Become a professional wedding photographer - The value of education

When we first began our business almost six years ago, it was a crazy time in our life!! 

We had day jobs and we were slightly able to balance home life, day job, business and having some type of social life…it was kind of insane!! 

But, one of the major things that we struggled with was where to invest the money that we was making as a new business owners. We knew that we needed to invest it into something that would better our whole business, but how do you know what will benefit you the most when you are just starting out? 

For most than 5 years we were assistants and second shooters and we had a basic gear to work with, but we needed to improve several aspect of our business. Equipment, education, marketing, being a “preferred vendor”, conferences, branding, websites? How in the world do you know how to spend your money in a way that is going to grow your business well, inspire you and help you become a more credible photographer? 

As we was struggling with decisions, we began looking into applying at photography courses. Having a formal photography degree would  make our business a million times more “true” and people would HAVE to take us seriously. But, we discovered that formal photography schooling wasn’t something that you need to be successful in the wedding photography industry. In Italy there isn’t a real photography degree and we didn’t want to waste our precious time in courses that we didn’t grow up our business.

We wanted to learn from someone in the industry who had been successful at exactly what we wanted to do and soak up as much information as we could from them. So we decided to invest in several workshop from the photographers we love most. From photographers all around the world that inspired us every single day. From photographers that we admire and that we would like to became friends.

Jose Villa, Erich Mcvey, Elizabeth Messina, Nancy Ray are just fews of them.

From then on, we decided that we weren’t going to focus on investing our money in technical classes, marketing, magazines, branding or a new website…we were going to invest in education. 

Because after every workshop or book or course we feel inspired, refreshed and ready to build our business in a way that they don’t teach you at school. During our first  an second year in business, we invested almost 100% of earnings into new equipment (we love expensive toys) and education to better our business.  

And now we continue to invest in education 50% of earnings to make sure to serve our clients in the better way possible!