I think this one's better.
And we're interested in publishing this image as a poster, 24 by 36, and I'm calling to
see if rights are available.
I look for examples of what I call their eyes.
So portfolio gets to be a continual battle, but it's a very important thing and you have
to work on it all the time.
That's the essence of my photography.
Without it, I couldn't really get anywhere in the commercial field.
The photographer's portfolio, the book.
How important is it really?
Well, to me, it's the bottom line.
It's the key to any successful photographer's career.
If you construct your portfolio correctly, it will not only help you sell your work,
but it will also help you build your reputation.
It can increase your income while expanding your marketplace, and it will allow you to
charge more for the photographic work you're doing.
If you construct your portfolio correctly, it will also have another big benefit.
It will allow you to get the kind of work you really want to do.
In this half hour, we'll take the mystery out of building a successful portfolio.
We'll start at the beginning and show you some techniques that you can use in determining
what type of photographic skills you have.
Then we can show you how to build your portfolio to those strengths and near your marketplace.
Next we'll look at formats and the different types of formats you can use within your portfolio.
And finally, we'll talk about editing.
How you can edit your work for its strengths, for its marketplace, for results.
Throughout this program, we'll be talking with top photographers, art directors, and
photographic buyers.
We'll see and hear what they have to say about successful portfolios.
So art directors started telling me that I had a great knack for moving things meticulously.
They should try still life photography.
The photographic market is huge.
The next time you're in a supermarket or pass a newsstand, pick up any magazine.
Leaf through it and take a look at how they use photographic illustrations in their stories,
how the ads use photography, how they have pictures of celebrities.
And this is just a small portion of the total market, which includes corporate photography,
public relations and architectural photography, food, scientific and travel photography, and
so on.
But before you run out and start building your portfolio, or even trying to organize
it for that matter, you must select what type of photography you're interested in doing.
Is it corporate?
Is it travel?
Is it editorial?
Another word, you have to start by doing a little soul searching.
Look inward first.
Don't ask yourself what will sell, what's the market buying?
Ask what you want to do with your photography.
Now I know the entire field of photography is very large, so I've broken it down into
three primary disciplines.
The advertising photographer, the corporate photographer, the editorial photographer.
Now let's say that you decided that advertising was your area.
I ask back to you, do you have the temperament to put up with clients, stylists, models,
running a big studio, dealing with cash flow problems and the business of photography?
Because if you have that temperament, then you're in the world of advertising photography.
David Campbell is a successful advertising photographer in San Francisco, California.
David, how are you?
Nice seeing you.
You got a few moments?
Sure.
Nice to see you.
Thanks.
San Francisco is certainly a major photographic market and therefore there must be a lot of
competition.
How do you deal with this?
Well there's competition anywhere you go in any field that you're in and all you can
do is try to do your best and hope that you rise to the top.
Is the business side of photography as important as the aesthetic side?
Basically, they go hand in hand, Brian.
You have to please the prospective buyer with your aesthetic capabilities in order to lure
them into the chamber.
Especially when you get up into the high dollar, the high end work, the art directors who are
really trying to please a multi-million dollar client that they're using, they have to bring
to that client a photographer who's very seasoned and who has the aesthetic capabilities also.
Although the assignment may be something quite simple.
Advertising photography is where the big money is and it's also the hardest to break into
because art directors tend to work with a very few photographers whose work they know
and whose personality they trust.
Now let's say that you're not the kind that can deal with all the disciplines of advertising
illustration but you like working on a location and you like working with small format camera,
then the corporate field might be just up your alley.
Corporate photography includes everything from annual report photography to in-house
newsletter photography to audio-visual production.
Bruce Forster is a well-known corporate photographer in Portland, Oregon.
Now Bruce, you're primarily noted for black and white photography but really you do all
kinds of commercial photography.
Right.
And you know in this market as opposed to a market like San Francisco or like Los Angeles
or New York, I tend to be more of a generalist here.
There are a few photographers in this market that tend to be real specialists but I prefer
being a generalist because I love the medium, I love all the challenges.
It doesn't matter whether it's trying to make a grungy old silver mine look fabulous
or whether a bowl of fruit look tremendous, it's a challenge to me and I enjoy that.
So you work in the studio as well as location.
I tend to be more of a location shooter than I do a studio shooter but I have to do that
to serve all my clients.
It's not uncommon for instance for us to get up on a location shoot, let's say we're doing
an annual report for Nerco Minerals or somebody like that.
It's not uncommon for us to get up at four in the morning, drive 45 minutes or an hour
to a mine to get there at sunrise, maybe it's 20 degrees out or less.
You shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot through the sunrise, you know grab a cup of coffee,
all day long, you want the sunset, it's in you know, you're shooting until seven, eight
o'clock at night, you've got another hour and a half ride back into town, then come
back, clean all your equipment and that takes an hour, dismantle everything because it's
dirty, clean, shower yourself, get yourself ready for the next day, download all your
equipment, market it, you're in bed at one o'clock in the morning and you're up again
at four.
A corporate photographer deals in a variety of assignments.
He might be asked to photograph an oil derrick or an executive portrait all in the same day.
If you like variety, there are a lot of opportunities in the corporate field.
And finally, there's the editorial photographer who deals with a vast number of publications
that uses photography.
We're talking about pictorial magazines, newspapers, news magazines.
If you like travel, if you like adventure, if you like photographing real situations,
then the editorial photography discipline might be for you.
Rick Cook is a nationally known photographer.
He does most of his work for National Geographic magazine.
As far as geographic is concerned, I'm a generalist.
They don't want specific photographers.
I am expected, and I expect that of myself, to be able to handle any situation.
So I'm, you know, at the moment I'm lighting buildings.
I'm going into museums photographing artifacts.
I'm making what is traditionally uninteresting things really visually appealing to people.
There's that old word lighting.
So you're saying lighting is important in every aspect.
I guess it's all about light.
Everything's about light.
For me, it's nice to be able to go into a situation no matter what the weather is like,
and I can make my own light.
I can make my own image as long as I don't have the rain hitting the lights.
At the same time, I may have to be doing photographing in a marketplace, trying at 6'4 to be not
noticeable, photographing people that are half my size, doing really spontaneous photographs
that is completely on the other spectrum.
The only thing I generally don't have to do is underwater work, but everything from underwater
up to short of the peaks, I do.
To help you decide on what discipline you really like, I strongly recommend that you
get a hold of a large number of magazines and leaf through them and find different ads,
different illustrations, different pictures that you like.
Ask yourself, what have I enjoyed being put on that assignment?
Then group those pictures you like and take a good hard look at them.
Are they primarily illustration?
Are they primarily food?
Are they primarily fashion?
What is it that you would enjoy?
If skiing is your passion, why would you want to be a studio photographer?
If food is your passion, why would you want to be a skiing photographer?
The bottom line is what makes you happy, because if you're happy in your chosen photographic
discipline, then like cream, you will rise to the top.
Well, I think as it ruled, it's either a zip or folio, a box of some kind with loose
prints or with transparencies mounted.
Whatever you do, the presentation is very important.
Now that you've established your direction and you know which discipline you like, it's
time to build your portfolio.
The first thing you've got to determine is the format your portfolio will be in.
