Hi All,

Not to bore everyone with the life story but more as background to the question. I have always had an interested in photography from when I was very young, mainly due to my fathers love for the craft. I now have a very successful IT career which has taken me many many times around the world and not many weeks pass that I am not on a plane or hotel.

I decided a few years ago to break the stress to get back in touch with photography this was driven my the birth of my first daughter, and something changed for me when I looked at the images I was taking.

I quickly tried to understand the business of photography and was mainly meet with very negative statements about it as a career choice. I tried to approach a few professionals to start to learn the craft but had no real success. So I started my own wedding business aimed at the mid to high end of the market while the corporate life still runs it's course. So I now find myself driven by my passion for photography and not the corporate dream. So I want to transition over to run my own studio and expand into the areas that I wanted really to be in the commercial editorial side of the business. Don't get me wrong wedding photography is a great area and one of the most demanding areas considering the volume and process we go through.

With al that said I am seeking real advice and guidance to the best steps to get into the commercial side of this great business. I am looking for the best steps that i could undertake to assist me getting started. I respect the great photographers and your work on this forum and hope that your many years of experience and inside knowledge of the business may assist to help me get into the game.

So with that covered please feel free to let me know what you think. I read one of James articles/interviews on the phaseone site and one key line was "photography choose him" I also feel that I had no choice in this matter it just took a longer time for me to discover that calling.

Regards

Rodney

I get a series of these questions weekly and never really have time to answer, so maybe a public place is the best way to cover it.

The answer is there is no answer, other than dedicate yourself to producing the best photography that you can and show it to people who buy photography.

It's really not anymore complicated than that, though to have any form of success can be very difficult.

I've had quite a few assistants through the years complain that their education was too expensive for what they actually learned about the business, but the one thing an exclusive school provides they immerse the student in the great photographers work. Avedon, Roversi, Salgado, Penn, (it's a long list) so immediatley the bar is set very high.

If you don't have the time or luxury of a school like Art Center, or Parsons, then you will have to search out and find your own levels to compare your starting work to, not emulate mind you, but compare.

There are about 80 million photographers, but not many with a clear voice and even those with a very clear and set agenda can lose there way depending on who hires them and the quality of subjects they can place in front of their camera.

Like it or not, we are what we shoot.

JR

I have had a similar career path. I used to work in high-tech but have been photographing since age 12 for fun.

At 31 I decided to quit my job and pick up photography as a profession instead of doing it only for fun.

Currently I make my living as a professional and take care of my children. It took me several years to get to a level where I have a constant stream of clients.

Photography is also a very wide area in which to work where you have to carefully select what you do. I have found it very beneficial to advertise only a few areas towards potential clients and stick with them. Maybe other people can be very good in everything, I cannot.

I am in the lucky position that my wife takes care of the business side of my photography.
She is very aggressive in pursuing potential clients with great succes as well. Some people don't have to do anything to get their clients in, we having chosen to actively pursue clients.

I get a lot of questions of people that want to know how they can make a living from photography. Most have a completely distorted view of what to expect. Most believe they go out every once in a while, preferably to an exotic place, make a few photographs and companies/people will come knocking on their door to pay them big bucks. Unfortunately only a very few photographers are in that position. The majority of us simply have to find clients, help with visualizing their imaging needs, be able to produce something that comes close to that and get paid a reasonable amount of money.

If you can give people the feeling that you can actually help them generate the images they feel they need (or give them the feeling they need the images you produce) you will have a basis to make money from it. I found this sometimes means I produce things I don't even like that much myself but are the taste of my clients. This can be very frustrating at times. I know there are people that categorically refuse to do this but I also know they have a very difficult time keeping their head above water financially. I chose not to be picky and find it sometimes a very good experience to try to visualize according to somebody elses needs/wishes.

Naturally there are those amongst us that can do whatever they like and make loads with that, I am not there yet.

Hi Rodney,
venturing into the wedding market is certainly the most profitable and rewarding part of the photography industry.

What more do you want?

You get to photograph a couple etc on their happiest day and get paid as well?

There are quite a few wedding shooters that gross 1 million plus.

Have fun,

looks like you're on the right track!

Cheers,
Willem.

Yep, wedding can be very rewarding. Not only financially. I wish I had the guts for them

I agree with you Dustbak!
I would burst into tears every time!.
Groetjes,
Willem.

