2025 03 24
Mal, from a Keep it 100 session at See You Soon. Chicago, Illinois. October, 2024. Ā© Clayton Hauck
Becoming a Portrait Studio
by Clayton Hauck
The following thoughts were written in conjunction with an event happening later this week. Keeping The Lights On: An evening with photographers Clayton Hauck and Jason Little. They will discuss the importance of creative exploration within personal work and projects. You can rsvp for that event here.
Becoming a studio portrait photographer has been a humbling process and far more challenging than I anticipated. While, yes, Iāve been a professional photographer for two decades now, Iāve actively avoided pursuing portrait or headshot clients. Previously, I didnāt have the studio space and for that reason alone it never made much sense. Dedicated space aside, the economics of portrait photography is challenging, especially in todayās market, where everyone is either a photographer themselves or knows a skilled photographer.
All this said, I became obsessed with a setup artist Jeremy Cowart was offering and sharing via his Instagram. He now calls it The Portrait Lab and has built an entire business around the concept in his hometown of Franklin, Tennessee, outside of Nashville. The methods that caught my attention were his use of a projector to change the background throughout the shoot (heās now using a fancy LED wall), along with varied lighting schemes which cycle through as you shoot. Basically, I loved the idea of creating a more organic and random situation inside of a controlled studio setting. It would blend a bit of my own candid photographic style into a more traditional portrait approach and I had to try it for myself.
Days of internet sleuthing and rabbit holes eventually led me to the setup I now use (though I prioritize tweaks and trying new things each time I set it up). Jeremy is quite open about his process and has laid much of it out in various industry talks you can find online. For me, the biggest hurdle was not figuring out how to technically do it, but the decision to blatantly steal the idea of another artist. Itās one I still struggle with, while doing everything I can to make the setup my own in the process. For example, he embraced Ai while I shunned it and made Anti-Artificial Intelligence the core focal point of my process.
The name āKeep it 100ā came to me while editing photos late one night in the studio. Chicagoās now mayor Brandon Johnson was doing a campaign event, dropped the line in conversation, and it just sort of clicked. I could offer people one-hundred unique photos for one-hundred dollars in one-hundred seconds, all while shunning Ai and providing people with real-life images in a style that is hard to believe isnāt artificial. It would showcase the power that photography can still wield in a world where technological advancements are eroding our standards towards what we believe is real.
THE NEXT BIG THING IN PORTRAIT PHOTOGRAPHY
The first few test shoots I did were so fun that I was completely convinced this thing was going to be huge. In my head, I was envisioning renting spaces to open additional studios while completely customizing the experience to whatever the subjects wanted. Different colors, backdrops, lighting vibes, propping, wardrobe, etc. It would be like a professional wedding photo booth on steroids and there would be lines out the door, I thought! This thing was going to be so big I could pivot my career and open up locations offering these quick and exciting portrait sessions all over the country! Like a photo-obsessed Ray Krok, I was already perfecting the operational flow as guests moved through the setup.
Then I started offering sessions ā for free ā to my friends and Instagram followers. Thatās when the challenging reality of the situation began to set in. While Iād been thinking this thing would quite literally sell itself and get instantly booked solid whenever I made openings available, the exact opposite thing happened. Nobody cared. It was hard to get people to come by and park themselves in front of my camera, even for the low price of freeeeee!
Quickly, I learned that convincing people to come to you and give you any amount of money is no easy task, even when youāre offering what you consider to be the worldās best portrait deal. Communicating your ideas are even more important than executing them. That was the takeaway, and it was demoralizing and almost made me give up; itās what Iām still working on well over a year later.
SALES > SKILLS
This is the grim reality that artists like myself never want to believe is true. We like to think that good work will rise to the top and get an audience naturally. That people will come flocking to us for our skills alone. That if we only buckle down and focus on producing the best work, everything else will fall into place naturally. At the same time, we love to complain about how so-and-so is terrible and itās dumbfounding that they got signed by a rep and are working on huge productions all of the time. We focus on the negatives and make excuses that donāt help us in any way. Iām amazed by how often I catch myself remembering that not everyone else already knows and thinks the same things I do.