Each discipline will have a different type of format that you could utilize.
There are no hard and fast rules.
All I can do is give you some general guidelines.
Let's say that you're going to go into the advertising illustration field and you want
to build a portfolio to take to different art directors.
Then you're going to be primarily working with large format transparencies, everything
from 4 by 5 to 8 by 10 inches.
The other thing the art director will want to see is tear sheets.
A tear sheet is an example of already published work that you've completed.
Tear sheets are an important element in an advertising portfolio.
But remember this, the art directors will probably only give you a short amount of time
with them and therefore they'll want to see probably no more than half a dozen or a dozen
pieces of your work.
The corporate side works a little differently.
You certainly can show a little more variety.
The corporate communications director may want to see a series of slides to show how
you would document a stockholders meeting.
And he might want to see a combination of interior, exterior, and areos of a new plant
that just opened up.
In any event, the corporate photographer shows more variety than the advertising photographer.
Picture editors and art directors for publications will also want to see a variety of work.
They'll want to look at your portfolio primarily in a 35 millimeter format utilizing either
35 millimeter transparency or black and white prints.
They'll also want to see tear sheets and sample publications from other previously published
work.
But there is one strong rule here.
No matter what format you've selected for your portfolio and this is it, the kind of
work you show is the kind of work you'll get.
If you show computers then you will get assignments to photograph computers.
If you show mediocre work then you'll get mediocre assignments for mediocre pay.
And that's why it's so important that you construct your portfolio only with your strongest
work.
David, how important is a portfolio in your overall marketing effort?
Brian, a portfolio is everything to the commercial photographer.
Would you like to see some of the work that we've done?
Sure, I'd love to.
Great.
That's a nice box.
Did you build that yourself?
Oh yes, Brian.
I actually bought the box after a long shopping trip but I did line the interior with foam
and I think it's important to have a very buttoned up presentation because packaging
is important.
Go into the supermarket and find out what you see.
Packaging is real important.
Oh that's nice.
You work mainly then.
Your portfolio is all foam.
Yes, Brian.
I pretty well sell transparencies to every client I have so that's what I like to show,
transparencies because that's what they're going to get.
They're not going to get a tear sheet.
They're going to get a transparency from me.
This is a piece I did for Crowns Zeller Back, the paper company, basically nationwide and
the headline dropped in right across here.
I believe the headline was just add genius and print.
Real nice.
This is a piece that I did for Hewlett Packard.
You can see I'm trying to create a lot of daylight looks right here in the studio.
This is a great piece.
I did 10 of these illustrations illustrating the word leverage for the Bank of America.
It was very fun.
It was a purely illustrative assignment.
I really enjoyed it.
Oh here's a real money maker, Brian.
Well look, you got them all floating in the air.
They're flying up there.
When a brand manager sees that, he really wants to have that.
Oh very nice.
You probably noticed I have a lot of computer sort of things in my book.
Being close by to the Silicon Valley, there's just a wealth of that kind of work down there.
So I shoot a lot of computers trying to get more and more computer work.
So what you show is usually the kind of business you get.
Like you show a lot of computers, therefore you do a lot of illustrations with computers.
That's right.
Show computers, get computers.
Show lingerie, you get lingerie.
I always like to show a flower shot in my book.
It sort of says something about a photographer if one can handle flowers.
This is a fun piece that I did, another self-promotion.
I really had a lot of fun with this one.
Actually put an image of fire on video tape and ran a video cable down the chimney.
Oh my darn.
It was a lot of fun.
You know David, what I also noticed is how neat each one of these pieces are matted.
They're finished on both sides here.
You've got your name clearly identified.
The presentation itself of your work is as nice as the work itself.
Do you think that's an important element?
I think yes, Brian.
That's a very important element.
I know at every turn if you can make yourself stand out the better chance you have of getting
the job.
I wish you the best of luck.
You've got beautiful work.
Thanks, Brian.
Thank you.
Let's go on the other side now and meet some art directors and picture editors and see what
they have to say about good portfolios.
These people see portfolios every day of their lives and they have some strong opinions about
what makes up a good portfolio.
Al Davison is the art director for Motorland Magazine, a publication for the American Automobile
Association.
I think the immediate presentation is what I respond to.
Photographers when they send me sheets of 35 or 4x5s or 2.25, we accept any format.
They should identify each slide.
On their mounts they should put their name, their telephone and address, and then the
subject matter that that slide is showing.
That's very important because what happens is I'll have a bunch of slides out of one
sheet and I'll pick two or three and lay them aside as possibilities for the story.
Now if those two slides on their mounts are not identified then I have to go through the
trouble of writing down this is Tahoe's and this is whatever.
So every photographer sends in this kind of material should have it identified, their
name and the subject matter.
What about neatness?
Sure because when I look at a sheet of 20 slides like this and the immediate response
on it for me is to throw it up to the window or the light box and look at it.
And if I see slides that are upside down, that are backwards, I get an immediate response
that this particular photographer doesn't care too much about his work and why should
I give an extra effort towards him.
Lynn DeFlaw is with 4x5 Inc. one of America's leading buyers of stock photography.
When a photographer sends in a submission to us we prefer less.
Less is definitely more and I think 20 or 30 strong images are much more important than
sending 200, 200 or 300 slides which a lot of photographers do.
Raul Del Rio is production manager for Portal Publications, a major photographic buyer.
Daily there's a stack of transparencies that we go through.
After a few sheets of transparencies one tends to start losing concentration and it's hard
to discern like 20 shots of the same type which is going to be the best one.
That should be his job.
He can just bring one typical of a situation.
A good portfolio is something that has already been edited.
There's no reason to show things that he or she knows that are not that good.
I mean if he's going to show something he should show his best things.
Betty Trano is art director for Portal Publications.
When an art director reviews a portfolio and we notice that a photographer specializes
in nature photography then we want to see what you do best in that particular area.
I think you need not submit any more than say 20 and choose what you feel are the best
images that speak well for the type of subjects you do as well as the things you enjoy photographing.
Steve Sandstrom is senior art director for Nike.
As an art director for Nike the phone rings off the hook with every photographer in the
country knocking and saying hey I'd really like to do work for you.
If they can see the world in a little bit different way and they've got a nice interesting
view about things and have a creative way of solving real common everyday problems then
those are the things that really impress me most.
A lot of photographers like to show tear sheets and sometimes that's not the best way to show
their work because there are a lot of things that are lost in printing and then a lot of
photographers show prints and a lot of times there are things that are really lost in prints
as well.
We usually work with transparencies and so if you see transparencies you know exactly
what you're looking at.
Before we start editing our portfolio first of all we'll need three basic tools.
We'll need a slide projector if we're dealing with 35 millimeter slides.
We'll need a jeweler's loop so we can get into the details of each of our images and
we'll need a nice clean light box and it's important to note that the light box should
have a 5000 degree Kelvin light source and that way we'll be sure to be looking at our
images in balanced light.
Well we're ready to start now and let me give you a quick overview of what I consider the
four basic steps of editing a portfolio.
Step one, sort your pictures by subject or style.
Step two, select your best pictures.
Point number three is analyze your photographs from a selling standpoint as well as what
your priorities in your portfolio are.
