Fallen Out Of Love With Your Usual Wedding Style?

Lisa’s answer

Dear Existential Crisis Tog,

What a gallery to have under your belt. And what a feeling, to come home from a 12 hour wedding day and realise it felt easy. Hold on to that, because it’s telling you something important.

Thanks for writing in with this. I always say that if one of us has an issue, chances are that others do too. Wedding photographers continually evolve, shift and change, so what you’re experiencing is entirely normal. Many of the photographers you admire will have hit this exact point somewhere along the way.

I’m a little delayed in answering, as my time has been taken up running our Thrive conference. But I think being there has actually helped me answer this better for you.

01 What Thrive taught me about your question

We had a beautiful common thread running through the keynotes this year, despite the speakers all being very different – in style, in approach, in where they are geographically and in where they are in their careers. That thread was about finding what you’re truly passionate about and fired up by in this job, and putting that out into the world. Each of them described the point where they discovered that within themselves, and that’s when a shift happened. That’s when they began to attract the right couples for them.

It sounds simple enough, but we’re in a noisy industry and it’s very easy to look sideways instead of within.

02 Are likes really the measure of success?

It’s also very easy to think we’re in some kind of popularity contest, where the goal is more followers, more likes, more engagement. But all of that rarely brings more job satisfaction.

I’ve found that some of the content I post that performs the least gets the best results – and by results I mean actual enquiries, from the perfect client for me. People who value the photography, who feel excited about this part of their wedding.

So yes, enjoy those likes. But notice that the real win here wasn’t the numbers. It was how you felt doing the work.

03 Is total creative freedom always the dream?

Getting a client to give us ‘total creative freedom’ is the ideal for many photographers. For some it would feel like the opposite, and they’d much prefer a tight brief and an exact shot list. Neither is wrong.

But you’ve had this opportunity, and it’s led you to a bit of a crossroads. The downside of a creative breakthrough like this is that your old work suddenly feels wrong. You want to shed that skin and move on to the next version of you. That’s tricky in weddings, because the pace is slow. The couples already on your books came to you for your old style, and if you want to commit to the transition, there’s some work to be done.

04 Show the work you want to be booked for

It’s a simple adage, but it’s true. If you decide to move forward with this fresh approach, your first step is to show more of that work.

That might mean going back through past galleries and pulling out images where you were already beginning to explore this way of working, then re-editing them. These changes are rarely a total bolt from the blue. More often they’ve been simmering away in the background before you took the leap with this seminal wedding.

If you really don’t think that’s the case, create some self-motivated work in your new style to bridge the gap between the old you and the future you. And don’t be afraid to remove work that no longer serves you – from your grid and from your portfolio.

05 Take your audience on the journey with you

Talk about your transition. The right people will be inspired by you sharing this part of your process, and it explains why your work is changing.

Or be really brave and remove all the old stuff entirely. When I first discovered Brooke Davies, who has spoken at Farm multiple times now, she’d made a big transition like this – from traditional Mormon weddings in her area of Salt Lake City to much more artsy, alternative work. She stripped everything from her website and socials and showed just one elopement she’d orchestrated in the style she wanted to move towards. Bold, but effective. She left her old style behind and carried on down a career path of her own choosing, one that meant the right people could find and connect with her.

06 What about the galleries still on your desk?

While you’re in this transition phase, you have three options.

If you go with option three, keep it light so it feels like a treat rather than a problem:

When I’ve been where you are, I simply moved all my existing edits over to the new style and waited to see if anyone said anything, or asked for a re-edit in the old style. My thinking was that couples don’t pay as much attention to editing as we do, and they trust that you have the best eye for this. They booked you, after all, not your presets.

It also means you have far more work to share in your new edit, much sooner. And if someone does ask for the old look, re-editing a handful of their favourites is a small price to pay for moving forward.

07 One wedding, many portfolios

Over a full day of coverage we take so many images that we can make many different selections, each showing a different facet of what we do. I could pull out purely documentary frames from my weddings and pitch myself as a documentary wedding photographer.

So don’t write off your ‘regular’ weddings. Go through them looking for the frames that feel like you now – the in-between ones, the artistic ones, the ones you’d have pushed further with free rein. They’re almost certainly in there. That’s your bridge.

08 What about the structured parts of the day?

Most couples will still want some traditional set ups, and that’s fine, but you get to decide how much space they take up. Shape this at the booking stage, not on the day:

09 What happens when clients stop giving you a shot list?

Anni Graham, who spoke at Thrive, talks in the podcast we recorded together about reaching the point where her clients give her no input at all. No mood boards, no shot lists. They simply say, we trust you to do your thing. It’s well worth a listen, because it wasn’t always like that for her.

It was the same with Joanna Brown when she appeared on the podcast ahead of her Thrive appearance. She talked about working on film at weddings, and how what she takes is often just one frame – say, of the first kiss – but that’s her interpretation of that part of the day, and that’s what her couples get. It is so refreshing to hear.

Neither of them started there. They got there by showing the work they wanted to make, until the right people came looking for it.

10 Are you niche-ing yourself out of the market?

It sounds to me like you’ve had your own epiphany. You’ve realised that wedding photography doesn’t have to be about ticking boxes, or doing what you think is expected of you, all of the time.

I’m actually really excited for you. I very much believe in you, and I believe you can be found by the right people who will give you free rein.

Not every client is going to be a bohemian artist. But your friend isn’t the only couple in the country who’d love this work. There are plenty more out there – they just can’t find you yet, because your portfolio is still telling them you’re someone else. I’ve always said that in a busy market you can never be too niche. A niche doesn’t shrink your market. It makes you the obvious choice for the couples who matter most to you.