Hi Rodney
I have come to photography as a second career, what propelled my relative success
was my first career; design.
So my only advice to you would be photograph the subject that you know the best
so you can also talk reasonably intelligent about it whenever needed.
I just told a friend who is a wine connaiseur and wants to become a photographer to start
photographing all things wine, as long as he can keep the camera straight!?!?!
So if you are into happy gatherings, wedding might be the go, but as mentioned by Willem
and Dustbak they can be very difficult for diffrent reasons.
All the best
Marc

an

How cynical and how true...

Unfortunately being the best in the field isn't a guarantee for success and can even be a detraction at times when your product is too sophisticated for the general market to understand and appreciate. This is true of most businesses today, mediocrity wrapped in marketing hype is king!

david

PS I'm a cynic too.

I've heard this since I started this business and honestly it doesn't hold water.

If you produce sophisticated photography you have to broaden your market which usually means world wide, and if you broaden your market you have to up your game, because if you want to compete with the best in the world, you must be complete and complete means much more than just knowing what lens to stick on what camera.

I had a group of students in my studio and I was saying the normal stuff, this is a light, this is a camera, this is where the clients sit, this is . . . and I just stopped myself and said "look, if you have what it takes to make it then you will and if you don't you won't. Whether I tell you that your good, or or bad or even if I handed you the road map to success it wouldn't matter, because the people that succeed are the ones that never stop pushing forward usually through great personal sacrifice.

It is a fallacy to think that the photographers at the top don't fight every day, actually this holds true for any industry. Do you really think the CEO of General Motors doesn't have 10,000 employees that want his job and will do anything to get it?

So the only thing I can tell anyone is my list of what not to do, rather than what to do.

Don't give excuses.

Don't get comfortable.

Don't get a big head.

Don't think you can't be replaced.

Don't think you won't have to fight every day not to be replaced.

Don't think you can take a year (hell maybe a month off) and won't be forgotten.;

The further you move up line the rewards are in small percentages to the effort and the risk required.

There is perception and reality and rarely do the two have anything to do with each other.

It's also a fallacy to think a camera is going to make you a better photographer. It won't.


JR

Well said, Andre and James.

Glad to see that my philosophy is on the right track!

Thanks

James, How much time do you spend marketing yourself as opposed to shooting. You may be at a stage where you don't have to market yourself as much as earlier in your career. At this point in my life I am not trying to make a living shooting, maybe soon I will take the plunge. My wife who is a great artist, although she admits there are better, she decided this year to really make a go of it commercially, and finding the time to market and paint is now her big problem. She marketed herself out of all her work. And now has to produce some work in a hurry. I print alot of the reproduction for alot of the local artists in my area. I have to say 90% of them are just not marketable, for many reasons, personalities, no sales ability, etc. I think more so in the area of arts commerce the marketability of the person is as important as the work, and maybe more. Hence my question again How much time marketing yourself as opposed to the actual work. Thanks Steve

I don't like the term marketing. I do like the term sales and that doesn't mean I'm on the corner handing out flyers, or hustling cameras online.

Everyday I do something for "sales" for me and for my clients. In fact the better I "sell" for my clients the better I do.

"Sales" covers a lot of territory and is more than an online ad, a website, an editorial, an award or a printed promotion.

Nobody at any level can ever stop "selling".

JR

Andre/Russell…that’s right on the screws.

A slightly different perspective.

My zen approach to business. After graduating from Brooks, a school for commercial photography for those that aren’t aware of it, I started to assist for whom I considered the best still life shooter on the West Coast. I was full time with him for five years. Everyday we shot large format, mostly food, and or food and wine. Now this photographer was different than many. After the initial placement of the camera, he was sorta through….but not really. He would go into the next room and shoot billiards or sit and smoke and talk with the AD. It was up to me to light, focus, determine exposure, expose the film. After the initial setup, he rarely looked through the camera again. Polaroids yes, decisions on prop placements and composition yes, decisions on food yes. Often once the polaroids would look good, he would leave for the day and I would finish the shoot. New clients or new Art Directors would look very confused and worried when he would say, “Paul will finish this up, I’ll be at home if you need me.”
He was grumpy too. And he had a reputation as a grumpy, hard to work with person. I would often try to figure out why he was so successful because of his business philosophy.

