The word authentic gets thrown around a lot these days by photographers. And it's usually photographers describing themselves on their about pages or in their marketing copy. I don't believe many photographers are truly authentic, not these days with so much exposure to so much photography and so many photographers.
I think to be truly authentic you'd have to be unplugged. No internet. You would have no choice but to shoot the way you see things. I don't think Jeremy and Ashley are unplugged but from what I can know, they are as close to authentic as I've seen.
They have been credited as one of the Top Ten Wedding Photographers in the world by American Photo Magazine and I'm curious to find out how much that actually means to them.
The paragraphs above are the introduction I planned and read at the start of this interview with Jeremy and Ashley from “We Are The Parsons” – little did I know, they are in the midst of a social experiment, a year with no social media! It's no wonder they and their photography come across as truly authentic.
I know you're going to love this interview. I certainly did!
Here’s some of what we cover:
What’s on Offer for Premium Members
If you’re a premium member, you should have received an email with links to your version of this episode where you can hear lots more content from where we dive deeper into some of the earlier topics plus some new ones that I pushed hard for that include:
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What is your big takeaway?
Following this interview, I’d love to know what your biggest takeaway is – what is the one thing that you’d like to implement or learnt from what was shared? Let me know by leaving your thoughts in the comments below.
You are worth what you charge. If they won't spend it, they don't deserve you – We Are The Parsons
If you have any questions that I missed, a specific question you’d like to ask Jeremy and Ashley or if you just want to say thanks for coming on the show, feel free to add them below.
iTunes Reviews and Shout-outs
Each week I check for any new iTunes reviews and it's always a buzz to receive these… for a couple of reasons.
Firstly, it's confirmation that I'm on the right track with the interviews and that they really are helping you improve your photography business. That's awesome!
Secondly, iTunes is the biggest search engine when it comes to podcasts and it's your reviews and ratings that help other photographers find PhotoBizX. More listeners means more interviews and ultimately a better show.
If you have left a review in the past, thank you!
If you haven't and you'd like to, head to https://photobizx.com/itunes and you can leave some honest feedback and a rating which will help both me and the show and I'll be sure to thank you on the show and add a link to your website or blog if you let me know the URL just like Rose and Thomas did below.
Thank You!
In iTunes by Rose and Thomas of Bittersweet Designs from USA on August 24, 2015
Thanks so much Andrew for giving us the opportunity to share our story on your show. What a great resource for photographers to tap into.
This year we set out to be more transparent and share more of what we do and how we do it. We look forward to listening to more of your future guests.
Links to people, places and things mentioned in this episode:
The Boredom Experiment Podcast on iTunes
Transform: A short Film by Zack Arias
Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
Thank you!
Thank you again for listening to the show and thanks to Jeremy and Ashley for being a fantastic guests and such beautiful people. I can honestly say I came away from this interview feeling moved and ready to make some changes in my life. I'm sure, you will too.
If you have any suggestions, comments or questions about this episode, please be sure to leave them below in the comment section of this post, and if you liked the episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of the post!
That’s it for me this week, hope everything is going well for you in life and business!
Thanks and speak soon
Andrew
Great interview…really enjoyed listening to the Parson’s take on social media and following your own style and heart. Social media takes up so much time and I often ask myself…for what for / is it worth it? Great insights and love their work and authenticity!
Thanks Dawn, great to read your comments and I’m with you and LOVED hearing their approach to social media… it’s one thing I really struggle with and dislike about running a photography business.
If you decide to drop it, I’d love to hear how (or if) it affects your business in any way?
Hey dawn,
ash and jeremy here. 🙂
I know it’s a bit after the fact, but we just wanted to thank you so much for taking the time to listen to the podcast we were able to do with Andrew, and some of the stories we are currently living. You are so so right about social media, it really does take so much time in our lives and, as annie dillard said, “how we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” It’s so easy to forget, but my goodness, it can free us to live out more purposeful lives the second we embrace that reality!
