Needing advice on pivoting from the wedding photography. This is so hard to admit to myself, as I have been studying and proactively assisting, second shooting for 2 years and now have an entire year of shooting my own weddings under my belt. This has been my dream for the last five years and I’ve been actively pursuing it for the last four years. I truly love weddings and love the couples + people I get to work with. But the stress of wedding days in general, being on for 12 hours, and then the intense editing for weeks afterward has been really hard on my mental health. Even though I give 110% at every wedding I do because I truly love the couples I get to serve, I know it’s not the right thing for me to continue to book wedding clients when I feel this way so I’ve stopped booking weddings for 2024. For anyone who has felt this way and pivoted - is there a lucrative type of photography you’ve pursued instead? I love shooting couples, portraits, and branding sessions, but would love to hear if you’ve found a type of photography that you’d recommend trying to pursue full time. Thank you so much in advance!
You could totally change genres to maternity & newborn, or boudoir, or family portraits, or commercial head shots, real estate…. Content creation? So many options.
Another option might be to offer smaller coverage- like limit it to max 8 hours or whatever your threshold is, and then outsource your editing. The beauty of working for yourself is that you can create the career you want to have.
I hope you find a solution that feels sustainable for you.
Thank you so much for your input. I will definitely look into the genres you mentioned + into outsourcing editing