But here I am now to give you some of the scoop! First of all, branding. Maybe you caught my announcement of the new wedding portfolio site, where you can see the wedding version of my new logo in action. If not, let’s put a spotlight on the logo, because I for one have a hard time getting enough of it.

Man, I am so. . . stoked. . . about the job Andrew Voss has done so far on design. (And by the way, I never use the word stoked.) He hit it out of the park, as far as I’m concerned. It’s modern but authentic, sophisticated yet hand-hewn. I love it, and I feel like it speaks to my photographic style perfectly. Big props to Mr. Voss for the logo and the layouts he’s come up with for my print portfolio, postcards, letterhead, business cards. . . the whole works. I can’t wait to unleash the green side on the world in the coming weeks.

The wedding site was accompanied by a new print portfolio book, housed in a spectacular hand made slip cover and cover made by the immensely talented Scott Mullenberg. If you’re in the market for a custom book maker, you couldn’t do better than Scott. His product is absolutely top notch, he’s creative, responsive, and professional. I’ll be using him for my non-wedding portfolios, and for all high end wedding albums I produce.

Once the wedding site and book were wrapped up, I moved on to marketing my wedding business. Compared to last year in particular, the rate of bookings for 2010 has been gangbusters so far, and I think a lot of the credit for that should go to Andrew’s beautiful design and Selina Maytreya’s editing and sequencing of the images used. I’ve had nothing but fun working with these guys, and I feel like I’m projecting a much more true idea of my capabilities to the world, which feels great.

In other wedding news, I will be the preferred photographer for events at Solera Restaurant in downtown Minneapolis, which is particularly exciting because I have so much respect for the food they put out. I photographed a wedding there last June and had a great time using their bright colors and wide windows and views of Minneapolis as my backdrop. Hopefully I’ll be there lots more in the months to come.

Most recently, this week Selina and I have been at work editing my non-wedding work. They’re still in a bit of flux, but here are the sequences for the three galleries I’ll be relaunching my site and print portfolio with as they stand today.

Portraits

Foodies

Sun City

Having this new edit is super energizing; working on your own portfolio by yourself, it’s easy to get bogged down in your attachment to certain images and your own individual artistic sensibility. Working with another person you trust – especially someone like Selina, who has a ton of experience in the industry – clarifies the work you do, and how it holds together as a whole. I really like the way these images flow one to the next to lead a viewer through some of the best of what I’ve photographed so far. It’ll be fun to package it all up and throw it to the winds in 2010.

After a few months of consciously building a team of collaborators and ‘bosses’ (see the Big Project posts), I can attest to the importance of not going it alone. Creative work is first and most importantly an exercise in self-searching. You explore your perspective on the world and create something that communicates that perspective. Without creative collaborators and bosses, it’s so easy to look at finished work and disappear in to the woods of self criticism, or on the flip side, to make work that is meaningful to you, but doesn’t speak to anyone not occupying your own brain. It’s only through sharing with some kind of group of trusted people that creative work gains legitimacy and confidence.

If you’re in the process of building (or rebuilding) your portfolio, or writing something big, or contemplating a career change, find yourself a boss. I can say that in my experience, ironically, by finding someone to act as your judge you’ll feel more powerful and confident almost immediately.

Please – take a look at the new portfolio and see what you think. I’d love to get your thoughts in the comments.

What’s been cool about the process is not that Selina chose a lot of images that I hadn’t selected on my own (although she did). What’s cool is that by asking someone with some distance from the work to look with a critical and fresh eye I not only got a fresh edit; I also got an outsider’s perspective on what makes my work unique, and the language to express that uniqueness. I’ve gone from the general idea that I do natural, photojournalistic, fun wedding photography to the specific core of what comes out of that practice: capturing emotions throughout the day in a different, more intimate way than other photographers. Because I’ve talked this all through with a person who has reviewed thousands of photographers’ work over the past 30 years, I now have the language, and I also have the block of images that illustrate the language. Super exciting.

Now that the work is solidified it’s on to the branding. I’ll be working with Andrew Voss, a designer here in Minneapolis. He’ll be working with me freelance, although he also holds down a full time gig at Spunk Design Machine, the agency responsible for all things marketing for the Seward Coop, one of my newest clients. I’ve also started the search for a book binder who will help me with my wedding and commercial portfolios when I get to that point, as well as potentially constructing my wedding albums starting next season.

All of this great stuff. . . it ain’t cheap. At this point I’m six billable hours in to my work with Selina. (Think lawyer rates.) The current plan with Andrew means about 50 hours of his time. (Not lawyer, but still.) Then there’s the actual printing of business cards, price sheets, postcards, the whole ball of proverbial wax.

