We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jordan Katz a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Jordan, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear about how you identified some of your key partners/vendors and how you made those relationships work?
As a photographer, I have found key partners in the early stages of developing each of the genres of my work (corporate, weddings and interiors) and they were truly instrumental in my growth. In all three of those genres, the partnership began like this: I created work on my own time/dime that was similar to what I wanted to create for the partner, then I reached out cold to see if they needed help.
For corporate events (my first experience in private photography), I searched EventBrite for events I might be able to photograph for free. When I found one, I reached out to the planner and offered my services. I rented the camera I needed and learned on the job. They were thrilled with the images, and soon I was able to charge for my work. (Learning how to communicate pricing changes was a whole other lesson.)
For weddings, after I had been working a few years I moved from California to Colorado. I put up a Facebook ad for a deal for a wedding in Colorado. I was hired by a couple getting married at a new venue. I shot the wedding, and it became one of the hero weddings for the venue after being published in a popular regional publication, Rocky Mountain Bride. From there, I became a preferred vendor and still work there frequently almost 6 years later. Being established at that venue helped me acquire work throughout the state.
When the pandemic hit, my business disappeared as it was almost entirely dependent on live events. I had had an inkling that I wanted to shoot interiors prior to the pandemic, and during one wedding when I was staying near the venue in a hotel I liked, I decided to shoot the hotel room before I settled in. When the pandemic hit, I used those images to reach out to a designer I admired to see if she needed a photographer, offering her a trial for her first shoot. Her photographer happened to have left the state because of the pandemic, so I was in luck. We worked together and to my delight, we were a great fit. I have since shot all of her projects, and my partnership with her has led to projects with several other designers working throughout Colorado.
The common thread in all of these is being proactive about where I want my business to go, combined with having a sense of play about trying something new. And the most important part was providing the most exceptional service I could imagine to the potential partner and proving they could rely on me in their own pursuits. Not to mention a lot of luck!
Jordan, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I am a photographer based in Denver, Colorado focusing on weddings and interiors. I work in Colorado, California and other destinations.
I have a background in journalism and that really guides my approach to weddings. I aim to blend a documentary ethos with my affinity for artful design. I shoot both digital and film, and I try to shoot every wedding a bit differently based on the couple and the style of the wedding (one wedding may have more digital flash photography while another may be shot heavily on 35mm film and yet another will contain a large number of medium format images). These days I primarily work on higher-production weddings, but also occasionally shoot intimate gatherings. The through line in all of my wedding galleries is an emphasis on fleeting moments and subtle emotion. My clients tend to be introspective, creative and deeply connected to their communities.
I also shoot interiors. I have a personal interest in interior design and I love working with designers to capture their projects. My favorite styles to shoot are transitional spaces with lots of unexpected design elements but a restrained palette.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
This is probably such a common entrepreneurial lesson, but I had to learn early on to charge my worth. And I don’t mean personal worth; I mean business worth. I think a lot of creatives get caught up in pricing as a personal, moral victory or failure. Early on I felt very uncomfortable raising my prices and I always had to have a pep talk with myself before a consultation call in which I would justify all the reasons why I needed to charge what I needed to charge. I hate to be corny but the bottom line is the bottom line. If I can’t stay in business charging a certain amount, then those prices don’t reflect the cost of doing business. And further down the road, if I can’t grow in my life charging a certain amount, then the prices don’t reflect a healthy salary for me and my family. Once I was able to distance my personal worth from the prices I charged, I began to have more fun with the sales aspect. Now I tell myself: it’s not the job of the salesman to change the price of a Lamborghini. It’s up to the buyer to determine what that Lamborghini is worth to them.
Can you open up about how you funded your business?
This is the embarrassing truth: I was making $50 an article writing for a small local publication and nannying part-time so I really had almost no capital. So, I rented equipment for my first few gigs, and once I knew which items I was after, I put it all on a credit card (about $13k over the first year). The debt was a motivating factor in charging my worth. I was very lucky to be living with a partner and a roommate so I had fairly reasonable rent and was able to pay it off somewhat quickly.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.jordankatzweddings.com
- Instagram: @_jordankatz
- Other: https://www.jordanhkatz.com
Image Credits
First image is by Hannah Quintana Photography
All other images by Jordan Katz