So I finished my five years with him and opened my own place. The very first job through the doors was a national comsumer ad for Young & Rubicam. I thought that was it, I had arrived. This was with an AD I knew from my assisting days, so in other words through someone I knew already. Business became very good, developed long term relationships with all the agencies and design houses in town, and direct for companies. But they were 99% through word of mouth. I did the cold calling, the setting up to show my book, the book dropoff with a face to face afterward but could count on my hand the number of times I got a job from it. I put in a self promotion page in the LA Workbook that first year. It wasn’t that I wasn’t shooting because I was, and it wasn’t that once somebody shot with me that they didn’t shoot with me again because most of the time they became steady clients. Business started to slow down after the go-go 80’s and I became very pissed off that I wasn’t getting work from my book.

I became depressed and holed myself up in the studio for over a year. Closed the skylights and sat in the dark for a year mainly. Turned down some work, took others to make the rent, etc. And I gradually lost all desire for work or jobs. I know this sounds stupid. It sounds stupid to me too.

The phone started to ring and it hasn’t stopped since. I haven’t done any self promotion, no business cards, no flyers, no reps. I don’t show my book anymore, in fact I don’t have a book. I want to fly way under the radar, I try very hard to keep my name off the internet.
But somehow the work finds me. I will take it if it’s given to me, but I will not go out looking for it and expend any energy or have any desire. I will shrug my shoulders and walk away.

And then something else happened. Started shooting for one of the large computer manufacturers in Silicon Valley. Big productions with lots and lots of people and lots of money involved. Over a hundred single or double truck national consumer ads. Hundreds of millions of this crap got printed. I never hit the 6 figure mark for any single invoice but came close. Afterwards I would look at the photo and think back on the amount of human effort, natural resources and money it took and know that photo would become tomorrow’s landfill. I never got off on seeing my stuff in print in the first place but would go out of my way of not seeing the finished piece because it was just so unimportant considering what it cost to produce it.

It didn’t feel good.
I mean for one photo I rented an elephant, I bought a car in order to smash it to appear that the elephant has sat on it, filled a small parking lot with right color and make of rented cars and the drivers that would be needed to transport, cherry pickers, assistants, food for everybody, etc etc etc. Or rent an entire block of houses and have people move out their automobiles so I could fill the place with period cars and props and people. I just couldn’t justify the means to reach the end and the stress producing something like entails.

I don’t have to be the biggest or the baddest or the richest. I don’t need to grow my business as big as I can. I don’t have to equate money with success. If you want to be big, you can…go after it. If you want to be small, be small. It’s ok either way.
For me it’s about photography, the business is just something that leeches itself onto it that I can’t seem to get rid of.

Ps…my disclaimer..Don’t try this approach at home.

A man after my own heart. The marketing/sales is getting to me, maybe its also New York, but for this California boy it feels like I'm putting out negative energy when I'm not true to myself. In other words, I don't like to create a false reality. Much too Biff Lohman for me.

Hahaha, I'm in exactly the same place. Nice to know I'm not alone The part about "business is just something that leaches itself onto it" pretty much sums it up for me.

an

This to all the newbies: you don't need to spend $50k a day for your promo shoots. Its easy to do so, but not necessary. My brother in law is a writer. When he has a script he wants to sell, he shoots trailers for it and submits a DVD with the script. Works like a charm. Usually a week of production, a week of pre production, a week of post. He shoots on Super 16, rents everything. He casts, shoots, pays for food, transpo, location fees, MUA, SFX, telecine, film, processing, lighting packages, grip truck, matched Zeiss lenses, sound mixer, boom man, DP and a gaffer. He edits in Final Cut. He budgets $15,000 and meets the budgets, in New York. This is not to detract from Andre's venture, as a name model always catches the attention of art buyers. And I imagine that $40k of that $100k is the model's fee. But you can beg, borrow and steel to get a shoot done. It helps if you have friends in the industry. Just make sure you don't skimp on makeup and lights. For my part, what got me some big cosmetics jobs were a few beauty shoots that cost me cab fair and $300 in food, and a crap load of editorials. Recently, some real low budget, edgy (read rushed) editorial stuff I shot on film got me a catalogue.

Also, to the newbies out there, editorials, while being almost no pay, cover production costs. They also give you room to work. So, you can work with high end models on a magazine's dime.

an

Hey Andre,
That's cool. Don't have a problem with anything anybody says on how they go about doing their thing. It's all about finding your way through life in the end anyway. I was agreeing with both you and James, that's the way it should be done. Just offering one different view of the same apple pie.
Paul

O.K. I think I need to be your assistant when you shoot Adriana Lima & then she'll need me to take her out to dinner and drinks afterwards to help her relax after two days shooting.

