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Episode SummaryShelly sits down with James Barnard — logo designer, Adobe speaker, and founder of the Designerrrs design community — met while doodling at a craft table at Adobe 99U in NYC this past June.
James shares:
Timestamps to jump to:00:00 — Intro and How they met in NYC at Adobe 99U03:32 — James Back story: From wanting to be a record producer to self-taught designer09:38 — Niching into logo design and the SEO win that followed17:17 — Going viral: the LogoLounge TikTok and the 15M-view pencil tool video26:58 — Why he built the Designerrrs community (the poop emoji logo story)28:24 — Teaching in public: "a rising tide lifts all ships"32:01 — The one-page brand guide for budget-conscious clients35:18 — How James actually prices a logo project38:13 — One concept vs. fifteen: two schools of logo design41:32 — The CRM and lead-scoring system behind his business44:12 — Landing his first Adobe MAX talk48:02 — Scripting content and platform-specific strategy52:05 — The 50/50 rule for marketing vs. client work53:44 — Family, running, and book-bindingAbout James
James Barnard is a logo designer and founder of Barnard.co, a freelance studio based on the Gold Coast, Australia. Originally from England, he spent over a decade in UK publishing — including Runner's World, Men's Health, and The Daily Telegraph — before going freelance and niching into logo and brand identity work. He founded the Designerrrs design community, speaks at Adobe MAX, and teaches design workflows to a large following on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and LinkedIn.
About Shelly
Shelly Waldman is the founder of Creative Camp, a business education platform for commercial photographers and creative freelancers, and host of the Creative Campfire podcast. A working commercial photographer with a background in finance and economics, she brings an "Analytical Creative" lens to pricing, positioning, and business strategy.
Links and Resources
Keep the Conversation Going
Follow along on Instagram
Support the show buy Shelly a coffee
Sign up for the Camp Bulletin
If you loved this episode, leave a review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts — it helps more Campers find the fire.
Want to know what gear I use to make the podcast here you go. It's listed below.
Podcast Gear:
Shure MV7 mic
Audiotechnica M50x headphones
HP Omnibook 7 TB2
on the go mics for iphone/mobile Rode Wireless micro
for phone or camera Rode Wireless GO III
This week is a pod swap, Campers — we're gathered around a fire shared with Patrick Fore of The Terrible Creative. Patrick reached out about joining forces, and what came out of it was a raw, honest conversation about money shame: the stories we inherit from our families, the fear behind undercharging, and how to separate the emotion of money from the math of running a business.
IN THIS EPISODE:
- How childhood money stories (layoffs, blue-collar roots, "money Saturdays") quietly shape how we price and negotiate as adults
- Why Shelly's economics degree and ten years at Citibank became the backbone of Creative Camp's whole philosophy
- The messy truth about second shooters, copyright, and who actually owns those images
- Licensing 101: why usage is baked into (or missing from) most photographers' pricing
- A real-time negotiation story: Shelly's client asked her to cut a quote in half, and what she did instead of caving
- Why people undercharge — fear, identity, scarcity — and Shelly's "raise it until you get a no" method
- Patrick's "gamify it" trick for taking emotion out of budget conversations
- The stoic reframe that helps with money anxiety: "what's the best thing that could happen?"
- Patrick's brutal 2025 (from $123K to selling his backup camera) and why just surviving deserves a gold star
RESOURCES & LINKS MENTIONED:
- Patrick's podcast and book, The Terrible Creative: theterriblecreative.com
- Patrick's portfolio: patrickfore.com
- Patrick on Instagram: @patrickfore
- The Terrible Creative on Instagram: @terriblephotographer
- Ren & Jen's Photo Dump EP 50 on "would you start over in 2026"
- Dawn Heumann's thought piece on starting a photography business today and another piece how much goes into a photo shoot
CREATIVE CAMP LINKS
Instagram: instagram.com/creativecamp.pro
Substack: substack.com/@creativecamp
Camp Bulletin
Buy Me a Coffee: buymeacoffee.com/creativecamp
And if this episode helped, leave us a review — it helps more Campers find the fire.
