In this episode Oh Shoot! podcast, Cassidy Lynne shares advice on how to deal with unsupportive photographer friends and more!
Listen to the full podcast on Spotify or watch the episode on YouTube!
I got a message from one of you guys wanting advice on unsupportive photographer friends, and I thought about putting this blog post on what I believe you should focus on instead or how to deal with it!
Photographer Advice
Dealing With Unsupportive Photographer Friends
In the world of photography, having a supportive network can be a major plus. However, not everyone is lucky enough to have that. In this blog post, I discuss three main topics that come up during the podcast: identifying unsupportive friends, dealing with negativity, and finding and nurturing supportive relationships.
#1 Identifying Unsupportive Friends
The first step in dealing with unsupportive friends is recognizing them! In the podcast, I mentioned that these people tend to belittle your work, express indifference or jealousy, or consistently fail to acknowledge your achievements. Sometimes, they might even discourage you from pursuing your passion. Identifying these red flags can be tough, especially when these friends have been part of your life for a long time. But identifying these red flags is super important for you to move forward.
#2 Dealing with Negativity – Photographer Advice
Once you’ve identified unsupportive friends, it’s important to deal with their negativity in a constructive way. During the podcast, I emphasized the importance of standing up for yourself and your work. It’s okay to distance yourself from these individuals if they continue to bring you down. Your mental health and passion for photography should always come first. Remember, not everyone will understand your journey, and that’s completely fine. It’s your journey, not theirs. You need to focus on what makes you happy and if that is your photography career go for it!
#3 Finding and Nurturing Supportive Relationships
Finally, the podcast episode highlighted the importance of seeking out supportive relationships. This can be other photographers, mentors, or even friends from other fields who genuinely appreciate and encourage your work! These relationships can be life-changing. They can offer constructive criticism, help you improve your work, and boost your self-confidence. Make sure to nurture these relationships, give and take support, and you will see how they positively impact your photography career.
Navigating the photography world with unsupportive friends can be discouraging but remember that their lack of support does not define your talent or passion! Identify these friends, stand up to their negativity, and seek out supportive relationships. Your passion for photography should be nurtured and encouraged. The journey may be challenging, but with determination and the right people around you, it can be incredibly rewarding! Trust me!
Photographer Advice
Submission:
There’s a photographer in my community, I actually consider her a good friend, we also go to the same church, and she always gives me unsolicited advice. I feel comfortable with my pricing, gear, schedule, etc. But she is always telling me to up my pricing, up my workflow, etc. She even comments on the reels I make about my pricing transparency. I have almost tripled my pricing in the past 10 months and made some pricy upgrades to my gear in the last few months too. I’m exactly where I want to be in my business this year. How do I go about kindly telling her to stop with the unsolicited advice?
Advice:
this can be tricky because it feels like this photographer friend is trying to push you to be better but when they do that is also unsolicited advice. think of it also from their perspective though maybe that photographer friend feels like they need to give you advice because maybe they feel a little bit insecure in their own business or maybe they feel a little threatened by your business or maybe they just truly want to help you personally if this were me I think I would wait for them to comment on a reel or send me a DM and just straight up address it in a casual way because ultimately I don’t think that this person wants to harm you by doing this it sounds like they really want to help.
Photographer Advice
Submission:
I’ve been full-time for now going on 3 weeks! With that said, I’ve struggled with the organization of my business plan. What should my main focus be right now? How should I be marketing? I don’t want to sound like a broken record (which I have felt I have for the past 3 weeks). How do you keep your audience engaged?
Advice:
I’ll give you just a few tips, I have like three things that I think you should focus on. Number one is getting leads, I think that’s a huge thing when you go full-time it’s scary. It’s like how I am going to maintain this business by getting more bookings so getting leads has to be a huge focus. Number two creating an organizational workflow or automated workflow that’s going to help you manage the leads you get in and your current clients. Creating a workflow is something that needs to be set up one time but once it’s in place then you can go and work on other things like marketing. I would say focus on Instagram ultimately you want to ask yourself what are the things that are going to get me bookings?
