Looking at the photograph more than 20 years later made me think about something that applies just as much to business as it does to music.
Beyonce was already successful with Destiny's Child, so this isn't one of those "before they were famous" stories. But she was young, ambitious and still at a point where nobody could have predicted just how extraordinary her career would become.
I remember talking with her about her ambitions and what she hoped might happen next.
Talent can get you noticed. But what keeps you there?
We've all seen people and businesses arrive with a bang and disappear just as quickly. Early success doesn't guarantee a lasting career. Neither does talent. After nearly 40 years as a professional photographer, I think longevity has far more to do with what happens after the initial success.
Consistency beats occasional brilliance
Being brilliant once is relatively easy.
Doing good work consistently, particularly when you're tired, busy, under pressure or dealing with a difficult brief, is much harder.
Clients need to know what they're going to get.
That doesn't mean producing the same work repeatedly. It means establishing a standard and maintaining it.
In my business, a client isn't simply buying my ability to make a good photograph. They're trusting me to turn up prepared, understand the brief, work with the people in front of my camera and deliver what I've promised.
It's the same in most businesses.
Talent gets attention. Reliability creates trust.
And trust brings people back.
Careers are built on ordinary days
We naturally remember the big moments in our careers: winning an important client, landing a promotion, receiving an award, launching a successful product.
But those moments are relatively rare.
Most careers are built during completely ordinary weeks when nobody is applauding.
Following up with someone.
Improving your website.
Making the uncomfortable sales call.
Doing a good job for a relatively small client.
Learning something new.
Dealing properly with a mistake.
Turning up again tomorrow.
None of it sounds particularly exciting, but over 10, 20 or 30 years, those small decisions add up.
I've had exciting periods in my career, and I've had quiet ones. Anyone who has been self-employed for a reasonable length of time will recognise both.
The trick is not assuming a quiet period means you've suddenly become bad at what you do.
Sometimes it means something needs changing.
Staying relevant means being prepared to change
When I started photography professionally, my working world involved film, darkrooms, contact sheets and picture desks.
Today I run websites, think about Google, LinkedIn and social media, shoot digitally and increasingly have to understand what AI might mean for my industry.
The tools have changed enormously.
The basic job hasn't.
I'm still trying to understand the person in front of me and make photographs that communicate something about them.
That's an important distinction for any established business.
You have to be prepared to change how you work without losing sight of why people chose you in the first place.
Chasing every new trend isn't progress.
Ignoring change isn't experience.
Knowing what to change and what to protect is the difficult bit.
The second photograph
I photographed Beyoncé again some years later in Dallas, Texas.
This time the circumstances were very different. I was photographing her with Destiny's Child in a large, controlled studio production.
By then the scale was bigger, and her career had moved forward.
But even at that point, nobody knew what would eventually happen.
That's what interests me when I put the two photographs together.
We can look at them today knowing what Beyoncé subsequently achieved and convince ourselves the trajectory was inevitable.
It wasn't.
Plenty of hugely talented artists who enjoyed early success and disappeared. The same happens to businesses.
Which means there has to be something beyond talent.
Determination certainly matters. So does adaptability. Curiosity matters too, particularly once you've been doing something long enough to think you know all the answers.
And I'd add another quality that isn't discussed enough.
Resilience
You won't win everything
I've lost commissions I wanted.
I've had ideas rejected.
I've produced work I thought would lead somewhere and watched absolutely nothing happen.
That's business.
The danger isn't rejection itself. It's allowing rejection to convince you that you're finished.
Sometimes you need to improve.
Sometimes your pricing is wrong.
Sometimes the market has changed.
Sometimes somebody else was simply better suited to the job.
And sometimes you did everything right and still didn't get it.
You learn what you can and move on.
That's easier to say after nearly four decades than it was at the beginning, but it's probably one of the most useful lessons I've learned.
Ambition doesn't have an age limit
Our ambitions change too
Early in a career, success can be about proving yourself.
Later it might be about earning more, gaining independence or building a reputation.
And later still, it can become about doing better work, choosing the right people to work with and creating something that actually matters.
I don't think ambition necessarily diminishes with age.
It just becomes more focused.
I still have photographs I want to make, projects I want to start and businesses I'd like to work with.
I certainly don't feel I've made my best photograph yet.
And perhaps that's part of what keeps any career moving.
You need to believe there's still something ahead worth working towards.
So what keeps you there?
I don't think there's a clever formula.
Talent helps
So does luck, probably considerably more than successful people sometimes admit.
But if you want a career or business that lasts, I'd put my money on something less glamorous:
Do good work consistently.
Be reliable.
Stay curious.
Change when you need to.
Learn from rejection.
Don't assume success will continue simply because you've had some.
And keep enough ambition to believe the next piece of work could be better than the last.
When I look at that first photograph of Beyoncé now, that's what strikes me.
She couldn't have known what was coming. None of us ever really does.
You just have to keep doing the work and give yourself the chance to find out.
Beyoncé Knowles photographed by John Ferguson in London early in her career, and later with Destiny's Child in Dallas, Texas.