- Basecamp Bundle — four courses covering swipe copy, visibility, usage licensing, and goal planning, all for $197: outpost.creativecamp.pro/basecamp/
- Creative Sidekick — 6 months of 1:1 coaching on strategy, pricing, and pitching. Apply for a discovery call: creativecamp.pro/sidekick
ABOUT THE HOST
Shelly Waldman is a commercial photographer and the founder of Creative Camp, a business education platform for photographers and creative freelancers. Known as "The Analytical Creative," she draws on a background in economics and ten years as a financial analyst to help creatives build sustainable, well-priced businesses. She hosts the Creative Campfire podcast from her home base in London.
ABOUT THE GUEST
Patrick Fore is a commercial photographer and host of The Terrible Creative podcast, where he talks candidly about identity, money, and the long middle of a freelance career. He's the author of Lessons From a Terrible Photographer, now available on Audible. Find his work at patrickfore.com.
Twenty years in commercial food and lifestyle photography will teach you a lot about reinvention — and this week's guest is doing exactly that in real time. Dawn Heumann joins Shelly by the fire to talk about what happens when you dismantle a perfectly curated Instagram, the vulnerability of showing up on video to the AI systems Dawn has built to run cold outreach, content planning, and client research — and lands on the bigger question every commercial photographer is asking right now: what does this career look like on the other side of the AI shift?
It's a wide-ranging, generous conversation between two friends who've known each other since a portfolio review years ago.
LINKS AND RESOURCES:
Wisprflow.ai — the voice-to-text tool Dawn uses for her AI brain dumps*
Dawn's website and where you can find the resource for the AI Blueprint
Unscripted — Dawn's garage videos
Dawn on Instagram
Folkhaus — Dawn's production studio and creative partner for ongoing social content
Folkhaus on Instagram
SUPPORT FOR YOUR BUSINESS:
“We all need help in different places.” — Dawn Heumann
Dawn said it best on this episode: none of us are amazing at everything, and asking for help is a skill worth practicing. If you're ready for that kind of support in your own business, Creative Sidekick is 1:1 coaching built for photographers and creative freelancers who want a strategic partner in their corner — not just another course.
Learn more about Creative Sidekick
And if this episode had you thinking about your own AI workflows, we're building an AI Blueprint workflow class to help you set up the kind of systems Dawn talked about — without the overwhelm.
Register your interest here
ABOUT THE HOST:
Shelly Waldman is the founder of Creative Camp, where she brings her background in economics and finance to business education for commercial photographers and creative freelancers. Known as “The Analytical Creative” and Creative Camp's Head Counselor, Shelly is a working commercial photographer based in London who's spent her career helping creatives build pricing, pitching, and business strategies that actually hold up.
ABOUT DAWN:
Dawn Heumann is a commercial photographer working in food and lifestyle. She's the founder of Folkhaus, a production studio that partners with brands to keep up with the endless demand for social content, and she's increasingly building in public on Instagram about AI, personal brand, and the future of the industry.
SUPPORT THE SHOW:
The show is produced with love and zero backing. If you like to support the show,
Buy me a coffee
Work with me
Invite me to be a speaker in your community
Follow along on Instagram
Join Camp Bulletin
This week at the fire, Shelly welcomes Costas Millas, the fine artist, graphic designer, food stylist, and photographer behind Made by Mr. Millas — for a conversation about creative process, patience, and building a solo business after two decades in design.
Costas walks through how his food art stories began with a pink-and-black rhubarb series for an Instagram photo competition, the making of his award-winning Spaghetti series, and the deeply personal journey behind No Colour, his self-published, hand-numbered black-and-white photo book born out of a difficult year. They dig into mood boarding, letting ideas marinate, maxing out the gear you already have before buying more, delegating on big productions like his work for Fortnum & Mason, and why slow, meaningful creative work still has a place in an increasingly optimized, AI-accelerated world.Resources & Links Mentioned
Made by Mr. Millas — website & No Colour book shop
Costas on Instagram & LinkedIn: @madebymrmillas
The Eat, Capture, Share competition, hosted by Kimberley Espinal
Lola Fowler's Food Styling Diploma*
World Food Photography Awards
Podcast Gear:
Studio Mic: Shure MV7*
Headphones: Audiotechnica M50x *
Laptop: HP Omnibook 7 *
Mics for iphone/mobile Rode Wireless micro*
Mic for camera or mobile: Rode Wireless GO III*
*affiliate links. If you buy through any of these links it's supports the show, or supports Costas.