Anyways, thanks again, and we always invite you to keep in touch as you continue your journey as an artist and human being.
with care and thanks,
us
Wow. I’ve already listened to this one twice. It’s funny because this episode isn’t “tip” heavy. There aren’t a lot of useful tools or tweaks to apply to your business to have more success overnight but there is a ton to take away from a business philosophy standpoint. My wife tends to point out that I often exceed the amount of time I tell couples I will shoot with them by sometimes an hour or more. I have always felt that the time I invest was less important than the product I can bring home. This has caused plenty of doubt and thinking that I’m terrible at business. The Parsons approach makes me feel more confident that it’s OK to do things that aren’t “best” for business/profit if they are best for you and your work. I’ll probably listen to this a third time.
Hey Dan – thanks for adding your comments an apologies for my delayed reply.
I’m with you 100% here on the lack of tips in contrast to the value of what was shared by these amazing two.
I totally understand where your wife is coming from if looking at numbers and profitability and the “business side” of things when you’re spending a lot of time on a shoot but I think you have it right. Sometimes the extra time isn’t relevant to to profits and business and hourly rates when you’re in the moment, have a connection and are creating something special.
Don’t change what your doing and try not to lose it either – your clients will love what you’re doing for them.
P.S I used to cop it from Linda if I ever shot an extra roll of film at a wedding when it was an extra $50 per roll (purchase, developing and printing) but learned to justify it by selling more album sides with the extra photos. That was the last thing on my mind while shooting and working with the couple but Linda no longer cared. Maybe you can find another way to justify your extra time to your wife… Or have her listen to The Parsons interview. 🙂
hello dan,
my goodness, even though you left your comment a while ago, I hope you hear back from us now… yes, yes, yes, absolutely – it is always in your best interest to serve the why, that is, the core of your heartbeat in your work as a human and photographer before you serve the logical side of the business. there are plenty of business books and get-rich-quick schemes out there that will say otherwise, and I’ve even heard photographers choose profit over heart a multitude of times but we have found that there is longevity and integrity in choosing to serve your why, serve your voice, serve your people, and then let the business chips fall where they may.
thank you for each time you listened to our words, for connecting to these things with us, and most of all for being an artist who leads with your heart.
always the best to you,
us
Okay, I’m about halfway through so far (I’m waiting to listen with my wife) but what I have heard is incredible. Trusting God to provide instead of your abilities with social media, not thinking that you deserve more money (because getting paid to do something like wedding photography instead of being stuck in an office is an incredible blessing), and your overall attitude of thanks for what you have instead of complaining that you need more. Thank you for recalibrating me.
Also, is your picture in a tiny house? That’s what it looks like and if so, that is so cool! We are planning on building a tiny house sometime soon so we can live off of less, and enjoy each other more than things.
Love that you feel “re-calibrated” after just half the interview Chris. I’m with you though and feel the same way… we really are lucky to be earning a living doing what we love and with clients who love and pay us to do it. It doesn’t get any better than that.
Hope you enjoyed the rest of the interview and Shae did too.
In regard to that picture, I think it was shot in a camper van/caravan of some sort. In saying that, if you have a look at their website, it looks like Ashly and Jeremy live in a small cottage… If that’s their home on the site.
I too love the idea of a small house and downsizing as much as possible. Did you hear the interview with the Rose and Thomas from Bittersweet Designs? They’ve recently gone through a similar process and it sounds very attractive.
