I’ve started experimenting with my photography work over the last couple of weeks and it’s been really fun - but also very frustrating and uncomfortable process to say the least.

It feels like I’m back in the beginning, the newbie who doesn’t know what she is doing but I’m also loving the fact that something feels creatively challenging. I haven’t felt that for such a long time with my commercial work.

I’ve had my signature “style” in photography for years now and clients would hire me to always follow the same script: you know super contrasty, hard light for luxury brands. But if I’m completely honest with you, it doesn’t excite me anymore. Not like it used to.

Maybe it’s not challenging enough, maybe it’s not real reflection who I am anymore either.

The new (very exciting!!) Art Direction

I’ve been sitting with this question: What is it that I want my work to say or what does this all mean? Not to my clients, but to me personally. And for years I’ve been looking inspiration from all around the world - America, Southern Europe, all the places but not where I’m actually from, Finland.

So I sat with this, and thought about how I could translate the feeling of being Nordic into my photography. How does it really feel to be Finnish?

Finland is such a beautiful country, and there is this sense of simplicity and Melancholic that is hard to explain, but maybe I can turn that into visual work so people can feel it that way?

Last week I’d some free time so I decided to spend it shooting something just for me.

It basically felt like I was back in my happy place.

I realised, it’s been months since I’ve let myself to spend time on shooting from a place of curiosity and I felt like a kid again.

When you work in advertising and shoot commercials everything becomes really structured and it’s really easy to forget this part. But it’s so important.

The challenges of Still Life

Most photographers I teach and creatives walking through the doors of Her Studio usually would say how they struggle lighting wider scenes, or bigger sets - which to me feels fairly easy now, but going back the other way when you light still life, you’re working with such small areas that I’ve found that extremely challenging.

With still life photography you’re making everything much more simplistic, which kind of feels like the opposite of what I’m used to shooting.

What I’m learning at the moment is that still life is more like an object study, that showcases textures, materials, light and mood. Maybe there is more?

This week at Her Studio

Our community is currently building projects around this month’s theme which is Morning Rituals and I’ve started to plan mine! I confirmed a drink stylist today too so it’s gonna be great fun working on this after my holidays.

One of my favourite thing about this space is to see how different everyone’s work is. We have one brief for everyone, but every single month the stories and worlds look completely different.

I’m so glad I started the community, it means so much to me now. And it’s not just about building beautiful portfolios - even though that’s the outcome - but it’s about become a director of your company who understands the industry and becoming someone who builds work from within, not copying what other photographers are doing.

It’s a really special crew.

Tomorrow we have got our monthly Q&A live call and this month we’re diving into commercial lighting, excited to hear everyone’s questions!

Thanks for stopping by. Now tell me, what is it that you’re working on this week?

I hope you’ll find some creative play time just for you. Not for your followers, but for you.

Have a good one! x

Subscribe to weekly artist notes | By Jenni Helin, Her Edit

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I mean majority of creatives online still do this.

But wouldn’t agree that the most interesting accounts you follow show little bit more?And I’m not talking about being an “influencer” but we want to hear your story, and see how you work. Regardless if you’re photographer or a client.

I'm still working on visibility myself. It’s funny to look back, but I’ve always been a people pleaser. So with things like marketing a personal brand - you fall into this trap of just thinking what other people need instead of showing the real you.

And I think that's the real test.

Also - I’ve seen big brands this year sharing BTS content from shoots, and then using those as the campaign instead of the photos alone. It’s pretty cool. Companies going anti-AI!

The year of change

Ah, what a wild ride it’s been.

It’s been one of the most challenging years in business, but for completely different reasons than before. When I worked as a commercial photographer, I was usually exhausted from traveling and putting so much pressure on my body.

Fun fact- I weighed my hospitality equipment the other day and it’s 45kg. That’s more than half my body weight. Yeah, I don’t drive either. Point being, it’s really hard work.

Yes it’s creative and super rewarding, and fun at times, but it’s not an easy profession to be in. Especially when you’re getting closer to 40.

People see the glamorous pictures online and think your life is just 5-star hotels and beautiful pictures, but there’s another side that I see no one talking about. Maybe it’s because we feel so grateful for all the work we get that we just keep quiet.

To keep things real, and to remind you that food photography isn’t always so glamorous - here’s me eating a meal deal last week at the side of the road, 20 minutes before call time.

To give you the full picture, I travelled a lot last year. Not every month, but there were times I was away 3-4 days a week, staying in hotels, and when got back home I was so exhausted I didn’t have much energy for anything else. And when you overwork, you’re faced with a creative burnout, which happened to me last year.

I’m also a mum. My son turns 3 in a few weeks, so I knew our situation just wasn’t working. So you pivot.

And that’s what I’ve done this year.

I now teach photographers how to build creative projects, in a way that feels exciting and fulfilling. Because let’s be honest, all the photographers I know who purely shoot commercial without personal work - are they really happy?

Maybe grateful to have healthy bank balance and constant stream of work, but creatively fulfilled kind of happy?

This comes from a place of love, because I know what it’s like.

It’s time to slow down a little

For months now I’ve been so focused on building Her Edit, and I hit a bit of a breaking point a few weeks ago. Mainly because of marketing - it’s exhausting to be everywhere, juggle two businesses, and be a wife, good friend, and a mum to a toddler.

It’s a lot.

I built Her Studio at the beginning of this year and I’ve loved it. Working as a creative director, and teaching this community, has honestly been one of the best things I’ve done in my career.

But I can feel that the marketing is slowly wearing me down. I’ve never loved short form content, and I think that’s why I really love platforms like Substack and YouTube. You get to learn some cool stuff every day, and people here have really inspired me to build something personal, but in a much nicer way than on other social media platforms.

Now I’m starting to think, maybe it’s okay to slow down a little. And I hope the right people will find my corner of the internet without me trying so hard.

It’s time to change things up a little.

What’s coming next?

Being part of the studio has really inspired me to shoot creative work again, which I’m so grateful for. I think the studio tends to do that to people.

But instead of focusing on projects that support my commercial career, I’m way more interested in fine art and still life. Things like art books, exhibitions, printing, collaboration projects. All the creative stuff that I’ve always loved.

I remember when I was 12, telling my grandma I was going to be an artist when I grew up, living in Paris. Well... the seaside town where I live is not quite Paris, but maybe I can be an artist of some kind. Let’s see, time will show.

I thought it would be a fun personal project to document my journey, whatever the outcome. I might not succeed, I might, but I’ll sure have some fun times ahead of me.

I was planning to start this still life book project this week, but I’ve got 3 client galleries pending, studio live today, and a project briefing waiting to be recorded, so my creative work is on hold till next week.

No idea where any of this goes yet. But I'd love for you to be here while I find out.

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Few lessons I’ve learned this year about running a creative business:

• It’s ok to love and work on different things - stop trying to put yourself in a box (friendly reminder to myself)

• Schedule in creative days (otherwise they will never happen!)

• Build relationships with other photographers, you don’t have to do this alone

• Stop worrying so much about what other people think. If someone thinks or says something negative about your work that tells me more about them and their insecurities

• Be brave and always follow things that light you up

If you’ve made this far, thanks for being here!

I really hope this article finds the right people.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve a studio briefing to record. See you next week.

Love, Jenni x

When I'm on set, I get really immersed in the world-building. All the stories, set design, beautiful food styling, textures, colours, highlights and shadows that run through the set. It's almost like nothing else exists in that very moment. I find it really relaxing and exhausting at the same time. And when it's time to go home, when I leave the crew after multiple shoot days, I always feel really sad when the bubble bursts and it's time to return to reality.

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Going back to the early days in my career when I was still figuring things out, not just business but even photography felt really hard.