Step four, arrange them in a unified and consistent flow.
Okay let's review step one, sorting out your pictures.
What I'm talking about here is start by taking your slides or your transparencies or your
prints and putting them into general subject categories and from those general subject
categories you can make smaller categories or groups.
An illustration of this is that let's say you do a lot of photography of automobiles,
trucks, airplanes, ships, well then you have a category going called transportation.
On the same vein if you do a lot of swimming, boating, biking shots then you have a category
going called sports.
Real important, at this particular time leave out any of your repetitious shots.
This is the time to do away with those.
If you've got five shots of the same subject, pick the best one.
Step two, select your best image.
You have to look at the total image.
You must evaluate its visual impact and review it more than one or two times.
Judge your pictures for quality of the images.
Show only your terrific pictures and above all else forget any excuses.
Too often I've met photographers and gone through their portfolios and as I'm going
through it they're giving me excuses.
This is not a professional way to handle the situation and it does nothing good for you.
If you have excuses about a slide, get rid of it.
At this point I highly recommend that you review your slides at least three times.
Okay, step three, analyze your pictures.
At this point I want you to look at each image and ask yourself a question, will this image
sell me and my photography?
Also remember what is your basic objective of your portfolio?
Keep in mind that the subjects you're showing to a client are the kinds of assignments you'll
be getting.
Another question, is my client presently using these kind of pictures?
If you're talking to an art director from a ski magazine, don't show him boating pictures,
he's interested in skiing pictures.
Then I like to ask myself a couple questions.
What is my client, this art director, what's his impression of me going to be and my photographic
abilities?
This is the time when you're looking at each slide individually to ask these questions
and do a little soul searching.
Step four, arrange your pictures in sequence.
Put the subjects together, making sure that you realize your strongest images that have
the strongest selling potential.
Start strong and end with your best.
Quality not quantity is the important thing here.
Your portfolio is a reflection of you.
It must reflect your best work and that's important.
Another thing, your portfolio is never finished.
Judge your portfolio by your client's reactions, in other words, when I build my portfolio,
I'll take it out and show it to 8, 10, 12 clients and I'll judge its reception by those
clients and then I'll change it to accommodate those reactions.
Add new samples as you go along, this is real important.
I might be only showing 40 slides but I'll have a hundred other examples back of the
office that I could insert and use.
And here's a key point, no matter how successful you are as a photographer, remember photography
doesn't stand still, you can't either.
Make sure you're constantly updating your portfolio to reflect new styles that have
been developed in the photographic industry.
Keep yourself fresh, keep yourself in touch with what's happening.
Make self assignments, this is very important and if you're doing self assignments, make
sure you're doing subjects that interest you.
Build a stock of good sample photos for your portfolio.
To get ideas for self assignments, go through magazines and look at different ads, different
photographs you think you can improve on and then go out and do them and include them in
your portfolio.
We do that all the time, we call it testing and you have to do it to keep from getting
stale.
Also, if you shoot a lot of mundane products over and over and over, you need it just for
a little refreshment.
And to keep your book current and happening, things are changing out there in the marketplace
all the time and you need current things, you need the current look.
I try to roll over my portfolio once a year, maybe once every two years, I try to do once
a year and that's about 10 to 12 pieces and so each year they would roll over.
I don't necessarily do one complete portfolio to replace one but I add a piece and one piece
comes out, I add another piece and another piece comes out.
Another point, avoid mixing black and white prints with color whenever possible.
If you do have to mix them, keep your black and white together and your color together.
When in doubt, leave it out.
A rule of thumb that you should always follow.
A word about cleanliness and this is important, make sure your portfolio has no stains, make
sure there's no coffee marks, there's no egg stains, make sure you've spotted all your
pictures, make sure there's no fingerprints on your slides and make sure you have a neat
presentation folder to show your presentation in.
I use this nice leather bound MediaWest portfolio, it opens up and I keep my flax boards in it,
it makes for a nice, clean, neat, professional looking presentation folder.
Another thing, make sure you have your name on all your materials.
If you're using slides, make sure your name's on the slides.
If you're using larger transparency, make sure your name appears on all the materials.
Another tip, make up duplicate portfolios.
Here at MediaWest we have more than three identical portfolios.
The reason being is a lot of art directors will like to keep your portfolio for more
than a day or two.
That way we always have a portfolio out working for us.
And during the presentation itself, and this is real important, listen twice as much as
you talk.
That's why God gave you two ears and one mouth.
And it's real important to get your client's reaction by listening to what he has to say.
And finally, how professional do you and your portfolio look?
When you're making the presentation, if you come in and you have the right attitude and
you're convinced that you can do the assignment and you have confidence in yourself and your
portfolio's professional and you're professional, I'm sure you'll get the job.
Many amateurs have slides that they are anxious to have someone look at and if they're of
good quality and sharp, something that we might be able to use.
Why, we're happy to be able to use them.
Usually my gut feeling on going with a photographer on the first assignment is probably pretty
good because it's probably the same gut feeling that made you hire them.
I think as everyone finds out, it takes a long time to get somebody to trust you and
be able to be paid for a job.
Just add up how many pictures you've got to sell for $100 to actually gross $25,000.
You know photography to me is a business.
It's profit and loss.
We happen to be in San Francisco, California today which is a major photographic market.
But there are major photographic markets throughout the United States.
I don't care if you live in the east or the west or the north or the south, there's buyers
of photography throughout this great land.
The problem is how do we as photographers penetrate that market?
How do we sell our product, our services?
In this half hour, that's what we're going to address ourselves to.
How you and I make profit in photography.
I'm Brian Ratty and in this half hour, we'll take a look at how the business works, breaking
in and staying in.
Then we'll dig a little deeper and look at photo reps and self-promotion.
And finally, pricing, billing and taking care of business.
Walter Sworthout is one of the top advertising photographers in the United States.
I had an opportunity to visit with him in his studio in San Francisco.
What would be your photographic specialty?
What are you noted for in your opinion?
I do a lot of product, food oriented things in the studio.
My love is of course photographing people.
So ironically, the things you love the most you often don't do.
But I do a fair amount of it.
I've shot a lot of corporate presidents.
So how do you market yourself?
Do you use a rep or do you represent yourself?
Most of my first four years, I pretty much represented myself.
I believe that to go out there and to meet the people that are going to hire me, they
got to know who I am.
And I thought it was very important that they got to know who Walter Sworthout was rather
than a rep who would carry your book and not see you.
I'm a very big advocate that a person should perhaps the first year get to know this community
that they're going to be working in.
It takes time.
A lot of people want it now.
It takes time to develop a business.
I've been in this business for almost 20 years and it's only been the last maybe seven years
I've really had the kind of success I'd like to have.
And so it takes time and dedication.
After the first six months, you know, the fantasy were off and I realized...
Susan Schelling is one of the top fashion and food illustrators in America.
So I moved into a photography studio that had a large client base.
Did your knowledge base increase?
It was wonderful.
Oh, what a great experience.
The only other way you could do that is maybe go to New York or Chicago and work for lots
of photographers.
And in fact, that's the advice that I give to a lot of people who are starting out is
work for as many photographers as you can.
