What a week!  Pre-Cotillion portraits in my Hartford studio of eleven beautiful young men and women, a pre-Bat Mitzvah portrait of Dvora with her horse Secret by a barn in Westhampton, MA., two big events – a Harold Grinspoon Foundation Teachers Award Banquet and the 2011 Hartford Public Schools Academic Competition, a JCC Big Truck fun fair in West Hartford, a playful, costumed shoot at the University of Hartford highlighting Super Students (seniors with jobs to head into after graduation), a volunteer shoot on Grandparents Day at Lander Grinspoon Academy, and a day’s work in the Bronx on a video documentary about aging.

(Is Taylor elegant, or what??  I can’t wait for the Cotillion in June)

(Dvora, with Secret. I love them together.)

(A Springfield teacher and her pals pose as the sun sets over the mountains behind the Log Cabin in Easthampton.  What a beautiful setting, and what a beautiful tribute to teachers the night was)

(Two Kennelly third graders confer about an answer to a math problem in the Academic Competition)

(An LGA fourth grader, dressed for her role as a nasty princess in a play, shows grandparents one way of doing long division)

(No, I didn’t do the photoshopping! Art Director Stacy Baran did for the upcoming issue of The Observer)

This week rocked!!!!  I was busy.  I loved the events I covered. I had fun! But the very thing I loved – the range of assignments – raised questions for me. My work as a freelancer runs the gamut from non-profits and schools to wedding and bar/bat mitzvahs to news and some corporate work.  Add to that multimedia and some video. Oh, yes, and some teaching. I like the variety.  As a newspaper photographer, I loved that I could be in an elementary school in the morning doing a story on yoga helping kids relax before taking CMT’s and in prison in the afternoon doing a story on overcrowding. I could sit under the basket shooting UConn basketball and follow, in depth over two years, the life of a young woman getting off welfare.  In the business world, however, it seems like a liability to be a generalist, for lack of a better word.  Speciality is the name of the game. Photographers are known for their niche – weddings, portraiture, architecture, sports, corporate.

My question for all of you reading this, especially seasoned photographers in the business, is does one have to have a niche to be financially successful in today’s uncertain economy?

Do I need to identify primarily as a wedding photographer, a corporate photographer, a news photographer (forget it, it doesn’t pay), or can I be a photographer who shoots events and marketing, as well as weddings and bar mitzvahs, with an occassional corporate assignment and a NY Times/AP assignment every now and then?

If every week were as busy as the last week, I might not have to ask this question, but every week isn’t. So, as I look to drum up business to keep a steady work flow throughout the year, I am confused about where to put my energies and how to market myself.  I don’t have one target client.  Or do I?  My ideal client is someone who wants a photojournalist’s eye to help tell the story of their institution, event, or life celebration.  Instead of having a niche, I see myself as a storyteller who, with skill and sensitivity, can translate what is meaningful to a client into great photographs. But can it fly? Is there enough time in the day to keep abreast of all the trends and technologies for each of the particular direction? No, not really.  Is there one simple way to market a way of seeing rather than a niche?  I reach out to you for answers.  Is there a community of like-minded photographers out there who know they’d be bored doing the same thing over and over again?  I know that the best wedding photographers, for instance, don’t get bored, because they keep their vision fresh, but could I?  I don’t know. I’ve never done just one thing.

I know that my love for variety comes with a price.  I had an afternoon coffee last week with a wonderful and talented wedding photographer locally, Sandra Costello.  She’s very savvy businesswise, and when you think of wedding photographers in Northampton, her name will always be among the few that are very well known.  She commands a good price, and for good reason.  She’s good.  She’s got a well known brand doing one thing really well.  That makes marketing and promotion easier, it makes keeping up with trends and technology easier, it probably makes her brain work easier than juggling directions, different kinds of learning, and having no clue what approach to take to marketing.  She knows her audience and is known by her audience.  That’s so key to having a successful business.

Success, I’m learning, has to do not only with talent, but with being THE name -the brand, if you will -that makes you synonymous with your specialty.  When we were both at the newspaper, the name John Long instantly brought to mind great ballet photos.  In Hartford, Carla Ten Eyck=Awesome Weddings. I envy how being the ‘go to’ photographer for a certain niche must simplify certain things enormously – marketing, pricing, workflow, etc.  What I wonder about is whether there can be another successful business model for all of us photojournalists-turned-freelancers entering the marketplace in the past few years as newspapers/magazines downsize and grasp, literally, for their survival. Let’s put our heads together so we can all fly as we go forward!!!!

Any thoughts????  I’m looking forward to hearing from you.