Month One

This journal will outline my personal thoughts and opinions on my personal and professional development as a commercial photographer during my time at Wakefield College. It is here where I shall reflect on my progress and share my goals for the upcoming months.

What I hope to gain from this course is the necessary skills required to successfully pursue a career in commercial photography. This includes the technical skills I would need to carry out a job, as well as the business knowledge required to set myself up as a photographer and find these jobs in the first place.

So far, the technical side of the course has been pretty easy going and I am confident about the progress I have made. When I started the course, one of the main areas that I was eager to learn more about was studio work. Although I have had a bit of previous experience with studio equipment, it has only ever been out on location, not in an actual studio. I have assisted a professional photographer (Dan Medhurst) in the past and he went through the basics with me but I never fully understood about how to control the output of the studio lights or how that related to light meter readings. I did learn a lot from him about lighting set-ups, though just for portraits. Luckily, the first photographic practice lesson that we had was based around studio practice so that was pretty helpful and now I understand a lot more and feel like a large gap in my knowledge has been filled. As well as this, the health and safety information that we were given about working in a studio and on location seems like it will improve my photographic practice as it will help me to work by a routine and leave less room to make silly mistakes, which could potentially save a lot of time and money if I happen to be shooting for a client.

The work related learning lessons that we have had with Mike (Croft) have been varied in terms of what I took away from them. For the first couple of weeks, I didn’t understand what he was talking about as it was unfamiliar business terminology and I didn’t understand how I could relate what he was saying to commercial photography. However, more recently I realised how it could be related and what a valuable asset these lessons could be. Last week when he gave us the assignment of putting on an exhibition in the gallery space at the coach house, I felt very enthusiastic about the opportunity that we had been offered and could not wait to get started. For today’s lesson with him, we had to meet at the coach house, which was a good opportunity to scout out the place. My only concerns are that it seems quite out of the way (but then again I’m unfamiliar with Wakefield and wouldn’t know anyway), and there appears to be an issue with parking which could affect the success of the exhibition. According to Mike, cars will easily get a parking ticket if (a) they park on the same side of the road as the coach houses, (b) they park slightly on the pavement, and (c) they block access to anywhere on the street (it is not clear which parts are needed for access). These are issues that will have to be thought through before the exhibition.
It was earlier proposed that the college hires desk space from Mikes company and although it’s a nice idea, I personally don’t think it would be that useful. The space available seems too small to be useful to practicing commercial photographers, and having deskspace in Wakefield seems like a bit of an odd step backwards if I’m coming from Leeds every morning. But that’s just my opinion.

Our photographic industry lessons on Fridays are excellent. I think Tony (Speight) is an extremely valuable resource and a great guy, considering he’s doing it just for the cost of his petrol. The first assignment he gave us (the studio based assignment to photograph an object), has taught me a great deal and straight away I have gained some knowledge that will almost definitely help my development as a photographer, as well as a commercial photographer. The brief was to take a photo of our chosen object on our chosen background in three different ways, and it is the idea of finding more than one way of shooting a subject that I think will benefit me the most. Already I’m looking at shots that I have taken in the past and thinking to myself ‘oooh, if i’d just tried the same shot, but tried it from this angle.. or with this light.. or if I’d changed this.. I think it could have been improved’. I think in future I will think in terms of what I can do to create a different effect, so I have a choice afterwards about which shot I prefer. And even if I do prefer the original, at least I will have taken the time to consider the alternatives so I haven’t missed out on what could be a potentially better shot. Our PI lesson this week is going to be on location at the royal armouries. I can’t wait. We’re going to be shooting architectural shots of the outside of the building.

A few personal achievements that I’d like to record/share:
-I got an email yesterday informing me that I had been shortlisted into the semi-finals for Digital SLR Photography’s ‘Worlds Apart’ competition. That’s pretty exciting news. Even if I don’t win, I could still be published in the magazine as a runner up, which would give me a little exposure.
-One of the music festivals that I shot for this summer has licensed some images off me to use for publicity on their site. Hopefully I’ll be able to get a photopass again next year and turn it into a regular thing.
-I was published in a local (to Leeds) music magazine (No-Title), which is always fun.

And that’s it. That last paragraph is actually just to show off a bit because I’m usually too shy to talk to anybody about these things. Actually, as part of my personal development I think it would be a good idea to set myself an aim of making an attempt to be less shy and more confident, because this is definitely an attribute that would hinder me in the commercial photography business. Obviously a large part of getting work is networking and getting to know people, and if I work with a client I am more likely to get work from them again if I was friendly and confident the first time. So....

Aims
1. Become commercial photographer
2. Have confidence