I’d like to say thanks again to everyone for all of their input on last week’s post. It was quite helpful for me to get so many different viewpoints in one place and hopefully it will help someone else trying to dream up a new site sometime.
All is still quiet on the work front. I believe I’m also about 98% caught up on my editing stuff as well so hopefully things start to roll in again soon. For the most part I’ve remained held up in my bunker plugging away on the site. I thought I was done two days ago, I uploaded all the content and everything. Then I discovered an extra feature that I didn’t think I could do previously so down came the content and now I’m in the final tweaking stages. I’m hoping to have a couple web-headed people check it out before I put it on my main server just to make sure it’s kosher. Anyways, I’m just about done and hopefully I’ll be able to debut it by next week. Then it will be time to switch gears and figure out something for promo.
I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that there was a little bit of an emergency which ended my mini-vacation on a sour note. My step mother who had been battling cancer passed away on Tuesday of this week. I’ve been through the deaths of three grandparents, one friend, and my natural mother as well. This is the first time I’ve had to deal with this while being self employed and it seems to add an extra level of stress to it all. It’s kind of a difficult and confusing situation to be in and really isn’t something I’ve ever thought about too much before. It’s hard enough to balance my time at this point in my career when I’m looking for work five times as much as I’m getting it. Though I don’t have any shooting work this week, it doesn’t really mean I have more time on my hands to deal with things. In fact it’s quite the opposite when there’s nothing on the horizon. I guess it’s just one of the trade offs to doing something like this for a living.
Anyways, I’d just like to sign off with a couple of photos I took of my step mom a couple months ago when we found out she had cancer.
© Jaime Hogge
© Jaime Hogge
- So sorry for your loss Jaime, thanks for sharing these images -Heather
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Hello week 4.
In the last year I have learned to take care of my office duties on a regular basis….as opposed to, well, yearly. The amount of effort it takes to organize receipts, invoices, negatives, bills and digital files on a weekly or biweekly basis is not nearly as daunting as every six months to a year. Seem obvious? Yes. That doesn’t make it any easier. I’m sure most of you can agree. Even with my now regular adherence to these tasks I still dread doing it. Sure, I still do procrastinate but when finished I’m always filled with a sense of accomplishment. It’s like every week I forget that I am completely capable of taking care of the business part of running a business. It’s only once I’m finished that I recall the last time and how easy it was. With the weight of menial tasks lifted there is much more room in my space (head and desk) for creativity.
As I am building the different parts of my business (portfolio,marketing plan, etc) I feel compelled to keep shooting even if the work is unpaid. If there aren’t any hired jobs coming in I will continue to call on friends and acquaintances to sit for me. Here are a couple of portraits from the past week.
Elaine Briere is a Vancouver based documentary photographer and film maker. I am happy to say that I have a print of her image that was included in Carte Blanche, Vol. 1.
© Grant Harder
This is Mat. He makes a killer espresso:
© Grant Harder
On the assisting front I had a job with Eydis Einarsdottir. I love it when a photographer’s studio is right down the street from me. It’s nice to see the images from the last job we worked together on, for The Art Institute of Vancouver, up on a few billboards around town.
Does anyone have any tips for writing a query letter to a magazine? I have a good connection that could lead to a great series of photographs. I have a couple of publications in mind and want to go about it in the best way possible. For the editorial shooters out there, is submitting a query letter something you are doing these days? It seems like a proactive approach to potentially shooting rewarding work. Are magazines inundated with this kind of thing? Any insight would be appreciated.
That’s about it. See you next week.
A Year in the Life Project follows two junior shooters through their weekly adventures, trying to make a go of it, in the world of commercial photography. They want, they relish, they need your feedback. Please post comments.
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I’m sorry to hear that Jamie. The Happiness Hotel send u much love.
Grant re: editorial interests..
Its great if you have a contact at a magazine before pitching a story, if not then track down the eddress to the pitch database that many magazines have. A contact at a publication that you have a connection with will tend to help keep an eye on whether or not you’ve had a response to your story idea.
Personally i respond to unsolicited content on a regular basis. If a thoughtful presentation (albeit informal) and has my name on it (rather than a mass email – never) i will feedback. My practice is to be plain and truthful about the quality of the work , the degree of rightness of the content, even if it’s material that is not good for my publication. People who make reasonable work deserve to know how close or far off the mark they are. This is time consuming and i know all picture people and story editors are not necessarily responding back in detail. That said the better the idea the more contact you can expect to have even if to be turned down.
Some establishment magazines work pretty exclusively through an ardent network of editors and contributing writers but even these are feeding in from many sources. Think positive! perhaps you could enter this pool of ideas
In my experience the learned skill of what makes a story ‘right’ for a particular magazine is the tricky bit. Content is sometimes good in theory but may not have a good ‘peg’ (that is ‘moment’, visceral timing that creates enthusiasm). Sometimes – and in many cases with quality magazines – the tone of content can be viewed as having a ‘weepy’ lead or perhaps overly romantic or perhaps an ‘activist’ quality
which to the average person would seem to lend passion to a story but to a discerning publication will conflict with the mandate they work to. This kernel is often an unspoken perspective at a publication and relates to the politics of a magazine or their wish to hold a certain line. These are aspects of content that shape editors interest in content.
If this information seems incomplete let me know.
Thanks for the helpful info Bree.
It’s great to hear you do respond personally to queries. I think this is really important to people like myself. To find out why your work/idea is or is not a good fit is crucial. Like with everyone else feedback is needed to grow. Finding out your work/idea is not a good fit for one publication could give a better understanding of where it might fit and if there could be a possibility to work together in the future.
You make a few great points, especially in the last paragraph. Timing is something I never gave much thought but it does make perfect sense. Is the content relevant- now and will it still be for the February issue? I think your ‘unspoken perspective’ comment is an important consideration. Familiarization with a publication is crucial.
Thanks again.
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