profframeworks3-rebeccacallaghan

[profframeworks3-rebeccacallaghan]

Evaluation & Negotiated Major Project

Throughout my time at Salford University I have learnt a lot in terms of professionalism and what is needed to become a professional photographer, such as marketing my work, using social media correctly and how appropriation is key for all our work. 

During the first year of university we focused mainly on improving and honing our skills in areas such as studio, so I feel like I am able to successfully set up a studio with the relevant lighting and backdrop.

Admittedly I didn’t do too great in second year, as I was taking it as more of an experimental year to try out new things which I probably shouldn’t have done as the marks we achieved in second year count towards our overall grade for the degree, however, I am glad that I did experiment during the second year as it provided me with the necessary skills and what to/not to do during third year.

During our last year at university I learnt a lot about myself as a person and what I need to do to succeed. I mainly evolved a lot during the last semester of third year during Advanced Research Strategies and Negotiated Major Project. 

For the hand in of Negotiated Major Project I completed something that I never thought I would be able to do, which was documenting and challenging the negative perceptions of the metal community.

 I had been wanting to create this project for quite a while as I have been a long time member of the metal community and know first hand the effect that these negative perceptions have upon the metal community, from verbal abuse, to physical abuse and everything in between. 

Additionally I felt that in a long time there hadn’t been any significant documentation of subcultures, and they had been deemed unimportant compared to the mass documentation of the mods, rockers and punks. I feel like in today’s society there has been a lack of individuality and a lack of people joining subcultures which I find quite odd as I wouldn’t want to just go with the flow of what everyone else is doing, I feel like it is a necessity to be a teenager who experiments with different styles, and subcultures to ensure you find something or somewhere you fit in. 

I knew from the first time that I engaged in a rock concert, and wore the clothes deemed to be ‘emo’ that I was in the group that I belonged, and as I grew up my ‘emo’ phase slowly turned into the development of listening to heavy metal, and dressing ‘metal’. However, I feel like the metal community gets ignored largely and I wanted to document the people who belong to this community that gets overlooked, as they are the people I consider my friends, and family and I want them to know that they are important and that they are recognised, as well as highlighting the problems we face and the effect of the negative perceptions. 

For Negotiated Major Project I photographed members of the metal community outside of their workplace, dressed in their normal attire. The juxtaposition of their ‘normal’ clothing against the background of their work highlights the discrimination that we face, in and outside of work for the uniform that we wear in our daily lives. 

The images that I produced for this module are the following: 

I am really quite proud of myself for producing this work, as initially at the start of Advanced Research Strategies I was debating whether to produce work like this for the module as I was unsure whether I could actually make myself do it. I have been suffering for social anxiety for a while and I don’t like meeting new people on my own as I feel really quite awkward, additionally I have recently found out that I have a mild form of autism, as I have Asperger’s syndrome, which makes it quite difficult for me to maintain eye contact, form bonds with people and also have sensory issues. Despite all of this I really wanted to produce this work, especially because it was our last year at university and I thought that if I didn’t create it now, then I probably never would. So I pushed myself and fought hard to meet up with these individuals and to no surprise, the first person I met, Diana, the photoshoot didn’t exactly go that well as I was too concerned with just taking the photographs and then leaving.

However, the more I met up with people and took their photographs the better I felt about doing it, which enabled me to create better images. I feel like my ability to take portraits has improved massively since Advanced Research Strategies and I am immensely happy with how the images turned out. 

As I took photographs of Adam for both Advanced Research Strategies, and for Negotiated Major Project I think it is useful to compare the images from both of them and look at how much I achieved in just a few months. For the photograph I took for Advanced Research Strategies you can tell that technically it isn’t great, additionally there are shadows across Adam’s face and body which is quite distracting. The photograph that I took for Negotiated Major Project is so much better in terms of the composition, quality, and just the overall feel of the image is so much better. 

Overall I feel like following through with this project has made me a better photographer in general, and helped me with my confidence as a photographer and a person. Now I don’t feel as anxious about meeting people that I am not familiar with, additionally I feel like despite my anxiety, and the diagnosis of my Aspergers syndrome I am able to execute a project effectively and be professional despite my issues with eye contact and connecting with people.

[profframeworks3-rebeccacallaghan]

Where is Photography now?

In relation to music photography a lot has changed in recent times especially with the development of camera phones and them producing better quality photographs. 

Before camera phones became a big thing the only cameras that were permitted in music venues were professional cameras and the only way you were able to use them was if you had a media pass. However now people have camera phones it is nearly impossible to stop people from taking images on their phones at music concerts, and I am guilty of this as well. I don’t think it’s meant to be anything negative, people want memories from happy times that they have experienced whilst at a gig, or want to show support for the bands that are playing. 

However, not all artists appreciate that people are viewing their performance through their phone. Multiple artists such as Prince, Beyonce and She & Him have requested that their fans put down their camera phones and enjoy the show that they have put on. 

Prince fans were surprised when they showed up for a performance in New York City when they were greeted with a sign stating that not only camera phone photography, but all photography in general was banned from the gig. 

The sign read “These rules will be strictly enforced and violators will be asked to access another experience.” According to the Gothamist, the owner of the photograph, phones were being taken from people’s hands when they were caught trying to record the performance, and they were ejected from the building if they didn’t comply. 

Aside from camera phones, why is it only professional photographers that are able to bring their DSLR camera? Why are members of the audience not allowed to partake in the picture taking? 

It could be down to a few reasons, one, because they may not know how to actually take a photograph that isn’t on auto settings, which would then make the flash go off and you’re not allowed to use flash photography in most professional music venues (such as Manchester Academy). Flash photography can seriously ruin an artists performance and make their show obsolete, as a lot of effort goes into programming light shows and making sure that the smoke machines are suitable for each performer and flash photography can ruin that, although this wont stop people using the flash on their phone. 

Another reason why only professional photographers are allowed to take cameras in is for the sake of the person and their belongings. If a person who didn’t have a press pass and was taking photographs from the crowd they could end up getting themselves hurt and could possibly end up damaging their equipment.  So it really could be for the sake of the individual, as professional photographers who are going and have a press pass usually have access to the photographers pit, which is separate from the rest of the crowd, right in front of the barrier, which limits the amount of damage that could be done to the photographer and their equipment. 

The quality of music photography has got a lot better in recent times due to the increasing quality of cameras and lenses which has lead to better quality images of the artists, which not all artists like, as when they perform they begin to sweat and fatigue and not look their best.

As I have previously mentioned at venues such as Manchester Academy, they operate the 3 song rule, in which press photographers are only allowed to take photographs in the first 3 songs of the artists’ set. There reason for as to why this began happening is apparently due to the artist Sting. When Sting saw photographs of himself from a gig he noticed that at the start of his set looked great as he was fresh and looked how he wanted to look, but as the gig progressed, he got sweatier and tired which gave him an undesired look giving a less-than-ideal picture of himself, and so he decided to let people only take photographs during the first 3 songs of his set and it caught on with other artists. 

In terms of displaying music photography in the past they have always usually been displayed in magazines, however, in the age of social media and technology quite a few magazines are becoming obsolete with the introduction of online music magazines and photographers sharing their work on social media. 

In recent times, the magazine ‘Team Rock’ went into administration right before Christmas which lead to more than 70 people losing their jobs. The publisher Team Rock  owned other magazines such as Classic Rock, Metal Hammer and Prog which is quite worrying that these magazines may also go into administration. As someone wanting to go into the music magazine business I am quite worried that the threat of social media and online news will make music magazines obsolete and I would be unable to get a job working for a music magazine. However, an upside is that whilst a physical copy of magazines may not be being released there will be online alternatives, which would involve people still having to work for the online magazine, which means that I could still get a job working for a magazine. 

For photography in general, there is an issue in recent times to do with censorship and how artists are being censored in what they are creating. In an online article on the British Journal for Photography (2014) artist Newsha Tavakolian, recipient of 2014′s Carmignac Gestion Photojournalism Award, returns her €50,000 grant and stated her “artistic freedom” was compromised. Her report on young people in her home country, showing how many are caught between an increasingly modern society and the religious and cultural traditions of old, won her the prize.

However the statement she release telling us why she had returned the award is as follows:

“My acceptance of the terms of the award from the Carmignac Gestion Foundation was based on the understanding that I would have full artistic freedom as a photographer to create a work that is faithful to my vision as an established photojournalist and art photographer. Unfortunately, however, from the moment I delivered the work, Mr Carmignac insisted on personally editing my photographs as well as altering the accompanying texts to the photographs.”

I find it quite disturbing that in today’s society people are still trying to change other people’s art, I understand that owner would want the award to be awarded to someone’s work who was suitable, however if he didn’t think that Tavakolian’s work was suitable then she shouldn’t have won, instead of him trying to change parts of the work. Tavakolian has the right to produce whatever work she likes and it is not up to the owner of the foundation to try and change aspects of her work, as that is just telling the artist that he knows best when it comes to the work. 

[profframeworks3-rebeccacallaghan]

Final Images for portfolio

These are the final images that I want to go in my portfolio, I have chose 20 of my best photographs that I have taken this year to include in my portfolio. 

