Great things in business are never done by one person; they’re done by a team of people. ~Steve Jobs

Pros and cons of collaboration (collab) work

Living the life of an artist can be quite solitary. You create, share and repeat. Occasionally there is another creative who reaches out and asks if you’d like to collab. If you’re getting started I highly recommend getting the experience of working with a variety of artists and creatives to allow you to build an idea of what you like and to build a network of people that you can use on set if the need arises. As you create a body of work collab work can quickly eat up your existing time and build a false sense of busy. This isn’t great for productivity if you’re running a business or a creative endeavor.

Pros to collab work: A diversity you may not have had if you were the only one controlling the project. Mixing ideas and concepts can create a solid body of work for yourself, branching your work in ways you hadn’t expected. I especially love seeing what happens when someone else is at the creative helm, assisting them create something is really a wonderful experience. Shared workload is definitely welcomed, HOWEVER a bigass caveat to that is if you allow someone else to take control on a segment of the project do NOT critique, change or direct that person as if they are working for you on your project. The whole idea is allowing the creatives a free roam without setting barriers, expectations or specific goals. They’re donating their talent, time and minds to the project, let them be!

Cons to collab work: Mental load can be high with creatives, I personally prefer 4-6 projects max in a month for myself, as I find that is the max load mentally for the projects. I tend to mull them over heavily throughout the pre-production and want to make sure we create something that every one will be proud of. Mental load with too many collabs can hurt your output in your work, and that can lead to some testy customers. Diva on set. There will come a time where a diva will land on set, they believe the collab work is for them, by them and no-one else is to give input. Run like a paid shoot they bark orders, ask for quiet on set and generally are controlling the project disregarding everyone else on set. Pushy time crunchers. You’ve had a great sesh, and it’s been a few days since you did the project. Bombardment from someone on set who wants to release the images NOW!! These are hard to deal with because they’re super excited to show the images, just aren’t aware of projected timelines. Collabs often get shunted backwards in edit queues and can be delayed more by the fact they are collabs. Set attainable goals with your timelines and specify peoples roles to eliminate some of these cons.

The featured image is from one of our recent collabs, we’ll feature that soon on the blog!