Brooke Shaden is a fine art photographer based in Arizona. Her photographs are dream-like, ethereal and definitely complex in tone. I'll be the first to admit that each work of art has the capacity to draw you in and hold you hostage.

From her own website: “Brooke works to create new worlds within her photographic frame. By using painterly techniques as well as the square format, traditional photographic properties are replaced by otherworldly elements. Brooke's photography questions the definition of what it means to be alive.”

Brooke and I got a chance to speak recently, in advance of her presentation right here in Connecticut. She will be speaking about her work, at the behest of CTPPA. Find out more about that event here.

We spoke about her work, of course, but also her background. You'll find out how and why her degrees in film and English have helped her create artwork that is filled with intent and meaning. And, you'll hear about how she is a philanthropist, donating her time to a wonderful causes all over the world, including one in Calcutta, India. In fact, if you would like to donate camera gear or money, she is appealing to your generosity here.

A small sample of Brooke's incredible work. For more go here!

Want to keep up with Brooke, then bookmark her blog, Promoting Passion now.

UPDATE: Brooke Shaden is coming back to Connecticut! She will be here on November 21st and 22nd to lead a workshop called Storytelling & Compositing Intensive at the New Britain Museum of American Art. For more information about this opportunity to learn from Brooke, contact Heather Whitehouse at 860-229-0257, ext. 203 or whitehouseh@nbmaa.org.

Scott Robert Lim is quite the talker. But he walks the walk too. He is an internationally recognized photographer who has spent over 15 years photographing weddings. He is also a mentor to many photographers around the world.

Lim's CreativeLive courses are always very popular because he never holds back on teaching. In fact, he told me that these days he sees himself more of a teacher than anything else. So, it didn't come as a surprise that he was teaching through a free webinar again. This time the topic is something close to Lim's heart – tips to booking a $10k wedding.

We spoke recently in advance of the free ShootDotEdit webinar about the state of the industry and what wedding photographers need to have in place before seeking high-end clients.

“>Register today to learn more of Scott Robert Lim's secrets to booking your first $10k wedding!

Have these vignettes with industry leaders been helpful to you? If so, please share the link to this post of the video and subscribe to TiffinboxTV.

It has been about a week since I got back from Inspire Photo Retreats. The experience of being there, with 250 other photographers, is still reverberating through my brain. It was a relaxed and yet very informative conference. I highly recommend you go next year. Other than the fact that you and I will get to finally meet, you'll truly be inspired. I guarantee it. If you are following me on Facebook, you likely saw a few images from the event in Portland, Maine.

Getting to Inspire was a bit of an adventure. My friend, and fellow photographer, David Apuzzo, set out at about 10 am on Sunday. We had heard about a looming snowstorm that was going to pile in a foot or more of snow in Connecticut, Massachusetts and yes, all the way up to our destination, Portland, Maine.

Given that my wife had to go to work the next day, I insisted that she take the four-wheel drive, Subaru Forrester. I chose to take the Toyota Sienna, a minivan (with terrible tires, mind you), to Maine. The four hour trek was mostly uneventful until we hit Portsmouth, New Hampshire. We managed to evade swaths of snow. Dave excitedly pointed to the space in between packed clouds on his phone's weather app that we were threading through. It was exciting to race Mother Nature.

But when we got to Portsmouth, we got hit with snow coming at us sideways. The wipers on my cars which were functioning just fine started to give me some trouble. As the snow came down, I kept using the wipers and the wiper liquid to clear the front of the car. My visibility was diminishing and it became somewhat uncomfortable to drive. I noticed that while the passenger side of the windshield was getting cleared up quickly, the driver's side was not. Dave and I both assumed that we had run out of windshield wiper fluid. My wife had foreseen this issue and insisted that we carry a bottle of wiper fluid with us. And boy did that come in handy. The temperature in New Hampshire was down to 7 degrees Fahrenheit and my fingers were quickly going numb, but Dave helped me pour some of that wiper fluid in. In fact, Dave stepped up and bought two big jugs of it at the gas station.

But that didn't help one bit. The nozzle on the driver's side was either frozen or clogged up. What were we to do? We had at least another hour of driving ahead of us. Then it was Dave's brilliant idea that got us through. He suggested that I simply drive behind some of the other cars and big rig trucks. His rationale was the snow and spray flying off of the cars ahead of us would land on my windshield and all I would have to do would be to use my worn wiper blades.

Guess, what? It worked! Like. A. Charm. I probably owe Dave a beer or two just for that. (Do collect, Dave!)

Now, imagine you at the helm of your photography business. You can go at it alone or you can have a trusted advisor, like Dave was for me on the perilous trip. Which will get you there safer and faster? For my photography business in Connecticut, I lean on a few people to coach me.

I've already mentioned Jeff Jochum. If you aren't clear about what it is that you are meant to do, he will help you get there. It's not an easy process but his video coaching is top class in my opinion.

Steve Saporito is the other business coach, I listen to. He is based in Australia, but let that not stop you from listening to our recent conversation about what he does for photographers, why he believes his approach is the most natural and how his teaching can benefit you.

