What I've learnt today

Whilst your a student, experiment as much as you can. Make your mistakes NOW. Milk being a student by taking advantage of discounts and equipment available to you. Be technically aware, and make sure you know your stuff. Get experience in as many sectors as you can.

Look into getting work experience or you won't get noticed. Make contact with people, networking is important. Look at the work of the person you are contacting. Keep emailing them.. once a month should do.

If someone needs you, turn up early. Don't create problems for the photographer. Don't expect to be the centre of attention. Be keen to do any tasked given to you, however menial they are.

Do anything if it gets your foot in the door, no matter what sector its in grab any chance you can. You gain a lot of technical knowledge from photographers you do work experience with.

A photographers assistant does anything and everything to allow the photographer to concentrate on taking the photo. If you can't do what the photographer asks of you, you might aswell not be there.

You need to keep a level head and understand how to run a business. Be able to manage money and not spend it as soon as it comes in. Find out your break even. Keep an eye on your running costs.

Assisting is your way into the industry. Introduction to lots of contacts furthers what you've developed in work experience. Don't expect to earn a fortune.

Bread and butter jobs are what magazines and clients will give you as a tester job. If you can't do these well, then don't expect to get anything better or another job from that client.

Don't overlook mundane and basic jobs. Don't get lazy with this sort of work. This will be what ties you over between the work your wanting to do.

Frelancing on location: Keep your equipment lightweight and easy to use. In unsafe locations, be subtle about your equipment.

Even as a photographer you will end up doing stuff that you think you shouldn't have to do. But in the end if it gets the job done, you've got to do it.

Get or read the book 'Beyond the lens' is all about business. Someone at some point, will try and screw you over.

No one ever needs your copyright. Giving away your copyright means that you would then have to ask permission of the buyer to use your own photograph! Most companies expect some amount of use of the image, which is fine. You can also grant them 'all rights' and give them full use of the image, while still remaining your image.

You can earn mony from stock libraries, always look for opertunities to make money.

Be professional, polite and easy to work with. ALWAYS. Have business cards on you all the time, and have your website and portfolio up to date.

To get further you must always look for new ideas. Commercial work can be driven by your ideas. Keep people informed with what your doing.

What will get you out of bed in the morning is doing what you love.

Following your passion will result in better work.

Try and have as many adventures as you can.

Shoe

Negs came back from our Shoe project today. We had to use large format camera, which as it turns out, are not as scary as they look!

The brief was to produce 2 images. The first one was to apply camera movements and a small aperture to acheive full depth of field and sharpness throughout. The second to apply camera movements and a wide apperture to achieve a very shallow depth of field.

I scanned in my negs as soon as I got them and this is how they turned out.

Full DOF:

Shallow DOF:

Could probably use a bit of retouching, but I'm quite happy with them. Does this attract and hold your attention for longer than a split second?

Medium Format Fun

So I finally got my colour negs scanned in yesterday. For the shoot I used 4 flash light. 1 soft box and 1 umbrella. 2 lights behind black boards to light up the background, and 2 at the front with the soft box and umbrella. I really enjoyed the high key shoot. Here's a pic.

Lois was an awesome model. I think I'm really beginning to understand flash lighting. Which is awesome. I was pleased with the results, but I'm still not too sure about medium format cameras.. I can't decided if I like them or not...