2023 - Year in Review.
Welp. It is (somehow) already the end of December and I just wrapped up my last scheduled shoot day of the year. As I’m cataloging and archiving all of my work from the year, I’m taking a moment to reflect on the goals I had set for myself in last year's review. Continuing on with my personal growth I previously wrote about, and realizing that I was achieving the things I was intending to, it became apparent that I need to start setting proper professional goals for myself the same way I’ve been setting personal ones. But when my company is my name, my profession is my hobby, and my product is pieces of myself; I often have a hard time differentiating the two.
For the second time in a row, I’m happy to say..
What a fucking year, in so many good ways.
The Story
The first camera experience of 2023 came in the form of a New Years Eve wedding, and was the perfect end-cap to the “yes man” approach I took in 2022. That night felt like all of my interests collided. There were conversations about cars, I was working with two of my favorite wedding vendors, the desserts were memorable, and I got to talk with a retired NHL pro who played for my favorite team; all while working with a camera.
I didn’t know it at the time, but this wedding metaphorically set the groundwork for how photography was going to go for me in the upcoming year.
At this point, I’m just going to write as it comes to mind. I have a piece of paper in front of me with some scratch notes and bulletin points about what I want to cover, but separating my thoughts into personal and professional segments goes against every topic I’m about to go over; and the underlying issues that comes with them. If this reads a little messy and out of order, it’s because it is- and that’s how I feel about this. The honest truth is I don’t entirely know what I’m doing, and I’m terrible at talking about myself. When I see these stories, I critique myself for the frequent uses of “I, me, my,” but the benefits of laying out a roadmap for my future, as well as feeling understood in my process outweighs the discomfort.
I wrote last year about an epiphany I had pertaining to portrait photography being a reflection of the photographer. Throughout the year, I not only continued to focus my efforts on the human element involved, but I doubled down on focusing my efforts on taking up space.
This year saw a new system I wanted to implement all the way through. I’ve started requiring clients to meet me before we ever put a camera between us. For wedding couples that meant a meal and some table talk, for graduates that meant a beer or two at a shitty dive bar before throwing the hat, for family photos that meant booking me for multiple hours so the kids had a chance to assimilate before being forced to smile.
“Authentic,” and “candid” have seemingly become choice marketing words that are thrown around without much weight behind them. In the wedding world they’ve become a label for a certain type of photographer. To the general public they mean photos taken when someone isn’t prepared and looking at the camera. While neither are wrong, neither tell the entire truth.
For about a decade I took a lot of pride in my ability to be more observant than intrusive. Part of that came from frequently being in situations where I couldn’t control what I was photographing, and part of that came from projecting my own discomfort of being in front of a camera onto others. This isn’t to say that I’ve entirely strayed away from that approach, but circling back to the “taking up space” bit from last year, I have found that there’s a lot more on the table when you make people comfortable enough to ignore the camera, rather than not even know it’s there.
Like any project in life, the more hours you put into the prep-work, the better the final product. Which brings me to the first bit of professional tension I found this year.
I went out to lunch with a well established peer, and while talking shop I showed him the three photos above. His reply was “Those are Kyle Pope candids. Those are the reactions and expressions you would have in conversations, so it’s what you look for.” It was probably a seemingly insignificant comment to him, but it really drove home the point that my business’s end product is quintessentially “me.”
When I look towards the future to set 5 and 10 year plans, I keep feeling uneasy about the fuzzy unknowns. While I’m sure that’s applicable to anyone looking to the future, I feel as though I’m on a bit of an island with my circumstances. I see other media companies scale up by booking more work and sub-contracting it out to other creatives, while taking a “little” “broker fee” for playing middle man. I can’t knock them for it, because I’ll be the first to admit that I am not business savvy enough to facilitate that work load at the moment.. but on the flip side, that goes against my entire approach, theories, and even personal enjoyment of photography.
Then I look at the hours involved in my process. I look at the hard-costs involved of having redundancies in my equipment, fail-safes, insurance, hosting costs, etc. Murphy’s law alone has me finishing my 2023 year in review in February after my computer (the only piece of technology I didn’t have a back up of) failed and set me back. At 32 years old, I’m okay with the hours involved, but what does this look like at 42?
I joke, more often than I probably should, that I should just sell insurance.
The piece of advice I’ve gotten from other peers throughout the year is to specialize into one industry. That if I want to raise my value in general, to stop going for so many different markets. I think this is good advice in a couple ways, but after my long stint of only photographing motorsports, I had a really hard time being considered for other opportunities, and I’m not sure if that’s a position I want to put myself in again.
