Commercial Photography
When people ask you what you do for a living and you say you're a commercial photographer they often look a little puzzled and say things like, ‘do you shoot weddings and stuff then?”
Commercial photography is one of those fields that the man in the street is not really familiar with, it’s not mainstream like Landscape Photography, Sports Photography or Wedding photography, and yet it exists all around our day top day lives from the billboard advertising the latest offering from BMW to the picture of the family sat enjoying their new Ikea sofa.
So what does it take to be a commercial photographer and what did my journey into it look like in the early days?
There is no sort of magic route, there is nothing that you can just touch on or hit on, or you suddenly do work for them and it all explodes. It doesn’t really work like that and there are several reasons for that. It is a gradual burn, it’s not going to happen overnight, you’ve got to build it up. When I was getting prepared to start the business over 17 years ago I didn’t even know how to do anything on Photoshop, so I opened that up and thought my god this looks complicated, I don’t even know how to open this file! Since then I’ve just taught myself Photoshop in the way that I want to use it. There are a lot of people out there who will tell you there is a wrong way and a right way to use Photoshop, the actual reality is that there are often several different ways to do the same thing and the one that is right is the one that works best for you and how you work. PS is a ‘creative’ tool and therefore it is driven by what you want to do with it. I would never profess to be a PS expert by any stretch of the imagination but I have found ways to use it that are important to what I do in my business and over the years I’ve even been in the States for Adobe at their annual conference teaching Adobe members of development how I use Photoshop! And that to me is just like, wow, imposter syndrome moment.
Those first years
The first few years were a learning curve for me in virtually every way. They were very much all about how to hone my craft, and how to light in all sorts of different circumstances. I had to learn to get work in and how to quote, and it’s a bit of a minefield, but you have to go through that experience and it’s a bit like riding a bike. I could give you a pile of books on how the bike was made, invented, developed, built, everything, and it could be a 6-foot high pile of books and you could spend two years reading them… But when you get on a bike at the end of it guess what’s going to happen? You’re going to fall off! My policy in life for everything is not to just read the book on it, just get on the actual bike and learn from experience.
I get asked a lot about how you find clients and how you quote for professional work. The honest truth is that the very first thing you need to think about is what you actually want to shoot and therefore if you know this then there is a good chance you can start to identify your market and your potential clients. This is going to sound very hard but you need to make mistakes when you first start out, you’ll most likely not be asking the right questions and that’s fine because you need to go through these mistakes to learn properly. My best advice when you first start out is to be yourself, be open, and most of all be honest, don’t try and make out you're a seasoned professional who knows it all because you’ll stick out immediately. People are usually more than willing to help you, even at the client end, if they like your work and what you are trying to do, so take their advice and help and learn, It is a journey, and what is important is that you are on that journey and know what direction you want to go in. Many photographers flit from one subject to the next panicking if there is not the demand they thought there might be. Often the reality is that they are just not deep enough into that field yet and don’t have the right volume of connections and contacts, in essence, they are not exposed to possible clients.
It’s all in the Lighting
Lighting is key, once you’ve learned to use your camera, I use a Hasselblad or Nikon, but I change my settings on both so they mirror each other, therefore I know the front wheel and the back wheel do exactly the same thing so I don’t even think about it. I will often use my camera without even thinking about it…, the riding a bike effect.