I mean, there's certain things like you got to have decent hand-eye coordination in terms
of learning how to follow focus.
David Madison is noted for his sports photography and has a market that extends worldwide.
A 600 millimeter lens, you've got to keep the image in focus or else the shot ends up
in the trash can.
Other than that, I think, you know, you learn to work under different types of lighting
conditions.
You learn about how to expose in the daylight, how to expose in stadium lighting at night,
how to shoot, how to expose for white players, black players under different kinds of lighting.
There's a lot of different factors just in terms of getting the image on film so it's
a quality image.
So the important thing is that you understand what your client's looking for.
Yes.
Now in sports, when you say sports, everyone thinks, oh, this guy goes to the football
game every Saturday.
But the truth is that working in sports as a commercial venture, you do a lot of different
things.
You do things from going to a football game to recreating the finish of a winning race
where I have set up every element of the race.
You've actually staged the race.
I may have staged the race.
And the different types of clients, on one hand, you may be working for a client like
Sports Illustrated and they're interested in the news of what's happening at that game.
And another client is a commercial client, an advertising agency.
They want to create a particular feeling or a particular idea and every element of it
has to be controlled.
What you show those two different clients is radically different.
Oh, tremendous amount of advertising.
I do two, no.
Diane Pettis is noted for her large format food photography and I recently met with her
in a studio in San Francisco.
It returns and it's working.
It's doing exactly what I want it to be doing.
And there is no formula to any successful photographer.
I think we all find our route or route for advertising after lots of years of making
mistakes or trying things out that don't work.
And then finally it kind of hits and feels good and it feels right and all of a sudden
you feel like I'm expending money that's really getting me the kind of returns that I want.
And it all has to do with your design, your style, and really your choice of how you want
to present yourself.
If you want your local market to be the world, you've got to spend the money.
And if you want exciting jobs from New York, you've got to spend the money.
No one's going to know you're here unless you make your work visually viable on a national
scale and with consistency.
If you could give advice to a beginning photographer, what would it be?
Save up a lot of money so you don't, or get versed on how much money it's going to cost
to do a studio, the responsibility of having the right equipment for the kind of clients
that you want.
And figure out at some point in a very early on stage how you're going to achieve getting
that money by saving it, working on your own, loans through your parents, loans through
the bank.
Start getting really versed on the business end.
I think that's horribly important.
The point of all this is simple.
Photography is a business.
Profits are not a dirty word.
They pay for your cameras, they pay your overhead, they pay your people if they work for you,
they put bread on your table.
So the business side of photography is just as important as the aesthetic side, and to
me it's just as challenging.
He asked if I could bring my work down and show it to the editors and apply for a part-time
job that was available at that time, and I got that job.
You know getting started in the photographic business is probably the biggest obstacle
you face.
With the modern technology and 35mm SLRs and with all the new gadgetry that's on the market,
your Aunt Tessie, with a little bit of luck, can probably go out and photograph some scenes
just as good as you could.
So what makes the difference between the amateur and the professional?
Well I think there's four main points.
Point number one is talent of course.
You must have that to succeed in photography.
Point number two is a good grasp of the technical skills.
Point number three is a business and marketing sense.
And the fourth point is the most important point, a commitment to achieve.
If you can grasp all four of these points, I know you'll be successful in photography.
You know there's literally thousands of publications in this country that buy photography on a
daily basis.
And there's many publications that can lead you to these markets.
This happens to be the Writer's Market book.
It lists over 4,000 publications that are in the market to buy photographic stories.
This is the Folio, another book that will list different markets, different publications
that you can sell your work to.
And the best thing is you don't even have to do it on a full-time basis.
We have 12 different airlines that we publish for.
Orietta Spike Patterson is the art director for Skies America Publishing Company.
Do you buy a lot of freelance photography?
We buy quite a few pictures each issue from freelance photographers.
We oftentimes have photographers that are anxious to be published.
So you get your photos from amateurs as well as professionals.
That's right.
Even the mailman from what I understand.
Well we did buy.
It was a cover photo.
He had come into the office asking us to critique some of his photos, whether or not he should
go on with photography.
And we found him to be excellent and we were able to publish one on the cover of our commuter
magazine.
Do you find that most photographers send photographs as well as stories?
Well we would definitely like to have the story and the photographs at the same time,
whether a writer takes the photographs or whether he has someone go in with him on the
photographs so that the story and the photographs are pretty much one unit.
What kind of pay range do you give for the stories and photographs?
The range is usually from about $200 to $400 for a writer and photographs.
What format do you find most of your photographs come to you in?
Are they 35mm slides predominantly?
Mainly this is what we get.
Sometimes we have the larger transparencies and that is even better as far as we're
concerned.
What advice would you give photographers that want to be published in this kind of magazine?
One of the main things a photographer needs to know is that we will need an original photograph
rather than a dupe.
If it's a first generation dupe it is usable but after that it's almost impossible to
use.
We like photographs that tell the story that the author or the writer is trying to convey
in words we try to convey in pictures but enhancing it somewhat so that the subject
matter pertains directly to what is being written and done in a way so that someone
who hasn't ever been there gets an idea of what the author has seen, likes it a lot and
we hope he goes out there and visits the place.
So it's really travel related.
Definitely.
Do you rely on staff photographers or freelance photographers?
Freelance definitely.
Although our writers when they go out will take their cameras along and shoot shots but
what eventually happens is that we have a whole list of stock photographers and we send
out letters to them telling them we're looking for shots on barging through England and we
get those as our sources and they'll send in the photos.
So a lot of freelance photographers will provide not only the photography but the story as
well.
Most are solicited, most are unsolicited and of course we give those due attention.
Al generally what's a ballpark figure and what a photographer can expect to make with
regards to a freelance assignment?
We're paying about $400 a cover now and every cover that we choose is related to an interior
story so that people who sometimes send in unsolicited photos, pretty photos, they are
pretty but if they really have nothing to do with the interior of the book we can't
use those.
So let me see that issue there with Motorland.
What you're telling me then that there is a story within this magazine on skiing.
Absolutely.
It's called Winter in Tows.
So in other words the freelancer who submitted the story gave you the images for the story
as well as the story and one of those images ended up on the cover.
Either that or in this particular case he had written the story, sent in some of the
photographs that he had taken.
I didn't think they were of quality.
So then I sent out four other photographs and one of the others that came in I picked
to represent the story.
Okay Al so is it the quality, the quantity or the feeling of the photograph that's important?
See there's always an area here that's kind of gray.
Sometimes photographers will send in photos that are very beautiful, aesthetically beautiful,
composition wise, etc. but they're too generic.
A sunset over a silhouetted mountainside is too generic.
Rather I would appreciate a shot that maybe isn't quite as beautiful but tells the viewer
more about that particular area.
We always ask that the photographer get together a photo list because 75 to 80 percent of the
photos we use are from stock photos.
And so when I meet with a new photographer who comes up to present a photography to me
or sends it in the mail the first thing I ask them to do is to make up a photo list
that they don't have one.
This gives us an opportunity to keep it on file so that when that particular subject
matter comes up, let's say it's Oregon, fishing, we have the photo list of these individual
photographers and we know the subject matter.