Hey Christopher,
my goodness, we just need to thank you for what you said in response to this interview we shared here. recalibration is a beautiful, wondrous thing. we love when something intersects with our world and interrupts the way we have been doing or seeing things, and we are so very happy that our words and some of our stories may have done that, in one way or another, for you.
we love that y’all are talking about building a tiny house, what a great adventure!! the photograph of us was actually from a little vintage shasta camper/trailer that we bought online and refinished. it sits in our back yard and serves as our writing/creating/podcasting studio. it’s a wonderful thing to have a place reserved only for dreaming and scheming and creating new things! 🙂
all the best to you and yours, and thanks again.
us
Since going full time photographer, everyday I try to grow the business in some way. That mostly involves reading about something either camera or business related yet somehow I allllllways find myself on facebook while my 2 year old is watching Bubble guppies in the next room. I feel guilty for that. The Parsons hit the nail on the head with this interview. Like Dan said, it wasn’t tip heavy, but thats not why I listen to this podcast. I love the philosophical approach they take in their business and I will be re-evaluating my social media usage. Because cutting out social media all together is just plain nuts! (JK :P)
Thank you again you two for this interview! And I will be checking out The Boredom Experiment!
Hi Ray – I think anyone with children, no matter their age, who heard this interview feel the same as you… GUILTY. I know I did.
I think hearing Jeremy and Ashley talk about their experiment was the first step in me making changes to my social media use. I’ve made a conscious decision (even wrote it down) to put my phone down the instant Linda or my kids are taking to me… Whether they are interrupting what I’m doing or not.
So far so good but it’s early days.
What about you… Any changes to your social media use since listening?
As for dropping Social Media all together… hmm, I think I could do that if using FB for ads wasn’t counted as “using social media” because that’s still a big business generator for my studio.
Hey Ray,
I know it’s been a little while but we just wanted to comment back on your comment here, and thank you for listening to our interview with Andrew and for connecting to what we said. Your honesty in response is really meaningful to us, and we love your authenticity. my gosh, if we had a dollar for every time we let our littlest watch bubble guppies so we could get some work done, we would be a hell of a lot richer. 😉 at the same time, it is so important for us, as living and expiring human beings, to take an inventory of how we spend our minutes and our days.
Anyways, no one can tell you where to go from here but you. But I don’t think anyone, at the end of their lives when their children are grown and they are staring death in the face, will say, “I sure wish I would have spent more time on Facebook..”
keep fighting the good fight, and thanks again for your response,
us
That was a lovely interview with valuable life/relationship inspiration and a great reminder to step away a bit from the rat race that running your own business can be…
At times it’s hard not to let the thoughts about what to do for business and money run life. Guess it’s an issue for a lot of photographers since yeah, your “life” kind of depends on it. I wonder what the two of you would advice us that are struggling at the very beginning, where money really is an issue of being able to pay the rent (of course that’s an issue for all others too, maybe with a tiny bit more wiggle room…) it just takes away so much energy!
I’m a bit late to the discussion so it might be too late for questions already… so I’ll kind of answer by quoting another episode here ; ) William Gray from episode 134 says it so nicely in the mail he wrote after the show:
“I’ll start with this quote that has stayed with me since college:
“The Zen System and the pursuit of spirit thought photography, along with a number of other systems, became less of a burden to me when I emphasized doing instead of thinking. Too often I was finding that systems and exercises might point out where I was not, but this only left me in a state of desire and preconception about where I wished to be.” –Paul Caponigro (SR) (…) Photographers that are honest in their creative intent but weak at business often get stuck in a preconception of where they are supposed to be in business.”
Hi Stephanie… so good to read your comments.
I totally understand what your saying and asking because it has to be easier for Ashley and Jeremy being at the stage they are with their business to “work” less and concentrate on their family more.
I just emailed them about your question but here’s my take in the meantime…
I believe if anyone (and I’m 100% guilty of this too) looks at how they sound their time during work hours, whatever you make those for yourself, there isa LOT of time wasting going on. Whether it be social media which is probably the biggest time suck or doing jobs that just don’t need doing.
As photographers, we need to be shooting then selling – they are the two things that generate our income. Without clients and sales, we don’t have a photography business.
If we concentrate our efforts on getting bookings and making sales, life will be good… business wise anyway.
