The One Where We Reminisce about Starting Our Photography Businesses

It's time to laugh, learn and take your photography to the

next level with your favorite cowgirls with cameras, Cara, Kim

and Phyllis.

Hey everybody, welcome to the Cowgirls with

Cameras Podcast. I'm Kim with Kim Beer Photography and Be More

Business

and Cara with Fast Horse Photography

and Phyllis with Phyllis Burchette photo.

Hello everybody. Well, guys, it's July when we

are taping this. I don't know about where you all live, but

I'm assuming it's the same. It's hot as the dickens as somebody

would say and humid. I think we all share a hot, humid,

miserable climate right now.

Absolutely not a dry bra in the place.

Nope, nor a dry thigh.

You can definitely fry an egg on my

truck.

Oh goodness. So yeah, that's the current state

of affairs and I don't know about Phyllis and Cara, but I

have been personally seeking the air conditioning. Now. Phyllis

escaped us and went to Iceland. So I don't know what the weather

is like in Iceland is it like cooler and humid. I imagine the

word ice in the Iceland.

Iceland is really not as cool as you think.

But it was much cooler than it was here. Because in Georgia, we

were having courses like you guys, I'm sure 100 plus degree

weather every day. And I did escape that Thank goodness. It

the lowest we got was maybe high 40s at night and course you know

there is basically no night because it's the land of forever

light where you have the midnight sun and you know sunset

at like midnight and sunrise at 2:30am and it basically never

gets dark. That is

so awesome. What a neat place to get to go

shoot. So this was with your Iceland tour, right? Yes,

my Iceland equine photo tour wastes a farm

called a scallop farm in the south of Iceland, where the

people treat us like the stars that we wish we were. Now I pay

the farm to do setups and and I did that just for you to pay the

farm to do setups for us where they moved the horses around in

front of the waterfalls and the water and just all kinds of

different iconic Icelandic scenery is just stunningly

beautiful. And this year, they had just finished their spa. And

so we got to enjoy the spa and the Icelandic spa experience

too. So that was besides the five star chef. It was an

amazing place to be. And then of course I extended my trip

another week after my tour and got to travel the ring road

which I had never done. This was my eighth trip to Iceland and I

have never been in the north. So a friend of mine flew and

Suzanne and then one of my Iceland attendee stayed with me

and Trudy and we drove the ring road and we went up and spent

two nights on Grimsey Island. And then off the north. We took

ferry over and stayed on the island for two nights and gotten

to photograph puffins for a couple of days and experience

the summer solstice while we were up there and we had a lot

of fun. It was a really great trip and just I think I was bent

on I had too much listed to do we didn't get to everything we

wanted to do because I think I was over ambitious in our

scheduling but that's okay, this just means we'll have to

go back. Yep, amazing. Well, Cara I are back

here in the United States sweating through our bras with

our thighs sticking together in our butts burnin on our car

seats.

Well, you know it's a tough job but somebody's

got to do it. Cool,

what a great it sounds like everybody had a

great experience. I've been looking at the images that

people are posting and stuff like that and it just looks

Phyllis it just looks like it was as gorgeous as you would

expect it to be just everything looked amazing. I'm so glad

you're back though we missed you here on the flip side

I had a great group and um, as much as I loved

it and as much as I love to go and be on the road I still love

to come home and and be at home too. So my dog is getting to

where she really doesn't know who I am this time she did

actually act like she kind of miss me though. So there was

that?

Well, we missed you for sure. So I've been

keeping cool in the air conditioning as much as

possible. I've been working on a four days to get to and please

don't quote me on this title if I decide to change it but four

days to get to lightspeed and light room. So I'm working on a

little online course and also developing group Gestalt

experiences for our workshop participants kind of plan and

out and I feel a little bit like an evil genius or not not an

evil genius. A Good genius, figuring out things that we're

going to be able to do to express our creativity and get

out of our own way at our workshops. So I'm super excited

about some of the things I've come up with and can't wait to

get them published and out there in the world.

Yeah, don't don't say evil genius, because

nobody will want to join you.

