Why You Should Take Time to Shoot for Fun

Arabela and I are both big believers in taking time out of your schedule to create work just for fun. Before we started Weekend Creative, we were working on fashion editorials for a magazine and while we both really loved what we created there, we wanted to do some things on our own where we didn’t have to worry about leaving room for text or delivering images on a deadline. It was through those fun shoots that we were able to play around and learn without pressure or expectations.

We first put together this shoot called Flowerface, and then we reached out to It’s-It Ice Cream for product which ended up becoming a paid shoot and launching our business. I really believe that if we hadn’t started doing work just for fun outside of work that our business would not exist, or at least wouldn’t exist in the same way.

This idea of fun shoots has been a big part of our business throughout the last two years. At first we weren’t super strategic about this, but we soon learned that it could be really helpful for growing our business. We started by creating our “One Prop Challenge” which was a way for us to force ourselves to be creative and practice when we didn’t have a lot of product photography experience.

We would plan a day to shoot and each of us would show up with one product or prop that we wanted to shoot. The other person wouldn’t know what the item was ahead of time, and we were’t supposed to do any planning in advance. We don’t really do these challenges anymore, but you can see them here if you’re interested.

Even though we’re at a place now where we have a pretty steady stream of clients, we still think that it’s essential to step away from client work from time to time to play around and create just to create. I know it can be really hard to make time for this, but my goal is to convince you that this is an essential part of your business and give you some tips for making this happen for yourself.

Build Your Portfolio

The first reason that you need to be creating work for fun is that it will help you to build your portfolio. This is great when you’re first starting out, but it’s just as important later on as well. Your portfolio should reflect the kind of work that you want to be doing, and this means that not all client work will be appropriate for your portfolio. There’s also usually time between when you work with clients and when you can release the images. Creating work just for fun ensures that you can continually share work that will attract the kind of clients that you want in the future without restriction.

It’s also a great way to fill gaps in your work. For example, we haven’t shot for any jewelry companies so we’re talking about planning a fun shoot focused on jewelry so that we can have images on hand as examples in case we ever want to target a jewelry company. You could also use these images to incorporate a different style or technique into your images to show your range.

Increase Your Skillset, Experiment, and Practice Troubleshooting

When planning a fun shoot, think about new skills that you could test out in order to apply them to client work in the future. You could try a new lighting style, make a new background, experiment with gels, and so much more. This is the time to experiment and play around because it really doesn’t matter if the images turn out or not. Ideally you would be able to use them, but if nothing else, you will learn new things which just makes you a better photographer.

Fun shoots are also so great for learning how to troubleshoot without a client looking over your shoulder. Once you know how to tackle common issues, you’ll be so much more confident in your work, but the only way to really learn is to just create. Troubleshooting in this context is so much less stressful than when working on a deadline or when you have specific requests you need to fulfill.

Increase Your Creativity or Get Out of a Rut

We’ve all been stuck in a rut or just felt uninspired. It’s a beautiful thing when your passion becomes your job, but it can also feel like a lot of pressure and it’s easy to get caught up in client work that can be less than inspiring at times. Setting aside a full or half day to remind yourself of why you started shooting in the first place is so refreshing. While it can be hard to take time away from your paid projects, I find that it actually helps to improve the quality of your work when you take time away from it (read more about that here). If you only work on projects for other people you’re probably going to burn out a lot sooner than if you also take time to create just for the sake of creating.

How to Make it Happen

So by now you probably agree with me that you should be setting aside time to shoot just for fun, but how do you actually make that happen? PLAN. Let me say it again for the people in the back: you have to plan. As Benjamin Franklin supposedly said, “If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.” I can say from experience that if you don’t intentionally build this time into your schedule, there’s almost no way that it will happen.

We set a goal every year for how many fun shoots we want to accomplish and check in on our progress every month. To be 100% honest, last year we failed pretty miserably at reaching our goal. This year we decided that we want to do one every other month, and we blocked off the dates on our calendar. Since the dates are reserved, we can make sure that we plan ahead to make time for them and I can already tell that this is going to be really helpful in reaching our goal this year.

Theres one more thing I want to say along the lines of fun shoots, and it’s important. There will be lots (LOTS) of companies that will ask you to do work for free or cheap in order to “build your portfolio.” When you’re first starting out, you will work for much less and take on as many projects as you can, and that’s ok, but I would caution against doing this for too long.

If you need to build your portfolio, you can create your own fun shoots to accomplish this. If a company wants to hire you for work, they should pay what your work is worth, and not expect you to work for exposure or to fill your portfolio. You can find an article here about why we price the way we do, one here about how to raise your prices, and another one here about when to turn down work if you want more information on this. There may be times when it’s worth it to take on work for less in order to establish a relationship, but more times that not it ends up not leading where you would hope.

I hope that I’ve convinced you to set aside time this year to have fun and create work for yourself. We would love to see the fun shoots that you do, so if you post them be sure to tag us!

Is it the weekend yet?

Elle