this post was submitted on 28 Nov 2023
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Photography

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A place to politely discuss the tools, technique and culture of photography.

This is not a good place to simply share cool photos/videos or promote your own work and projects, but rather a place to discuss photography as an art and post things that would be of interest to other photographers.

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You can see my work here ; https://rmsphoto.mystrikingly.com/

Hi, I'm a Car Photographer, and I've done quite a few shoots in the past, some free some paid, with some amazing cars, for example I shot a lamborghini tour in the Yorkshire dales and an M5 & X7 for a car dealership. I've probably made about £300 in total from photography. I've emailed about 10-15 Companies around me asking if they would be interested in my photography, social media management & developing videography skills, with quite professional sounding emails. I've not told any of the company's the price or the fact I'm 14, but haven't got any responses at all even though I genuinely think I could help companies- I'm stuck on what to do. Any advice is appreciated or critique on my photos. I have a free photoshoot this Sunday of a Porsche 356, as I know the owner quite well (who also has a 992 GT3) but nothing after. Thanks so much

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[–] rollingupthehill@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

You have an excellent eye and your photos look really professional! Selling your services is exceptionally hard at the beginning. Don't be discouraged by a lack of responses to your pitch, follow up every so often and most importantly keep finding new ways to improve your portfolio. As sad as it is many companies are more interested in follower counts and likes than they are technical ability, so my suggestion would be to post as much high quality content as you can (1-2x daily) and start creating reels/tiktoks to build your follower count and portfolio. While photos are certainly still used and it's perfectly fine to stay a still photo purist, the algorithms definitely favor video content.

At the beginning of your career you should do as many shoots as you can, paid or not, and explore your creativity so you learn as much as possible. In order to reliably make real money as a photographer ($100k+ annually) you will need one of the following: Significant social follower count (5k+) + consistent content posting in your specialty (automotive photography,) a network of paying professional clients with consistent work for you every month, a very successful print/stock image operation, art galleries representing your work, get hired full time by a dealership chain or car magazine or get a solid stream of one off clients who might pay less than the commercial/regular ones but come in enough quantity to fill your schedule and pay the bills. I have been in most of these situations, they all have their pros and cons.

As others have mentioned, you should be more ruthless in your culling of your photos and cropping/framing. Presenting 10 exceptional photos each of which show a clear subject and tell a story is infinitely more compelling than 50 images of varying quality on a webpage. Other than that you need to focus on the basics: Build a brand, set your pricing, develop a marketing strategy and plan for gear upgrades before you impulse buy.