Hey photographer friends! Welcome back to our Photography Blog, Mastering the Wedding Photography Biz with Hunter and Sarah! Today, we’re talking about what it’s REALLY like to be a full-time wedding and portrait photographer. In this brief post, we’re going to give you some of the big-picture pros and cons of being your own boss in an industry like wedding photography, and hopefully help you get an idea of whether or not the wedding photographer lifestyle might be for you!

 

 

The Wedding Photographer Lifestyle: Freedom and Flexibility

First and foremost, we need to mention what’s probably the first thing that people think of when they think of the lifestyle of a wedding photographer: the freedom and flexibility that a job like ours gives. And a lot of the time, it really is as awesome as it sounds. Sarah regularly sleep until 9:00 or even 10:00 AM most days, because that’s what works best with her natural rhythms. Hunter, on the other hand, is a morning person, and likes to be in the office early. But then he might take off at 10:30 AM and go to the gym while it’s mostly empty.

 

And if we’ve had a long weekend or a rough few days in the office, and just want to take a day or two off, we can do that without having to check with anyone other than our own to-do list. So if we manage our time well, the freedom and flexibility that this career offers is unparalleled, and can give us way more time to invest in our own personal life or our hobbies or time with friends and family. Especially when compared to a traditional, M-F, 9-5 job.

 

 

The Potential Downsides of Freedom and Flexibility

Yet at the same time, that freedom and flexibility can be as big of a curse as it is a blessing. Because your schedule is entirely your own — both your weekly schedule, as well as your annual schedule — you have to be okay managing your time. If you don’t think that you’ll be able to handle that level of freedom, being a full-time photographer might not be for you.

 

This is especially true because there are really two different ways that you could manage your time poorly. Being self-employed, it’s all too easy to become a workaholic. Because the home office never closes and there’s no boss to tell you that you’ve done enough for the day. You could get into the habit of working too much, and end up become a workaholic who ignores your family and friends. This is especially true for people who handle stress and anxiety by retreating into work, which many small business owners struggle with (us included)!

 

And it’s just as easy for an undisciplined person to find this excuse or that excuse as to why they can’t make it into the office today, and end up not spending enough time working in order to reach their goals. That’s why some of the most successful solopreneurs are also often some of the most disciplined. As counterintuitive as it may sound, the extreme discipline day-in and day-out is actually what creates that freedom to take time off when you want or need to!

 

 

Benefits of Being a Small Business Owner

The next reality of running a photography business is that you truly are a small business owner. And on the one hand, this means that you get paid, often hundreds of dollars an hour, to create beautiful imagery of people in amazing stages of their life. Sometimes we’ll look at each other during a quiet moment on a wedding day and say something like, “I can’t BELIEVE we get paid to do this, much less $1,000 an hour!”

 

Being around people on their wedding day, or when they just had a baby, or as they’re getting ready to graduate and enter a new stage of life is already awesome enough. But then getting to capture that moment in time and freeze it for them to look back on forever — seriously, we can’t get enough of it.

 

 

Challenges of Being a Small Business Owner

But just like freedom and flexibility had their drawbacks, being a small business owner isn’t just about getting paid to travel around and capture people on the best days of their lives. There are challenges with this aspect of the wedding photographer lifestyle too. Namely, close to 70% of what you do as the owner of a wedding photography business is not shooting or editing.

 

And we’re not just taking a guess here. Once a year, we run our Google Calendar through a system we designed that tells us how many hours per month we spent on certain tasks like answering emails, accounting, updating our website and portfolio, or networking with other wedding vendors. And consistently, shooting and editing combined clock in around 30%, while everything else that we do takes up the remaining 70% of our hours.

 

Yes, we get to make our money by serving awesome people on the best day of their lives. But in order to do that, we also have to do the small business things that keep our business running and our calendar full of those high-paying jobs.

 

 

What It’s Like to Be Your Own Boss

The next reality of that wedding photographer lifestyle is being your own boss. That can honestly be incredible. There’s no boss telling you what to do or how to do it, no boss setting unrealistic expectations for you or your performance, no boss calling you at 10:00 AM on a Sunday asking you to come in on your day off, or creating a toxic work environment.