Oh and Adriana is a CANON girl.........sigh

there is a saying

There is the life we live
and there is the life, the way we want it to be
But unfortunately
We have to live the life, the way it is.

I started with photography as a hobby,
at age 12 I had my own darkroom, 35mm
I saw the technology booming and wanted to be on top of it.
I changed school and studied electronics, photography and informatics.

I looked for several jobs in photography, but was hired as a service engineer
repairing computers, and later I got hired by SONY as a service engineer in the PRO dept. Lab.
I saw the very first digital camera's.(from the inside mostly )

To make long story short
Today I make 80% of my income on informatics consulting
I work as a freelance for Agencies, consulting on DTP work, colormanagement,
editing PS, Il, video editing, even programming computers, pre-press e.a.

Sometimes, I get asked as a photographer, my lucky day.
I experienced, the harder you try to promote yourself as a photographer, the harder you get rejected.

This year, after al those "expensive" years of MFDB and software
I bought an old master-house in Art Deco style(1927)
Put my Old devere enlarger in it, and went back to film and fiber base paper for
portraits in black & white.
I just display the recent photo's before the window.People can make an appointment.
Guess what ... It works, I get several demands per week.
It's retro, it's art, it's ... priceless

And André, I bought a second hand RZ proII (I have Hasselblad V system)
and must admit, it is a fine camera, when using BW film too !

I'm in a comfortable position, since the IT thing covers my expenses, and for photography leaves the door open in doing ONLY what I like about photography.

cheers,

patrick

Well said !

As this article mentions. Getting discovered is one thing, having a career is quite another.

Unfortunatley we've turned into a world where everyone thinks one 3rd place runner up on "America's got talent" will make you the next Bob Dylan and for 15 minutes it will, but only for 15 minutes.

Broad strokes and moments of brillance ( or luck) does not make a career. It's a long hard and dedicated building process.

New York is full of photographers that come to make their mark. They live in 200sq. flats in Brooklyn and Queens, or share with a friend in Hoboken, but for the 10,654 that come in every week, 10,653 also return home.

Consequently some come with a great deal of resource and apply that to hiring talented crew and excellent PR, but that does no way change the fact that they what gets on the final page is beautiful and worthwhile.

You can have success in this business, but it rarely comes from one shoot, on moment, or one year. A career is a long process.

http://aphotoeditor.com/2008/06/13/an-endl...of-photography/

JR

There is also that old saying You can take the Gorilla out of the Jungle but you can't take the Jungle out of the Gorilla.

Well in this case, you can take the Cheeseball out of the Cheese, but you can't take the Cheese out of the Cheeseball.

No matter what you spend on promotion and hiring models to try and make your books look good. It is all about personality now a days and connections. You may get some advertising work here and there from small regional agencies. But you won't get anything major.

AN: 200 covers in three years since you started? That is impressive Mercedes Benz magazine? When did that come out?

This business has almost nothing to do with talent now a days. It has more to do with connections and retouching. I know shooters that have been doing it for years with little luck, but getting by. Then I know people that got into three years ago and made all the connections they needed and are shooting away.

Does it take money, ABSOLUTELY YES!

Does it take spending $30k to $100k on shoots. Only if you're on idiot. Take the money and spend two years at Pasadena Art Center. Most of the kids getting out of there go straight into shooting.

Take that money and get yourself an apartment in Paris, Milan or London for two years and test your ass off. Now a days a laptop, a couple of pocket hard drives, 5D with a few lenses and a Mamiya P30 with a couple of lenses and your set.

I have a friend who was testing for three or four years and in those years shot some of the biggest girls right now. Those girls remember him and he hangs with them all and in turn gets catalog and editorial work from the social connections. He admits himself, it is all about connections. with out knowing those girls he would still be a nobody. Now he is shooting Marie Claire, Second/Third tier Vogue, Elle and Harpers editions, Rolling Stone, Foreign Vanity Fair, etc..

Then you have the flip side of it. Guys Like Howard Schatz who bought their way in. He was a renowned surgeon and a passion for photography. Spent hundreds of thousands testing and shooting. No longer practices medicine and shoots all the time.

You make of life what you have available to you! Don't be discouraged by Cheeseballs spouting out hiring famous models to make their books. VS girls are not much. Once they do VS they don't anything at all. Most of the VS girls that is all they do, with the exception of Gisele. it is a double edge sword working for VS as a model. You get a contract and guaranteed salary, but then you can't do anything else except VS.

