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September 2010 Blog Entries
19 September 2010
The Loneliness of the freelance photographer
I was inspired to write this blog post from a new feature that one of the photography magazines is doing at the moment, about photographers getting together to help one another out with questions and advice on freelance photography. The United States of Photography has been set up by Professional Photographer magazine, which they say is a new country that any photographer can be a part of and features no border and no rules. If you are a photographer and have a website, you are free to join and become a member.
This made me realise just how lonely the life of a freelance photographer is and through my own experience know of the stresses and strains of working for myself can produce. I realised however, that I am probably not alone in these thoughts and every other photographer who works for themselves must be going through the same thing too.
I then got to thinking about social networking and I, like many other photographers are on Facebook and have their own Facebook page, as well as a list of friends within the business. But, there’s another issue, are these people my ‘friends’ or foes? Like many of the friends that you have on Facebook, I have never personally met a lot of the people on my list, but I know of them through working in the photography business over the years and know of their work. I interact with them though various posts on both my own and their walls on the site and we flick ideas about, as well as reviewing each others new images. But, as many of these photographers work in the same market as I do, surely they are not just friends or colleagues, but enemies and potential rivals to my own work. Should I trust these friends? Should I really be interacting with them? Am I damaging my sales potential by doing so, or am I gaining something by networking them? I have had several messages from colleagues asking advice from me over the years and I too have sought advice from them. The message usually starts ‘I hope you don’t mind me asking you...’, as they are seeking knowledge from me and presumably hoping to benefit from the answer. Should I be revealing any trade secrets that I have picked up over the years and should they trust the answer I give them? If I see that they are asking questions about one of my potential or existing markets or clients, should I steer them down the wrong path to avoid losing a sale myself?!
It can be hard for any new photographer wanting to start a business, to know the ins and outs of getting work published and who to turn to for advice. The common route for gaining experience always used to be assisting a fellow pro photographer and leaning the business this way, but, surely that assistant could one day be stealing your clients. Now that we all do our own darkroom processing ourselves and no longer go to the lab several times a week, where we might bump into fellow photographers and swop ideas, we are interacting less and less with people in the industry and fellow photographers. We also all have websites to show our work, which means less trips to clients with a portfolio and all correspondence is done by e-mail, so it seems we are spending more and more time working alone and not networking in the traditional way and so the life of a freelancer feels even more lonely and isolated.
So, maybe social networks like Facebook and Twitter are the way forward for photographers to meet up, swop ideas and seek advice, as where else do you go for this kind of interaction. I offer from my website, a Shoot to Sell module that comes from my main Online Photography Course and offers to help new photographers and give them useful tips and advice on how to sell their work. I also, like many landscape photographers offer photography workshops to teach people how to take pictures in the first place. Am I doing the right thing with these two advice portals? Am I selling my secrets to potential rivals or am I helping photographers to get that rung on the ladder, just like I needed when I fist started out?
Having someone to turn to when you work for yourself is therefore a welcome resource. It helps to know someone who has already been there and done it. If you get offered a fee from a new client for a job, is it enough, or would you be selling yourself short? You have to make these decisions for yourself and it’s your next meal on the table or mortgage payment that’s at stake. If you have a fellow colleague who has been in the same situation themselves, then having them to ask advice from can be a godsend. It’s a cut-throat business with people wanting to pay less and less for photography more than ever these days and so us photographers should stick together and help one another where they can. Without each others help, it’s a lonely profession and you can soon feel like a small fish in a big sea. Together though, we could become bigger fish in a friendly pond, and without any sharks to worry about!
15 September 2010
New Images in Project Gallery
I have been recently practicing my street photography skills on the streets of London and Sheffield, mainly with my newly acquired Olympus Trip film camera. The camera’s auto exposure, zone focusing and compact form make it ideal for the job and I was even surprised by its ability to correctly expose images on transparency film, rather than having to rely on print film with its wider tolerance exposure error.
Street photography makes a refreshing change to my usual landscape work, but you have to be in the ‘zone’ as it were to be able to spot funny/amusing/odd/quirky images that you would normally just pass by without noticing. It takes a lot of concentrating and a keen eye, but it’s lots of fun nonetheless. You can see my first results in the new Street Views gallery, which aren’t bad for first attempts and it really is a case of being in the right place at the right time, which you can’t really predict, but I the more I am out there with the camera, the more likely I am able to catch that split second, moment in time situation, that looks great on film. Watch this space.
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