Ready to shake up the traditional photography business model? Pat Miller chats with industry innovator Dan McClanahan, owner of McClanahan Studio, for an eye-opening episode on transitioning from a brick-and-mortar studio to a profitable digital file-based business. For years, selling prints in person was the gold standard for professional photographers. But Dan McClanahan reveals a game-changing approach that challenges the status quo and offers a more flexible, client-friendly system. This episode dives into how Dan's strategy not only sustained his business during personal challenges but also led to increased profits and creativity.

Episode Highlights 🎤💡:

(13:59) - Artist Commission

(20:52) - Rapid Growth of Tech

(31:32) - Imperfection is Human

Connect with Pat Miller ⬇

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Connect with Dan McClanahan ⬇

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I'm Pat Miller, and this is The Professional Photographer Podcast. The path for a professional photographer is someone with a camera, and then you start taking pictures. And then if you do really well taking pictures, someday you'll open your own brick and mortar studio, and you'll sell giant prints for massive amounts of money, and you'll travel to Spain, and you'll be famous. That's the path. And that's what so many photographers get to do when they put their head down and they work really hard. It's what I hope you get to do if you haven't done it already. Today's show's a little bit different though. We're gonna talk about someone that got a camera and took pictures and opened the studio, and then life came calling and he had to go a different way. Dan McClanahan is our guest today. Thoughtful guy. He's got some great stuff to share, and he's going to tell us the story about when life knocked on his door and said, hey, guess what? We need you to be a digital file studio again. So what would happen if you had a brick and mortar studio and you were selling your prints, but there was something in your gut and now a family situation that said, hey, maybe there's a different path? Dan's gonna tell us the story of how he got there, the decisions he made, and why now he's making more profit as a digital file creator than he did when he had in person sales in the brick and mortar studio. It's a different path, and Dan's got a great way to explain it all. You need to hear this story. It's something we don't talk about very much, but I think you're going to enjoy it. We'll be back with PPA high performer, Dan McClanahan, after this. Dan McClanahan, welcome to The Professional Photographer Podcast. How are you today?

Yeah. I'm good. Thanks for having me.

Now you're experiencing weather in Iowa. What's going on in your world right now?

Yesterday, it was 70 degrees. Beautiful day for a photo shoot. And then four in the morning, I woke up to probably about quarter-size hail for, like, ten minutes. And then it's still hailing and storming this morning, and it's gonna turn into snow. And we're gonna have a blizzard this afternoon, and then it'll be back to 70 by the weekend, probably. But that's the Midwest. I had to reschedule a session today already. So, hopefully, it chills out so we can do that. But, you know, I get to talk to you.

Yeah. Right? The web still works, so we get to get inside your head today, which I'm excited about. So if someone hasn't had the chance to meet you yet, how would you describe who you are and what you do?

I love interacting with humans and seeing them and bestowing dignity upon them with my lens. And I've been a photographer for about well, since 2009. What's that? Year 16 right now. That's a lot. I could drive a car. It feels like it's gone a lot quicker than that, but I've kind of done everything in my career. I started with weddings and then got into seniors and then got into families and then got into commercial. And now I kind of do a mix of all of that, whatever I'm feeling the most in any given year.

So, and rolling through those specialties, did that happen by necessity, curiosity? How did you go from one niche to another?

