085: Chloe Mary – How To Embrace Black & White Images In Your Galleries + How To Be An Adaptive Photographer

So funny, because I was kind of thinking, like you said. A lot of photographers are really keen to shy away from black and white work because they think it’s less desirable for their clients, or it’s not as marketable. And if you want to go off of Instagram stats, sometimes no, it’s not. It’s just the aim of the game sometimes.

But the saying of showing what you want to shoot really is true, especially when it comes to black and white work. Because if you want to capture more of it, you need to show people that you are capturing it in the first place. And I think the more you kind of show it, the more desirable it’s going to become to your audience, and the more they’re going to accept it as something that you do. A lot of people who inquire with me tell me that they love my black and white work, and other photographers like yourself always come to me and say, “Your black white work is beautiful,” and I kind of don’t get it. But I love it, so I just do it.

It’s hard to describe, but I think it really can help with finding your ideal client, if you’re putting out there what you love into the world, it’s going to come back as people are going to actually want it. And I think just, it’s more of a mindset with black and white work, when you take the photo you kind of start to feel if you know it’s going to be in black and white. Or at least I do, I don’t know how that happened. It just does.

And I think that’s the thing. It is definitely a mindset, and it’s just pushing that mindset a little bit further. So for me, it’s normally emotional photos or storytelling images. I think when they’re in colour they can almost become distracting, because the colors are clashing or there’s too much going on. And especially with documentary photography, because there’s so much, sometimes, background information. You kind of want to isolate the subject almost, and black and white can do that. I’m not sure how, it just does.

It’s no secret that the market is becoming saturated, as time goes on. And I kind of can’t blame people. It is an amazing job and people do see that from the outside, whether they kind of see it as more of, it’s a creative path for them to put their passion into because they’re creative people, or unfortunately there are some people who are just in it for the money. But I don’t blame them. It’s a good paying job.

But I think the number one piece of advice is to just stay true to yourself, and stay true to what you want to offer as a business. Whether you’re just coming in, or if you are years-years deep. There’s a lot of courses now and mentoring out there that is offered to new photographers, with the promise of giving you everything you need to become a fully fledged wedding photographer. And whilst those courses are great, I don’t think you should take everything you see as gospel. I’ve done a few of the things along my career, and even recently just gone, I’ve been to a conference back in November that was for educational purposes and stuff. But a lot of what you are given is useful takeaways and actions and things to implement, but it is just that. It’s ideas for actions. If you’re not willing to put the work in, it’s not going to come back to you.

I think you need to try and figure out what you want to offer and what’s going to make you stand out from a saturated market. Because for example, if you’re offering the exact same style of photography and the exact same prices as 10 photographers in your area, the only thing that’s going to differ between you and your businesses are you as people. And unless you’re kind of putting that out there, it’s very hard for clients to see that on a first glance, and they will go with somebody who has put themselves a little bit more out there than what you have, if that makes sense.