I think it sounds awesome cam. I can't wait

until you can share some of that with our op ed some of our

upcoming events and even in it just getting people prepped for

upcoming events. That is so cool. I've also been hanging out

inside I'm in Florida, and we've had some record heat here. It's

been hot and miserable in the summertime rains have started in

the evenings. So photo shoots are getting rescheduled right

and left. It's been a little sloppy and a little messy to try

to to keep it all together. But on the flip side, I have had a

ton of client art to design the last couple of weeks. So I have

been in the process of ordering frame pieces to put framed

pieces together ordering and designing albums. It has been a

lot of that. So I've been having just everyday stuff coming to

the door that I'm having to unwrap and review and prep. And

that's kind of the fun side of it. When you get to see from the

beginning when you start working with your client that kind of

initial concept to when you're holding tangible products in

your hand at the end. So all week long, I have been framing

and finishing stuff and unwrapping stuff and then re

wrapping it and and all of that good stuff. I have also been

shooting in the water. So I have been getting out to some of the

swampy areas of Florida and wading in and getting like

really wet. I had to put someone on Gator watch the other day

because I was so scared I was gonna get eaten by an alligator

that was gonna sneak up behind me while I was on the water. I'm

very scared of alligators. So I've been doing some cool time

shooting, I guess you would say just trying to beat the heat and

get the images that I need to get just having a lot of fun.

And we are all getting ready to head off to Montana next, like

what 10 days from now nine days from now. So I think we're all

in that last crunch to try to get stuff done before we head to

Montana. Are you guys ready?

I'm ready mentally to go to Montana but I

have a lot of catching up to do but yes I cannot wait to to be

in Montana and see Kristin and Brighton's new baby little

Aspen. I'm excited to be back at the dry head. I love everybody

there we got a great a great group going with us. I'm very

excited to be to be at the ranch. Oh, I'm

excited to see everyone everybody at the

ranch all of the participants and hang with you guys in person

instead of just on these zoom calls or on the podcast. So

that's awesome.

Yes, I agree. I'm looking forward to it. I'm

looking forward to hanging out with everybody and being able to

just kick back and do some shooting and enjoy the horses

and the Cowboy Western lifestyle and really just dig deep into

creativity and have some fun. I've had a little bit of a

Debbie Downer spring. So I'm ready for a happy trip and a

happy summer. So speaking of happiness, when we start a

business, sometimes we think everything is gonna be sunshine

and roses. And then we get into our business a little ways a few

years and we look back and there are things that we would have

liked to have known back there when we very first started the

business. So our topic for today's episode is all three of

us are going to share what we wished we knew before we started

a business. So if we could go back and talk to that Kara Kim

or Phyllis that was sitting there dreaming about being a

photographer or thinking about being a photographer and wanting

to start a photography business. What advice would you give to

that person? What would you tell them so that they could do their

business with less frustration and more happiness and joy?

Kara, do you want to kick us off with your top suggestions for

what you wished you knew when you started your business?

Yeah, I would love to because when I started,

I think I did everything wrong. Initially, I just jumped in and

immediately started a Facebook page and was like, I have a

business. I mean, I was just jumping right in and we have we

all know that's not the way to do it. Okay, so if you've done

that, that's okay. You can take the steps now to get your

business rolling in a more professional manner, like I had

to do. I think some of the things that I learned really

early on that kind of beat me back into my place and really

schooled me in the early days of my business was understanding,

first of all the actual cost of doing business and like what was

included in that. So I did spend some time doing a lot of work

around my cost of doing business, understanding what

types of costs it's actually very expensive to be a

photographer in case you know, people don't know that already.

So it was a there It was a lot to learn there. I would also say

that I learned this, this took a while. When I first started, I

had this goal that I wanted to photograph everyone. I was going

to photograph weddings, I was going to photograph seniors, I

was going to photograph horses and pets and families, and I was

gonna photograph everything. What I learned really quickly

was that I didn't enjoy photographing anything, except

for horses and horse people. So really quickly, I was in this

weird place where I wasn't loving what I was doing, because

I wasn't shooting what I wanted to shoot on a regular basis. So

I learned that it's okay not to be everyone's photographer. And

even within your own niche, it's okay not to be everyone's

photographer. So once I was got okay with that, and got myself

in a place where it was okay, when people didn't book me when

they moved on to other folks, because they weren't a good fit

for me, in my business. I think it just gave me so much more joy

in the work and made me a better business person. The last thing

I would say is that I learned that for me personally, having

outlets out there have continued professional development, that

that was really crucial for my growth as a photographer, and it

was really crucial for my mindset around being a business

owner, and around photography in general. I know that was kind of

quick. But those are the three things I think that really

jumped out at me, you know, when we sat down and started talking

about this topic today. What about you guys?

