I’ve found myself more than once in the past few days questioning how to explain the value of photos – having them taken of you, having them taken of your work, having a person you trust behind the camera.
Part of my personal struggle with this is that I’m not very good – and also, totally honestly, not interested – in quantifying the value of my work. Maybe this has something to do with my feelings about capitalism, and my resistance around competing on cost alone, because competition turns cost and quality into enemies. So often one is favored in exchange for the other, and cost is the typical constraint (and I FEEL this struggle, because I’ve had to make that choice so many times. And while I want to choose quality every time, my wallet too often chooses for me – or at least demands that I compromise). Integrity plays a part too; I can’t honestly tell anyone what the exact return on investment is on hiring a professional photographer. There is no “expect to make X many dollars” or “expect hundreds of likes” from paying a professional to take photos. To say that you will make six figures or achieve any other measure of success because you spent money on photos feels like an incomplete story, although they might be one piece of the puzzle.
But value has other meanings beyond estimating worth. There’s what you value – sometimes tangible things, but also intangible concepts or ideas. And when we talk about an item or quality having value, we typically say it with reverence, or at least the weight of importance. Things of value have a worthiness that aren’t exclusively monetary.
There’s a story about a famous artist (sometimes it’s Picasso) who is approached by a stranger. The stranger asks for a drawing and the artist spends a very short time doodling before handing over the artwork and asking for a very large sum of money, tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. The stranger is aghast – “You made that in 10 minutes,” they say. And the artist replies, “No it took me a lifetime.” The heart of this story is that a creative life is a practice of compounding. You’re building skills that are added to life experience and multiplied by a unique way of seeing the world.
What you’re paying for when you invest in photos isn’t just the picture you get at the end. That photo is a deliverable, but it isn’t the bulk of the work. Some of the work behind the scenes is incredibly boring and mundane (and you can skip the rest of this paragraph if that’s all you need to know). Besides the time it takes to show up and engage with people in a way that makes them feel comfortable, there are also hours of curating and editing, the cost of expensive equipment and running a business. After the photo is delivered, there’s ordering and permissions and licensing – where the photo ends up, what size it needs to be, or designing products, albums, and gallery walls – to navigate and account for, which is usually unique and individualized. And while taking a photo has become something that everyone does, several times a day with a camera that’s always with them, there’s a different energy to a snapshot than the intentionality of a photo shoot – even when the photo shoot is impromptu, relaxed, or takes place in the context of real life instead of in a studio. If it looks easy or effortless, it’s because the muscle memory of learning camera settings and remembering to take requested photos and seeing the way the light comes in or noticing what will add depth to the scene and being willing to wait or adjust or recompose has been a life-long practice.
Photographers are seers. Not (always) in the mystical sense, but in the way that we make invisible things visible. We deal in the language of metaphors and representation and non-verbal communication. We make values visible, people visible, emotions visible, community visible. We literally play with darkness and light, intentionally deciding what to hide and highlight. My work is so much more than curating and editing and posing and capturing – it’s using each of those tools to tell the story of you: who you are, how you exist in the world, what you make, why you and your work and the way you exist in the world are immensely worthy of time and attention. Directing the flow of attention is at the heart of this work. What you’re paying for is the empathy of my gaze.
If I could get on a soap box with every person that considers making photos with me, what I’d want to tell them is this: what you’re really hiring me to do is to make you (and your work) feel seen. You think you’re hiring me to make photos, but what you really want me to do is to show you that you are real, that you can be the whole-est, truest version of yourself. You want the validation that you are on the right path, that you matter, that you’re enough. You’re asking me to help you create the world you want to live in, and to be able to have something to hold on to that proves you’ve moved even a step in that direction, and maybe have other people there with you. Making photos is a type of actualizing, a validation that we are capable of becoming the people we want to be, or feel we are on the inside. And while it’s possible for you to do some of this work on your own, there is so much ease in letting another person hold the camera so that you can be fully present in the moment.
And maybe that still doesn’t feel like it will give you a return on your investment. But here’s what I know, because I have lived it: to be seen is to grow. To have your deepest desires validated and to feel held and approved as you show up as yourself gives you the courage to keep doing it, to keep walking in the direction of becoming your truest self. What you get, in the form of photos and the equivalent of a thousand words, is a way to then share your story and what you have cultivated with the rest of the world. And when you start the practice of sharing it, of using your voice and letting it influence the conversations around you, noticing the ripple effect, that’s when you’ll feel just how valuable the photos we made really are.