I have chose this image because I feel it demonstrates my talents at being able to capture something in a low light setting and it is in focus, there is some motion blur in the image but I feel like that works well for the image as it demonstrates the movement and atmosphere of the show.  

Shot: 04/17

Printed: 05/17

Made for Professional Frameworks

For this image I chose it to be in my portfolio mainly because it is really good quality and is clear, which is difficult some times when photographing live music, mainly because during live performances of metal music the musicians move around quite a lot and play quite fast which makes it difficult to capture them with good lighting and avoiding motion blur. This image is really well lit and it highlights the detail in the image.

Shot: 0/17

Printed: 05/17

Made for Professional Frameworks

I chose this image because of the lighting and the expression in the musicians face, as you can see there is a real atmosphere in the image as it looks like the musician is really loving what he is doing. 

Shot: 04/17

Printed: 05/17

Made for Professional Frameworks

I chose this image mainly because of the quality and clarity that it has, despite the hand at the front being out of focus, the guitar and the face is in focus and you can see that the musician is looking at his guitar whilst he is playing. Additionally I feel like the lighting is quite good on it as it provides a contrast of the light and dark which is interesting. 

Shot: 12/16

Printed: 05/17

Made for Professional Frameworks

I chose this image mainly because of the emotion that is being displayed on the musician’s face and you can tell that he is really feeling the music and screaming. I feel like this image is different from the rest, but in a good way as the background is completely blacked out and the sole focus is on the musician, I feel this is very similar to Abi Barwell’s work. 

Shot: 12/16

Printed: 05/17

Made for Professional Frameworks

I chose this image because the musician is looking directly into the camera and making eye contact with the viewer which provides a connection between the artists and the viewer. Additionally I feel the lighting is quite good on this picture and there is a contrast between the light and dark and compliments the paint he has on his face.

Shot: 12/16

Printed: 05/17

Made for Professional Frameworks

I chose this image because of the lighting also, I feel that there is a good coverage of light on the image and no part, apart from the background, is any darker than the other which allows the viewer to see all the details in the image. 

Shot: 12/16

Printed: 05/17

Made for Professional Frameworks

I chose this image because of the lighting and the detail that it shows off, I think that detail is important in live music photography as it is often quite hard to capture detail when it is in a low lighting situation. However, one thing that I don’t like about the image is that there is a lot of negative space above the musicians head which is quite distracting. 

Shot: 12/16

Printed: 05/17

Made for Professional Frameworks

I chose this image because you can see the musicians facial expressions and the pose he is doing gives off a sense of proudness and that he is showing the audience what he can do. Additionally the lighting is quite good in this image as you are able to see the detail in the clothing and face of the musician. 

Shot: 12/16

Printed: 05/17

Made for Professional Frameworks

I chose this image because I like how contrasted the image is, I feel like there is a lot of detail and the lighting is complimentary and full body. 

Shot: 12/16

Printed: 05/17

Made for Professional Frameworks

I chose this image because of the movement that is being displayed in the image, the musician has hair on his face and had just been banging his head which shows the movement that he was doing. Additionally I feel like the lighting is quite good on this image and provides full coverage. 

Shot: 12/16

Printed: 05/17

Made for Professional Frameworks

I chose this image mainly because it’s not like the others but again it is in a good way, the smoke provides an atmosphere and the way that the artist appears to be looking out from the shadows and looking directly into the camera makes the image appear quite eery. 

Shot: 11/16

Printed: 05/17

Made for Professional Frameworks

I chose this shot as it shows a lot of expression in the musicians face and shows the atmosphere of the show. Additionally there is a lot of detail in the musicians face and I believe that is conveys how pumped the show was, however one issue I have with it is the guitar is out of focus and it obstructing the frame slightly. 

Shot: 11/16

Printed: 05/17

Made for Professional Frameworks

Shot: 11/16

Printed: 05/17

Made for Professional Frameworks

I chose this image as I like the lighting on the musician and I feel it has a spotlight feel to the image, and that the only person that is important on the image is the artist as the rest of the background is blacked out. 

Shot: 11/16

Printed: 05/17

Made for Professional Frameworks

I chose this image because of the musicians facial expression, I feel that it gives the audience a feel for the type of show it is as you can see the aggression in his face, additionally I feel like you can tell there is a lot of movement in the image from the stance he is holding. 

Shot: 04/17

Printed: 05/17

Made for Professional Frameworks

I chose this image as I really like the way that the lighting hits the musicians body and provides an overall soft look the the skin, additionally I feel like it demonstrates the movement of the show 

Shot: 04/17

Printed: 05/17

Made for Professional Frameworks

I chose this image as I feel it is quite detailed around the areas that the light hits from behind, additionally emotion in the musicians face conveys the atmosphere in the venue. 

Shot: 04/17

Printed: 05/17

Made for Professional Frameworks

I really like this image as it offers a full body shot which most of my other images don’t, I feel that the spot light on the musician makes him look special and you can tell he is in the moment and enjoying what he is doing, additionally the overall lighting is good as it offers an overall soft lighting for his body.

Shot: 04/17

Printed: 05/17

Made for Professional Frameworks

And finally, I chose this image because of the stance that the musician holds, the way that he is holding his guitar really demonstrates the musicianship and showmanship of the artists and shows that they love what they are doing.

Shot: 11/16

Printed: 05/17

Made for Professional Frameworks

[profframeworks3-rebeccacallaghan]

Possible Photographs For Portfolio

As I have took a lot of photographs in the three photoshoots that I have done, with two being all day festivals there was a lot of photographs to choose from. Below, I have narrowed it down by choosing the best shots from each photoshoot, however I have 28 potential photographs that could be used for my portfolio, I will have to narrow it down and get rid of 8 of the photographs in order to meet the module brief of a portfolio with 15-20 images. 

Immediately I can see 3 photographs that I can get rid of, as they are landscape orientation and one of the aims is to understand the principles and theory of professional presentation and delivery, which would mean the portfolio having a ‘flow’ which would be all the images consistent and not having to turn from portrait to landscape, so I will be getting rid of my landscape orientated images.

I will print the remaining 25 images, and then see what looks the best printed.

I have decided to print my images on semi gloss paper, I feel like if I would have used full gloss they would have been too shiny and especially with the sleeves it would have looked a bit ridiculous. 

Additionally I feel because my images are in black and white if I used a matte paper the blacks would become too dark and you would lose depth in the images, I feel that semi gloss is an ideal middle ground and offers deep blacks but also isn’t too shiny behind the sleeves. 

I had some issues with some of my images when printing, when they had printed some of the images weren’t as contrasted as what they appeared on screen, I’m unsure whether this was due to the paper, or because I had the wrong settings on, so I will have to go back and reprint some of the images. 

When I went back to reprint John had told me that I had set the printer profile up wrong, and it wasn’t the one that was displayed on the wall charts, so that is probably why the images didn’t come out as they appeared on screen. 

Additionally, I am glad that I reprinted as I had forgotten to assign a profile to my images in order to make sure that they come out the correct colour/shades. So I assigned a profile to my images and then printed out the replacements. Although on some of the images there isn’t an immediately noticeable difference when you compare the images side by side there is a slight difference in the overall tone of the images and they appear more contrasted which I wanted. 

As you can see in the images below, the one on the left was a lot darker and a lot less contrasted where as the one on the left with the right printer profile has come out as it looked on screen which I am happy about.

The 8 images that I decided to cut out of my portfolio from the final ones I chose are the following:

I chose to cut this image from my portfolio because of two separate reasons, one because in the background of the images you can see people watching whilst on stage, and it quite distracting to the image. Additionally, when printing despite changing the printer profile and assigning a profile to the images, it still came out too dark and a lot of the contrast was lost whilst printing. 

I feel if I would have used this image in my portfolio it would have appeared unprofessional as it shows the viewers on the stage. 

I chose to remove this from my portfolio as it was slightly out of focus and when printed it looks quite grainy and unclear. Additionally, in the bottom right hand corner of the image you can see part of the railing from the steps I was stood on whilst taking the images. 

I like this image, as I feel it shows the atmosphere and showmanship of the artists, however I chose to cut it from my portfolio as it was in landscape orientation and it would cause the viewer of my portfolio to keep switching from landscape to portrait and would not give my portfolio a ‘flow’

I really liked this image on the screen, however it didn’t translate well when I printed the image either times, so I think it might just be the image that is the issue. When I printed it the first time it didn’t look at all contrasted and looked quite flat, however when I printed it the second time under the right printer profile with the assigned profile it came out too contrasted and looked quite digital, which I don’t want, so I cut it from my portfolio. 

Again, I really liked this image on the screen, however it didn’t work out either times when I tried to print the images as they came out quite dark at the bottom and made the artist look lost in the images. 

I really liked this images also, mainly because there is quite a lot of detail in the artists face, which is usually hard to do working in low light settings. Additionally there is a lot of emotion in the artists face which makes it a good candidate to be in my portfolio, however due to it being landscape it would disrupt the flow of my work. 

I have chose to cut this image from my portfolio mainly because it lost some of it’s tones in the bottom half of the image. 

Finally, I decided to cut this image from my portfolio because it is landscape orientation and it would have disrupted the flow of my work.

