Meet Jason Collin

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

Hi Jason, we’re so appreciative of you taking the time to share your nuggets of wisdom with our community. One of the topics we think is most important for folks looking to level up their lives is building up their self-confidence and self-esteem. Can you share how you developed your confidence?

Preparation helps with confidence and self-esteem I believe. If you know you have the skills needed for a particular photo shoot, and have the right gear for it, then confidence naturally comes from that. Then over time, even more confidence comes from experience, as variables can often come up during photo shoots, and likely happened before, and even if never before, you can be confident in solving it because you have many times before. Then feedback from clients about the photos you make for them give further confidence.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

I am a commercial photographer that also does larger events, like national conferences. What is exciting to me about being a commercial photographer is the variety of photo shoots any given week. From being on a piece of land real estate at sunset, to making product shots of a new kind of soda, to making headshots for the entire team at a law office. 2024 has brought a huge change for my photography and drone business having moved from Albuquerque, New Mexico to Pacific Grove, California. From a big city in the desert to a small coastal community. It has been my dream to live in this exact town, and I have been working on building up a whole new client base, while surprisingly, already having a few shoots for past clients still in the region.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

One thing to learn early on as a professional photographer is that having business and marketing skills is actually more important than the quality of photographs you show on your website in terms of getting bookings. There is no point in sitting and thinking, “my work is way better than this photographer, but they are making way more than I am.” That is a sign to up your business and marketing game. Unfortunately, just having an amazing portfolio sitting on a website is not enough. A second thing to work on from your very first client, is building a strong client relationship, even if you think you’ll never see the client again or they are just a one time photo shoot. They still are a resource than can recommend other people to you and taking on such clients is a way of building your local network. Having a monthly (or weekly) newsletter is a way to gently stay in touch with these clients you may not see so regularly. And thirdly, I do think it is important to have the right gear for the right job. Perhaps you have heard “gear does not matter, it’s the photographer.” Probably no photographer has said that who did not hav $20k in gear themselves! No doubt skill matters, but the right gear for the right job also. For sure an experienced photographer can get more out of lesser gear. I did for the first 5+ years of my own photo business. Then when I was able to invest in more and better cameras and lenses and accessories, I was always like each time soon after, how did I ever run my business without this?? Even things like shooting tethered for headshots, I did not due that for the first 10+ years of my business. Now, I could not imagine making headshots without being at least tethered to my 16″ laptop screen for clients. Keep growing your own skills, and you will easily find the best way to continue to also upgrade your gear to match your growing skills, assuming you do not have an infinite budget for gear to start out with!

We’ve all got limited resources, time, energy, focus etc – so if you had to choose between going all in on your strengths or working on areas where you aren’t as strong, what would you choose?

I think unless you can outsource or bring in a partner to address the areas you are not the strongest in, then it is definitely wise to become well rounded and address any weaker areas. This goes back to what I said about having business and marketing skills is more important than the quality of photos you produce to a certain degree. You can be an amazing photographer producing stunning images, but if running a business is not your strength (as in answering the phone and always following up with every call / inquiry as soon as you can) or spending time on promoting your business is something you dread, finding way to be just as good as these as you are behind the camera is critical. Or, bring on a partner that can do this for you.

Contact Info:

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