Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Matthew Andrews. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Matthew, appreciate you joining us today. Have you been 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? Was it like that from day one? If not, what were some of the major steps and milestones and do you think you could have sped up the process somehow knowing what you know now?
I can’t emphasize enough that I benefited from my slow start. Before I went full time there were about 12 years where I photographed weddings while I was in college and didn’t quit my day jobs after college but shooting and improving at weddings. Nashville is an incredibly competitive market for a photographer. Many say it is saturated. The vast majority of photographers fail or move on within a year or two so I feel just surviving for 15 years and making my mortgage payments has been a bit of a triumph but I’ve made better money than I could have imagined while keeping a very flexible schedule. It has been the perfect job for me. I’m a scatterbrained creative and that is a super power when you are posing clients and I have always been a night owl and I like to get most of my editing done at night when there are less distractions. Photography is a craft and you get better all the time. I’m still proud of photos I got many years ago back in the film days but I would be horrified if now I was turning in full deliverables of the quality that I was turning in even 10 years ago. Over time you get so much better at making people laugh, at posing efficiently, at getting variety and at editing. Some photographers go all in before they are really all that great and planners and venue owners work with them and compared to more experienced photographers they may seem like they aren’t as great with people or stress and that their deliverables were disappointing. Once you turn off a planner like that you may never be able to win them over. I got my 10,000 hours in before I went full time. I also leaned a lot from other jobs. Years after I started shooting weddings and years before I went full time I did a stint working as a photographer for a big school photography business with about 100 schools and I was their outdoor senior portrait photographer shooting thousands of students senior portraits. The work wasn’t all that creative but I learned how to be efficient and I learned what sells and what people find flattering. I had the chance to do tons of work and get honest feedback from the studio manager to hone what I was getting and I think most photographers never have that kind of honest critique and it really made me better at getting the safe shots people seem to love. Then I could focus on unlearning some of that and getting more creative but that influence is always there. I worked at Vanderbilt University for a few years and I improved my communication and organizational skills as well as my ability to make nice looking websites. I also take on a lot of commercial work from realtor lifestyle photos to promotional photos for TV shows and movies or magazine editorials. I’ve always heard that commercial photographers shouldn’t shoot weddings but this is another area where I’ve marched to the beat of my own drum and it has really helped me over the years. During the pandemic I had 26 weddings cancel on me within a period of 2 weeks and it was the small portrait shoots and realtor photos that really got me by before the weddings started to reschedule. I believe being good with commercial work makes you better at weddings but most importantly I believe the more you are out there working and the more people you are meeting and networking with while you do it the more work it leads to through referrals and sometimes you’ll do headshots for a hospital and a nurse you photograph hires you for her wedding and I’ve had the same thing happen on my recreational soccer teams and softball teams and end up photographing weddings for team mates who met in the dug out. There are photographers who say that they get more referrals than their competition just because they dress professionally and in this industry I think there is some truth to that. However that is just one of many things that all add up to professionalism and craft mastery that you earn through sacrifice, trial and error and a burning desire to become great and all of that to please your clients and earn referrals.
Matthew, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I’ve been a full time photographer in Nashville for nearly 15 years now. I love new challenges and take on all sorts of gigs from BTS work for TV shows to lifestyle photos for realtor teams to large conventions and one off portrait shoots and I probably earn the most of my dollars from weddings. I’ve marched to the beat of my own drum when it has come to my business. I’ve ignored a lot of the lessons the photography business guru’s have promoted over the years. I’ve barely blogged, I’m terrible with social media and have never booked a wedding from social media, I’ve rarely advertised and the few times I have I didn’t feel the return on my investment was worth it and yet I’ve outlasted thousands of photographers that have come and gone over the last 15 years. Like many who do well I owe my livelihood to a steady stream of referrals. I work hard, I show my clients a good time, I’m quick with directions and ideas, and I nail the exposures and lighting quickly so we can move onto another idea or get to the reception on time. I crack myself up sometimes purposely making a pose awkward just to make couples or bridal parties laugh and I think my clients can not only sense that I’m having fun with my job but the fun and enthusiasm is a bit contagious. I find a lot of less experienced photographers really gravitate towards being heavy on the detail shots of inanimate objects. We are told as photographers that we need to get a lot of these to stay busy because vendors want them and they help with marketing through tagging vendors on social media or Pinterest or to get blogs published but I find inanimate objects very boring. I capture them for posterity but I don’t show many in my portfolio or on my website because I want the clients who care more about the emotion and joy and people who will be at their wedding than the ones who are super focused on the details. To me the flowers and decor improve photos in the background but the people are the focus. This really seems to set me apart from a lot of photographers and when there are so many you need to lean into those differences. Another thing that sets me apart is my reception lighting. Not many photographers are able to get the look I do because most of them are shooting with speed lights or pointing their flashes down at the subjects but I use powerful strobes that I’m able to bounce upon the ceiling from opposite sides of the dance floor so I’m able to use longer lenses and capture sneaky candids while putting lovely backlight in people’s hair. I’m capturing candids on dance floors with beautiful skin tones, avoiding the shadows so many get when they point the lights at the subjects. I mix it up a lot also but the looks I get with my bounced off-camera strobes sets me apart from the masses.
What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?
As a freelance photographer I work directly with the people I’m photographing and I get to hear back from happy clients as soon as I share their photos. I have had clients for many years now. Many clients who hired me to photograph their newborns hired me again each year for family photos and then eventually the child’s high school senior portraits and I love keeping in touch and being there for these important milestones. I’ll be photographing a wedding for one such family this summer and I photographed his baby photos and his senior portraits and I’m so honored that they will have me as the wedding photographer. My work is personal and while it isn’t mean to be massed produced and I’ll never be rich, I enjoy the creative and social aspects of the job but I also enjoy the quiet solitude when my family is working or at school or asleep and I’m editing photos and listening to audio books or taking guitar breaks throughout the day or walks with my dog at night when everyone else in the neighborhood is asleep. I’m not sure if that makes me an introverted extrovert or whatever but I enjoy my life and I feel like I don’t waste my time. I have had 9-5 jobs where I am just waiting for it to be time to go, killing time, or doing work that doesn’t seem to have much meaning to me but as a freelancer you don’t waste time commuting just for the sake of it and you can set up your business and your life in a way that is just as efficient as you like, you can work as hard as you like an make lots of money or take a month off to work on another hobby or project.
Is there mission driving your creative journey?
Photography is like tennis or golf, you can do it when you are old. I plan to continue doing it as long as clients reach out to me. I’ve been very passive about going after business and fortunate that clients come to me. Just today I’ve had 3 inquiries for completely different types of shoots. I do see myself slowing down and possibly transitioning into shooting less weddings and a little more commercial work. I’ve been working hard throughout my 30’s and 40’s to provide for my family and paying a mortgage and soon I’ll be sending my daughter to college. She makes excellent grades and even had a 4.5 GPA last semester as a result of the weight of her 3 AP classes so I have hopes that she’ll earn scholarships but regardless I’m in for an expensive 4-5 years. I don’t want her to be faced with debt out of college so I’m willing to continue working hard for a while but my wife and I talk about downsizing to a less expensive home where we’ll no longer need to pay a mortgage and we can take it a little easier. I’m very interested in writing and I’m always plotting stories, writing jokes, and listening to books on the craft of writing and I have write songs and play guitar, cello, and mandolin and enjoy recording music and programming electronic music and beats. While I’d love more time to pursue those other creative interests I’ll be happy continuing my photography journey.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.mattandrewsphotography.com
- Instagram: mattandrewsphoto