My Photographer Home Office | SMP Office Tour

Hahaha, I wouldn’t actually call this a tour. But I figured it was about time to memorialize my current photographer home office on the internet (other than just on Instagram), because it has served me since 2021, and I won’t have it for much longer. 🥲

What better way to do that than through a blog post?! Today, I’m sharing the real deal, the space where I’ve made my dreams of running my own photography business come true.

I hope this post inspires some of you who have been itching to start your own business to just get started. You can do it with less than you think. Truly, the hardest part is just beginning.

Let’s dive in.

My partner and I moved into our SF apartment in July of 2021. I had been in business for less than a year at that point and was still working as a classroom assistant teacher at a Montessori school to help make ends meet.

I officially went full time with photography about a year later in June of 2022. I left my assistant position and started pursuing photography full time! It has been a wild ride, to say the least, but that’s not what this blog post is about. This blog post is about my little “office” space.

Enter: our apartment. A charming little 500-square-foot studio with bay windows and hardwood floors. The dream! We loved it.

As we acclimated to living together in SF (my first time living in the city) and our possessions grew, my business was growing right alongside it. I quickly realized I needed a space to work – an “office.”

I found the perfect little desk for cheap on Facebook Marketplace, along with a filing cabinet that acts as a small extension of my desk. I upgraded to a Mac Mini with a monitor and set up my desk at the end of our bed in our main living space. And just like that, my photographer home office was born.

Over time, I’ve accumulated more and more things: notebooks, hard drives, film negatives, SD cards, you name it. (I’m not even going to go into all the non-office space photography equipment I’ve accumulated, because frankly, there ain’t no space for us to store it. 😂 It’s stuffed into myriad locations in our apt.)

To put it candidly, between the two of us living in this space for nearly five years, we have definitely outgrown our tiny apartment.

But this tiny desk, or should I say “office” space, still serves me and my business. 🙂

And while I would love to have an actual room dedicated to an office, that’s just not where we’re at right now. That day is coming, but I’m really proud of myself for building my business with the resources I had available at the time.

Enjoy these little peeks into my current photographer home office. She’s gotten me a long way, and I’m very grateful. I know I won’t have her for much longer.

Thinking of starting your own business but feel like you don’t have enough resources? Or maybe your space doesn’t feel “Instagram-worthy” enough? I’m here to tell you that you can absolutely do it. Just get started.

Start small, build slowly, and make do with what you have. Your setup doesn’t need to be perfect, aesthetic, or expensive to build something meaningful. You might be surprised by how far you can get with a little determination, creativity, and consistency. 🙂

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