I quickly realised that me reaching out to clients asking for shoot opportunities just didn’t work and I knew deep down that there had to be something for that other person, to get a yes. If you think for a second that someone walks up to you and asks you to give them work, what would you say? You’ve never met this person, you know nothing about them. You’d probably lean towards “sorry who are you” or just ignore them? Right??

My first project was called “Behind The Restaurant”

It was covid, in 2020 and all the restaurants were forced to shut their doors. People were struggling as you know. Around the same time I was desperate to get out of my corporate job. I was such a foodie, loved cooking and I thought restaurant photography could be my get out of jail free card.

At the time (well still am!), I was obsessed with fine dining, small plates, and all that jazz living in Brighton, which is btw the foodie capital of the UK!

So I sat down, started brainstorming ideas how to help all these small restaurants in my area, and I came up with this idea of putting together a project where I would get cool shots for my portfolio, and they would get free marketing pictures for their web.

Now this is the usual recipe for a personal project, but I wanted to secure these clients in a long run, so I suggested that we do the free shoot, but I’d also interview them for my blog. I wanted to get to know them and hear how covid was for someone who owned a small business.

And because I started building genuine connections with these people, they hired me again and again. People need to like you first, the paid work will follow.

For this project I did 10 free mini shoots, blog articles and ended up making £20K+ in revenue over the next few years. But it’s not even just about the money, but I was finally on the map where real industry people saw my name. That meant so much to me and it was exactly what I needed to kick start my photography career.

Small cafes and restaurants in Brighton turned into bigger restaurants and famous chefs in London. And boy, did I’ve fun shooting and hanging out with these amazing people in my late 20s! Foodie’s dream - and YES I got to eat the food. (most asked question I get from random people)

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Why personal projects work

They feel personalised, and that you genuinely care. When you put together a creative brief, a team, then think about storytelling, the brand’s consumer group and every little detail, it makes the brand feel like you know their brand inside out and you go from “this is lovely work” to “we need to work with this person!”

Inside Her Studio I teach photographers how to put together proposals for brands and build projects that makes an easy yes for the client. We build projects keeping your dream clients in mind, then we connect with the decision makers and pitch the project to them. And it works!

I also do this with my 1:1 mentees and wanted to share a client win with you! (in case you need any encouragement to go and make some cool shit!)

I started working with Anna this year and she has already secured multiple paid shoots with luxury hotels and restaurants in London, using my exact framework and I couldn’t be more proud of her!

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Now go and make something awesome - I know that your dream clients are waiting to hear from you! You’ve got this.

Jenni x

And when you do somehow manage to move into action mode you actually just end up doing things that look like work, but in reality you’re just finding new ways to avoid the actual thing.

I know, because I’ve done all the above.

The most frustrating thing is when you have a great concept sitting in your notes app for six months, always nearly ready, never actually happening.

Over the years I’ve had to learn how to overcome this, because let’s be honest we can’t run a creative photography business if we’re not building creative work ourselves.

What I realised, is that underneath all the feelings and frustration I was scared of fear.

Not the work itself, but the feeling of making something I don’t love. You put in the hours, real time and actual heart into something and coming out the other side disappointed. I’ve felt that so many times, so of course it started to play with my mind when I tried to do something new.

But here is the thing - there is no way of knowing if that next project is gonna be your best work or a lesson. And it’s a risk we all have to take if we want to get better.

Otherwise your current reality will never change.

Here’s what I’ve had to make peace with:

Not every project can be a masterpiece. That’s literally just the job when you work in the creative industry.

Every photographer you admire has a hard drive full of work they don’t show anyone, we just never see it.

The difference between them and someone who stays stuck isn’t because they are more talented or have the perfect concept or even their confidence. It’s just that they made the thing regardless of the outcome.

They let it be imperfect, they took what they learned, and they kept going. And that’s the whole point of personal projects. They are your best resource to learn and get better, so that when the perfect client opportunity lands in your inbox, you’ve already mastered the technical skills for that specific job.

The rest of this article is for paid subscribers.

Below: the three-step framework I use to go from blank notes app to shoot-ready project deck in an afternoon, bye bye overwhelm

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I was six years old when I lost my parents. Unfortunately they chose drinking over looking after me and my sister, so we both moved out. I don’t want any sympathy, but I wanted to tell you this because it’s the beginning of my story. The part I feel, shaped everything that came after.

Back in 1997, I moved in with my grandparents. I grew up in a world that felt slightly off - like overnight I was surrounded by things from the 50s,60s and the 70s, but those were also things I grew to love and you can see this is my work if you look closely.

Don’t get me wrong, I have lovely memories with my grandparents and I’m forever grateful for what they did. But for years I had this big hole in my heart. I still do.

At school I was always the different one. Other kids called me too loud, too much, not enough - depending on the day and depending on who was doing the measuring. But the message was always some version of the same thing: “be like everyone else. Why can’t you just be normal.” - like what even is normal??

And I got very good at hiding my feelings. (Now thinking about it - maybe that’s what helped me with difficult clients later on. Ha.)

As you can imagine, my twenties were a bit of a blur. And no, I'm not talking about a romantic, finding-yourself blur - more of a deliberate disappearing act. Parties, noise, the particular kind of busy that stops you having to feel anything. I was good at that too. But looking back, I think I was just trying to outrun myself. I didn't have the skills or the knowledge to handle life any differently and that’s ok.

I’ve made my peace.

Everything started to shift when I started my business, almost ten years ago now.

I didn’t know it at the time. I just knew that being on a shoot felt different to anything I’d done before. Managing people, making beautiful things, watching a blank space transform into something that hadn’t existed before we walked in. And somewhere in the middle of all of it, I noticed something: I was having fun. Real fun. The kind that doesn’t need anything to take the edge off.

It was everything to me.

I remember the moment I realised I was the first person in my family - like, in my entire family history - to move abroad and build something from scratch with a second language. C’mon that’s pretty awesome! But I was the first to create financial freedom not out of necessity, but out of joy. Out of a vision I’d had for my own life that no one had handed me. I always knew there was more to life. I had to go find it myself, and somehow, I did.

The early days felt like I was a girl on a mission. And I was just getting started.

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2018 to 2021 felt like fun, low-stakes work.

When you're in it, it feels stressful - but now I’m looking back, and I sometimes miss the chaos. Cooking four recipes in a day for a food blogger, stressing about deadlines or the right kind of cutlery to go with your steak and chips. I was still figuring out the business, and my technical skills, and the pressure hadn't really arrived yet. I was just finding my feet and starting to understand what kind of photographer I actually was underneath all the trying to fit in.

I think too often we forget to stop and enjoy the process. Because I know if you’re anything like me, one day you will look back and wish you could relive this time again.

2021 changed everything.

I started working with a mentor who completely changed the way I saw this industry.

She showed me what was possible - not just creatively, but strategically. What it looked like to work at a level where the brief was almost beside the point, because the photographer’s vision was the whole reason you got hired in the first place. She showed me how to manage £10k- £15k jobs - not as a distant dream, but as a logical next step, if I was willing to do the work.

And let me tell you, I was so willing. Girl on a mission again - but this time with a real fire in me. I was ready to take on the world.

I surrounded myself with podcasts, books, conversations with people who were further ahead. I had this hunger - not just to be a better photographer, but to understand the industry, to understand business, to understand myself inside all of it.

It was long hours and exhaustion, alongside some of the happiest memories of my life. Slowly, my reality and my identity started shifting.

I stopped calling myself a photographer who was trying to go commercial.

And I started calling myself a commercial artist. And it felt sooo good! Remember where my life started? Yeah, this was huge.