I have this quote that I look at everyday

If you wish to travel far and fast, travel light. Take off all your envies, jealousies, unforgiveness, selfishness, and fears.

CARPE DIEM!!!!!

I guess everyone here assumes you want to be a fashion photographer? I didn't get that from your post, but maybe I just didn't get it. I'm not sure where a wedding photographer goes after weddings.. Shoot what you love, be unique in how you do it and do it great. I will leave the details to others here as to how to get your wares to market.. was never my forte. But if you have good stuff you should be able to make a living... " there is always room at the top"
..get the editorial jobs and the advertising will follow.

But the practical upshot of this is that you don't need an insane investment either. I have a cousin who does work for a couple of local newspapers and magazines here in Los Angeles from time to time and he just does fine with a few bags of gear.

There are a lot of jobs where world-class results aren't a necessity. But good marketing and people skills always are. It's perhaps one of the few jobs where nice guys can actually finish first

JT & JR nailed it on the head!

But if you want to be a shooter. Start with local mags and papers, then get to regional. If you want to just take pictures and don;t care what you shoot. Everyone wants a portrait. Even Avedon, Penn and Newman shots weddings and kids portraits when they started.

I started at the local and regional and then went national and worldwide. Shoot what you want to kids, weddings, portrait, music, stills, landscape, etc...

You never know where it will take you. Just shoot and the best thing is you don't have to worry about making money to feed yourself and pay the bills. Go at it with reckless abandon! That is the best place to be.

Good Luck!!!!

So

A few cliches, that I have found to be true:

Shoot what you love, the money will follow. Be your toughest critic. Have standards higher than your clients. Don't worry about what other photographers are doing. Charge enough so that you don't fret about whether you are making any money during the shoot. Its not about the camera, its about your vision.

An

Andre,
You started it, by saying you were going to spend 100k on a promotional shoot.
What has that to got do with giving advice to a newcomer other than majorly bragging
about either your income or your spending.
Is this superficiality indicative of the fashion industry?
I wonder.
cheers
Marc

an

Never mind!

All by all I thought it was maybe not the right place to mention it, allthough I was a bit perplexed
at the money (for some a yearly income) you would have to spend to get the future jobs.
No envy or jealousy here at all, the more money you make the higher the ceiling is for me as well.

cheers
Marc

The best advice I can give anyone is to be upfront, honest and fair.

(This isn't directed to any one person, btw).

This is a strange industry and one of the few where building a good reputation can mean you pay people on time and don't abuse everyone in the room. When you think about that last sentence it's funny (ironic funny, not ha-ha funny), because there really should be no points for decent human behavior.

Long term, you really do receive what you give and remember when you are building your career, it is your choice and if you do it correctly you as the photographer will reap the most rewards, so on those days you test, or do low to no budget editorial remember the crew isn't building their portfolio, you are.

If you build a good reputation, finding the right materials, crew, talent to put in the room get's easier as you go down the line because you build positive equity.

Still all of what I just wrote can be condensed down to one line which is just treat everyone the way you would like to be treated and it usually works out ok, regardless of the genre or level you want to reach.

Live to your word, your promises, give credit where credit is due and you will eventually build a good reputation and client base.

I welcome the good, hard working and honest photographers to our industry because God knows we need more of them.

JR

i started also late to work as photographer, after writing and producing music my half life,- i was finally very fed up from tv and ad industry,- although i wasnt bad in business at all. so i stopped, but havent had any clear idea how to go on at that moment. i think this was one of my bravest and best decisions in my live.