[profframeworks3-rebeccacallaghan]

10/04/17 - Impericon Festival

Today I photographed Impericon Festival at Manchester Academy 2. 

The festival was sold out which made it even better to photograph as there was more of an atmosphere. However, due to it being sold out it meant that there was a lot of people there, and at one point, whilst trying to access the photographer’s pit I got my phone kicked out of my hand by people in the mosh pit which wasn’t great, but luckily I found it. 

As it was an all day festival it was quite a long day for me, as there were 10 bands to photograph, however, as it was on a bank holiday it took me a bit longer to get there than I had anticipated due to bus times being infrequent, and I ended up missing the first band. Although I missed the opportunity to photograph the first band, Higher Power, I managed to photograph all of the remaining 9 bands. Despite having photographed Burning Manc Festival, another all dayer, this festival was a lot longer, with the first band starting at 1:40PM (I got there just after they had played their third song), and the last band starting at 9:45PM, I was at the venue for around 8 hours straight, which is the equivalent to a day’s work and it was quite tiring. Here was the line up:

9:45-10:35PM | Thy Art Is Murder 8:40-9:25PM | Being As An Ocean 7:40-8:20PM | Carnifex 6:45-7:20PM | Miss May I 5:50-6:25PM | In Hearts Wake 5:00-5:30PM | Broken Teeth 4:10-4:40PM | Brutality Will Prevail 3:20-3:50PM | Napoleon 2:30-3:00PM | Casey 1:40-2:10PM | Higher Power

As at professional music venues such as Manchester Academy, you are only allowed to take photographs during the first 3 songs of the artist, which in itself is a task as you have to capture good photographs in the allotted time, and if you don’t then it’s just tough, you can’t go back out into the photographer’s pit. Additionally it is frustrating when there is poor lighting in the time that you have to photograph as there is nothing that you can do about it, except from use a high ISO, and the highest aperture you can go, which can result in grainy photographs. I was quite surprised at how many photographs I took for the festival considering that you have only 3 songs to photograph each band, all in total I took 550 photographs which will be a pain to edit, however it means that I have a lot of choice for my portfolio, including the Burning Manc Festival and Rotting Christ gigs. 

What really took a toll on me was the waiting in between bands to photograph the next band, for the first few bands it wasn’t as bad as the first three songs usually equates to around 9-15 minutes of photographing depending on the song length, which led to around 20-30 minutes waiting time until the next band came on. However, as the day progressed and bands were having longer set times the wait between bands grew and was really boring. One of the other photographers that was photographing the festival had brought her laptop and was editing the photographs after each band, which I thought was a really good idea, as it is something to do whilst you’re waiting for the next band and also, it saves space on your memory card as well as just getting your job a bit quicker instead of having to go home and edit your photographs (Like me) so I will be considering this next time I photograph a gig.

One issue that I faced during this festival is that for one of the bands that I photographed (In Hearts Wake) I didn’t realise that I had knocked the autofocus button to off and it was making some of my images really out of focus, it was only half way through the second song that I realised it wasn’t focusing when I was pressing the shutter so I only had one and a half songs to get some good photographs. 

Another issue that I faced is that for the final band (Thy Art Is Murder), during the first song the lighting wasn’t great which resulted in me getting very few decent shots, most of which didn’t even involved the artists playing which was quite disappointing. And at this point the doors for the festival had been open for 9 hours and so the crowd was quite rowdy, and drunk, and at the start of the second song members of the crowd began to crowd surf which led to all the photographers being told to leave the photographer’s pit. What is more frustrating about this is that there was nothing that I could do to combat this, as it wasn’t my fault, I couldn’t change the lighting for the first song or stop members of the crowd from crowdsurfing, whereas with knocking the autofocus off for In Hearts Wake I knew that it was my fault and I could turn the button back on and take some more photographs before the time ran out. However as we were told to leave the photographer’s pit we were unable to take any more photographs so I had to leave with what I had, maybe if I had a better lens than the 50mm f/1.4 that I was using at the time I would have gotten better shots during the first song, however as I didn’t I don’t know what the outcome would be. Although I heard how disgruntled the other photographers were so perhaps they didn’t get any great photographs either. 

As I had a lot of photographs to go through and edit, I had a lot of good shots for me to choose from. I will showcase each band’s best shots, and due to the lighting some bands may have more best shots than others.

Casey:

I really like the landscape orientation, shot as I feel it is a bit different than the style I usually work in, which is usually focusing on one person, tightly cropped, however I really like the lighting and the composition of this photograph. I think it would work well on my business cards.

Napoleon:

Brutality Will Prevail:

 Broken Teeth:

In Hearts Wake:

Miss May I:

Carnifex:

Being As An Ocean:

Thy Art Is Murder:

[profframeworks3-rebeccacallaghan]

Cost Evaluation

For the cost evaluation we have to look at how much it would cost us to produce work if we weren’t given things like camera hire and printing at university for our chosen career path. 

As my chosen career path is to work for a music magazine producing live music photography, I would want to use a good camera, and the one that I have at the moment isn’t the best. However I wouldn’t want to buy a camera as it would be a waste of money, as new cameras come out every year - every two years and there would be no point paying out a lot of money for the best  camera when within the next two years there could be a better camera. Additionally as there are different venues that are involved when photographing live music there would be no point in buying a lens that you would only use once or twice, so it would be best to look at hiring equipment for music photography. 

If I worked for a music magazine and wasn’t at university I could get a variety of different venues/festivals that they could want me to work, so I would need a variety of different lenses. Additionally, I need to accommodate the low lighting conditions that I face when photographing. 

As I have only really photographed with a 50mm and the occasional other lens I decided to ask the other photographers who work for Distorted Sound Magazine what they shoot with:

The main consensus of the best overarching music photography lens was a 24-70mm f2.8 so I am wanting to try this lens out to see what the outcome is. 

If I was to shoot at a festival the equipment hire would be as follows:

From calumet, the cost of renting the Canon 5DSr body is £95 a day, and a typical festival is Thursday - Monday, which would be £95 x 5 which would come to £475 just for the body. 

A good zoom lens suitable for festivals is the 70-200mm f/2.8 as it enables you to shoot up close on smaller stages and also offers a large zoom for the larger stages. 

The daily rental price is £35 per day, and as a festival is usually 5 days long it would be £35 x 5 = £175

So it would cost all together, £650 for rental of a canon 5DSr body and the Canon 70-200mm lens for 5 days. This would be ridiculously expensive to rent as you probably wouldn’t be getting paid that by the magazine you were working for. 

For a normal gig, which is usually of an evening or an all dayer event would only involve renting the equipment for a day, so if I was to use the Canon DSr again, that would be £95 x 1 = £95.

The cost of hiring the 24-70mm lens for the day is £35, so adding the cost of the lens and the body it would be £130 just for the cost of hiring, which again the magazine you work for probably wont be paying you. 

However, from ‘hireacamera’ they are offering the Canon 5DSr for £84 a day, so for the festival it would cost £425 just for the body of the camera.

The 70-200mm lens is only £1 less a day than Calumet, at £34 for the 5 days it would come to £170 for the lens. 

So overall it would come to £595 for the camera body and the lens for 5 days.

 If it was for a one of gig the 24-70mm f/2.8 lens would cost £34 a day meaning that it would cost £118 for the body and the lens for just a day. 

Hireacamera is a lot cheaper overall than Calumet. I never realised how much it costs to hire equipment, and being a student I don’t think I would have been able to complete my degree if I wasn’t able to borrow cameras/lenses.

If I was to buy the lenses on their own, from brand new on the Canon website the 24-70mm f/2.8 lens is £1,911.99

Additionally the 70-200mm lense is £1337.99 on Canon’s website.

For the line of work I am wanting to go into I wouldn’t have to print anything to complete my job as you usually send your editor the images for the gig you have shot and then they input it into the magazine.

On the website there wasn’t an option to buy the Canon 5DSr, so the next best thing, the Canon 5D Mrk 3 costs £2299.99 

So if I was to buy the camera, and both lenses the estimated cost would be £5,549.97, which is a lot of money, especially when you don’t have it. If I was to save up my student loan over the year I would only have £450 spare, which is ridiculous. 

Portfolio Research

As I already have my portfolio box from last year I am just going to use that as I feel it is the most appropriate method of displaying my way, and seeing that neither Abi Barwell, or Marcus Maschwitz replied to my email I guess I will never know how professional photographers have their portfolio other than their website. 

My-Folio 

Remembering back to first year and one of the first guest speakers I experienced was My-Folio, and they specialise in unique alternative portfolios such as leather, bamboo and acrylic.

Leather:

For the leather option there are two different styles you can get, a ring bound option, and a hinged style.

The ringbound style is quite basic but is effective, and starts off at £75 just for a plain portfolio, for it monogrammed it starts off at £85.

The next style for the leather option is the hinged portfolio, which starts off at £95 and with the option of adding your name and logo. To add you name it would be another £25, and for the logo it would be an extra £50, which would end up coming to £170 for the portfolio, logo and name engraving. 

I really like the hinged leather portfolio and I feel it would be appropriate to display my work in this, as my work is of live music, in the metal/rock genre, and that is usually associated with wearing leather, so it would link in with the leather portfolio. Additionally the metal hinges are quite profound on the portfolio which would link in with the metal community again. 

