Starting Your Career as a Freelance Photographer

Tad Crawford, Chuck DeLaney

• Publisher: Allworth
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781621535461
• Topic: Médias et arts de la scène
• Subtopic: Arts de la scène et monde des affaires

Here is a virtual treasury of advice, insight, and guidance for every freelance photographer! The step-by-step advice covers the multitude of concerns facing aspiring and beginning freelance photographers—from compiling a portfolio and promoting your work to winning the first client and running a healthy, profitable business. Esteemed attorney and writer Tad Crawford has teamed up with expert photography writer Chuck Delaney—and more than a dozen of the photo industry's leading experts—to provide comprehensive guidance, including: Photographic careers and the skills they require
How to shop for equipment and studio locations
Clients, websites, portfolios, and self-promotion
Studio management, insurance, and safety
Negotiating contracts, pricing, and model and property releases
Copyright law and protecting your work
Avoiding libel, trespass, and litigation
Accounting, record keeping, and taxesFor anyone looking to earn money with their photography, Starting Your Career as a Freelance Photographer crucial marketing, business, and legal know-how for every step of the process.Allworth Press, an imprint of Skyhorse Publishing, publishes a broad range of books on the visual and performing arts, with emphasis on the business of art. Our titles cover subjects such as graphic design, theater, branding, fine art, photography, interior design, writing, acting, film, how to start careers, business and legal forms, business practices, and more. While we don't aspire to publish a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are deeply committed to quality books that help creative professionals succeed and thrive. We often publish in areas overlooked by other publishers and welcome the author whose expertise can help our audience of readers.

PART I.

GETTING STARTED

SOME PEOPLE FALL in love with photography at a young age and decide to make it a career and then stick to that plan. Some find its magic later in life, while still others suppress the desire to work in a creative field and devote their education to a “safe” profession with a nine-to-five workday, only to discover that they’re unhappy with that cautious choice.

The good news is that it doesn’t matter when you decide to become a professional photographer. The important thing is that you act on the impulse and get started. There are plenty of pathways into the field and there are no formal education requirements. In Part I, four photographers explore the flexibility of a career in photography and examine various educational options. Chuck DeLaney addresses the flexibility of career pathways in photography and the fact that the person who takes great pictures and has the right attitude can succeed with very little formal education. He also provides some thoughts about how freelancers getting started can save money on equipment. Bill Kennedy details what to expect in different education settings, including the “open enrollment” opportunities at the School of Hard Knocks. For anyone considering a two- or four-year college major in photography, this chapter is essential reading. John Kieffer explores the many benefits of serving an apprenticeship as a photographer’s assistant.

Veteran travel photographer Susan McCartney contributes her classic essay on the principal photographic specialties and explains why specialization is beneficial for many photographers. In some fields, such as photojournalism for newspapers and Internet sites covering medium- and smaller-sized markets, photographers will find it necessary to master several different skills like portraiture and still-life photography as well as covering breaking news. Online sites that specialize in selling stock photography have changed the landscape for photographers seeking to sell stock images.

The Internet has fueled the need for photographs, as the 24/7/365 content cycle requires frequent refreshment of visual imagery for every story. Whether the topic is the winner of a national election or the death of a famous person, large online publications will change and update the images that accompany the story frequently. This means that many of the specialties that McCartney describes have grown and mutated to address the needs of blogs and social media. The number of celebrity photographers continues to grow to meet the insatiable demand of a curious world. Sport photography is another area where online coverage has increased the need for photographs to be posted on the web at frequent intervals during every major event.

CHAPTER 1

CAREERS IN PHOTOGRAPHY

by Chuck DeLaney

This chapter is adapted from Photography Your Way by Chuck DeLaney, a freelance photographer and writer based in New York City. He served as director of the New York Institute of Photography, America’s oldest and largest photography school, for many years and has devoted his career to adult education in photography and other fields.

IN MY LIBRARY, I have a number of books that are traditional career guides in photography. Most of these books survey various fields—portraiture, medical photography, photojournalism, commercial and industrial photography—and discuss the requirements, job opportunities, and financial prospects of each area.

That’s not my approach. I firmly believe that photography is a passion and that during one photographer’s lifetime the career activities are likely to meld into one another. If you were going to be a doctor, you would need to choose a specialty, such as cardiology or nephrology or psychiatry, and would probably devote many years of training to that specialty. In all likelihood, you would then practice that specialty for the rest of your life.