Photographer Advice
Submission:
Kat:
Shooting in scenarios where shade isn’t available, and the sun be sunnin! Even during early golden hour.
Advice:
I kind of really like it when the sun is out and about. When you start to have a bit more contrast in your edit, your edit’s a bit more intense that’s when you start to struggle in lighting scenarios. Where the sun is out and bright and you can’t avoid it because your edit starts to really show that it’s really bold in shadows so what do you do when the sun is sunning well honestly I just embrace it I would say use the lighting as a mean of creativity for you!
Photographer Advice
Submission:
Kenzi:
What do you about sessions with wild children I recently shot a mini session that was supposed to be 15 minutes long but ended up being like 40 because the children WOULD NOT COOPERATE!!! they were like 5–7-year-old boys. like running around and grabbing the barb-wired fence and refusing to smile at the camera. parents were just bribing them and telling them to smile at the camera, but not doing much. what do I do in this situation?
Do I end the session on time and they just get what they get? This was also my neighbor’s property that I was using. so I also want to respect their property and not have children run all over the place. Anyway, what would you do in that situation? I struggle to end on time because I fear not giving them a product that they’re pleased with, but at the end of the day, it’s not my fault their children weren’t cooperating. sorry for the novel, thanks for any advice you can give me.
Advice:
So this is one of the reasons I am very glad that I’m not a family photographer because I do not have the patience for that! My perspective is similar to yours Kenzie. Where I think if your children are not behaving, and you booked a mini session you knew it was going to be 15 minutes you do not get special treatment. You get what you get if you have children that do not behave.
So personally if it was me doing 15-minute slotted mini sessions I’d set a timer and I’d cut it off right at the 15 minutes because at the end of the day, they booked that session and it’s not your fault if their kids don’t behave. I would probably have a little bit of Grace and go to like 20 minutes and just see what happens. But Mini sessions are mini sessions they’re discounted, they’re time slots, and they’re usually very busy so you can’t afford to go over on that time frame.
Photographer Advice
Submission:
Scheduling/Overbooking/Pricing: In your common mistakes episode you talked about overbooking and how it should be avoided. What’s your advice for how a portrait photographer (family, senior, couples, maternity) could/should structure their schedule? I find myself in a constant loop of shooting, culling, editing, and emailing, with not much time to grow and scale. I struggle with figuring out how many shoots to do a week/month while also focusing on other parts of the business, all while trying to make enough money to survive and thrive😅
Honestly am so curious about what other photographers’ workdays look like and how they structure their weeks! Do you have certain days dedicated to editing and certain days for content creation? Or does it change every week depending on your tasks/mood? How far to book out? Do you work on the weekends? Do your grocery shop/chores during the workday/week? Just a recent full-time photog here tryna figure this entrepreneurial lifestyle out haha! Love your pod and you!
Photographer Advice
Let’s say the minimum you need to make is $100,000 a year. So $100,000 is what you need to make in a year you charge 500 a session that’s 200 sessions. So how can you structure your weeks based on how much you need to shoot. If there are common months that you find yourself booking more let’s say April to October you might need to make that your busier time. And then in the slower months, you don’t book as much so figure out how many sessions you need to book per month. Or do the busy months and then do the slow months separately and then figure it out per week. Based on that you’ll have a general idea of how many sessions you can shoot every week and figure out your editing time.
As with each session comes let’s say an hour or two of editing for me personally I go through moments of motivation with editing so usually I’m doing all my editing in one day. I’m in an editing mindset so it’s easier for me to crank a bunch of work! when I’m in a Content creation mindset it’s easier for me to crank out a bunch of content. I don’t want to every single day have to edit for 1 hour, create content for an hour, and reply to emails for an hour.
Like that is a very busy day whereas if I’m editing for 5 hours one day and emailing for a couple of hours the other day when I’m creating content a full day like that is much more fun to me and it’s not as stressful, then if you get done early, you get done early so that’s kind of like what I would suggest is really breaking up those chunks and I think just like the last question you have to schedule yourself to get things done if there are some things that are taking longer like editing or emailing maybe that’s something you can outsource as well.
Show Notes
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