Before photography became my full-time focus, I spent years in IT as a senior leader at a bank. One of the certifications I carried was Certified Product Owner—and the most useful thing that role taught me had nothing to do with Jira, story points, or roadmaps.
It taught me this: You don’t build a product in a vacuum. You build it with a clear view of the market, the buyer, and the friction that stops adoption.
That mindset matters here because photography has a trap baked into it.
A lot of photographers do this in reverse. They make images they love. They build a body of work they’re proud of. Then they try to sell it.
Sometimes it works. Often it doesn’t—because the market reality shows up after the work is already done.
And I can’t afford to discover, two years from now, that I built something beautiful that has nowhere to go.
That’s why my post Three Sessions a Week for 105 Weeks isn’t just a discipline plan—it’s a deadline. It’s a commitment to shipping finished portfolios, not endless “practice.”
But there’s a second constraint I’m adding now: Before I go deep, I need to understand which bodies of work are viable products—and what their sales friction looks like.
The Uncomfortable Truth About “Name” Careers
I’ve been told—and I’ve seen enough to believe—that many professional street and travel photographers don’t earn a living from print sales alone, at least not for a long time.
They supplement their income through workshops and mentorship, books and courses, speaking engagements, and content revenue.
Not because their work isn’t strong.
Because selling street and travel photography as a product is high friction until you’ve “made a name,” and that can take decades.
I don’t have decades.
So instead of pretending this is purely an art question, I’m treating it like a product question.
What markets exist for the kind of work I’m capable of making—and what kind of images do those markets reliably buy?
Photography as a Product: The Part Most People Skip
A product owner doesn’t ask, “Can we build this?”
They ask, “Will anyone adopt it, pay for it, and keep paying for it?”
So here’s the photographer version:
- Who buys this?
- Where will it live—book, wall, lobby, boardroom, collector’s home?
- What’s the risk to the buyer?
- What are the purchase blockers?
- How do I package it so buying is easy?
This isn’t about watering down the work. It’s about understanding constraints up front so the work can actually travel.
Corporate Art Buyers Want Low Drama and High Impact
Here’s the most useful thing I’ve heard about corporate clients, and it tracks with how large organizations make decisions.
They buy artwork for meeting rooms and common spaces, but:
- It can’t feature faces, or anything that triggers privacy, identity, or HR concerns.
- It can’t be emotionally or politically loaded.
- It can’t introduce controversy, fear, shame, grief, or anger.
- It has to be visually strong, but not distracting in the wrong way.
In a corporate environment, art isn’t there to challenge the viewer. It’s there to support the space.
Calm. Confidence. Clarity. Prestige. Local identity without tension.
Which means the buyer’s definition of “impactful” is often this: Bold enough to feel intentional, neutral enough to feel safe.
That’s the product owner lens. Corporate buyers aren’t just buying art. They’re buying risk reduction.
What Sells to Corporate Clients: What’s In the Frame
If I’m building a portfolio with corporate print sales as a serious outcome, the content itself has to reduce friction.
The lowest-friction subjects tend to be:
- Architecture and city geometry
Clean lines, strong structure, modern surfaces. “The city” without “the crowd.” Images that scale big on a wall and still read clearly. - Nature and landscape moods
Calm, timeless, universally readable. Easy for offices because it soothes rather than provokes. - Abstracts and visual texture
Reflections, shadows, patterns, weather, movement. Design-friendly and safe because it’s interpretive.
A local sense of place, carefully handled: a company in Toronto often likes seeing Toronto. But not necessarily the messy parts of Toronto. There’s a way to make place-based work feel premium and brand-safe.
The common theme is simple: No one has to explain it in a boardroom. It just works.
Coffee Table Books: Not What I Like, But What Readers Buy
Coffee table books sell when they deliver a clear, repeatable experience.
- A place you want to visit.
- A world you want to enter.
- A theme you want to live with.
- A story you want to revisit.
They’re often bought as gifts, status objects, lifestyle signals, design objects, or souvenirs of identity.
Which means the book has to be instantly legible:
- A strong cover image.
- A coherent visual language.
- Sequencing that feels intentional.
- A topic you can summarize in one sentence.
A book isn’t just images. It’s a packaged promise.
The Portfolio Viability Check Before I Commit 105 Weeks
This is what I need to do in the coming months before I go deep.
Define two buyer personas for each portfolio idea
For every potential body of work, I need to name the likely book buyer and the likely wall buyer. If I can’t describe the buyer, I’m guessing.
- Write acceptance criteria like a product owner would
- Not to control the art—just to prevent wasted effort.
Example for a corporate-friendly series:
- No identifiable faces.
- No overt political symbols.
- No visible distress or illicit activity.
- Prints must hold up at 40–60 inches wide.
- The series must work as 3, 6, or 9 images on a wall.
That’s not art-killing. That’s shipping.
Build a 15-image MVP wall for each concept
Before I call anything a portfolio, it needs 15 images that feel like one voice. If I can’t assemble 15, I don’t have a product yet. I have experiments.
- Test the market like a grown-up
- Not “Would you buy this?” from friends.
Show images to interior designers, office managers, and art consultants. Ask where it would hang and what would stop them from buying it. Mock it up at scale in boardrooms and lobbies. Price it like it’s real. See what gets immediate yes or no reactions.
Decide deliberately: one portfolio for prestige, one for cashflow
This might be the strategic move because time matters.
- One body of work can be higher friction and higher prestige—street, documentary, work with edge and voice.
- One body of work should be lower friction and designed to sell into spaces—architecture, abstracts, place without faces.
Both can still be me. They just don’t need to fight the same battle.
The Point of All This
The 105 weeks plan is about output, consistency, and finishing.
This is the reminder that finishing isn’t enough.
If I want a book deal, a gallery show, and corporate print sales when I turn sixty, then part of my craft isn’t just seeing.
It’s positioning.
Not chasing trends. Not abandoning voice.
Just doing what a product owner would do.
Know the market, define the buyer, reduce friction, and build a portfolio that can actually be sold.