Yeah, so I agree with all of those. I think that

they're fantastic suggestions for people, when they're

starting to think about their business, especially the costs,

that was a huge realization for me as well, in the transition

from an hourly wage, to running your own business. That's,

that's a struggle for a lot of people. And when you get used to

being paid an hourly salary, or and or a salary position, so

hourly, or salary, and the paycheck comes from somebody

else, not from you, I think it's easier when you make that

transition, it can be a little bit of a jolt, let's say, so do

you have anything to add? Before I put my two cents into this

topic?

I think the biggest thing is that growing

and you're not only growing as a photographer, when you're

starting out, but growing in your business knowledge, like

hiring somebody a good at accounting for your taxes,

getting your LLC or your business model, a business plan

set up and all that and learn learning about what you can and

can't use for deductions. And I think really, I've always been

self employed all my life. But when I started the photography

thing, it was a different kind of business model than what I

had been used to. And part of the time, I was like doing

things because I enjoyed it not really getting paid the right

amount for it. Because I was like, Well, I just liked doing

it so much. And you have to be careful about that. Because you

don't have to charge less just because you're starting out. I

mean, I think I think one thing is no one the cost of doing

business like like Kara said, there's different places you can

go to. To help with that you need to understand how much your

business costs to operate in order to adequately price your

work. There's so many different ways to price your work and

different price structures you can do. And I think just valuing

your work and providing that value to your clients is

something that will always there's always going to be like

Kara said there's always going to people that are price

shopping and looking for photographers that will give you

know will give the most for the least amount of costs. And these

people aren't going to be your clients and you need to learn to

be okay with that if you educate your clients and communicate

with them so they know the difference between what you have

to offer and what you bring to the table versus another

photographer, then that'll really help that communication

is really big, just taking the time to understand also what

outcome your new client is looking for. So that you are

able to manage those expectations I think is huge. I

would also highly encourage as a I didn't join professional

photographers America of America till later so I think that was a

big one. There's so many things that they can help you with that

are very beneficial to new photographers coming into the

business I'm sorry I love quotes so you know me I'm always like

sharing quotes so I do love the quote about Comparison is the

thief of joy because I'm really bad to compare my work to other

photographers and worse when I was starting out which

I think so many people are that way we

can't help it sometimes right we

all do that I mean and there's nothing wrong

with it to a certain extent to have always have a level of

excellence or whatever that you want to strive to, to you know

to compare your work to or at least you know try to get there

but it's also can get into your head and really kind of beat you

down sometimes if you're not careful on really get to your

self esteem if you're not careful even With gear, I mean,

I have to admit that I'm a terrible gearhead, I love I love

having the latest and the greatest. But I think the

biggest thing when you're starting out is it just remember

that a camera is only your tool. And it's an extension of you as

an artist, that spending time learning composition, exposure,

and how to use light and how to see light is way more important

than what camera you're using. Because you can do all that with

any camera and your your job, ultimately, in the end is to

create emotion with your art. And that'll come from your heart

and from your head, not necessarily from the kind of

equipment you're using.

Wow, there's some great advice in there some

really good wisdom from somebody, like you said, who has

been self employed for your entire life and then having been

employed as an artist? It's a little different than being

employed as a horse trainer or a breeder or something along those

lines. It's it's a little different career. Right? Kara?

How long have you been a photographer,

I think I've been a business for seven years

now, I can't remember right around seven years. So it's

gotta be right around that seven, it's gonna be right

around seven years, probably an anniversary coming up. I feel

like I'm new in the world of photography, it was a situation

where I had a quick learning curve. And I was fortunate

enough that I had the time to do it, I was at a place in my life

where I could commit to all of that legwork that goes in in the

early stages. So I made a lot of mistakes in the beginning, but I

also had the luxury, I think of working through them. And I had

the time to do that. And Phyllis,

you said you've been you've had a lifelong self

employed lifelong entrepreneurship. And then I've

been an entrepreneur for over 30 years. So it's interesting that

we have so many decades of experience underneath our belts.

