The Importance of Having Personal Projects

Fashion Photography TipsPhotography

Nov 3

Written By Olivia Bossert

This was the first personal shoot I had done in three months.

Three months!

That is far too long.

When I first picked up a camera, I didn't have any clients. I didn't even have a real need to find clients (I was still young, and living at home), so every single image I took was simply for the pleasure of it. Then, I went to uni, and all the inspiration I had disappeared. I put the camera down for two years, thinking that the love and inspiration I had once had would never come back.

Thankfully I was wrong. One day, after spending a few hours looking at the work of a photographer I love, I felt flooded with ideas. So what did I do? I began to shoot again.

Of course, this time, there was more ambition behind what I was doing: I wanted to make a real go at making photography my career.

A year and a half on, I'm so proud to say that that is really happening. It's hard, and exhausting, some times feels like it's impossible to be an artist for a living, but then you look back at how far you've come, and something incredible hits you: it's working!

The only thing is, clients come into play, and suddenly all those personal projects you had floating around in your head get put aside so that you can shoot for those clients.

Now I'm quite lucky in that pretty much everyone I shoot for lets me get very creative, and I love all of the shoots I do. However it is SO important not to think that just because work is fun and creative, that you don't need to create work just for you, as an artist.

It's taken me a very long time to realise that I am, actually, an artist. It feels almost arrogant a word to use, but since I was able to hold a pencil, I've been a creative person. So why not just embrace the word, and go with it?

These creative shoots that I do, the ones that I do just for me, they're the ones that keep the fire alive. They keep the ambition there. They attract the clients that I want to work with. They are what keeps my business afloat.

So if you're a creative business owner, and you haven't created something just for you in a while, i urge you to stop and think about what it is you might want to create for yourself. There doesn't need to be an end goal, you don't even need to show it to anyone! But I bet you that whatever it is you create makes you feel something really good inside. And it'll make you want to do it again and again and again.