As much as I would really like to have this portfolio to display my work in I don’t think I would be able to afford spending this amount of money on a portfolio. I would get the name engraving, so it would be £120 for what I want, which is money that I don’t have at my expenditure. 

Their leather options are robust and good quality, especially with the hinged portfolios as they are adjustable as you can buy bigger hinges to fit more images in.

Bamboo:

The Bamboo option from My-Folio only comes as a hinged portfolio, as you wouldn’t be able to ringbind bamboo, and I feel that the metal hinge is quite distracting and contradicts the natural feel that the bamboo has. 

I really quite like the bamboo option as it is really unique, and I have never thought about having a wooden portfolio. I feel that this portfolio would get you remembered as I don’t think many people would have a wooden portfolio. For the plain portfolio it starts off at £95, the name personalisation starts at £120, and then the logo personalisation starts off at £155. Although this is a nice portfolio I don’t think that it would suit my style of work, and would contradict the work that would be in it. 

Acrylic:

The acrylic option that My-Folio offers only hinged styles, as again,  you wouldn’t be able to ringbind acrylic. However, they do offer you the choice of three different colours, although quite similar, they offer black, white or grey acrylic. Despite the colours being quite mundane and similar, I feel like they don’t offer colour options as the black, white and grey options are the most professional for photography and would more likely result in you being employed rather than a colourful acrylic. 

There is an option for personalisation of the acrylic portfolio, however it doesn’t say how much it would cost. Although there is a link on their website to see how much it would cost, it just redirects you back to the homepage. 

When I was looking on their website I found that they offer a 10% discount for university students, which if I was to get the hinged leather portfolio with my name on it would cost £108 instead of the £120. Although there is a discount I still can’t afford spending £108. 

Additionally they offer an option to order as a course for graduate shows, which could be useful for our degree show, they offer 20% off on orders for graduate shows.

When My-Folio came in for their talk they brought physical examples of their portfolios and they looked really good quality, which you would expect for the price they are charging. 

Silverprint 

I also remember us talking about Silverprint as an option to get our portfolio, they offer portfolio boxes, portfolio books, and something new that I haven’t seen before, Prat Kraftfolios.

Within the portfolio box category they offer a portfolio box, a print archival portfolio box, an archival portfolio box slipcase, a print box and an CDX archival box. 

As I plan on printing A4 size for my photographs I will be looking at A4 sized portfolios, for the portfolio box it would be £19.70 for an A4 3.5cm deep box, and £20.75 for a 6.5cm deep box, obviously the deeper the box the more photographs you would be able to store in them. It only costs £1.05 more for double the depth so it would be beneficial if you had more prints, however if you didn’t really have a lot of prints then it could make your box look empty and would give off the wrong impression to potential clients. 

Silverprint potfolio boxes use materials that are acid and chlorine free, which means that they won’t effect the quality of your prints which is good, as you wouldn’t want to go to an interview with a potential employer and get there and your prints be ruined. 

For the archival portfolio box, they only offer one depth for A4. The box opens out into two trays which would be useful for showing prints and comparing prints.

For the print box, which differs from the portfolio box in the sense that it doesn’t open out, it is just a box to store prints. Additionally they only offer one depth for print boxes.

As the print box is fairly similar to the portfolio box, however it is £30 cheaper than the portfolio box, due to cheaper materials being used so this could effect the durability of the portfolio. 

For the CDX box, I was unsure of what to expect mainly because I had never seen this before. Whilst researching it there wasn’t an option for A4, however they had a box of 10x12 inches, which is the closest to standard A4 size of 8.27 x 11.69

What I found out about the CDX boxes is that they aren’t meant for displaying as a portfolio, they are mainly used to store prints which wouldn’t be useful for displaying prints in to a potential employer, as the material is made out of boxboard, and would look fairly cheap.

Portfolio books are another option that Silverprint offers, with there being a few different types, a Permajet Snapshut portfolio, a prat leather portfolio, a prat modebook, prat pampa and a Silverprint Portfolio book. 

For the Permajet snapshut portfolio they offer two types of A4 sized portfolios. One portrait, and one lanscape. As the majority of my images are portrait, I would go for the portrait option. 

The good thing about this portfolio book is that it is glue free and wouldn’t impact on your prints, however I’m not sure how many prints this would hold. Although in the description it does mention that it could be used to store magazines which are usually pretty thick so I feel like you could store a lot of prints in this. Additionally I feel like this is quite a professional way to display your work, although I prefer the print box. 

The next option for portfolio books is the Prat leather portfolio, this is similar to the My-Folio ringbound leather portfolio, however it is much more expensive.

This portfolio only offered one size, which is 9.5x12 inches, which isn’t A4 but is big enough to fit A4 prints in without there being too much excess. What I like about this portfolio is that when you are displaying prints in them there is a flap that covers where the prints attach to the portfolio and gives it an overall sleek appearance.

The next option that Silverprint offers is the Prat Modebook, they offer only one size, which is A4. 

This portfolio book sounds quite good, a it has a spiral mechanism which is ideal for adding more sleeves or taking out sleeves. This portfolio would be good if you worked in different genres of photography as it would be easy to swap out the sleeves with different prints on them depending on the type of photography you was wanting to display.  The book has the option to have 20 different prints in, as that is all that it can hold, and it comes with 10 sleeves which is good value.

Similarly to the Prat Modebook, Silverprint offers the Prat Pampa portfolio, however, unlike the Modebook, the Pampa only comes in 9.5x12 inches, which isn’t exactly A4, however it does give you some room spare.

The Pampa also comes with the spiral mechanism, which makes it easy to interchange prints, however it can only hold 15 prints. It is a leather bound portfolio and has an attractive closure point to ensure that the book doesn’t come open and then end up bending your prints which is good. 

Finally, Silverprint has it’s own portfolio book, which offers 3 different styles, the Siena, Havana and Bali, all quite exotic names. 

The Siena portfolio book has a padded leather cover, and similarly to the  Prat leather portfolio, it has screws for you to add your prints in, and they are also covered by flaps which gives it an overall sleek finish. It also has the capacity to hold up to 25 sleeves which would be good for this project as we have to produce a portfolio of 15-20 images.

The next Silverprint portfolio book is the Havana, which is a vegan friendly version of the Siena portfolio book, as it has a matte faux leather finish. Additionally it has the same internal screw system as the Siena and the same sleeve capacity, but is a lot cheaper due to the faux leather. 

Finally, the last of the Silverprint portfolio books is the Bali, which has a Buckram cover, which has more of a textile feel to it, similar to a print box, but as a book. This also has the same screw system as the Havana and Siene books, as well as being able to hold up to 25 sleeves.

One thing that I would have liked with Silverprint is the option to personalise the portfolio as I feel like that adds another dimension to your portfolio and would help you be remembered by potential employers/clients. 

Overall, I would love to be able to have the My-Folio leather hinge portfolio or the Silverprint Havana portfolio book, however, I am just unable to afford any of these, so I will be sticking to my print box, as I feel it still suits the style of work that I am producing. If I were to have bought either of the portfolios it would have cost me £108 for the My-Folio hinged leather portfolio, and for the Silverprint Bali portfolio book would cost £80. Although it would be really nice to have either of these I simply can’t afford to spend that kind of money.

Portfolio Sleeves

London Graphics:

Despite buying some portfolio sleeves last year I can’t remember where I got them from, so I googled ‘Portfolio print sleeves’ and there was a website named London Graphics which looked promising, however upon closer inspection they aren’t the type that I’m looking for as these are more suited for ring binder portfolios, as they have the bit on the side with holes in so you can attach them to the rings. 

However, upon closer inspection of their website I found that there was an option to get the style that I need. For a pack of 25 A4 sleeves it costs £4.75, which isn’t bad at all, and as our portfolio needs to be 15-20 images it has enough, and 5 spare in case I needed any more. What is good about these sleeves is the fact that they are resealable, which is good if you wanted to switch your prints around.

Additionally I found the exact same sleeves on Cass art for £4.95, which is a 20p difference, which isn’t much but it can add up. I think I will be opting for these, as there is a Cass art in Manchester that I will be able to collect these from to avoid paying for delivery. 

Update: I went into the store and bought these sleeves, and I got the option to get student discount and the sleeves only ended up coming to £4.45 which isn’t bad considering I get 25 sleeves which equates to around 17p per sleeve.

On amazon, I found 100 of the print sleeves for £6.79, however the fact that they are so cheap, for so many is quite worrying as it seems too good to be true and wouldn’t want to order them and then they come and are really low quality, despite the fact that it says they are high quality.

On My-Folio’s website there is an option to buy sleeves, in packs of 10 costing £10 which equates to £1 per sleeve, and as our portfolio has to be 15-20 images I would have to buy two of these packs which would total £20, which is a bit expensive but I imagine they are high quality.

Silverprint’s sleeves cost £8.83 for a pack of 10, and again, I would have to get two packs due to the module requirements, so it would come to £17.66 for two packs, which again is expensive but as they are an art company you know that they will be of high quality. 

[profframeworks3-rebeccacallaghan]

Applying for Music Magazines

Kerrang!