Some Things Should Take Time
“Not everything needs to be optimized — including in our business.” Costas's words this episode are a good reminder that a sustainable creative business isn't built on hacks alone.
If you're ready to slow down and build the strategy underneath your creative work, start with the Basecamp Bundle — four foundational courses on swipe copy, visibility, usage licensing, and goal planning to get your business fundamentals in place.
Check out Basecamp Bundle
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About the Host
Shelly Waldman is the founder of Creative Camp and host of the Creative Campfire podcast, a business education platform for commercial photographers and creative freelancers. Known as “The Analytical Creative,” Shelly is a working commercial photographer based in London whose background in economics and finance shapes her distinctive approach to pricing, usage licensing, business strategy for creatives and education design.
About the Guest
Costas is based in the UK and originally from a Graphic Design background, he started out as a hobbyist food photographer who loved to cook and bake, sharing images captured with his iPhone on his Instagram Made By Mr Millas. Now working full time as a Food Photographer, Food Stylist and Art Director, he is known for his bold and colourful style, his creative concepts and renowned Food Art Stories, including the self published book NO COLOUR.
His clients include Nikon, Adobe, Fortnum & Mason, Fratelli Beretta and Clean Eating Magazine. He was named Food & Drink Photographer 2024 at The British Photography Awards and in 2025, was awarded the Food Stylist Award at the World Food Photography Awards
Keep the Conversation Going
Follow along on Instagram
Buy Shelly a coffee
Sign up for the Camp Bulletin
If you loved this episode, leave a review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts — it helps more Campers find the fire.
Gather 'round Campers, this one was recorded around a real campfire, deep in the woods at The Secret Campsite in Sussex. Shelly sits down with her longtime friend Angus Light, founder of Locate Productions, for a conversation about building a B Corp production company inside one of the most wasteful industries on earth (advertising) and then, with the campsite's own founder Tim Bullen, who worked in luxury goods advertising and marketing segmentation before it was a thing, the conversation turns to rewilding, nightingales, and why the advertising industry might be exactly the right tool to make nature cool again.
In this episode
How Angus fell into location scouting in Soho in 1998 and built Locate Productions from a broom cupboard in Battersea
Locate's "fly at last resort" policy, and why 65% of the ad industry's CO2 emissions come from flying
Becoming a B Corp: what it actually restricts (fossil fuels, airlines, gambling, tobacco) and how that hits revenue
The Agency for Nature campaign — five agencies, five youth subcultures, one client: nature
Tim's leap from a luxury goods media business to building The Secret Campsite from an old garden centre
"Toe-dipping" into nature: why the ask shouldn't be full conversion, just curiosity
Insure4Nature, and turning a home insurance premium into a nature-restoration donation
Resources & links mentioned
Locate Productions — locateproductions.com
The Secret Campsite — thesecretcampsite.co.uk
Albert (BAFTA's sustainability arm) — baftaalbert.org
AdGreen (carbon calculator for the ad/production industry) — weareadgreen.org
Purpose Disruptors (Agency for Nature campaign) — purposedisruptors.org
Clean Creatives (fossil fuel divestment pledge for agencies) — cleancreatives.org
Insure4Nature (home insurance profits fund nature restoration) — insure4nature.com
Build the thing that pays the bills first
Locate didn't start as a sustainability company — it started as two people and a broom cupboard in Battersea. The mission came later, once the business had legs to stand on. That's the order Shelly cares about too.
Still nailing the fundamentals — pricing, positioning, getting paid what you're worth? Start with the Basecamp Bundle — four courses, one price.
Ready for one-on-one, dig-into-the-weeds support to take your business from scrappy to established? That's Creative Sidekick — six months, just us, building the thing that's actually yours.