The wedding game was because I began after college, and that's, like, the people I knew that needed pictures were getting married, so natural progression. And then I also think that's the easiest niche to get into to start generating income and also to hone your chops because it's so high stress. At least the way that I operate, the higher stress the gig, the more self-imposed pressure I put on myself to grow and, like, be good enough for what I'm being paid. So I got good pretty quickly from five years of weddings. And then, you know, everything wears off, the luster, after a while. So I started dabbling here and there. I had a neighbor who had a senior, and they were like, "Would you take the pictures?" And I said, sure. And then it turned out fun. And I dove into that for a while because I felt on the inside, like, I'm still in a lot of ways a teenage boy that likes to listen to punk rock music and drink Baja Blast Mountain Dew. And I got along great with that demographic. And now I identify more with the parents than with the kids, but I still love the power that that work has on their lives potentially. Like, it's a very transformative time where they were told who they are their whole life, and now they get to finally choose who they are. And it's kind of a validation of that. The only thing I've dabbled, but strayed away from is maternity and newborn because I respect it. I don't have the patience for it. I have a good friend that I refer everyone to that wants that kind of work. But I don't know. I have ADHD. I guess I'll come out about that. So that's probably part of why I'm constantly chasing the stimulus of challenge and growth in my work. So I get really bored doing the same thing over and over. So, arguably, I have some friends that have told me that I could have a way more successful business and make way more money if I just did one thing over and over forever and systematize it, but that would kill me on the inside. So knowing that about myself, I ebb and flow with the way that I am because I know that my superpower in my work is being a healthy version of myself so I can overflow that into other people regardless of what the genre is.

Wait a minute. We gotta back up a second because what you just said there that's really powerful. Because the first thing that caught my ear is that you said that you're using your lens to find the dignity in the subjects, which is beautiful. But then you also said my work is at its best when I'm at my best. How do you find, like, what do you do to bring your best to a session so then you can find that dignity?

Well, that's a loaded question, but I'll give you a couple of abridged answers. One is I've learned that I have to pace myself in my own life and carve out time to make work just for me. And if that well dries up, then my work–it's not bad, but it's not magical. Like, it stagnates to a certain degree. So I need to pull away and recharge the way that I'm wired to recharge, which is often in solitude creating stuff that no one will ever see or playing music or indulging that part of my brain. So I play drums in two different bands, and that's kind of my outlet. And then also, I think I haven't been formally told this by a doctor, but I feel like I'm a bit of an empath. When I'm tasked with photographing someone, I can't help but try to see beyond the surface and pay attention to the nuances and the body language and the eyes and try and have every interaction end with the person leaving with their head held higher. I learned quickly early on, the thing that I value most about my work is the quality of that experience, not the check I get at the end of it. But I know those two things have to be in tandem, so that's always in my mind. And some days obviously are better than others in terms of my muchness and juju, but I do find when I'm on set with a person, I'm pretty much always able to transition into that flow state, like take off the Dan hat and put on the seeing the other person hat. And if I'm not in my best space, that will drain me more than normal. And afterwards, I'll have to recharge more. But usually, like this year, I'm jamming. Right now, I'm super pumped. I've had sessions the last two days. Both of them went very creatively. There's hail coming again. I don't know if you can hear that in the background.

I can't hear it. No.

It's like clacking on the window. So that's my answer. But I definitely have gone through seasons of intense burnout where I just wanted to quit altogether and, like, get a day job with health insurance. And I'm glad I didn't, but I had to navigate the idiosyncrasies of my unique chemistry to find a balance that works. So I think that's an important thing to validate in all photographers because we compare ourselves to one another, but we're very different inside. So we can't say, like, I'm a failure because I'm not as productive as so and so because they are special in ways that you are not, but vice-versa is also true.

It's a great reminder. And thank you for sharing the process that you go through to bring your best to a session. I think that's helpful for everyone no matter what they do.

Caffeine helps too.

Caffeine does help. I find caffeine is an elixir we all need. Alright. We get to talk about this other transformation that you made. Because a few years back, you went through something that doesn't get talked about very much. You had this brick and mortar studio. You had employees running around, in-person sales, the whole thing. And now you're a digital file-based business. How did that come about?

Yeah. That's a good question. So we had spent a decade building what was the dream for us, which was what you just described. And then in 2019, we had a baby boy. I actually grabbed a picture of him in case we talked about him. There he is.

Oh, yes.

