Those who can, teach
Share your considerable skills with other photographers and make some money in the process. Jeff Meyer meets two camera masters who’ve done this successfully...
There’s intense competition in the photography education market, so find a suitable niche for your workshop
Ever dreamed of walking away from your nine-to-five to pursue a career as a professional photographer?
Running workshops is a great option for making money from your passion while sharing it with others. But running a workshop requires more than just a thorough technical knowledge. You have to be a good communicator and know how to inspire people to learn the techniques you’ve spent years learning to perfect. What’s more, you have to be willing to share your best insights. After all, this is what people are paying you for.
If you’re confident and enjoy talking about your craft, there’s no reason you can’t succeed at running a workshop series. But be forewarned, there’s intense competition in the photography education market, so you need to find a suitable niche for your workshop.
The first thing you’ll want to do is look at the competition. What are other photographers doing? Do they specialise in a particular subject or technique? Where are they taking their attendees? What are they doing well? What could they be doing better?
Now it’s time to think your workshop through and write down exactly what you’ll be teaching your students and, more importantly, what you hope your students will learn from you. Then you’ll want to flesh these ideas out a bit more specifically. Where will you go? How will you get there? How long will it take? Which are the best days of the year? The goal is to have a precise itinerary – almost like a movie script. This will give both you and your students confidence in your course. Once you’ve got your workshop’s course plan together, it’s time to start thinking about numbers.
So how many people should you accept on to a course? For the most part, your numbers will be limited by logistics – the number of seats in your transport, for example. But as a rule of thumb, leading trainers like Charlie Waite suggest that one photographer can handle about eight participants effectively.
“Any more than eight, and you should have a second photographer,” he says. “I think the maximum should be 12 or 14 people. And it’s important for you and
Differentiation is a massive problem. Some of us are primarily visual learners who learn by copying, others are paper-based academics.
Some clients are learning tolerant, others become overwhelmed and overloaded too easily; others have more analytical minds that can grab complex subjects with ease. Some are artists with less care for the technical; others are scientists who just cannot ‘see’ so easily… These are just a few of the complexities.
Without this knowledge, the learning process will become difficult for the client and bewildering for the tutor. Decode, assemble and simplify the world before teaching, so the learning process can be pitched at a variety of different starting points. David Clapp runs workshops in Iceland and Norway to photograph the Northern Lights. www.davidclapp.co.uk
your second photographer to swap so that each person on your workshop gets different takes. One leader might have a particular understanding of the sky, for instance, while the other might introduce other things.”
Pricing your course will be one of your final steps. Like any business venture, you first need to calculate your overheads and work out the cost per person to run it. Your overheads might include things like travel and transportation, accommodation, fees to outside contractors, advertising and, of course, the cost of another photographer’s time should you wish to teach to greater numbers. Once you have this figure, set it against your desired profit.
Finally, you’ll want to advertise your workshop. Like any business, the best ways to advertise are the tried-and-tested channels of websites and magazines. Of course, these cost money.
If you have a large following already or you’re particularly savvy online, social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter are fantastic ways to advertise your workshops, as they offer people the chance to get to know you and your style before they commit to spending the money on your course. Don’t forget that Facebook and Twitter are free! For this reason, social media will be the best advertising tool for most of you out there planning to launch a workshop.
Engage with other photographers and photo brands on Twitter that have large followings. Become a member of one of the thousands of photo-related Facebook groups. But remember: subtlety is key. No one likes a hard sell. Post your photos, and maybe some of your students’ images too. Always be friendly and chatty, and those who are interested will come seek you out.