About the Host
Shelly Waldman, founder of Creative Camp and host of the Creative Campfire podcast. "The Analytical Creative," and Head Counselor to a community of commercial photographers and creative freelancers learning to build financially confident businesses. With a background in economics and finance she brings a numbers-first, no-shame approach to pricing, licensing, and business strategy for creatives. She's also a working commercial photographer and speaker, based in London.
About the Guests
Angus Light, founder of Locate Productions, a B Corp-certified production company working across the UK and Europe. He's spent over two decades pushing sustainability into the advertising and production industry — from AdGreen's carbon calculator to the award-winning Agency for Nature campaign — and believes the industry's real skill is storytelling in service of a livable planet.
Tim Bullen, founder of The Secret Campsite in Sussex, an off-grid retreat built from a former garden centre using reclaimed materials and zero concrete. After 13 years running a media and market research business in the premium and luxury goods sector, sold his business to build a space where people — and wildlife — could get some room to breathe.
Keep the conversation going:
Drop us a DM on Instagram.
Support the show by buying us a coffee
Sign up for our Camp Bulletin
Leave a review and share your thoughts on the episode — it genuinely helps this little fire reach more people
"I've got a spreadsheet with every AI tool, their data center usage... and shocker, they're all red." — Holly Arnold
In this episode, Holly Arnold and Shelly Waldman dig into the new B Corp standards, why nature and biodiversity belong in the climate conversation, the environmental cost of AI and digital storage, the "controversial industries" revenue rule that's already cost one major agency its B Corp status, and how solo creatives and small studios can build ethics into client conversations from the first brief.
Links to things mentioned in the show:
Organizations & communities
Purpose Disruptors
Ad Net Zero
Creators for Climate
Creative Conscience
B Corp / B Lab (certification info + new standards page)
Tools mentioned
AdGreen (production carbon calculator)
Albert (BAFTA's TV/advertising carbon calculator)
People & companies
Holly Arnold — Planet A: planet-a.co
Holly Arnold — LinkedIn:
Locate Productions (Angus) — next episode's guest
Faith in Nature — referenced re: nature on the board; board member named sounds like "Ali Pimlott" or "Ali Pimaw" in the transcript — confirm spelling/name before linking
Ep 08: with Bobbin Productions / Tom — Shelly references a prior episode discussing analog vs. digital storage impact; link that back-episode in show notes
World Central Kitchen — Shelly's mentioned donation cause
1% for the Planet
Background/context
COP / UNFCCC (Conference of the Parties)
Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework ("the Montreal agreement")
About the host:
Shelly Waldman is a photographer, educator, and founder of Creative Camp. With a background in finance and a decade behind the lens, she helps creative entrepreneurs build sustainable, profitable careers. Creative Campfire is where she pulls up a chair and has the honest business conversations most creatives wish they'd had sooner.SUPPPORT THE SHOW AND KEEP IN TOUCH:
Drop us DM over on Instagram.
Buy us a coffee (we love chai lattes)
Sign up for our Camp Bulletin, where we drop nuggets about industry insights, creative opportunities and the latest show.
We'd love a review as it helps others know to listen as well as it helps us get found among the plethora of podcasts. If you're Spotify leave a comment on the show, and on Apple give us a review.
A World Cup-timed conversation about design, fantasy football, and finally finishing the idea you've been sitting on.
Jordan walks through the origin story of his design career (Ninja Turtles, rap crew websites, and a Google Nexus hardware project he still calls his favorite), why football's visual design has lagged behind American sports, and how he used AI tools — ChatGPT first, Claude later — to finally build the product that had been sitting as an unopened PSD file on his hard drive for years. The conversation covers everything from his deliberately monochrome, "more Nike than football" design choices, to the realities of vibe coding without a backend background, to why loyalty to underperforming players (in the game, at least) doesn't pay.
It's a conversation for anyone who has an idea quietly gathering dust — and a reminder that "done is better than perfect" applies just as much to a passion project as it does to a client brief.
ABOUT OUR GUEST:Jordan Sheldrick is a creative director and designer whose work spans advertising, web, product, and brand design, including projects with Ubisoft, EA, Crafton, and Google.