Stetson, he's the bomb. He's six now. If you wanna see what he looks like two days ago, go to my Instagram. He keeps me in check. But yeah, he has several special needs that basically require more attentive care than a normal child. So we've failed to continue working the way we were and have him in daycare. We were kind of failing at both, raising him and our business because our heart wasn't in our business. It was with our son. So we got through that, and we're like, you know what? This just sucks. We can always reinvent ourselves later if we have to, but let's reorient everything and figure out how to sustain through this period while we get this kid up to what he needs to be. So his first five years specifically are kind of the clutch years with one of his genetic conditions. So we fired my wife jokingly and got rid of our storefront gallery framing studio. And then, basically, my plan was I was doing some advertising work at that point, so I was gonna keep doing that for stability. And then I had the opportunity to sit down and pretend it was 2019 all over again, but have the experience of a decade in the field and reinvent what I thought the best concept for a portrait studio was. Given my age as a millennial and where that places me in the consumer market and also the demographics of the community that I live in, I think these are all factors that dictate decisions in business that should be talked about more. But I realized through having my own child, and we lived in a small apartment. I have a daughter that's older than my son, and we wanted to get awesome newborn photos and do the whole thing. But we lived in a crappy rental and didn't have wall space. So that prevented us from going to a studio that required us to purchase wall portraits to get the art because we didn't have a space for that. So it didn't fit our need, but we did have a need of having great artwork captured before the moment was gone. So we worked with photographers that gave digital files, and then we had those files. And then five years later, we finally got our first house, and then we printed that stuff and put it in her room. And it lives now, but it didn't live in the confines of a traditional portrait studio business model. And that, to me, made me question how many other people are out there like me. And it turns out there's a lot. So I had to reorient. Like, I knew I wanted to continue to service my clients because I had all these families I'd photographed. The older kids and the younger kids were still in the queue, and I didn't wanna leave them hanging. But I also knew I didn't wanna manage staff anymore. I wanted to be just me. So I took my experience in the commercial world, which is very much you're hired for your time and talent, and you get paid a half-day rate or a day rate. And then when you're done, you call and export JPEGs and upload to Dropbox and send, and then they mail you a check. And it's just done. And those jobs were always my favorite because they were the least stressful due to the shortened timeline. So I had the thought, what if I take this experience and apply it to portrait photography in a way that the term shoot and burner, we've always used derogatorily because people that shoot and burn under charge. But the concept of giving files in and of itself is not inherently wrong. It's the charging for it that's the issue that diminishes the industry, and, you know, rising tide raises all ships type of thing. So I reinvented myself with the concept of hourly income in mind instead of the client average. So to give you an example, like, our senior portrait client average was $4,500-ish. And when I switched to this new system, that dropped substantially. But the amount of time spent with each client was so much less on this new system that my hourly income is actually higher, making a lot less per client. And for me, like I mentioned earlier, my juju and purpose in this work comes with working with as many people as possible so I can have that human experience. So it paired really nicely with that. So we've released this system that was like an in-studio session that comes with five full-res edits, or you can do a longer one where we go to a location and it comes with 10 full-res edits. And basically, I do a session and I shoot my brains out until I'm happy and then proof all that stuff. And then they get a gallery online, so it's no longer in-person. We were getting a lot of flack about that, too, because we had loft lots of clients that would travel from out of town. And either I'd have to do the session and then stay up all night prepping the proof so we could do the viewing in the morning before they went back, which really impeded on family time and normalcy and structure, or they would have to drive back again. And they hated doing that because it's really inconvenient. So proofing online ended up being a win-win. And people could screenshot my watermark pictures and steal them, and I just have to not care. And I haven't seen that happen. But that was the warning that was given to me when I was telling friends about this before I did it. And what actually happens is I think people enjoy being able to get opinions from other relatives and grandparents, and almost everybody buys additional images on top of what comes in their session. And there's ways in there. So, basically, and I'm still printing, by the way. I'm just not requiring that as a step to be done in that workflow when people work with me. I deliver my images through a shootproof gallery, and then that lives on for a year. And they can order prints anytime they want, which usually for high school kids is now, like, grad party time. So right now I'm getting lots of print orders on sessions I did last summer and last spring, and it's because they finally know what they need. So rather than guess what they might need a year from now and buy a bunch of stuff, they're actually getting a more accurate version of what they need. And my income as an artist is front loaded in my system now. So my session is expensive because it includes the files, and then the prints are not marked up as high. Whereas it used to be my session was like a breakeven, get people in the door price, and then all my income was on print markup. So that inherently feels more correct in my mind. Like, the artist part of me is like, you're commissioning me. You're not buying this stuff, but we're gonna make you the stuff anyway because it's important to have that. But there's not a pressure on the timeline or the way in which you do that. So it becomes all about the interaction and all about the experience, all about the human connection, and then my vision on top of that. And it's worked really well. I was blown away. At first, I was super nervous because when this transition happened, I conceptualized this at the end of 2019 and then launched it in 2020, like, right when COVID hit, which timed out coincidentally. But when COVID hit, all that commercial work I had booked that I was planning to use as a lifeline to sustain myself while I did this transition, all of that evaporated because companies didn't wanna take any risks. So then I found myself as the sole income provider for a family of four for the first time in my life, also with zero work in the queue. And I panicked and put a lot of pressure on myself to figure out how to make it work. And I did some Instagram promotions where I gave away some creative sessions for people that booked me, and that was wildly successful. And 2020 ended up being one of my best years ever, creatively and financially, which was wild. So I don't know if that's–there's a lot of things that could be pursued in that long answer but hopefully that gives you a starting point.

