Pretty pictures, hidden pain
You see another group email in your inbox, and you have to take a deep breath. When you looked at the photos from the styled shoot you did a month ago, your work wasn't even visible. Your favorite photos look the exact same as another photographer's. The magazine you were aiming to get published in decided not to pick up the shoot.
Portfolio work promises exposure, collaboration, and beautiful content. But for many creatives, it also comes with hidden emotional costs—ones that don’t show up in the photos, but leave a lasting mark behind the scenes.
While, as a creative, you always need to consider the fiscal costs of your work, sometimes the emotional cost isn't top of mind. The emotional cost is what lingers, though. Every shoot day, creatives are secretly struggling with factors that are tarnishing their mindset:
- The frustration of wasting time for potentially little gain
- That unspoken sense of competition between vendors
- Knowing their worth, even when things go wrong
With the emotional weight of portfolio work heavy on the minds of creatives, the question becomes clear: when are the emotional costs too expensive, and when are they worth the price?
The hidden toll of "just one more shoot"
Styled shoots often leave creatives asking: what’s the point? No matter how much work you put into portfolio work, some of it is bound to end with you, head in hands, coping with the frustration of things not working out the way you wanted. These are the instances where portfolio work can feel performative, not productive.
Ronak Kadhi, founder of Bundled Design, knows this dilemma well—having done shoots that helped, and others that didn’t pay off:
"I’ve been part of styled shoots—some that helped, some I probably shouldn’t have said yes to. It doesn’t always make sense. If there’s no clear purpose, or everyone’s just throwing together pretty things with no shared direction, you end up with images that look good but don’t do anything for your business. The hidden costs are mostly your time and energy. It’s not just the day of the shoot—it’s planning, back-and-forth with the team, editing, and sometimes even chasing credit when your work gets shared. There’s also the mental cost of doing all that work and realizing it didn’t really go anywhere."
The shoot day is just the beginning. The emotional labor starts long before, and often lingers after. Many styled shoots are done with the intention of being published, and the organizer of the shoot often works hard to pitch the work to aligning magazines and bridal sites. Sometimes getting published can feel like a game, and not a fun one. With the fate of your shoot in someone else's hands for judgement, you are left with the anxiety that your work may not reach who you wanted after all.
Even when your work does get published, of which there's no guarantee, you then have to deal with the mentally draining hassle of receiving the proper credit. In an Instagram post created by wedding business coach Manda Worthington, she found that some wedding publications are failing to credit the entire team on a styled shoot, crediting only the photographer whose photos are published. It's emotionally draining, after working on a shoot and waiting for it to be picked up, to not even reap the benefits of your hard work.
You may not be the only creative of your niche on the shoot, either. Sometimes, portfolio work can accidentally lead to a sense of competition, an unspoken conflict while trying to work with others and build relationships.
"Purchasing tickets to pre-planned shoots means you have less creative control and have to usually 'fight' with multiple other photographers to shoot," said Connecticut-based photographer Kari Bjorn. "Taking part in a pre-planned shoot also means you'll have images that many other photographers will also have in their portfolio and on Instagram. If you're looking to book weddings, brides and grooms will potentially get confused if they see the same couple and same set ups across multiple photography websites and portfolios."
The possibility of the bride and groom's confusion over styled shoots unlocks another cost of portfolio work: the hard conversations. You know they're necessary, but you hate them anyway. The thing about portfolio work is that it's perfect. Great, right? Of course you love having perfectly styled pieces across your portfolio, but that's just the problem. During a real wedding, the couple's day is, by nature, perfectly imperfect.
That means you need to have the styled shoot conversation; a lot of things that are possible with an unlimited time frame, the perfect setup and professional models aren't necessarily easy to recreate during the hectic reality of a wedding day. Having to tell clients that what they want, and possibly what is on your portfolio, is actually not possible for them is a hard, emotional task.
Perhaps the worst emotional cost of all, though, is working incredibly hard on portfolio work only for it to go completely unappreciated. Not only have you missed out on the promotion of the shoot itself, you're forced to cope with feeling unseen by fellow creatives.
"I have participated in a styled shoot where items I donated were lost in the flurry of the shoot and not ultimately photographed, which was a huge disappointment given I spent my own money printing them," one NY-based stationery designer told Visualist. The hidden cost here, as it turned out, became the emotional experience of losing the entire project. "I think [it] comes down to not only the obvious printing costs, shipping costs, etc., but also the value of your time. Designing custom artwork, assembling suites, adding calligraphy to menus… don’t discount that your time is money, too."
Even when things happen unintentionally, mistakes like this one can easily reinforce other ideas that creatives often struggle with, including imposter syndrome and negative self-worth. Each bad experience with portfolio work makes wedding professionals less and less likely to participate again, dimming the potential for them to find the right fit.
How to make portfolio work worth it
The hidden costs of portfolio work are real, but they're costs that a lot of creatives are willing to pay. When you do decide to participate in portfolio work, the important thing becomes knowing how to overcome and even mitigate these costs. The key factor? Go in with intention. Knowing what you want out of a shoot, who you want to be doing it with, and why you want it makes all the difference.
For some creatives, including Bjorn, the answer to mitigating worries about individuality and creative control became planning their own styled work:
"Planning it yourself, with a local wedding planner or florist, for example, ensures you'll be the only one showing images from the day. It gives you nearly full creative control," he said. "2 years ago, I got in touch with the owners of a venue that was being built and scheduled a styled shoot shortly after they opened and had their first booked wedding. I booked the models and planned the decor with a local planner and florist. I used the shoot to network with the venue owners and was immediately put on their preferred vendor list (which was empty at the time) and booked 4 weddings that year at the venue. The blog post I created from the styled shoot ranked number two on Google after the venue's own website and brought me 2-3 organic clicks a day until I moved out of the area."
Networking with industry players, like a newly opened venue, turns a styled shoot into a great way to get ahead. By planning it yourself, you can maintain creative control and only work with vendors who clearly align with your aesthetics and goals.
For those who may feel overwhelmed or uninterested in planning your own styled shoot- because it can be a lot of work- it's still important to prioritize yourself over making other vendors happy. If you don't know or don't trust someone else with your work for a shoot, say no. In situations where being taken advantage of is a real risk, make sure you're handing your time over to somebody you can trust.
"In my experience, it is challenging to know how invested each vendor is in a styled shoot unless you already know them. I have been given the advice by other stationers I respect to only do shoots with planners I know and trust, as they are typically the "project manager" and drive the expectations set to the team at large," the stationery designer added.
But after an experience as negative as having your work lost, the most important factor contributing to whether or not to do a styled shoot is the why. Having a clear purpose, and understanding how that purpose is going to further your growth and your business, is how you figure out what to even consider participating in.
"Styled shoots serve many business purposes, and I think you can craft your goals with different lenses," she said. "For example, is it about pushing yourself to try a new aesthetic, or a new printing method? Is it about getting connected to other vendors, or showcasing your work in a target venue/geography? Lastly, maybe it's about social media or the outcomes of the shoot... Any of these are valid reasons to participate, but understanding "the why" upfront, like in any business decision, is important."
Styled shoots can be valuable, but only if they move your brand forward. If they drain your time, damage your confidence, or leave you feeling unseen, it’s okay to walk away. The “why” behind the work should always be clear—and it should always be yours.