He's the creator of CampoV, a fantasy football platform built around following goals and players across Europe's top five leagues.
You can find his portfolio at jordansheldrick.com and follow his work on LinkedIn.
Capo V — Jordan's fantasy football project: capo-v.com
Jordan's website: jordansheldrick.com
Jordan on LinkedIn
The Games That Built Us - HIGH SCORE (Netflix) — the role-playing games episode Shelly recommended to Jordan
ABOUT THE HOST:
Shelly Waldman is the founder of Creative Camp — an education and coaching business helping commercial photographers build sustainable, profitable careers. She's a commercial photographer herself, with a background in finance and economics and a career that's spanned New York, San Francisco, and London. Shelly geeks out on pricing, usage licensing, and pitching — and on this episode, on fantasy football design, too.
Follow Shelly on Instagram: @shuttershelly
Find Creative Camp at: @creativecamp.pro
KEEP THE CONVERSATION GOING + SUPPORT THE SHOW:
We love hearing from you, Campers — drop us a line or tag us in your thoughts:
📩 Email or DM: [email protected] or Instagram
☕ Buy us a coffee (we love chai lattes): buymeacoffee.com/creativecamp
📬 Sign up for the Camp Bulletin — industry insights, creative opportunities, and the latest show: Subscribe here
If this episode sparked something for you, share the episode with a friend and send leave a review — it helps other creatives find the show. High fives for leaving e a comment on Spotify or YouTube or a review on Apple Podcasts. It means more than you know. 🔥
Creative Camp is an education and coaching community for commercial photographers and creative freelancers. Visit us at creativecamp.pro
In this episode, Shelly sits down with Liverpool-based documentary wedding photographer Andrew Keher to talk about the slow business snowball that becomes a quiet avalanche, why your best content might be the story behind a photo nobody would look twice at, and the two frameworks (three layers + MICE) that have given Andrew — and now his students — a way to show up on social media without losing their minds in the process.
The origin story nobody's telling. Andrew didn't pick up a camera until he was 29, after a particularly bad day being shouted at in a windowless construction office. At a wedding he was attending he spotted a wedding photographer doing Jäger shots with the guests and thought — I want that job. A small loan, a mentor, and a lot of second-shooting later, he had a career.
For nearly a decade, Andrew's business grew through word of mouth and strong SEO — and then he stopped doing any of it. Post-COVID, he entered 2024 with four weddings booked and money running out. His response: buy a new camera, update the website logo, and hope for the best. (Spoiler: this is not the strategy.)
How viral comedy reels saved a struggling business.
Resources & Links
OUR GUEST:
Andrew Keher is a documentary wedding photographer based in Liverpool, UK, and he's become one of the most followed and most practical voices on social media strategy for photographers, and runs The Brand Inn: an online community where photographers come to work on their digital presence in a fantasy-themed tavern, complete with wizard's hat.
YOUR HOST
Shelly Waldman is the founder of Creative Camp — an education and coaching community for commercial photographers and creative freelancers who want to build sustainable, profitable businesses. She's a working commercial photographer herself, and when she's not hosting the Creative Campfire podcast she's helping photographers understand their worth, nail their pitches, and actually get paid what they deserve.
📍 creativecamp.pro📸 @creativecamp.pro @shuttershelly✉️ [email protected]
What does it take to build a career that spans National Geographic, Apple, Airbnb, and a palace in Jaipur — all while keeping your creative voice intact? In this episode, Shelly sits down with photographer, writer, and educator Michael George to talk about the winding road from a Florida hospital (yes, really) to photographing penguins in Antarctica, why licensing your images matters more than you think, and what it's like to get taken down by Pharaoh's Revenge in the Egyptian desert.
In This Episode
The unlikely origin story. Michael didn't get on a plane until he was 18. Before that, his camera got him into places most people never see — including scrubbing in to photograph brain surgery at 16. That early lesson that a camera is a key, not just a tool, has shaped everything since.
The Camino de Santiago. A 500-mile walk from France to Spain that became Michael's first real travel story and a masterclass in brutal editing. His journaling process became a kind of creative art direction for his images, and the lessons from that project (including learning to cut 150 photos down to 8) still inform how he works today.