No. It does. I have a thousand questions, but to keep it simple, would it be fair to say you took your moment, your seeing of the client and who they are, and sprinkled some volume on top of it, that it's more of a volume-style experience where you're doing a higher velocity of client sessions?

Yes.

So for simpletons like me, I took a brick and mortar studio and kind of volumized my gift so I was getting paid by the hour, not by the product.

I think that's a fair way to put it. Although my volume still isn't high. I would still be considered a low-volume studio, but it's higher than it was before, largely because I have access points, which are a lot more of a micro touch point. Like that in-studio 45-minute session with five files takes me almost no time, and that's been a gateway for a lot of people that never would have booked me before to book me. So I sprinkle those into my schedule instead of having dead time where I'm marketing, I will be working with people. And then that's my marketing when they leave and tell people about it. So I'd rather be behind a camera than doing all the other stuff, and it plays nicely with that. And specifically, that session, like senior boy city is what that session ends up being. It's like all these boys that don't want pictures, and their moms make them come. And then those often are my favorite because you get that breakthrough where you see them start to believe in themselves.

Do you think you would have made this move if family wasn't prioritized the way that it was that you just would have woken up one day and thought, you know what? I'm not doing it right.

I don't know. I mean, I was definitely spurred to action by circumstance.

Sure.

But I have had these thoughts in my head for a long time, kind of propagating and not coming into full fruition. But I knew, like, I grew up with AOL Instant Messenger and computers and, like, printers in school, and knowing that you could use Mpix to print things or various, like, the concept of owning your digital media and then choosing what to do with it creatively after the fact is a part of the millennial wiring. And that was a missing piece in my previous business model. And that was not a big deal. Like, what I was doing before worked great, and I believe in it. But I think what I'm doing now is more in alignment with my wiring, which maybe means that people that are wired more like me work with me. But it's funny because Mpix is a client of mine. Miller's, I shoot a lot of the work on their website, like production photos and stuff. So I've been to the lab, and there's a picture of me and my daughter on the Mpix home page that pops up that's like a coupon. And she's on my shoulder. So every time I have a client that's going there to print stuff, they text me and they're like, "Did you know you're on this website?" Yeah. So it's almost kind of a reciprocal. I don't know. There's all these layers to it that make it pretty cool. But also for families, I do the same model words and files. And having been in a sales type position before as a client and having to narrow down pictures and pick the favorite to print big, I really miss, like, my favorites are never the one that's worthy of the wall. It's always the little moments in between my kids, like, picking his nose or tantruming or being an idiot. And that's the truth of them. And as a parent, like, years removed from when that time happens, that's my favorite stuff because that's what makes my child, not a generic child perfectly posed on a wall. So in this new model, too, there's options for people to purchase all of the proofs. So I can shoot 200 frames on a session, and then they can actually be used and enjoyed versus go in the trash. And that's additional income for me with no more work. But I feel the value that gives to people is tremendous in terms of memory keeping. So there's more layers to it. But the millennial piece is a big one, and it took me a long time to believe in myself and put confidence in my hunches. But I'm five years into this transition now, and it's still going strong.

