Personal Projects (Part I) Don’t Lose Your Creative Integrity
Personal Projects (Part I) Don’t Lose Your Creative Integrity
Over the past few years, as my business has scaled and focused primarily on commercial photography, it's often been challenging to maintain my creative vision. There comes a true turning point for many creatives when they begin monetizing their skills. This crossroad requires a delicate balance between earning a livable income and continuing to create for oneself and from within.
Attending a Chris Burkard workshop in Iceland last December taught me some valuable lessons. One of the biggest takeaways was to never stop pushing toward personal projects. Last year was exceptionally successful for my commercial photography business, keeping me extremely busy. However, this led to severe burnout, forcing me to put my camera down for short and long periods to recover from the relentless work.
Taking a step back, I realized I was dedicating almost all my time and creative energy to producing work for brands and clients. Although it paid well, it didn't satisfy me creatively.
This year, I’m doing my best to put my creative ideas and vision in front of brands and companies that align with my values and passions, instead of just taking any work that comes my way. You may be reading this and thinking that it sounds lovely to only work for yourself and chase your own creative visions. I totally get it. We all have to make a living and need an income, so there is a delicate balance between pursuing personal projects and taking on work that helps pay the bills. As you continue down your creative career path, you may reach the point I did. Yes, it feels good to make money, support yourself, and have a profitable business, but we also want to feel good intrinsically as artists.
So, how do you change this situation? Recently, my buddy Ross and I put our creative minds together to build a personal project we are very passionate about. We started by creating an idea deck that outlined the objectives, initiative, and why it was important to have representation as part of our project. We were pleasantly surprised when three camera gear companies liked our ideas enough to provide monetary support. While it may not have been the biggest project of the year, it fed our creative souls and reminded us why we got into this in the first place: for the love of photography and being creative individuals with unique ideas.
So, don’t be afraid to continue chasing personal projects and your own creative ideas. You’d be surprised how many brands and companies want to hear from you and value your vision. They may not just want you to shoot their products, but to subliminally integrate their products into highly immersive creative projects. If you take one thing away from this blog post, it is to never lose your creative integrity and never stop chasing personal projects. This is a big reminder to both you and myself this year.
Blog coming up tomorrow… HOW TO CHASE PERSONAL PROJECTS, STEPS AND HOW TO BUILD A CREATIVE IDEA PITCH DECK!
Thanks for reading along, see you out there. -Frankie @fr33water