Wedding Photography and the Comparison Trap

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Transcript… not entirely accurate!

Hi folks. Hope you’re doing well. We are in the middle of June. I’m on my way to a wedding in North Wales and I just thought I’d take this time to talk to you about something that’s cropped up a few times recently, uh, with some of the photographers that I’ve been mentoring this year. And that thing is comparison.

And comparing yourself to other photographers or the businesses, other people, and the main, the main culprit of this comparison is actually social media. It’s a bit of a problem. It’s not something that I had to contend with when I was growing up. First photographing weddings when I started out, which was some 18 years ago or something like that.

And it really helped me to be able to focus on what I was doing, um, concentrate on my own craft and my own journey. Now, sorry, people go too slow. Doesn’t help anyway. So the thing about comparison is that it’s, it’s a negative energy. It’s not good for you. It’s not a great thing to do, but it’s rammed down our throat.

Isn’t it these days that people are successful and people are doing well. And because a lot of what we do is, is visual. We use Instagram a lot and Instagram does seem to be a big, a platform for us as, as wedding photographers at the moment, and for some people it’s more important than their website, certainly more important than.

Facebook or Twitter or anything else, Pinterest, Instagram seems to be the biggest thing at the moment. And it’s, it’s almost like a search engine in its own right. So we focus a lot of our attention on Instagram. We spend a lot of time on it. We look at what people are doing and how they’re doing it. And it’s very easy to see the success of, of other people and what we deem as success.

Now success is another story because success is, is something that we have to define ourselves. What, what is success to us is, is success being fully booked, is success being, uh, making the maximum amount of money, is success having a certain lifestyle. It’s success winning a lot of awards, but this is a conversation probably for another day.

And your definition of success, certainly for me, has changed as I’ve progressed through my life and my wedding photography career. But what I’m talking about today is comparison and, and, and how we can see sometimes that other photographers are doing this really cool work and they’re doing work in different countries.

Fancy venues, and it just looks great. And everything they portray on social media looks, looks brilliant. And if you are a wedding photographer starting out in this industry, you look at that and you think, oh, I, I wanna be there. Why? Why can’t I be there? What do I need to do to, to, to be like that person?

Use the white blade to speak to the, and what it does. First of all, it felt, it takes your attention away from your own journey, your own creative. journey because not only are you looking at their success, but you’re looking at how they do it. You’re looking at their work and then what will happen is your, your own vision and your own style becomes contaminated because you feel like you should be shooting in a certain way to be like these other photographers who seem to be successful.

So the thing to say about that, firstly, is that everything you see on social media is just the best bits, really. It’s the best bits of people and the best bits of their business. It’s not necessarily 100 percent real either. People exaggerate and people don’t show you everything else that goes on. The other thing to say is if you’re starting out in the wedding photography industry, you’re looking at these photographers, you think that’s, that’s great work.

And that’s, that’s a fab venue. They look so happy and they have all this behind the scenes stuff and they’re doing all this. cool things at the weekend and jetting off to Italy to photograph weddings all this other kind of stuff what you’re what you’re not seeing um and it’s the same for anything you know if you’re in the roundabout if you’re trying to learn how to play golf if you’re trying to get fit what you don’t see when you look at successful people is perhaps the 10 years or so of of intense work and effort And trial and error and failure and everything else that’s gone into getting to where they are at that point.

And so you can’t compare yourself to those people. It’s a, it’s a pointless exercise. Uh, it, it’s negative and it takes you away from that forward. Momentum that you need to build up your own business and your own photography so you can see it a little bit like as a, as a, as a journey. Let’s just say you want to, you want to climb Everest and you can compare your wedding photography business as a, as a journey to climb Everest.

And you have to train for it. You have to do a lot of hard work and then you’ve got to try and do it. And it’s difficult, but you can’t, what you can’t do is you can’t look at the people at the top of Everest. Having their picnic at the top. What do you think you could have a picnic for? There’s probably a McDonald’s.

up there. You look at the people at the top of Everest, having their Big Mac in McDonald’s, and you think, why can’t I be there? Why, why, what can I do to, to get there more quickly? And then what happens then is, as well, you, you, you get sucked in by other things that potentially could help you get there.

And what that does is it takes you off your path. So you have a certain, let’s, let’s just talk about a normal mountain that’s not Everest, because this is quite difficult. Because I don’t think you can breathe properly at the top. So if you got to the end of your path and you wouldn’t be able to breathe, that wouldn’t be very good.

Anyway, so let’s, let’s talk, let’s call it Ben Nevis. So you’re going to go to the top of Ben Nevis, but there’s people at the top already. And you’re on a path and there are lots of different paths up there, but your, yours, is unique to you. Yours is the only path that you’re gonna take. And if you try and go on somebody else’s path, it might not be well equipped, and you might fall down because you haven’t, you’re not fit enough because you’ve not put enough effort in.

I don’t know. I’m, I’m going off on a tangent here, but my, my, my point is at the Radabout, you, you can’t, your journey is unique to you. You can’t go on somebody else’s path because that’s their path and they have a lot of things that have gone on in their lives Before to get them into that position, just as you’ve got everything that you’ve done up to this point has made you who you are and your business and your work and that kind of thing.

And the only way to get to the top is to keep trying and keep moving. There are no, there are no shortcuts and it’s difficult. So what I was trying to say a minute ago is that. That it’s very easy to get sucked in by things that potentially could make this journey easier for you. Right on 8 bar. And some of it is a bit of a con.

Um, you know, there is, there is decent training and mentorship out there, of course. And you can learn a lot from, from mentorship. Particularly because people have already made the mistakes for you and they can certainly point you in the right direction. I give you good advice based on experience, but there are some bad workshops out there and there’s some bad training courses, which aren’t going to help you, uh, nor is looking at everybody else’s work and being envious and jealous of what they’re doing.

Because again, that’s negative things like things like style shoots, style shoots. Maybe a way to be, get, to get a great portfolio. But if you’re in a situation where, you know, you, you, you’re at a wedding and you need to produce this stuff and you can’t because the conditions are different and the couple are different and, uh, you know, you, it’s a, it’s a false, it’s a false path.

So you, it’s like you, you take, trying to take a shortcut of Ben Neviss, but it’s too cracky, uh, and you’ll probably fall off and you’ll have to start again somewhere lower down. I hope that’s a good analogy, but to get to the top you just need to keep plugging away and take your own path. Concentrate on your own work.

Do your own thing. Trust in yourself. Stop comparing yourself to other people and know that if you carry on doing everything you think or that you think you need to do, everything that that you’ve been told or trained to do by by someone who’s Maybe giving you some good advice, then you’re going to get there.

Eventually. You can’t do 10, 000 hours in a week. It’s just not possible. So keep going, trusting yourself, uh, and, and just bear in mind that the everything you see on social media isn’t. necessarily true and try not to compare yourself to other people. Take, take what you want from, from other people. I mean, take inspiration and take some good ideas, but don’t compare yourself.

All right. Hope that this is a useful little ditty. I’ll see you soon. Cheers.