First Take
It started with a free portrait.
What somebody did with theirs
“Ma sej ni besed. Lajf, hvala!”
There are no words. Life, thank you!
Fifteen free minutes, and she put the result on her own page without being asked to. That is the whole of what this project was, and the reason it turned into Worthly.
The studio years
No fees. Fifteen minutes. One portrait that looks like you.
“Come as you are. Even if you want to be a cat.”
The booking page of the original First Take
Once a month I opened ZoomZoom Studio for free portrait sessions — the same lighting, the same direction and the same retouching as the paid editorial work that runs in Elle and Cosmopolitan the rest of the month. Instead of paying me, I asked for a donation if you wanted to give one. Five or ten euros was the suggestion, all of it went to Botrstvo and Projekt Vida, and what had been raised was published at the end of the year so anybody could check.
People consistently gave more than the ask. That gap, between a suggested five euros and what somebody decided the work was actually worth to them, is the whole idea Worthly is built on.
Free never meant a lesser version of the work, and that is the standard Worthly asks of everybody who joins.
From a studio to a marketplace
Then other professionals wanted the same deal.
It was the best hour of my month, and it kept being the best hour of my month. So I started asking other people who are good at something: would you give a few hours of the work you love, to somebody who will actually value it, and let it fund something that matters?
Worthly is that, with a calendar attached. Everybody sets their own offer and their own length — a fifteen minute portrait and a two hour audit are both normal here — names the charity their sessions fund, and the person who booked decides afterwards what it was worth. Worthly takes nothing, exactly as the studio did.
It is early and it is small, and the site will not pretend otherwise. The numbers below are the real ones.
Damjan Dimic
Founder · Growth operator and photographer
Based in Slovenia
Right now
How early this actually is.
Every number below is the real one. It seemed worth putting them somewhere you can find, rather than letting the design imply otherwise.
- Professionals signed on
- the founder
- 1
- Sessions held under Worthly
- the site is new
- 0
- Payments
- nothing has been collected
- Not built
- Company
- registered in Slovenia
- Damjan Dimic s.p.
Nothing raised yet. The first session has not happened.