This is the fourth part of a series about photographer couples, called “Two of a Kind.” This post features Carla Winn and Jim Winn. View their website here.

Previous posts in the series are on Meggan Haller and Jeff Haller, Kendrick Brinson and David Walter Banks and Jenn Ackerman and Tim Gruber.

Semi-trucks slowly make their way across Interstate 90, west of Gillette, Wyoming during a winter storm that closed roads and left hundreds of motorists stranded on the interstate. (Jim Winn)

Jim Winn: “Carla and I met a couple of years into the photojournalism program at Western Kentucky University, and we were married in the summer of 2006. Since finishing school, our life has really been an evolving tour through the business of photography, the most recent facet of which has landed us in Seattle, Wa.”

VS: Why did you decide to work together?

Jim Winn: “It was really a combination of things. First and foremost, Carla and I have pretty much done everything together, and the business/photographic part of our lives just naturally followed that same path.

There have been some aspects of our business, primarily weddings, that we always worked on together 50/50, while in others one usually takes a leading role with the other in more of a supporting capacity. The nice thing about that is it has given us a chance to work together with a very specific focus and style, while still giving us creative freedom independent of one another. A good example of that would be the industrial work that I’ve done with Vellum Media, which I absolutely love. Carla isn’t much for big machines and heavy industry, but she has played an enormous role in helping develop that work, the clients, etc. The same thing has applied for the work Carla has done for non-profits and social organizations.”

After finding water on the Tohono O’odham Reservation, migrants fill their bottles and find a secluded location to hide for the day. Most migrants travel only at night, for fear of being seen by Border Patrol officers during the day.  Before successfully being picked up by friends outside the reservation, the four would send another three days and nights crossing the desert. (Carla Winn)

VS: Why did you choose the Seattle market?

Jim Winn: “Seattle was both a personal and a business decision. We love the area, and it has always been one of the few places that truly felt like home, and we knew it would be a good place to build a new foundation for our life outside of photography. Leaving photography, as a business, has been something we have thought very long and hard about over the past year, and we felt it was time for us to do something else. While our business has grown and done very well, we kind of found ourselves at a plateau with nowhere to go. If you think about it, if someone is hiring Jim or Carla Winn for a job, they are hiring us specifically for our style, our specific skill set. That makes scalability hard, as you would always have to be the one shooting, you can’t really hire an employee for that. Not that there is anything wrong with shooting all the time – but Carla and I both originally picked up the camera because of our deep love for photojournalism, not because we wanted to have a photography business.

Many years from now Carla and I expect to be self-employed again, though definitely doing something out of photography. Right now, our goal is to learn as much as we can about how other people and other companies do business, so that we can refine the skill set we developed over the last few years running ours. The best way we can do that is to go back into the work force, and we are fortunate that Seattle has a plethora of great companies from which we can learn.”

Before crossing the border into the United States, many immigrants leave photos of themselves beneath a shrine to Mary at Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church in Altar Mexico. (Carla Winn)

VS: Talk about your business plan.

Jim Winn: “The best decision we ever made was to focus on getting out of debt and saving some money before we tried starting a business. Not that we were buried in debt or anything, but we did have school to pay off. To get that out of the way as fast a possible, we sold our house, got our CDL licenses and became cross-country truck drivers, driving on average about 6000 miles a week. We did that pretty much non-stop for about a year. Once that was out of the way and we had some money in the bank there was one less hurdle in front of us when it came time to start the business.

During that time we talked with as many photographers was we could, seeking a diverse group of wedding, commercial and editorial photographers, and begin asking questions. How did they get started, grow their business, manage expenses, marketing, etc. The generous feedback and advice our peers gave us was instrumental in getting things off to a good, solid start.

Vellum Industrial Media. (Jim Winn)

The hardest part, initially, was treating it like a business – especially coming from a photojournalism background. It is soooo easy to get caught up in the creative side, and lose focus on the business aspect. The important thing to remember is that if you are shooting for money, you are producing and selling a product, and you need to treat it that way. It might sound like a cold to approach your work, but if you can’t do that then you are going to be very unhappy until you can come to terms with that reality.

Something we did later then we should have was to write up an actual, very detailed business plan. THERE ISN’T ANYTHING WE CAN MORE HIGHLY RECOMMEND THAN WRITING A VERY DETAILED BUSINESS PLAN. It can be a little intimidating to get started, but fortunately there are some very helpful resources out there. Once such resource is S.C.O.R.E. – the Service Corps of Retired Executives. Most cities have a local chapter, and they are a great resource for getting help in writing your business plan, and getting advice about any other aspect of your business.”

VS: What kind of work takes of most of your time/resources?

Jim Winn: “Without question, the office side of the business took up the majority of our time. Depending on whether it was wedding or commercial work, we probably spent as little as 25% ( weddings) to 10% ( commercial) of our time actually behind the camera. The rest of our time was spent marketing, managing paperwork, keeping up with accounting, and doing lots and lots of post-production. Again, that reality of that is what really factored into our decision to move out of photography as a business. If we want to shoot, we’re going to shoot stories and topics we really care about. If we’re going to run business, then we are going to focus on that. Balancing creative growth and business growth, we found, wasn’t a very efficient use of our time.”

