A big decision - Help and advice please!

[Toby Allen]

Iím 28 years old and living in London.

I was made redundant (after 7 years) last year from a film trade magazine (I was the uk and far-east sales manager) I was always more interested in the whole photo and production side than selling advertising.

I have always had a passion for photography and with my redundancy pay; I bought myself a Canon D30 and an apple notebook.

I have come to the conclusion that I am not getting any younger and do not want to be selling advertising for the rest of my life.

So I have decided that I want to give Photo Journalism a real crack.

I have some good photography contacts from my
Old job (who say I have a photography talent) and want some advice on the above.

Sample pics - http://www.delicatetectonics.net/toby_ten.htm

1) I don't particularly want to go back to university at this stage in life (3 years!) - would it be more beneficial for me to use my contacts and try and get a job as an assistant (rather than full-time education) I could then go to evening school to study the various elements.

Would I learn more from a being an assistant of a professional rather than studying full time at college.

If I were working as an assistant I would also learn the business side also?

I would really appreciate some advice from people who are earning a living from photography!!!

(I realise that it is a tough profession, but if I donít give it a go - I will never know!)

I would like to eventually get a full time job on a national newspaper.

[Neil_Turner]

Toby

Right now the industry is in about as bad a way as I've seen it. I've been working in London since 1986 and there are a lot of very good photographers out there with little or no work. I had a look at your pictures and you have a good eye for the graphical. Most of the work that we do as PJs involves people in some way so you need to get into shooting people in all sorts of ways.

College is a very time consuming option like you say, and there are pluses and minuses to any route into the business. Assisting other photographers doing all kinds of photography will teach you a lot and maybe help sharpen your ideas about exactly where you want to go. Staff jobs on national newspapers are very sought after and there are very few of us out there, so the chances of landing one are pretty slim. It's much more realistic to think about being a freelancer working for a range of magazines as well as working for a newspaper.

Breaking in isn't easy, but a lot of people manage it. If I can do it, then it must be possible. You need to get a solid technical grounding, some good experience on smaller papers and magazines and plenty of cash behind you before you think about touting your folio around the nationals. Nobody will ever get rich as a photojournalist, so you need to have a thought about whether you want to live hand to mouth for a few years and then "MAYBE" earn a decent, if unspectacular, living after you have cracked it.

If you've been in sales, your people skills should be OK. Teaking good pictures is important, but it's only the start. The web is overloaded with photography advice, so go find some of it and make up your own mind which way to go. Good luck, it's not going to be easy (but it may be fun!)

Neil.

www.dg28.com

[DavidBlumenfeld]

My advice for what its worth is don't go back to school. Spend your money, instead, on photographing a project that you are interested in...Look at magazines and photo books to see how others approach visual stories...This is a craft of telling stories through images. Maybe do a weekend workshop someplace to learn some "technical" stuff, but most real technique is learned in the field by shooting and shooting and shooting. I work in Israel, where I have been based for 3 years, and have seen many come through here to do just that--you can do something exotic or something near home. I have never once been asked by a photo editor where or if I went to school for photography (and I've gone to see hundreds of editors over the years) The quality and uniqueness of your work (seen in the portfolio), as well as your personality, drive, passion, and lots of luck is what gets you assignments. I went to a techy school for a year (after a BA in Political Science) and then travelled to the USSR to do several photo projects. Then I had something real to bring to photo-editors, while my classmates who went for 4 year photo program had student work--school assignments and were just starting out after school...Anyway...thats my 2 cents worth. good luck
Davidblumenfeld.com

[Ken_Bennett]

Toby--

I enjoyed your portfolio. I must say that your images, as they are now, are far better suited to a corporate or advertising market than to newspapers or standard photojournalism. They are clean, have good composition and use of color, and really look like nothing other than annual report photos for some sort of multinational company.

That said, here are a couple of ideas, in no particular order:

1. Yes, you should assist other photographers. All kinds of photographers, from magazine shooters to annual report and advertising photogs. Yes, the market is poor, but someone is out there shooting, and you can help them.

Assisting will give you the insight into how this business is run, which is crucially important. You may never become redundant from a freelance job (it's hard to lay yourself off), but you can starve just as easily either way.

2. The D-30 is a nice little camera, but it's not really up to the rigors of daily photojournalism. Worse, it's not something you can use for corporate or advertising photography, either. But, it has one huge advantage -- you can shoot lots of experimental images without any additional cost, so you can learn more about photography and work on an interesting portfolio without incurring huge costs.

I really hope that you have a couple of old Canon or Nikon film bodies in your closet, along with a bunch of good lenses and a decent tripod, because that's how you'll make a living shooting the kind of images you show on your web site. Of course, that means giving up the advantages of digital shooting, and dealing with slides and filters and polaroids and all the other old-fashioned stuff we thought we gave up in the last millennium <grin>. But that kind of work is still mostly shot on 35mm slide film.