i started to come in professional architecture photography, but i had lo expectations, knowing how hard it can be to reach in an artistic work even average level, just to be able to call you professional. i`ve shot a portfolio with regional ( but good ) architecture and phoned a million architects in the beginning.
i got some small works from this activities, but at least it was a beginning and i enjoyed it a lot. as i said, i had very lo expectations..... but the jobs grew up fast and soon i came in situations where i had to compete with the work from several known photographers, either because they have shot the same projects as i did, or because they already were working for institutions, where i was asking for work too.
to my surprise i was able to compete with them and often the client preferred my image language, which was great for me to experience, esp. because first time i was confronted even with international known photographers.
in fact i havent had a clear idea if i am good or bad, but i knew that i tried in all this jobs the best i could give and this was very good for me to see that there are people who really liked my way of seeing the things.
i was able to do that in several cases and got some important clients in that way,- important especially in the way that they have been very demanding in respect to image quality.
this works have been a great school for me. i shot some stock stuff ( even i made good money with some of this ) as long i had time for it.
so my career was mostly a mix of luck and trying to use it as good i could do.
about luck: of-course i have had luck to meet the right persons in the right moment, but to use these little chances to get constant work out of it needed the highest effort and the best i could give.
for sure it was very good for me that i already knew how to calculate and how to make business,- music is not so far away from photography as it seems,.- not in terms of business, usage rights, how to act in front of clients and so on... and not in terms of the work itself. at least i realized after a while that the process i was in ( meanwhile shooting ) was very similar than when i was composing music.
its all about structure... at least in architecture photography.

i rarely tried to get jobs i for being the cheapest, although i tried to make my work affortable which was not always easy, because i am very perfectionistic. this often leads me to ask for a lot of gear and time for my projects. now i get often the money i am asking for, but in the beginning i was often working very long time ( many days or weeks ) on my jobs, so i could not calculate my work on a "day rate" base, because on one hand i did not liked to give very cheap day rates, and on the other hand i wanted long time frames to get the images i wanted to make. i did not wanted to give cheap day rates, because they often imply that the guys who ask more are better,- and i didnt liked to give this impression at all ). so,- although i was in fact cheaper than most others ( in terms of my real hour rate ), in the end my productions have been usually the most expensive ones.

i personally always was more interested in satisfying work than in my bank account,- although my business is running well and i really should not complain,- more the opposite.
i would advice in any case to give 100% of what you can give. forget the thought that it is in any way important if your clients can see your efforts. in the long term they can, although they might not be able to see the difference if you give 95 or 100% in one job. but you just will become better if you try your best. above it was mentioned and i agree,- there is always a place free on top.
but therefor your photography has to contain more than a clever business, maybe a practiced obsession - with opened eyes - will serve you more.

some thoughts about prof. working:
take care about the usage rights, they can be very important,- i mean it might be important of you are in or out of them ( sure fashion and ad work here is very different ).
dont try to come in the business for being the cheapest or making prices which can not feed you. it could be impossible to bring up the prices later to a level where you want to work and it will be impossible to make outstanding work, not only because you cant afford the tools you need, as well because the people which are buying your images will not valuate you in the same way.
give 100% of what you can give.
give your clients more than you promised , not less ( j. schulman said this )
calculate ( for yourself ) the double of the time which you think you will need ( j. schulman said this also )
have fun and be relaxed. no one likes to work with over-stressed people.
treat your assistants good and the people you might depend on the site

Rainer, thanks for your comments here - most helpful, as have been many other people's.

Could you explain a little more what you mean by 'image language'?

Thanks

That's certainly the most succinct advice I've seen on the subject.

i mean personal style.

... of which you have an abundance.

Thanks Rainer

thank you ...
i work on it.

Great Story Rainer. Very motivational

My batteries are now fully charged.. tks Rainer.

Great words rainer, very inspiring.
I enjoyed your work on your website, very awesome stuff. The behind the scenes made it all really impressive.

Rainer,

Again, thanks for the great post.

I just flipped through your website and you have some wonderful work.

The special Gottschalt with the sliding adapter that you are using on the airport shoot likes pretty amazing. Is there a model number to that camera system with the viewing magnifier/sliding back combo?

Thanks,

So

so many flowers ...... great.
no, there is no model number. the sliding back was a modified prototype gottschalt formerly has made,- after insisting a lot he made one for me. i am not sure if there is a second one out.
same about the back adapter, which is rotatable and can just work with the sinar back directly mounted on it. the camera itself is a modified ds30.

Thank you to everyone for sharing some insights to there stories. Maybe to further assist and use this thread for others can you maybe recall the best aspects of your marketing or ways you presented yourself to get the first jobs/assignments.

There are some many options and ways you can approach things but I think it would be very useful to see if there are common aspects that can be used and leveraged for us entering the business.

Items I can think of like:
- How do you approach an agency to test models if you have no book to show them?
- How to approach creating your own shoots to build your book
- How do you find out about the best hair and makeup artists
- Where do you learn the post production skills - as I see most high end commercial images have a different look, I am not talking David Hill but the other key parts to finishing an image?

Thanks again.

Rodney

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"DELETED"

I second that!