I have an associate who goes through these lists, finds the names and the subject matters
and then we call those photographers and have them send their photos in.
There are literally hundreds of other markets which are represented by literally thousands
of other special interest publications.
Nude and Glamour, Skiing, Boating, the list goes on and on.
And there's also greeting card and poster companies which purchase a lot of photographs.
But another big market is the stock photography houses.
What's a stock photography house?
Well simply put, what they do is take your photographs included in their portfolio and
resell the photographs to another buyer.
You in turn get a commission on what they have sold.
This is big business in America and a business you should consider.
Let's talk to some of these stock house people as well as photographers that sell to them.
Our files are composed of all kinds of images, people, sports, industry, scenics, it goes
on and on.
But right now we seem to be strong in real people photography, showing real people doing
real things.
When your photographs are accepted by 4x5, they are put on file and they are made available
to our clients on a selection basis.
When a client is looking for a particular photograph, he will call and say I'm looking
for tropical beaches or robotics.
We send out a selection and if the client is interested in using the photograph, they
are granted permission to rent the photograph on a one time basis for that particular usage.
Bruce, this is pretty impressive, your stock file.
How many images would you say you have here?
Well I think 60,000, 70,000 images in this file here.
60 or 70,000?
Right.
And are they all types of photographs?
They're from all over, they're animals and sunsets and trees and children and there's
a bunch down here on China.
Now you tell me that most photographers that want to break into stock photography, the
stock houses require about 4,000 pieces.
Generally they try to qualify and they try to get a nice fat selection.
Everybody's got a few good shots here and there but they want somebody that they know
is dedicated to doing stock and that's what we're doing here, which is rare.
A lot of people will try and pick a few scenics where they'll go out with their girlfriend
on a weekend and do some pretty shots and that's fine.
But they want people that are dedicated to the stock business and that will continue
to feed them new material all the time.
Let's not kid ourselves, breaking into professional photography and being successful at it is
a long hard road.
It takes a commitment, patience and above all else persistence.
When I graduated from photography school, the only job I could find was that of a delivery
person for a local photo studio.
I took that job willingly.
I convinced myself that I would be the best damn foot delivery person they ever had and
I was sure that if I did that, I could move up and become an assistant to one of the better
photographers at the studio and it worked.
I know it's worked for me, I know it can work for others and I know it will work for you.
I think the key to being a photographer is persistence and I think that you find that
persistence in just pursuing an image or an idea but it also has to do with getting the
jobs that you most want and I have had a dialogue going with Geographic for many years before
I got my first assignment, ended up showing slides to all the top people at Geographic
and I thought boy I'm just in, I'm in like Flynn, this is going to be it.
Two years went by and I never heard from him.
I had one of those enlightening experiences one day and noticed that my little desk, my
little tabloid, my little calculator was not what I wanted to do for the next 30, 40 years
of my life and it overtook me to the point of nausea, breaking out in a cold sweat and
I thought no this isn't it and what popped up was photography, it was like a vision and
I never had experience with what a vision was or what it was like or anything and I
got it loud and clear and took action on it right away.
Once you get established, how do you stay on top?
This will dig a little deeper and see how two important elements will help you stay on top.
First the photographic rep and how they work within your marketplace.
They represent you to your market, they help sell your work.
That will free up time for you to do what you do best which is photography and second
how you can use self-promotion to increase your sales and your profits.
I feel like I need someone out there representing me as a personality, a more personal touch.
You almost need a rep to survive in that high end of the business.
We're here with Freda Scott who is one of the top photographic reps in the United States.
Freda, what's your background and how did you get started as a photographer's rep?
I was a stylist for four years before I was approached by two of the photographers that
I was styling for to rep them.
I guess they thought that I was doing a good job of selling myself so they wanted me to
rep them.
I started out in San Francisco and decided that my photographers were talented enough
and did things that were different enough that we could be sold outside of San Francisco.
We all got together and said, look it's more efficient for one person to be managing the
photographer's careers than to have three or four different people pulling at them all
over the United States.
Freda, what type of accounts do you search for?
First of all I talk with my photographers about who they want to work with, what kinds
of accounts they want to be working on.
I do research on who's doing those types of jobs and I go and target those people.
I make sure that they know about us and that they see our portfolios and we're the best
people for them.
How does a photographer know when they need a rep?
What we found through a lot of mistakes is that oftentimes photographers are not the
best business people.
They have a business sense about what they want but they can't wear every hat.
They can't be their own accountant and be the assistant answering the phone and changing
the film.
They can't go out and make sales calls consistently.
They can't plan their promotion consistently.
And so it's much more efficient and smarter to farm it out to someone like me.
And that's what I want to do.
I envision myself as managing their careers and I'm selling their careers.
I think an art director at an agency here in San Francisco recently told me he doesn't
even see photographers' books who don't have a rep.
It's just the way he does business.
But he deals on one of the larger accounts in town and it pretty well sets you apart.
It's almost a status symbol to have a representative.
There's only so many hats that one can wear in their own business and you need to delegate
certain areas to other people that can do it better and get your work out there on a
really regular basis, regular by being every day.
We've talked about how reps promote you.
But how do you as the photographer continually promote yourself?
This is called self-promotion and it can come in all forms.
Like these very handsome montages of your work which can be sent to the local art directors
or used in a direct mail piece.
Or you can buy space in the creative black book or the photography showcase which is
nothing more than a series of photographic works done by different photographers throughout
the country.
Art directors all over the country have access to these books.
They leaf through them and find a photographer who has a style and a look they're looking
for.
Self-promotion is the very key element to your continued success and profitability.
I have a plan and the plan is not cheap.
I've probably spent over the years, I've probably spent in excess of $50,000 developing that
image.
I like to believe that they know me because of my work but I sometimes think they know
me because of my advertising.
But advertising is what I do for a living and it's why not use it yourself and I think
it's very important.
I don't feel there's a better way for a photographer to get known than to be in one of these source
books and I think the creative black book is the best one.
I think art directors tend to respect it the most and it's a good size for them to carry
around.
I've had a lot of success with it.
Are you in the black book?
Yes I am.
It's very expensive but I think it's worth it in the long run.
It's a matter of positioning.
You've got to position yourself with the other great photographers.
Next we'll talk about something that is just as important as getting the actual assignment
itself.
That's pricing, billing and taking care of your photographic business.
The key issue here is value.
If you don't ask for what you want you're never going to get it.
So Mr. Raddy, what's this photograph going to cost me?
A question I get asked all the time.
This leads us to how we price our photographic services, a very important element in the
business of photography.
Basically I see that there are four primary structures for photographic pricing.
A catalog photographer may price his work per shot while an advertising illustrator
may work on a day rate plus expenses.
A magazine photographer may be paid by a usage fee from the publication.
And that fee is either small or large as determined by the circulation of that publication.
And of course there's the standard hourly rate.
In any event, what's really important is what will the market bear.
You negotiate your price with your client.
And when I'm usually asked that fee, what will this photograph cost, I like to turn
it around and say what is your budget?
And begin my negotiations from what he wants to spend as opposed to what I want to charge.
A lot of times I find that he's willing to spend more than I would have charged.
Some clients obviously work with higher budgets than others and there are times when you need
to learn to ask for more.