Here's what I know now that I couldn't have articulated all those years ago.

The thing that was always “too much” about me - the intensity, the vision, the refusal to do things the way everyone else was doing them - that was never the problem.

It has always been my superpower.

Every time I was told to be less, I was being pointed away from the thing that would eventually become my whole career. The bullying, the loss, the years of disappearing into noise - they didn’t break me. They just delayed things. And maybe they were part of the making too, in ways I’m still figuring out.

Commercial photography didn’t just change my career. It changed what I believe I’m allowed to be.

I’m writing this today, as a 35 year old, just feeling so proud of myself. I built something real from a life that started with so much loss and somehow I managed to found an industry that rewards the people who are brave enough to show up as themselves.

And I’m still here, building and hungry for more. Weirdly with my education business it feels like I’m back at the beginning but with so much clarity and confidence in my own voice.

It feels good.

If you’re a photographer still figuring out what your voice actually sounds like, or if you’re holding yourself back because somewhere along the way someone told you to be less - this is your sign to go find it.

Your voice is the whole strategy.

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I want to start this by saying that I went into this research expecting to feel a bit grim about the state of things. And some of it is a bit concerning, I won’t pretend otherwise. But mostly I’m excited to see the new landscape of food photography. The industry is moving towards “realness” and from the looks of it proving something not to be AI becoming the new currency.

Here is what I’m currently seeing

The VSCO Photographers and AI Industry Report (published this April, answered by 401 working photographers) found that 83% of photographers are already using AI in their workflows. And stock photography is taking a serious hit, with AI images jumping from 5% to 35% of all new uploads. But there are a few platforms that I know, like Stills.com that have strict regulations against AI work so brands know they are licensing the real thing. Which I think it’s great!

The crazy thing I’m reading is that product photography can now be done 85-95% cheaper with AI tools. Headshots, 70-90% cheaper. So especially start up and small businesses will use AI purely from the money aspect. If you need to get simple product shots done against a block colour background, and you don’t really value the craft of making the image, I think AI will do a great job.

But here’s what also came out of that same report - and this is the bit that made me put my coffee down.

Only 5% of photographers actually feel threatened by AI. The vast majority are approaching it with curiosity. And when asked about concerns, the biggest one - flagged by 61% of photographers - was that AI-generated imagery might devalue authentic photography.

Not that AI would replace them. But it might make people forget what the real thing feels like. And globally brands and consumers are starting to recognise this - and now we get to the excited part!

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Why AI is rewriting the landscape of commercial photography

Because AI got really, really good at producing technically perfect images... perfect images stopped being impressive. Stopped being interesting. Brands started noticing that the content getting genuine engagement wasn’t the flawless stuff. It is now the messy, human, real stuff.

Which means - and stay with me here - that what we do as photographers with a real point of view, a real eye, a real presence on a shoot? That’s becoming rarer. Not more replaceable. More rare.

Aerie ran a campaign earlier this year pledging no AI-generated bodies. 40,000 likes on the pledge post alone. And it’s not just them, but big brands are building what one report called “proof systems” - showing the behind the scenes of campaigns, what the sourcing looks like, who is working on set, and the real creative process and this is the new marketing strategy.

Before we’d have thought the BTS’s to be an afterthought, but now it’s the actual thing. I feel like it’s becoming part of your brand’s value list - whether you support AI generated images or not.

I’ve been watching this happen in real time in the food and commercial photography world too.

The reports show that clients in 2026 are increasingly asking for lifestyle storytelling over super stylised hero shots. Hands reaching in. Mid-meal chaos. The pour. The steam. Not because they couldn’t generate a perfect overhead flat lay in minutes but because their audience has become eerily good at sensing when something’s real and when it isn’t.

I’m seeing this in agency briefs, restaurants/hotels, editorials, licensing platform reports, social media, it’s everywhere.

People want the receipts now. They want the BTS. They want to see the photographer, the stylist, and the love that went in to the project.

The creative process itself has become the content.

Like most of us, I’ve been sitting with a lot of feelings about AI and this industry over the past year or so.

I don’t think it’s simple. I don’t think anyone who tells you it’s simple is being straight with you.

But reading these reports - properly reading them, not just the doom headlines or ignoring the fact that we need to adapt - all of this has reminded me of something.

The things that made me fall in love with this work in the first place. Cooking real food in my kitchen or being amazed by light reflections. The problem-solving on the fly. The weird little decisions that add up to an image that couldn’t have come from a prompt. The real creative process and the feeling of creating an image that feels mid-convo.

Your personal point of view cannot be generated. Not really, not yet. Maybe not ever - because your point of view isn’t just an output. It’s a lifetime of looking at the world in a specific way.

That’s your way - the lens through your very own brand world.

And the industry is waking up to how much that’s worth.

I don’t know about you, but I find that kind of thrilling!

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If you've been reading any of the photography reports doing the rounds and want to nerd out about them - or if you've been noticing shifts in what your clients are asking for - I'd genuinely love to hear. Reply back. I read every one - Jenni x

My first ever personal project was a case study on Jack Vettriano. He was a brilliant painter who loved all things romance, mystery and nostalgia, and I’ve always loved his work. It was the first time I thought about how to turn a character into a story with food, and I loved it! Obviously we didn’t have a styling team or anything, but a friend kindly agreed to model for me, and we got some shots I still love today, five years later.

Recently I’ve started thinking about the link between different creative industries, and it’s really fascinating to me.

When you start building bigger projects - worlds, I like to call them- you’re not just building a table setup, you’re thinking about the story that happened, in a specific time and place, with specific people. And all the visuals around it.

Everything became about the world my photography lived in.

Let’s take interior design, fashion and photography... I used to think of these as separate rooms in separate houses. Now, if I think about my brand world - aka “my house” - they’re all living under the same roof. I just keep finding new doors. And that’s what keeps the work interesting when you get to the level where editorial food photography starts to feel a little bit boring.

My first ever mentor taught me that food photography series (the bigger projects) are like fashion outfits - and I still love this ideology!

Think about your daily outfits: you’d have leather shoes, jeans and a cotton t-shirt. All different materials, all looking different, but they work perfectly together. So when you start building bigger project series, you’ve got all these different angles to the story, but they never happen in the exact same spot. You have a story, and that story is broken down into 5–10 frames - and THAT is what makes a killer project people actually remember.

You start thinking about location houses, models, lifestyle... and this is where it gets really interesting, because you’ll start learning more about interior design, art history, architecture, fashion, colour worlds, make-up, hair, textiles… Do you want me to keep going?

I started to realise how much art and creativity is all around us - everywhere I looked, all the creative industries - and now I was able to use this in my own commercial work. How AMAZING.

The door they all open onto is storytelling.

Because once you stop arranging props and start asking who lives here, and what kind of morning are they having? everything changes. That’s an interior designer’s question, really. A fashion stylist’s question. And it turns out it’s a photographer’s question too.

The mug stops being just a mug, because it belongs to someone who reads in bed, takes their coffee too strong, and would rather burn the toast than answer their emails. Once you know them, every other choice falls into place.

That, for me, is what scaling up really means. Not better gear, or more followers - but the moment when you start framing the bigger picture. You start building stories around a person. You build the set for someone to live in it. And if you get it right, the viewer forgets they’re looking at a project and they think they’ve just remembered a place they’ve been to.

That’s the magic. When it all feels linked -when interiors, fashion and photography stop being three separate skills and become one instinct you’re following.

