Beyond the Image Podcast

Are your photography rates leaving you busy, booked, and broke? In this episode of Beyond the Image, James Patrick breaks down exactly how photographers can calculate sustainable rates that cover their cost of doing business, desired income, and all the hidden hours spent editing, marketing, and running their business.

The recent Vanity Fair portraits by Christopher Anderson sparked an unprecedented reaction across the creative world. Some called them powerful. Others called them "bad photos." In this episode of Beyond the Image, James Patrick breaks down why that criticism reveals more about viewer expectations than photographic qua

Photographers… this may shock you — but not everyone is going to like your work. And sometimes, the loudest critics are other photographers. In this episode of Beyond the Image, James Patrick breaks down why criticism from other creatives often has nothing to do with your talent and everything to do with ego, insecurit

In this episode of Beyond the Image, James Patrick takes a direct, professional look at one of the most polarizing conversations in the photography world: ethical pricing. After a viral post claimed that "$2,000 for 100 photos is unethical," the industry erupted into yet another round of pricing debates, judgment, and

In this episode of Beyond the Image, James Patrick dives into one of the biggest questions photographers asked after his viral video: "What do you do when the client is the difficult one?" After more than 20 years, hundreds of shoots, and more personalities than he can count, James breaks down the real root of "bad cli

In this episode, I break down exactly how I landed a dream project—not through luck, connections, or waiting to "get discovered," but by creating the kind of work I wanted to be hired for. I share the full strategy behind building a spec portfolio, crafting content marketing around it, and ultimately generating a wave