Community is so important. When it comes to our work as photographers, the importance of having a community of like-minded individuals to learn, grow and feel support from is no exception. Joining and being a part of an online photography group can have incredible benefits and perks as a photographer.

 

As photographers, we all know how important it is to get our names and brands out into the world, but we often direct these efforts only at potential clients. Even if we realize that there’s a lot to be gained from networking with other professionals, we may assume that we should prioritize reaching out to people who might hire us and forget about doing anything else.

There’s also a certain amount of competition in photography since most clients will consider multiple photographers for a project but hire only one; if you get the job, someone else is rejected. 

This “me vs them” mentality can be detrimental to you as an artist and to your business, and it doesn’t help you win more projects; being friendly with someone does not give them an advantage over you in being chosen for a job. If you often find yourself viewing your peers as rivals, try to keep an open mind for a minute and consider all that an online community has to offer.

 

Marketing Opportunities

Other photographers may not need to hire you for photography work (they can probably do it themselves), but they could be interested in collaborating on special projects. There’s no rule against clients joining online photography communities, either. So, counterintuitive as it might seem, joining a community can give you new ways to market your business.

 

Feedback

You probably get tons of feedback from clients, friends, and family, but this is no substitute for having a trained eye or two observe and critique your work. People who don’t know much about photography can only comment on what they see in the final product, whereas other photographers can offer specific advice to solve a problem or improve something. 

Your peers understand the process, and many of them have experienced the same problems as you, so their notes are infinitely more useful than a client’s vague statement that they like or dislike a photo. By sharing your work in an online community, you’ll get valuable feedback that you’d never find anywhere else.

 

New Skills and Tips

One of the great things about being a photographer is that, although there are right and wrong answers for some things, there is also a lot of room for creative exploration. Developing your artistic talent involves both taking advice from experts and discovering your own voice.

When you have a community, you get to be on both sides of this process. You can offer help when someone is struggling with something that you know a lot about, and you can also incorporate the advice and tips offered by others into your own personal style. 

We put a lot of ourselves into our photography styles, so no matter how much we share with and borrow from others, we don’t lose any of that individuality; each of us retains the originality and uniqueness in our voice, and everyone wins.

 

Current Trends and Tools

Checking in with your online community can be one of the easiest ways to keep up-to-date with news, trends, and reviews relevant to the industry. Many photography communities have a section for news or information on equipment releases.

If you don’t want to take the leap when some new tool, accessory, or preset is released, you can ask around with others in the community, first. Odds are that someone else will have tried it and be willing to share their experience. 

Even though you don’t necessarily know every single person in the community well, it’s easier to trust the opinion of a peer in this context than a random stranger’s review on amazon, so it can feel like you have much more real information when you learn about trends and tools this way.

 

Friends

Perhaps the most obvious and important benefit of joining a photography community is the avenue it offers for meeting new friends. Connecting with people in our field of work is so easy to do online, but we often don’t realize how important it is.

Our peers understand the joys and struggles of being a photographer in a way that none of our other friends, however much we love them, ever could. Sometimes you just need to complain about something, or to be proud of a victory, with people who actually know what you’re talking about and having friends from a photography community can be invaluable in those moments.

 

Start Meeting People

Now that you know how an online photography community could enrich your life and grow your business, what are you waiting for? 

No matter how busy you are or how competitive you tend to be, community is important, and making an effort to be part of one will present opportunities that you’d never have otherwise. You’ll be able to reach more people with your work and your brand, even clients, and you’ll learn a lot from other professionals.

And, most importantly, you’ll have the chance to develop relationships with other photographers that will be more valuable and longer-lasting than any project you might compete over.

 

Embrace Presets is all about community. 

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