One of the biggest ‘alternative’ magazines out there is Kerrang! magazine, I actually used to buy this magazine every week when I was a young teenager so it would be quite cool to end up working for them. They didn’t have any job openings on their website, but they did have a contact email, and I decided to email them about any job opportunities. 

Terrorizer

However, when I tried to email Terrorizer magazine, I found that there was no email address on their website to actually email them for job opportunities. 

However, I have a friend that used to work for Terrorizer and I asked him how he managed to get in contact with them in order to apply for jobs and he gave me an email address of the main editor, darren@darkartsltd.com

Metal Hammer

For Metal Hammer, they had a subsection on their website that was titled ‘Careers’ however, when I clicked on the section there was a message that stated that there was no career opportunities available at the moment, which is disappointing 

Get Your Rock Out

Although not an official ‘magazine’ more of an online publication, Get Your Rock Out is still a good opportunity, and they have covered many gigs and festivals, such as Bloodstock Festival. 

Due to this I decided to  email them and see whether they have any openings. 

As the magazines/publications that I have looked at have been mainly ‘rock’ or ‘metal’ based I thought I would broaden my horizons and look at different genres of music magazines.

NME

When looking on NME’s website I was quite shocked that they had a section just for work experience. I am glad that this magazine has a section just for work experience as that could mean they are more likely to reply to me as they have a separate email just for work experience. Although it is work experience and it likely wont be paid work, if I do well then it could open more doors for me. However, due to the fact that there is a section just for work experience could mean that there will be a high influx of people trying to gain work experience and I may not get to do any work experience, compared to if there was just a regular email address as people may not want to email.

I decided to email the address, and I will see what comes of it. 

I received a reply the next day saying that there weren’t any work experience available until November, and that it is only open to students, which I won’t be in November. This is quite disappointing as it would have looked good on my CV to say that I had experience working for NME.

[profframeworks3-rebeccacallaghan]

Competitions

Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize:

Sony World Photography Awards

The awards for the Sony World Photography competition are the following:

Open Competition winner​ - $5,000 (USD) / Sony digital imaging equipment / Flights and accommodation to the awards ceremony in London / Included in exhibition at Somerset House, London

Category winners - Sony digital imaging equipment / Publication in winners’ book / Included in exhibition at Somerset House, London

Shortlist - Digital exhibition at Somerset House, London / Publication in winners’ book

Additionally there are rewards for those who don’t win the top prize which are the following:

Global exposure is given to not only to the overall winners, but also to shortlisted and commended photographers.

Recognised photographers can receive:

Exhibition at Somerset House, London

Potential to be included in international exhibitions

Inclusion in the annual Sony World Photography Awards book

Potential to work with Sony and other partners on a variety of projects

As this competition is not open yet I will be planning on entering this into the portrait category, with one of my images from NMP, as it is the best portrait I have ever taken. The image I would enter is the one below:

HIPA Award:

The HIPA award, (Hamdan International Photography Award) has the largest prize amount for the winner of $400,000 which is around  £309645.46. Unfortunately for me the competition has already closed, however I will display what I would have entered for this. 

As the theme for it was ‘The Challenge’ I feel that my work for my Negotiated Major Project would have fit in really well with this theme as it is about challenging the negative perceptions on the metal community. 

As I would be submitting portraits, it states above that I would have to submit the minimum of 5 images for the competition, and luckily enough I have 5 portraits from NMP which would work well with this. 

The images are the following:

As my project for NMP is surrounding challenging the negative perceptions that are associated with subcultures, especially the metal community I feel that this fits in with the theme of ‘The Challenge’, as it is a unique spin on the theme. 

Insider Photography Competition: 

For this there was no set brief that I could see except that our images should have a long dimension of at least 2000 pixels and be saved at 300 dpi. There would be a few different photographs that I would possibly enter for the competition. 

Images I would enter:

[profframeworks3-rebeccacallaghan]

Photographs for Advanced Research Strategies

When photographing my subjects that I didn't know I was quite nervous as I get quite anxious meeting new people, I tried my best to appear polite and nice.

The first person that I photographed was someone named ‘Arun Kamath’ who worked as a bar man in Manchester:

For this I had to be quite quick in photographing him as it was really cold, and he had took his jumper off so I felt quite bad making him stand there for a while without a hoodie on in the middle of winter. This was the first time I had met someone for Advanced Research Strategies so I was unsure on how well it went, although I was nervous I felt like I did quite well in terms of making conversation and appearing polite and professional. 

The second person I photographed for ARS was Adam Leavy, who works as chef in Chorlton. I was really nervous on the journey to meet Adam, as I had never been to Chorlton, so I was quite anxious about getting lost, and then my anxiety began to take over and I was thinking is it really stupid to be going meeting people that I didn’t know, in a town that I wasn’t familiar with, what if I got kidnapped? However, I pushed through the anxiety and went to meet Adam anyway.

When I met Adam he made me feel really at ease and was really chatty which helped me feel a lot more comfortable, additionally it was quite a nice day which was good as I didn’t feel bad about taking many photographs of him, however, as you can see in the photograph above there was some issues with shadows when I was photographing him. Overall  though I am feeling more confident about photographing people that I don’t know and having to make conversation but also act professional as well. 

[profframeworks3-rebeccacallaghan]

Graduate Opportunities, CV & Cover Letter

When researching graduate jobs I was confused about what type of things I should look at, so I decided to look at all graduate opportunities.

There are may different things a graduate can do after university, one of the things is that they could do a Masters degree, however, after 19 years of solid education I don’t think that is what I want to do. 

There is also graduate schemes outside of photography, such as the Aldi graduate scheme where you become an area manger. Which can lead to having a £42,000 starting salary, your own courtesy car, health insurance, five weeks holiday each year, plus bank holidays and opportunities to travel the world. The Aldi graduate seems a lot of hard work but would be worth it in the end. I would love to apply for this, however a requirement would be that you have you have a driving licence, which I don’t.  

The first website that I looked at was Prospects, as I wasn’t too bothered about the pay, I didn’t change the salary part of the search, I did change the type of work to ‘creative’ and the location to North West, as I live in the North West I wouldn’t want to get a job outside of the North West as it would be difficult to get there.

I decided to further my ‘type of work’ and add media and internet as it links with the creative side, and also animal and plant resources, as I quite like animals and wouldn’t mind working in that area.

With that search it only came up with with three results, which are the following:

I found it quite discouraging that there were only 3 results from the search I did, I don’t really think I would be qualified or actually like to take any of these jobs so I will look elsewhere. 

I then looked on the Guardian as they have a section for graduate jobs, I refined the search down to arts and heritage and visual arts.

The search came up with 8 results, however, again none of them were of any interest to me and again, the majority of jobs are based in London.

Starting to become discouraged about graduate jobs, I found a website, aptly named graduatejobs.com

However, when looking the arts sector there were no results found. I tried three different headings of ‘media’ ‘internet and digital media’ and ‘arts and design’

Moving on to another website, Target Jobs. Hopefully this site will have more jobs. 

There were 29 results in the ‘media’ sector.

However, yet again there was no option to filter the results down to the North West, or even North East. It is looking more likely that there aren’t any graduate jobs for the arts in the North West.

When giving up on mainly graduate jobs, I decided to look into normal jobs. I looked at indeed

A job that caught my eye was a photographer/retoucher job for boohoo.com, although I’m not a professional retoucher I am quite proficient in photoshop and a quick learner so if I was shown what they wanted I would be able to do it. I think I am going to apply for this job.

When applying for this job I was required to add a CV, which got me looking into CVs.

An example of a bad CV:

Although the above CV is an extreme example of how bad CVs can be, it just shows you how the structure/display of your CV can give off a bad image to potential employers. 

Good CV:

The above CV is so much better than the other one, as just from looking at it without reading it you can tell it looks a lot more professional and neat rather than cluttered. 

Using this help I have helped update my CV:

I have improved on my CV quite a bit from last year, as I forgot to include some things that could be useful to potential employers.

I have added my work for Distorted Sound Magazine, and as a Freelance photographer. Additionally I have updated the skills that I have gained from university. 

I used this CV to send with the job application to boohoo.com, so hopefully I will receive a reply. 

Cover Letters

Below is an example of a cover letter:

[Your Name]

[Address]

[Hiring manager’s name]

[Hiring manager’s company name]

[Company address]

[Today’s Date]

[Name of Recipient]

Dear Mr/Mrs/Miss/Ms [Hiring managers name – if not known, simply Sir/Madam]

I wish to apply for the role of [Job Title], currently being advertised on reed.co.uk. Please find enclosed my CV for your consideration.

As you can see from my attached CV, I have over [time period] experience in the [Sector] industry, and I believe the knowledge and skills built up during this time make me the right/perfect candidate for the role.

In my current role as a [job title] at [employer name], I have been responsible for [Insert a quantifiable and notable achievement/s - e.g. a x% increase in revenue], which when coupled with my enthusiasm and dedication [insert skills relevant to the role – usually found in the job description], has helped the business to [measure of success].

I am confident that I can bring this level of success with me to your organisation and help [company name] build upon their reputation as [state their position in market – learned through your research]. With my previous experience and expertise, I believe my contribution will have an immediate impact on the business.

