Not necessarily the best way to do it, but here’s how I’ve developed Painted Barn Media. Maybe there are some nuggets in here for you.
A Love of Taking Photos is not reason enough to start a business
It’s called a business not a funness for a reason. There’s a lot more to a photography business than having fun taking photos. I do love taking photos, but the more serious I’ve gotten I’ve found that there’s a lot of not fun parts of trying to run a business. You’ve taken a nice photo. Do you know why it’s a nice photo? Can you do it again? How do you feel about organizing? You’ll need a calendar to track appointments, a spreadsheet or financial software to track the money, and a file system to organize the photos before and after you edit. Oh by the way have you thought about learning to use photo editing software? OK enough with the old man writing the Get off my Lawn paragraph.
If you get the chance, Rent first
I say if you get the chance, because maybe you’ve been gifted a camera or maybe you’ve already jumped in and chosen a brand of camera. Even if you have already chosen a brand renting is still a good idea. It will give you the opportunity to try a new lens/camera before you commit to buying it.
LensRental.com is excellent. They’re based in Memphis, so I’m usually lucky and get what I order the day before it is supposed to arrive. When they ship you something it comes in a box with a hard plastic case inside that contains the article you have rented plus tape to reseal the box and a shipping label to send it back when done. The last few times I’ve ordered they’ve shipped it via UPS so you’ll need to find a UPS retailer to ship it back. If you’ve read a photography article touting the life changing properties of the latest 85mm f1.4 lens – go rent it and make sure YOU love it before dropping $2,000 on it.
You will find that the debate over which camera brand is best is maybe more fierce than who is the best college football team. I shoot Nikon because they had a camera with the features I wanted at a price I could afford when I got started. You really don’t have to declare a serious loyalty until you purchase your first ‘fast’ lens, that’s when you get locked in. Canon and Sony cameras take great photos too. My advice is rent or borrow cameras from the different brands and see which one you like.
Start with Used Equipment
Buy used equipment as much as you can. I know a great sports photographer that I’ll introduce you to later that uses a 10-15 year old camera as his favorite for the extensive portrait work that he does. Used cameras and lenses are much less expensive than brand new and they have the added benefit that someone has used them and if you use the retailers I’m about to list, they have also evaluated it and assigned a grade to it. With a brand new piece of equipment you take the risk of getting a dud.
I’ve spent thousands of dollars with Adorama.com on used gear. I’ve had no disagreements with the grades they’ve assigned to the equipment I’ve received and I’ve yet to have anything from them fail. Adorama sells new gear too, so make sure to go to their used section. The last thing to be aware of and you will find this with several camera retailers based in the New York City area – they observe the Holidays on the Jewish Calendar and there are a couple of weeks during October when they do not process orders
I’ve also bought several items from KEH.com. As with Adorama, I have no complaints with the items I have purchased from KEH. I listed Adorama first because they are bigger and usually have a better variety of used equipment.
Learn as much as you can on YouTube and AI
When I was learning photography 9 years ago, ChatGPT and all of the other AI’s didn’t exist so YouTube was my Photography School. I could recommend pages of photographers to watch on YouTube, but I’m going to limit the list to two and advise you to look at the number of views on a video about the topic you’re searching. If it has a lot of views it’s probably helpful. My go to’s for getting started are:
Zamani Feelings – Portrait and Sports Photographer in Philadelphia
Scott Kelby – a leader in the Photography education field
ChatGPT has opened up a whole new avenue of learning. I now find myself giving ChatGPT a shooting situation and asking it for the best settings for my particular camera/lens. It’s also great to have it evaluate a sample photo as a particular type of editor asking it to give you an editing recipe to apply in LightRoom. The future is looking bright.
Do you have a thick skin?
I’ll admit it, I don’t and it makes for some difficult times. Get ready you will have customers that don’t like your work, you will have customers act like your best friend only because they want something, you will lose jobs and have no clue why and that’s just the beginning. I’ve found some dear friends through photography, but I’ve also been used and abused through photography. That’s true in life I guess, but I think a photography business opens the door for this to occur much more often.
At some point I realized I wasn’t trying to build the biggest photography business in Tennessee. What I really wanted was a way to encourage young athletes, help families hold onto memories they can’t get back, and use a camera to do something useful for the community I call home. That’s what Painted Barn Media has become. The cameras, lenses, and editing software are just tools. The real goal is serving people and preserving moments that matter.