How I Keep My Photography Passion Alive | 106

I

’ve been told countless times that when I start making money from photography, I’ll start to slowly hate it.

This scared me.

When I was starting my photography business 4 years ago, I loved walking around and taking photos in the streets of Chicago. This was my favorite hobby and I wasn’t ready to give that up.

But I also wanted to become a full-time photographer.

Fast forward 4 years, I’m making a great living as a photographer AND I still love photography.

So, how did I pull this off?

How can you do the same so you don’t grow to hate the thing you love most?

First, Answer This

Let’s start with your why. Why do you want to monetize your passion? Are you trying to make a few extra bucks every month as a side hustle or do you want to become a full-time creative?

Identifying the goal here is critical. My goal was to go all in. I wanted to become a full-time business owner. So, each decision I made was in line with this vision. I didn’t monetize my street photography because that would be an extremely hard business to make profitable and would take years.

Instead, I found a niche with high-paying clients that were easy to reach.

On the other hand, if your goal is to just do this as a side hustle, you’re not going to be devoting 50+ hours a week to it. It doesn’t make sense for you to follow the same path a business owner would.

Monetizing your current passion/niche may be the best way to go. You’ll make a few extra bucks each month and that could be all you want.

Mixing Pleasure And Business

When it was time to start making money with my passion, I knew that the timeless advice would apply to me.

When you monetize your passion, you’ll slowly grow to hate it. This has been said thousands of times by people who have experienced it, and I didn’t have the ego to think I was any different.

So what did I do?

Rather than try to monetize the street, cityscape, and landscape photography I did, I monetized a completely different niche. Product photography.

The goal was to make money on my own terms.

I wanted to be free of a boss.

I wanted to live a life of freedom.

So, I started with that goal and reverse-engineered the best way to do it.

I was good with a camera. Product photography seemed like an easy enough niche to break into. I went for it.

Notice how I’m still doing photography to make money. I’m just not doing the exact niche of photography I was doing as a hobby.

I chose a complementary style and that was what I monetized.

And that was the key for me.

4 years later, I still love taking street and landscape photos. Anytime I see some sick light, I pop out my phone, snap a pic, and do a quick edit. And I love it. But do I love product photography?

When I’m taking photos for myself, I still love it.

When I’m taking photos for clients, it depends. The act itself is fun, but after 20-30 hours of shooting in a week it gets to be a lot.

But that’s not important. Product photography has allowed me to build a life on my terms. I’m my boss. I have my own business.

And going back to my vision, that’s exactly what I set out to do.

Selling Out?

I can’t tell you how happy I was when I started landing clients in my photography business. I was finally doing something I loved and making money from it.

My family and friends all supported me and were pumped to see me winning.

But something strange happened online. When I started posting about my successes and sharing that I was making a living as a photographer, I got some weird comments and DMs.

People told me they were sad to see me “sell out.” To some people, me making money from my art took away from the magic of it. I couldn’t wrap my head around this. I thought that people wanted to see me do more of what I love, but I guess to some, it reminded them of where they want to be and that they’re not there yet.

Almost everyone supported me, but this small handful of comments bugged me. Eventually, I realized that with any success in life, you’ll find hate and you just gotta ignore it.

Ignore the haters and focus on winning. That’s all we can do at the end of the day.