On the other hand, at the other end of this process I anticipate doubling my wedding rates. (Which is a weird idea that I’ll probably need to devote a whole post to at some point.) When I’m there it hopefully won’t take long to recoup my investment, and be at a point where I feel like I deserve and need to be. At this point it’s a leap of faith.

Since those initial conversations, my job has been to throw ANY image up for consideration from my archive in to a big pile for Selina to weed through and include in new edits of my print and web portfolios for each business. Once we’ve got that new core, then come the next steps. For the commercial work that will mean more self-generated shooting assignments that fill specific holes in the current work. For the wedding work the next step is finding a designer to help me with identity creation, as well as business cards, postcards, and other collateral.

Since the wedding work is generating a big chunk of my income at this point, and since the new wedding identity won’t be a matter of producing any more images, that gets rebranding attention first. I’ve talked to a couple designers whose work I admire about working together, and the cost estimates should roll in by early next week.

As was the case with my conversations with the photo consultants I considered hiring, it’s been good to talk to the designers; when you hear yourself talk about what you do, it clarifies what’s important to you, and what’s at the heart of your business. Those insights are what branding is all about, and I’m really excited to mind meld with the designer I end up going with and see how they take their understanding of me and my business and translate that in to a visual identity.

Overall, things feel real good right now. There are many many moving pieces that will need to find their places for me to be where I want to be, but Selina has emphasized the importance of just concentrating on the very next thing in front of me and not looking too far ahead. So far, so good.

The funny thing is that I actually thought about canceling my introductory phone call with Selina; she was the last of the five that I talked to, and I had already had a couple other conversations that really excited me, with consultants used by some photographers who I really admire. But I kept the appointment, and I’m so glad I did.

Now that it’s behind me, I can say that I enjoyed the process more than I thought I would; each person I talked to gave me at least one insight in to my work and its presentation, or ideas for personal projects. I did my best to find the consultants out there with the strongest ties to the photo community, with the strongest backgrounds, and I truly believe that any of them could help me along my path; but it’s such a personal chemistry thing in the end.

Another side benefit of my conversations was to get a gauge on where my work stands here at the outset, in the eyes of some people whose job is to know the photo industry and help guide us to where we want to be. (Granted, there’s some incentive for the consultant to overstate their opinion of your work. But on the other hand, the photo community is smaaaaall, and trust is a big chunk of the basis of a consultant’s business. So there’s equal, or probably more, incentive to be straight and realistic.) To my slight surprise, what I learned is that in the eyes of these people, my portfolio is a little closer to prime time than I thought it was. It’s what I hoped people would think of my work, but that’s different.

Next comes Selina giving my work an in-depth look through, both online and in print. Then we talk about a lot of the things I’ve already blogged about in this little series, and come up with a plan to start getting me some of those assignments I’d kill for.

To close the book on this chunk of the Project, I’ve got a couple recommendations for those of you thinking about starting your own consultant search, based on what felt right about my process:

• Do lots of research before calling anyone. APhotoEditor and Agency Access have lists to start you out. Look for clues as to who has helped the photographers that you admire (but don’t put too much stock in that; each client/consultant relationship is different, and you’ve got to go your own way). Pay attention to who speaks nationally, and if there is a predominant style associated with a consultant’s client list.
• Be very clear with yourself what you’re objectives are for working with a consultant.
• Make sure you have the budget to pay your consultant for the size project you have in mind.
• When the time comes to start talking to people, contact everyone on your list and ask for an introductory phone call. The point of the call is to get a sense of each other.
• Prior to the calls, come up with a short list of questions to guide the conversation. You can plan on a 15-20 minute phone call, so it doesn’t need to be a huge list of questions, but they should address your biggest concerns. For me that was getting a sense of each consultant’s process, and how they work with their clients. Not only will the list help the conversation get rolling; you’ll also present yourself right off the bat as someone who is serious and motivated.

* Note: what I’m showing here are scans of tears directly from magazines. I don’t feel the greatest about reproducing them here, but I’m linking both to the magazine and to the photographer. Please leave me a comment if you feel like more can/should be done, or if I’m totally overstepping boundaries here and should take them down.

Assignment 1
The New Yorker: Sheriff Joe, July 20, 2009
Photographer: Dan Winters

Why this: I love that this is more of a psychological profile than a literal image; the environment is used so effectively to portray a very specific side of the subject. The subject is something of a connoisseur of media coverage; he’s been photographed any number of times, but looking around online there just aren’t any photos of him remotely like this one. I love the quality of immediacy that it has, and I love the fact that this is a local story that has turned national. I love how well the image illustrates the text. And I love the access given. The story benefits from the photographic vision, and relationship built between photographer and subject.

Assignment 2
Wired UK: The Cable Guy, July 2009
Photographer: Neil Massey

Why this: In-depth coverage of a story at the intersection of technology, politics, and social justice. The chance to learn about an industry and see how a business is impacting people on the ground. It’s both a rich set of images, and I’m sure a rich set of experiences to gather them.