Having a brand world feels like you’re building somewhere you’d actually want to live, and that’s how you make every project - personal and commercial - feel like you’re living the dream. How do I know? Because I’ve been dreaming for the past 4 years ;)

If you're now sitting there thinking "okay, but how do I actually build my brand world?" - I've got you. I hosted a whole Masterclass on exactly this, and you can copy my full framework here: [REPLAY]

Restaurant shoots are fun too, but they’re exhausting, and in my experience in the UK, you’re not able to charge usage fees, so your rates are a lot smaller than in the ad world.

For a long time, usage fees and licensing were something I knew existed in theory, but I didn’t really see them until a production company put them on a quote in front of me.

I was working with a global production company for the first time. Editorial job for a UK-wide supermarket. One image. And when the ‘budget email’ came in, I just sat there staring at my screen - because my fee for a single photograph, without any retouching, came to £3,500. Like... can you actually make that in a day?

Someone had finally shown me what the number was supposed to look like when you account for how, where, and how long an image is going to be used. That was the moment I started seeing bigger numbers in my bank account. And for someone normally charging £500-1200 per project, it felt life-changing.

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Here’s the thing nobody tells you early on.

When a brand uses your image - on their website, in a campaign, across paid social, on a billboard - they’re not just buying a photograph. They’re licensing the right to use it, the same as when a movie wants to use someone’s song, they have to pay for it.

And that right has a value that exists completely separately from the time it took you to shoot it.

Your creative fee covers your technical skills, your visual style, and your time. Everything else is a separate line item - your editing, your team, your equipment, the usage.

Your usage fee covers what the image does in the world after you’ve handed it over, generating huge profit margins for the client. So, how do you calculate this fairly?

Let’s break it down ↓

The rest of this article is for paid subscribers.

What’s below: how I calculate usage fees (the percentages, the variables, the matrix I actually use) how I handle the full buyout conversation, the negotiation where I pushed back and walked away with an extra £1,000, and what I do when the fee isn’t where I want it to be but I decide to take the job anyway.

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I’ve always loved them so much. The creative freedom, the world building, the storytelling, working with other people and then seeing the work come together and sharing it... it’s just magic to me. Always has been.

And then I completely forgot this conversation, until last week.

I was reviewing work coming through Her Studio - watching photographers develop their projects, helping each other, building lighting and prop plans - and I had this moment of…

Oh. I’m living my dream. This is the thing I said I wanted two years ago.

I’ve always wanted to spend my days deep in creative work and imagining what’s possible.

Building projects, directing, and helping other photographers make images that actually mean something to them. I didn't make a vision board or set a two-year plan. I just kept working, kept shooting, kept building things that felt exciting - and it feels really good to be here.

I don't think this is a story about manifesting things as much as it is about how well you already know yourself, even when you're not paying attention.

The version of me who said it on that set knew something the version of me with the to-do list hadn't caught up with yet. I wasn't ready two years ago to build what I'm building now with Her Edit. But somewhere underneath the client work and the busy days, I was moving toward it anyway.

Do you ever feel like things happen for a reason?

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Last year, I experienced creative burnout for the first time, which was horrendous at the time, genuinely. But it forced me to look at my business outside of commercial client work. That led me to start Her Edit mentoring and, soon after, to put ideas together for Her Studio. The thing that felt like falling apart was actually just a redirect.

You probably have a version of that moment too. Something you said in passing to a friend, or thought in the car on the way home from a shoot you didn't love. A small, honest moment where you accidentally told the truth about what you actually wanted.

The question isn't whether you know what you want. You do. The question is whether you're building toward it or just waiting for permission to start.

Here's what's been happening inside Her Studio this month.

We kicked this month off with a brand world exercise and it’s wild how different everyone’s is. The in-between weeks were all about planning, shooting, sharing BTS and people helping each other. This week, we’re reviewing projects, and it’s been amazing to see people’s feedback and discoveries on their projects.

Notes from our community:

That's exactly it. When you build work with real intention behind it, something shifts.

You stop second-guessing every frame because you know what you're trying to say and that clarity just keeps getting stronger after each project. It bleeds into how you shoot for clients, how you talk about your work, how you price it, and how you carry yourself and your photography brand.

That's a life change. A quiet one, but very real.

Her Studio is a monthly membership for food and product photographers who are already working, already good - but ready for accountability, project structure, and a community to build bigger, more exciting work alongside.

Each month, I put out a creative brief with relevant trainings and resources. You shoot it, develop it, and bring your point of view to it. I'm in there with you throughout the month - directing, giving feedback, helping you make work that looks like you rather than a version of everyone else.

Now, if you’ve been wondering how to reach the cap between £400-£4K client enquiries, or secretly hoping that clients come to you for your style and storytelling, you already know what you want.

Now let’s build it. Our next project starts tomorrow!

[Join Her Studio →]

And the only time I really respond is when it’s something I actually need, or I know it’ll help support my business.

I’ve no doubt every single company is exactly the same. But the good news here? There’s a way we can show up with real value and actually support the dream brands we want to work with.

Before I get into it, a little back story.

I was someone who avoided pitching for as long as I possibly could. I thought it felt pushy and “salesy” for years even though I felt anxious about not having enough work, and I was hoping that someone would send me an enquiry on a daily basis. Not how you run a successful business.

A few years ago - because of my stubbornness, or lack of logic/confidence - I got to the point where I wasn’t sure if I could pay my mortgage and bills. So I said to myself: maybe it’s time we give this pitching thing a go.

And I’m glad I did.

Over the years I’ve realised something that changed my whole mindset around this.

You’re not actually selling anything, but building your Networking. It’s me - a creative, with a point of view - going, “hi, I exist, I think your product is beautiful, here’s what we could do with it.” And if your brand world and storytelling is the perfect match with the brand it’s very easy yes from them and there is no need to do any “convincing”. It should feel like a warm introduction, getting to know the person behind the message and that may or may not turn into work one day… and a lot of the magic is in the “one day.”

So, you ready?

Here’s my actual process. Six steps you can start using today in your creative business.

The rest of this article is for paid subscribers

What's below: my six-step pitch process, the exact LinkedIn connection note I send, my cold email and proposal email templates, the free tool I use to find decision-maker emails on LinkedIn, and the follow-up flow that's landed me most of my yeses. If you want to start pitching without it feeling icky, let me show you what has worked in my photography business.

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People started arriving on set and I was there, walking in circles, watching digi setup, watching set pieces being carried in... completely clueless about what I was supposed to do. Most photographers assist before they run the show and on that day I understood exactly why.

But I got through it. I’m still so proud of myself for doing the scary thing. I learned so much -from building treatments, to handing over an editing brief to a retoucher for the first time. And I want to tell you about the lights, because this one still makes me cringe-laugh.

The producer asked me when I wanted to turn the lights off - meaning, when did I want to start managing the ambient light on set. I said something like “no it’s fine, just leave them on.” She looked at me. I looked at her. Luckily I’d a very experienced digi with me, who kindly figured out some gels for the strobes so the colour would come out correctly.

The control thing

When you start in commercial food photography - that need to control everything isn’t confidence. It’s fear wearing a very convincing outfit.

I thought if I touched every element of the frame, it would look like me. My work. My vision. And that felt important- especially early on, when your whole identity is still wrapped up in being the person who does it all.

But when you style the food, arrange the props, check the light, adjust the composition, and then run back to the camera... you do all of it average. Not bad - but not great either. My attention was scattered across six things and fully present for none of them. The food was fine. The props were fine. The light was... fine.

And fine is the enemy of everything you’re actually trying to make. If you want to get into advertising, you’re aiming for outstanding.

The first time I properly let go

Back in 2022, I was obsessed with this TV show called The Marvellous Mrs Maisel. The colourful set design, the characters, the music, the 1950s nostalgia- everything about it felt like a world I wanted to live inside. And this was probably the first time I started thinking about applying world building into my food photography.

Around that time I got talking to a food stylist. She loved making cakes, I loved the aesthetic, and somewhere in that conversation the idea came together: what if we shot something from the world of Mrs Maisel?

The planning was full-on, I didn’t know anything about prop styling, but we kept it fairly simple and the actual shoot was so much fun! More than I ever expected. But here’s why I’m telling you this. I could have never created a cake like the ones she made. Baking, cooking, styling it’s a completely unique set of skills, built over years. If I hadn’t been willing to let go of the need to do everything, we would never have created this series.

Some of these images have been featured across different websites. I’ve won awards for them. The power of creative collaboration is very real.

I remember standing behind the camera thinking- oh. So this is what it feels like to actually be a commercial food photographer.

That shoot started my commercial career in advertising.

What advertising taught me about teams

When you’re working on a big advertising shoot, nobody does someone else’s job.

The prop stylist isn’t also the food stylist. The food stylist isn’t also the gaffer. The director isn’t scrambling around moving cutlery. Everyone is in their lane not because they don’t care about the other lanes, but because being excellent at one thing is already a full-time job.

The first time I worked in that kind of environment, it was a revelation. And also, if I’m honest... a little humbling. Watching a professional prop stylist work- the tiny colour corrections, prop swaps or the specific technique to fold a napkin just so and seeing how much it shifted the final frame... I realised what they bring is something I could not replicate. Not because I’m not creative. But because they’ve given that skill their whole focus. Their whole ten thousand hours.

You can’t compete with devotion. You collaborate with it. That’s how mastery actually gets built.

The director shift, when you start thinking bigger

When I stopped trying to do everything, something changed. I started paying attention to the whole campaign, not just the image I was about to shoot.

Does the lighting reflect the exact time of day we’re trying to create? How could we push this technically even further? I started coming up with solutions in the moment - because I finally had enough headspace to see them. That never happened when I was building solo.

This is what it actually means to think like a director. It’s not about being in charge of everything. It’s about being fully present for the thing you do best, and trusting the people around you to do theirs.

You start building projects with a storyline. You place products and people in a very specific moment in time and that’s where your best work begins.

At the start of every project now, I build a treatment for the team. We sit down together and they can see my thinking - rough composition references, mood, direction. From there, the styling team brings their own ideas and expertise in. Then it’s equipment, set, prop and food shopping... and then we just have fun making something we’re all really proud of.

The invitation — for you, reading this

If you’re building towards bigger projects - if the idea of bringing a team together both excites and terrifies you - I want you to know that the terror is completely normal. Letting people into your creative process feels vulnerable. What if their vision isn’t your vision? What if you lose the thing you’ve spent years developing? What if people get disappointed? We’ve all started there.

Here’s what I’ve found: the right people don’t dilute your vision. They amplify it. They take what you’re trying to say and help you say it louder, cleaner, better than you could alone. It can take a while to find your people but when you do, it’s the best thing you will do for your career.

You just have to actually let them in. That’s the part that takes practice.

Start small. Message a food stylist you really love the work of. Invite an assistant to a shoot day at home - let them handle the BTS while you stay behind the camera and use the materials for your marketing. Or even better, book a studio for the day! Hand over one element and just... see what happens.

Be the photographer and artist you’ve always wanted to be. This is your permission slip!

This is also why I built Her Studio the way I did.

If you’re reading this thinking I want that - the team, the bigger projects, the clients who come to you because of what they see in your work - I built the strategy and steps for you to get there. This is not for a photographer who’s just starting out, but for someone with real skills and real ambition, who’s still mostly shooting alone and wondering when it starts to feel less like scrambling.

Inside Her Studio, I’ll show you how to plan, build, shoot, and pitch so you stop guessing and start building a body of work that actually speaks to your clients and gets you excited to shoot more creative work. A portfolio that’s yours, not a patchwork of whoever hired you this year. And the skills to go after the kind of clients who’ll pay properly for your creative vision - because they see exactly what you bring to the table.

You don’t have to figure this out alone, not anymore.

Read more here: HER STUDIO

Thanks for reading - I’m here to help you with your commercial photography journey. To start making more money with your creative business, book 1:1 session with me Her Edit Mentoring or come say hi on Linkedin, I can’t wait to chat all things food with you :)

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Every other week inside the paid tier: the real behind-the-scenes of building a commercial photography career - pitching, pricing, creative direction, and everything in between. Seven years of hard-won lessons. Practical, honest, and yours to keep.

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There was a moment right after the producer’s email came in where that little voice showed up again. You sure about this? This is big. What if you can’t pull it off? I sat with it for about thirty seconds, then said yes anyway. And I’m so glad I did. Because this one job taught me more than the previous three years combined and today I’m taking you inside exactly how we made it all happen.

This is the full production breakdown for the Baileys Oat Milk campaign. From the first email to the final image. All of it.

The producer reached out to see if I was available and interested. We’d worked together before, which helped - with production companies you haven’t worked with previously, there’s often an unspoken audition happening on those first emails and calls. They’re often assessing whether you know what you’re doing. (You learn to spot it.)

After the initial conversation came the pre-PPM the pre-production meeting, for anyone newer to this world. This is where you meet your styling team, the creatives, the full production team, and sometimes people from the brand itself. It’s where the creative agency walks you through what they’ve built for the client.

Then came this email from the producer:

Day-time, brunch vibes. Highlights, textures, warmth. They wanted my previous Baileys work as a reference point plus anything else I could pull together. So I built a lighting approach deck.

The rest of this article is for paid subscribers

What’s below: my full lighting approach deck, every question I ask on a PPM call, my handwritten lighting plan from the shoot, a breakdown of how I think about lighting a large set, the full 81-piece kit list, and my honest final thoughts on trusting yourself when the job feels too big.

If you want to shoot at this level this is how it actually works.

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Last week I said goodbye to Instagram and honestly, it was one of the best things I’ve done in a veeeery long time. It felt a bit strange at first, but no regrets there. And if I’m completely honest with you, I feel free.

Isn’t that mad?? The effect of social media.

Back in 2018, when I started my career in food photography, I remember the platform felt so inspiring, and I used to love spending time there. But things change right, and I knew it was time to move on.

I’ve had this low-level anxiety of feeling like I had to be there, even when I had nothing to say or produce images just for the sake of content. So when 2026 started, I made myself a promise: this year, I’m only saying yes to things that genuinely light me up. With client shoots and marketing.

Life is too short, and the window where we actually get to do work we love is even shorter. So please don’t waste it.

What I wasn’t quite prepared for was the response from other photographers.

Some came to say congratulations or give respect to me, some to say they’d miss seeing my work, and a handful with what I can only describe as mild panic on my behalf. “Are you leaving photography?” More than one person asked some version of this, and that question stopped me in my tracks a little. Because the fact that leaving Instagram could read as leaving photography entirely... that says something, doesn’t it?

This got me thinking about my own journey through the years and whether the version of ourselves we’re showing online is actually pointing in the direction we want to go. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this too!

My first business mentor was a brilliant artist

Back in 2021 I hired my first-ever business mentor, because I knew I wouldn’t reach that next stage of my commercial career without help. The investment wasn’t cheap, but it did change my whole career and the course of my life, which I’m forever grateful for her.

She was someone who’d worked at a level I was desperately trying to reach. Early on she asked me who I was talking to online, and I explained: the photographers who followed me, the creatives who resonated with how I talked about my work, the small businesses who liked my aesthetic. A genuinely warm community that I loved.

She listened and then said: “And are those the people you want to hire you?”

They weren’t. And I knew it the second she said it. Things had to change.

