How to Do a Spec Shoot

and Why You Might Want To

Probably for years now, I’ve been saying I want to take my photography more seriously. The only problem is, I was as unclear about what I meant by that as you probably are.

I have no problem calling myself a professional photographer. No, it’s not my primary source of income. But I get hired for my photography, I’ve sold prints, I’ve taught others. Yet I’ve been feeling like my photography has lacked direction in a way I want it to. First and foremost, I aspire and work towards being a fiction writer; but that doesn’t mean I want to set photography aside. I have ambitions for my photographic work that go beyond keeping it as a simple hobby—though were I never to make another dime on my photos, I’d still keep taking them.

For me, I see my photography in two main categories: personal and professional. Both have gotten a little murky for me lately. The personal side is mostly the street / candid photography I’ve been taking for about a decade now. It’s clearer to define for me, but I still want to take it a step further, get my work seen, so I’m working on doing my first true personal photo project, as well as curating and submitting photos for contests, etc. (I’ll probably write more on this later!) On the professional side, most of the paid work I’ve done has been headshot or portrait photography, but I don’t really aspire to become a headshot or even a portrait photographer. I wanted to find a way to make some work that I was proud of, that contained a bit of my artistic sensibilities, while gesturing more towards something a bit more commercially-minded. So I made a spec shoot.

A spec shoot is a photoshoot, usually unpaid, designed to learn something, explore an idea, or showcase either a new talent, technique, or style of work for potential clients. It’s hardly a unique angle, but I’ve always really liked working with a subject to make portraits, and wanted to explore making some fashion-adjacent portraits with a model in a way that felt in line with my candid, street photographer sensibilities. I wanted to write this up both as a mini how-to guide if you wanted to organize your own spec shoot, as well as a condensation of some of the ideas and things I learned during this process.