The Shoot That Nearly Made Me Quit
The “canon” event that builT my product photography business and process.
It was 2020. The world shut down, and so did every single job on my calendar. Gone overnight. Weddings, events, freelance gigs. Every single one.
I sat there staring at my inbox, watching the “we need to cancel” emails roll in, and thought, this might be it.
No one was hiring. No one was shooting.
I had two choices: wait it out or pivot.
So I pivoted. Decided to let go of events, weddings, and everything else on my website to step fully into product photography. I’d been doing both up until then, showing up as a “jack of all trades” but never fully committing to either. This felt like the push. I had real in-house experience, having worked at Nordstrom and Dermstore. I wasn’t new to photography. I just hadn’t run a product photography business before.
I told myself I was ready.
I wasn’t.
My first full project came through a past client. She was launching a skincare line and needed everything: ecomm shots, creative content, the works.
I said yes without hesitation.
Looking back, I said yes way too fast.
I didn’t have a system.
No real process.
Maybe I had a deck? But not like what I build now. No shot list with goals, no strategic anchors, no breakdown of what we were actually trying to say. Just me walking in with a ton of props that I thought “would look nice” and we would go from there.
We shot for 12 hours straight. I was sweating through my shirt, moving sets, chasing light, convincing myself it was all working. I thought I was doing okay, keeping the energy up and the pace moving. I was proud of how hard I worked.
Until I saw the final gallery.
Everything was soft.
The lighting wasn’t right.
No texture shots.
No real focus.
Just… blah.
I couldn’t even tell you what the brand’s personality was supposed to be based on the images I delivered. There was no story arc and no cohesion.
I poured hours into every image because I felt like maybe I could salvage it with enough polish. I quickly found out my retouching skills needed more work. To add more insult to injury.
I didn’t set limits on revisions or image counts. So I just kept going. Over-delivering out of guilt, trying to make something work that was broken from the start. Every round of feedback chipped away at me a little more. And then the energy changed. Someone new joined the email thread, asking questions, nitpicking everything. And for good reason. It wasn’t like these images were high-end or industry standard.
And then something shifted. I was losing their trust with every video check-in and email.
I told myself it’s ok — there will be a next time. This can get fixed for the next project.
Then the day finally came. In my gut I expected this, but in my heart I hoped it wouldn’t.
She did most of the talking, and I listened. She told me they were moving on. That they’d found someone else who was a better fit. She was kind about it and very professional.
I thanked her, hung up, and laid down on my office floor.
Then everything hit me like a pile of bricks.The exhaustion, the fear, and all the embarrassment. The thought that maybe I’d made a huge mistake.
Then I cried… hard.
I can’t even tell you how long I was on the floor. 30 mins maybe? But I felt like I was one with the floor, like I was stuck and unable to move. I remember staring at the ceiling, thinking, maybe this is it. Maybe I’m not cut out for this. I had no income. No clients. And the first one who trusted me, I let her down.
But eventually I sat up, crawled to my desk chair, and opened my laptop. I needed to know what went wrong. I started typing every question I could think of:
“What do product photographers charge?”
“What’s in a typical package?”
“How do I even structure a shoot?”
“Do I charge hourly versus day-rates?”
“What goes into a shot list?”
I read articles, looked at other people’s websites, and tried to reverse-engineer what a fully functioning product photography business looked like.
I started putting together basic packages. Outlined deliverables and built super light versions of the decks I use now. Nothing fancy, honestly.
But even with that, the work wasn’t coming in. I thought maybe this wasn’t going to work. I just genuinely didn't know where to find clients.
So I started applying to jobs for full-time creative roles.
One of them stood out. A company that sounded interesting and was located in LA, in an industry I wasn’t too familiar with at the time. I put everything into that application and submitted my resume and links.
And then the job listing closed.
I was crushed, again.
Until the creative director reached out. She told me she saw my resume and explained she closed the job posting due to changes in their team's needs. She wanted to work together, but project by project.
I said yes, and I was scared. I was flooded with the fresh thoughts of my major blunder months earlier. But I was also determined not to make the same mistakes again.
After that first project, it became the turning point I needed. And I saw my confidence rebuild itself.
We built trust, experimented with the visuals, found the brand’s voice together, and grew my photo style in the process. She gave me the room to grow and the kind of structure I never had before. And through that process, I finally started to believe I could really do this.
That failed shoot didn’t end my career.
But it almost did.
And every time I build a deck, now every time I get into pre-production mode, I think about that girl on the floor.
The one who thought she blew her only shot.
The one who almost walked away.
I still carry her with me.
And I never want to forget what she taught me.
