i hope to post more often but the past 2 months i've been scrambling to get any funds to barely scrape by and pay the minimum bills.
quick update, in the last 2 months:
i've had 1 shoot of my own
i've assisted 3 times
i've had to borrow money from the girl
i've had some really great people trying to help me out
all of my contacts don't return my calls, emails
i may be moving into a studio with 2 other photographers rent free for 3 months
-only have to be 'studio manager' for 1-2 days a week and have access to studio for any time that it's free.
so that's the brief synopsis. here's an even more brief synopsis...
i feel that if i don't get work soon i'll have to get a retail, throw away job just to barely make ends meet.
::sigh::
when will it get slightly easier? no clue. trying to balance be optimistic while based in the reality.
hope is winning.
for now.
::anonphotographer
Monday, September 1, 2008
Saturday, July 5, 2008
editorial work dries up
well at least with one that i've worked with consistently since i started shooting professionally. they were actually the reason i could say that i've been shooting 'professionally' and 'for money'.
back story
for months, i'd tried to get a hold of local magazines to find out who i have to talk to about shooting for them and how to go about doing that. i had been shooting local models using an online modeling/photographer's website; a social networking site. i had also shot a couple local bands and definitely my fill of less-than-par models, if you can call them that. i was just wanting to shoot whoever i could get my hands on and to get more and more experience. in November of 2007, i got a call back from one of the many local mags here that I had left voicemails and emails for months. the editor called and said that one of their shooters was moving and that she needed to have a 5 page spread filled for their january issue, had to be shot by 2nd week of december and the budget was $1000.
that was when i officially became a 'professional photographer'. i was getting paid to take photographs.
that same editor is the one who moved to san francisco and had me come out there to shoot. so since december until now, i've shot pretty consistently for the magazine here. when the editor moved to SF to establish the magazine in that city, i met with the editor that would replace her here and he said he wants to continue to use me for shooting.
I have done 2 shoots for them. Adding them together doesn't even add up to 1 full page photo.
which brings us to today
It's weird because the magazine that has started me out and given me tons of oportunities , is now not calling on me. It is a weird contrast to know that after I've got some experience, a good production value , higher level of communication , understanding of the process and needs of editorials and i am getting less work than when i lacked the above mentioned.
I'm almost wondering if the magazine is a stepping stone for me. They were there for a specific time for me to hone my skills and to get a good introduction so that I could be better prepared for what is to come. Wishful thinking? Maybe. But here's what makes me think the greener grass is coming:
this magazine had an approx distribution of 30,000
i have a meeting on july 8th with a much , much bigger magazine who's approx monthly distribution is 385,000.
i had to chase after first magazine for over 6 months to get first assignment.
magazine on the 8th, i called twice and sent 1 email before art director wanted to meet to meet me , with my book. and he'd seen my work around and able to identify some of it.
around same time of first magazine here in town not calling for work, i received good reception from a total of 3 other local magazines ( 1 above, 1 that is local but national distro and another local distro)
so maybe it is the end of a season, one that helped me get my start as a professional. i'm excited for what's to come. i'm hoping i can fool others that i have a good idea that i know what i'm doing. now's the start of a new season where i show people how good i really am.
... god help me.
::anonphotographer
back story
for months, i'd tried to get a hold of local magazines to find out who i have to talk to about shooting for them and how to go about doing that. i had been shooting local models using an online modeling/photographer's website; a social networking site. i had also shot a couple local bands and definitely my fill of less-than-par models, if you can call them that. i was just wanting to shoot whoever i could get my hands on and to get more and more experience. in November of 2007, i got a call back from one of the many local mags here that I had left voicemails and emails for months. the editor called and said that one of their shooters was moving and that she needed to have a 5 page spread filled for their january issue, had to be shot by 2nd week of december and the budget was $1000.
that was when i officially became a 'professional photographer'. i was getting paid to take photographs.
that same editor is the one who moved to san francisco and had me come out there to shoot. so since december until now, i've shot pretty consistently for the magazine here. when the editor moved to SF to establish the magazine in that city, i met with the editor that would replace her here and he said he wants to continue to use me for shooting.
