Why We Don’t Teach

 

As more and more inquires come in from other photographers, asking us to coach/mentor them, we continue to be amazed, flattered and frankly a little shocked. The idea that anyone would look to us for guidance, advice, and coaching in the wedding photography field is hard for us to understand. So when the number of inquiries piled up, and the momentum towards mentoring other photographers gained, we realized it was time to discuss our take on the whole thing. We’re doing that today!

We’re not new to the wedding photography industry, but we’re not seasoned veterans either. We’re right in the middle! Our time working as full time wedding photographers has been enough though, for us to have seen the massive growth in the photography teaching realm. When we were starting out, photographer’s blogs were just starting to pop up. A few brave pioneers in the industry, decided to start talking to other photographers through their blogs posting tips and tricks to the art of wedding photography, and sharing things they’ve learned in their time. Over the past 3 years or so, this mindset has evolved and grown into a huge following and now seasoned photographers are being hired by other photographers to coach/mentor/teach them all that they know. It’s amazing! Working in a community like this one is a huge gift, and we are always so grateful to be a part of it, even in our small corner of it.

We want to be very clear here… make no mistake that we are indebted to the people who helped us. Our own mentors came to us in various forms, through various methods, and they helped shape us as the photographers we are today, and they continue to inspire us to work towards becoming the photographers we are still striving to become. But we also worked very hard. In the early years, when we were clueless about something we figured it out on our own. Trial and error was a huge part of our self training process. We read. We read a lot. We took classes, researched our problem areas, realized the mistakes we had been making and adjusted. We followed some rules, broke others, all the while following our gut and being pushed by our desire to be our absolute best. We tried to fit into some different wedding photographer molds, broke character and cheated ourselves out of the joy that comes from being confident in your own skin. We quit that game real fast, and learned to embrace who we are, and what we do best. We focused on those two things, and we started to thrive. A class can’t teach you that. We can’t teach you that. You have to come to that mindset on your own. Sometimes trial and error, hard work and failure are the best teaching tools.

However! The coaching sessions, classes, workshops and mentoring opportunities that exist for new photographers now are amazing! These teachers in the industry are taking it to the next level, creating a community of photographers we are proud to be a part of. There are a lot of photographers who offer mentoring/coaching/workshop sessions who we absolutely admire and we think what they are doing is incredible and commendable. But as with many things in life, not everyone is fit for this job. An amazing photographer might not be a great teacher. And just because you want to teach, doesn’t mean it’s always a good idea.

Not all wedding photographers should be teachers, and we’re two of them. We’re just not teachers! We’re photographers. When we received our first inquiry from another photographer, asking us to coach them, we could have said yes. We could have charged a large fee, thrown together a power point presentation in our studio and fumble through a coaching session, but that wouldn’t have been fair. That wouldn’t be right. We’re not good at teaching, we wouldn’t even know where to start! Yes… we could learn, get better at teaching, figure it out as we go. We could invest in a coaching session of our own, take notes on how we were coached, and then in turn offer the same experience to other photographers. But that’s not our style either. Do we love to help others? Yes! Do we admire the camaraderie within our community of wedding photographers? Of course! Do we want to see our fellow colleagues succeed? 100% yes! But we’re not the ones for the job. Teaching is not in our hearts. It doesn’t drive our business. It doesn’t bring us the same joy that photographing does, and so there’s no reason to add it to our lives. We are so devoted to our couples and their experience, adding anything else to our business would distract from that.

The misconception that a photographer who offers coaching/mentoring sessions is of a higher level of expertise within their field, is not always the case. Just because a photographer decides to offer classes, doesn’t mean they should. And in turn, just because a photographer chooses not to offer classes, doesn’t make them less of a photographer. For us, we don’t feel the need to jump into this boat. It’s not important for us to be seen doing the next new thing, or be placed in a category with photographers who coach. Our goal is to focus on the thing that brought us into this industry in the first place, and leave the teaching up to the photographers who belong in that field.

So to be clear, we have no plans to offer workshops, coaching sessions or mentoring opportunities. It still amazes us that anyone would even consider asking us for help, but it’s much appreciated and incredibly flattering. We’re still learning, heck we’ll always be learning! We’re just grateful to be in this point of our careers where we finally feel like we have room to stand up straight, hold our heads high and call ourselves “wedding photographers”.