The portrait setup, for me, was a great refresher in starting out as a photographer ā this shit is hard!
While things started very slow, they did eventually pick up, hardly thanks to my own doing. I stumbled along, offering portrait openings every few months as my schedule allowed, but bookings were light even at my $100 price point. Fortunately, my studio has also allowed me to expand my social network as Iām meeting lots of people through the various events that we host. This is when I learned the value of influencers (another thing we photographers love to scoff at!).
Dennis Lee is a super talented guy (you can find him at Food is Stupid and The Party Cut). He booked a $100 session and loved the results so much that he wrote about it on his popular newsletter, while also telling me I was insane for making it so cheap, which helped me to raise my prices. This was just the bump I needed. Both a social proof-of-concept and a shot of much-needed confidence for myself, the next session found itself a ton more bookings, largely thanks to Dennis, and also because Iād kept at it through the awkward period when things werenāt working out as I thought they were going to.
After the Influencer Bump, I embraced the word-of-mouth method and began to focus on shaping an email list to help promote the offering (something I should have been doing from day one). I woke up one Monday last fall and decided to drop another run of dates the following week. Within hours, I had a dozen bookings already lined up. This was the moment I realized I was on to something with some real potential.
LETS TALK NUMBERS
Earlier I mentioned stealing Jeremyās idea as being difficult for me. It still is. Another challenge is the super low price point. As a commercial photographer, Iām used to being ātoo expensiveā for clients on a regular basis. We have high standards and we are pretty tough about sticking to them, so me coming out and offering dirt cheap portrait sessions both goes against my own standards and does a disservice to other portrait photographers who make a living doing this work, which is another thing Iām very sensitive to.
So why do I do it?
This answer is complicated and, admittedly, still evolving. My immediate response is that itās a tough market and the only easy way to get regular bookings is to offer a deal so good that people canāt resist. But this doesnāt justify undercutting your colleagues. My current working justification is that this is a trade. While, yes, Iām giving people wildly affordable portraits (my pricing has since risen to $150, with various add-ons also available to help make it more lucrative for me), Iām also doing it on my own terms. In a sense, these cheap sessions are paid test shoots for me. Iām using whatever backgrounds and lighting schemes I want to try out and learn from, while keeping each session very short (ten minutes or less, usually) so that I can squeeze in a bunch each day. This helps make the math work better without compromising the results ā people are still getting an incredible value and the low price point makes me feel good, in a way, that I am providing a āhigh endā service for an accessible fee. Itās important to me that Iām able to cater towards faces and personalities that otherwise would not show up if I was charging, say, $600 a session (a price that is far more representative of my time and the equipment involved in making all of this happen).
All that said, when my agent tells me I ālook desperateā and am ruining my reputation, I donāt fully disagree with her. This industry runs on perception, and the guy doing cheap headshots, or shooting weddings, or events, canāt be trusted to handle a McDonaldās production the following week. Love it or not, thatās how things work.
Her solution is for me to raise my prices significantly. My solution is to drop them and make the whole thing an art project. My end goal is to make Keep it 100 run as a project that primarily raises money for charity, while working with sponsors and finding other creative solutions to fund it and make money for myself. While the vision is still formulating in my brain (and is very much inspired by another friend and Keep it 100 backer, John Carruthers), and I have a lot of work left to do, itās this goal which is driving me forward and keeping me most excited about the project.
IN CONCLUSION
Trust me, I hate talking about this stuff. Iād much rather be at the studio shooting new sessions right now and letting things play out organically. But Iām also learning that itās important, both for marketing purposes (yuck) and my own sanity, to dedicate time towards processing everything and talking about it. Without stopping to digest what you are doing and why it is either working or not working, you risk driving yourself mad in the process or missing potentially simple solutions which allow your idea the space it needs to grow into what you know it has the potential to be.
Iām excited to share the next phase of this endevour, which is largely me getting back to my roots, in the coming days.
-Clayton
Thanks for reading and if you want to hear more about this, the next phase of Keep it 100, and various other personal projects Iāve been working on, stop by my studio this Thursday for the APA Chicago event. Click here to book a session or sign up for the Keep it 100 email alert list and get some fun new photos of your own!