by Ilva Beretta
My career as a food photographer started late in life because I already had another completely different career as an academic. To be honest, my career as a food photographer came as a surprise to me, my family and my friends. I think but that is what happens when you follow the flow of events, you never know what you might find around the corner.
I have always had a thing for challenges: I just can’t refuse a challenge despite being a very non-competitive person. So when a Canadian publisher approached me five years ago about shooting the food photos for a food encyclopedia, I jumped at it and later realised that this was what I wanted to do for a living. That started it all, although it took some time to make a break as a professional full time photographer
I subscribed to a database service, began collecting additional contact information and started sending out promotional emails every five to six weeks. I am usually not a reader of how-to books but when I decided to go for it, I read a very good book on how to promote yourself as a photographer by Elyse Weissberg, which made me understand that there are three fundamental points to remember when you start out as a photographer (apart from producing high quality work, of course).
1. Be persistent in your marketing: if art buyers, creative directors or editors don’t see your work, how are they going to know that they need your images?
2. Be patient: it may take time to make the imprint that one day will make a creative director think about your images when they need a certain style or type of photography.
3. Be yourself: it is you and your personal style that makes you unique and makes you stand out from what others do.
No comments:
Post a Comment