How to Niche in Photography

Today we are talking about how to grow your photography business the easy way. The easy way of maximizing your profits and getting more bookings is all through positioning yourself or in other words selecting, defining, and mastering a niche. 

Niching is something that so many photographers struggle with. 

They struggle with WHO they want to serve. 

It makes sense. It’s a very hard business decision. 

Picture standing in a giant lobby with hundreds of open doors to walk through. Each one represents a niche and sub-niche of photography.

We are scared to close doors and choose one, because what if I would have liked what was behind the other doors? 

We are scared if we actually say “Yes – this is the door I’m walking through, this is the choice I am making” that inside will just be a room that we will get bored of, or a long empty hallway where our creativity will go to die.

But what if inside that room, there was hundreds of other doors? What if there was even more possibility for our creativity to get expressed. 

Now hear me out, a generalist photographer can be successful. However, it is the HARD way to success.

What I mean is when you refuse to position yourself in a lane, the competition is everywhere, and you have no way to stand out. It’s more difficult to solve the specific large and complex problems that a very targeted client might have and so it becomes more difficult to charge a premium. 

This then often sends many photographers into the tailspin. 

Here’s what that looks like. 

Because money is tight, the scarcity mindset kicks in. 

And while the solution is to niche down – instead out of fear, we often go on to broadening our standards further – taking any job we can get. 

It ends up resulting in us …

• Shooting shit we don’t wanna shoot
• Shooting shit that doesn’t pay shit 
• Shooting shit that looks like shit 
• Shooting shit for shitty people
• Leaves us burnout – feeling like shit 

…That’s a whole lot of 💩

I’m here to tell you, it doesn’t have to be this way.

Forget the fear of closing doors and opportunities. 

Focus on the opportunities that can appear when you close the doors to the jobs and clients you don’t want. 

The more niche you become, the more the competition becomes irrelevant. 

An example, instead of photographing all pets, you can position yourself as someone who photographs adopted and rescued animals in their new loving home. 

When you are photographing jobs that you want, your creativity will flourish and open other doors.

YOu will be able to solve very specific problems that are more complex and feel larger to the specific client. This means that not only is the competition irrelevant to you, but you also get to charge a premium. 

If you want to grow your photography business the easy way, you need to niche start niching yourself down through positioning.