We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Liza Head a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Liza, thanks for joining us today. Are you able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen?

It took many years of advertising and trial and error to be able to get to the point where I can earn a living doing what I do. Of course “full time living” is highly variable depending on where it is you live – in the Bay Area especially it can be hard. I was lucky enough to have a supportive partner while I built my business up to where it is today. I started like so many do in photography – almost accidentally. I took some photos, and people liked them, and I realized there was a business that could be created. Off the bat, I would say I did most things wrong. I started out by charging very little because it seemed like a lot compared to the hourly retail gig I was working at. I made the mistake of thinking that what I charged would be my income. I had taken no classes or done any research on running a legitimate business. I just went out and started offering my services. Once I realized that there were systems that needed to be established, expenses that needed to be considered, and that I could actually do this professionally – I had to take several steps back and start all over again. I believe there are two things which would have helped me speed up the process. 1) Invest in marketing. Once I got my website, systems, legalities in place, I should have either taken out a small loan or used my business credit card and just dumped all of my business budget into marketing. 2) Learn the right way to set my rates. Figure out how much I needed to make to be a viable business, what my expenses were, and charge what I needed to charge to make that happen.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I am Liza Head – owner and lead photographer of Juniper Spring Photography. In 2010 we had some friends and family members get married, and I took some casual photos at the event. Another friend saw the photos and asked me to take their wedding photos as well. It was a hard and stressful day but absolutely exhilarating. Being able to document something so important – sharing the story as I see it – having to work fast and on the fly and be fully engaged with what is going on – it was all addicting. I was instantly hooked. Fast forward several years of focusing on documenting weddings, and I found myself itching to add another creative outlet to my repertoire. I went on a couple of retreats for creative women’s portraiture and absolutely fell in love. Here was a way for me to reach back into my fine art background and get creative, while also celebrating and empowering women. That’s when I started offering my over-the-top glamorous flower bath sessions as well as studio and outdoor boudoir. Now having been in this business for 13+ years, my most important “why” remains the same: It’s the connections I get to make with the humans I work for. Getting to know and sharing real life love stories – getting to connect with people from all walks of life – showing the people I work with that they matter and their stories matter and they are beautiful: these things are such a gift to me. My number 2, though, has to be the beauty. I love that I get to spend my time finding the most beautiful way to capture reality. I love making beautiful things. And I love that it teaches me to see more and more beauty in the mundane of every day as well. I am most proud of the times when a client tells me that they feel seen and understood and beautiful through my lens.

Any resources you can share with us that might be helpful to other creatives?

So many! There’s a website called “creativelive” – I’m not sure if it’s the same now as it was earlier in my career, but boy did I learn a lot on there! I wish I had done so sooner. Also Emily Kim Photo ( https://emilykimphotography.com/ ) has recently started business coaching and wow I really wish this resource existed when I started! Finally, I’m in a local photographers group and it has been just absolute gold for both my professional life and personal sanity. It can get lonely being an entrepreneur and it is so encouraging to find that folks who are doing the same thing you are doing can be friends and mentors and partners instead of competitors.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

Every lay person has heard that there is a “market rate” for things. As a person with basically zero economics and business training outside of my real life experience, I can tell you concepts like these can be very easily misused and misinterpreted by those of us desperately trying to start a business. I believe I misunderstood the market rate concept for the type of business that I am running. I thought that there was one number, give or take a bit, that “the market” is willing to pay for photography. and that I would be stuck charging that amount and would have to make that work. Over the years, I’ve found that for creative, high-luxury items like photography, market rate is *extremely* flexible. There is not just one market – there are different levels at which people are willing and able to spend for your service. While it makes sense to do some research about what folks are paying for the service you offer so you have a ballpark, it makes much more sense to take a practical approach to how to price yourself. Taking into account how much you need to earn to live (or thrive even), and your cost of doing business, and how much time it takes you to serve your clients, you can come up with the amount you need to charge per client.

Contact Info:

• Website: juniperspringphotography.com and bayareaboudoir.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/juniperspringportraits/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/juniperspringphotographypage
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/juniper-spring-photography-san-jose

Image Credits
All images by Juniper Spring Photography