is historically look at how artists have evolved over history and how that works most people do it through connections and through mentorships and through studying and one thing that's kind of debatable right now it's kind of this trend that people like to debate is whether or not the college system is actually worth the money that it costs and I'm not going to get into that debate here however if you can pick the right school you do have the talent you're able to develop you have access to teachers who are in that world and that can be a huge benefit to you now not all schools have very successful photographers on their faculty really the only the best ones do but that is something that might be worth pursuing in favor of that education because there's another thing there that you're actually going for so that's one way of looking at that another thing is participating in shows knowing other photographers all these things they're going to kind of lead up to an end result and I see that and I'm not trying to single anyone out I've had a lot of people ask me this question but usually the people who asked the question tend to be more isolated in their approach they are not necessarily talking with and hanging out with other photographers who are more successful than they are and so I think that's a big gap that's missing if you are living in a vacuum it's going to be very hard to get your work seen and get the word out it's going to be very hard to have any shows on your resume and that makes it very hard to talk to galleries so like everything is a little bit of a chain that leads up to the next now of course if you don't care about financial reward or you just want to shoot for personal reasons then all you do need is a passion and a drive and go and you're going to be in good hands but if you're looking at actually making a career out of that it becomes a little more difficult and a little more and at but I think you have to pick it apart like that the one last thing I want to say about this and I think this is going to be fairly obvious to most people but photographers and artists in Jen creatives are not necessarily really good at PR in the business side of things I'm not most people aren't and there's a lot that goes into that and I think mainly because if you're an artist most of you understand this it's an obsession we never stop thinking about it it's something that we're constantly trying to improve on it's the last thing we think about when we go to bed at nights the first thing we think about in the morning it's something that is on our minds all day no matter what we're doing and so that obsession is what is required to get really good at whatever it is that you're doing and I think that's important however having that obsession you don't really see what's beyond that in terms of getting the word out now there's nothing wrong with that and I always kind of take a little bit of offense when people will pigeonhole artists is just being bad business people and that is frustrating to hear because it makes it sound like it's just an insult but I'll give you an example if you consider Ansel Adams who is a household name if there is one and you look at photographers who are I think Vivian Mayer is certainly coming into that fold now even though she's no longer living Ansel Adams did it in his lifetime what a lot of people don't know about Ansel Adams is that he had a full-time PR guy that he worked with gentleman named Bill Turnage and Bill was responsible for making sure that that Ansel Adams was in the news that his prints and shows were known he probably would not be a household name had he not had that partnership with Bill and I think that's really important to recognize and I'm not saying that to devalue Ansel at all in fact I'm saying it to complement Ansel because what this did is bill turns wouldn't have been able to do it if Ansel wasn't a good photographer Ansel Adams was incredible photographer but that freed Ansel up to make better work and become great and Bill took care of the rest you look at any commercial entity today for instance Apple look at their marketing department how strong that is you know another one GoPro does GoPro make the best cameras available that's very arguable they make a very specific niche camera but they have an incredible marketing campaign around it and that's why they're popular and so I think a lot of it is you need to figure out what you can start doing to start making strides in your career but having somebody helping you do the marketing is not that bad of an idea and Ansel Adams was one of the most intense at that and obviously Bill was was really good at marketing him but you don't see a lot of other people doing that necessarily and unless it's somebody like you could argue Peter lik who is questionably one of the great living photographers but he runs a good business and he has a way of marketing himself is it work that I'm interested in not necessarily but I do have to commend him on his business skills and I think there is something to be learned there I mentioned Vivian Mayer a second ago and I think that that is a single thing that's a single photographers come along and it's turned the photography world around in some ways because her work is great but there is a mystique about her I mean they're people that have never been interested in photography or vintage photography or fine art photography that are very interested in her but look at the way she's been marketed and I think it was very smart there was a really well done film on documentary on finding Vivian Mayer there's been a lot of books that been put out the PR has been good it's a grassroots thing there is a story that's being told there this obscure nanny who left this amazing photography collection behind but anyway those are the things that you know you need to look at and I think as photographers we need to embrace and realize that maybe we've been marketing this the same way too long anyway those are just some thoughts I'd like to know yours so feel free to leave a comment if you enjoyed this video please remember to like it share it with your friends and it's always subscribed for more videos I'll see you guys in the next one later\n"