If you’re an advanced enthusiast serious about making it as a pro, here are nine practical steps you can take to start the transition. These steps will help you break inertia, make your first sales, and establish a solid foundation on which to build.
1. Find your niche and start shooting in it.
Most enthusiasts shoot what they want, where there at, without any overarching logic. They produce a haphazard collection of different images. Then they try to sell the resulting images. Shoot first and then find a market. Pros do just the opposite: they know their market, and then shoot for it. They specialize, get to know buyers in their niches, and shoot deliberately and strategically to deepen their portfolio in their chosen areas. Starting tomorrow, spend some time figuring out where you want to specialize, and from now on spend your precious shooting time in those areas. Unless you live in Kansas and are determined to have your niche be Central American travel photography, it’s not that hard to build a solid portfolio. Just give yourself a highly targeted list of assignments. Do some at-home product shoots, or portrait or engagement sessions with family or friends. Assign yourself to cover at least 10 mammal species at the local zoo, or spend some time at some local wild areas. Take it seriously – learn about the animals or natural areas you’re covering. As long as your niche is something close to home, you can build a portfolio relatively quickly.
2. Develop your website.
In the digital age, you must have a website and it must be a good one. A website is your online portfolio and your most effective marketing tool. A well-designed site gives you credibility and provide a point of interaction with clients and buyers. Like a storefront, it is a place to which you can direct people, and a way for others to stumble into you while searching the web. Indeed, many people today find photographers today by doing Google searches. If you don’t have a website, you won’t even be found or considered. Beyond that, web sites provide a platform for selling prints and stock photos directly, and for offering blogs, reviews, and other important content that adds value for your potential clients. Over the next week, either develop your site yourself, or find someone to develop it for you. Read my best photography website template series for reviews of photography website templates you can use to create great sites fast. Continue reading »
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LookBetween for Emerging Photographers (by Look3 Festival of the Photograph)
We just wanted to announce that the LookBetween is taking place this coming weekend. This is a spin-off of Look3: Festival of the Photograph that takes place in Charlottesville VA each year in June. This is an “off” year, so the sponsors are doing a smaller event for emerging photographers. It’s an invitation-only even for 90 emerging photographers and others in the industry. Both Look3 and LookBetween were initiated by National Geographic photographer Nick Nichols. We’ll be attending and it sounds like it should be an amazing time filled with some of the best imagery in the world from up-and-coming photographers.
Here’s some information from the inviation:
PURPOSE: To assemble developing artists, editors, publishers, teachers, and professional photographers in order to celebrate and explore the future direction of photography.
WHAT TO EXPECT: LOOK3 is hosting an experimental two night event to present the work of 90 innovative photographers on a farm 30 minutes west of Charlottesville. The 90 artists showing work were asked to participate by experts in this field such as PDN, Burn Magazine, Humble Arts, Getty Images, VII, and others. This initiative, which we are calling LOOKbetween, is designed to showcase early-career talent and engage the presenting artists with media professionals on practices and trends influencing the direction of photography today. We want to turn the traditional mentorship model on its head and let the established professionals hear what the next generation of photographers has to say. Thank you to BD and National Geographic for supporting LOOKbetween. Each night will feature outdoor projections of work by the invited emerging photographers in attendance. Showcasing the work of these talented photographers is a main focus of the weekend. However, LOOKbetween is also designed to create networking opportunities and be a forum for the exchange of ideas between professionals and those early in their career. Saturday daytime will be devoted to discussion about important issues in photography.
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In addition to all the great imagery, Burn Magazine, Photocrati, and Luceo Images will all be announcing the winners of their grant competitions for emerging photographers. We’ll write a post about the event and the grant winners next week.