SP w2 Professional photographer?

This week is about all kind of occupations in the photographic industry and the question what is mine?

I have had my own company 10 years long and therefor I met a lot of people involved in the process.

I worked directly for companies

• To take images from there products. My contacts were the people of the public relations departments. They didn’t often know much of photography but liked to have a nice image for the brochure. The images were given to the graphic designer to work with but. I never met the graphic designers.

• Images for in the company magazine; reportage often and work together with the writer of the article. The input was mailed to the graphic designer.

I worked for magazines

Here I got most of the assignments from the editors. They were responsible for having the written articles as well as the photography. Some of the editors did complete magazines but often a couple of editors worked together, each having their own pages to fill. I did reportages, portraits and illustrations going with an article. The illustrations were the most exciting. I got articles and had to interpret them. So I did the brainstorming, concept. Present my ideas and sketches and make the chosen idea. This was in the analogue area. Colour development went to the lab and black and white I did myself. Sometimes I had to do the colour printing myself if special technics were involved. In my free time I did free work that I often showed the editors because it gave them ideas for future publications. Gave me new assignments. Doing reportages I came in a lot of places and met interesting people.

I did exhibitions

• Ones I made work solemnly for an exhibition working together with the curator of a museum and an art gallery.

• I had some groups exhibitions were work was chose and I "just" delivered.

• I did a project with a group of artists for 3 months and this resulted in a couple of group exhibities were we reached out to galleries, artist routes and festivals

As a teacher in photography

• I worked together with museums to make exhibitions with work of our students 5 times. The museums reached out to our school with the questions if we could make an exhibition because for example it was “ the European year of …” Than I acted more as the producer.

• I oversaw a lot of big projects acting as the producer and art director for the photo yearbook. This sounds small but if you know that having 24 photography students who took around 50 group portrait of in total over 1000 students on different locations (with a different concept for each group) and 50 studio portraits of 60 educators in 1 week. Then you have an idea that it takes some planning. We had a second week to edit everything and deliver it to the art director.

• We organise 2 exhibitions in school each year

• We organise one portfolio review with photographers form outside every year

For the business part; I have my own small business providing photographic, teaching and software trainings. I hate the financial part. I got hired most of the time by companies that provide the trainings so that I don’t have to deal with the clients to make the arrangements; just teach.

I hope to expand to sell my own work. Being presented by a gallery would be ideal.

For the setting up an own compagny we have a gaar site in the Netherlands for photographers here you can read everything from copyrights to getting clients, pr, promotion, portfolio, planning, https://www.dupho.nl/kennisbank-ondernemen

Do I think myself a professional photographer at this moment; the answer is yes and no.

Yes because I can worked for clients, have the experiences and make professional images. Have lots of knowledge of technics. But I don’t do as much with it unless teaching is counting.