“If you really want to earn a living as full-time, self-employed photographer, you’re signing up to work in an industry where you have to watch for every opportunity and be ready to take advantage of them,” says commercial photographer Judy Herrmann. “There is creative vision — a photographer’s artistic voice — and then there is vision for business and career. These two things have to work together, but they are not the same.”
I featured these thoughts from Herrmann in “Judy Herrmann: Reinventing Creativity,” a recent profile for Rangefinder that focuses on Herrmann increasing efforts — through workshops, consulting and her new blog, 2 Good Things — to help creative professionals gain more satisfaction through their carriers, making more money doing more of what they truly love.
“Reinventing Creativity” is probably the most important article I wrote in 2010, but — dangit! — I probably gave it the worst name.
A much better, if less flowery, title (that would have really pissed off the design team) would have been:
“Judy Herrmann: How To Reinvent the Business and Creative Aspects of Your Photography Career in a Harmonious Manner, Over Time, In an Ongoing Process, To Earn More Money and Feel Profoundly More Satisfied In Life.”
That’s what Herrmann’s insights are all about, and there are a few things that make them particularly valuable.
One is that Herrmann is full-time working photographer, and has been for two decades, and her increased interest in supporting other photographers with the challenges of business-creative success comes from an honest passion to help. She says providing consulting services to photographers “is one of the few things in my professional life that actually gives me a deep sense of meaning.”
Another reason Herrmann’s guidance rings true is that she is deep in the reinvention trenches herself, and has been since she was 27-years-old. That’s when she forced herself, for the first time, to figure out how to make more money with more satisfaction through her photography. (I reported on this in “Triumph Over Fear” for Rangefinder a few years back.)
That’s right. I have been talking to Herrmann about this topic for years now, and distilling her insights into less than 2,000 words was painful. This woman has so many valuable insights to offer professional photographers that I’m just dying for you to be aware of her. And then — damn me! — I gave her article a crappy name.
Luckily, you can get in touch with Herrmanns’ ideas directly through her posts on ASMP’s Strictly Business Blog. Good stuff, like “‘If you don’t know where you’re going…you might not get there.’ – Yogi Berra” and “Looking Forward, Looking Back.”
Another reason Herrmann’s reinvention insights rock is because she is adamantly adverse to serving in a counseling capacity. “I make it clear that I am not a therapist,” she told me. “This is not psychiatry. What I’m really teaching people is problem solving. It is defining a problem very, very clearly and then brainstorming solutions.”
“What I’m trying to do is to give people an arsenal of tools,” Herrmann explained. “My goal is to make my client not need me any more.”
One place you can learn from Herrmann how to not need Herrmann is at the ASMP’s Strictly Business 3 conferences (Philadelphia, February 25–27; Chicago, April 1–3).
Yet another reason Herrmann’s strategies are so valuable is that she is not formulaic in her approach for working with photographers. She says, “I don’t think there exists a one-size-fits-all answer to this kind of problem solving.”
Can you see why I think it’s so important to learn about Herrmann’s business reinvention processes?
So, poopy title aside, I urge you to download “Reinventing Creativity” and soak up Herrmann’s ideas.
To be clear, I am not concerned about drumming up consulting business for Herrmann (although, um, I do get a percentage of all fees she earns resulting from this post).
What makes Herrmann’s insights so invaluable is that they don’t depend on her or, for that matter, any other career consultant. Like all great ideas, Herrmann’s strategies are a distillation of other people’s great ideas. And like all great ideas, you can put them to use for yourself on your own.