If you ask for less you're never going to get more.
And one of the important things is thinking about how you handle people on the telephone
when they call.
Usually the first thing they want to know is how much?
And what you need to do is sit back, find out everything that you need to know.
You need to know how the picture is being used, how big it is, how many copies, how
long, on and on and on.
All of that goes into the pricing formula.
Then you can sit back and come up with a price.
You should never feel intimidated or pressured into giving them a price right then.
You can say I'll have to check on it and I'll give you a call back.
Sit down, have a cup of coffee, think about really what they're doing with the picture,
come up with a fair price and call them back and ask them for it.
Don't be afraid to ask them for more than you might think because there are clients
that work with higher budgets.
There are clients with no money.
You're going to hear every story in the book about this is a non-profit, this is a budget
thing.
Sometimes when people really start to lay that stuff on you and it doesn't really add
up in your mind, it's not a church organization that you're doing a nice favor for, but it
sounds like it's a commercial deal that someone's just trying to get you cheap on.
You can ask some questions like, well is the printer getting paid for this job?
Are you the design agency?
Are you charging your normal fee for this?
When they come to you and ask for you to do something for nothing, you really have to
determine what the least that something's worth is, what it's really fair and what
you'd like to get and ask for what you'd like to get.
If I take a picture, let's say I get up in the morning and I've been scouting a location
for let's say weeks and I know exactly where I want to go and what film and what exposure
and what lenses I want to take and now all of a sudden it's the perfect day.
I go out and I shoot that, let's say it's on a bridge somewhere and it takes me 10 minutes
to do the shot.
You want it for your office, well let's say you want it for your home, maybe I'll charge
you $75 plus the cost of the print, but then if you want it for your office it's going
to kind of enhance your business a little bit.
Maybe it'll be $150 for your office plus the cost of the print.
Then let's say you might want that same picture as an editorial usage in Oregon Magazine.
Then maybe we're talking $200 for that shot, but then maybe you want that in Oregon Business
Magazine for an ad.
Well an ad is going to help your business, it's going to either help your prestige or
it's going to help your sales.
It's got more value.
All of a sudden the same photographs got more value.
So now we're maybe talking $350 or $500 and then if you wanted it for a national ad we
might be talking $1200 or $2000.
Everything's negotiable, we all know in business and you always try to get as much as you can.
Usually we price ourself with a day rate, but if a client comes to us and says we have
X amount of dollars to spend for this shot and it's under our day rate, we might try
to negotiate for a higher fee, but if we're not doing anything that day we'll probably
take the job.
There is also two fine organizations, the American Society of Magazine Photographers
and the Professional Photographers of America who have published guidelines with regards
to photographic billing.
I highly recommend that you review these documents, but more importantly review what your particular
market is in your particular community and find out what the rates there are.
Bruce, I know you're really involved with the ASMP, can you explain to me a little bit
about that organization?
Now it's an organization, it's a national organization, actually international, it's
got about 5000 photographers across the country, the top shooters from Avedon all the way down.
And it's a coalition of photographers that help to give you some guidelines, to give
the photographers some guidelines and some business practices that mainly help them in
business.
They produce some very fine literature on business practices, how to deal with customers,
firms, different legal aspects, they can help you that way.
Let's talk about legalities.
Who really owns the pictures you're taking?
In general, you do.
When you negotiate with your customer a price structure, you're only negotiating a use fee.
In other words, if you're contracted to photograph an illustration for an ad and then your customer
uses it in an annual report, you're entitled to additional fees.
You can sell the rights to the photograph outright to your client, but for an additional
fee.
These rules are supported by current copyright laws of the United States, which clearly state
that even though your customer has paid for your time, your talent, your supplies and
your travel, you as the photographer still retain the rights to those photographs.
The only exception to these rules are as if you're a staff photographer for a large organization.
Can you fall under what's called work for hire?
When you do work for clients, you really own that negative or transparency.
Right.
I own the copyright and I license them the usage of the photograph.
We try not to restrict them in any way at all.
We just want to make sure that when we're told that we're selling a certain thing for
a certain use, that that's where we want it to stay.
The other thing, I just remembered, the other thing that we try to do other than going to
a greater usage is going outside the company.
Let's say an architect hires me to do a building downtown and he wants it for his own brochure
use.
I do a really, really pretty shot and all of a sudden Owings Corning Glass sees that
shot and they say, this is a beautiful shot and we'd like to put it in architectural record
for an ad.
Well that's not the place of the architect to give Libby Owens Ford that photograph to
run as an ad.
Libby Owens Ford needs to come to me and talk to me about it.
Because you still own it.
Right.
I want the architect to use it in any way he sees fit, but I don't want him to broke my
photography.
You know, being a successful professional photographer can be a complicated process.
You must develop a lot of skills and a lot of traits.
One of these traits is your personality.
I've known too many photographers over the years who have let their technical skills
develop but not their personality skills.
Remember, you're a member of the community.
You must be represented in that community by your own personality as well as your integrity.
And I'm not talking about just aesthetic integrity.
I'm talking about business integrity as well.
If you contract with your customer to do a specific assignment for a specific price with
a specific deadline, that's your integrity on the line.
So what's the key to all this?
Simple.
You must do the best job you can each time out.
You know, photography has been awfully good to me.
It has given me the opportunity to travel all over this world, to experience different
societies, different cultures, different moods.
And I certainly hope my photographs reflect that.
I started in photography in high school and I chose the path of getting a formal education
in photography at Brooks Institute of Photography.
But that doesn't mean that that's the only way necessarily you have to go.
I thought it would be important if we went into San Francisco and interviewed some of
the top photographers in this market to see how they got their start.
When I got my first assignment from National Geographic, it was an incredibly scary thing
because all of a sudden all my excuses went out the window.
I didn't have enough money, I didn't have this enough equipment, I couldn't hire a
helicopter.
All of a sudden the only limiting factor was me.
I found that I couldn't keep my ideas down like I'd like to, so I took a photography
course.
And through that photography course I found that I love photography much better than any
other form of art.
Susan, how did your career in photography get started?
Well basically I went to Dallas with my portfolio from the Art Center, which has no tear sheets
and no indication that all the things in it didn't take me many days to do.
I think as everyone finds out it takes a long time to get somebody to trust you and be able
to be paid for a job.
It was very exciting to have my own studio.
I felt I had a lot of power and it was scary from a day to day basis.
After the first six months the fantasy wore off and I realized that I needed to get down
to business and have a steady income.
That's what I found I really wanted, so I moved into a photography studio that had a
large client base.
If you had to do it all over again, would you be a photographer?
It's a hard point in my career to answer that, to say would I go back.
If I could have everything idealistically, yes I'd probably be a photographer and not
take on a lot of the other pressures that I took on.
Because as an artist you have to be totally consumed by what you do to be a really good
one and I believe in being the very best that I can possibly come to.
When I got out of college I didn't feel driven to follow architecture as a career and I sort
of had been doing some freelance photography and I tried to do more and more and gradually
began working in it full time trying to earn a living.
Now that I kind of reflect on it a little I realize that photography has a very immediate
feedback in that you go out and you shoot and in a matter of a couple of hours or a
couple of days you see your images and you've gotten feedback right away.
