From time to time we have run small courses and seminars for those in our profession that want to branch out on their own and start a business. They may want to start a small wedding and portrait business or perhaps something a bit larger with a commercial studio serving the internet and magazine publishing circuit. We have helped some of these emerging businesses over the last few years and of those we have seen some real success and also some heartbreak.
Businesses that fail generally do so as a result of running out of funds and not being able to service their debts is a sustainable manner. It is never down to a lack of ambition or hard work. A full market research is sometimes lacking in the build up to starting a business but in our experience the lack of tangible cash flow is more than likely the cause of the demise of what could be very profitable small operations.
The business of being a professional photographer has changed over the last twenty years what with the advent of digital capture and the like and the roll of the High Street studio has diminished in recent years, yet there is a market for the family photographer in 2016.
People will always need a good wedding photographer and schools will have photographs of students taken at school and for proms etc.
Look in your local newsagent and see how many magazines and papers there are on the shelves all requiring professionally taken images to fill the pages. Someone has to take those images and there are a lot of pro photographers making a good living from this market. So how do you, as good quality amateur get into these markets and how do you get your images seen and more importantly “paid for” in a climate of – everyone being a photographer nowadays?
There is no stock answer to this question. In fact over the last twenty or so years the path into professional photography is harder to travel.
When I re-trained as a photographer in the late 1980s and early 90s there were many grants and training programmes available. There were local and national schemes into various professions and trades leading to self-employment. There were European incentives and schemes to get people to start up small businesses and help with tax relief on equipment and training. Even the Banks had schemes to help small businesses (that seems a long time ago). I remember our business bank holding business breakfasts in hotels early mornings to help with networking and to get information across to the smaller outfits that would not normally benefit from banking information. BUT, the world is a very different place in 2016.
In the last few days we have been contacting organisations that used to help small businesses – we are talking family and one-man-bands here – and where the organisations still exist the amount of help to get start up businesses off the ground is almost non-existent. Grants, what grants? We could not find the grants that used to help the new businesses. Red-tape seems to have over taken the help that was there. European funding for such things as ECDL and digital training that once was free to small business just isn’t there any more and the help with small businesses that want to employ people has gone completely or should I say is so hidden in the red-tape and bureaucracy of governmental policy that anyone other than a business lawyer would know where to look.
A small business owner employing people also has to pay towards the employees National Insurance contributions and now also has to match the payment that the employee makes towards a work place pension. With three or four staff this could be in the thousands of pounds per year. I have no problem with employers paying their fair due but the small or family run business is not usually in a position to be able to afford these extra payments especially if they are trying to start up or get established.
I spoke to a person at the local chamber of commerce to ask if there was local help for start ups and they almost shrugged their shoulders when I mentioned that the start ups I wanted to help were photographers.
The courses and seminars that we have written for start ups are now being looked at very hard and we will try to gather the information from various organisations to get the full picture on business start ups in the photography industry.
In the meantime we have seen some very good wedding businesses setting up and running part-time, which we feel is the way forward. Starting up in a part-time capacity is the best way to get into the industry before ditching the day job and launching yourself into the world of professional image making.
For the reasons that I have stated here we are re-writing our business courses (weddings and portraits are still being covered) so we can get definitive information on the benefits available to start up businesses.
Happy snappin’
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