The editorial vs. commercial question. Michael shoots for National Geographic and Airbnb, Aēsop, and Apple. He shares how he navigates briefs that range from completely open to highly controlled, and why he's lucky that most commercial clients come to him because they already know what he does.
How the business actually works. Michael breaks down his rough income pie chart.
The lecturing life. From Yale and NYU to National Geographic Expeditions, Michael talks about why teaching has become a core part of his career and how working with hobbyists who still get giddy over an in-focus bird photo is the antidote to burnout.
Licensing, copyright, and why it matters. A Camino photo from 2012 just landed in a DK book. That unexpected cheque is the whole case for holding onto your copyright. Michael and Shelly dig into why young photographers too often sign it away — and what's at stake with contracts like the Wall Street Journal's current full buyout clause.
The Egypt health saga.
Morocco's street cats (and the global cat report). Michael's unofficial side project photographing the sweetest street cats he's ever encountered leads into a wider conversation about cat culture around the world.
What's next. Michael is quietly pitching a zine on Japanese theme parks — including one entirely dedicated to onions, complete with claw machines where you win an onion. We are here for it.
ABOUT MICHAEL GEORGE:
Michael George is a New York-based photographer, writer, and educator whose work has taken him across all seven continents. Find him at michaelgeorgephoto.com or on Instagram @michaelgeorge.
ABOUT THE SHELLY WALDMAN:
Shelly Waldman is a photographer, educator, andthe founder of Creative Camp. With a background in finance and a decade behind the lens, she helps creative entrepreneurs build sustainable, profitable careers. Creative Campfire is where she pulls up a chair and has the honest business conversations most creatives wish they'd had sooner.Follow Shelly on Instagram: @shuttershellyFind Creative Camp at: @creativecamp.pro
We love hearing from you, Campers — drop us a line or tag us in your thoughts:
If this episode sparked something for you, we'd love a review — it helps other creatives find the show. Leave a comment on Spotify or a review on Apple Podcasts. It means more than you know. 🔥
Creative Camp is an education and coaching community for commercial photographers and creative freelancers. Visit us at creativecamp.pro
Shelly and Lauren are hosting a live deep-dive on usage licensing. Lauren walks through a real case study where usage renegotiation happened after a shoot wrapped. Rachel Korinek joins to share how terms shifted in the 24 hours before her shoot — and what happened.
Tickets: $97 — includes a 14-page workbook. Newsletter subscribers get a discount code which now expires May 8, 2026.
Episode Summary:
Shelly and Lauren tackle a listener question from Tara @teragigotstudio, a food photographer navigating usage licensing in her local market. From baking usage into your creative fee without line-iteming it out, to why restaurants operate on razor-thin margins and what that means for your quote, to how to explain licensing using movies and Spotify — this episode gets into the nuance that most "just charge for licensing!" advice skips entirely.
What Tara Asked:
Tara wrote in wondering whether her ability to charge for usage is limited when competing photographers aren't charging for it at all. She lost a restaurant group job to a photographer who charged a fraction of her rate, and she's trying to figure out how to price strategically in a local market where she's still finding her footing.
What's Covered:
Quotes from the show:
"Whether you know you're paying for usage or not, there is a usage fee. I took the photo — I have to license it to you." — Shelly
"Clients aren't sitting on bags of money trying to keep it from you. Stay focused on finding a compromise and educating them." — Lauren
Stay in touch and resources to grow your business:
Drop a comment, send us a DM at @creativecamp.pro, or reply to the newsletter. Tara's question opened up a thread we've been pulling on for weeks — what's your version of it?
Live usage workshop — May 12th: Real case studies, Lauren and Shelly live, Rachel Korinek as a guest, and a 14-page workbook. $97. Newsletter subscribers get a discount code before the 8th.
Basecamp Bundle: The foundational resource library for creative freelancers. Everything you need to pitch, price, and promote your creative business — all in one place.
Creative Sidekick: 1:1 mentorship with Shelly for photographers ready to work on the business, not just in it. Application and discovery call required.
From the publisher's feed

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