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Redefining Success As A Wedding Photographer with Skillie Jacques Botha
By Kyle Wilson
“My name is Skillie. I am a creator at heart. I am a husband and a dad and it brings me immense joy to spend time with my family! Capturing moments at weddings of a couple and their loved ones is a massive privilege for me. I genuinely believe that we as humans discover a whole new level of beauty when we see the magic in the small things around us – every moment matters – big or small – and I absolutely love capturing those raw and real memories for people. When I’m shooting a wedding, it’s one of the most fulfilling spaces in which I find myself.”
Based near Cape Town in the Western Cape of South Africa, Skillie Jacques Botha has been shooting weddings since 2011. He recently joined us on the podcast and talked about creative integrity, what it means to be a storyteller, and how his work-life balance has evolved.
What's one of your better business decisions that has gotten you to where you are now?
One of the best business decisions I've made would be trusting my creative process and building my process around what my life looked like. Do not go and follow a certain recipe. People would like to sell you the idea that as an entrepreneur or a wedding photographer, this is the road you will have to take. This is how you need to set up your day. This is the kind of workflow you need to have. But the most important thing for every person is to find out what works for you in your own life. Do not let your life try to fit in with your work schedule but make your work schedule fit into your life.
I feel like I've managed my business quite well through the different stages of my career and my life. When the kids were babies it was a lot more chaotic. Now that they're going to school, I get way more done because I know if I have three or four hours, I have to make it count. It's about setting your priorities and your goals straight. The happier I feel, the better I can run a business. But if I constantly feel like I'm not reaching this unrealistic goal I've set for myself, then I will just be unhappy. The moment I started feeling that freedom, that was amazing.
That touches on work-life balance, saying, I don't need to do what everyone else is doing. I just need to do what's best for me. What does trusting your creative process look like?
When you start out as a wedding photographer, you see everyone traveling, doing insane destination and luxurious weddings. You sort of feel like that's where I need to be, or I'm not a successful wedding photographer. I pushed myself so hard, and then it felt empty. I thought there was going to be a great rainbow with a pot of gold, but that wasn't there.
Then I started saying to myself, why are you doing this? Why do you put that kind of wedding above a wedding five minutes from home? A couple with a bit of a lower budget, maybe it's just one candle and one flower on the table, but the people there are golden, and they're having this incredible wedding, and I can capture their memories. Once I started making that move, everything changed for me. So that was the creative process for me when I just started loving what I do. Do not love the idea of what I should be doing, but actually loving what I do.
I want to spend quality time with my family and friends. That's my priority. I have to figure out what tools I can use when I'm not shooting so they don't feel like I’m working the whole time. I started trusting myself a lot more and not putting goals in my mind that I know are not achievable or goals that I “should” have. Just let that go.
How have you changed your brand presence to seek couples that make you want to love your job versus couples that are going to give you a wedding day that's going to look good on Instagram?
I started speaking differently about myself. I started thinking, what am I going to post on Instagram to tell a story within 10 images? I can take a nice portrait of a couple, but these days anybody can do that. What's going to make a difference? So I tell the story through emotion. Composition is not that important to me when it comes to the way I market to my clients. People don't care about composition, to be honest. They just care about their people being captured.
The tangible thing that I did was showcase what really matters. At my workshops, I teach photographers that the photos are honestly a secondary thing you need to worry about. It's the energy you bring to the wedding. It's the energy you give to the couples. It's your ability to shift the energy in a room, and if it's filled with drama, bring it back to joy and calmness. Don't feed on the chaos. Just bring people back to what matters. Life is short, and we need to show people how beautiful it is, and that's what I've been trying to do, whether that's through a child's smile or a simple picture of a flower in beautiful light. I've been doing it consistently, and people are seeing it.
People love saying, 'I'm a storytelling photographer.' But meanwhile, they don't know anything about capturing a story. It's just using a buzzword. People see right through that bullshit if you tell them you're a storytelling photographer but your website or Instagram is just posed photos over and over again. Honestly, just being consistent in doing what I do, in actually being a storyteller, made a difference for me.