Assignment 3
Saveur: Reasons Why We Love Texas, July 2009
Photographer: Penny de los Santos

Why this: Again, I’m a fan of the depth (much more than I’ve got scanned here). I’m also a fan of how personal all the portraits are, and the predominantly natural light in the food photography. There’s a double truck shot I especially like of a group of women in a home kitchen – more people than you’d think could maneuver through the room – cooking a huge meal. Food photography becomes so much more interesting to me when it’s photographed in the context of someone’s life, and this piece captures that idea.

Assignment 4
Donna Hay Magazine: In the Forest, July 2009
Photographer: Con Poulos

Why this: I love that this is a fully styled and produced piece, but that that doesn’t make it feel inaccessible to people of modest means. It feels real, like an ideal autumn day. I’m drawn to the spontaneity of it, the nostalgia, and again, the depth of the story.

I probably need more examples, but this is my pile as of today. What do you think, y’all? Any surprises?

Next up in the Big Project, I’ve got introductory phone calls set up with a number of photo consultants. I’ll give you a sense of how those go in the days to come. Until then, think big!

Namely, now that you’ve got the lens of what success looks like for you, what are your personal, creative, professional, and financial goals, and how do they fit (or not fit) together? Here’s what I came up with:

Personal Goals

• To get outside of myself and contribute to the world in ways that encourage positive behavior. How does that relate to my photography? I create honest, direct images of people and organizations doing things to help the planet, and those images are used to tell their stories.
• To support my family and help create a nurturing home.
• To shape a career that allows me the flexibility to devote some time during the week to focus on my home and family if I need to.

Creative Goal – Short Term

• To create a new body of work that emphasizes my storytelling ability and displays a consistent vision with depth and breadth of subject matter.

Professional Goals – My Dream Business

• My clients view me as a trusted resource for vision, not just someone who you give image specs to at the end of the design process.
• I’ve got a constant mix of new and repeat clients.
• I work closely with clients and we communicate throughout the process of completing a project.
• In terms of my business practices, holding a hard line on copyright and usage isn’t as important to me as evolving with the industry and reaching a price on any project that is fair to both sides.

Financial Goals

I won’t get in to the exact amounts for my financial goals; I’ll just say that they include categories for my salary, equipment purchases to keep me competitive, and marketing budget. Once I wrote out all those line items, I figured the target billing levels I’ll need in order to reach those category goals. Then I broke those billings down in terms of how much I need to bill per month, and per project if I assume I can shoot two projects per week.

As boring as this all sounds, I’ve got to say that I don’t feel like I would feel as grounded in the reality of being a small business owner without it. As a creative, it’s so easy to focus entirely on the visuals, to the point where you forget that to continue being a creative, you need to understand how those visuals are connected to your deeper goals *and* to your financial goals. They all work together. And by taking the last week or so and really feeling all this out, I feel much better equipped to move on to my portfolio.

I think.

Another note: if the process of breaking in to the photo business is interesting to you, definitely check out this post on John Keatley’s blog. First, he just does great work. And he just wrapped up a seven month process of his own revamping his portfolio and promo materials. I hope that at the end of my Big Project I end up with stuff that’s as good lookin’ as what he’s accomplished.

One of the things that’s so cool about the photography world right now is photographers’ willingness to be open with their business practices and share what they’ve learned. Not only is John great at this kind of behind-the-scenes kind of thing, but I emailed him with some follow up questions and he called me back within 15 minutes and told me everything I wanted to know. In today’s world, that’s the kind of business person you want to be.

Then you get in to it and realize you actually need to take about five steps back before anything that feels like progress actually happens.

That was my day today on The Project. Instead of diving in to a pile of magazines to find my dream assignment shots, I decided that I would invest in Selina Maitreya’s book, How to Succeed in Commercial Photography. I’ve now seen Selina speak once, heard an extended interview, and read a couple blogs about photographers’ experiences working with her, and so far I like how she goes about working with her clients. So I bought her book.

She starts things off with a couple exercises meant to start at the most basic level of running a business: making sure that your core life values are also the values at the core of your business. And to get at that, she recommends asking yourself what success means to you, since it can mean so many things.

Here’s what my success looks like:

• Helping to tell stories that bring about positive change in the world.
• Working on extended, multi-day assignments that allow me to tell stories that are broad and deep.
• Collaborating with smart, ambitious people
• Earning enough money to save for retirement, travel on a regular basis, and provide my family with a comfortable life.
• Working with new clients each year.
• Giving back to my local community, and to the photography community.
• Loving my portfolio on a consistent basis and making my clients ecstatic about their photos on every shoot.

