things I WISH I KNEW when I STARTED to SHOOT PROFESSIONALLY
E aí, guys! My name is Priscila Elias and today I will
share the things I wish I knew when I started to shoot professionally. As some of you already know, I was an amateur
photographer for many years but I went from amateur photography to professional photography
considerably fast from the time I really started studying photography, so the things I will
talk about today, I learned them and started to apply them on my daily basis on the way,
as soon as I started taking photos professionally. Knowing these things saves me a lot of time
and energy and, besides that, it helps me keep my photos as safe as possible. So I hope these tips help you from the start
so you will also see your productivity and professionalism go from here to here in no
time! The first thing I wish I knew back in the
days, and especially while I was an amateur photographer, was that study and practice
makes the whole difference. Of course that, as an amateur, I wasn't much
worried about how fast I'd get better but, if I had dedicated a little more time and
practice into shooting a bit more and studying different photography topics, I would have
gotten better and would have been able to charge for my work even faster.
And c'mon, I'm not saying about studying and
practicing 8 hours a day, even though if you do that you will certainly learn even faster, but if you put in 2-3 hours a day into studying
and practicing photography, you will see that in no time you will be good enough to be able
to go out there and charge for your work. From the time I really started studying and
practicing hard, it took me about 6 months to get my first paid clients. Of course, we have to consider that I already
had a decent knowledge of composition, posing, I already had some Photoshop skills and also
a basic knowledge of the camera settings, light and equipment. But still, if you're starting from zero and
you put in the work, the more you do it, the faster you will be a professional.
Also, please note that this never stops! I still study and practice photography and
that helps me to get better every day. But, what we're talking about here is studying
and practicing to a point where you're good enough to start charging for your work. The second thing I wish I knew when I started
to shoot professionally was that I should not suffer from my mistakes, but instead,
learn from them. I always want to deliver my best to my clients
and, especially in the beginning, not always my best was good enough for me.
I used to put a lot of pressure on myself
about the expectations of the results of each and every one of my photo sessions. And not only over the photo sessions, but
over everything that was related to my photography business. I felt that I needed to have all the answers,
that I needed to be fast, that I needed to be awesome, that I needed to be this and that
and bla bla bla. It consumed me so much! And in the end, this pressure didn't change
the results! Or maybe it did, for worse. In the best case, the results would be as
good as they could be but I'd be overstressed, sleepless or extremely exhausted. Time taught me to take it easy and to chill
a bit more. What I do up until today is to get prepared
for each shoot. And this helps me to keep calm and relaxed
for work. If the client asks me for something that is
a challenge for me, I will ask them for more time to get prepared and then I will have
enough time to study, to get the right equipment and to be certain I can do my best for them.
And that's it! If things don't go exactly right, instead
of suffering from it, I will find solutions. What can I do about it? How can I fix whatever went wrong? Can I offer the client a new photo session? Can I send them some extra photos? What can I do to get it right? And, of course, learning from your mistakes
is extremely important. Repeating a mistake is totally unnecessary. And this is something I take not only for
my photography business but for my life: learn from your mistakes, do not suffer for them.
Blaming yourself will only make you feel upset
and possibly at some point your insecurity will show and you will end up losing clients
for something that is already in the past and that you should have overcome by now. So get over your mistakes and get a positive
attitude about them. Learn from them and, now you're a better photographer! So! Thank you, mistake! You helped me to be a better professional! The third tip I wish I knew when I started
professional photography was to get my files organized. When I started I had no idea of how to do
that, so I just did it intuitively and, after a while, my files were a mess! It was only after a couple of months shooting
and after watching some other photographers' videos about how they organized their work,
that II finally found a way I could get organized.
There are several ways you can do this, but
nowadays I save my work into different folders: Portraits, weddings, other events, product
photography, real estate, food photography. And then, inside each of them, I save subfolders
with the name of the client and date of the shoot, that way, my folders are easily searchable. Also, inside of each of my clients' folders,
I have all of my raw files loose and then I have two other subfolders: HD Versions and
Social Media Versions. Inside each of these folders I save the Jpegs
of the edited photos both in HD and in Social Media versions. That way I can always easily find my edited
files and my raw files in my folders. And the next thing I wish I knew when I started
photography professionally is something still related to getting the files organized, which
is, saving a virtual and a physical backup of all of my work.
So everytime I come back from a shoot, I always
send a copy of my RAW files to an external HD and then, from there, the photos will automatically
be uploaded into the cloud service I use, which in my case is Google Drive. I won't get further into details about this
because I already have an entire video explaining why and how I do it and, in case you want
to know more about it, I will leave a link for this video up here and also in the description
so you can watch it after you finish watching this video.
What I want to tell you regarding this today
though, is, keeping 2 backups of your work is extremely important for you to avoid getting
anything lost. Also, it is always great to have all of your
work available for you even when you don't have your computer in hand. Believe me, every now and then you will be
thankful for having two backups, being one of them, a virtual one that you can access
from any device, anywhere in the world. Still into the organization topic, comes the
fifth thing I wish I knew when I started photography professionally, which is working on finding
the workflow that works best for you.
It might take some time, after all, finding
what works perfectly for you, will demand some trial and error. BUT having this in mind will definitely help
you to get there faster and, believe me, once you find your perfect workflow, you will save
tons of time and stress. And when I talk about workflow, I mean the
whole process, from getting ready for a photoshoot to actually editing and delivering your photos. The part of the workflow that took me the
most time to nail was finding the best EDITING workflow, since there are so many steps from
uploading photos to actually exporting and sending them to the clients, and, for that
reason, I dedicated an entire video to this topic, for which I will also leave a link
up here and in the description. There I will talk about my editing workflow
in detail, which might end up not being the perfect one for you but that will probably
help you to have a few ideas on how to get a good editing workflow and where to start. Maybe you can try my step by step and see
how it works for you and, from there, decide what you think you should do differently or
just copy and do the same.
If I knew that finding my perfect workflow
would save me so much time and headache, I would definitely have put more effort into
nailing that from the start. And the last thing I wish I knew when I first
started doing professional photography was to get things going. That's right: To just get things going! It's very common that when we start out we
feel we're not ready, that we need to open up our company with all its bureaucracy, that
we need to have a brand and our style figured out, that we need to be awesome! And the truth is, after you have some knowledge
and you can take good enough photos, sometimes all you need to start is… just start! You don't need to be perfect! Things don't need to be perfect.
You can improve on-the-go. You don't need to start your company before
you have your first clients. You can first get a couple of clients and
maybe use a third party company to issue your invoices for you. You don't need to know for sure what it is
that your brand is about. If you do, great! But if you don't, it's ok. You might start shooting portraits and later
on you might find out you only want to shoot products, weddings, or maybe that you want
to shoot all of them! It's ok if you're not sure in the beginning. Just get things going! Get things going and keep thinking about the
things you can improve, but don't let the things you do not have in hand or the things
you do not know about stop you from doing your thing. Just go ahead and do it. That's mainly what it takes for you to get
your business going: having the guts to keep it going even when
you're not sure about the best path to follow. Keep studying, keep practicing, keep shooting
and the answers will come.
I promise you! If this video helped you, please consider
hitting the like button and subscribing to this channel, guys. You might have no clue about how much that
helps me to keep this channel going! That is about it for today… thank you so
much for watching this video up until the end and… I will see you in the next video, tchau!.
