I've been in the photography business for 10 years
Updated: Oct 19
It has been ten years since my first paid photography job. Looking back, what surprises me most is how many highs and lows can fit into a decade behind the camera.
There have been shoots where I have lost all sense of time. Everything else has faded away, leaving just the moment in front of me and the challenge of capturing it. There have also been periods when I have wondered whether I was burning out. A technical question has kept me awake all night, too curious to put it aside. And yes, there have been days when nothing seemed to work and putting the camera down felt like a very sensible idea. Then one photograph would come together exactly as I had hoped, and I would remember why I do this.
I suspect anyone who puts their heart into their work knows that feeling. Photography happens to be my version of it. The satisfaction matters so much because getting there is not always easy.
Product photography is a good example. I did not enjoy it when I started. It felt painstaking and repetitive: adjusting a product, checking every detail, then adjusting it again. A tiny imperfection that barely registered in person could suddenly become the first thing I noticed in the photograph. There is creativity involved, of course, but it has to serve a clear purpose: showing the product accurately and making it appealing to a potential customer. A clever image is not much use to the client if it fails to do that.
I originally trained as a machinist, so that demand for precision feels familiar. Turning and milling teach you that even a small measurement error can ruin an entire piece of work. Product photography calls for a similar kind of attention. You cannot simply decide that a distracting detail adds character and hope nobody notices. Tempting, perhaps, but rarely a convincing argument.
Early on, I sometimes accepted product shoots because I needed the work rather than because I was excited about them. I complained about how tedious they could be. Looking back, though, those jobs taught me far more than I appreciated at the time. They made me practise patience, self-discipline and humility, even when I would have preferred to be doing something else.
At twenty, I tended to see things in black and white. If I liked something, I wanted to do it; if I did not, I wanted to avoid it. Experience has made that view rather less convincing. Sometimes the work you resist is exactly the work that helps you develop. You may only understand what it has given you much later, when you find yourself drawing on those skills somewhere else.
I am not claiming to be the best product photographer out there. There are people whose work in this field is far more accomplished than mine. But learning to do it has shaped me, both as a photographer and as a person. These days, I approach it with a very different attitude. What once felt like an unwelcome obligation has become a part of my work that I can appreciate on its own terms.
Which brings me to the photographs below: a product shoot I did this month for Apissima Apiary. After everything I have just said about learning to appreciate product photography, it seems a fitting project to share.
You can see all the pictures here:
