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Archive 2016 · Personal Work?

  
 
canerino
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p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · Personal Work?


Greetings all!

I've been listening to a lot of podcasts lately. The last five I listened to (Matt Stuart, Dan Winters, Elliott Erwitt, David Alan Harvey, and Frank Ockenfels) have all said something very similar...they are known for their personal work rather than the work for which they are commissioned. Almost all of them have said that the work that is exhibited or published has almost always been personal work.

They all acknowledged the importance of pleasing clients (so the money keeps coming) but then also talked about the importance of shooting personal work. Just about all of them mention that they shoot personal work with such regularity...which is impressive to me. I really saw quite a parallel for what they do to what wedding photographers do. We shoot on Saturday to please clients. But do we shoot other times to please ourselves? I derived that we should shoot to pay the bills on Saturdays but shoot to feed the soul all other times.

I'm wondering if you are regularly shooting personal work?



Sep 06, 2016 at 08:13 PM
joelconner
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p.1 #2 · p.1 #2 · Personal Work?


Our boudoir is as close as I have been coming to personal work these days. About 1/3 of the sessions I have done this year have been no-charge sessions for fun. I really need to be doing more that is personally gratifying, but with a second little one as of six months ago, it's harder and harder.


Sep 06, 2016 at 08:19 PM
Mitch W
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p.1 #3 · p.1 #3 · Personal Work?


Yes. In fact, my personal work has crossed over to being a professional focus now. It has effectively supplanted wedding photography for me, which is perfect since I stopped shooting weddings last year to reclaim weekends with my family.


Sep 06, 2016 at 08:49 PM
dhp_sf
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p.1 #4 · p.1 #4 · Personal Work?


Yep, all the time. My personal work varies, though. I try to do studio/fashion stuff & really classic portraiture which I enjoy, as well as try to get in trips for travel/landscape work.


Sep 06, 2016 at 09:07 PM
Chris Fawkes
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p.1 #5 · p.1 #5 · Personal Work?


I used to believe the line that if you can do what you love and get paid for it then that is the best career you can have.

Truth is that when you do something that you love because you now have to it can suck the passion and life out of it.

Maybe it's not universal but I think that if we do not do personal work what many of us got into because we loved could end up being something we hate.



Sep 07, 2016 at 02:43 AM
glort
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p.1 #6 · p.1 #6 · Personal Work?



Only personal work I do is really that, personal work.
Family and friends.
I have learnt, you can never have too many pics of the people you love.



Sep 07, 2016 at 04:46 AM
Jeff Simpson
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p.1 #7 · p.1 #7 · Personal Work?



Not sure this counts, but personal work for me (landscapes) are a big part of my photography. I now even have a splash page that allows you to enter wedding or landscape website. A lot of our potential clients even mention it at our initial consult which is cool.



Sep 07, 2016 at 06:18 AM
jmraso
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p.1 #8 · p.1 #8 · Personal Work?


I hit the big city, Madrid, quite often with no other reason than walk around, eat sushi, see friends and family if possible and take pictures till Guinness time. Here in my wee hometown, I take a camera with me 99% of the time for my everyday walk, I dont shoot like crazy most of the time, a shot every now and then though sometimes I DO shoot a lot !.

This is what I basically do:

http://www.jmraso.com/Blog/Post_003.html

I have to say that for a couple of years I nearly shot anything but paid clicks and I felt I was missing something !

Edited on Sep 07, 2016 at 07:07 AM · View previous versions



Sep 07, 2016 at 06:59 AM
jeremy_clay
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p.1 #9 · p.1 #9 · Personal Work?


Yes. Weekly if possible.


Sep 07, 2016 at 07:00 AM
form
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p.1 #10 · p.1 #10 · Personal Work?


I rarely pick up a camera between weddings. Not actively looking for muses for free sessions, often too cautious of the risks anyway.


Sep 07, 2016 at 10:16 AM
DannyBostwick
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p.1 #11 · p.1 #11 · Personal Work?


Yeah, I shoot a lot. A few "projects", but I love to have the water housing out in the ocean. That's my favorite through and through.


Sep 07, 2016 at 01:32 PM
Mark_L
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p.1 #12 · p.1 #12 · Personal Work?


canerino wrote:
Greetings all!

I've been listening to a lot of podcasts lately. The last five I listened to (Matt Stuart, Dan Winters, Elliott Erwitt, David Alan Harvey, and Frank Ockenfels) have all said something very similar...they are known for their personal work rather than the work for which they are commissioned. Almost all of them have said that the work that is exhibited or published has almost always been personal work.


The business of photography is quite different in different areas. Those guys will get their money from commercial clients and those will be 'big money' jobs that will come in competitively infrequently. Their personal work is integral to their marketing, getting the, visible and known for a certain style and to get them hired plus they have loads and loads of time to go and do these projects/pictures.

The business most of us wedding photographers are in is very different. We are shooting 25-40ish 'jobs' a year so we are pretty flat out already and is always someone's wedding not some commercial job with an ad that can be very conceptual or where the CD/AD will hire you because of the feel of your last project's pictures. The likelihood of being actually hired based of your personal work is small - at best it is going to be a small factor, mostly they just want to see your wedding pictures so they have an idea of what their wedding might look like if you photograph it.

I say all this because yes, it seems like these guys spend a lot of time and effort on their personal work because they is a big business reason for them to do it.

The direct business stuff aside I am a big advocate of it because I think it is detrimental to the of running a business and your own wellbeing to try to get a large chunk of your creative fulfilment from photographing others peoples' weddings over and over. You get bored, you get annoyed when you are asked to change to a much less ideal place/time, you get irritated clients want simple and boring or they do not have enough time to dedicate to something. This is bad because:

1) These things are NOT conducive to delivering client satisfaction and will reflect in your decisions and handling of these situations which is Not Good for a business owner. The Artist has got too close to The Business Owner.

2) These things will start to wear on you over time and eat you up as well as taking the enjoyment away. I'll get all Glort on you are tell you a story: I worked abroad as a sailing instructor and the guests would always ask us what we did on our days off and were shocked when the answer was "go sailing". The reason was because they didn't see the massive gulf of a difference between mucking about in training boats teaching them and blasting around in high performance boats - they were both in boats with sails about that was about the limit of simultaneity. Did I like teaching them? Yes but if I had not been able to do that on my days off I would have driven myself mad and hated it. Airline pilots often do private flying in their spare time, they like their job flying airliners but deal/like it better when they do their own fun flying too.

In life fulfilment does not come from one place (or one person, this causes may relationship problems). Don't try and get almost everything from you paid work photographing peoples' weddings - it is usually unhealthy and not sustainable.

TL;DR: personal work is good, do not seek all fulfilment from your paid work - this is likely to be unhealthy. These guys have business reasons we don't for doing loads of it though.



Sep 07, 2016 at 02:29 PM





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