Steve and his business partner, Kelly Vanyai moderate a lively Facebook group (open to only those who have signed up for their courses) where if anyone has a question, all you need to do is to ask and either they or an eager bunch of peers will jump in to help you. I've found it very helpful so far and I am already seeing results. What I personally love about Steve and Kelly's approach is that there is nothing “salesy” about how they want us to work with our own clients. Just as much as Steve and Kelly are our trusted advisors, we in turn become our client's trusted advisors and help them make the very best image selections for their life.

On February 20th, 21st and 22nd, Steve and Kelly will be hosting an intimate workshop in New Haven, Connecticut, for a few select studios. Yes, I am going. Did you have to ask? Find out more about this unique opportunity in Connecticut to learn from them face-to-face here. They will also be at WPPI offering a similar workshop there.

Clearly I am not the only one reaching out and working with business coaches. Maggie and Jason Henriques just wrote a post. Go read it! Also, Jasen Arias also posted about working with Jeff Jochum and Steve Saporito here.

Of course, there are other business coaches and mentors helping photographers, but from my exhaustive search and perspective Jeff and Steve make up the one-two-punch that I needed to restructure my business. If you have any questions about them, feel free to post them below or ask me directly.

Is your photography business fully protected? No, I am not talking about buying liability insurance (which I hope you also have). I am referring to things like having rock-solid contracts with your clients, being the right business entity and copyrighting your images.

While we spend a great deal of time and money on learning creative techniques, we rarely get our legal homework done. To understand some of the quagmires photographers have found themselves in, all you have to do is to switch on the evening news. Whether it is a disgruntled client or a duplicitous photographer, the media serves up stories often enough to make me worry.

And when you are worried, you aren't really creating your best work. At least, I know if I am distracted by any loose ends, I am not focused on the work at hand. Perhaps you are the same way. So, as a working photographer, getting my legal ducks in a row is a top priority. I want to be able to arrive at my client's home and know that both of us are protected by a set of standards and an agreement that will hold up in a court of law.

But going to a lawyer and having a variety of these documents all created could cost a pretty penny. That's when I stumbled across Small Business Bodyguard, about a year or so ago. Rachel Rodgers who founded Small Business Bodyguard also happens to be an attorney.

According to the Small Business Bodyguard site, it is:

For anyone starting a business.
Selling something online.
Selling something offline.
Running a website.
Pitching services.
Writing eBooks.
Launching products.
Hiring web designers / copywriters / VAs / interns / contractors.
Collaborating with others.
And selling anything to anybody.

If you need such a comprehensive collection of templates, ones that will walk you through a variety of scenario, then Small Business Bodyguard is for you. But at $595, it is a little expensive (compared to the thousands you could spend face-to-face with a lawyer, though, it is still a bargain).

To cater to the specific needs of the photography industry, Rachel just launched Legal Nunchucks: For Photographers [aff].

At $197, it is definitely affordable. But now through Friday, you can actually buy it for $97. Here's what you get:

50+ pages of digestible, fun content so you can learn about the legal precautions you need to take to make your business thrive PLUS the action and how-to to actually do it.

Client Service Agreement for Photographers Template

Model Release Template

Legal Checklist for Photographers

To find out more about Legal Nunchucks: For Photographers, check out my conversation with Rachel Rodgers about how and why having legal contracts is actually a good thing for both you and your clients:

Like all legal documents, if you use Small Business Bodyguard, Legal Nunchucks: For Photographers or anything else you download from the Internet, I implore you to still have it all looked over by a local (in-state) attorney. The resources mentioned above are, in in my opinion, a great way to get a head start into lining up those pesky ducks!

First, Here’s The Bad News:

Professional photography is a lousy industry. According to the US Department of Labor, median photographer earnings in 2013 was $29,280.

What makes the industry so bad? Take your pick:

Zero scalability: With a photography business you are simply trading your time for dollars, and you have a finite amount of time. Compare this with a retail store that can sell more items, or open up more stores. An online business like Google has nearly limitless capacity. A manufacturing business like Apple can open up sales to more and more markets/countries around the world and build more/different products. You, on the other hand, can only shoot a limited amount before you run out of time or drop dead from exhaustion.

Zero barriers to entry: Every day you probably see a dozen new photography businesses open up in your area. Photography businesses are ridiculously easy to start. Since just about 100% of new professional photographers started out as hobbyists, they already have the gear, Photoshop and a computer. And photography web design companies make it cheap and easy to start a website. How about a beautiful website design, free domain name, blog and hosting for $8 a month?

Zero equity building: Most entrepreneurs start a business with an exit strategy in mind. How are they going to cash in on their hard work? It may be an initial public offering, it may be getting acquired, but in one way or another the entire point of the exercise is to build a valuable property that can be monetized. Now let’s look at Sally Smith Wedding Photography. On the day she decides to call it quits, what exactly is there to cash in? Nothing. Maybe she can get a few thousand dollars by selling her gear, but that’s about it. There’s no business to sell.

Now, How About Some Good News:

You can still run a great business, even in a lousy industry.

