How I got here 4: Turning Pro

College life went past in a heartbeat, and before I knew it, I was back on the street trying to carve a niche in the world of the pro – a world I’d found to be uncompromising, and full of total egotistical wankers that loved themselves. During my time as a mature student I’d worked with some professionals, and been to workshops and talks hosted by several others. I suppose every profession has a wide ranging gamut of personalities in it’s ranks, but I’ve never known an industry populated by so many people who are full of shite. People who would (and did) make it their business to prevent others from getting on in the industry, and would put themselves on some pedestal created in the 1980’s. One such egotistical wanker actually went out on a limb to prevent me getting jobs with a creative agency by ringing them and threatening to report them to some non existent body for using me while I was a student. I used to respect the person in question, and assisted them on occasion. I look at their work now, and they’ve stayed the same for 25 years – stuck in a bubble that shields their own ego from the inevitability of a changing market, and the need to adjust style and working practices to evolve with the times. I digress.

Starting out was  bit weird. To be truly successful in a short time you need contacts in the industry – loads and loads of contacts. Your skills mean jack shit, your sparkling personality means jack shit, and the hundreds of pounds worth of leaflets, SEO, flashy website, and amazing portfolio full of  pictures of models shot at college mean…….yup…….jack shit. If you’re 20 years old, you get your bags packed, head down to the smoke, register as a freelance assistant, and work for £100 a day, seven days a week for a couple of years. After this time, you look at where you want to specialise (fashion, architecture, products, industrial) and you look for a permanent assistants role within a studio run by one of the longstanding professionals in London. Another 2 or 3 years should help you learn the business from the inside out – and will allow you to pick up contacts. After this time, you go it alone (still in London), and use your contacts to build up a client base that sustains a full time job, and in time, lets you start a studio of your own. This cycle continues. It is the traditional route into all forms of commercial photography, and there is no way in after you reach 25. Eventually, if you tire of the costs and hassle of the South East, you move to a quieter part of the country to continue your career (i.e. anywhere). If you don’t have the contacts, and try and launch yourself into commercial photography straight outta’ college anywhere in the provinces, or you’re over 25, your choices thin down to virtually nothing. Nobody wants to know you, nobody wants to meet with you, your calls go unanswered, your emails and leaflets are ignored. You will pick up the crumbs left over by the guys who got the good jobs……… Enter yours truly.

My introduction to the world of the professional was a bit harsh. The breaks I did get, were invariably down to friends and family mentioning the fact that “they knew a photographer”. I did a bit of emailing and leaflet dropping to target clients and got a bit of work that way, but never enough to pay my way. My first few clients included:

Dogs Trust – I volunteered to shoot some of the sponsor dogs for free, and this led to years of pro-shooting whenever the need arose at various centres in the North.

Sanderson Publishing – doing the photography for a couple of Northumberland guide books for the publisher (friend of my wife’s).

Northumberland Tourism – attending workshops, conferences, and tourist events, covering the proceedings and PR/Press calls. (Leaflet drop)

Therefore Design – shooting various bits and pieces, but mainly my first interior residential stuff, and architectural (came from an outgoing email campaign)

An early PR shot at the Parsons factory in Byker

A painstaking architectural shot of Carlton Terrace in Newcastle

There were scraps of work coming in now and then, but without a major break, I was doomed to fail. That break came in the autumn of 2007 in the form of a chance meeting between my ex-sister in law (a hairdresser), and Frauke Gamblin, the Marketing Director of the outdoor clothing brand Barbour, who have their HQ in Simonside, South Shields.  She was having her hair done, and the subject of photographers came up. It just so happened that the product photographer at the time was charging too much for too little productivity. My name was mentioned, and I went in with some kit to do a test shoot for them. I winged it a bit, using what experience I had, but they loved the results and I was duly commissioned to shoot the entire 2008 Autumn/Winter range of clothing for the princely sum of £350 a day in a section of the warehouse. A stylist was provided, and all I needed was the gear to shoot the stuff (camera, tripod, lighting, etc.) The shoot lasted for about 3 weeks, and I took home about six grand just before Christmas. This paid off my overdraft and credit card bills, and meant I could breathe again.