VS: Do you have time for personal projects?

Jim Winn: “While we weren’t out shooting personal work every week, I think we did a good job of finding ways to work it in. Knowing we had time set aside for personal work was really what kept us going when things with the business were busy and overwhelming. We typically set aside a big chunk of time each year to focus on personal work, with smaller bits of time scattered in here and there during the busy seasons. Immigration has been a focus of ours for the last couple years, and we were fortunate to win a few grants to help support that work. Beyond the creative fulfillment personal work provides, it also gives you the opportunity to experiment, fail and grow. Though you always need to be pushing your creative limits, when you are shooting for a client is not the time to be putting it all on the line and taking huge risks. Personal work gives you that opportunity.”

VS: What were your expectations coming in?  Where those met?

Jim Winn: “We expected it to be very hard initially, and we weren’t disappointed in that respect. Not that it was a bad experience, but getting any business up and running is going to be hard, you have to expect to put in some long hours. We also expected it to be extremely fulfilling, which it was.”

VS: How has being together affected your business?

Jim Winn: “Having the chance to work together is what made the whole thing worthwhile. I think running the business was more than either of us could have handled on our own, and in areas where one of us was weak, the other was always very strong – we made a good team. I think it helped us stay focused as well, since we were both working towards the same goals.”

VS: What is the biggest challenge of working together?

The problem with running a business is that there is always something to be done, you’re always at work. With both us in a situation where work is only one room away, finding time for each other can be hard. Even when we’d take a day or a night off, the topic conversation always managed to find a way back to work in some form or fashion. Eventually we started setting one night a week aside, like a “date night” or something, where we would just go out, have fun together, and there wasn’t any work talk allowed.”

VS: Is your current business model a good structure for mutual support?

Jim Winn: “The best thing about working together, in terms of mutual support, was that each of was going through the exact same thing. We always had a direct understanding of what was hard for the other person, and could lend a hand. If one of us had been running the business while the other was working some other job, I think it would have been harder to have that mutual support at times. Additionally, shooting together that often really helped us critique our style, our visual direction, our progress, and then help it all evolve forward at a faster pace. I know that whenever I started to get in a rut, and use the same visual crutches over and over, Carla was great about calling me out and helping to push me into a move evolved way of seeing.”

Vellum Industrial Media. (Jim Winn)

VS: How do your separate personal visions work together?

Jim Winn: “The nice thing about shooting projects or assignments together was that we both knew the other’s strengths and weaknesses, and could fill gaps for one another. I think our styles are somewhat similar, but just like anything else, each of us was slightly stronger in certain areas than others. Between the two of us, on an assignment, we could collectively build a very solid visual foundation, and then from there each could explore separate visions on the same project. Knowing that we had each other’s back, visually, really gave us a lot of freedom to experiment and explore with our images.”

VS: What advice do you have for other people wanting to try the same thing?

Jim Winn: “First and foremost, be honest with yourself. If you think being self employed is going to give you the opportunity to pay the bills, and spend vast amounts of time shooting personal projects and documentary work, then it isn’t for you. Be realistic about the fact that you are starting a business, and selling a product. Plan for the fact that 20% to 30% of what you charge is going to be taken away in taxes. Be realistic that you also need to be setting a percentage aside for retirement – this is extremely important.  Find a financial advisor if you aren’t comfortable setting up a plan for this on your own. If you are still in school take business classes, learn accounting, find a mentor.

Also be aware that every person out there with a digital camera is your direct competition, and the quality of your work isn’t really a huge selling factor. Obviously you have to be good at what you do, but most people don’t know what a good picture is – as long as it’s in focus and has a lot of color people think it’s fantastic. A good example is MSNBC.com’s Week in Pictures (which is great, by the way). The picture with the most votes is consistently the cute one, or the one with the most color – not necessarily the one that took the most photographic skill to produce. Once you are working for clients that are not highly trained picture editors, the playing field is pretty level. Your clients won’t always understand why they should pay you $5000 more than the high school photo teacher who just thinks it would be cool to see his photos in print somewhere. With Vellum, after losing a $20,000 job to someone who was, literally, a teacher who just wanted to see his photos in print, we realized we needed more to offer than the quality of our work. We began to emphasize safety and experience in our marketing, and sought out industrial certifications (such as MSHA miner’s cards, aerial work permits, etc) that would separate us from pro-sumer competition.

The same thing applies to weddings – your biggest competition is the uncle with a D3 who will shoot the wedding for $250 and a case of beer, which is way less than the $4000 you have to charge to stay in business. Just like any other business, you have competition, people undercutting the market with inferior products, and you need to have a plan for how to handle that.”

VS: What would you do differently in the process?

Winn: “If we had to do it all over again, we both would take business classes while in school. Other than that, and hammering out our business plan a little earlier, there isn’t really anything we would change. It has been a wonderful experience.”

Wedding portrait. (Carla Winn)