3 Struggles I've Faced as a Photographer
What I’m sharing today is more than just a peek behind the curtain in my business—it’s reassurance for other photographers (and any business owner, really) that “living the dream” doesn’t always have to feel like a dream.
If you ever feel like you’re doing something wrong because every other creative businessperson on TikTok and Instagram seems to be having fun 24/7… it’s not you. It’s the unrealistic expectation set by social media, the New Millennium edition of Keeping Up with the Joneses.
Working for yourself is still work, and there are ways it can impact your life that people outside of you might never expect or understand. That doesn’t mean it isn’t all totally worth it! I am a much savvier, more empowered, stronger person because I started a business. I love who I am, I love what I do, I love how I do it.
But there are tradeoffs.
So it’s time for Honesty Hour. Here are 3 ways I’ve struggled as a photographer.
Struggle No. 1:
I don’t want to take photos just for fun anymore.
It’s weird that I can get totally jazzed up for a photo shoot with a dream client, and yet not want to take photos of my actual life. Sometimes I won’t even be able to sleep the night before a shoot, I’ll be so excited; or I’ll end up paying for extra props out of my own pocket because I just can’t help myself—I have big ideas and I want to make them a reality for the client.
Then Matt and I will take a road trip, or we’ll attend a big family event, and the question I always seem to get asked is, “Did you bring your camera?”
But I’m in Time Off mode. So the answer is no.
Matt and I got together right as I was taking photography full-time, and early on, he asked me to set boundaries between my work and our personal life. I needed to be able to “power down” at five o’clock in order to be present for having dinner together, playing virtual chess or watching one of our favorite Netflix shows. It took a while to learn to leave work at my desk, but I did it—and now when I’m with friends or family, I just want to be with them. I don’t want to be “working.” And I think that’s a very healthy and positive thing.
At the same time, I’d love to have photos of those road trips, of family events, of time passing and my life being lived. You’d think it would be so easy—but because photography is how I make money to survive, when I’m taking unpaid photos, it feels like I’m not using my time well. Hard to explain, harder to change… but I’m working on it. I got some iPhone snaps of Matt fishing on our last great adventure!
Struggle No. 2:
Sometimes (sometimes), clients don’t love their pictures.
Photographing women means photographing subjects who have been trained by sales and entertainment media to be self-conscious and insecure about things no one else even notices. It’s so, so sad—and yet I also completely empathize, because I go through it, too:
I wish I wasn’t so tall. I wish my hair would stay where I put it. I wish the surgeries I had in my twenties hadn’t left certain muscles in my face partially immobile, meaning my smile is always going to be a little wonky. I wish my shoulders and hips were the same width, that my skin wasn’t so white, that one ear didn’t stick out slightly more than the other.
In many ways, this has given me power as a photographer. I know what my subjects are going through. I ask questions like, “Do you have a preferred side of your face?” and, “What’s your favorite feature?” and, “Is there anything you’re self-conscious about that I should be aware of?” This helps me to focus on what my subjects already love about themselves, and keep an eye out for anything that might cause them to write off a perfectly good photo.
But maybe once a year I get someone whose heart has been so crushed by the unachievable standards set for how women “should” look that no matter what we try, in the end they can only see a distorted, broken version of themselves.
I’m so hard on myself after shoots like these—they make me question every skill I’ve learned along what has now been a decade-long journey of growing as a photographer. I wonder if I’m a total fraud, if there was something another, better, wiser photographer would have done differently…
… and then I think of all the testimonials I’ve gotten from clients who loved their photos, had never loved photos of themselves so much. These far outweigh the number of clients who wish they’d lost 15 pounds before their session. It doesn’t take away the sting of feeling like I let someone down, but it does remind me that I’m good at what I do, and that heart and mind obstacles are not what I specialize in. I specialize in photography.
Struggle No. 3:
It’s not exactly consistent income.
