My 4 Biggest Fails of 2023 as a Fashion Photographer
Last week you got my 3 biggest takeaways from 2023. And today, you're getting my 4 biggest fails of 2023 in the life of a fashion photographer 🙃 ‘cause let's be real, not everything always goes to plan!
Ignoring my intuition about a job:
Earlier in the year, I got an email about a job that sounded epic. I was so excited, and I hopped on a call with the producer of the job. During the call, I got a weird feeling… I can't really tell you what it was, but something just felt off.
Instead of listening to that feeling, and backing out of the job (cause let's face it, I could have come up with an excuse of some kind), I went ahead, ignoring my gut feeling.
Let's just say that I should NOT have done that, cause the WHOLE THING turned into a nightmare. I'm not going to go into details, ‘cause… let's just not 🤣, but trust me, not my best week ever.
However, that job DID lead to me making some big changes in my boundaries, processes, and also how I say yes or no to jobs going forward, so it worked out well in the end.
Forgetting an external battery for a location shoot:
I love location shoots, and I got booked on a really lovely location job earlier this year that didn't require much kit, but it did require an overnight stay.
I packed up all my stuff, drove to the shoot location, and…. realised that I'd forgotten to pack the external battery for my laptop.
Oops.
I did have a mild moment of panic that I wasn't going to be able to tether for the shoot, which would have been baaaaad.
Thankfully, I'm lucky that I have a relatively new laptop which has a GREAT battery. It impressed me, and I was able to shoot without a battery for the first half of the day, and then over lunch, I charged it up again, and it all went fine.
But I won't make the same mistake again in future - it was stressful!
Not insisting on having an assistant for a commercial job:
One of my regular clients approached me about a realllllly fun job this summer, but the budget was quite low. I wanted to do it regardless, but in order to do it, there was no way I was going to be able to have an assistant.
I asked a few times, and the clients were kind and did try to allocate me the budget, but sadly it didn't work out.
The shoot itself went fine, but it was a stressful one for me to manage because I had to cover every single element of the day… and I hadn't done that for a long time.
It made me realise just how much having an assistant is essential to me on a shoot - I just can't deliver my best work without the help that I need!
Overdelivering, at my own expense:
I'm a big people pleaser (I'm working on that), and I'm also a very fast photographer. I've been doing this for so long, it's very much second nature.
When I've got the shot - I've got the shot! We move on.
It's definitely a good thing, as we usually get through everything we need on a shoot day easily.
However, soooometimes that positive trait has come back to bite me in the bum. Sometimes we are so ahead of time, that the clients are able to pack in waaay more outfits than intended… but that means that I never get any rest, my back kills me, and I feel a bit abused.
At the end of one shoot, one of my assistants and I were talking, and he looked at me and said: “You know, just because you're fast, doesn't mean that you need to overdeliver so much. You can have an outfit limit, and when that's hit, you are done… even if it only took you 6 hours instead of 8 hours.”
His words hit me like a ton of bricks. He was right!
After that day, I went home, reflected, and set some new boundaries. From now on, I set an outfit limit for shoots. If we go over it, the clients have two options: they can leave early, knowing we accomplished everything that they set out to accomplish on that shoot day - and did it easily and fast! OR they can pay extra per look. That way I feel compensated for the extra work that I'm doing!
It's worked so well for me, and was a biiiiig lesson in setting boundaries.
Fails happen, but on the other side of them are always lessons and takeaways. Think about your fails of 2023, and ask yourself: what did you learn from that? What changed after that happened? Was it REALLY a fail after all?