There are people who have known me for my entire adult life who have never seen me without a camera on my shoulder. The challenge and learning process is what I love. I still try and shoot whatever is in front of me as often as possible, and to do it better than I did it last time. We’ve all heard the saying “do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life,” right? One, that’s wrong. Two, I don’t love doing the same thing over and over and reproducing the same results. Again, I’d be selling insurance right now (and have better benefits) if that was the case. I don’t want to just fall into one specialized field and try to master a niche. I want to get excited about new things.
Admittedly my excitement can, sometimes, be a bit problematic. This poor girl below was out of the country during my main shoot with the dance team this year, and was my lone subject who had to deal with my enthusiasm to try out new equipment when she returned.
To swing this away from a professional reflection and get back to the personal side of this, this year brought a few of my habits and tendencies into the light.
I embody every definition of a sentimental person- to a fault even. My original full frame camera sits on a shelf to remind me of the memories. I still have a (really beat up) Sigma 85mm lens that came as a gift from a girlfriend well over a decade ago. A friend recently asked me for some editing help and wanted to see how my presets looked; it hadn’t occurred to me that all of my saved adjustments were named after different people in my life, until I went to share them. “Lettie,” is a preset I use for skin tones in the shade that I developed after my niece was born. “Que Bueno” is a night time preset I developed and named it after an inside joke with another photographer. “Idk I like it?” was the text I sent to get approval for an edit, and is now my baseline for most of my daytime work.
I’ve struggled with creative block this year when my life is stable. When my days are more emotionally charged, both high and low, I seem to expand my bag of creative tools. I haven’t been able to find the answer as to why that is just yet, but it has left me in a pretty cool spot. In the same way that a song or a smell can remind you of a person or an experience: photo editing styles now has that same affect on me.
My own sentimental value and nostalgia aren’t a very good selling point, which is ironic considering my end result (hopefully) is sentimental value and nostalgia for others. So I’m always on the look out for more work opportunities.
I’m grateful to have been given some commercial experience this year, but those values above were missing. While light is light, and cameras are cameras, I must say this side of the profession couldn’t be further from what I’m used to. It’s a very structured operation, but not for the reasons I initially thought. I’m not so naive to think that I’ve learned every lesson those experiences could offer me, but lesson that stuck with me the most was that I enjoy the selfish side of photography.
I enjoy to give. There are few feelings that compare to delivering someone a gallery filled with things that are important to them. I spent years delivering images I was proud of that were only used for immediate release and some social media engagement. Sure, there was a feeling of accomplishment, and it felt good to help others achieve a goal on a roadmap, but there was no… “soul.”
Commercial sets continue to leave me with a similar feeling. It’s very technically sound, with clip boards and lots of pieces in play, but it all feels very sterile. It’s possible these experiences didn’t feel right for me because I wasn’t who was directly hired to fulfill a vision, I won’t rule that out, but I’m having a hard time feeling like that’s a route I should take.
Those feelings came as a total surprise for me, considering how good the corporate experiences have been.
Corporate events have turned out to be quite an enjoyable little piece of the puzzle, especially as I’ve gotten older. I remember photographing them back in my early 20’s and feeling so out of place with such an age gap, now it’s fun to see people around my age succeed in their given fields. These events have a lot of the same mentally stimulating tendencies that weddings have, but they have the potential to be reoccurring clients.
I received one of the best compliments of my career towards the end of a corporate event in December, and it had nothing to do with my technical ability as a photographer. I was told by the head of HR that I continued to be hired because I aligned with the personality of their brand, and I was going to accurately show who their people were.
That was it. That’s the photographer I want to be. That’s the work I want to do, that’s what I want to be hired for.
That one compliment made all of the efforts I’ve put in over the last couple of years, to the parts of photography that have nothing to do with the technical side of shooting, feel like they’re being noticed. It’s what being a candid shooter means to me. It’s being experienced enough to be ready without hesitation, with enough prep-work done to allow the subject matter to carry on how they would without a camera present. Hands-on enough to make it look good, hands-off enough to make it natural. Authentic.
Authenticity was the common denominator of everything I enjoyed photographing this year. It’s what I found in the trips I took with couples to go do their engagement shoots. It’s what I found in corporate events, and marketing activations. It’s what I found in studio portraits with the dancers. It’s what I found in my personal photography, and what I found in weddings.
When I said that photography in 2023 felt like all of my interests colliding, I meant it. I was fortunate enough to photograph a wedding in a town in Mexico that was a staple of my childhood. Fortunate to photograph the wedding for a family who has owned and operated an automotive shop I’ve looked up to since my early days in cars. Fortunate enough to photograph a wedding for my brother in law’s best friend. Fortunate enough to photograph a wedding along side a good friend, for a couple that was friends with my current relationship. Fortunate enough to photograph a long-time-friend’s passion project.