My income is more consistent than 90% of photographers out there, maybe even 99%. So I’m not complaining. But the reality of working for yourself in any field is that earning a consistent income is a constant battle.
I had to make some lifestyle sacrifices when I started working for myself. To this day, even after I’ve learned many lessons about money management and upleveled my contracts and raised my prices—and I’m at the point where I get inquiries every week and earn passive income every month—there will be times Matt and I are shopping together and he says to me, “We don’t always have to get the cheapest version of everything.”
But it’s just habit… because the reality is always lurking in the back of my mind: Just because you think you’re going to make x-number of dollars next month doesn’t mean it’s actually going to come through.
My business has been through so much. A client who owed me thousands of dollars ghosted me and moved to New York. I invested a lot of money into a launch that never happened because a pandemic was declared by the President and everyone everywhere went into lockdown. Matt went through medical hell for two years and I had to be the sole provider of our household—with almost nothing set aside because I’d been hell-bent on paying off tens of thousands of dollars of debt in just two years, assuming we’d be a two-income household forever and we could save money later.
This is something that my friends and family members with day jobs struggle to wrap their minds around: Everyone is nervous to start a business because they don’t want to be without a consistent paycheck; yet they assume if someone’s been in business for years their income must be consistent. If it isn’t, why would they keep doing it? But at least for me, I like that my schedule is within my control more than I am bothered by inconsistent income, so it’s worth it to keep going, even though it can be taxing mentally (and financially) at times.
Why It’s All Worth It
I’ve changed a lot as a person because I became a business owner. As I’ve hinted, I’ve never been so stingy with spending in my personal life, and I try to think 4 or 5 steps ahead of where I used to so I can get where I want to be.
I’m also much better at self-care than I once was—and I don’t just mean the Instagram version of self-care that mostly consists of $11 smoothies and facial Gua Sha. I mean recognizing when I’m starting to spiral mentally and emotionally, and reining myself in. I mean planning my business to create the life I want to live—not in terms of extravagance, but in terms of spaciousness. When I need a few minutes more sleep, I can usually take it, because I haven’t scheduled anything that requires another person until 9:00am; when I want to do a “wine night” with my family, I can, because I stop taking work calls and responding to emails at a pre-set time. I have boundaries, and I have freedom.
Furthermore, I’m proud of what I do. Some people quit their day jobs because in spite of their prestige, they feel empty… but I never really felt like I had prestige in my day jobs. I mostly felt stomped on. I wondered how much difference I was really making. I sometimes resented my bosses, and I often felt like I would never be able to self-correct my life’s course because I’d already had a shot at college and internships and choosing a career path and I’d flubbed it all up.
But today I get excited to go to work. I’m excited to deliver photos to a client, usually another woman in business who is defining her future for herself. I love knowing that I’ve helped someone fill the toolbox they’re going to need to build their next incredible thing. I love connecting with new people and helping them in ways that transcend photography. And I’m always proud to tell strangers who are becoming friends, “I’m a commercial photographer.” I never feel like I have to apologize for it.
So even though my life is different now, I wouldn’t change it. Even though there are struggles, I understand that they’re part of the natural tradeoffs that come with any decision in life—that saying “yes” to being a photographer has meant saying “no” or “no for now” to other things, like a weekly paycheck that direct deposits into my account on Fridays, or being super creative in my free time because my work now exercises that part of my brain and it needs a break.
I encourage anyone else who struggles with things as a business owner that they never could have expected: Take inventory of your WINS. Do they make the struggles worth it? Because no one’s life or career is perfect. There are always struggles you don’t get to see. Everyone makes mistakes, everyone falls down, everyone has lessons it feels like they’re being asked by some divine force to learn over and over.
But if you love who you are and you love what you do, and you can pay your bills and sleep through the night (for the most part), you’ve probably come out ahead.
HELLO! MY NAME IS ALEXIS.
Coffee lover, day dreamer, foodie, and creative. I believe in doing what you can with what you have where you are. I blog to help you do more with what you have. I hope you love it here!
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