Do you think this is something that's gonna come to the brick and mortar studios whether they like it or not because the audience has changed and their expectations have changed?

It probably depends on location, but I think that, I mean, people wanting to own their files is an inevitability at this point. And I think you have to be really good and well-branded to be able to sustain without succumbing to that. But I also think even if I were a brick and mortar still, I have friends that have seen what I've done and they've started to incorporate versions of what I'm doing into what they're doing and just increase their averages by selling files or using them as an incentive. And I think that's really smart too. So there's a million ways to do it, and I just do it the simple way that makes sense for me and works for me. So I don't tell people that it's scripture or correct because that kind of undermines the message here, which I think is you have permission to do what you need to do to make things work in your circumstance.

But do we have permission? Because it seems as though the greater conversation is never sell your file. Shoot, burn, oh, my gosh.

That's one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you because I'm what? A high performer in PPA. What does that even mean?

Yes. I mean, you're a big deal. That means you had an outstanding year. I think it technically means you're in the upper quartile or 10% of all the studios that they serve in the annual survey. So we know that you're winning. It's so exciting to hear a different way to get there, but calling out the idea that you can't sell your files, I mean, that's been, like, canon this whole time.

Yeah. And it's not bad advice, but I think it's dangerous when an entire industry puts all of its eggs in one basket like that. When things are changing as astronomically fast as they are technologically. Like, the next three years are gonna be bonkers for how our culture shifts as AI takes over jobs and things aren't what they were before. So I think it's always wise to be thinking ahead and questioning everything that you do. And that's an inherent trait in my curse slash blessing of the ADHD brain is I'm always questioning everything I do. And that makes me hone it and refine it sometimes preemptively, which is what I feel like is happening here.

Go back to that moment where you had the blank slate. Looking back on it, you were fortunate because you had a very important reason to make this change, and it ended up working out. So you were sitting there on a blank slate. I need to make this change for reasons that are more important than the business. Cool. But if someone is sitting there right now and they're back at that blank slate, how might they be feeling about this idea? Like, okay. Dan's doing it. He's proven that it could work. I have a strong brand. My work is high-quality. I like what he's saying. I'm thinking about making this change. But what are the emotions they might be feeling that would hold them back or maybe stop them from going all the way?

I had a lot of fear, but I also had something kicking me off the ledge. So that would probably be normal. Anytime something is working, it's really hard to stop doing that, unless something sticks a stick in your bicycle tire and makes it stop, stuff, which was the case for me. However, I don't think it needs to be a drastic overnight transition, but I think start thinking about these things. And usually the way I make choices is I'll say where I wanna be and put it five years from now and then break it into five chunks and, like, transition in terms of a bigger business shift goal. But I don't know. I mean, you can always try it, and it might be tingly. Actually, that's a word I stole from a mentor of mine that talks about creativity is, like, the feeling you get where you have the tingles in your fingers and you're like, if you have that feeling, that's a good sign and follow whatever you're doing. I think that there's two types of photographers. Well, there's more than that. But for generalization purposes, there's the type that wants to make good income primarily, and there's the type that wants to be creative primarily. Would you agree?

Oh, yeah. Absolutely.

