How to Find Your Style & Develop Your Brand | Yucca Valley Palm Springs Photographer

 What qualifies me, someone with very little formal photography training and who has been in this business for only 3 years, to write a post like this?

Not much. But I have this. I’m living it.

My journey so far goes a little something like this…

I’ve loved photography for a long time. But I didn’t get into the business of shooting people until I had my first baby. That’s how a lot of us started out. Our kids are the best subjects. I’m not ashamed to be a momtographer. It’s just another reason I love my kids. They are a blessing in so many ways. One of the gifts they gave me is a hobby that I’m passionate about, a hobby that grew into a business.

I spent my first year in business wanting just to *get good*. To produce something that people liked. To keep shooting my family, preserving my personal memories, and also maybe be considered legit, instead of just a MWAC.

My second year in business, I started to have a sort of professional crisis. I was starting to get a lot of bookings. I was busy. I was having a lot of fun.  I knew I loved being a photographer. But what *kind* of photographer did I want to be? I read enough blogs about going pro I knew it was important to be *definable.* I wondered, when people looked at my work, could they tell what my business is about?

I spent a lot of time thinking about what kind of  “image” I want to put out there, about my brand. A LOT of time. No one (especially not a mom with a neuroscience degree and a background in biotech who had spent the last couple of years as a children’s librarian) knows immediately and completely how to build a photo business from scratch, how to develop it and market it, how to project a “brand” let alone decide on and define one. I was thirsty for inspiration, for direction, for a voice to tell me I was doing something right, that I was making sense. I knew that I was passionate about it. But I wasn’t sure what “it” was, or even if I did have an idea, I was worried that I wasn’t communicating it effectively enough.

So I went through a couple of periods when I read a lot of blogs and followed a lot of photographers’ work. Inspiration is life blood. What an amazing wealth of great photographers, great online personalities, great business strategies and brands there are out there.  I also went through a couple of periods when I pretty much cut out all professional influence, stopped reading blogs, and intentionally kept things out of my newsfeed because I didn’t want to be constantly inundated with who and what everybody else was. Because I wanted to make sure that I didn’t end up a copy of something or someone else, to “find myself,” as cliche as that sounds. Inspiration is one thing. An impossible standard is another. Too much inspiration leads to a soul-crushing urge to be everything to everybody, at least for me.

I also really struggled with how much to separate *myself* and my family from my business. At one point I completely stopped posting pics of my kids or writing anything personal. I wanted to be a professional after all. I didn’t want to bore anyone with anecdotes and snapshots. I wanted to be taken seriously.

All of it, the struggle with defining my brand and separating the personal from the professional, was a necessary part of the evolution of this business (so far.) There is so much more to owning and developing and running a photo business than I ever would have imagined (and I’m always discovering new facets, and I’m sure I always will.) The things we go through, the questions we have, the mistakes me make, the things we obsess over, the ways we change, all the things we don’t already know… we have to cut ourselves some slack. It’s a process. So the twists and turns (at least the behind-the-scenes version) that this business has taken, I’m proud of them, and I’m far from done riding these S-curves.

Another year later, I’m here – wrapping up my third year in the biz. My journey as a pro photographer has been short. I’m just telling my story. I don’t have all the answers. But I sure do have a whole heck of a lot more hard-earned experience now than I did back in 2010. And this road has brought me to a certain belief. I believe with my whole heart that in order to be successful in this business, we have to stop thinking so hard about what kind of image we’re projecting, and just be ourselves. Shoot what we like. Stop worrying so much about how we’re perceived (the curse of all women everywhere.) Be careful about living for accolades or recognition (but freely give it to the ones who inspire us!) Be our own version of great. Find some security in who we are as individuals and be passionate about it.

Crazy, we-don’t-care-what-the-world-thinks-passionate about it.

If that means finding some sources of inspiration to help us unlock our potential, great! If that means clearing out our newsfeeds and stopping the perusing of other people’s work for a period of time, also great. If that means blurring the line between our personal and professional lives because we find it impossible to separate them, maybe stop trying to compartmentalize quite so much. Some things just don’t fit into compartments.

I’ve found that my business and my family are not two things I can separate. Too much of my inspiration comes from my family. I’ve also discovered that what I love about photography doesn’t fit perfectly into a prefabricated style or brand. My brand is also not  a finished product. I’m keeping my mind and my options open.

I thought I wanted to a be a writer for a while (I’ve wanted to be a whole lot of things, go figure.) One piece of advice that has always stuck with me (probably first heard this in respect to Louisa May Alcott who was my favorite writer as a kid) is “write what you know.” I think it applies to photography just as well. It just doesn’t seem genuine when we’re trying to be somebody or something else. People can sniff out a phony.

Shoot what you know. Love what you shoot. Trust your gut. Be your own definition. Don’t let your brand be something that you’ve defined and are trying to be.

Just be it.

(Just a few personal favorites from 2013 so far…)

Tell Your Story | www.delalanephotography.com