Three Ways to Expose Yourself To Advance Your Styling Career

As Photo and Prop Stylists, we often times get caught up in going to our "go to" sources for styling assignment and projects and not expanding our horizons.  We have to continually expand our sources!  It's great to seek out and expose ourselves to variety of sources for knowledge and inspiration to grow our styling business and career.

I love all the Magazines, Pinterest, Instagram inspo too!  BUT, to advance your career and be the best Photo Stylist you can be, you have to educate and expand.  Here are some of my "go-to's".

PHOTOGRAPHY EXPOS AND TRADESHOWS.

I always say ~ go where the photographers go.  While I LOVE a great style trade show ~ we need to go where we can meet those who could (& will) hire us.  Photographers hire Photo Stylists.  Go to their Shows and Events, hear them speak and attend their industry speaking panels! 


BUSINESS INSIGHTS.

Keep track of what your favorite brands are doing in business, not just their ads, tv commercial and styling they use, My go to sources are Fast Company and AdAge.


INDUSTRY TRADE SHOWS AND MARKETS.

Trade Shows and Markets have been a standard for me in both marketing my styling business as well as keeping up to date on all the lifestyle trends. (Also the Markets as in Flower Market, Farmers Market!) I find the best produce when food styling at the Farmers Market.  My favorite is heirloom tomatoes.  The variety of colors and odd shapes make the best food styling shots. In addition to the inspiration, trade shows and markets are a great way to meet new friends, colleagues and clients.  I believe in Trade Shows and Markets so much I wrote two Guides on it.  Photo Stylists Best Conferences, Tradeshow and Events and also a Guide on meeting clients for both styling and for using as a source for styling assignments in the Photo Stylists Guide to Networking. The Conference Guide have direct links and Guide is updated frequently,

Here are a few more topics for knowledge and inspiration I make sure I am up-to-date on.

• Graphic Design
• Interior Design
• Fashion Design
• Color Psychology
• Pop Culture
• Trends (Across Lifestyle and Color)  For Color, my favorite is Pantone Trend Reports and for all Lifestyle niches, it's Fashion Snoops.

Exposure to all items on this list help perfect your images because you have such a large amount of inspiration to be inspired by and draw from.  It’s not always about “composition” of the image. What else can you bring to that image?  Your “exposure” to everything on list above will perfect your images. All these have cross over into each other and effect marketing trends and how you will provide creativity and style for your clients. 

Have a favorite place for inspiration?  Reach out and let me know at [email protected]


Bonnie ~

Image Credit ｜ Editorial Stock Images