I have done 2 shoots for them. Adding them together doesn't even add up to 1 full page photo.
which brings us to today
It's weird because the magazine that has started me out and given me tons of oportunities , is now not calling on me. It is a weird contrast to know that after I've got some experience, a good production value , higher level of communication , understanding of the process and needs of editorials and i am getting less work than when i lacked the above mentioned.
I'm almost wondering if the magazine is a stepping stone for me. They were there for a specific time for me to hone my skills and to get a good introduction so that I could be better prepared for what is to come. Wishful thinking? Maybe. But here's what makes me think the greener grass is coming:
this magazine had an approx distribution of 30,000
i have a meeting on july 8th with a much , much bigger magazine who's approx monthly distribution is 385,000.
i had to chase after first magazine for over 6 months to get first assignment.
magazine on the 8th, i called twice and sent 1 email before art director wanted to meet to meet me , with my book. and he'd seen my work around and able to identify some of it.
around same time of first magazine here in town not calling for work, i received good reception from a total of 3 other local magazines ( 1 above, 1 that is local but national distro and another local distro)
so maybe it is the end of a season, one that helped me get my start as a professional. i'm excited for what's to come. i'm hoping i can fool others that i have a good idea that i know what i'm doing. now's the start of a new season where i show people how good i really am.
... god help me.
::anonphotographer
Friday, July 4, 2008
yes i do
unless it makes me money.
http://www.pdnpulse.com/2008/07/do-pros-want-mi.html
::anonphotographer
http://www.pdnpulse.com/2008/07/do-pros-want-mi.html
::anonphotographer
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
contest
i've been thinking about how to get more exposure and i keep reading that entering contests gets you seen. what they don't tell you is that winning contests gets you seen.
there's a cover contest being run by city magazine and referenced here by rob only problem is in the fine print. I don't want to have to commission myself to go to another place that looks like somewhere else that could be accessible to all the people who look at a magazine cover , on the chance that it might get chosen and if i do win, they have the right to use the images however they want, forever, without any regard to the copyright owner. so even on the off chance that I 'win' the magazine will be able to make more and more money off of my image(s) than the 1 issue that the image would represent.
man. that's defeating. just look at all my uses of italics.
::anonphotographer
there's a cover contest being run by city magazine and referenced here by rob only problem is in the fine print. I don't want to have to commission myself to go to another place that looks like somewhere else that could be accessible to all the people who look at a magazine cover , on the chance that it might get chosen and if i do win, they have the right to use the images however they want, forever, without any regard to the copyright owner. so even on the off chance that I 'win' the magazine will be able to make more and more money off of my image(s) than the 1 issue that the image would represent.
man. that's defeating. just look at all my uses of italics.
::anonphotographer
Saturday, June 28, 2008
2:18
that's how much time left my battery has, or so my laptop tells me.
sitting outside starbucks enjoying an iced tea and i'm reading about what others are charging , their rates, for updating model's portfolios. this is an entirely different rate than a creative fee that would have usage. i'm seeing a good amount of numbers all over the spectrum:
3 hours for 100 bucks and that gets you 20 retouched high res images and prints of all of them in 9x12 format.
Each look is a set rate, and additional work/crew/expenses are on top of that. price is usually 1/10th 'normal' creative fee.
Day's worth of shooting , get to select 100 images and none of them retouched for $500. each retouched image will be $10.
sheesh. if i wasn't confused before i sure am now. i texted a friend/mentor/awesome photographer here who helps me out with the nieve stuff that i don't know anythin about and he said the current rate is 150 a look plus makeup artist fees. so that leads me to sitting outside of starbucks, looking at creating a rate sheet to give to the local model agencies. they've asked me for my rate sheet for a while and to go with my whole 'brand' , i want to design it and make sure everything flows together.
where i'm thinking about doing for my rates is simple and easy . I'm going to partner up with a mua and hairstylist to find out what their rates are for a model portfolio. I may just tell them a set rate and for essentially 'getting' them work, the number i tell them will be 20% less then what I add on for the agency. here's what i'm going to do :
1 look : $150 + $70 MUA.
3-5 looks : $125 + $60 MUA , per look.