So I am the latter. And this transition for me, just to give another piece of data, has unlocked and unleashed or given me permission to tap into that creativity because it's taken a lot of the pressure off from having to make the wall portrait sale. So I used to spend so much time on a session shooting stuff that was not very interesting, but I knew it matched the demographic content of what people wanted to put on their walls. So I would shoot for the wall, which meant I didn't have time to shoot experimental weird ideas that are in my mind, and now I do. So if I have a session and I owe someone 10 images, I can shoot 10 sellable images really quickly and then spend time doing Dan stuff. And that to me is a lot of where my fuel in my mind comes from too is because I've changed my client experiences to make room for myself. So if you are a creative photographer, this might be helpful for you if you're stuck.

I wish all creatives knew that money is applause. Go be creative, but when you get paid for it, it's people applauding your work. It's celebrating what you've done. It's okay to take money and be compensated for your vision and your time and your art. And sometimes it's either or, like you say, it's black or white. I'm a creative person. I don't wanna be one of those slimy salespeople. No. We gotta keep the doors open. We gotta make a living here. Something I wish more people would talk about. Let's go back to that moment then when you started. Is there something that you know now that you wish you knew then about making this move? Like, any big aha moments as you began developing the last five years of the digital file business?

No. I mean, I think putting myself in the shoes of the average potential client in my town was the thing that helped me refine what this should look like. And then, the amount that you can command for your digital work, I feel like directly correlates to the quality of your work and your brand and your reputation. So just like the other model, if you're not good yet, you aren't gonna be able to charge that much for your work. I had the advantage of having a brand and a reputation that stood high before I made this switch, and that helped it happen more seamlessly. If you're starting from ground zero as a shoot and burner and you're not good yet, in-person sales is a way of greatly increasing your bottom line in that space. I remember I started as a shoot and burner in 2009 because I didn't know what I was doing yet. And then the first time we ever did ProSelect in-person sales, we made, like, four or five times as much as we ever made before. So we went to HyVee and celebrated with Chinese food. And that was a thing that helped us go from nothing to this level of success by default, but then I feel like that is limiting or that became limiting to me. And now I'm not moving backwards, but I'm combining the two because I'm still an expert on telling my clients where they can make tangible things or making tangible things for them.

So, some of that ability that you have now came from the in-person sales because there's so much visceral feedback. Hey, do you like this? Hey, do you like that? Well, look at this image. And if it's not good, either they won't buy it or they'll tell you what they want done to it. I wonder if you would be as successful as you are now if you hadn't done the ten years as a brick and mortar.

Right. Probably not. But also, I don't know. A lot of what I'm doing now is trying to unwire my brain from the rules of correctness that I learned in my work and lean into gut feeling and emotion and incorrectness. Because in the advertising world, if something's too perfect, it doesn't work because it looks like it's trying too hard. So it's very much about curating believably perfect imperfections. Does that make any sense?

Sure.

So that's why I stopped doing print competition for a while because my work got so refined and so consistent at checking all the boxes in one world. It was completely uninteresting in the other world. And I feel like, I guess a good way to define what my style has become is editorial. It's like a mix of refined, dignified classic portraiture and play and spontaneity. And I think there's tremendous value in both of those. But the one that makes me more tingly is the creative play, like the spontaneity. Going into a session and not having a clear picture in my head and then coming out of it and saying, look what we made. And that to me is where the magic is. And I didn't have that during that ten-year period per se the way that I do now. So sometimes I wonder if I could start from scratch, we'd all do everything differently. Right? But I wouldn't trade those ten years for anything. I got to work alongside my wife during that time, which was super cool. She did all the sales actually, and she'd always tell me after. They didn't pick your favorite. They never did. They took the one you almost didn't proof because it wasn't up to your personal standards, but that's gonna be 45 inches on the wall. And every time, that actually, I think, kind of incapacitated my creativity to a certain extent because I'd pour myself into making a cool thing, and no one ever bought it because the Midwest is very conservative. And if someone's going to put something on their wall, they don't wanna have any risk of appearing too creative associated with that. But if someone's just buying files, they'll buy the cool stuff.

