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“It isn’t just what you know and it isn’t just who you know. It’s actually who you know, who knows you and what you do for a living. ”
This past weekend I went to Photo LA (a local trade show), where many photographers hold booths in the hopes of selling prints to local photo enthusiasts. The biggest benefit of an exhibition like this however, is self promotion. My purpose was no different, although I did not have a booth of my own. I went with a pocket full of business cards and the intent of pushing my name; which actually comes as a bit of a challenge to me. My whole life, I have never been very good at socializing. I prefer to hide behind my camera or my computer because I am infinitely more comfortable with a machine than a real person who can judge me. I have to say that I did a decent job at networking, despite my handicap. I rid myself of a good hundred business cards over the course of a three day weekend, and took home some cards of photographers interested in hiring assistants.
Before this becomes too much about me though, lets step back and discuss why networking is so important to a working photographer. Not to be offensive, but there are some talentless people out there making a killing. And some people who are exceedingly talented that make no income. Don’t take my word for it, check some of the art communities popping up around the web. There are many factors at play here but the biggest ones are networking and marketing. It is all about making sure that the right people know about you and you know about the right people. With todays online professional and social networking sites, this is becoming easier for everyone; but you still have to put effort into it.
My first goal is to assist some and begin shooting on my own to earn an income. I figure that the benefit of assisting is twofold: firstly you get to learn how they run a business and secondly they have a well established network of clients and art buyers that are currently looking for talent. That is not to say that you should steal their list or try to underbid them; but, that they may know of work that is under budget for them or just not what they are looking to shoot and they will pass it along. I know that at first it seems unlikely that a photographer in this day and age would pass by any job, but I have seen it regularly enough while in school to trust in the photographer / assistant relationship. My desire to shoot commercially makes assisting at first almost a necessity to break into the market.
There are other types of photographers and other ways of forming your personal network. A photographer that is going to shoot events and headshots for example has no real need to assist and is not looking to make contact with art buyers. These people would be better suited with a good online social-networking system and an incentive for their clients to advertise for them through word-of-mouth. A photographer who wants to sell fine art may or may not want to assist, but is more interested in making contact with curators and gallery owners. The trick is to know who is interested in hiring you or buying your work, and making friends with them.
This week I am contacting all my new friends and trying to get my foot in the door to commercial shooting. Which means that my next entry should be full of success, failure, and intrigue. We shall see, but before I leave you I would like to share some of my favorite networking sites.
LinkedIn – networking between professionals (I use it to get in touch with editors and art buyers)
Facebook and Myspace – social networking between friends and a good way of passing information around
Twitter – a micro blog that allows for people you know to keep up to date with you.
Deviantart and Flickr – both art blogs for getting people familiar with your work
This is nowhere near an exhaustive list. There are many sites for specialties, and also many local guilds that are out there to help you get in touch with the people you need to get in touch with.
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One of the benefits of Colours Magazine is that I regularly get to see great pieces of work of art that I would have other wise totally missed out on. I opened my email a little while ago going through the submissions from different photographers trying to decide on what to publish for the Monday’s post and I came across the following excellent feature done by Colours Magazine’s reader Julien Coquentin. I am time and again amazed by the excellent quality of work produced by these artists and I am honourd to be part of a project that is helping to regularly show this work to other people who would normally have not seen it.
So if you have got a project that you would like featured on Colours Magazine then don’t delay and get in touch with me right away [submissions(as)coloursmag.com], I would love to hear from you.
Artisit’s Statement
Hum’ant about our relationship to the world and the city. This series of photo has been thought and realized as an oppressive urban poetry filled but I hope a certain beauty. I speak of the cities, I play their lines and shadows and I include humans as a natural element of urbanity, as an extension, which over time has finally include them altogether
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Colours Magazine reader Stefania Mizara has submitted a vivid photographic account of his visit to the war torn region of the world. He captures the lives of the devastated people tries to show a picture of life from behind the barbed wires, something you may not see on Network TV every day. If you like the article why not leave a comment and let us know. You can find out more about the artist by visiting his website and seeing more of his work. Links are at the end of the article.
I entered Gaza the 12th of January 2009 late in the evening with a group of doctors. It was my first time entering an active war zone and I was feeling kind of nervous.
The feeling of anxiety worsened as a sound of bomb dropping near the bus made us all in the “Gaza city” bus that is transferring people from Egyptian to Palestinian border fall under our seats.
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The project was submitted by Colours Magazine’s reader Gian Guido Zurli from Italy.
Artisit’s Statement:
I’m introducing part of an entire project called “Totentanz”. Inside this project you could see photographs of funeral arts and related landscapes of the most beautiful cemeteries of Italy. Most of those pictures are shoot with infrared technique for obtaining a dreaming and fairy atmosphere and the feeling of the stone of the statues became living like a human skin.
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Capturing the history of Iran in Black and White
Behind the scenes with Chris Logue
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Colours Magazine reader Julien Coquentin from France has submitted the following story.
Once again—the sky saturates us with is deluge—accompanied by its loud burst of thunder—we’ve grown accustomed to.
How long has it been raining on this city?
Mute and indifferent to what has become familiar—we are only sure that the storms have transformed our city and us.
It is a strange sensation –living in a gorge –an atmosphere is chronic with humidity as we find ourselves with the sons of the months—embracing the brute infernal noise.
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“the starting point of all achievement is desire”
The hardest part of doing anything is beginning, photography is no different. My intent for this series is to document my successes and shortcomings as I graduate photography school and struggle to establish myself in this highly competitive industry.
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In our on going series of articles on Self Portraiture by our guest author Alex Cameron, she interviews Mirjan Van Der Meer.
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Since the launch of Colours Magazine (alomst 18 monthis ago) I have not had a redesign of the original website. Where the original wordpress theme served it’s purpose it was hard to manage. By the time I launched Colours Magazine I had already heavily modified the wordpress theme and within a couple of months due to on going needs of the publication the site wentthrough several more changes. Where it continued to serve it’s purpose at that time, since the middle of last year it was becoming increasingly obvious that the backend design had to change along with the layout of the articles.
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