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That's evidenced by your Instagram. I love seeing how a photographer changes by scrolling back a few years. I can see how you started the idea, and looking at your most recent work, I see you've expanded on that. I'd be interested to know, what's your problem? What do you feel that you're working on now and trying to evolve moving forward? Because what you've got going on is pretty sweet. I'd like to know what's next.
That's always the question that's lurking around, right? What's next? To share a personal story of what's influencing the work, I went through a very painful divorce about five years ago. That influenced my work a lot, which was strange. I sort of started latching onto those really happy moments. My great heartbreak opened my eyes to life's smallest joys which was amazing. All of my work fell into place and I felt that rhythm and sweet spot.
When you asked me what my problem was, I really had to think about it. Life is good right now. Work is good, family is good, and everything feels incredible. But from a work point of view, the small things I'm working on are how to further elevate the client experiences I'm offering people. I find it interesting working with different personalities and finding a way to connect with them. The more I can understand people, the better, so I read a lot about that. I'm very interested in psychology. I studied it as a student, and I'm interested in picking it up again and seeing how it influences my work life. Once again, focusing on my personal life and what makes me happy always finds its way into my work.
So I don't have a massive problem right now when it comes to my work. It's just making the systems even smoother and being as present as possible in every part of the creative process. What would you say is one of your biggest problems, Kyle?
I’m supposed to ask the questions here, Skillie, come on. It's great that you don't have a big problem going on and that you're diving deeper into the reflection that you are able to connect with anyone.
For me, I have been photographing weddings full-time for 10 years, give or take, and I recently photographed potentially my last couple of weddings, which feels pretty nice. I've wondered for a while now what my portrait and artwork would look like if I went in with a concept and experimented with things I'm not good at, like studio lighting. I have a career where I don't have to hustle and photograph things anymore. I do this Monday through Friday, and then on the weekend, I probably want to ride my bike with my friends. I don't want to take more photos because every time I click the button, I'm giving future me a task to deal with later, which has pulled me away from photographing things now. It's a struggle to find the perfect formula for this. What scratches the itch without making me annoyed at it later? And so that's my problem. And I've been saying this exact sentence for about a year or two now so I'm yet to come up with an answer.
Everything boils down to consistency and doing something when you don't feel like it is hard. But the fruit you get from it at the end of the day tastes really sweet. Hard work pays off no matter what kind of work you're doing, and it comes with a lot of challenges. I'm excited to see what you're going to do.
I appreciate it. On either side of the industry, personal or professional paid work, it's about carrying the momentum of excitement. You're totally right. It's just doing the work every day, and the juice is worth the squeeze, but it's going to take a while.
100%. My greatest wish for our generation is to not sell ourselves a world where we're to enjoy working 90% of the time because it's not a realistic expectation to have. I'm privileged to be doing what I'm doing and having an incredible lifestyle of choosing my own time and doing whatever I want to do, but it's still not great every day. We should better manage our days and space it out a bit differently than previous generations did. We are in a unique era in humanity where we have to figure out how these things work and how we will combine being human within a new context. It's an interesting time.
I love hearing anybody managing their work-life balance in this job, and it sounds like you've been doing that for a long time. I appreciate you sharing your insights today and it's great to hear how you're evolving as a photographer in the middle of your career.
I'm very excited to see what's coming next, what problems will arise, and how I'm going to solve them. Thank you so much for your time too. It's been great chatting with you and getting to know you better. Next time, I want to ask you some questions. I'm curious to learn even more.
Follow Skillie on Instagram (@kikitography) and check out his website at Kikitography.com. Don’t miss out on upcoming workshops where he shares his knowledge and passion for storytelling.
This interview has been edited and condensed. Check out “The Photographer’s Problem: A Narrative Podcast,” streaming now on YouTube or Spotify, for the full, unedited interview and more inspiring stories from the evolving world of photography.