Similarly, if you want to make a lot of money, you might go to business school or law school, but probably not both. After that training, you would go out and have a career “in business” or “in law.” Then you’d (hopefully) grow old, retire, and then die, perhaps with money to leave to your heirs.

PHOTOGRAPHY IS DIFFERENT

To me, that’s not what a lifetime in photography is about. Sure, it can be a way to make money, but there’s also a lot of fun and adventure to be had, a lot of opportunities to express yourself and your unique point of view, and the chance to change what you do as you go along. Why do one thing all your life? If you want to do that, it’s fine, but even if you train to become, say, a medical photographer and then work in hospitals for your entire work life, that’s no reason you cannot involve yourself with all sorts of other photographic endeavors at night, on weekends, and on vacation.

That’s the beauty of photography—the vocational goals are hazy, and the training in photography technique and technology doesn’t need to be that extensive in most fields. You can be a medical photographer during the workweek and pursue fine art or animal photography on the weekend. Try being a lawyer during the week and a brain surgeon on weekends—it won’t work. The requirements, and limits, of many fields are set in stone.

To that end, I view photography more as a lifestyle than as a career. There’s no sense of either/or. You can be a medical photographer and a wedding photographer. You can be a photojournalist and a child photographer. It’s up to you. You may not leave a fortune to your children, but you’ll lead a rich life and possibly leave behind images that will have both monetary and social value. That’s sure not a bad life to have lived.

PHOTOGRAPHY AS A CREATIVE OUTLET

And, let’s not write off all those doctors, lawyers, and MBAs either. There are many professionals in a host of fields who turn to photography to get the creative and expressive satisfaction that their “profession” may not be able to deliver.

So let’s start with the basics. We’re photographers and we’re involved with a very powerful force—photography. And we have the opportunity to shape our careers as we go along. But before you can bask in the potential of photography, locate your interests, and find success in one or more fields, it is essential to address three things: (1) the nature of this magical medium; (2) what you really want to get out of photography and what skills you bring to the table; and (3) what holds you back as a photographer and as a human being and the negative emotions that may confuse and inhibit you.

THE NATURE OF PHOTOGRAPHY

I love photography. I make images almost every day, and I respect the power, science, art, and magic of the medium. I once took a Christmas-greeting portrait on Polaroid film for a young man who was in prison. It took me three minutes at most. Six weeks later the prisoner told me that he had sent it to his deathly ill grandmother who hadn’t seen him in the ten years he’d been in prison. Shortly after the photo arrived, she died. Among her last requests was to be buried with the portrait I made of her grandson.

To me, that’s powerful. I make images. I show people things. I capture their emotions and expressions, their memories, their past, the things they love. Sometimes I try to express my emotions in my photographs. Maybe, one of my photos will help change something in the world for the better.

And people pay me to do this!

Another key part of what I love about photography is that it is so democratic and accessible. The equipment isn’t that expensive, and a lot of equipment isn’t necessary anyway. There are many ways to get the training you need, and there’s opportunity for you regardless of gender, race, or physical ability.

I know photographers who work from wheelchairs. There are photographers who are legally blind. I have had students over the years who were recovering from serious illness or injuries and who turned to photography as a way to reconstruct their lives. When I started teaching I worked for the nonprofit Floating Foundation of Photography, which ran photography courses in prisons and mental hospitals. Photography can help you grow. And, I know from experience, it can help you heal.

And people looking at your photos won’t necessarily know if you’re black or white, if you’re female or male, or whether you used a Canon or a Nikon. They won’t know if you went to college or learned photography in prison.

I recall a television interview with the late Danny Kaye, a performer with many talents. In talking about his interests, he made a very simple but profound statement: “If you can find the form of self-expression that’s best for you, then you’ve got it made.”

A CAREER TO THE END

There’s one other great aspect of photography. There’s no need to retire. Opera singers, supermodels, athletes—even the sharks and traders on Wall Street—all have a prime. When they can no longer take the rigors or hit the high notes, or when the “new (and younger) face” retires the supermodel who may be “over the hill” in her mid-twenties, it’s time to move on.

Not so with photography. You can take great photos while leaning on a cane. Photography will never desert you. How many of us are lucky enough to find a lifelong friend?

For me, that’s photography. My guess is, it’s photography for you too. Now that you’ve found your method of expression, the trick is to move forward and stay optimistic. Perhaps, as you grow, you may find photography is not for you or that there’s something better. Then the trick is to move on to that better something. This is not unheard of in creative professions. For example, the great artist Marcel Duchamp, a pioneer of the Dada movement, gave up making art altogether and turned his passion to chess in his later years. The wonderful French photographer Jacques Lartigue turned to painting in midlife. Not long ago I read the obituary of Myron “Scottie” Scott, who started out as a news photographer and happened to take a few feature photographs of some kids who had made a toy car out of a soapbox and a set of buggy wheels. He went on to become the founder and guiding light of the Soapbox Derby.

WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM PHOTOGRAPHY?

Knowing what areas of photography are of interest to you isn’t always that easy. One problem is that the world of photographic specialties and professional practitioners is highly segmented, particularly in the way photography is taught. There isn’t a lot of crossover. For the most part, those in fashion know of their predecessors and peers but are clueless about the history of photojournalists or portraitists. The couple running a portrait studio in Des Moines probably don’t know the names of the hotshot fine-art photographers who are currently in demand in New York and Los Angeles.

The key to learning about what possibilities exist out there is to look at other photographers from either the recent past or from prior generations. There’s no career guide better than learning about the lives and looking at the works of others who devoted themselves to the pursuit of photography.

Michelangelo, known to most of us for his skills as a sculptor and painter, also wrote poetry. One of his sonnets muses on the potential in a block of marble. Every possible sculpture is contained within that block; the sculptor need only remove the bits of marble that aren’t part of that sculpture!

Photography is like that block of marble. It offers everything you could possibly desire. Sometimes it may be easier to determine what you don’t want and then make your way toward the areas that are left.

THE NEGATIVE STUFF

We’re all susceptible to negative feelings, but until those emotions are examined and either eradicated or put in their place, the good stuff is hard to access in a sustained, trustworthy way. And those despairing gremlins do have a way of popping up again and again, for all of us.

That’s important to remember. There may be a few enlightened souls who have put the dark stuff behind them forever—conclusively—and with no hitches. But for most of us, those negative feelings are like houseflies—you never get rid of every single one of them, you just keep them under control.

Over the course of my career, I’ve slowly come to realize how many people—not just photographers but all kinds of people—take themselves off the playing field, fold their hand, and ask to be dealt out of the game. They end up bitter, befuddled, or beaten. Or, if they’re lucky, just depressed. And they did it to themselves! Well, the hell with that!

A lot of our emotions come out as anger when dealing with customers and suppliers. As you’ll see, there are a few situations where you can go ahead and blow your top, and other times when you have to take it easy. There are times to talk and times when the trick is to stay silent.

Occasionally, as you go along, you may find yourself thrown to the ground. Maybe you can pull this book out and reread a few sections and get up, brush yourself off, get back in the game, and get even with those that threw you.

This discussion of negative stuff is written with the wish that it will help you stay in the game right up to the end, that it will help you absorb the bumps, learn to analyze the self-inflicted ones so as to keep them to a minimum, and figure out how to handle those dealt you by others.

FIGHTING THE “IF ONLYS”

Photography is an elusive undertaking. As a form of self-expression, it can fool many people. It’s easy to get good, to take technically okay photographs—to record a sharp, well-exposed image of something.

But it’s a lot harder to get really good, and for the gifted, it’s even harder to get great. It’s hard to get other people to take your photography seriously. There are business and financial considerations involved. There are a lot of rejections along the way. Any of these factors can lead to distracted, depressed thinking, a lot of “if onlys”:

• If only I had better equipment

• If only I had her contacts

• If only I had his sales technique

• If only I had gone to that school

• If only I could be published in that magazine

And one of the worst:

• If only I hadn’t screwed up that job

You can fritter away an entire lifetime dealing with the “if onlys,” but this seduction must be avoided. It’s not that hard once you see them for what they are, but it’s also one of the reasons that, if you’re not careful, photography can make you crazy.

IT’S ATTITUDE, NOT SUCCESS, THAT COUNTS

In fact, I know many successful photographers who are still hounded by “if onlys”—what they haven’t accomplished or the people who don’t respect them—rather than basking in their considerable achievements. And these aren’t just run-of-the-mill photographers. I know of one fabulously successful commercial and editorial photographer who is obsessed with getting major shows for his work in recognized fine art museums. He won’t rest until he’s secured that reputation. I’ve also met a very successful nature photographer who expressed to me his need to prove himself to his colleagues although he has legions of admirers. “They still think I’m a techno-geek,” he told me.

I believe that there is no one way of being. If that’s what these photographers want to do, if those are goals of their choosing, and as long as it is a choice and not an obsession, then that’s OK.

And, while it can be obsessive at the top, it can be lonely when you’re starting out. Photographers spend a lot of time alone—working, traveling, in the studio, or in ...