I apprenticed for a year in that studio and that really was my beginning.
It said to me hey I like what I'm involved with, I think it's very very important to
have that apprenticeship time and of course it led to other apprenticeships as well because
from there I came back home and later to then go to New York and of course from New York
I had an opportunity to work with Irving Pan and to work with some very prominent photographers
in New York and it really was the beginnings of really what launched my career in photography.
If I do think about it then all my weaknesses and my little points that I don't like about
how I am or what I've done or regrets, oh I should have gone to photography school,
I know more.
So that's when you start thinking about competition that's when you think oh they're better than
I am, how did they get there and everything.
So my rule of philosophy about competition is if you can remember it and if you can stay
firm with yourself and be positive about it is there really is no competition.
My biggest competitor is myself and if I live up to my own ideals and my own goals of what
I want to accomplish for myself then they become my own.
The people we've been talking to are all self-employed photographers, they're all freelance, entrepreneurs,
sounds glamorous but keep in mind that while their earnings may have no ceiling and while
there may be a little bit of glamour involved they may be able to choose the assignments
they want to take and don't want to take there's the other side to that coin too.
They're responsible for providing equipment and supplies for their studio, for paying
the bills, the taxes, the overhead, the salaries, it can be not as glamorous as it appears.
Now let's turn our attention to another way to go, the staff photographer.
What is a staff photographer?
Probably somebody that works full time for a magazine, newspaper, business, industry,
government and there are some advantages of being a staff photographer.
You certainly have a regular paycheck with fringe benefits and you're always sure that
you have another assignment and you know where your next role of film is coming from.
So let's now take a moment and talk with some staff photographers.
Here with Mike Lloyd who is a staff photographer at the Oregonian, Mike, every day you're exposed
to different types of assignments that could be sports or hard news or soft news, do you
do it all?
We basically do it all.
We have certain areas of interest where some guys may get more sports than others and it
depends on the shift you're working to but by and large there's very little specialization.
Are you responsible for shooting, processing and printing?
We still do most of the black and white printing of our own work and do a first edit of everything
we shoot and occasionally a black and white print from the color negatives that we shoot
and then the color printing for the final selections is done later by the lab people.
So are you shooting exclusively color now and using the color negative for the black
and white prints?
Pretty much, I'd say about 85-90% of what we do is shot on color negative film and we're
able to make some good quality black and white prints from that as well as having the flexibility
of not saying in the morning that this picture is going to be shot in color and this is going
to be our color shot for the day or maybe it won't be.
Maybe something else will develop later that will yield either a better picture or a new
thing will develop that we'll want to have available in color.
Are you limited to just this city or region or state?
It could be anywhere.
It could be anywhere.
Last year in particular we covered assignments in India, Europe, Mexican earthquake.
I went to Ethiopia for three weeks with the Northwest Medical Team.
We do travel a lot regionally.
Does the paper provide cameras?
We get two cameras and five or six lenses from the paper and all of the appropriate
other things.
The one distinction I do make in technical stuff is I sometimes use my own Leica equipment
because it's quieter than the motor driven reflex camera.
When you're working with other photojournalists is there a common denominator?
I think you're kind of driven by the exciting things that you do and you put up with a lot
of routine in between those.
It's not all glamour and glory and exciting locales and events.
As far as common denominators with other photographers I think we all have a vision.
We all love photography and we all want to express ourselves visually using the camera.
Whether you're a fashion photographer, advertising or photojournalist you apply that vision and
that mind to whatever the subject may be.
That's true even just in the breadth of the work that we get.
We do fashion, we do illustration, we do photojournalism, we do documentary project work.
There's a wide variety and that's part of the beauty of the job really.
It gives a lot of variety to your life and it puts you in positions you'd never be put
in any other way.
Whether it's shaking hands with the President of the United States or the most mundane thing
that comes along in the studio.
I'm looking at Rick Cook's book on the island of Molokai in Hawaii.
These images are beautiful.
They're more a labor of love.
It took him over 14 years to develop this book and the pictures within it.
I guess you couldn't really consider Rick Cook in the truest sense of the word a staff
photographer.
But in one way he really is.
He only works for one organization, National Geographic.
I had an opportunity to catch Rick between assignments.
He had just returned from Alaska.
We had an opportunity to talk at his mountaintop home in Eugene, Oregon.
You must be a fanatic fisherman, Brian.
Well, you got to.
If you go to Alaska, that is the place.
Well, what do you mean, New Zealand?
Yeah, well, New Zealand too.
Those are assignments.
Assignments are important.
Oh really?
Yeah.
Well, that's sounds like you're doing the good thing too.
You know Rick, everybody asks me, they ask me the one question is how did you get started?
It's funny because I got started in architecture school, getting a master's degree in architecture.
I lived to photograph on the weekends.
And I finally one day I just said the hell with all this.
What I really want to do in life is photograph.
That's what brings me the most joy.
I don't know about education being important.
I think experience is important.
I have no education in photography at all.
I have a passion for it.
I love it.
I live to do it.
It's my lifestyle.
And in a way, I think it was wonderful that architecture school taught me how to solve
a problem every day.
And that's all photography is, is coming up with solutions.
I think that photography has gotten to the point now there are so many good photographers
but so few good ideas.
And the bottom line of photography now is good ideas.
It's the seeing.
It's the getting the great ideas.
It's being turned on.
I mean for me, I want to lose myself in the camera.
I want to lose myself in those moments.
And in essence, I'm in training all the time for those few moments a year where I forget
about the camera and somehow the pictures are taken.
Now Rick, you talked about the fact that for about six months out of the year you are on
assignment for National Geographic.
I'm sure most people think it's glamorous but I'm also sure it's damn good.
Everybody says, oh you've got the greatest job in existence.
And I hear that so often.
I lose, I have to admit I lose a little bit of patience and I want to tell them all the
reasons why I don't have the greatest job in existence because there is a hell of a
lot of work involved.
The hardest part of these assignments is waiting.
Is those moments when everything isn't going right.
When the, especially when the weather isn't cooperating.
Or what people don't quite realize is the introspection that goes on because you're
thinking about what all these other great photographers are doing.
And things aren't going so well for you.
And am I ever going to get another assignment?
And it gets pretty lonely out there and you start thinking about home.
You're not, you just don't have everything come through that perfectly for that one in
a thousand pictures every day.
And yet that is what's expected of you.
They don't, they're not, there's no excuses.
They just want great images.
Of course we can't all start out by working for National Geographic.
So if you're just starting out, look for those staff jobs with organizations such as hospitals,
fire departments, police departments, or even working with your local audiovisual production
company.
Or corporations or a number of other fine organizations that have large photographic
departments.
There's another option you should consider.
That of a formal education in photography.
There are plenty of excellent photographic schools in America.
Let's take a look at that now.
I could have apprenticed or I could have taught myself or I could have gone to school.
Those are the three ways.
And I chose school because that immersed me in photography.
You know starting a career in photography can certainly be a complicated scenario.
You have many options to select.
You can start by learning your trade on the streets or going to work for a well recognized
photographer.
Or you have the third option, which is the one I chose, and that's to go to an institute
that teaches photography.
And there are many fine institutions of photography in America to select from around the world
for that matter.