Your lighting is what you need to really master, and I say ‘your lighting’ because just like your style of shooting, lighting will also be in many ways, in your style. I suggest that you don’t need massive amounts of equipment to do that, start with one light and the best one to start with is the sun, and learn how that works. Learn how you can position stuff and learn how to shoot directly into the sun and how that has an effect on this, and that has an effect on that. And do all the things that people say you can’t do to find out why you shouldn’t do it, or maybe they said you can’t do it because they couldn’t get it to work for them but you can get to work for you. And then start building up your lights, I bought one light then I bought two and now I have got a massive equipment room full of gear. That’s not because I’m a gear freak, it’s just built over the years from what I need. But learn lighting, lighting is not something that will come to you in a week, and you can’t sit on YouTube and watch how to do it. You’ve got to do it, it’s really important but if you can light, if you can understand how light works, then you can make it work for you. If you can make light work for you then you can literally shoot anything in any circumstance, this an important skill that you will need to be successful because not everything that we shoot as commercial photographers is shiny and pretty, there are going to be many instances where you are asked to shoot something and you’ll look at it and think to yourself quietly, “wow what the hell am I going to do with that to make it look good” That is the nature of the job in essence, to make your client’s stuff look good to make them money, that is commercial photography in a nutshell. Over the last 17 years, I have shot everything from supercars and private jets to water tanks and lawn mowers.
One example of the importance of learning to light in your own way and understand light properly was a shoot I recall of a superyacht and a model that was flown in to be part of that shoot for the client in New York. I wanted to do a shot of this model stood on the centre part of the back of a yacht, and I wanted to shoot with the sun coming straight through the mast and straight into the camera, so I used a pro photo twin head. It’s one single flash head, but it’s attached to two batteries, so the cable splits of into two batteries, meaning you can shoot at twice the power. Both packs are on full power, so that’s 2400 watts straight into a flash, which is like proper bright light, you can feel that go off, in fact, you can even smell it when it goes off! I’ve also got we call a magnum dish which is like a reflector dish which focuses it forward and I’m bobbing up and down on a small boat off the back of the yacht trying to get to the centre whilst the sea is moving us around, obviously. Everything is in complete silhouette because of the sun shining straight into the camera lens, and I’ve got a couple of people from Profoto and Hasselblad who are with me because they are trying to film a behind-the-scenes feature.
Sometimes you need to trust your gut…
They are pretty much all saying “this isn’t going to work, it’s not gonna work, you can’t do that” and I’m literally using this direct straight in and the team are still going “it’s going to be too hard, it’s not gonna work, it’s not gonna work”. The Hasselblad camera wouldn’t even focus… I can’t focus on anything, therefore I’m manually focusing while trying to figure out everything else. I do three shots, the first one I’m too far to the right, the middle one is great, and the last one I’m too far to the left. But the middle one was spot on and it looks like beautifully soft light and pretty much didn’t need a massive amount of retouching at all. The reason it’s soft even though you go in at 2400 watts direct straight in you’re balancing what’s coming straight at you in the opposite direction. So, it shouldn’t work, but it does work and that’s the thing with lighting. Unless you try it, you’re never really going to learn!
The harsh but honest reality
This is being 100% honest because I’m really down to earth and open when it comes to this kind of stuff because there’s no point in giving people advice that’s not on the mark and that’s just all fluffy because fluffy advice doesn’t really help anyone. A client doesn’t really give a damn about your pictures, they really don’t… You have to see it from their point of view, they might have a 200k budget to shoot a campaign. They need to know you’re going to do it, they need to know you’re going to give them the results, you know? So they have brand guidelines for their company, and maybe they come to you because your style is very close to their brand guidelines, and then you’ve shot in their niche area that their business sits in and you do it consistently, then it means that percentage chance of you carrying this off to the level and the quality they want is high. Therefore, they will start having a conversation with you. they’re not looking at your work and going “Oh look at that, that’s brilliant”, they’re not. All they’re seeing is that you’re a safe bet because if you turn up on the day, or you go in studio for a week and you make a complete hash of it, not only do they need to completely redo it, but that’s the budget blown, someone is going to get their balls kicked over that!