And yet, there's a wide range of advice here. And I'll put my two

cents. And now I look at this a little differently now that I my

advice, when I was seven years in business was be way different

than it is now one of the things that I think is so important for

business owners is to know that anything is really possible, you

just need to know enough about what you want to do to order the

deck of your life to stack up the way you want to win. And so

if I could go back and do this over again, I would sit down

with myself and I would say how do you really want to spend your

days? And how do you really want to spend your weeks? And how do

you really want to spend your months? And how do you really

want to spend your year because I think that when I started my

business, I had a very corporate notion of what that should look

like. And the reality was really pretty far away from that. But

if I would have said the truth about how I wanted to spend my

days, how I wanted to spend my weeks, my months, my years, I

would have said exactly the way that I'm living now. Now it took

me 20 Something 25 years to get to this point, because I didn't

have that question answered way back then. So I would say start

with a vision of what you really want to do. Where's your passion

at? What is it that you want to do? And yes, we're going to all

have to do administrative work. And we're all going to have to

do tasks that we don't like. But if you had your choice and could

write your own ticket, what would that look like? The second

thing that I wished I knew was how important not just who I

knew in the world, but who knew me. So taking that time to

really let myself be present with people so that they could

get to know who I was as an artist as a person as an

entrepreneur as a business owner. So I always say the

network is the important work. And it's it's really true, I I

always felt like entrepreneurship was rolling a

big heavy ball up a hill until I figured out how to work my

network. And then many hands make for light work to use a

quote for for Phyllis, many hands make light work. And so

when you have a network, that ball becomes so much easier to

roll. So if I could go back and do this again, I would have

concentrated harder on that. The third piece of advice I have is

that life will always get in the way. There is no good time for

anything and truly the sometimes you'll run into luck. So roll

the dice and if it doesn't come out in your favor, roll them

again. But you can look like I know right now inflation is like

scaring the bejesus out of me because every time I drive by a

gas station, I have a little mini panic attack or when I look

at my grocery bill or the feed bill for the animals or or the

damn airline ticket to fly to dry head or the rental cars when

we were booking a rental car the other day. I mean all of that

makes my breath catch in my throat and I have to remind

myself that life will always be getting in away. And there's

many times in the 30 years I've been an entrepreneur that I took

divergent exit ramps because I panicked, I went back and I got

a day job somewhere because I was worried about it. And the

truth is, is that I always found a way. And I think if I would

have been able to tell myself back then hey, look, just stick

with it, you'll be okay, don't panic life is it's always going

to be in the way. So just keep going. Just keep going. Roll

those dice again, and again and again. And then the final thing,

I think, when I started out in the world of graphic design and

photography, that's where my business was established. And I

really loved being a photographer and a graphic

designer. And in the beginning, people hired me because they

liked what I did. And that was great. And then I started to get

more clients. And when I started to get more clients, I started

to have to make other people's creative visions come true

through my own creative lens. And that was really, really

hard. I'm not gonna lie, I struggled a lot with that it

ended up showing up as procrastination missing

deadlines, it terrible things in my business and things that I

really fought against. And one of the things that I wish that I

would have known is that creativity is like a muscle, you

have to train it, and you have to flex it. And over time, you

get really good at delivering it on demand. But don't be so hard

on yourself in the beginning, because it takes time to get

that. So if you have to procrastinate, if you have to

call a client and say, Listen, I need an extra week on this

project. And I apologize, but I've got to have this creative,

I got to let my creativity have enough time. You know, be honest

about those things. Don't hide from them. And know that as you

progress through your business, as you do it more and more, the

easier and easier it gets. And today, it most of the time, not

all of the time. But most of the time, my creativity feels

effortless. It's not a problem I pick somebody can come to me

with, Hey, how would you lay this out? Or what would you do

here, and I can immediately have a creative idea. But that's been

honed and practiced over many, many years.

That is such a good point that you bring up

because I think as business owners or as as early in the

early years of photography, I think there's a tendency to

think we get to go out and we get to be creative. And we get

to shoot the things that we want to shoot. And we get to be

excited about it. And we're creating but the truth is, is

when you're a business owner, you're often working on someone

else's time, someone else's ideas, and you're having to be

creative on command. And I was just going to point out that you

and I have talked about this before over on our other show

The Business Animal Podcast, episode number 27, connecting to

your creative magic, we talk and give a ton of strategies around

being creative on on demand. So I just wanted to throw that out

there because it is something I think that is underrated in the

early years of you know, things that you didn't think about when

you were starting your business. But it's such an essential part

of what not all of us, but a lot of us have to do as

photographers and it doesn't just include working with

clients. Think about the times that we're out. And we're at a

workshop and we're leading, you know, photography participants.