Thank you for your time and consideration. I look forward to meeting with you to discuss my application further.

Yours sincerely/Yours faithfully,

[Your name]

[contact phone number]

[Signature - if desired]

I will be applying this information to the job application for Boohoo.com

Below is the cover letter:

Graduate Photography Awards

[profframeworks3-rebeccacallaghan]

10/12/16 - Burning Manc Festival

 Today I got the chance to photograph Burning Manc Festival, this is the first all day festival that I have photographed. The gig took place at Sound Control, however it wasn’t in the usual place of upstairs, it was in the downstairs area, which I have never been to, so this was another first for me. When I found out the gig was in the downstairs area I was quite concerned as I had never been in there, let alone shot a gig in there so I didn’t know what the lighting was going to be like, or whether I would get any good photographs. Additionally I noticed that there wasn’t any photographer’s pit to separate me from the crowd, which wasn’t so bad at the start of the gig as there wasn’t many people close to the stage so it gave me the opportunity to shoot from the front. However as the day went on the gig got busier and I was unable to photograph from the front of the stage, luckily they had a walkway at the side of the stage which led to an area that bands who were coming on stage stored their gear, I used this to photograph the bands who were on later. Another issue that I faced is that when I was photographing the drummer (which is something I rarely get to do, but I could thanks to the walkway) there was very little light reaching them so the images I did photograph ended up being grainy and dark. I 

A positive about this photoshoot is that the lighting stayed fairly similar the entire night and so it gave me the chance to get consistent photographs of all the bands. 

However an issue was that I was unable to photograph the first band as I had prior engagements so I was only and to photograph from the second band. 

Because this was an all day festival I took quite a lot of photographs, covering 6 different bands. Below are the contact sheets from this photoshoot:

Here it is on the online version of Distorted Sound Magazine:

As the files are too big to put on individually I have had to do it in contact sheet form.

Below are the best shots from each band, I will be choosing which ones could possibly be in my portfolio.

Scutum Crux:

Necronautical:

Sathamel: 

Foetal Juice:

Hecate Enthroned:

Melechesh:

[profframeworks3-rebeccacallaghan]

Guest Speaker (Claire Tindale)

Today we had Claire Tindale in for a guest talk, I first heard of Tindales work during the Advanced Photographic Practice module and Lawrence showed us her work featuring 3D miniatures of everyday objects. As well as 3D materials Tindale uses all different types of media such as 2D, video and installation depending on what is most appropriate to the work she is producing at the time.

Dementia is a big subject for Tindale, having originally creating an artists book titled ‘Memory Loss’ which focuses on found objects which made Tindale research further into dementia and was the basis for her work ‘Going Nowhere’. 

Going Nowhere was an exhibition that honed in on Tindale’s skills working with multiple different medias. With the exhibition being very reminiscent of a home the work exploits both juxtaposition and manipulation of objects to investigate the potential of emerging narratives and to convey meaning through symbolism.

As the exhibition featured side galleries of the main exhibition, one looks like a living room which is often the most communal area in a home, the living room is often associated with familiarity. However there have been subtle tweeks to the usually normal setting such as the wallpaper, titled ‘Forget-me-not’ that is on the walls. The wallpaper has multiple meanings, such as the image of the forget-me-not flower, the wallpaper also has medical references to Alzheimers disease, with the visualisation of amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles, which are thought to be contributory factors to the disease. Voids in the pattern convey the deterioration caused by the interruptions to the networks in the brain, while the repeat pattern of a wallpaper design further echoes the repetitive nature of the condition.

‘Going Home’ is the project that Lawrence showed us in Advanced Photographic Practice which features miniature models that reflect the range of jobs involved in the care of older patients in hospital, in particular those suffering from dementia,which she created during a residency at Royal Bolton Hospital. 

[profframeworks3-rebeccacallaghan]

01/12/16 - Presentations For Advanced Research Strategies

Today we had to deliver our presentations for Advanced Research Strategies, and as I said I wanted to push myself become more comfortable with talking to people that I don’t know and being able to instruct them in a photoshoot, I decided to focus my work on photographing members of the metal community. 

My project is going to focus on photographing members of the metal community as a way of representing them and to challenge the negative perceptions that have been placed on them. As I am a part of the metal community I know first hand the effects that these negative perceptions can do. 

For the module I will be getting in contact with members of the metal community who have faced the effects of the negative perceptions, which will involve me advertising for people to take part. This will result in me having to go meet people that I have probably not met and having to direct them on a photoshoot.

Additionally as Advanced Research Strategies is the precursor to our Negotiated Major Project I will be having to take photographs again for that module of people from the metal community, I hope that I am able to overcome my fears and anxiety and produce some good work for both of these modules. 

[profframeworks3-rebeccacallaghan]

16/11/16 - Guide to Freelancing

Today we looked at how we could become freelance photographers and what we would need to know in order to be a successful freelance photographer. 

Networking

One of the things we should consider if we were to become a freelance photographer is networking. Networking is an important part of being a freelance photographer as it is what could help you get jobs in the future. 

The most common form of networking is by word of mouth, you can usually speak to other photographers and introduce yourself, tell them the sort of work you are producing and tell them if you have any exhibitions/work coming up. There is a saying, it’s not what you know, it’s who you know, and I feel like this is quite relevant in photography as it is useful to know other photographers and for them to know you as if they need a piece of work creating, or help with any work they could think of you and ask for you assistance instead of advertising the job. 

However there are other ways of networking such as social media (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter). I am in a group on Facebook titled ‘North West Modelling - for models, photographers, MUA’ 

It is good to be in this group as you can post links to your page, or advertise any work you’re looking for as well as just discussion amongst creative like minded people. It is useful as if you keep posting in the group people will come to know you and your work and could even recommend you to other people who are in need of a photographer. 

However, besides social media there are groups online that you can join to help you network, such as EPUK (Editorial Photographers UK & Ireland). 

The EPUK is a discussion group for the business of editorial photography, open to all editorial photographers resident in, or working for organisations based in the UK and Ireland. You can network within this group as you put your query in an email to the list address. That then gets sent out to each of EPUK’s 1000+ members, each of whom can reply, and their reply is then posted to all EPUK members in return. 

Additionally, this costs nothing to join which is always good, however, it is exclusively for editorial photographers so I wouldn’t get much use out of it.

As well as that there is the Association of Photographers (AoP), the Association of Photographers is one of the most prestigious professional photographer’s associations in the world. They aim to promote and protect the worth and standing of members, to vigorously defend, educate and lobby for the interests and rights of all photographers. Whilst they provide direct benefit to individual members; collectively, members benefit from association with each other and can project a voice and reputation that carries far above any individual. 

However it does cost to become apart of the AoP.

If you are a fully fledged photographer and have been working as a professional photographer for over 2 years it would cost you £315 p/a  + VAT (UK)

However, if you are a student on an AOP affiliated course you get the membership for free, however as our course at Salford is not on the affiliated course it would cost £25 p/a, which isn’t bad.

Copyright

Another aspect of becoming a freelance photographer is Copyright. If you are the creator of the work you produce then automatically you are the copyright owner.

Under law, it is the photographer who will own copyright on any photos he/she has taken, with the following exceptions:

If the photographer is an employee of the company the photos are taken for, or is an employee of a company instructed to take the photos, the photographer will be acting on behalf of his/her employer, and the company the photographer works for will own the copyright.

If there is an agreement that assigns copyright to another party.

In all other cases, the photographer will retain the copyright, if the photographer has been paid for his work, the payment will be for the photographer’s time and typically an allocated number of prints. The copyright to the photos will remain with the photographer, and therefore any reproduction without permission would be an infringement of copyright.

Copyright registration:

The purpose of registration is to ensure that you have proper, independently verifiable, evidence of the date and content your work. This ensures that if another party steals your photos you have solid evidence to prove your claim.

Without registration it can be very difficult, and often impossible, to prove your ownership if another person claims the photo belong to them.

It is possible to submit a great many photos within a single registration, and only pay a single registration fee.

Licensing 

Although copyright is about who owns the image you can also license your work so companies can use your image for a selected amount of time. 

A license is a contract in which the photographer grants specific rights to the client who wants to use the image. The client can only use the image within the range of the agreement. 

Insurance 

One thing to consider when it comes to being a freelance photographer is getting your equipment insured. As if you are a full time working photographer and something happened to your equipment meaning that you are unable to work or earn money then you would be worse off as you have no way of making any money until you get new equipment, so it is better off to pay for insurance and then have a back up if your equipment fails. 

One company that deals with camera equipment insurance is Eversure:

Here are the policies that they will cover your equipment for:

Here is what is not included in the policies:

If I had a canon 5D mrk 3 brand new, which cost £2,299.99, plus a Canon 70-200mm f/2.8 lens brand new, which cost £1,337.99 and a Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8 lens which costs £1,911.99 it would come to £5549.97 and to get insurance on these three items alone would cost £129.59 yearly and that doesn’t include a replacement, just the chance of getting money back. 

Protect Your Bubble:

For the insurance there are criteria that your equipment has to meet in order to be covered:

There are 3 different types of insurance you can get, gadget insurance starting at £7.99 p/m, household gadget insurance which includes 3 - 10 gadgets starting at £12.99 p/m and finally the business gadget insurance starting at £7.99

Due to us looking at this from the perspective that we’d have our own business as a freelance photographer I chose to look at the ‘Business Gadget’ option, however, when I went on the option it was asking for the serial code for the item I would have in order to give me a quote, however as it is hypothetical and I don’t actually have the equipment I am unable to see how much it would cost to get insurance with Protect Your Bubble.

Pricing

Firstly, a section on the financial elements that you need to take into account in determining a day rate: 

1. You will need to know (and should already) some basic financial information such as the costs of you doing business in the first place. This means you need to know the figure that represents the overheads you carry as a business, which will include rent on a studio or office if you have one, any business rates, business insurance, lease payments on equipment, telephone, internet, marketing costs of your own business, equipment depreciation costs and so on. 

2. Once you have that figure as an annual total, you can estimate how much you need or wish to earn as annual drawings or as a salary from your own business. Obviously this figure will need to cover all your personal costs such as your home rent or mortgage, living expenses, food, social activities, clothing and so on, as well as perhaps general leisure items like holidays. If you are a small business and work from home, some of the costs will be shared between domestic and business use (rent/mortgage, telephone, internet, for example). You only require a total of what it costs to keep you and your business running per year, therefore you can add the figures from (1) and (2) together. 

3. You now have a total annual cost for you and your business. Now you must estimate the number of actual shooting days per year you can manage. This will NOT be 365. It will much more likely be somewhere in the region of 100 to 150 days a year to give you time to market, pitch, do the paperwork, visit clients, recce, shoot new portfolio work and so on, as well as having some time for holidays. 

4. Divide the figure of your total costs of you and your business (1+2) by your actual shooting days (the figure from 3, above), for example; Costs of you/your business = £70,000 per annum (year) – this includes your drawings/salary as well as all other costs. Total actual shooting days per year = 130 (as an example) £70,000 divided by 130 = £538.46 per shoot day. Round that up to something more sensible/easy, i.e., £550 per day. 

5. That example figure represents your base day rate and does NOT take into account any USAGE fees that you may charge on top, nor would it include any other expenses incurred on a shoot-by-shoot basis (models, stylists, props, retouching, and so on). It also does not include any additional profit margin that you may wish to generate in order to reinvest or save. In addition, you have to remember that your experience or particular area of The Association of Photographers expertise may mean that you are able to charge a higher base day rate for your services. 

6. Lastly, remember that you may not actually achieve that estimated total of actual shooting days – in which case you run the risk of losing money, so it pays to keep a regular watch on your turnover and profit figures. Secondly, this section covers other elements, which may influence or affect your determined day rate: From the first section above, you will have been able to work through the figures that apply to you and your business to determine a day rate figure based on the financials alone. However, you should remember that there might well be additional factors that can influence the determination of your day rate. 

• These can include such elements as your level of expertise in a given technical field – for example, are you a specialist in a particular area, with skills that are uncommon? Examples of this might be high-speed photography or underwater photography. 

• What is the accepted range of day rates in the market sector you work in? You need to do your research and see what your competitors might be charging for the provision of similar or identical services. Remember though that your competitors may not have worked through the financials in the first section, and so could be operating below profitable levels. On no account should you aim to work on a regular basis at a level which is below your profitable level – you will simply find it is economically unsustainable. If you believe that your competitors have worked out their rates appropriately and yet they are still lower than yours, you may need to look at your own business model and see if there are cost savings to be had anywhere, in order that you can lower your own day rate accordingly.

 • What is your level of experience in a given sector that you are working in? – If you have considerable experience, you may well be able to charge a higher day rate in light of that. 

[profframeworks3-rebeccacallaghan]

09/11/16 - Guest Speaker (Mark Edwards) & Photoshoot

Mark Edwards

Today we had a guest Speaker, Mark Edwards. In his work Edwards focuses on the landscape he encounters on a daily basis, and responds to the tradition of British landscape painting in the form of a different art, photography. 

In his series ‘The View From Here’ Edwards has produced a body of six large scale colour landscape prints. To create these immense photographs Edwards uses a large format 10 x 8 camera which give his image immense detail and the ability to print them to a large scale. Edwards’ work is reminiscent of Thomas Gainsborough’s paintings and due to this he photographs in a painterly tradition. Although when speaking Edwards stated that he is heavily influenced my Stephen Shore’s work, especially his series ‘Scotland’ as he also works in large format and also focuses on the mundane, yet beautiful landscapes that are often overlooked. As well as allowing Edwards’ work to have immense detail and being able to be printed at a large scale the process of large format cameras is quite slow which allows him to really take in the landscape he is photographing and consider it’s beauty. Due to this slow process it also gives him the opportunity to get his photograph right, as with large format cameras film is quite expensive, so a mistake is costly, whereas with digital it is a lot easier to be quick and try to rush the photograph. Although the large format camera makes you consider every photograph and aim to get it right Edwards stated that he doesn’t like to use photo manipulation such as photoshop and would much rather retake his photographs in order to get it right. 

In addition to the guest speaker I also had a photograph at Sound Control in which I photographed the bands Inquisition, Rotting Christ, Mystifier and Schammasch at the venue ‘Sound Control’ in Manchester for Distorted Sound Magazine. I was quite excited about photographing this gig as I really like Rotting Christ, and saw them at Bloodstock Festival so it was nice to see them again. 

An issue I had when I was photographing is that I noticed that my memory card was becoming full quite quickly, and I knew I was shooting in RAW and that takes up more data on the card than JPEGs. I also knew that I had erased everything that was on the memory card before the gig so I was quite confused as to what was happening to make my memory card fill up so quickly. Due to this I was having to edit my photographs down in between artists and delete the ones that were blank or not very clear, when I got home I realised that I had been shooting in RAW but I had also been shooting JPEGs as well and I was producing two of every image that I took. I will keep this in mind the next time I photograph a gig as I don’t want to be deleting any photographs until I see them on a computer screen. 

Below are the contact sheets from this gig:

Schammasch

I had some issues when it came to photographing the first band, as they are a Black Metal band they opted for quite an atmospheric stage presence when they were on stage, which involved the use of a smoke machine and low lighting, every gig photographer’s nightmare. Due to the heavy smoke presence and low lighting situation on stage it was quite difficult to get clear shots of the band, however I persisted and had to judge exactly when the light was going to hit them, as well as this I just took some photographs of them when the lighting wasn’t so great and the photographs turned out quite good as they really captured the atmosphere.

The edited photographs from Schammasch are the following:

As you can see it was quite difficult to photograph the band because there was so much fog, however I feel like when I did get a clear shot it captured the atmosphere quite well. 

Mystifier 

The best shots from Mystifier that I edited are the following:

Rotting Christ:

(I was unable to upload them on their own as there was too many)

Inquisition:

Again, I couldn’t upload any more individual images as there was too many images on this post.

[profframeworks3-rebeccacallaghan]

02/11/16 - Ethical Practice

As ethics is the subject matter of my dissertation it was quite useful to have this lesson surrounding ethics. 

From researching ethics for my dissertation I know that there is no write and wrong answer when it comes to ethics, as what one person could consider ethical, another person may not. Additionally, just because something is legal, it doesn’t make it ethical, ergo, just because you can, doesn’t mean that you should.

Ethics are the morals which shape our everyday life and the societal rules we live by, but in photography they can be the difference between having a professional reputation and a unprofessional reputation.

However in some iconic photography hasn’t necessarily been ethical, as artists blur the line between what is ethical and what is art, such as Michael Wolf who peeks into others’ life by photographing them in their apartments from the buildings opposite. 

The subjects on these photographs feel because they are so high up in their buildings they have no need for curtains or blinds and so they are susceptible to having their photographs taken, totally unaware. Is it unethical for Wolf to be taking these photographs, or is the fault of the subjects for thinking that no-one would look?

Additionally Sophie Calle’s ‘Hotel’ series is entirely unethical, as in February 1981, she was hired as a temporary maid for three weeks in a Venetian hotel. During this time she looked at the personal belongings of the hotel guests and the contents of their suitcase. The sheer thought that this could be happening to anyone right now is quite eery, knowing that someone had been through your suitcase whilst you were out on your holiday. 

Model release forms are one way of avoiding ethical issues in instances where a model could sue you for displaying images of them that they had not agreed on, especially when it comes to selling images of them. Usually the model release form specifies how pictures can be used and is there to protect both the photographer and their subjects. Properly completed a signed form will protect the photographer in the event of any future claim. 

I don’t think this really applies to my line of work, as when artists perform at a gig, they expect there to be photographers and the legal side is usually down the publications the photographers are shooting for, as in most venues you have to have a photographers pass in order to actually photograph. 

Here is an example of a model release form:

[profframeworks3-rebeccacallaghan]

26/10/16 - Marketing

Public fundraising:

Arts council 

During second year we had an opportunity to make an art’s council bid, which is how artists receive funding to create artwork.

They believe that everyone should be able to have access to and create art, they also support, develop and invest in the arts and culture throughout all of England. 

Brits council 

The British Council is the United Kingdom's international organisation for cultural relations and educational opportunities. They work with over 100 countries across the world in the fields of arts and culture, English language, education and civil society. 

