I think it’s been a year and a half since I last published an article on my official blog that turned 13 years old in January 2025. In light of this (somewhat impressive) anniversary, I believe there are two reasons why I continue to pay WordPress a hefty annual fee for maintaining this blog. The first reason is that I truly do love creative writing and using my photography to illustrate, complement, and underscore the subject matters covered here. The second reason is that the search engine optimization (SEO) for the content that I’ve published on this blog since its inception is easily discoverable via most search engines. Despite my disdain for most social media platforms, the fact that my photography can be easily found via this blog makes “La Vue Atypique” — in thoughtful consideration and retrospect — my most reliable marketing tool to date.
But it’s not enough for what I want TIA to achieve…
More than 15 years since TIA International Photography’s inception, marketing still remains the biggest challenge for sustaining my small photography business. Finding that “core niche” remains so remarkably elusive and frustrating that I frequently query whether the discovery of such a demographic is tenable, realistic, or achievable.
After the presidential election in the US last November, in a morbid stupor, I had convinced myself that there was no longer any point in pursuing photography at all, let alone trying to keep TIA afloat. The aftermath of this event has had such a personal, negative impact that I can no longer claim to be the daily “news junkie” that I’ve been for most of my life. To preserve my own mental and physical health, I’ve determined that I can only tune into the latest developments twice a week at most. To be candid, the first few weeks after the election left me, figuratively, struggling to escape a psychological quagmire of despair. However, since the holiday season to present day, I am more troubled by the untamed fury and contempt that I harbor towards my “fellow Americans” who deliberately chose this path for America and, by extension, the world today — a world that is much farther removed from what I perceived when I was much younger, much more impressionable, and much more optimistic about humanity and civilization.
All that being said…
I have reached an age in my life in which I will deliver a regrettable disservice to myself if I do not channel my fury, resentment, and disappointment into something creative while being cathartic, therapeutic, constructive, and useful. Since November, virtually all my family and inner circle of friends have expressed emphatically (once again) that I cannot abandon TIA. Apparently, the contrary is the expectation. This is the time to double-down on my efforts of creativity and expression — and what better way than to venture (once again) to market my entire inventory of photographic works to a “core niche” that seems to have been nonexistent (from my experience thus far)? The time is ripe for another attempt to materialize what has appeared to be, or what I have told myself over the years, utterly intangible.
Part of the reason why I struggle with marketing is because I have tried, in earnest, to be the “jack of all trades” with my photography. Most experts in photography state with conviction that this is one of the worst mistakes a photographer can make when marketing oneself. One must specialize in one or two subjects matter and be perpetually passionate about them to a fault. I am a cityscape photographer who specializes in low-light and night-time photography. I would venture that my secondary specialization is event photography, but cityscape photography is my purpose in life. (I discovered this early on in my career as a professional photographer, and still feel gratified by this epiphany). If I’m being true to myself, I would state that I’ve become very proficient in timelapse photography to accentuate my cityscapes in a much more mesmerizing method.
North Head Historic Reserve, Auckland, New Zealand (December 2023)
I do not specialize in portraits, animals, food, fashion, weddings, still life, astrophotography, or many of the different subject matters that exist in photography. I believe I’m paraphrasing but the notion is true that if “you’re everything to everybody, then you’re nothing to nobody.”
I wonder how long TIA has been nothing to nobody in my quest to prove that I can master and deliver photography in all sorts of subject matters. Alongside a few significant revelations in my mind this year, I have determined to obliterate my efforts to be everything to everybody and devote my energy to showing the world — via my photography — just how magnificent its multiple metropolises are from Auckland to Accra, Calgary to Kuala Lumpur. There are so many people who claim that they loathe all the cities of our world, claiming they’re so terrible for the planet and counter to nature. I wholeheartedly disagree with this viewpoint but I do not think less of the people who subscribe to it. It just means my kind of photography is not going to appeal to this particular group, and I need to accept that and not dwell on it. After all, there are millions of people who are thrilled by the cities of the world and their distinctive personalities. TIA is for these individuals.
Ultimately, the challenge is to find TIA’s “core niche”. To be extremely specific, TIA needs to find the demographic of people who love and appreciate atypical, unusual, extraordinary views and angles of the world’s cities in photography. After 15 years, I have observed that this is not a large demographic. In fact, I’d wager it’s rather small. Why? Most publications tend to publish photos of cityscapes that are instantly familiar and identifiable. One could argue that publications prefer “textbook” images of cities. The viewer can pinpoint a landmark or popular skyscraper in a certain cityscape and say, “That’s New York!” or “That’s Singapore!” and move on immediately.
TIA doesn’t do “textbook”.
More importantly, TIA doesn’t want you to move on from its cityscapes! WHY ON EARTH WOULD I DESIRE THAT?
TIA’s cityscapes do not offer the quickly and readily identifiable. My work coerces the viewer to have to visually discern for several seconds, or maybe more than a minute, to answer the question “Where is this?” or “Which city am I looking at?” Part of my job (which I love to do) is to deliver the not readily recognizable cityscape to the viewer so that she is thrilled when she discovers that the metropolis is an odd angle of Seattle or a uncommon visage of Vancouver.
So that’s the goal in 2025 and beyond for TIA — and not to stray from this objective ever again. I’ve received so many conflicting details on how to market my business. As a result, while many revisions to my plans must occur to achieve my goal, some will probably be counterintuitive to most experts in marketing, but unequivocally in alignment with my intuition and instincts. I think I’ve been ignoring this for years which is why TIA is (currently) nothing to nobody in my mind. I’m ready for the challenge to change this both for myself and for my business.
I hope you’ll accompany me as I finally figure it out. This blog will be instrumental in this new journey — and who knows? Maybe some of you will be instrumental as well.
TIA’s current mental state via music video:
