What Photography Educators Won’t Tell You

What Photography Educators Won’t Tell You // Navigating the Wild West of Education

I recently started a series on the wild, unpredictable world of education (here’s part one on how to navigate your options), and next time I’ll walk you through practical steps you can take to protect yourself as you find an educator you can actually trust.

But today, I needed to address something essential first. There’s a really, really problematic mistake that most educators are making these days, and I need to tackle it. Because truly, it’s doing so many women a disservice.

What they’re getting wrong:

The way it usually goes is that photographers in large cities who work in markets with high demand create a successful business. After such great success, they want to teach others how to do the same. They see other female photographers undervaluing themselves, and tell them to raise prices, and to raise them a lot. They’ve built a sustainable, highly profitable business and they want to teach other women how to do the same. All of this is great!

But here’s where it goes wrong: these educators mistakenly believe that the same results are achievable anywhere, and they set up unhealthy expectations for women who live and work in small cities or towns, in markets with low demand for their services. These other women are told that they, too, can earn six figures, or even multi six figures, as a photographer – they’re fed one success story after another in Facebook groups and other platforms, they’re even shown photos of receipts from happy photographers who are now bringing in four or five figures per session. So these photographers take the success stories to heart and change their business model, and when their market doesn’t support the kind of success they’ve been sold, they’re crushed. (Obviously.)

>> These photographers are left feeling like failures, wondering why they can’t seem to accomplish what other women can. Their self confidence is shaken, they lose joy in their work, and they perpetually feel that they can’t measure up. And wow, what a mentally and emotionally unhealthy experience this is! It actually gets my blood boiling a little to think of how many women have been sold a lie – even if the lie wasn’t intentional. 

Here’s the truth:

The harsh truth is that most of the photography education industry has completely missed some Business 101: your local market matters. As a photographer, your market is primarily local, and markets vary wildly based on location, city size, cultural values, and more. What sells in a big city might not sell at all in a small one.

>> Women need to stop being fed unrealistic expectations. Instead, they deserve to have access to realistic, practical, foundational business knowledge that they can apply to their own market, and use to build a realistic vision of what success should look like for them.

What Photography Educators Won’t Tell You // Navigating the Wild West of Education

In the past ten years, I’ve lived in Pittsburgh, PA, small town TX (a town of less than 6,000 to be precise), different parts of San Diego County, CA, and now Boise, ID. I’ve worked as a photographer for several years in each of the last two. The years that I’ve spent living and working in such varying locations has given me a unique experience that many photographers won’t ever have – it’s taught me how wildly different the culture is between different cities and states. They may all be in the same country, but there is as much different between each of these locations as there is similar – cultural values, housing prices, recreation, lifestyle, vibe, etc. None of them is alike – not even San Diego and Boise, where a significant part of the ID population has actually migrated from CA.

What’s more, I’ve worked with dozens of students all over the country and even around the world, and have heard their experiences in big cities and small ones and how business looks different for each. So I can say this with total confidence: being a photographer in a small city is nothing like being a photographer in a big one. 

Like many jobs, the income opportunities vary (a lot) based on your location. We would never expect a realtor to earn the same amount in a small town as she could in a large city. And if Cartier and Prada opened stores at the local mall here in Boise, well, they wouldn’t get even a fraction of the business that they do on Rodeo Drive, even though their brand and products would be exactly the same. Jobs in healthcare and technology and teaching and most other fields pay differently from one location to another for the same exact set of skills. It’s a fact of life, but one that has been mostly forgotten in the photography industry, to the detriment of so many hard working women.

Don’t think for a moment that I don’t believe in dreaming big, believing in your potential, knowing your value, and aiming high. Nothing gets me more excited than empowering others to grow and thrive! And you absolutely can be a successful photographer in a smaller city or town.

The key is that success must be rooted in reality and in your local context: by understanding your own market and what it can support, using wise business strategies, and defining success in a realistic, achievable way. It’s essential for your health and the health of your business – without roots, struggle (or even outright failure) is inevitable, and that’s not something I wish on anyone. Skipping this piece is, plainly, very bad business practice. 

Markets vary. Success varies. And there’s so much more to success than what the numbers show on paper that your business brings in. As we all know, big cities may offer higher wages, but they also tend to include significantly higher living expenses. In the end, you truly can’t compare numbers from one city to the next.

Instead, keep your focus local. Assess what your competitors are offering, and how you can stand out amongst them. Create a high end business, but remember that high end looks different in each location. Dream big, but do it within your local context instead of watching what others do who work in a market totally different than yours. 

Friends, I want to see you healthy and thriving, and I couldn’t let this go unsaid. I hope that you can filter through the big, shiny, too-good-to-be-true promises out there in the education world and remember that real success is found in using your incredible talents to serve your market, not someone else’s!

What Photography Educators Won’t Tell You // Navigating the Wild West of Education

What Photography Educators Won’t Tell You // Navigating the Wild West of Education