A Lesson From L.L. Bean

Just about every weekend there seems to be a new workshop, mentoring session, coaching session, or educational gathering of some sort for wedding photographers or wedding industry professionals. It’s overwhelming at times. Everyone out there who teaches, is quite frankly, just teaching what they know to be true for them. The things that have worked or not worked for their business. Much of what we hear at these conferences/workshops can be applied to any business, which is the intention of these events. Find what works for you, take it, manipulate it to work for you. Everyone is different, each journey will be different, and no two markets are the same. Don’t get us wrong, we’ve been eager to be a part of this leap towards empowering and educating photographers too. We’ve been lucky enough to have the opportunity to work with, and be advised by, two of our greatest role models in the photography world. Our goal is to further our photography, constantly improve, and build a business that allows us to do what we love for as long as possible. That doesn’t happen just because we sat through a workshop, and we’re realizing how easy it can be to lose sight of yourself in an industry with so many options for education and inspiration.

Keeping a focus on who we are has been tough. Not loosing sight of the type of photography we want to create, the brand we want to establish, the client base we want to grow, and the overall experience we want to provide proves to be difficult tasks these days. There’s just too many big name photographers to choose from. Which online class will we take? Which workshop will we attend? Who do we want to learn from, and who do we want to be? We see a fantastic photographer offering coaching sessions. They’re wildly successful, and so maybe we should try be just like them. Wait, what about this photographer? Their work is so unique! Like nothing else out there! Let’s try be like them too. Well, no actually this photographer seems to know what they’re doing, maybe their style is what we want to mimic? And then overwhelm sets in, and we realize no one can be six different people in one. We can only ever be who we are. The trick, is trusting yourself.

Take the L.L. Bean boot for example. They always sell out. This year alone, there were 100,000 backordered pairs of these rubber and leather boots. The demand for these boots will continue to grow, and the company will never outsource production. A company spokesperson said “We realize we could outsource, but that will never happen. These boots have been hand sewn in Maine by our own skilled boot workers, and they always will be”. Their standard of quality is what L.L. Bean is known for, and nothing will ever be worth sacrificing that hand made quality. Trends have come and gone several times in the 100 years these boots have been manufactured, and they’ve looked the same the whole time. Now, loads of other brands make their version of the L.L. Bean duck boot.

So we’ll take a lesson from L.L. Bean. We’ll use this story of a humble work boot to remind us that it’s ok to stay the course. It’s perfectly acceptable to focus on the product and not the filler or fluff. You don’t always have to accept the new trends and change your brand, your product, or yourself. A timeless design remains fashion forward no matter the decade, and these classic, always relatable, never out of style boots serve as a great example to us. So we’ll allow ourselves to love black and white photography, even though the trend is to focus on color. We’ll watch wedding days unfold, waiting for those real, hidden moments no one else sees. We’ll continue to believe that the relationship of the couple getting married is the most beautiful thing to see on a wedding day, no matter how high end the wedding decor may be. Most importantly we will focus on the photos, and the relationships we build with our couples. We will not worry much about what everyone else is doing in the industry.

And we’ll do it all in our bean boots.