For those of you who don’t know, I didn’t go to to school to be a photographer, or a business owner. I went to school to become a high school chemistry teacher! I feel so thankful and blessed that I am able to live out both of my dream jobs! Being a photographer was a dream job I didn’t know I wanted, until last year. I am a self-taught photographer. Everything I’ve learned, I’ve learned through experiences and a ton of research. Even if you went to some sort of school to be a photographer, you’re still going to be researching and practicing (<< they keep underlining this word saying it’s not spelled right, but I can’t figure out why!) far beyond your time in a classroom. Therefore, we are all self-taught photographers (or any kind of career!) to some degree.
Tonight I just wanted to share with you all (in no particular order!) some resources that I’ve really found helpful in my journey to learning about photography and business! Later on in the month, I’ll be sharing the things that I can’t live without in my business!
#1. CreativeLive
CreativeLive is such an incredible tool. This is a place where you can watch live seminars from professionals in various fields – photography, business, design, and so on – for FREE. If you can’t watch it live for whatever reason, you have the option of purchasing the course to watch over and over, forever. I can’t even begin to tell you how valuable this tool is!! The seminars vary from one-day live seminars, to as long as three-day seminars. The workshop from Zach & Jody Gray about their workflow really changed a lot about my business. I still need to watch the business course from Ramit Sethi that I purchased! I’ve heard such incredible things about it! I haven’t watched a course for free, or paid, that I’ve regretted spending time or money on. The coolest part about these live seminars is that you can ask questions on their facebook page that may be asked live during the seminar! It’s a wonderful community to be a part of.
#2. Digital Photography School
I LOVE this resource. I could literally (and I have) spend hours on this website. There are so many helpful tutorials and articles written about so many aspects of photography – exposure, posing, tips for taking photos of kids, weddings, and pretty much anything you can imagine! I get a weekly e-mail from them with tons of great articles highlighted. Seriously, if you haven’t heard of this website, check it out!
#3. Jasmine Star’s EXPOSED and Shooting Stars
Jasmine Star is a very well known, and fabulous, wedding photographer based out of California. She published a magazine called EXPOSED that tells her story about photography. Reading this has single-handedly kept me going. What she shares is so incredibly real, and it’s something I can very much relate to. I pull EXPOSED off my bookshelf about once a month to give myself the boost I need to keep going and to find new ways to be inspired! She also has these short videos on YouTube that are called “Shooting Star”s and she talks about various topics around photography. I like checking these out because they’re short, sweet, and to the point! They definitely provide a lot of good ideas and tips!!
#4. Photography Awesomesauce
This was such a crucial piece to starting my photography business. Photography Awesomesauce is run by Carrie Swails of Carrie Swails Photography. She. is. fabulous. Carrie provides SO many resources to photographers who are not only just starting a business, but who are growing in their photography. I’m pretty sure I purchased 95% of her store within the first few months of becoming legit. She makes it so easy to access, and makes it worthwhile! She does various classes online about a ton of different topics from starting a business, what to blog about, how to price your products, and so on. It’s also possible to purchase prior classes from her store. The other thing that I think is super neat is that she will have free online Q&A sessions where she just opens it up to questions from her audience. I have gathered quite a bit of information from these sessions! Plus, she’s super down-to-earth and so very helpful!
#5. Scott Kelby “The Digital Photography Book”
I bought these books on a whim, and I am so glad I did! I learned a lot from reading these. The books were written in a way that leaves out all the technical jargon and just puts in terms that can be easily understood – it’s like how you would explain how photography works to a friend! If you can invest a little bit of money in this, I would strongly suggest it. I would almost guarantee that you’ll learn something from it!
Well, there you have it. These are the five resources that I can really attribute my current success to. I have learned a ton of information and skills from these five sources. I also read a lot of blogs, and spend a lot of time browsing the internet 🙂 Oh! And spending a lot of time practicing!! I only hope that one day I can be as influential on someone else’s success, as these guys have been on mine! I hope that you can check one, some, or all, of these out and see if you can grow from it!
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