Equine photographer Leslie Bliss has worked and trained with Emily for a few years now. She has kindly written her top 10 tips on how to get the most from training with Emily, as well as her experiences working in the competitive equine photography industry..
‘1. Watch, listen and learn. Emily’s business expertise is what makes her courses special. There are many talented photographers out there, so you need to know how to run a business and market yourself to be in with a chance of becoming a successful professional photographer.
2. Never be afraid of competition. It is a highly competitive market, so use it to your advantage by being inspired and striving to be the best
3. Never give up. I won’t lie to you, this is not an easy journey and there will be many ups and downs, but it’s so worthwhile and the best job in the world. You need determination and staying power. Don’t expect to be successful overnight
4. Practise makes perfect. Photography is a skill and it takes time and effort to develop, excuse the pun.
5. And then you have to keep working at it! Nothing worthwhile is easy.
6. Don’t undersell yourself. This is so easily done. If you sell your images for a pittance it means you don’t value your work. Doing a photo shoot including a USB with all high-resolution JPEGs for £35 not only devalues your work, but also damages the industry as a whole.
7. Having a mentor like Emily and continuously working on improving your photography and business skills makes all the difference. If it hadn’t been for Emily giving me regular kicks up the preverbial, I wouldn’t be where I am now.
8. Make friends with other photographers. It’s a lonely job in many ways, so having a support network of likeminded friends is wonderful and rewarding in so many ways.
9. Don’t expect Emily or your photographer friends to do the work for you. There are some things you need to work out for yourself. You need to put in the hard graft and use your own initiative and talent to make a success of it.
10. Believe in Emily’s words and it will work. Her system has done so for me!’