3. If you really want to end up as a newspaper staffer, then the traditional approach is to start for a very small paper, usually a weekly, and progress up the ladder: first to a small daily, then a larger regional daily, then finally, after 10 or 15 years, to one of the national dailies. It is a long, slow process, with no guarantee of success, and the end result is a job with very long, irregular hours, and modest pay. Oh, and you don't own any of your work -- your employer does.

If this still sounds good, then you will need to show images of people doing stuff -- sports, news events, disasters, nice portraits, etc. Look in your daily paper for inspiration as well as to see what sorts of images make editors happy. You can certainly show one or maybe two images from your current portfolio to a newspaper editor -- but not all of them.

4. No matter what, a professional photographer needs to be able to come back with the bacon. That's the one thing that really separates the talented amateurs from the professionals -- the ability to get a pretty good (or better) shot under really lousy conditions that would send most sane people back to bed.

Partly, this means that you need great technical skills, and you have to keep them up-to-date. You also need talent, but you seem to have that. But mostly what you need is an incredible flexibility, especially as a photojournalist. When you *know* that you can get the shot, under any circumstances, then you are ready to be a professional photographer.

Good luck. Go find some great photographers to assist. Find out about all kinds of photographic specialties, and find the one that best fits your talents.

Cheers,

Ken

[Scott Martin]

Hi Toby,

If you're a good advertising sales rep and enjoy it, stick with it - chances are you're making good a living that affords you a decent lifestyle. It is, without question, the real money side of the publishing industry.

I've been a freelancer for 12 years and was a staffer at 2 newspapers for 7 years. In the last 3-4 years I have netted more salary than the average staff photogs that work for metro newspapers in our area.

My wife, on the other hand, started as a sales assistant 12 years ago in the zoned advertising dept. (the lowest rank and dept.) She sought out and took new job opportunities as they presented themselves. She eventually made it into sales management and has been promoted several times and recently accepted a job that will compensate her 5 times what I make as a photojournalist.

Stick with advertising, expand your networking contacts into editorial, and do your photography on the side. There's no one saying you cant' do both. The leap to what you want to do will be much easier if you can do both well at the same time.

Don't be eager to play the 'starving artist' role. Speaking from my experience, it's not glamorous or fun.

[img]images/icons/wink.gif[/img]

[marcus_wilson]

Dear Toby:

I have been in photojournalism since 1968 when I worked on my high school newspaper as a photographer. I will tell you three things that I have learned in that time. 1, No amount of experience can equal a college degree when applying for a job. I cannot tell you how many jobs I have been turned down from because I did not have a degree. As one job interviewer told me, "If you had a degree in basketweaving I would hire you right now, but if I hired you without a degree, I would be seconded guessed right out of a job." I finally got my degree in December 2000. Has it made a difference, franly no. But as one recruiter said, "At least you don't go into the automatic "No" pile.
2, This field has always been in bad economic times. No matter where I've been I've always hear or heard photojournalist, writers and photographers (each seperately and together complain about how the industry is sinking and jobs are drying up. If you are going to do this, do it and don't worry about making it. Just do it. At least you can complain from the inside (and you won't wonder what if...)
3. Believe in yourself. If your wife and family supports you all the better. People can and will help you, some will even try to prevent you from being a success. But it is utimately up to you to decide what you are going to do. All of us in the business will welcome you into the Protherhood of the Photograph Makers. But you have to commit to the profession.
Good Luck,

Marcus J. Wilson, Sr.
Photojournalis
Public Affairs Specialist
former newspaper photographer, newspaper editor, writer, and photographer [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[Francis_Specker]

Photojournalism involves one great attribute, the ability to photograph people. The photos on your website don't show it, but it doesn't mean you don't have the talent for it. If you want to make money, shoot what sells, right now its celebrities. Magazines, newspapers all want photos of celebs and really don't care about your background/skill. Find them, shoot them and then call up either a publication or a photo agency and you will eventually make money and have your photo published. If you don't like that, find something you like and shoot that. It could be crime, sports, whatever. Then find a publication that uses those kinds of photos and sell it to them. School won't teach you that, it will give you an education but after graduation you will be where you are now. When you sell enough photos to publications, you then will have a portfolio of printed work. You can then market yourself to publications that will pay you upfront for assignments. I've seen many photographers that started very late in life, 40+ age, with no experience become professional photographers making a lot of money (100,000 USD) in a year. Just shoot photos that sell, and sell them. Don't do it half-way. Don't worry about fancy equipment. Just do it everyday, full-time. And if you can't sell those photos, all it means is the market doesn't want them it can't make money based on those photos. Remember, professional photography is a business. Just like any other business.