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

Nicola, looking forward to hearing all of your stories 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’ve been making a full-time living from my creative work for the past decade, which is wild to say. It hasn’t always been easy, but I feel incredibly lucky to have been able to do so.

My journey into this industry started right out of college – I had a fresh Bachelor of Arts in Photojournalism and after working in the news cycle for a bit, wanted to explore other avenues of making a living within photography. While on assignment at a local fashion show, I met another photographer who quickly became a friend and asked me to help him shoot a few weddings that summer. Within a few years I had a pretty thriving full-time wedding photography business and was quickly running down a road I hadn’t planned to.

As much as I loved both the relationships I built and the travel, I always knew weddings wouldn’t be sustainable long term for me. When my husband and I made the move from Minneapolis down to Nashville, TN for his career, I started to dream about what it would look like to pivot again – this time from weddings into portrait and commercial/brand work. My entire portfolio was in wedding world, and I didn’t want to mix the two, so in 2017 I started frequently renting a studio that came along with my co-working space and began to ask my (very kind) friends if they would come in and get their photo taken by me so I could practice various studio lighting and getting comfortable with this whole new world. I would do this whenever I had the time away from client work (weddings) and slowly built both my commercial skillset and my new book. As I started to share the new portraits and brand work I was making, new kinds of inquiries started to trickle. By 2021, I had swapped the two – weddings were now a tiny part of my income and commercial work was the majority.

Today, I’ve fully let weddings go and focus entirely on both commercial and editorial. Niching down has been incredibly helpful for me, and I curate what I show online, knowing that this will impact the future inquiries I receive. I’ve found a few of the keys to continue having a steady stream of income is to actively pursue business development, test frequently, prioritize relationships within the industry and to be a loving and kind human that people want to work with. I’m so grateful for my journey and can’t wait to see what’s ahead.

Nicola, 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’m a commercial and lifestyle photographer and director based out of Nashville, TN. I work primarily with lifestyle brands and agencies to create high end lifestyle and product imagery that elevates their messaging and resonates with audiences nationwide. I’m frequently told that my work “looks expensive” and pairing that with artistry really is the heartbeat behind what I do. I always want to make work that carries a feeling and looks different from everything else, no matter what the product is. Working good people on and off set is incredibly important to me and I feel so grateful to get to make a living with a camera in this way.

If you have multiple revenue streams in your business, would you mind opening up about what those streams are and how they fit together?

It can be tough to think about building multiple income streams as a photographer and a service based business. I have many friends who have sold presets and have built education businesses around what they do, and while I think both are amazing, neither have ever truly spoken to me. When thinking through things like this, I never want to take action out of fear or scarcity, so it’s been important for me to make sure all arms of my business truly align with who I am and how I see the world. I’ve found image licensing to be important and have tried a handful of stock agencies (currently with Stocksy and have great things to say!) Licensing my images for fine art prints has also been a new stream of revenue I’m excited to dive into more, as well as one-on-one coaching and mentorship for other photographers. I love being able to share my journey and experience with others to see how it can help them with theirs.

We’d love to hear about how you keep in touch with clients.

I’m always brainstorming new ways to do this. It can be tricky to run a business as an artist that doesn’t feel overly sales-y, but I’ve also found that leaning too much into an artist mindset while doing commercial work doesn’t push my business forward as much as I need it to. I try to stay in the middle and switch back and forth where necessary. No matter how I’m doing it though, I want to think of fostering client loyalty as truly building relationships. Both Instagram and LinkedIn are great places to easily stay top of mind, and while I’m not active all the time on both, I think of them as touch points for people to experience my brand for the first time, even if we haven’t worked together yet. I frequently do reach out via email to past and potential clients to touch base, check in if I see something that makes me think of them, or have new work to share that I think will resonate with them.

My quarterly newsletter is another great way I stay in touch with my network, and this feels powerful because I own my email list and feel grateful that I have the ability to show up in so many inboxes. Growing that list is important for any artist – when I’m bidding on jobs that I’m not awarded, I will often ask if I can stay in touch with new work and will add the producer or Art Director’s contact to my newsletter list and/or will email them personally in a few months to stay top of mind. I try to share new work in these updates but also little pieces of life and inspiration as they come – all relevant to my brand.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://nicolaharger.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nicolaharger/
• Facebook: https://facebook.com/nicolahargerphotography
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicola-harger-2a225855/
• Other: https://stocksy.com/nicolaharger