And there is sometimes there's folks and even ourselves

sometimes that we're just not feeling the creative Mojo that

day. But we don't have a choice we need to shoot we have to work

we have to help others be inspired to to be creative. So

we have to draw from that. Anyway, when you brought that

up. It just got me thinking that is such an important piece of

what we do.

Definitely, I really agree with both of you on

that. I do have one more thing to add, as far as things I wish

I'd known is about marketing about how to market yourself, I

think doesn't matter what a great photographer artists you

are, if you don't know how to market yourself or your

business, and I'm probably not a very good person to give advice

on that because I think I'm a terrible marketer, but I think

just taking care of your present clients are your past clients

and in using those as referrals. And because I think that's one

of your greatest assets is the is the people that you have done

business with in the past is to really cherish those

relationships and they are what's going to get you more

business as your last client, your own clients. That's what's

going to get you more business. So just marketing yourself and

keeping those people that you've done business with as part of

your assets in your box to keep for your marketing.

Absolutely. The network and your customers and

your network are so so important to your business and making sure

that they're well cared for being honest, being upfront and

really concentrating on service and building relationships is so

key to building a business. And Phyllis you say you don't think

you're good at marketing And yet, I think you're astounding

at it, you do a really good job at inspiring people as well to

do your marketing for you, for them to talk about you to talk

about your work, which means they've had that wow experience

that they need to have in order to be able to do that. And I

think all of us sort of question or marketing abilities at some

point in time, because it never feels like it's just always

perfect, but it is a big part of it. And understanding marketing

concepts is is important. And again, it's something you're

going to learn over time. That's, I guess that's one of

the bigger pieces of advice I have, it just takes time, folks,

things don't happen overnight, it takes a long time to grow a

successful business. And when you get to the other side of

that, and you can look back and see it, it's so worth the

journey. But there's so much to learn in between either of you

have anything you want to say before we head on to our gears

and gadgets.

I don't know if it's okay to include this.

But I did do a blog post on this and included some advice from

other photographers, Kara being one of them things that we all

wish we had known when we were just starting out. And I think

the general consensus was that we all wish we'd known more

about business. But if you know we can link to that blog post in

the show notes if that's okay, and maybe that would be helpful

to somebody along with the great advice that you both gave here

today.

