Professional Practice at level 2 Dan Vann
Statement of Intent With my work experience this year I hope to focus in on what I want to do in my future involving photography. Namely, Architectural, structural, or general photography, as well as photography books and bookbinding. In an ideal world, my earning work would be photographing buildings alone for any reason, from listed buildings to new ones. I believe that there is certainly enough work in this field, and thus finding working experience in this area to gain skills as well as build up a portfolio is essential. A perfect example of the sort of work I would want is Fotohaus, an architectural photography company based in London, Bristol and Berlin. Them having an office in Bristol could make them a perfect opportunity for me to gain some real experience, and I will be contacting them to enquire. If they do not offer any type of work placement, assisting a photographer doing the same type of work would be perfect. There are multiple on the AOP database that look suitable. Alongside photography work, I would love to assist or shadow a bookbinder in Bristol. There are two close enough to me that would be perfect - Alfred Harris Bookbinders and Bristol Bound Bookbinding. I have some experience and a growing passion for making books, which could help my chances. Even so, getting a placement with a bookbinder could be difficult, as it’s unlikely I’d be able to do any substantial work on customers books for a long time, meaning that they would be helping me a lot more than vice versa. I still plan to contact these businesses, and if I were successful, the skills I would gain would go a long way in helping my personal plan to make books in the future. If I couldn’t find anywhere, getting a work placement in a printing company may be easier, and would also provide me with extremely useful skills.
Initial Work experience Ideas: Photographique - 35 Colston Ave, Bristol BS1 4TT photographique.co.uk 0117 930 0622 10:30am–6pm Bristol Bound Bookbinding - 300 North St, Bristol BS3 1JU bristolbound.co.uk 0117 966 3300 9am–5:30pm Alfred Harris Bookbinders 30 St Matthew’s Rd, Bristol BS6 5TT alfredharris.net 0117 942 4337 9am–4:30pm Fotohaus Bristol Architectural Photographers Bristol 0117 929 7001 bristol@fotohaus.co.uk 5 Christmas Steps, Bristol, BS1 5BS, UK
Personal Branding Behind quality of work and previous experience, how you or your company is branded may be the largest influence on your likelihood of obtaining work. As I’m interested in attracting more high-end clientele, my idea brand needs to reflect that, and is something I’ve been consistently working towards. Attracting an expensive architecture or interiors company at this point obviously isn’t very likely, but having a clear understanding of what is appealing will be more likely to get me taken on as an assistant or apprentice by a professional. Things like website design, CV, style of photography, email signature, and how you present yourself are all important.
For anything with design elements, it’s important that they are consistent and remain very similar or even identical throughout all forms. Between a creative CV, website, social network, etc. the colour palette should be exactly the same where applicable, as well as fonts staying exactly the same, and similar spacing between any design elements. In my case, the actual design is fairly standard, and I have enough trust in my design abilities to do everything myself. I want my design to reflect what people want from me - Simple and clean, but stylish and professional. Much like a new high-end office space that a client might want photographed.
Creative CVs Making a creative CV is an incredibly important step towards finding work. Like I said previously, I want work in the architecture and interiors area, so I’m using design elements to try and reflect that. My CV is simple, but I don’t think it’s dull, and I’ve tried to find a balance there. It’s hard to tell exactly what can be used to give a CV that little bit of attractiveness, but I think I achieved it through the use of lines and space, a range of text thicknesses, and italic headings. With something so word-heavy, text and text spacing is obviously the most important element. I exclusively used Helvetica Neue, as I do throughout all my branding. To keep it from being repetitive, I use a variety of styles - Regular for bodies of text, light for titles, and medium for my name. At the moment my CV has some empty space, which needs to be filled before I would consider actually sending it out. Ideally, the education section should be moved down, and the experience section should be much longer. For the moment, I may just have to play around with text size, spacing and layout, to try and fill the space. I have looked at a lot of other creative CVs, and personally I feel that the ones that push themselves too far into their subject area often seem to end up dreadful. Creative graphic design CVs seem to be okay because the creators have the knowledge that they need, but it seems that a lot of photographers don’t. It seems that photographers want their creative CV to have some link to photography, but end up using a cliché idea like the use of an aperture, a camera, or a lens. What I have actually occasionally seen work is the use of an image. When used properly, it’s enough to give the CV just that little bit of substance to set it
apart from others that are well designed, but just lacking something. In the CVs below images are used in various forms: The imagine in the top left corner of a CV page doesn’t really work in my opinion, and just feels odd. The image of stars as an entire CV background does work to an extent, but feels a bit extreme, and leaves almost no room for writing. The CV with a strip of image down one side actually works very well in my opinion - it gives an insight into the quality of photography as well as the subject matter that the photographer shoots, without getting in the way. With all this in mind, I made two versions of my CV, one plain, and one with a subtle image background. Neither of them are perfect, but I think they both look professional enough. I’m actually surprisingly pleased with how the image looks as a background, though I had to work out issues with the text being readable, and it does mean that the print quality must be to a very high standard, as a badly printed background image will completely undermine how professional the CV looks.
Other Sites There are many other companies and individuals working in the architecture and interior photography industry, and looking at their sites is obviously a good place to start looking at what’s successful for attracting work. Starting at the top, we have the website of Paul Groom, a commercial photographer in Bristol. His website isn’t hideous, but it’s not great either. He seems to spread himself too thin between disciplines, and feels like a jack of all trades but a master of none. His website reflects this, with a purple theme and slightly messy layout, I can’t really tell who it would appeal to. fotohaus’ website is a lot more focused, clearly dedicated to architecture through both image and design. I feel that this is fundamentally important, as a client will always want someone who specialises in their area. The site itself is quite basic, a little dated, but not unattractive. It feels clean and professional, a reflection of many of the structures they shoot. John Seaman’s site feels okay, but isn’t particularly attractive. The textured background, bit of blue text, and general layout feel very much like a tumblr blog, and upon scrolling down I can see that it was built in wordpress. Finally, we have Marc Wilson’s site. Marc’s site is definitely a successful one in my opinion, and matches very well with the content of his commercial work. It’s very simple to navigate, sleek and minimalist, but still feels quite stylish. I’m split between what works better between the attractive nature of Marc’s site, or the more formal indexing style of fotohaus. Both are strong websites in my opinion.
My Site For my website I took considerations from other sites I had looked at, and made a site that I thinks works well as a portfolio site, and as well as a commercial site. While having two websites may be preferable, I don’t have the money, or a big enough portfolio of either for it to be worth it. My website uses a more portfolio style design, with an easy to navigate sidebar on the left. The navigation options are each project name, commercial, and then contact slightly below. The site background is just a touch away from pure white, the same numeric RGB values
as all my branding. Once again, my fonts are Helvetica Neue. My default view is for images to come up large, and can be navigated by clicking on the edges of the image, or in the bottom left. It can also be changed to thumbnail view with many images coming up initially, but with such a small portfolio I don’t think it makes a very good initial impression. It’s a very simple website, but I think that stylish design elements and consistent look make it a professional looking site. The biggest thing that could be done to improve it, is probably just to have a bigger portfolio.
Presentations For my website I took considerations from other sites I had looked at, and made a site that I thinks works well as a portfolio site, and as well as a commercial site. While having two websites may be preferable, I don’t have the money, or a big enough portfolio of either for it to be worth it. My website uses a more portfolio style design, with an easy to navigate sidebar on the left. The navigation options are each project name, commercial, and then contact slightly below. The site background is just a touch away from pure white, the same numeric RGB values as all my branding. Once again, my fonts are Helvetica Neue. My default view is for images to come up large, and can be navigated by clicking on the edges of the image, or in the bottom left. It can also be changed to thumbnail view with many images coming up initially, but with such a
small portfolio I don’t think it makes a very good initial impression. It’s a very simple website, but I think that stylish design elements and consistent look make it a professional looking site. The biggest thing that could be done to improve it, is probably just to have a bigger portfolio.
Budgeting Though my work has effectively been unpaid and as a way to gain experience, our handling of the situation has been fairly professional. As well as this, the role I’ve fulfilled is almost identical as a larger, more successful photographer or team, just on a smaller scale. As such, I think it’s a good idea to budget for the same sort of job but in a scenario with a larger client. This commission
estimate is for a portraiture shoot, but could easily be translated for other jobs types, such as shooting architecture. Fees simply need to be adjusted for any different charges, and roles like hair stylists may be replaced by additional set assistants. Longer jobs will naturally cost far more, but this sort of format is easily adaptable for other jobs.