Next exercise is to write your ‘Dream Bio:’ where you see yourself in five years, who you’ll be shooting for, whether you’ll have a studio and a staff or working alone from home, what your best experience will have been.

My Dream Bio, in 2014:

• I shoot organic and sustainable food and producers, green technology innovators, policy makers, and other interesting and active people working to nudge us all back a little bit from the global chasm.
• I’ve got work space outside my home, maybe a studio but at least office space.
• I’m shooting three days a week, farming out post-production, and marketing the other two days.
• My best experience: shooting a two week job on people and companies shaping green technology.

Now that I’ve done these exercises I find it interesting how rarely I think clearly about my values and how they relate to my career the way I did today; usually paying the mortgage takes precedence, and loftier goals get relegated to ‘boy, wouldn’t it be nice if I could shoot that’ status. It feels pretty good to be at the beginning of a project that reverses the assumption that values have to be subservient to profit, exploring the idea that my vision is rooted in my values, and my vision is what will get me hired.

Next post: Vision Part 2, the visuals.

I’ve also been mentally processing how the past several months have gone – the latest cycle of market, shoot, reflect. This time around I feel like my reflections have been a little weightier than usual, and now I’m ready to download the results of all that reflection to all y’all, whoever y’all might be.

All things considered, I’m feeling pretty good about how this year – and my career in general – is going. The client list has grown despite the global economy’s best efforts. I’m able to invest in some marketing, upgrade some gear, and shoot personal work on a semi-regular basis. And as happy as I am with those results, I’m not what I would call Happy. To hit Happy, in terms of my photo life, I need phone calls from the photo editors of national magazines and the art buyers of Minneapolis ad agencies and corporations. I need some multi-day projects with realistic budgets, planning, and a team of creative people working towards the goal of visually telling a really cool story in a new way. Photo subjects who teach me something during our time together. Mostly what I do right now is local and regional things, and those will always be there; what I’m talking about is breaking through to a place of prosperity, both in terms of economic security and job fulfillment.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve got some great clients right now who give me assignments that hit the spot on one or two of those criteria per job. But I feel more and more lately like I haven’t pulled everything together yet to break through to the next level where all of those Happy-making things happen on jobs that I want to be considered for.

Reaching Happy is the ‘new project’ from this post’s title, a project that I’m guessing is going to take me easily through 2010. This post is my way of throwing that intention out in to the world to make it a little more real.

So where is this coming from? I knew you’d ask, so I’ve got references. Basically, you can’t walk in to a meeting of the American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP, of which I’m an enthusiastic member), or read a photo blog, or pick up any kind of literature about the business of photography these days without being bombarded with the fundamental importance of projecting a succinct, well-articulated visual style to clients with your print portfolio and website. The business of photography has changed over the past 20 years to valuing well-defined personal vision over the ability to shoot any and all assignments one or two big clients can throw at you.

A cohesive portfolio has always been my goal, of course. But looking back, at this point in my process I’m feeling like I’ve been somewhat passive about its formation; I’ll do personal projects that are fun at the time, but don’t specifically help me get the jobs I truly want.

Then in the ASMP Strictly Business blog I read a post about the importance of assembling a freelance team around you. Revelation: I’m only one person, I can ask other professionals for help with things that are outside my areas of expertise, or things that I’m too close to, like evaluating my own work.

Next, a post on Photoshelter’s blog (my client gallery hosts) written by a photographer who hired a consultant to help him tear apart his portfolio and rebuild it from scratch over the course of a year. He called it the best use of his money since his first computer in the ’80s. Great post, and I could really relate to his position pre-consultant.

Related to the Photoshelter post, a pretty substantial interview with the same consultant on the Lighting Essentials for Photographers blog.

Of course it’s more complicated than the sum of all these sources, but I feel like the message being beaten in to my head is that top flight photographers have portfolios that are solid personal vision from top to bottom. I aspire to being a top flight photographer, and I plan on enlisting some help to get there.

So that’s where I find myself: sold on the idea of sinking some significant time and money in to working with a consultant to raise my game. I’m super excited. My plan is to blog about each step in The Project, letting y’all know what I’ve accomplished and what my next action steps are. I’d love your comments and suggestions as I go.

Today’s Action Steps:

• Find the vision. As suggested in multiple venues by consultant Selina Maitreya, I’m going to go through magazines and websites and find five images that visually represent the work I would kill to do.
• Think about some qualities that are important to me when looking for a consultant.

One last blog to share: HeatherMortonArt buyer. She’s got this great idea – find an emerging photographer, follow him/her for a year and blog about all the behind-the-scenes stuff that he/she does to try to break in to the commercial photo world. I’m a fan of Heather’s blog, and I nominated myself, but I’m not holding my breath. I decided to go indie. Maybe we can team up someday.