I’d been treating social media like a place to hang out with other photographers, vaguely hoping my dream clients would spot me while I was doing it. And it all sounds obvious now, but when you’re in it, the logic feels completely fine because you’re trying to build your ‘dream career’. Everyone else is doing the same thing, the community is real and warm, and it genuinely doesn’t occur to you that the room you’re performing for might not contain a single person who would actually have the money to hire you or the kind of money that makes you feel good.

So that one question my mentor asked me all those years ago reframed everything.

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There are two versions of a food photographer,

and they’re both completely legitimate, but they attract very different work when it comes to marketing.

One shows up warmly and consistently. Beautiful feed, improving reels, a real behind-the-scenes window into their life and process. People feel like they know them, and brands want that energy and their audience.

The other is quieter, more mysterious creative. More specific when they do show up. They talk about decisions, the brief, the casting, the colour direction of a campaign. Less like someone sharing their day, and more like someone who runs a room with others. And the clients who find them are looking for exactly that.

The shift between the two isn’t really about platforms or posting frequency. It’s about whether you’re thinking like a photographer or a director. And once I understood that difference, I could not unsee it. It was everywhere!

When I made that shift, it wasn’t dramatic or overnight.

People used to DM me, asking if I’d shoot their product “for exposure” - anyone who has experienced this can imagine the joy I felt when this gradually dried up. The version of me that was visible online had stopped signalling I was available for it.

The conversations that started replacing those? It was with producers. Art directors. Brands with actual budgets and briefs. It was such a big change for me and it was a completely different energy, but interestingly, these were not happening on Instagram.

Obviously, there is more to the story than just changing my messaging, but for the sake of this conversation, your voice will either invite people in or send them away.

LinkedIn gets a bad rap in creative industries and look, I understand it’s not “as fun” as something like instagram but every marketing director you want to work with is sitting on there. I’ve had conversations start in the comments and end in a studio. You can connect with people after shoot days, stay front of mind, and share how you think about work in a way that feels considered rather than performative. It’s not about being corporate. It’s about being findable by the right people hiring photographers.

I’m not saying delete your Instagram or that leaving was the right call for everyone. It was right for me, at this point in my career, for reasons that are mine.

But if you’ve been feeling a low hum of confusion about why certain clients keep finding you or why the ones you actually want never seem to, it might be worth sitting with the question my mentor asked me all those years ago.

Who are you actually talking to? And are those the people you want to hire you?

Because the version of yourself you put out into the world will slowly start shaping the next few years of your career. It already is, whether you’re thinking about it or not.

Both paths are real. Both are valid. The question is just which one is yours.

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The projects that have brought me the most success got me in front of the right people and opened doors I didn’t even know were there. And the funny thing is, they were never the ones I made because I felt like I should produce something. They were the ones rooted in a real story. It was always something that happened to me, or a creative angle on something I genuinely cared about.

One of my favourite projects came from my son

When I was on maternity leave, I knew I had to shoot something about that time. Not for content reasons but I wanted to remember this time and create a series that was personal. All the date nights we spent at home. Being more tired than I could ever imagine, and consuming waaay too much coffee. The sushi I’d been dreaming about for nine months, which finally appeared alongside a box of painkillers after giving birth.

Motherhood is wild.

I shot this project with food stylist Charlotte Fuller, who is also a brilliant mama of two, and it became one of the most personal things I’ve ever made.

That project also helped me get an agent. Two different art rep agents mentioned it specifically in our conversations. Not because it was the most technically polished thing in my portfolio but because it felt real and it showed my worldview as a creative.

I had a story to tell, and it made the work more interesting to look at.

And that’s what I want to talk about today and show you how you can build food photography projects that stay on people’s minds and mean something to you as a creative. Because that should be the whole point, right? Not the content schedule or the likes. But because we actually have something to say about this crazy life.

You’re a food photographer, so of course the food is the starting point — right?

So I used to think. But here’s what I’ve come to realise. When food is the starting point in your planning process, you almost always end up with something a bit flat and forgettable. Not because the food isn’t beautiful but because your story blends in with everyone else. I say this with lots of love, having made projects like this more times than I can count.

And honestly, that was most of my early career, but those projects only get you so far.

The shift happened when I stopped thinking purely about what I was shooting and started thinking about who, where, when, and why. You start thinking like a director instead of a photographer and that’s when things start shifting in your commercial career.

I started building stories first, and letting the food live inside them.

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Start with a storyline, not a subject

I will argue that a bowl of pasta is not a concept. A lazy Sunday morning when someone’s cooking for the person they love, using the last of the good olive oil that’s your concept. The bowl of pasta just happens to be in it, and we make sure it’s the most beautiful bowl of pasta you’ve ever seen.

This is the difference between a shot that stops someone mid-scroll and one they slide past without registering it. It doesn’t start with props or styling but with the narrative underneath the image. What happened before this moment? What’s about to happen next? Who is there and why, and what does this food mean to them?

When I started building a storyline before I built a set, everything else got easier. The props started to make sense. The light had a job. The food wasn’t just sitting there looking pretty but it was doing something inside a story. And honestly, it made the whole process so much more exciting. I wasn’t shooting for the sake of shooting anymore. I was building something completely new.

Try it this week: Before you think about anything else in your project, write down three sentences about what’s actually happening in the scene. It will change the way you see the frame before you’ve even picked up your camera.

The first shift is the mindset one. The next two are where it gets practical. The decisions that make a set feel like a world rather than a backdrop. All of that is below for paid subscribers, along with how I build a project brief from scratch before I reach out to the styling team.

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“Jenni, you know this means you’ll get so much more work this year not just food shoots, but we need lifestyle photography all the time for our marketing. These shots are amazing!”

It made me think about the power of spec shoots, and how I’ve used them throughout my career. And maybe there’s something in this for you too.

How you see the world

When I think about any of my personal projects, what I’m really trying to do is show someone how I see the world. The way you see and experience things in life that’s your visual language in photography. Your world view is unique because nobody else has the same memories or perspective as you do.

It took me ages to realise that this is my secret weapon in commercial photography.

Those images I shot for the hotel weren’t technically anything crazy exciting. But I was able to build a story that happened in that room- and that’s what made the marketing team excited. While I was shooting, I was imagining myself having a weekend away somewhere really nice. A luxury spa break, no kids, no husband, just me. What would I do in a hotel room if I had all the time in the world just to relax?

And that turned into a shot list.

I like to think of these shoots as proof for myself and the client on what I can produce, how I see the world, and what storiesI can tell with my camera and lighting.

Most of us default to sharing just client work. Which means our books end up full of other people’s briefs, styling choices, someone else’s stories. But your stories- all the things you’ve experienced in life, the worlds you’re drawn to, the way you move through life that’s your creative magic, right there.

Stories are so powerful in marketing, and they’re the thing that keeps you on top of mind. People buy stories because they make them feel something. And the stories aimed at a specific person? Those are usually the ones generating the most income.

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The beauty of spec shoots

You’re not waiting for permission or working around someone else’s budget. You’re walking into a space or building one and saying: this is how I’d shoot this if you trusted me completely. Pick a brand you’d genuinely love to work with, shoot it like you already have the job, and don’t wait for the perfect location or budget to do it.

Do you have to invest your own money into this? Yes. Exactly like every other business does. Clients invest in photography shoots hoping it will make them more successful- we’ve to do the same thing just from a different angle.

When a dream client sees a spec shoot that looks like them, done your way, with your eye and your instincts all the way through? That’s not just pretty pictures in your portfolio. That’s a proposal for them. It’s proof that you can handle the paid shoot and make your clients more successful. And the really cool thing is that the more you do these, the more you start to see brands coming to you asking “hey, do you think you could shoot something similar for us?”

