Ask away Questions 3

Today part III of the “ask Frank”.
I’m gonna combine a few because so many questions have come in.

1.
I have been shooting for a few years now and I believe that I have a pretty solid portfolio. I’ve showed it to several pro photographers and have received very positive feedback.
My question is: What would you do if you were in my position and your goal was to start working professionally in advertising or fashion?Thank you!!

2.
I would love to hear anything on your marketing and business strategies. You are consistently putting out killer work but how did you go about getting the world’s attention with it? More precisely, what are the top two or three methods, disciplines or strategies that you feel have contributed most to your success?

I combined these two because actually they are very similar.
I added the image also for a reason this time, not just eye candy.
Let’s start of by saying that there is NO road to success that will work for everyone, and trust me, I still struggle every day to find new ways to get my work noticed, and with internet now a days you HAVE to, there are SO many great shooters out there that getting yourself noticed is a day job or just plain luck. The problem is that because there is so much out there peoples attention span also has significantly decreased, meaning they won’t look at your work long and if you don’t jump out at ONCE you’re “toast”.

Now let’s start with 1.
First of all, don’t believe all the positive reviews.
If you are REALLY serious about a portfolio review don’t be afraid to pay someone to do a REAL portfolio review, and trust me you will probably not hear wow, good and great. Those reviews can be brutal, but…. they learn you a lot about what you are doing and what to improve. Don’t pay just anyone however, find a really good photographer, not someone who advertises with “now I review portfolio for 10 dollar” (pun intended). OR…. even better go to Photoshop World and let your portfolio be looked at there, you will get REAL and solid advice on how to improve and where you stand. For years I’ve had big problems with portfolio reviews because I wanted to stay friendly, the last few years however I’m more “honest” and will say where it’s not ok and what to improve……. or sometimes advise someone to start looking for another job 🙁

Now if your portfolio is really “WOW”
The real work begins, sending your work to agencies is almost throwing away money, they get a million of those a day, everyone wants to shoot for vogue so forget that. Start as we sometimes call it at the post room. Start networking. Shoot for some local model agencies, make beautiful work and GOOD connections, now start using the connections to land some jobs, some will be for free or little pay, but some will be big. Now learn to be a nice guy, network, network, network, network and when you’re done….. start networking. And yeah it sounds like a joke but it’s not, it’s REALLY all about WHO you know instead of who you ARE, it’s a difficult pill to swallow but if no-one knows you you can be the best shooter in the world but you will never land a job, if you are close friends with the editor of a magazine you can be a mediocre shooter and land jobs… that’s why when you look at a lot of magazines the photography is to say the least “not that interesting” some magazines excluded by the way, for example when I look at Vogue I see that as almost a learning guide, it’s rocks. So literally build your way up by producing great constant quality of work, be a nice guy (but not too nice) and slowly keep climbing that ladder.

Now question 2.
For most part see answer 1 😀
Now how to get out there.
Well it depends on what your market is. If you shoot families… Facebook rocks.
Loads of families friends etc, an image can go viral over there and I don’t even want to think about the numbers of people you reach when you make a killer shot of for example one senior that REALLY stands out, you will be working for a year (if you’re lucky).

If like me you aim at other photographers Google+ is the place to be.
If you aim for businesses Linkedin probably.

And now prepare to spend time there, don’t just update your page every month, no be there EVERY SINGLE day, get your voice heard, show people new work. And remember when a website is updated every day, people tend to come back much more than a weekly updated page. When I switched from every 4-5 days to every day my visitor numbers almost tripled and it’s still growing (by the way thanks for that, because you guys spread the word).

However, and this goes for all, and it’s why I choose the image at top.
It’s all about finding your OWN voice.
Don’t just copy someone, don’t switch from A to Z and to C and D and than try some landscapes, make a solid style, make constant quality, and make sure that your portfolio rocks. Start with a killer image and end with an equally killer image and in between make sure that the quality doesn’t drop too much, if in doubt DELETE the image. So break out of the box of standardism and be yourself, make sure people hire you for YOU and not because you’re cheap, a nice guy or whatever.
Hope this helps.