So I don't know. I had to laugh about HyVee Chinese because I was a young professional living in Des Moines, and I can totally relate with the celebration of HyVee Chinese. That's funny. It seems like there's a law that every interview I do on this show has to talk about AI. What are you doing with the AI? How is it affecting you in how you're shooting?

I'll start with the positives. I mentioned the way that I play more now, and that means overshooting. Like, when I get in that space, I jump around like, I don't know. I enter the zone where I just try stuff and, like, catch people off guard. And that means overshooting, which means more culling on the back end, which can be a bottleneck in a workflow. So I started using a program called AfterShoot that is an AI culling software, and that's basically offset my leaning into overshooting so that doesn't incapacitate my back end. And then, I use it as a first round pass to eliminate, like, two-thirds of what I shoot, and then I hand cull that last section because I still like to feel like I'm a perfectionist that gets to have that. But I have it trained pretty well to think the way I would think at this point. So that's been really helpful. And then the other is Evoto AI for base level retouching. So I mentioned earlier, I allow people to purchase all the proofs now as an upsell, and that wasn't a very high conversion rate before Evoto. But then I basically use it to just remove the stuff from images that would prevent people from wanting to post it on Instagram immediately. So if it's a blonde girl at sunset in backlight and the hair is crazy, it's got, like, stray hair removal. And I'll run that on those preemptively so that way if they download everything, they can use those pictures. Or if there's a boy that's in sports and has chinstrap acne, I can go in and just dial in a setting for that and sync it to the whole shoot and preemptively solve a problem. Preemptively take away a thing that's going to become a fixation that prevents them from seeing what the images actually are, which is interesting. So every shoot, I'll be like, look at this. And it's like the best image I've ever taken. And she's like, oh, but that piece of hair, and, like, that stops her from enjoying the rest of it. Right? So Evoto has been crazy. I can't believe how many hours and days and weeks and months of my life I wasted hans, healing brush out, all these hairs and things. To proof images now, it's just done for me. So that's been a great alleviation of burden on the back end. And then I still hand retouch all the edits that my clients purchase. On the negative side, in the commercial space, there is a decent amount of fear around AI because companies like Fiat, Burger King, even Vanity Fair recently posted AI images without attributing them as AI. Like, companies are seeing the potential to just save money, and they're doing it. Which can you blame them? Because that's Capitalism 101. Right? It's not to care about the hearts and bottom lines of artists. It's to make as much money as you can as a corporation. So food stylists, gaffers, grips, all these, this whole industry that's been really strong is in a deep uncertainty at the moment. And to me, that makes me think my value moving forward is not creating perfection. It's capturing the truth of humanity in a way that only a human can see. Because robots can only create the best of what they've copied human sharing on the Internet, but there's a whole depth of us that AI stuff looks AI. It looks perfect. So perfection is no longer a thing with a degree of difficulty to create. So, leaning into imperfection and trying to get people to embrace their own imperfection to express their humanness as like a proof of life is increasingly on my mind. I also used to do a lot of compositing. So PPA people that have followed me for a long time saw like, I won the grand imaging award for the master artist category with a family composite, and I do all these crazy family composites. And I still do those, but not as much. My heart isn't there anymore because it used to be this thing that required tremendous skill and art to do. And now you can just upload some faces to AI and be like, make this idea and it'll do it for you. And it'll be not as good, but it'll be like a B or a B-. And for most people, that's good enough. So I think that what that's taught me is that leaning into creating the art of fantasy isn't a viable business model long term. Again, leaning into that humanness and the in-camera artistry is where I foresee our value never ceasing to exist, documenting truth, but trying to do that in a way that still holds a place as art. That was a long answer. Sorry.

No. It was great. Your move to a digital file studio was based on your intuition of where you thought your clientele was going. Are your clients giving you feedback that they want more imperfection and more emotion in their images, don't make it perfect?

