The COVID-19 pandemic has devastated the creative industries in Australia – the music industry documenting million-dollar losses and lockdowns putting temporary halts on domestic screen production.

But it’s the closure of borders around the world which has had the most impact on the work of creatives whose ‘offices’ are often overseas locations.

For veteran portrait and travel photographer Glynn Lavender, the pandemic has underlined the importance of business and marketing skills for those working in the creative industries.

“In the world of photography, the most important thing is to learn how to run a business, not how to be a photographer – because you could be the world’s best photographer but if you can’t run a business, you’re going to be bankrupt,” he says.

“If you’re an average photographer but are really good at marketing and business you’ll be successful – so learning business and marketing skills as a photographer is probably more important than learning photographic skills – it’s really, really important.”

Glynn says he doesn’t really keep up to date with the industry, outside of using social media channels in the operations of his business.

“I don’t believe in following other photographers – I don’t spend a lot of time looking at what other people are doing and I just do what makes me happy,” he says.

“Because I do a lot of tours – international travel for photography and going into places to photograph events happening in those places – I’m more interested in looking at what’s happening in the world – are there political issues, any unrest, any terrorism issues that we may have to face and deal with?”

The most important thing is to learn how to run a business because you could be the world’s best photographer but if you can’t run a business, you’re going to be bankrupt. When I ask Glynn how a normal shoot day looked like before the pandemic, he pointed out that he didn’t work like other photographers did.

“I don’t work necessarily every week, I might work four times a year – I do four big photo tours a year so a lot of my time is spent researching, checking flights, working on insurance, all the boring stuff,” he said.

For aspiring international photographers, he warns against notions of glamour and glitz, in the job.

“Because it’s on tour it usually means getting up very early in the morning like four thirty, five o’clock in the morning, shooting until breakfast, heading out to another location, shooting all the way through to lunch, heading to another location, shooting through till sunset, and then back to the hotel,” he explains.

“Compared to an average photographer, if they’re doing say editorial stuff they might only shoot for two or three hours a day – I could be shooting for twelve hours, or fifteen hours a day, so that’s quite different.”

Zainah Mertakusuma is a photography student at RMIT.