It’s not always about attracting new clients

That hotel shoot I told you about, it let me experiment with something different, outside of food photography. Sometimes these shoots spark something in me, and other times it’s a full body I don’t want to do this- either way, I feel like it’s a win. These shoots have build up my confidence and given so much clarity on my creative direction, and that’s the most fun part of all of this.

That hotel shoot reminded me how much fun photography can be when we’re not shooting from a brief.

So if you’ve been waiting for a client to email you a dream brief I want to encourage you to stop waiting. Give it to yourself first. Rent your dream location, hire a hotel room for the day, purchase something you’d love to shoot and make something beautiful with it.

And remember the magic is in your personal stories. And most often, those projects are the ones that we love the most (and so does your clients!).

Think about the client you’d love to work with. Then go and show them through images, not a pitch deck- what a collaboration with you actually looks like. And if you already have someone in mind? That’s your answer. Go shoot it.

If any of this landed for you, come and find me inside Her Studio. It's where I work through this kind of thing with photographers who are ready to stop playing it safe with their portfolios. Real briefs, real creative direction, and a community that actually gets what you're building. I think you'd love it.

HER STUDIO ACCESS

J x

She didn’t hire me. And I genuinely don’t think it was the price. I think it was the energy around my pricing.

That call probably left her feeling like I wouldn’t do an outstanding job. All because I didn’t believe in myself and my work enough. And here’s the painful bit: I had the work. The portfolio was there. I just didn’t know how to position or trust myself enough to win the job.

Your price is a signal before it's a number

Your pricing isn’t just a logistics conversation. It’s not a budget problem, it’s not even really about money, at least not primarily. It’s you, communicating your skill level and giving them a reason to trust you before the shoot even begins.

In these higher-paying jobs, the person hiring you doesn’t care about how much you charge as much as they care about the quality of work you deliver.

The simplest way I can explain it is this. Your pricing tells people what tier you’re in. It sets an expectation before any creative conversation has even started. And what most of us do, myself very much included, for longer than I’d like to admit, is price from a place of fear rather than from a place of positioning. We charge what we hope people will say yes to, rather than the actual value we can deliver and how much experience we have.

What happens when pricing and work don't match

When a brand or a client is looking for a photographer, they’re already forming an impression before they even speak to you.

They’ve seen your work, they’ve felt something, and that’s why they’ve emailed you. Your pricing either confirms the story your images are telling, or it creates this weird dissonance they can’t quite name, but they can feel.

High-end work priced like a favour? Feels very confusing. Suddenly, they’re second-guessing what they saw. Did she forget to add a line item? What am I missing? Can she actually deliver what we’re looking for? This seems so much cheaper than other quotes. Why?

Work that’s still developing, priced with unearned confidence? Also confusing - just in the other direction. And this is why it’s really hard to figure out pricing, especially in the early stages of your career.

But when your pricing is in alignment with your work and experience: when the whole thing just fits together, the client doesn’t think twice. They feel like they’re in the right place. And that feeling is worth more than any negotiation tactic.

I always say to my mentees: if you don’t feel confident in your pricing, your clients won’t either.

The period of my career when I was chronically undercharging

And I think a lot of you reading this will recognise this: I wasn’t undercharging because I hadn’t done the maths. I was undercharging because I was scared of losing clients to photographers who were charging less. Scared of the silence after a quote. Of someone choosing someone else, and me spending three days wondering if I’d priced myself out of a job I actually wanted. Sound familiar? Yep, soul-crushing.

So my pricing had this apologetic quality to it. Like I was already negotiating before anyone had pushed back. I just always assumed the client had no budget, and that if I wanted more yes’s, I had to undercharge.

And the clients that came in at those rates? Some of them were genuinely wonderful. But a lot of the engagements had this looseness to them: slow to respond, a bit casual about timelines, a “can we just quickly add one more...” Because somewhere in the transaction, my own energy had said: this is flexible. She’ll be fine with it.

I was teaching people how to treat me through my pricing.

Looking back now, I really wish I started working with a mentor sooner than I did - I’ve left so much money on the table, simply because I didn’t understand how the industry was built.

Pricing is identity, not just a number on a spreadsheet

There’s no formula. Yes, you can roughly price yourself based on the market and I’ll get into the practical side of this in a moment, but from my personal experience, it’s more about your identity than anything else. You decide what level of photography you provide, where you stand, and whether your pricing reflects that decision or if it undermines it every single time.

I’ve seen this in myself and in every mentee I’ve worked with: pricing is a form of self-identification. When you hold a number with confidence, you’re saying this is the category I’m in. I get asked all the time, “What should I charge for this job?” but the minute I give them my price, I can see how uncomfortable they get.

That’s the thing. You have to figure out pricing that makes you feel confident above anything else. Your ideal clients will always see the value you offer when you believe it first.

Your confidence comes with the decision - not before it. I’ve seen this enough times now that I really believe it.

Want the practical side? That’s what’s inside for paid subscribers.

In the full article, I go into:

• The day rates you should be quoting for advertising work - and why going too low immediately signals inexperience to producers

• How to structure licensing fees and the exact questions to ask before you ever send a quote

• Why you should never negotiate over email - and the data from my own business that proved it

• How to handle pushback without caving, including your walk-away number and what to actually say

• Retainers - what they are, how to propose one, and why they change the whole client dynamic

• Journaling prompts to help you figure out what’s actually going on with your relationship with money

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Simple. But once you hear it, you can’t not see it. It’s everywhere.

There’s obviously so much more to it than that - so let me try to break it down in a way that actually makes sense.

It starts with who’s paying and why

The simplest way I can explain it is this. Commercial photography exists to sell something and editorial photography exists to tell a story.

That single distinction changes everything - the brief, the budget, the creative freedom, the usage rights, the timeline, and honestly, how you show up on set.

When a brand hires you commercially, they’re investing in imagery that will represent them. It’ll live on their website, their packaging, their ad campaigns. Every single decision: the props, the colour palette, the mood is filtered through their brand guidelines and signed off by multiple people. There’s usually a creative director, an art director, a client, maybe a whole marketing team all with opinions. And that’s fine, that’s the job. You’re hired to execute a vision that serves the brand’s goals, and to do it brilliantly.

An editorial is a completely different conversation. A food magazine, a newspaper supplement, an online publication - they’re hiring you to create imagery that serves a story. Maybe it’s a feature on a chef, a seasonal recipe spread, a piece about a food trend. The brief is looser and the creative freedom is wider. Nobody’s checking whether the napkin matches the brand’s Pantone colours (well from my experience!).

The honest difference in creative freedom

I want to be careful here because I don’t want to make commercial work sound creatively limiting - it isn’t, when it’s the right client and the right project. Some of the most technically challenging and visually exciting work I’ve done has been commercial.

But there is a real difference in where the creative decisions live.

In editorial, you have so much more say. You’re trusted to bring a point of view, to change the composition, to make choices on set without running them past six people first. It can feel… freer. More personal. Like the work has your fingerprints all over it.

In commercial work, your taste is part of why you were hired, but ultimately you’re working within someone else’s world. The best commercial photographers understand that and genuinely enjoy the collaboration. The ones who struggle are usually the ones who want editorial freedom inside a commercial brief and that tension doesn’t end well for anyone.

The money conversation (because we have to)

Commercial pays more. Significantly more, in most cases. And the reason is simple -the images have commercial value. They’re being used to generate revenue for a brand, and the licensing reflects that. You’re not just selling your time on set, you’re licensing the usage of your images, and that’s where the real money in commercial photography lives.

