It is very common to offer every type of photography when you first start out and it makes sense; you are trying to find yourself as a photographer. If you don’t experiment and dabble, then you don’t know what your eventual path might be. It’s similar to our school experience where our education is very general at the start but typically starts narrowing as you advance.

There are certain instances where remaining a generalist could be good for business. Think of a small town where a photography studio may be located on Main Street, and the photographer servers all in the community. While it’s not a true niche (because it could arguably be considered the “small-town studio niche”), is still represents at least a specific marketing position aimed at getting business and maximizing profit.

1001 Studios on Main Street

The example I used above can help us illustrate a point. While there might be a studio on Main Street in small towns everywhere, they are also other photographers in that small town. You might be from one and know that Main Street photographer. You might even be complaining that everyone goes to them so how do you compete? And that there are dozens of other photographers who don’t have a studio, in that same small geographic area.

Could you imagine if every.single.photographer in that small town opened up a studio on Main Street and offered the same generalist services: Family, maternity, newborn, seniors, graduations? It would be very hard to know which door to walk through, and it’s the epitome of a saturated market.

We don’t want to compete; we want to stand out

A photographer decides they want to open a studio on Main Street in their town. They look at the real estate listings and see a dozen of other photography studios on that same strip. Nonetheless, they lease their space, open their doors, offer the exact same services but try to manipulate variables like time, price and number of files to try to compete. But when every photographer has a storefront and can also manipulate those same variables, it’s all a losing proposition. And then we wonder “how can I stand out?”

The pinky finger niche

Some years ago I met up with a group of my University friends visiting from out of town to attend the Montreal Jazz Fest. I met a friend’s girlfriend for the first time. Getting to know her, I learned she was doing a post-graduate Kinesiology thesis. Her thesis topic? One particular bone in the pinky finger. Yup. An entire thesis on a small bone in a pinky finger. I can’t remember the details, but in actuality focussing in on such a specific thing allowed a really deep dive on that thing, with results or insights that maybe wouldn’t be uncovered if you generally studied the all the bones in the hand. I just looked it up and there are 27! Each are different because they differ in size and length and function depending on where they are found in the hand. If her topic had been all the bones in the hand, then studying all 27 would simply not allow the same depth of study or knowledge mastery as one. The reason why this was an important bone to study was that it was an often injured bone in sports because pinky fingers are more vulnerable. Think about how many sports includes heavy use of hands and fingers - baseball, basketball, volleyball, hockey, gymnastics and we can see that this very specific study could touch a large audience. And yet a very specific audience. Not “everyone.”

The jaw niche

Again in the healthcare sector, yet another personal experience jumps out at me. Since I was in my teens, I’ve had a click in my jaw when I open/ close my mouth (TMJ). I joke that 5 years of braces fixed my teeth but messed up my jaw! Over the years I saw a few dentists who gave me mouth guards, but nothing improved and I’ve just learned to live with it. But over the past few years, I kept coming across Facebook posts in local groups of people seeking help with TMJ, and I kept seeing a name pop up as the go-to person. Not a dentist, but an Osteopath. I decided to give it a go. They specified that he was only taking TMJ patients at this time, and I still had to wait over 6 months to get an appointment! Trying to schedule follow ups is also tough and his waitlist can exceed 100 people!

I’m sure he was a general Osteopath for a while before noticing how many people suffered with this particular issue. He may have also sparked an interest in trying to correct that issue or it was professionally rewarding to provide great results to clients. Given the choice, people would see him over someone else because as a specialist, he can likely assure faster and more effective relief and results. And he has more than enough patients to keep him busy all day, every day. In doing that work, he deepens his experience and knowledge in that area, making him that much more effective and successful. Patients might even come from a long distance because his reputation can precede him.

When he was starting his career as a general Osteo, he probably had to actively market harder to stand out from other qualified Osteopaths. Work harder to build a reputation and get his name out there. In specializing, he flipped the script. He is beyond capacity just with TMJ patients, and I doubt he is doing any marketing at all. He is being constantly recommended by others because he excels at his niche.

Breaking the myth that niching results in less business

I hope the above examples can help demonstrate that niching, while it sounds like restriction, could actually boost to bigger opportunities because you become more sought after as the go-to person and your level of mastery increases which then feeds being sought-after. We feel that niching reduces our prospective audience and it does, but the myth is that the reduced audience isn’t big enough to sustain us, where it actually is, in spades.

There are many genres of photography and the market size for any one of them is gigantic relative to your capabilities as a one-person show. The wedding sector is huge. The senior sector is huge. Personal branding is huge. Commercial photography is huge. Fashion and editorial? Huge.

Jeff Jochum, author of the amazing book called “Work Happily Ever After” - published over a decade ago, states that having a niche is no longer enough as the market continues to saturate. You must niche in your niche! He talks of the evolution of photographer to specialty photographer like weddings. Have you seen the amount of possibilities now with weddings? Adventure elopements, traditional church weddings, offbeat weddings, tiny weddings, winery weddings, destination weddings, courthouse weddings, backyard weddings, film-only captured weddings, weddings with an editorial slant. And there are so many more! Niching into any one of those would still likely keep you busy to the end of your career!

I’ll end by saying that just because you’ve decided to niche, doesn’t mean you cannot ever shoot anything else! Not only can you borrow from other niches to enrich yours (that deeper dive allows this creative freedom), but you can also accept other work as you like. Part of niching is marketing so while you may not want to heavily advertise nor showcase other work, you can wander off path when it feels right for you.