Me....looking stripped of life if the truth be told.

The work at Barbour repeated itself the following Spring, and increased in volume – providing valuable income after the awful winter period. I got the odd PR job, and tried contacting various agencies without success. At one point I signed up to a firm who subcontracted jobs out – shooting damaged cars, rooms etc for insurance purposes. I had to pay a joining fee upfront, and  agree to cover any job within a set geographical area. It turned into a royal pain in the arse, as I would be sent up to the Scottish Borders without any reimbursement for petrol to shoot some bloke’s water damaged bathroom floor, and receive the fine sum of twenty pounds sterling a few months later. Not what I’d envisaged back in my training days.

My famous shot of the ticket hut at Seahouses – used in a local tourist guide. Now on sale at discount bookstores throughout Seahouses.

It was clear that this wasn’t going to be plain sailing, but with a defined client base & a blue-chip under my belt, it felt like things were going alright.

As time went on, circumstances changed inevitably. Although my work with Barbour increased exponentially, so did my expenses. The need for new equipment pressed occasionally, and my increasing involvement meant that my other clients had to be turned down during the intense bouts of clothes shooting. The coalition government was voted in, and immediately stopped any funding of the local development organisation which funded my work for Northumberland Tourism, NHS Choices, and One North East. Following this, Dogs Trust announced a cessation in photography commissions – replacing me with a volunteer. Not good news. The bouts of shooting were actually really intense. I learned a massive amount of stuff on the job, and had to endure extremes of temperatures under the corrugated metal warehouse roof – sweltering, oxygen starved heat in the summer, and literally freezing cold days in the winter. The days were long due to the ridiculous queues at the Tyne Tunnel in both directions. I had the misfortune of copping for Type 2 Diabetes in the summer of 2011 after years of eating poorly, and consuming gallons of Lucozade as self-medication after a season of enduring tropical conditions in that place. God almighty.

I’d also set up a partnership with a local designer who had started an online estate agency – the first in the North. His idea was to replace the traditional shit photography with high quality 360 degree virtual tours, which showed each room in detail. The plan was to start small, and expand into a franchise, with me at the creative helm – selecting and developing a team of nationwide professional Virtual Tour Photographers. I purchased thousands of quid worth of new kit and software especially for the creation of virtual tours, and spent a while doing free commercial jobs in places like Durham School – perfecting the technique and workflow required to make it all feasible. Advertising was set up, and a launch date of 14th September 2007 put in place. We were armed and ready for action. The big time loomed!

As queues of bloomin’ stupid people stood for hours outside every Northern Rock branch on the 14th September 2007 – for the purpose of withdrawing every penny of their savings in cash – it was clear that fate had dealt me yet another unexpected, painful kick in the goolies. The panic of thousands of sheep-like humans triggered the collapse of the mortgage market, and consequently the housing market. To start a business venture based on property this particular day would have been a mental act from the mental text book of mentalness. The venture was scrapped that same day, leaving me with debts, and a bunch of stuff I didn’t need anymore. Typical….. bloody typical.

The clothing photography meanwhile, expanded for another few years, and slowly I became monopolised by Barbour, with the other clients dropping off completely. I found myself in the dangerous position of having one big client with absolutely no rights, no guarantees of work, or anything to do in between the intense bouts of shooting. I suppose I knew the inevitable would eventually occur, but there seemed nothing I could do about it, as I was always busy, or about to be busy with the campaigns. Dangerous acceptance of the situation set in. Obviously, the inevitable did happen, and they eventually moved their production to a London packshot studio at short notice, presenting me with a gaping hole to fill in a short period of time, and a certain fate – total business collapse. 

I managed to draw in the purse strings for 6 months, and continued working with Barbour on small projects for the time being. I knew that the logistics of moving thousands of bits of clothing to London and back was a nightmare, and I also knew that the urgency of some of the shoots required an instant response, and the flexibility that a huge studio just couldn’t offer, so I played my hand, and put forward a plan to get the business back by setting up a studio space dedicated to shooting clothing products.

My plan was accepted. It was time to take things to the next level and get myself a permanent base. Cue the next chapter in this series – Part 5, The Studio Years.