5 Mistakes To Avoid When Building Your Wedding Photography Business with Michael Anthony
It’s been quite a while since I have written an article for Shutter Magazine. A little over a year in fact. During this time, so much has changed in the wedding photography industry that has helped me to gain a new perspective on the business and fine-tune many different aspects to build a more sustainable career, and more importantly, teach others how to do the same.
For those of you who have never read an article of mine, I am a Los Angeles Wedding Photographer and entrepreneur. Our studio, Michael Anthony Photography, offers photography and cinematography to wedding couples all around the world. In 10 years, photography has taken me to many different countries, and I have had the opportunity to serve couples on all ends of the budget spectrum. But the most important thing that I have learned about this industry is that building a business that can sustain a full-time career is not difficult and can be very rewarding. Over the years I have tried to teach photographers how to structure their wedding photography businesses in such a way that they can meet their income goals consistently.
With that being said, I constantly see photographers making the same mistakes in our industry, causing stagnant growth or worse: burnout. Being an educator in this industry has allowed me to analyze the things that create success and failure, so that I can better teach business-minded photographers how to find that success and sustain it over many years.
With that being said, here are the most common mistakes that wedding photographers make when building their wedding photography businesses.
Mistake #1: Prioritizing Art Over Business
This is the most common mistake I see in the photography industry in general, but especially in wedding photography. I understand that we get into wedding photography because of the artistic nature of it. I understand that capturing weddings can satisfy the inner artist in most of us.
But the biggest problem with adopting an art-first mindset is that it changes the course of your business decision-making.
Now, you may think that you don’t suffer from this, but I can promise you that the vast majority of photographers, myself included, do make this mistake from time to time.
Examples of this kind of mindset would be:
- Investing in new camera equipment over new marketing collateral
- Investing in editing courses over business courses
- Attending workshops taught by great artists who have not ran a successful business
- Not attending networking events
- Spending hours on YouTube looking at camera reviews rather than marketing techniques
Don’t get me wrong, doing any of these things occasionally isn’t a bad thing. I do them all myself. However, not prioritizing business first will have long-term devastating effects on the quality of your business.