Sometimes. I still have a mix. Like, I do a lot of headshots, and 99% of those lead with, I hate having my picture taken. You better make me look ten years younger and twenty pounds lighter, whatever. And I'll do what they want me to do because they're paying me. But the younger generation is where I see there being a bucking of the trend potentially. Like, there was a period of time where I started to loathe working with high school kids because they had smartphones, and it turned them into fearful narcissists. No offense if you're listening. I still love you. But they were afraid of posting anything that made them look like they're trying too hard, but they also tried exhaustively to look perfect in an imperfect way. And I think the generation below that saw what happens to their minds, and they're saying, screw that. So I work with a lot of high school kids that don't have social media, or they don't even have a smartphone. They have dumb phones. And what makes them feel alive is going to concerts with friends, like, in-person experiences that aren't documented for the world to see. And that's been extremely encouraging to me that still exists. And that's almost existing as a backlash to what we turned culture into. So maybe culture will fragment, but those people are who interest me. And I did have a girl recently that requested that none of her pictures have any retouching at all. And I thought that was extremely cool. I've heard them say, like, I want my pictures like, when I show this to my grandchildren someday, I want it to be an accurate and fair comparison because that's inevitably what we do. We could pull up grandparents' wedding pictures, and we're like, oh, my god. Look how beautiful grandma was. And there wasn't Photoshop back then, and that's actually a fair comparison. But now, if you look at 20 years from now, here's dad's senior picture and it's like this crazy manipulated thing that doesn't have any connection to reality. It's not gonna have value. It's actually gonna do harm potentially, if a kid is looking at something overly perfect and comparing themselves to it. So I think there's a lot of lessons to be learned there, and I'm curious to see how it shakes out. But I would love to do in-camera artistry and have that be enough.

Let's end here. What other areas of the industry has your curiosity? Like, you know, people keep on saying this, but I think we really should be doing that. And this is kind of a free space. Anything else that you think that's ripe for disruption or something that we're all just going along with that probably isn't a great idea anymore?

You know, I think I've shared all my industry-related thoughts. I have a lot of personal goals and ideas that I would like to start making time to pursue if I can.

Sure.

That would help me enter the realm of creating work with a greater potential for impact in our culture. But I can't talk about all of that publicly yet. I got a few ideas in the queue that I'm excited about that are just leaning deeper into that truth of humanity aspect and making people realize that we're mostly the same as each other, especially in a time where we're being conditioned to be really afraid and focus on the differences and polarize ourselves and put up walls. We need connection more than ever, and art helps do that. So we'll see what happens.

We'll definitely be following along for sure. Dan McClanahan, PPA high performer. Thanks for coming on The Professional Photographer Podcast. I appreciate it.

Thanks for having me. Keep fighting the good fight, everybody. It's worth it.

I could have talked to Dan for about four more hours, but there's only this much space left on YouTube. So thanks for tuning in to this week's episode of The Professional Photographer Podcast. Cannot wait for the next time I get to be in front of you on TV and share another photographer's story. Now before you go, can I ask a favor? Like the show, subscribe to the show, and leave us a comment. What did Dan say that made you go, "Huh, I never thought of it that way, or wow, I'm going to try that." When we get those comments, that helps us know that we're on the right track and that we're talking to the right people. So take a moment, like, subscribe, and comment. That way, we know what you thought of the episode. The other thing is, if you're not yet a member of Professional Photographers of America, you're missing out. PPA offers incredible resources like equipment insurance, top-notch education, and a supportive community of photographers ready to help you succeed. It's perfect for photographers who are serious about growing their business in a sustainable and profitable way. At PPA, you belong here. Discover more about membership at ppa.com. That's ppa.com. I'm Pat Miller, Founder of the Small Business Owners Community and the publisher of the new Small Business Summary newsletter. Check it out. Thanks for joining us on this journey. We'll talk to you next time.