Education is so key to the photography business these days. If you can’t do it, you can learn it, and odds are, it’s free or very cheap.

But how cheap is education?

There is a stark difference between cheap education and education that’s cheap, and both are taking hold in the photography world now more than ever.

Education is cheap now, but it might be cheap in more ways than one. Learning and educating yourself are no longer an accessory. They are a necessity. You are expected to know every part of your camera and the gear that you use. Our clients are coming to us with the idea that we are experts at our craft.

Lucky for us, learning doesn’t cost much with how much information we have access to. Unfortunately, it’s easy for everyone and learning no longer separates us from our competition the way it used to.

Inspiration

Everyone wants to be inspired. You always want to seek inspiration for your work whether it’s photography or not. In order to stay sharp and current with our work, we have to find ways to improve ourselves.

A few key ways that photographers do this is by reading books or blogs, starting clubs in their area with other professionals, and going to conferences and seminars.

If you have done any of these things, you can relate to the elation you have when you leave or log off. You read a post that absolutely blew your mind from that blog you follow. You walk away from a seminar with a notebook full of messy notes from the speaker.

Yes, we’ve all been there.

But it’s what we do after that blog post, seminar, or conference that really counts.

Perspiration

Time to put in the work. If you aren’t implementing the things you learn, then you are actually hurting your business by attending those conferences. Those hours you spend reading are only worth your time if those hours help you build your business.

Just because you’re learning doesn’t mean that that education will correlate with the growth of your business. You have to take what you learn and turn that into value for your business.

It’s your duty to use the tools, ideas, strategies, and inspiration you take from educational sources to implement them directly into your business to help its growth. After all, that’s the point of the education in the first place. Blogs, books, seminars, and conferences are all meant to give you momentum to thrust your business forward.

Actions Speak Louder

Education is cheap. It’s cheap to obtain. It’s extremely costly if we don’t use it. Believe it or not, if you are wasting your precious time reading, commenting, or taking notes to gain inspiration without a plan on how you will put those teachings into action, you are wasting your time, money, and resources.

It’s time to take the inspiration and turn it into perspiration. Inspiration is a phenomenal tool to help motivate photographers but that inspiration may trickle away as time passes. Make sure you come out with, not only, new inspiration but a plan you are going to use that will put that work into action that will create value for your business.

After all, education is cheap, but its value, when put into action, is priceless.