I think I was one of the first people doing what I do to turn the wheels in on a car shoot, and that was over 17 years ago now. It’s fascinating now if you look at billboards from all over the place, and think those wheels are turned in, I wonder if I influenced that? That’s fantastic though… It’s just a simple change. But, it’s a tiny thing, but in the industry, it’s like wow that’s a bit dangerous, we have never done that before! But if you go back post 17-18 years, you’ll not find a car advert where the wheels are turned in. I clearly remember the very first time I did that. I was on a shoot with a classic Jaguar car, the work was for Jaguar Heritage and the client was on the shoot with me, great guy and we got on really well. We are getting all lined up for a front 3/4 shot of the car and I have started to set up my lighting and I turned to the chap and said, ‘you know, I really think it would look better if we turned in that front wheel about 30 degrees, just looks better in my view, like the car has just stopped or is about to drive off, more dynamic” His reply was that we don’t ever do that, it’s not really a done thing. I did the shots with the wheels straight and then with them turned in slightly, they published the ones with them turned in and that was that, it is now very rare I shoot a wheel straight, or be asked to.
Equipment
I use a Nikon for all my editorial work, I have always shot on a Nikon and I use the Hasselblad medium format for my commercial work. With regards to the camera I would recommend, there is nothing I would recommend, I don’t make recommendations because it would be wrong for me to do that. Generally, you need to pick whichever camera works best for you and is perfect for what you need it to do. I wouldn’t be the type of person to say you need to use the Nikon or need to use a Hasselblad, they just work for me, so that’s what I use…
Sure I look at new equipment coming into the market and currently I find Sony very interesting and maybe I’ll make the leap over to that at some point when the time is right for my business because it is a business and my camera and lighting equipment are tools of my trade, I would swap when it was right financially for me, I don’t need the latest thing to feel good about what I am producing. Somebody once said to me as they watched me shoot on my Hasselblad, “wow that is an amazingly serious-looking piece of kit, you can’t really fail to get a good shot with a camera like that”. The honest truth is that Hasselblad medium format cameras are great, and the quality and resolution of what you get out of them are very impressive, however, if you don’t put the effort in then all you will see on the other end is very good quality high-resolution crap.
Remember this is for them
In commercial work, always allow plenty of room in my images, remembering what I call ‘the banner scenario’ A lot of people try to get stuff together to promote themselves and get more commercial work, but they go in far too tight, they fail to remember that imagery may have to go across a double-page spread (DPS). Or even worse what I call the “banner scenario” which is 1800 pixels by 700 deep which is your standard commercial banner on a website, if your image can’t fit into that banner it’s of no use to your client. Even worse, and this happens a lot, the client will take an image that was intended as a standard 4x3 ratio and crop the life out of it to make it fit their banner, the result is a terrible image that has your name on it.
They may not have decided whether it’s going into a banner until months after you’ve shot it, so always be aware of that. If it can’t fit in there it’s a bad sign, furthermore, if you go in for a DPS and you fill the frame you’ll find that you’ve left no room for the text or branding, therefore always allow room in your image. Shoot over the space you need because commercially, you always need to do that. One of the perks of shooting on a medium format is that you can crop in, for example, if I shoot a metre each way wider than I need to then the client has room to manoeuvre and if the need to crop then the image should not suffer any great compromise. Whenever I get a client brief on what shots need to be done the first thing I ask is how they intend to use them and if there are any specific image ratios that I should be made aware of first. It sounds like such an obvious thing but it’s best to shoot your image to fit the hole than force it in later…
Always remember that you’re not shooting this for you, you’re shooting it for them, a paying client, so don’t shoot it how you would like it to be shot. In the early days remember that the client is paying you to do this the way they want it done. Later down the line, you might get to the point where I got to a couple of years ago, where I ask how would you like it shot and they turn around and say just do it your way, what do you think, and they will give you that freedom to do it. That is great but comes with its own added pressure of course.
When I did a recent Lexus shoot we did it that way, because it’s the way I said it would look the best, so there is a bit of freedom, but also an immense amount of pressure there because if you mess it up they are going to be coming back at you and saying “You said this would be really good and it’s not!” It’s never happened to me yet, and touch wood it never will because I’m careful, but yeah in the early days remember you are shooting it for them, not you. The more you shoot the more you build experience, it is that experience that your client is actually paying for in many ways. They will not pay you because you just know how to use a camera, everyone knows how to do that, it’s uniquely how you ‘use’ that camera and your lighting.