6-8 looks : $100 + $50 MUA, per look.
hair/wardrobe will be extra. now the fun part will be trying to find a place to shoot some of this stuff if i get girls wanting to update their portfolio. in the hot hot summer. without a studio.
::anonphotographer
sitting outside starbucks enjoying an iced tea and i'm reading about what others are charging , their rates, for updating model's portfolios. this is an entirely different rate than a creative fee that would have usage. i'm seeing a good amount of numbers all over the spectrum:
3 hours for 100 bucks and that gets you 20 retouched high res images and prints of all of them in 9x12 format.
Each look is a set rate, and additional work/crew/expenses are on top of that. price is usually 1/10th 'normal' creative fee.
Day's worth of shooting , get to select 100 images and none of them retouched for $500. each retouched image will be $10.
sheesh. if i wasn't confused before i sure am now. i texted a friend/mentor/awesome photographer here who helps me out with the nieve stuff that i don't know anythin about and he said the current rate is 150 a look plus makeup artist fees. so that leads me to sitting outside of starbucks, looking at creating a rate sheet to give to the local model agencies. they've asked me for my rate sheet for a while and to go with my whole 'brand' , i want to design it and make sure everything flows together.
where i'm thinking about doing for my rates is simple and easy . I'm going to partner up with a mua and hairstylist to find out what their rates are for a model portfolio. I may just tell them a set rate and for essentially 'getting' them work, the number i tell them will be 20% less then what I add on for the agency. here's what i'm going to do :
1 look : $150 + $70 MUA.
3-5 looks : $125 + $60 MUA , per look.
6-8 looks : $100 + $50 MUA, per look.
hair/wardrobe will be extra. now the fun part will be trying to find a place to shoot some of this stuff if i get girls wanting to update their portfolio. in the hot hot summer. without a studio.
::anonphotographer
speak of the devil...
An Art Producer's Perspective: Email promo subject lines
after my last post, ending about email newsletters. this came up in my google reader feed and it helps out with what i ended my last post on. next up, trying to afford a list. the actual emails will not be too bad, as I won't be doing it through who I get the list from , rather a 3rd party emailing company.
::anonphotographer
after my last post, ending about email newsletters. this came up in my google reader feed and it helps out with what i ended my last post on. next up, trying to afford a list. the actual emails will not be too bad, as I won't be doing it through who I get the list from , rather a 3rd party emailing company.
::anonphotographer
not this time
after the trip to SF, got back to the hometown and began the task of backing up all the photos and making sure that I backed up everything to my hard drives and dvd discs. that took quite a few hours. after importing everything into lightroom i was just exhausted. traveling always takes it out of me and I feel like I need a week to recuperate and that's without doing work, just normal travel; add responsibilities to it and that's a heavy load.
narrowed everything down to 82 shots for editor & art director to make final selects. came back with 6 images, 3 of which were my recommendations for the spread, which turned out to be a 6 page spread instead of 8. I guess the advertisers just weren't there and the page count had to be cut down. Totally fine by me. Art director then chose another image to do for the cover. Found out a few things about shooting editorial , with a cover option.
So that brings us to late last week. The art director 'needed' the files ASAP and wanted the cover version with the details masked out. The problem with that was that there were SO MANY small details behind the model and she had a very intricate, fine, frizzy hairstyle in front of a similar color behind her. all this is to say that the retouching was going to take a ton of time and i wanted to make sure that if i was going to be taking the time to retouch it that it would be the cover for sure, that my work would not be for nothing. AD told me that the images go into a pool of images for what could be the cover and people vote on which one, but that my image was the favorite for cover.
i'm browsing online, find the new cover image and nope, my image is not the cover. turns out it is a similar looking cover that they've had in the past 6 months. haven't seen the physical , printed magazine yet, but when I do i'll look to see who shot it. The shot is good, but I'm partial to mine. The shot on the cover wasn't shot in SF, it doesn't fit the theme of what the magazine's content is.
::sigh::
It's disappointing actually. I'm very happy that I've still got a spread in SF, the first one for the magazine there and that's a great feat. I can definitely put that on my site as well as as a subject for an email newsletter mailing list...when I can afford one of those.