I believe these two things need to be a business owners first priorities and we need to do what we can to make these two things happen but we shouldn’t need 24hrs a day to make that happen.
Whether that’s a better website, 3rd party marketing, SEO, getting published on blogs, running Facebook Ads, whatever… Do what you have to every week to get the phone ringing or emails coming in. Prioritise what needs to happen to get the bookings (no matter how unsexy they are) and get them done every week – during business hours.
Once you have bookings, hopefully you’re getting sales, then it’s a matter of building and improving what’s already working and possibly adding little by little.
When things are moving along and business is young but growing and you run out of time, outsource when you have to. Not to spend more time of Facebook but more time shooting or selling and more time with your family or for yourself. Someone else can do the other stuff, you don’t need to do it all. Have someone else do album designs or colour correcting or web design or whatever.
Wow, I hope this doesn’t come across as a rant at you, that’s definitely not my intention. I understand exactly how tough it is when starting out.
I totally hear you in regard to the quote from William Gray. It is tough as a creative when trying to make it in business. I know though, if you concentrate on getting the bookings, everything else will happen, even the sales can be done by someone else – I hate sales and don’t do them anymore in my business. Plus, if you’re getting the bookings, you can be as creative as you like and spend more time doing what you love… Shooting and creating.
Hopefully one of the Parson’s will get back and give you their answer whig will probably be the completely opposite to mine. 🙂
Hey there Stephanie,
Our response is definitely late, but my mom always said, “better late than never” so hopefully that will apply here, too. Thank you so much for connecting to the interview and for what you shared here afterwards.
in response to this question:
{ I wonder what the two of you would advice us that are struggling at the very beginning, where money really is an issue of being able to pay the rent (of course that’s an issue for all others too, maybe with a tiny bit more wiggle room…) it just takes away so much energy! }
here’s what we would say…
For us, we still have months where we struggle to pay the bills. then other months we don’t. I think that is just the way of artists who decide to make this a career, not just a calling. Maybe some people are just killing it and raking in the big dollars without any struggle financially but I would suspect that it isn’t the norm, in fact, I know it isn’t.
All that to say, we can afford to invest in our family more than we used to, not because we don’t invest time in our business, but because the time invested in our business is focused and filled with purpose. we no longer meander through our days and waste minutes turning into hours on social media. this means we have extra time and focus to actually “get shit done” around here, and then play hard with our kids when they get home. Sometimes despite working really hard we still have to buy cheap wine and eat beans and rice for dinner. Other times we have windfall months and it looks like paying the bills with a camera is going to be easy. But don’t be fooled, any of us who signed up to try and pay the bills with an artistic craft is gambling big time. it’s one big crap shoot and none of us actually have job security for next year or the year after that. I guess my hope is that our added intentionality with our time and our family and our business ethics, along with our faith in the most powerful force in the Universe to provide for us, will be the things that keep our heads in the game longer than they would have been, had we wasted more time on social media or trying to keep up with everyone else.
Also, we love what Andrew said in response to you, as well. He’s a smart, smart guy with a heart of gold and what he said about time wasting was right on.
After all that, all we can say is to encourage you to work your hardest, from the heart, keep making art that feels true to the way you were made, and seeking to serve people well. avoid time wasting, and chase down purpose and inspiration in every hour of your day. we have found that those things can lead to incredible places as a human being, whether you get to eat a fancy dinner or not.
with much care,
ash and jeremy
This is the kind of refreshingly honest, soulful wisdom that I need to listen to at the start of every year!
Andrew, I’m confused – glad to know you are too! I guess what’s meant to be will find us eventually and we’ll all settle satisfyingly into our own business/life cluster f*ck too 🙂
Excellent interview guys – loved every minute. Thank you
I’ll have to send a reminder at the start of the year about this episode – you’re right, that would be THE perfect time to hear it again.
Haha… I don’t think we’re alone in our state of confusion. I think that’s kind of comforting in a messed up way.