Making Money Doing What You Love Part II

I blogged about the idea of making money doing what you love awhile back. If you haven’t yet check out that first post called Making Money Doing What You Love?

I recently came across this post on ArtsHub called It’s the Business: creativity in action that got me thinking about that old post and the idea of making money from photography.

The quote below is from the creativity in action article and sums up what I think every photographer faces at some point in the early stages of their career. It’s that point where photography is no longer a hobby, but a passion. You live it, breathe it and dream it. It’s you, but soon the reality of making a living from it sinks in.

Most of us feel there’s a conflict between doing what we love and being paid. I talk about the two beliefs that most have us have grown up with, 1: to earn money you have to sell your soul to some extent and do something you don’t particularly enjoy, or 2: you can do something you love, something meaningful to you, but you shouldn’t expect to get paid very well for doing that, if at all. That’s the conflict many people face: do I work for love, or do I work for money? And my work is very much about a third way, which is about how to work for love and money.

So what do you do?

The conflict for many people can be that they feel that they’re artists rather than entrepreneurs, and I think you can have both identities – I see myself very much as an artist, a creative person, but I’m also an entrepreneur and my business is a vehicle for my creativity. I don’t see that there needs to be a conflict between being entrepreneurial and being artistic – they often go hand in hand. The business is the vehicle for the creativity. It’s about having different aspects of ourselves, having the artist within us but also having the entrepreneur and the businessperson within us as well. And when we can bring all those parts together we can find the people that want what we do.

If you can serve people with your art, if there are people out there who would love your art and they’re not finding you, or you’re not finding them and you’re not making money, then everybody loses.

Nick brings up the dreaded B word for creatives; business. If there has ever been a time for photographers to think as entrepreneurs now is the time. It’s time to ween ourselves off the old models and become our own vehicles.

Most appealing is Nick’s third option of working for love and money. But how do you do that? If you’re a photojournalist the default answer is usually by shooting weddings. If you don’t enjoy weddings then it’s time to get brainstorming.

Quickly the word “sell out” comes to mind as you brainstorm for ideas to keep your passion alive. Maybe passion should not even be associated with money?

And what if you don’t have an interest in business? David addresses that:

Well, the first question is to decide whether you want to be in business at all. It’s possible to be creative outside the business arena, as a leisure interest, for example. But once you decide that you do want to be in business, then inevitably you will have to deal with issues such as marketing, finance, etc. Initially you won’t have enough money to outsource those things, but I think it’s quite good training to do these things yourself for a while anyway, because it forces you to understand how the business works economically. Even when the business gets big enough to outsource that side of things, you should still keep an overview on it – it’s dangerous to abdicate all of that to someone outside the business.

David moves on to talk about success:

Firstly, define what you mean by success – it could be a mixture of financial success, creative challenges, recognition, job satisfaction, quality of life, etc, and that formula will be different for everyone. Define what you mean by success, don’t let others define it for you, and know where you want to go

What does success mean to you? I’m slowly learning to use my own gauge. A few years ago success would of meant winning in photo contests, being published in big name publications, etc. Today those things mean very little. I won’t say it doesn’t matter some because it does, but it doesn’t weigh on me. I’m still very passionate about being a photographer, but I’m learning to channel that energy in ways that are far more meaningful and productive to me.

The photo bubble we live in can be all consuming at times. Don’t forget to look outside it.

Just remember you grow as a photographer when you grow as a person. Want to become a better photographer? Start by being a better person. It’s something we all can work on myself included.

Related posts:

1. Making money doing what you love?
2. Making art is making your life
3. Contests: The love and hate relationship
4. Starving Photographer or Artist no more?
5. One day we’ll all just be amateur photographers?