We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Matthew Shuck. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Matthew below.

Matthew, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Are you happier as a business owner? Do you sometimes think about what it would be like to just have a regular job?

I think everyone who takes the risk of starting their own business comes to a point where they wonder what it would have been like if they had taken a more traditional path and found a “regular job”. For me this is a common thought when business is slow and the idea of a regular income starts to sound very appealing!

I work as a commercial photographer, and so far in my career I have experienced nothing that resembles a consistent schedule or income. Sometimes I’ll have several weeks back to back to back where I’m traveling and working 12+ hour days (plus editing at the hotel), and then that might immediately be followed up by a month straight without a single job. Typically pay is fairly good but it is also nearly impossible for me to know what work to expect more than a week or two in advance. It is not terribly uncommon for me to get a call asking if I can fly somewhere for a job with only a few days notice, and I can go from having an open schedule to completely overwhelmed with work in an incredibly short amount of time.

So far in 2024 I’ve already seen extremes. I believe I started January without a single job on my calendar for the month, which is pretty normal as it is typically my slowest month of the year. And then things popped up and by the end it had turned into my most profitable month in quite some time. Quite simply, chaos is the norm.

We all have different parameters that we are comfortable with. While this lifestyles can still drive me nuts, I know I am built much better for it that most. And likewise, while a consistent income and schedule is certainly appealing, the idea of working a normal job gives me an overwhelming dread I can only compare to claustrophobia. This life of chaos is also one of freedom. While work is unpredictable I still feel like I have a greater sense of control. The ability to turn certain jobs down, to allocate time as I see fit, and to never have to worry about things like earning vacation days is quite liberating. While there are a few scenarios I could see myself happy in, I think most regular jobs would make me feel like a caged animal.

This control is probably the biggest factor to my happiness. I have a strong sense of what keeps me happy and I have put myself in a position where my hands are on the wheel. As my friends and family know I’m also incredibly stubborn and, whether it’s true or not, I almost always see myself as the smartest person in the room. I don’t believe this correlates well with being the best potential employee. If I am not in charge of what I am doing I will immediately challenge whoever is.

The photography itself is also a key factor in my happiness. I still feel like I’m somehow getting away with something. Work is rarely ever work to me, and more often than not I am excited to take on the projects I’m given. To me it’s building and problem solving, and it keeps my mind active in ways to are enjoyable to me.

Also, while I love doing it, photography isn’t some monolithic passion of mine. But it has allowed me to build a life I quite enjoy. I am happiest when I am learning and making things. A lot of times this is expressed through photography, but I’m not limited to that. Right now, for example, work has been a little slower and that has given me time to focus on woodworking. I’m currently finishing building a dining table for a friend. Those slow periods with photography also allow me to spend time on other things I deeply enjoy.

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

I am still a little surprised I ended up in a creative field. Growing up I always loved school, but I certainly gravitated toward math and sciences. I went to math competitions, took summer robotics classes, and found success in engineering competitions. I didn’t really spend my time in anything artistic or creative. This lead to me enthusiastically going to college to study physics. What I quickly learned though was as much as I was deeply curious, the classes and homework had disrupted all balance to my life and I was just not happy. I have a very clear memory of spending each night doing physics homework while just outside my window other people were playing soccer, which was another passion of mine I no longer had the time for. Around the same time I had just happened to take a film class, simply for the credit. One week we were given 35mm film cameras for a project and I was immediately hooked. Soon after I bought a DSLR of my own and I was obsessed with learning everything I could. Eventually I built up the courage to take a leap and drop the physics major and focus on photography. From that point on a think I took a fairly similar path to many other photographers where the first jobs I got where just family photos for people that already knew me, shooting for the university newspaper, and getting small jobs here and there for local magazines.

From there on it was just a process of developing my own style and growing my network. Eventually I stopped doing family photos, senior pictures, and weddings and focused on more commercial work which I enjoyed much more. Again, my mind works in a more analytical manner, so the commercial work which is often more planned out felt more natural to me. It was more like I was building photos rather than capturing moments. I found a really enjoyed jobs that gave me a chance to work with more complicated light and build images out in Photoshop. I am still in the process of moving more of my work in that direction.

What my business currently looks like is a still a bit hard to describe, because job to job it can be so different, but it is almost entirely commercial work for other businesses. Sometimes it’s a simple as company headshots, which I oddly really enjoy, and other times it’s working alongside film crews shooting complimentary images to the commercials that are being filmed. Think about commercials you’ll see on TV, and then you’ll see the same character in a print or digital add. That’s what I do.

I’m still trying to move my work in more of the direction of creative advertising and less stuffy lawyers with their arms crossed on billboards.

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

So even though I’m about 14 years into my career I still don’t have a great idea of how to find to clients myself. Instead I sort of depend on referral work. To this point my business has grown naturally by just keeping people happy and willing to hire me again.

So, the simplest way I have found to keep work coming is to first of all deliver a good product, but also just be easy to work with. I work alongside a lot of film crews, and that is not always a cohesive process. The most important thing for me is to accomplish all of my goals without disrupting theirs. Schedules are always tight on set, so I do everything I can to get what I need as quickly as possible. An easy way to annoy everyone is to have the whole crew behind schedule because stills is taking too long. If I can deliver a good product while making everyone else’s job easier that day I will get hired again.

Can you open up about a time when you had a really close call with the business?

2020. I know I am obviously not alone, but Covid was a terrifying time for my business. I had very little background in food or product photography, everything I shot was people focused. This resulted in me not having a single job for almost a year straight. This also came on the heels of several years of struggling with some health problems that made it hard to work, so I went into 2020 with very little in terms of savings.

I wouldn’t recommend other people try this in a similar situation, but I decided that if I was stuck in my apartment all day with no prospect of work in sight that I would learn to play poker. Online poker had just been legalized in PA and while I had played a little bit I hadn’t taken it seriously until that point. I had $22 on my account and decided I would only give myself that amount to learn with. If I failed that’s all I was allowed to lose. But that part of my brain that loved math was excited to get a little exercise again and I felt it should be something I would be good at. While I didn’t make massive amounts of money playing I did find success almost right away and found I could make about the equivalent to minimum wage pretty consistently. That little bit of money coming in while my photography business was sidelined made a huge difference. I still play today regularly and while the context of why I got started is quite terrible I feel very fortunate I was given that time to give it a shot. I love that my life has been opened back up to math oriented problem solving. As much as I enjoy photography it was not fulfilling that need.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.mattshuck.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mattshuck/