It’s hard to imagine an industry worse than professional photography, but if I had to name one, I’d pick the airline industry. The airline industry sucks for a few reasons:

Extremely high capital expenditures. A single Boeing 737 (one of the most common planes in the industry) costs anywhere between $52 million and $87 million.
Extremely high labor costs. Skilled pilots, mechanics, ground crew and air crew are expensive and labor disputes are common.
Extremely high fuel costs. Not only does fuel cost a lot, the price is always varying, making it hard to plan and/or expensive to hedge.
Extremely high vulnerability to exogenous events. Weather, air traffic control delays, terrorism, you name it. A big negative event in any of these things can cause millions of dollars in added costs and/or lost revenue.

The result? It’s hard to name an airline that hasn’t gone bankrupt. Let’s just look at a few of the big names that have gone bankrupt in the past 20 years:

Continental Airlines
Frontier Airlines
Eastern Airlines
Pan American World Airways
America West Airlines
TWA (Trans World Airlines)
US Airways
United Airlines
Air Canada
Aloha Airlines
Northwest Airlines
Delta Airlines
Frontier Airlines
American Airlines

So just about every single airline that you’ve ever heard of has gone through bankruptcy. Some reorganized and re­emerged, others simply disappeared.

The bottom line ­ the airline industry sucks rotten eggs.

And yet, there’s Southwest Airlines.

If you invested $10,000 in Southwest Airlines in 1990, your investment would now be worth $508,667.

How did they do it? Why have they thrived while almost every other competitor has gone bankrupt? There have been many, many articles written about the success of Southwest, so I’ll just give you some highlights:

They treat their customers well. How about “bags fly free?” The last time I flew Southwest, the pilot announced that our flight saved $3,300 in fees by not charging for checked bags. Flight changes are easy and relatively painless. And they move fast.

Efficiency. Southwest turns its planes around faster than any other airline, which allows them to fly nearly one extra flight per day per plane compared to their competitors. Everything is standardized ­ they use a single plane (the 737) on all their routes. This saves on maintenance time and training. Their simple point­-to-­point routes means that they have the fewest percentage of lost bags in the industry,

Happy employees. Southwest has never had a strike, despite being the most heavily unionized company in the industry (87%). The employees are on a mission to provide excellent customer service. You’ll never see an airline employee smile more than you do with Southwest. Happy employees make happy customers.

By doing simple things: running efficient operations and treating their customers and employees well ­ Southwest has managed to thrive in a lousy industry.

It sounds simple ­yet it’s easy to lose sight of. You can succeed, even in a lousy industry.

Now, getting back to your photography business. Is business not what you hoped it would be? Are you struggling competing with all the newbies in your market? Phone not ringing? Running any business is hard, but trying to succeed in a lousy industry is even harder.

If you’re doing great ­ that’s awesome, you’re probably doing the right things! If you’re not, what are you going to do about it? Complain? Spend a few hours today online reading camera reviews and lens-sharpness charts?

You’re going to have to reinvent yourself. Learn from Southwest Airlines and do what your competitors aren’t doing. Kick yourself in the butt.

Phone isn’t ringing? Then get on the phone and make some calls! When was the last time you met a wedding planner for coffee? When was the last time you got together with some other photographers to talk about cross-­referrals? When was the last time you met with a realtor who could give out some of your gift cards to families who just purchased a new home in your area? Get off the internet and get on the phone! I guarantee you your competitors aren’t doing this.

No shoots because it’s the slow season? Then start shooting! How about collaborating with a local wedding gown designer or bridal shop to set up some awesome winter bridal fashion shoots? Split the cost of hair/makeup with the designer. Make it a production that turns into an epic blog post and portfolio material.

Influential bloggers in your area? When was the last time you called them and offered a free headshot session?

Still have a 2008­era website? You know, one of those Flash­-based template sites that don’t work on an iPad or iPhone? Get going now on making a new, awesome site that’s also optimized for mobile.

Only write one blog post a month? Or less? Writing blog posts is one of the best ways for customers to find you. Get going.

Sitting alone at your desk all day without talking to anyone? Call some other vendors (florists, planners, DJs, caterers, cake bakers etc.) and put together your own Mastermind group.

Do you know most of the financial planners in your area? Why not? Have you called them to meet for coffee (yeah, I know, I’m big on coffee)? They have the same target customer base that you do ­ affluent clients. They’re always looking for gifts for their clients, but gifts are expensive (e.g. $75 for a fruit & cheese basket). Why not see if they’ll offer one of your portrait photography gift cards to any client that opens a college savings plan?

How about you try to stop asking for stuff, and instead start giving. Grow your circle and find ways to help them. Why not do a photo shoot of one of the caterers in your circle? Make it magazine­-worthy. Blog about them with links to their site. Shoot portraits of them and their food. Help them put together a blog post for their own blog linking to your site, of course). Make them look like the best caterer in town. When you help others it will all come back to you.

The new year is always a good time to kick yourself in the butt. Stop moping. Stop wishing. Stop wasting time. Be the photographer that makes a great income despite being in a lousy industry. Just get out there and start making things happen!