An integral part of my business is constant learning and broadening my horizons. Reality is changing and I am changing. It’s clear that I’m not only honing my craft in photography, but also expanding my skills in the area of running this type of business.
But at this stage of my development, among the most important issues I include working on changing my mindset.

For the first few years of professional photography, I was mainly focused on honing my photographic skills. Over time, I turned my attention to expanding my business skills. More recently, however, I have realised that without fundamental mental changes, it is difficult to really spread my wings.

I read a lot and have a large library of ‘developmental’ reading, I also benefit from access to industry articles available on the internet. I also like biographies, for me always wildly inspiring. So I read stories about people, not just from the art world of course, but these interest me in particular.
The nature of my work involves not only taking photographs during photo shoots, but also processing the material at the computer, which often takes longer than the shoot.
This is the perfect time to listen to podcasts, speeches and interviews. My hand and eye work, my mind can be redirected to interesting content.

My proposals are in Polish. So if you know this language, go to the Polish version of the blog, here.
In English, I listen to ‘The Portrait System Podcast’ hosted by Nikki Closser – interesting interviews with photographers involved in portraiture and running their business.

What is distinctive for me is that I have moved from the ‘rigid’, scientific, to the ‘soft’, intuitive. I guess that’s the phrase I could use (in a nutshell) to describe my exploration of the last few years in personal development. So at the moment I’m definitely listening to or reading soft stuff, focused on emotional intelligence, laying out a mindset. I’m also interested in social topics – after all, I’m a sociology major – but I’m currently cutting back on hard and dramatic content.

You can find the texts in this series under the ‘I have a company‘ category. Or click the tag: 18.

It is this December (2024) that the company I founded in 2006 celebrates its 18th birthday. And actually I’m celebrating this birthday, because in the case of a one-person business, combined with a personal brand and being an author, the company is me.
Over these eighteen years, I have accumulated a whole bagful of experience. My business has gone through several transformations, I’ve caught up with crises and doubts, and I’ve also enjoyed a huge number of successes.
In all this time, photography has been my only source of income.
I don’t know if I can count how many people I have photographed, how many events and places.

Of course, a one-person business isn’t just – in my case – about photographing and post-processing. It’s also a huge amount of work: communicating and meeting clients, running the website, social media and the shop, writing the blog, running workshops, dealing with documentation (invoices, contracts, etc.), promo activities, strategy and trying to get away from the day-to-day to draw visions and plans. It’s also personal development, education, new competences.
And a whole bunch of crap, such as servicing my car (which is my work tool, after all), taking care of the studio or running to the parcel machine with a delivery. So it’s not just a crap.

To celebrate my anniversary, I have decided to write a series of texts about how I run my business, what difficulties I have encountered and what goes lightly. Where I get my inspiration from and where I look for answers. What values do I hold dear. What my typical working day looks like – do I even have such a thing as a typical working day. And I’ll probably catch a few more ideas in between. I’m not going to sugarcoat it, I’ve experienced some total fuck-ups 😉 Fortunately, moments of elation and happiness were more frequent.