We're fortunate today to be at what I consider one of the foremost photographic institutes
in the world, Brooks Institute of Photography.
And with me today is Ernie Brooks, president of Brooks.
Nice seeing you again Ernie.
Ernie, how long has Brooks been around?
We're in our 40th year now.
40th year.
It looks beautiful just as when I came here.
What kind of students are primarily involved in coming to Brooks Institute age group wise?
Median age, Brian, is 20 to 21.
We have an up and coming middle age, career change age also, 35, 40 years old.
So it's almost any age.
Oh yeah.
You know, school is as beautiful as I remember it.
It's really a great environment for teaching photography.
And at Santa Barbara too, Brian.
It hasn't changed much has it?
Not one bit.
Let's go in the town, Sedan Channel.
Wonderful.
Ernie, now aren't there some islands out here right off Santa Barbara?
Yeah, we have five in the Channel Islands, which its close proximity is wonderful for
our undersea classes.
That's beautiful.
Ernie, you said that you have a lot of international students.
What do you think the big attraction for the international student is?
Career photography?
Yes, and Brian, you have to consider too where these nations are today too in developing
media communications.
The attraction to Brooks is we have a program that's totally complete for them.
That employability point works for all nations.
Our main ingredient is employability.
What we try to do and we must do is to make sure that our last semester here is on an
even plane with the profession.
So there's not a big step when you leave this institution.
And that's all a school should be doing, providing the foundation for that.
We're compressing probably 10 to 15 years of practical experience into three years here.
And you can go the other way.
You can work for somebody, be an apprentice.
That's wonderful.
A lot of people do that.
But if you have a lot of time, do it that way.
But if you want to get to where you're going and enjoy what the future has, go the right
way.
Here's a question Mime asks all the time, and a good one for you.
How do you know if photography is right for you?
That's probably the number one question.
It's asked to us.
It's the number one concern we have.
If a person has a good attitude and a good feeling toward design and perseverance and
loves to accomplish things in their life, they're the kind of person we're looking for.
I think if a person has that, we're right for them also.
Jim, let me ask you, how do you at Brooks handle portraiture?
Is it something that all the students have to be exposed to?
Yes, essentially every student who goes through the still program particularly will have one
class or seven weeks of basic portraiture in lower division.
And then the main part of portraiture instruction comes in the upper division.
Jim, what do you think is the prerequisite to be a successful portrait photographer?
Technically, they have to be technically competent, which means they have a basic understanding
of their lighting and lighting ratios and the mood that can be created with various
lighting situations, basic camera control.
But more than that, if they're going to be a portrait photographer, they have to have
a real empathy and a real concern, a real desire to work real close with people.
You can teach people lighting.
You can teach people various other kinds of technical things.
But someone has to have a portrait photographer's heart.
It has to be there to begin with to really excel and persist in portraiture.
Someone said portraiture would be fun if it weren't for the people.
And that means that people can be aggravating at times.
They can be disruptive.
They can be hard to understand.
But there's that desire within the true portrait photographer that says, I still want to please
you.
I want to make you happy.
And at the same time, I'll supply you with a photograph.
And in my view, the satisfaction comes largely from your interchange with the person or the
group or that kind of thing rather than the specific photography.
Whether or not you have the opportunity to get a formal education in photography, there's
no substitute for experience.
And this brings us to the apprenticeship program that most successful photographers have.
It's a throwback to the old medieval apprenticeship programs.
In essence, what you do is you apprentice for a photographer and work with and learn
from that established photographer.
In a period of three or four years, you have built your own portfolio and you've learned
the craft of photography.
This is an excellent way of getting your photographic career started.
I think the apprenticeship program is the only way.
I think that when you go to school and you come out, you know, you can learn photography
in a book.
You don't have to even go to a school, although I think schools are more expedient.
But I think that the real training, the real core information, the real experience is seeing
somebody on the firing line.
You know, when you're out there on the cutting edge of life, that's when you really learn.
And you can study and sort of go through the motions safely at home or in the school room.
But when you get out there on the firing line, that's when it really starts teaching you
something.
I think that's very, very important.
I think I would say it's the most vital thing of all is to have that time in a studio, learning
on the spot.
You can liken it to medical profession, where you come out of medical school, you've graduated
from medical school, but then you've got to go through all the internship and then you
got to do that for a long period of time and then work your butt off and do all the weird
hours and then you go from there to being a resident, I guess.
You got to go through that for a long time, you know, before you become a practitioner.
Well, it's the same in photography in a way.
You go through those phases, you know, you get a person, you train them, and then after
a while they begin to be able to shoot for you and then they're in that residency.
And then finally they graduate more often than last, unless your studio has grown to
accommodate them, they're off on their own.
Actually the first fellow that I hired here in San Francisco had no training whatsoever.
He came in with his 35 millimeter slides, he had no 4x5 or 8x10 experience.
He just really wanted to be a photographer and was ready to work for anything that we
were willing to pay him.
And we said, well, we'll try it out.
If you're willing to help us build the studio and you know, you're consistent, then we'll
teach you everything we know.
He just grew with me and now he's totally independent of me except for he helps share
the space with me now.
Magically is when I need an assistant, the phone starts ringing off the hook.
I just put it out mentally.
And that's how I usually find people.
I have them come in for interviews, I look at their work, find out what their intentions
for their own profession will be, to make sure it's in alignment with my work so that
we're not, that person's not interested in doing fashion and all I'm doing is food.
So I want someone that's really geared and wanting to learn and be really excited about
the kind of work that we're going to be doing together.
There are a lot of jobs that come into the studio that are pretty basic, white seamless
paper, backlighting, bank lighting.
So I would assume that once my assistant got to know me and my little attitudes that they
could just set it up, a job comes in and I'll say, okay, set that one up for me.
At least we have a starting point.
Everything's all geared up to go and it may change when I get on the set.
You may find that apprenticing or formal education is too much of a financial or time commitment
at this point.
I encourage you then to consider the community colleges or the state colleges.
Most have excellent photographic courses.
And of course, there's always the local public library, which is just full of books on photography.
You know, photography has been awfully good to me.
For 20 years it has provided me and my family a good living.
And in the last 90 minutes, we have tried to illustrate to you the reasons why you can
make money and have a career in photography.
We started with the important element of how to build your portfolio.
And then we talked about how you can market your services.
And in the last half hour, we have really stressed career opportunities within photography.
Not all of us are destined to be great illustrators or great photographers, but there are many
other job disciplines within photography that should be considered.
Photographic reps, one hour lab people, specialty color people, other types of sales jobs.
All of this is within that quote unquote profession of photography.
And they're great opportunities.
They're opportunities beyond belief for any person willing to dedicate themselves to the
career of photography.
I know from personal experience that it took two main ingredients for my success.
And I think you've heard other photographers mention them too.
Number one, of course, we have to have some talent.
And in my case, I was fortunate to have some.
But the second ingredient was a dedication.
A dedication to concentrate on my career within photography.
And also I had a lot of patience.
It doesn't happen overnight.
You have to work at it.
So what you as a budding new photographer must do is dedicate yourself to this career.
And I'm sure you too will be satisfied with what it has to offer.
Thank you.