Their work in the arts involves the very best British and international artistic talent to help increase audiences for international work in the UK and for UK work globally by bringing artists together and support the development of skills and policy in the arts and creative industries. 

Creative Scotland

Creative Scotland is the public body that supports the arts, screen and creative industries across all parts of Scotland on behalf of everyone who lives, works or visits here.

They enable people and organisations to work in and experience the arts, screen and creative industries in Scotland by helping others to develop great ideas and bring them to life..

HLF (Heritage Lottery Fund) 

The Heritage Lottery Fund distributes the heritage share of National Lottery funding, and supporting a wide variety of projects across the UK.

Since the foundation began in 1994, they have awarded £7.1billion to over 40,000 projects. They believe that understanding, valuing and sharing our heritage brings people together, inspires pride in communities and boosts investment in local economies.

NESTA

Nesta is an innovation foundation. We back new ideas to tackle the big challenges of our time. They seek out, spark and shape powerful new ideas, joining with others to take on the big challenges of our time and shift how the world works for everyone.

New ideas are key to human progress, prosperity and happiness. In a rapidly changing world, they need new ideas to tackle the big challenges we all face and empower people to shape the future.

These big challenges include an ageing population, stretched public services, a rapidly changing jobs market, and ordinary people feeling disempowered.

Trusts and foundation:

Elephant Trust

The Elephant Trust was created in 1975 by Roland Penrose and Lee Miller with a view to develop and improve the knowledge, understanding and appreciation of the fine arts in the United Kingdom.

Esmee Fairbairn

Esmée Fairbairn Foundation aims to improve the quality of life for people and communities throughout the UK both now and in the future. They do this by funding the charitable work of organisations with the ideas and ability to achieve positive change. The Foundation is one of the largest independent grant-makers in the UK.  They make grants in the region of £37 million annually towards a wide range of work within the arts, children and young people, the environment and social change. They also make up to £35 million in social investments in organisations that aim to deliver both a financial return and a social benefit.

Calouste Gulbenkian

The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation is a charitable foundation set up in 1956 as a private institution of public utility under a special act of the Portuguese Government. Its Headquarters are in Lisbon and include the Administration, which deals with grant-giving throughout the world, the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, housing the Founder’s art collections and recognised as one of the best small museums in Europe and the Modern Art Collection, whose holdings include an extensive collection of contemporary British art. The Foundation acts in its four statutorily defined areas: arts, education, science, and social welfare. 

Peter De Haan

Founded in 1999, The Peter De Haan Charitable Trust aims to improve the quality of life for people and communities in the UK through its work with arts, environmental and community welfare organisations. At the heart of the PDHCT arts programme was IdeasTap, the creative network founded in 2008. IdeasTap helped young people find work in the creative industries through training, mentoring, seminars, CV clinics, paid internships and an extensive employment database. It worked with leading arts organisations and creative businesses to provide career opportunities and paid commissions, and offered facilities and support for start-ups through its Creative Space programme. 

Foyle Foundation

The Foyle Foundation is an independent grant making trust that distributes grants to UK charities. Since it became operational in November 2001, The Foundation has disbursed £81.8M in grants (up to 31st December 2016). 

The Foundation seeks applications that make a strong artistic case for support in either the performing or visual arts. Their Arts programme has a two purposes, the first is to help sustain the arts and to support projects that help to deliver our artistic vision. The second is that they look for value for money, long term benefit and sustainability in projects that we support. Typical areas of support include:

Helping to make the arts more accessible by developing new audiences, supporting tours, festivals and arts educational projects;

Encouraging new work and supporting young and emerging artists;

Building projects that improve or re-equip existing arts venues (rather than construction of new facilities, although this will not be excluded);

Projects that encourage sustainability by reducing overheads or which help generate additional revenue

Our Degree Show

Deadline for money - Early May - 5th?

Video for kickstarter or go funding - maybe JC? It would be beneficial to have a kickstarter or go funding page up as it would be an ideal for members of the classes family or friends to help donate towards our degree show instead of just having fundraisers. As a class we thought JC would be best suited to make the video as that is what he specialised in and even made a video for the university, so it would be good for him to help make this video as he has all the necessary skills to make a brilliant video that would keep you interested.

Apple - Don’t Blink, it would be useful to look at the advertisement by Apple, titled ‘Don’t Blink’ which is a 107 second long video, nearly 2 minutes, which is quite a lot of time to not be blinking for. However, the video has short cut scenes in order to keep you interested, instead of just one continuous video, this could be applied to the video we make for the kickstarter/go funding page.

LiveTree - LiveTree is also another form of crowdfunding in which you set up a project page and then people can donate to your project. The good thing about LiveTree is that it is exclusively for the arts, such as photography, fine art, and music so this would be more suited for our project. However I had never heard of LiveTree before this session, so it could make it difficult to find as not many people may donate compared to the bigger websites such as kickstarter. 

Bank account - For our degree show we have to set up a bank account for all of our money that we raise, this is going to involve three different participants to be cosigned onto the account, which means that all 3 of these people have to be present in order to draw money out which eliminates the chance of someone stealing all of the money that we raise. 

Personal Marketing

Business Cards:

For business cards I first decided to look at vista print as they are the most prolific business I know that does good quality business cards. 

In the search engine I typed in ‘photography’ as that would narrow my search from the many business cards they offer. 

Below is the first option I tried, I liked this design as it gave you the option to add a photograph, which I feel is important for a photographer as it gives you the chance to show potential clients your work before they even get to your social media/website. 

The front is quite simple as it just shows one of my images, and my name. I like the design as it is quite simple but quite effective with its design.

The reverse side offers more information about who I am, and where you can look at my other work, as well as my number and my email. I feel that this needs to be simple as you wouldn’t want to confuse your client with a busy information side.

Below is another example of one of the templates I tried. What attracted me to this particular design is that it offers you the whole business card to insert an image as your background, which again offers potential clients a chance to see your work. 

Below is the reverse side of the business card, again which I wanted to keep fairly simple, just for basic information. I’m not  really sure about this business card as it has an emblem on it which you can’t remove and it looks like a mountain? So i’m not really sure about this design. 

I thought I’d try something different than the last two styles I have done, however the design was the same on the back as it was the front, which I didn’t like. Additionally I think that it looks quite cliche for a photography business card, and not the style that my work really fits. 

Below is another design, I remember trying out this design last year, and I really liked it, however now looking back, it’s not that great, I like that there is an option for both sides to have a photograph on it, however, I’m not sure what it is but I just don’t like the style of this. 

As well as Vista Print I decide to check out MOO.com

As Moo.com offer a free sample pack of cards I have decided to order some before making my decision

Update: 

My sample pack from Moo.com arrived and there are a lot of unusual different types of business cards that I had never thought of.

I really like the Raised Spot Glass sample below, I feel like it adds something a bit extra to the your business cards, and it also adds another texture/dimension as the spot glass is raised.

Additionally I really like the gold foil detail on the business card below, I feel like it also adds something extra which you would remember about a business card.

I find the square business card with rounded edges quite intriguing as it differs against the usual business card which could make it memorable:

Additionally I feel like the minicard is quite unique as it’s a smaller size, but still as capable of delivering information, and because it’s smaller it would be easier to carry around.

However, I feel that Vista Print is the best option, as they offer a range of different styles to chose from. I have decided to go for the first design I tried, mainly because I feel it sticks out and offers my potential clients a chance to look at my work, and mainly because I really like the design. 

When finishing the business card sale, Vista Print asked me if I wanted to add a metallic finish to the card, and after previewing the video it showed me I really liked the effect it had on this business card, so I decided to add it. 

When asking about the paper type of the business cards it gave me the option of making the cards glossy, however I don’t think this would be the right look for my cards, I like that it will be matte, and I think that if they were glossy they would scratch really easily, which I don’t want. 

Overall the cards came to £22.76 for 100 business cards, I only decided to get 100 as this is my first business card that I have produced so I want to see the outcome before I order anymore. 

Website 

Similarly to last year I decided to do a comparison on the different website builders that are out there, and as the same as last year WIX is still considered the best soI decided to stick to the same website that I had as last year, however I will be just updating the work that I have on the website.

Below is the entrance page to my website, the background has been changed to this:

I really like this image as it is quite different from the style I usually work in, and it is a landscape image which fits across of the page instead of being portrait orientation to give it a better feel.

Below is my portfolio page which has been updated with my new photographs. 

What I like about this layout for my website is that it offers you quite a few photographs at first, and you can scroll down and see the rest of the images, additionally if you want a closer look at the images you can click on it and it becomes bigger,  e.g.

There is an ‘about me’ page on my website, which for the last year just had a background on it which was provided by WIX, however, this year I feel like I should add one of my own images to the background:

Additionally for the ‘Contact’ page, I decided to keep my background the same as it provides consistency with the ‘about me’ page.

Additionally I decided to add a page for my art photography and the work that I have completed for NMP

One thing that I didn’t notice last year was the option to link your social media sites on the website, so I decided to set up the link. 

Facebook link:

Twitter link:

Instagram link:

To get the domain for my website I had to buy the website rebeccacallaghanphotography.co.uk from GoDaddy, and to my surprise it only cost £1 for the year.