Absolutely. And there's some fantastic

photographers that contributed to Phyllis this blog post that

it really good advice comes from them. All right, well, I'm gonna

skip on to one of my favorite tools in my camera bag that I

like to have with me at all points in time. And that is my

visible dust Arctic butterfly sensor cleaner. This tool is

kind of unique. So a lot of photographers are really afraid

of their cameras, sensors, probably because our

manufacturers or the people who care for our equipment have

drilled it into our heads that this is something that we can do

a lot of damage. And I totally agree with that. But when you

are in the middle of Montana, and you're on a photo shoot and

you're taking pictures, and you start to see big chunks of

sensor dust, you really don't have time to go send your camera

off to Canon or Nikon and let it be cleaned appropriately. So

there are times in the field where we do have to address what

is going on with our sensors, and especially as equine

photographers, we do see a lot of dirt and dust. Funnily

enough, I had a local camera person who used to clean my

equipment, he went out of business and COVID. And now I'm

a little distressed, but he would always sort of lecture me

about how dirty my equipment was. He was very, very

judgmental. About he'd be like, Why do you let your cameras get

so dirty? He wasn't impressed with what you were doing. So

yeah, he's like, this is not good for your camera. And I'm

like, well, it is the way that I have to do my job, there's dirt

comes along with it. So I would get a lot of judgment from him

about it. However, back to that situation where you're in the

field, you're noticing things on your camera sensor, well,

there's two common ways that you can clean the sensor in your

camera, other than the little electronic shake the sensor

thing that comes on your camera as an option, which by the way

you should always have turned on because basically what it does

is it jiggles the sensor a little bit and the loose pieces

of dust will fall off. And granted, they probably will show

back up again later. But at least you can get it out of the

way until you can get your camera to somewhere to get

cleaned. And your cameras should be cleaned at least once and

probably a couple of times a year depending on how dirty you

get it. So there's two ways that you can clean your sensor on

site or on location. One of them is is what's called wet

cleaning, which I don't recommend, there's things that

people will sell and you can get them they're a little like swabs

and there's actually a wet solution when dust gets stuck on

your sensor. It's generally the only way that you're able to get

that dust off is through a wet cleaning. And a lot of times I

think that's what they do the professionals use that kind of a

system but when you do that you also if you don't do it well or

you don't have the exact right equipment and you don't have the

exact right swab because all sensors are a little different

sized you can cause a lot of damage to the center because

you're actually touching it and that's where the Arctic

butterfly that was a long route to get you to the gear to the

gadget which is the Arctic butterfly it is a dry cleaning

system. And what it uses is a brush that has built up a little

bit of like static collectI vibes to it and you spin it and

then you wipe it across your sensor and then you hold it away

from your camera and spin it again so that the dust flies off

away from your camera and then you go back and do it a couple

of more times until all the dust is off. So if you have a good

practice of keeping your sensor cleaner on your camera turned on

and so mine cleans my sensor every time I turn the camera on

and every time I turn it off as well as whenever I initiate it

during while I'm shooting. If you do that frequently, chances

are any sensor dust that you have is it going to be truly

like really sticky sensor dust and so the dry cleaning will

work really really well. So this product is made by visible dust

it's a little handheld tool and it has a runs on a triple A or a

double A battery and you can get it from just about anywhere

Amazon b&h, all of those things. So visible dust Arctic butterfly

and I think Phyllis may have some things to add on other

cleaning topics I'm always jealous of Phyllis his camera

equipment always looks super clean. So listen to her as well.

I would just add real quick Arctic butterfly

does not we're not like endorsed by them or anything so we're

just we're just letting you know this is something that Kim has

used and she loves so if they would like to reach out to us

we'd be open However, at this time we are merely talking about

products that we know and love throwing that out there

products that we use that we have experience

with yes I for one I like the Zeiss disposable lens cleaning

wipes because they come in you know they're already moistened

you open the little pouch up use it I use it on all my lenses

then I throw it away and also not to brag but the new Nikon Z9

does and you have to enable it you have to go into the menu

because as a default it comes disabled but it does have a

sensor shield that if you enable that when you take your as soon

as you turn it off that center shield if you you know take the

lens off that center shield is there it will protect your

sensor pretty easily which I love my other camera the Z6 two

does not have that so it's real something really nice to have

that sensor shield

for sure that is awesome. I really appreciate

that.

I think we all would appreciate that on every

camera we own one way we need to shout out to all camera makers.

Okay guys, I think that takes us to this

episode's Cowgirls with Cameras photo challenge. So we decided

that we because of the heat because of the weather because

it's summertime, this challenge is all about water so use

hashtag CW see photo challenge and post your equine equine

equestrian horses inspired images that have something to do

with water whatever your interpretation of that is, if

you tag us with hashtag CW see photo challenge or and or tag

cowgirls with cameras, we would love to see it and we would love

to share. And I think that's it for us today, guys. For folks

that are listening. If you haven't already followed us

online, we can be found on Instagram and Facebook at

Cowgirls with Cameras. We also have a website cowgirls with

cameras.com. And it's so important if you love this show,

if you've listened to a couple episodes, and you want to come

back and listen to more, we would really love it if you guys

would rate in review. So whatever program you're

listening to whatever app you use to listen, there should be

some way for you guys to rate and review. If you would do that

we would really appreciate it. And also if you stumbled across

this today and think you might want to hear more, click that

little follow so that we start popping up in your feed. Thank

you guys so much. It's been awesome to be chatting with Kim

and Phyllis today as well. And I'll see you guys in less than

10 days out in Montana. Can't wait looking

forward to it.

Thanks for listening to this episode of Cowgirls with

Cameras. Don't let the laughter and learning stop here. Join our

community on social media. And be sure to visit our website for

more opportunities to fulfill your photography goals head to

cowgirlswithcameras.com That's cowgirlswithcameras.com See you