Lighting
Start with one light, learn how it changes with direction and the time of day, and then when you have mastered that, add another light and start to build it up slowly. It’s a bit of a learning curve, one thing poignant to say is that photography is a journey, it’s not a destination. You’ve got to evolve and push yourself and keep learning, don’t be in a rush to get to the endpoint, because there really isn’t one. Lighting is very much a personal thing and there will always be people who say that you need to do it the way or that, there is nothing wrong with that but don’t let it stop you from trying things out, trying new ways to do things and being creative. The biggest enemy of creativity is comparison, so don’t beat yourself up by comparing your work with other people constantly, it does not do anything to help you develop your own skill sets. Be yourself and do new things, Sometimes they will be great, sometimes they will be awful, but no matter what the result you will learn and evolve through that process.
It’s spitting…
Weather, subscribe to the best weather apps you can get, and make sure you get to know what those apps and websites are because if you have to work on location in the UK or worldwide you need to be prepared. Use them and if it’s important to you, then pay for them because you can’t beat being able to shift a shoot day because of the weather. Also, learn to shoot in all conditions because you can’t trot up to a shoot on location and say to a brand “Sorry it’s not 62% cloud cover so I can’t really do it”.
You have got to learn to shoot in bright sunshine and also in rain, I’ve shot in rain three times, it doesn’t happen often, usually, rain doesn’t last all day, but in three instances it has lasted all day. It is a pain and the only way around it is to shoot down at something like an eighth a second so the rain blurs out and isn’t visible, but you have got to learn to do all these things. In any situation, you’re expected to produce the results no matter what, so get familiar with all types of weather conditions.
Make friends
Social platforms, use them, build them up, in the first few years when you’re building up your brand on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram start uploading your work and only put up work of the niche you want to be in, don’t cloud it with other stuff. When you’ve built a name for yourself and a bit of a following, I think we have 120k across the social platforms now, that’s when you can put pictures of your dog upside down asleep. Because it’s a bit of humour and allows people to see behind the scenes of your life, but in the early days keep it absolutely to your niche, you have to make it clear what you do. Use LinkedIn properly, and if you don’t know how to use it properly, book yourself in for a course. Because many people are using it the wrong way and it’s a very powerful tool.
Get yourself an all-star profile on there, understand how to do that and learn how to use LinkedIn. Not only is it important for linking to people, but if I do a shoot for somebody and I want to know who their marketing Director is, LinkedIn is where I would go to do that, it’s a good research tool too. With regards to your portfolio, remember you’re not selling the images, you’re trying to demonstrate your ability and style, the quality and the range of circumstances you can work within and also show consistency.
Back it up
Everything I ever shoot is backed up fully and is doubled up, cameras can be replaced, and if something happened to my cameras today I know I can phone the people I work with at the camera manufacturer and they would deliver a couple overnight as I have a good working relationship with people like that.
I did a job two weeks ago and I got off the plane, and when I’m on the plane I have a pair of Bose sound headphones, which can reverse the sound making it absolutely quiet, sometimes I listen to music or watch a film, or just have it silent in order to sleep. So I was listening to music and I had my phone in the pocket in front of me and I stepped off the plane going through security and I thought I’d text the wife to let her know I had arrived ok, reach into my jacket pocket and cannot find it. Damn, I’m thinking. It was 40 minutes ago, I’m sure they have turned around and are on the next flight already. For a split second, I had this very real fear, my phone had all my emails, my calendar etc. It was in my back pocket, disaster averted.
Of course I would have just got a new phone and downloaded it all from the cloud, but for that brief second it was like loosing one of the kids in a crowd.
We all rely on ‘stuff’ these days, or at least we think we do, the great thing about photography is that its all inside you, whatever you use and what ever you do, it comes from you.