This year also brought my first handful of weddings that were out of the country with some extended travel. I mentioned earlier requiring the couples hang out before a camera is involved, but being able to assimilate with the family, bridal party, and guests for a couple of days before a destination wedding really opened the flood gates for the “selfish” types of situations that I love to shoot.
As nonchalant as I’m making the shooting aspect sound, I’m no-where-near thinking I have it all figured out. I expanded my lighting kit this season and have been experimenting with using artificial colors to enhance situations. I got put up against midday sun ceremonies as a solo shooter with only one chance to capture what needed to be captured. I had an experience where I needed to do bridal party photos at a resort where every room was booked by a wedding guest, and the bride couldn’t be seen before the ceremony started. I’ve turned a handful of living rooms that were undersized for the project into proper studios and produced good work. None of which were done absolutely perfect, each with areas for improvement, but I still produced work I was proud of.
While I don’t think I made as much measurable progress in my best abilities as the few years prior, I did learn how to improve my average images in more difficult situations; and I’ll take that as a win. I used to be hesitant to take on paid work for situations that I couldn’t guarantee my portfolio caliber work regardless of circumstance. A flawed mindset for growth..
2023 made me feel like I was out-performing my existing portfolio almost every time I went out, and my personal standard for a portfolio grade image got pushed up even further. It’s a weird mental block to get over: to feel like you aren’t producing your absolute best as frequently, because your average has improved so much that the margin between the two is thin.
I don’t know what kind of photographer I’ve even become. I don’t know how to label my own services, or who I’m even trying to market them to. From a business side, I can’t tell you who/what my ideal client looks like. From a personal side, I can’t lay out a vision on a creative board and go execute.
I’ve even gotten to the point of telling wedding couples before hand that I do not love weddings. I don’t love the structure, or traditions that people feel inclined to follow even if they don’t believe in them. I don’t love the stress of perfection, nor the perception that everything needs to be influenced by what someone else does. But, I do love the 12 hours of challenges, I do love to share in the experience and try to match the energy and ambience of a room. And I do love to offer people the same types of photographs I would print and keep in a drawer to look at years later.
That self-admitted lack of direction didn’t stop me from trying to make more progress. Following through with a goal I set last year, I got out and shot more for myself. I dabbled back in the car world, did a little street photo, gave some sports a try. I even sat on the side of the river for a few days (unsuccessfully) trying to capture some of the wild horses.
I could go on a rant that would make me seem like an old man screaming at the sky, but I’ll spare you all and just say that I’m glad I got started when I did. I can’t imagine trying to navigate through the current climate of everyone going out and shooting for social media likes, and basing where you are as an artist on how an algorithm treats you that week.
As far into this habit as I am, it’s still filled with plenty of ups and downs. Enthusiasm comes in waves, imposter syndrome has a mind of it’s own, and the retail therapy only gets more expensive as the kit grows.
I rounded out 2023 just outside of Grand Rapids, Michigan. Walking around the freezing cold with a Starbucks latte in one hand and a camera in the other, trying to convince my younger sister to enjoy it the same way that I do.
I’m not sure how I feel about the year. Doing what you love absolutely does feel like work, because it requires proper work to keep the dream alive. I finally sorted out the busy nature of paperwork and contracts. I had to buy myself a physical agenda to keep myself organized, since my boomer ass will ignore phone notifications. I’m looking at P&L’s, and having to keep overhead in mind when bidding projects. It’s very work-esque, regardless of what the silly figure of speech says.
On the other side, I look at what I’ve gotten to experience. I look at what people, families, were willing to share with me. I look at the opportunities that have come my way, and the front row seat I’ve been afforded to moments that I wouldn’t have otherwise gotten without a camera in my hand.. and I’m reminded by the memory of 18-year-old-Kyle that I would be doing this even if I wasn’t making a career out of it.
And then there’s the nostalgia, that “soul” I mentioned. It’s amazing to see people share a photograph I took 10 years ago with the same excitement that I hold towards the photo. I’m editing photos with styles I developed through my own character building events, and sharing a chunk of myself with every gallery. Sure, that same feeling can get a little convoluted when you have well-documented chapters of life that are now in your past, but that’s the beauty of it all. The good and the bad. The authentic.
As always with this stuff: it’s deeply personal for me. It always be. Thank you for reading through this word-vomit filled recap of my year. I appreciate you guys giving a fuck about a major part of my life enough to make it to this point. I don’t have it all figured out, and taking a business-approach to this has certainly put a different view point on it. But I love it none-the-less, and I don’t see that enthusiasm fading any time soon.
If you, or someone you know, have some life that you want photographed, please consider me. My business model is almost entirely word of mouth and referral based, and I would appreciate any opportunity to photograph things that align with the story I just told.
Thank you all. (Also, you’re welcome for the shenanigans in that picture of me)