 

And when you find success in your business, you get to fully enjoy and appreciate that success as your success. You weren’t just a small part of a team that did something good — you were the driving force behind creating a successful and thriving business out of literally nothing. It’s one of the best feelings ever.

 

 

Don’t Become What You Hate About Your Boss

Yet at the same time, being your own boss can be a struggle for almost those exact same reasons. When you’re uncertain of what the next step should be or the right move to make, not having anyone to tell you what to do or how to do it can produce a lot of anxiety.

 

And of course, one of the benefits of having someone to set expectations is that it gives you a benchmark to aim for. So now, if you want to achieve your goals, YOU have to be the one to figure out what a good goal is, set it for yourself, and then stick with it.

 

You may not have a boss calling you at odd hours or asking you to cover someone’s shift, that doesn’t mean an upset client won’t ever call you whenever they want. And just because your boss isn’t creating a toxic work environment, doesn’t mean you won’t create one all on your own! 😂 Just like with the other areas of being a wedding photographer, being your own boss requires some resilience, some independence, and some comfort with taking risks.

 

 

Wedding Photographers’ Seasonal Lifestyle

The final area of the wedding photographer lifestyle that has some serious benefits but also some real challenges is the seasonal nature of being a wedding photographer. Now, if you live in southern California where it’s sunny and 75-degrees all year long, you might not have this problem. But in a lot of places in the world, there’s either one or two seasons each year where the weather is nice and your business will pick up, then the rest of the year, when the weather is either too cold or too hot for outdoor weddings, your business will slow down.

 

If you manage this well, this can be a really awesome way to live! Every winter, we get anywhere from 4-6 full months with little to no shooting. We can take entire weeks off around the holidays, and have so much more down time during the winter months. We of course still spend time working on our business during those months. But we get to spend more time with friends and family during this season, and really enjoy that slower pace of life.

 

And to a lesser degree, we get another slow season each summer when the heat of Virginia makes weddings less common. For the last 3 years, we’ve taken 3-4 weeks in a row totally off each summer. A couple years ago we went to a handful of beaches on the east coast of the US, shooting a few smaller weddings as we went (which paid for the entire trip). Last year we celebrated our 5th wedding anniversary with a couple of weeks in Italy, and this year we visited family in up-state New York and Vermont after spending a week at the beach.

 

 

When Seasonality Strikes Back

And we got to do this without requesting time off, or even taking a pay-cut. But the thing is, we were only able to do this because of how hard we worked during the spring and the fall, and because we squirrelled away so much income during those high-earning months.

 

So if you’re uncomfortable with the idea of saying goodbye to your social life for a few months at a team once or twice a year, then this is going to be hard for you. Likewise, if you struggle with budgeting and setting money aside during the busy times so you can get through the slow times, this might be a struggle. And we also know that some people really benefit from routines day in and day out, so the intense seasonality of wedding photography definitely isn’t for anyone.

 

 

If We Didn’t Scare You Off Yet…

Now, if you’ve heard all of this information, and aren’t scared off yet, then wedding photography might be the career for you! If all of these drawbacks surrounding managing your own time and being your own boss sound like challenges you can overcome, rather than barriers that will hold you back from success, then the lifestyle benefits on the other side of those challenges are absolutely worth it — at least for us.

 

And if wedding photography is your dream job, but you don’t know where to get started or are struggling to grow your business, then we’d love to be the people to help you! CLICK HERE to learn more about our collection of workshops and resources for sale on a ton of photography business-related topics. You’ll also learn our coaching program, where you can get personalized guidance in live coaching calls with us!

 

 

Want More?

 

If those options aren’t enough, click HERE to get your free copy of our eBook! “5 Essential Tips for Turning your Side-Hustle into a Full-Time Photography Business.” You’ll also be subscribed to our newsletter, so our newest content, weekly encouragement, and exclusive offers will be delivered right to your inbox!