Editorial rates are generally much lower - sometimes shockingly so but they are fun when you’ve a great team with you. You’re paid for your time and creativity, but the usage is limited (usually a single publication, one issue, no advertising rights) and the budgets reflect that. A lot of editorial work is genuinely passion-led. Photographers take it for the creative freedom, the portfolio value, the relationships it builds, and the visibility inside the industry.

Neither is better. They serve different purposes in your career.

How they work together

Here’s something nobody really talks about enough. Your editorial work is often what gets you commercial work.

But there’s something worth keeping in mind when you’re building personal projects, because the two worlds actually look quite different on set. Editorial projects tend to be shot on-table: think meals with friends, a beautifully laid dinner, food in its natural context. Commercial projects go off-table entirely: food or drinks out in the world… eating in a car, takeaway sushi on an armchair, a sandwich next to your shoes. I always think of editorial as the more traditional dining experience, and commercial as the slightly unhinged, brilliant cousin who throws the rulebook out and makes it work anyway.

When brands and agencies are looking for a photographer, they want to understand your visual language, your brand world, your technical skills, and how you see food. And editorial spreads - especially beautifully shot ones with real creative freedom. A stunning magazine feature tells a potential client: this is how she sees the world. This is what she does when nobody’s giving her a mood board.

So even though editorial might not pay as well in the moment, it can absolutely be an investment in your commercial career. The two feed each other more than people realise.

Which one is right for you

Honestly? Both, probably at different seasons of your career and for different reasons.

If you’re building your portfolio and developing your style, lean into editorial. Chase the briefs that excite you, even if the budget is small. Let yourself have a point of view. Make work that feels unmistakably yours. And every now and again shoot something a bit crazy with your team.

If you’re ready to scale your income and work with bigger brands, start thinking about the commercial world - how licensing works, how to position yourself, how to communicate with art directors and agencies. It’s a learnable language and once you speak it, you will start seeing more yes’s.

Food photographers I admire most tend to do both. They protect space for creative, editorial-style work that keeps them inspired and shows their true voice - and they bring that same quality of vision into their commercial projects. That combination is genuinely rare, and brands notice it.

You don’t have to choose a lane and stay in it forever. But understanding the difference means you can make smarter decisions about which opportunities to say yes to, how to price your work, and how to build a career that actually looks and feels good in your body.

And that’s worth knowing early.

If this was useful, there’s a lot more where this came from. Free subscribers get pieces like this one - but inside the paid tier I go deeper. We’re talking real breakdowns on pricing, licensing, how to position yourself for bigger commercial work, and the stuff I save for when we’re really getting into it.

If that sounds like where you’re headed, I’d love to have you in there.

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So today I want to pull back the curtain on the real power of creative collaborations - not just creatively, but commercially. I’ll show you how to use them to increase your income, strengthen your network, and position your commercial photography business more strategically.

Let’s imagine for a moment that a marketing director lands on your website. They are looking for a photographer for their next campaign.

Here’s something most people don’t say out loud: clients rarely choose you because of your technical skills alone or the latest campaign you shot. They choose you because your work makes them feel something - and that feeling is what stays.

I want you to start seeing that first interaction with your website as someone stepping into your brand world. It’s not just a portfolio. It’s a reflection of how you see life, how you build spaces, and how to translate stories into images. It should make them feel something instantly.

If I landed on your website right now, how would your world make me feel?

Just like in real life, when you walk into a room and immediately feel something, you either want to stay for a while, or you think, this isn’t for me, and you go somewhere else. We all do this in real life. The amount of times I’ve turned around in a restaurant or cafe because it wasn’t the exact place I was looking for.

Brands do the same thing with photographers.

More often than not, I see creatives worrying that they don’t have enough new work to show online, when the real question isn’t quantity at all it’s the quality of the work and how clearly it reflects your unique brand world.

When you reshare older work, it might feel repetitive to you because you’ve lived with those images for months or even years. But for most people, it’s either brand new or they’re seeing it with fresh eyes. Your audience isn’t analysing your archive the way you are.

As long as the work comes from your specific world and feels aligned with your direction, nothing else really matters.

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The World I Grew Up Watching

A quick story from my childhood to get to the heart of this.

So I grew up with my grandparents, and most weekends my grandad and I would sit together and watch technicolour films on tv. Sometimes it was musicals, sometimes romantic comedies, but I remember the colours and optimism so clearly even today.

I used to wonder whether life could actually feel like that.

Of course, I know now that life isn’t always perfectly lit and wrapped in a jazz soundtrack. Although I do believe we create our reality to some extent (currently listening to Summertime by Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong).

Why am I telling you this? Those early references became part of my visual language in photography. Nostalgia, the colour palettes and a sense of joy. Even the music references that still show up in my work and marketing.

When I started building personal projects years later, I wasn’t thinking about strategy. I was simply building worlds that felt familiar to me.

Now here’s the interesting part.

When It Clicked

The first time I walked into The Savoy Hotel for a meeting, I sat in the lobby waiting for the marketing director and realised they were playing a jazz melody by Louis Armstrong in the background.

It was the world I used to dream about when I was ten years old. It was one of those moments when everything zooms out but yet, you stay still.

When I signed my first shoot with them, I remember thinking there’s something here. Me being selected wasn’t random. I’d been building that visual world in my personal work for years: the colours, emotions, and the lifestyle, even the music references. When I walked into that hotel, it felt aligned because I’d already been creating that kind of atmosphere in my own projects.

We were the perfect match - visually and emotionally - and that’s when I truly understood that personal work isn’t just creative practice. It’s positioning.

This is why competition doesn’t really exist at the highest level. Alignment does.

A client who is right for me would not be right for you. Why? Because our stories, personal tastes and visual language are completely different.

How To Use Personal Projects Strategically

When you start collaborating with other creatives, your marketing no longer relies on you alone. Your work reaches new audiences naturally, because it’s being shared across multiple networks not just yours. It’s like having free marketing!

And stylists who have worked in advertising? They often have long contact lists filled with producers, art directors and brand teams you’d love to connect with. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been on a client call and heard, “Oh, we found you through X’s website and we really loved that personal project.” These things travel further than you think.

Commercial photography isn’t built in isolation. It’s built through relationships.

Some people believe doing everything alone makes it more impressive, but in reality, that mindset often keeps you operating at a smaller level for longer than necessary.

If you want to move into bigger campaigns, you need to think bigger than just yourself.

Let’s break down exactly what you need to do to make that happen.

Here’s what we’re going to cover:

• Get crystal clear with your brand world: Questions to get you started + brand world examples from my students

• Build your network first: benefits of building a creative team before you enter advertising

• Create a marketing strategy for your projects: Step by step guide + email template to reach out to decision makers in the industry

• How to make money with personal projects: 3 ways to profit from creative collaborations

• Think in campaigns, not in single frames: what to include in your personal projects to attract more yes’s and build trust

• Consistency is what creates alignment

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When you’re starting out in commercial photography, it’s easy to assume you just need better images to land bigger campaigns. But at a certain level, it stops being about just you and your skills. It becomes about building something bigger with your team.

When you’ve got your go-to people on set, it doesn’t feel intimidating at all. It’s actually fun.

This is why building personal projects with the people you could one day take onto bigger sets matters so much. To me personally, set days often feel like travelling into a world you all built together in pre-production. You walk into the studio and it’s almost like Christmas morning: the set design, the colours, the props everything you imagined is suddenly real and you get to capture it all.

It’s such a good feeling.

And most photographers don’t really see that side of it until they’re already inside the room.

That’s what I want to break down today.

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The Shift From “Just Me” to “My Team”

When you move from smaller projects into the ad world, you’re no longer operating as a solo creative. You’re stepping into a well-planned system where everyone has a clearly defined role, and every role matters.

On a typical commercial shoot, you might see:

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