Commission Estimate Client:
Musical Artist
Address:
P h o t o g r a p h e r : Daniel Vann A d d r e s s : 22 Nuthatch Close Weymouth DT3 5SH
Description:
Artist portraits on location
U s a g e :
Worldwide, Unlimited
P e r i o d o f Wo r k : 1 Day Fees: Commission fee £600.00 Pre-/post-production fee £100.00 Location fees £80.00 To t a l f e e s : £780.00 Expenses: Film & processing £60.00 Prints (If Required) £200.00 Travel £50.00 Equipment Hire £150.00 Production co-ordination/Assistants £100.00 Hair/Makeup/Stylist £200.00 Props/Wardrobe £50.00 To t a l e x p e n s e s : £810.00 S u b t o t a l : £1,590.00 Contingency (10%) £159.00 To t a l : (exc. VAT) £1,749.00 50% Advance required before shoot commencement
P h o n e :
07894 507 691
We b s i t e :
danvann.com
D a t e :
01/09/2017
P r o d u c t : High Quality Digital Portraits
Work Experience Report & Reflection While I didn’t get experience in the area I initially wanted, I’m not entirely displeased with how my experiences went. My initial wanting for architectural and interior photography experience is mostly due to how difficult I find it to work with directing and interacting with subjects. I prefer to be given instructions, not be the one giving them. The response to this changes depending on who I speak to - Some would say that it’s inexperience, and gaining experience in the area will allow me to more easily expand into this area, while others say that if that isn’t what I want to do, then I shouldn’t do it. I’m not actually certain what’s correct, and if I will actually become comfortable with photography people if I practice at it. It is undoubtedly an important skill however, and could help me to open up my personal projects also. My experience started when I was contacted by a small musical artist called Oloff living in Bristol. He was looking for portraits, and the possibility of moving image work. I was happy to see where it went, so we met to talk so I could find out specifically what he was after and arrange dates based around each other’s schedules. Our process has been slow, but consistent, and we’ve met numerous times to discuss and create work. We started working in October, and most recently worked together in March. His musical style is an alternative rap, honest and somewhat depressing. We talked extensively of visual styles, and sent examples of work back and forth, with discussion of styles that he liked and how we could achieve them. He liked a grainy aesthetic, harsh contrast and shadows, so the idea of harsh flash photography shot on cheap film with a cheap camera appealed to him. We met one evening and shot a 36 exposure roll of film around the Spike Island area. The experience was a little awkward, but generally not too bad. Because we’d talked so much about what we were aiming for, he thankfully didn’t require too much direction. I instructed him where to look, face, and stand, but his facial expressions and posture were great and already what we were after. I think a lot of my fears about portraiture are the thoughts of trying to get people to look natural, something I’ve had trouble with before. Because we’d met
on multiple occasions beforehand, we were able to communicate a bit more easily, though this wouldn’t be the case with a lot of people I’d photograph in an industry environment. Even so, I do feel as though it was a step forward for me. Our in-depth discussions beforehand really did pay off, and he was incredibly pleased with the results. He used the photos over various social media platforms, and we agreed he’d credit me where he could, which I was completely happy with. We talked about the legal side of our working together, and decided that due to the symbiotic nature of our situation and because I was working for free, we’d just work under a verbal agreement. We agreed that if he was working on something that had the possibility to create income, I’d be paid and we’d use a written contract. It feels like a great situation to me, and as well as receiving a small gain in my potential audience, it’s likely he’d come to me first for paid work in the future if he has any. A photo of mine was even used on a website alongside a small feature of him. Unfortunately it wasn’t credited, though I’m not bothered - They weren’t claiming credit themselves, and it was just a small Spanish website. We also worked together more recently on a music video, which he was also very pleased with. I’ve enjoyed my experiences this year, and I’ve definitely gained some skills. I plan to continue working with Oloff in the future, and we’ve already made some plans as so what we are doing next. My experiences this year however have made me think about where I want to go with my career, though I’m still not entirely sure. Anxiety is quite dominant in my life, and it’s hard to tell if working as a self-employed photographer is feasible. It’s certainly something I’d love to do, and so I am going to try and get experience as an assistant next year, but I feel like I may need something with a little more routine. The sporadic nature of self employed photography can be quite stressful, and it’s hard to tell if I would cope. I’m going to try and aim to be a commercial photographer, but perhaps I’d feel happier having a reliable day job that also lies somewhere within the field of photography.