So that's San Francisco.
I did get to shoot for another magazine here in town, and that makes it a grand total of 2 magazine's I've now shot for here in town. I'm thrilled to have the opportunity to work with another magazine. It's slow going, but nothing is wrong with that in my mind. I know how long it can take to build up clientele and I'm new to the game , at least to people's perceptions, and I need to convince with hard work and with a good reason to have them to WANT to work with me. So I showed up at the location, got the shots , had a ton of fun with the subject ( who is the owner of a non-profit organization that helps underprivileged kids ) and within 2 hours had up a gallery for the AD to make her selections from. she was super surprised with the fast turnaround and told me how much she appreciated the hard work and attention to detail in the pictures and my work ethic. retouched the 4 chosen images, uploaded and sent over the invoice/usage license along with the .zip of the files.
all within 24 hours of the shoot.
after we talked on the phone to verify a question she had about the usage license I sent over, i asked about any other stories she has for the issue that this image set is going into and she said that they are pretty covered... but that she can't wait to use me on a monthly basis staring in August.
awesome.
::anonphotographer
narrowed everything down to 82 shots for editor & art director to make final selects. came back with 6 images, 3 of which were my recommendations for the spread, which turned out to be a 6 page spread instead of 8. I guess the advertisers just weren't there and the page count had to be cut down. Totally fine by me. Art director then chose another image to do for the cover. Found out a few things about shooting editorial , with a cover option.
- this magazine doesn't have an extra budget for a cover shot, in addition to what was paid for the spread.
- i got paid 2,000 for the spread , the production , and that's 600 more than the regular shooter gets for shooting the national content, plus cover.
- found out the above, by calling the national shooter and just straight up asked what they got paid and found out that the most he got paid was 1,400. To shoot for multiple magazines, that were viewed all over the prominent cities in this nation.
- cover shot was now not guaranteed to be from my spread, but they wanted a mockup of the image chosen (an additional image outside of the 6 chosen for the spread), but with the details removed from behind the model and replaced with white.
So that brings us to late last week. The art director 'needed' the files ASAP and wanted the cover version with the details masked out. The problem with that was that there were SO MANY small details behind the model and she had a very intricate, fine, frizzy hairstyle in front of a similar color behind her. all this is to say that the retouching was going to take a ton of time and i wanted to make sure that if i was going to be taking the time to retouch it that it would be the cover for sure, that my work would not be for nothing. AD told me that the images go into a pool of images for what could be the cover and people vote on which one, but that my image was the favorite for cover.
i'm browsing online, find the new cover image and nope, my image is not the cover. turns out it is a similar looking cover that they've had in the past 6 months. haven't seen the physical , printed magazine yet, but when I do i'll look to see who shot it. The shot is good, but I'm partial to mine. The shot on the cover wasn't shot in SF, it doesn't fit the theme of what the magazine's content is.
::sigh::
It's disappointing actually. I'm very happy that I've still got a spread in SF, the first one for the magazine there and that's a great feat. I can definitely put that on my site as well as as a subject for an email newsletter mailing list...when I can afford one of those.
So that's San Francisco.
I did get to shoot for another magazine here in town, and that makes it a grand total of 2 magazine's I've now shot for here in town. I'm thrilled to have the opportunity to work with another magazine. It's slow going, but nothing is wrong with that in my mind. I know how long it can take to build up clientele and I'm new to the game , at least to people's perceptions, and I need to convince with hard work and with a good reason to have them to WANT to work with me. So I showed up at the location, got the shots , had a ton of fun with the subject ( who is the owner of a non-profit organization that helps underprivileged kids ) and within 2 hours had up a gallery for the AD to make her selections from. she was super surprised with the fast turnaround and told me how much she appreciated the hard work and attention to detail in the pictures and my work ethic. retouched the 4 chosen images, uploaded and sent over the invoice/usage license along with the .zip of the files.
all within 24 hours of the shoot.
after we talked on the phone to verify a question she had about the usage license I sent over, i asked about any other stories she has for the issue that this image set is going into and she said that they are pretty covered... but that she can't wait to use me on a monthly basis staring in August.
awesome.
::anonphotographer
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)