Hi, I'm Doug McKinlay and you're watching AdoramaTV. Today we are going to take photography to the next level.
You've been honing your skills for weeks, for months, or even years and now you wanna dip
your toe into the pro-market, so that's what we're going to look at. Let me just be clear, we are going to look at
my little area of the photography world, travel, documentary and reportage photography.
AdoramaTV presents Stay Focused with Doug MacKinlay.
So you've landed your first commission or you are going do a self assignment with the intention of approaching
some of the picture libraries. Now there is a million things going through your head
right now. Not least of which is, will I do the job properly? Now I know exactly how
you feel, even now after all these years before every commission I still get
butterflies. But there are ways to calm your nerves, over the years I've developed
a little routine helps keep me grounded. Now the success or failure of a job can be
something as simple as not doing you proper research, you need to know what's
already out there,
you need to know how to fulfill your commission, but at the same time you need
to look for things where you can make a little extra money. This is the nature
photography today don't forget your job but keep your eyes peeled for other
things. This can be something as simple as looking through the picture
libraries and seeing where there are any holes in the market. Before you go on a job
make sure you do your environmental checks, make sure you know when the sun
is going up or down and the times. Make sure you know the weather, make sure you know
the layout of the land. All this stuff will add to the success your job. As photographers
today we have to cast a really wide net. There are no more staff jobs, we need to try and
make our money where we can.
Now one thing I tend to do a lot before I go on a gig is to is to pre visualize
what I'm going to be doing. I think it really helps me get into the mindset of
a job. Now I do this after my research is done, after I read the briefs look at the
pictures online, and I really kind of try to get myself into that whole sort of
ready to shoot kind of mode. One thing I do that helps me is I kind of pre-visualize
a flat plan or a magazine layout. Now, it's very simple, I just take a piece of
paper and I grab pen and very simply just draw a rectangle with a line down
the middle, like the gutter in a magazine. And I kind of just draw some of the boxes
in really, where I might think that pictures will lie on the page and just
scribble in the lines for the copy so you know most magazine spreads are
going to be usually between six and eight pages. So to really help myself to think
about the finished product. I want to have a look in my head about how it's
might look on a page. Now I do this because I've done it many, many times and I have a
lot of experience in shooting for magazines.
So obviously as a photographer you have to think about your equipment, how much and I going to carry?
How much damage is it going to do my
back if I carry too much? Can I get it on the plane and part of that is your bag.
Now airlines are getting pretty strict with their carry-on luggage. The
size and such, and this bag just makes it.. barely! Each job might demand a different
set of tools, but no less you got to think about the weight as well. I always have a
little mental checklist before I go anywhere about what equipment I want to
bring. Now as a novice to travel photography you might want
to like write all that down so you don't forget stuff because it happens, I've done it
myself. So you can see my bag is full of gear at the moment. Now the reason
that it's full of gear is because the job I just did
demanded I have this equipment I don't always carry this much stuff and
sometimes even carry more, so you got to figure out what you need for the job that
you're about to do. It's a tool kit.
So I'm in Grenada, in the West Indies, now I've been commissioned to shoot some
pictures for a high-end luxury magazine, that's the great surroundings, but even
though this room is really cool I still want to check it out.
I want to make sure the windows and the doors lock. Then going to find the safe, most
decent hotels these days will have a safe in the room somewhere. If they're big, it's a
fantastic place to store extra kit and if they're small, good for passports and money etc
but more importantly, a good place to store your backup files. Now, how I work
which is only the way I work, is I carry these little digital tanks with me the
little hard drives and I carry two of them. So my process is simple,
end of a day of shooting I come back, download the pictures on to both of the
hard drives, store them in the safe. That way I know that no one's going to get a hold of
them. Plus I have created redundancy and got two sets of the images so if one drive
goes down, I know I get another one. Now as for the cards do I wipe the pictures
from the cards or not? Depends on how many days I'm away, if it's two to three or
four days, then I generally won't wipe the cards, I'll just give myself an extra
level of redundancy. If it's longer, two, three weeks or whatever, they're not a
necessity and I'm probably going to have to wipe the cards, but still I've still got my two hard drives
I've got my redundancy as for card sizes I tend to stick with the 8GB cards, now the reason
why do that is because I think it gives me that nice mix of capacity, and safety in
terms of failure because flash memory has a finite life so cards will fail,
eventually they will all fail, so I'd rather lose 8GB's of data than 32GB's of
data so it's just a simple matter of mathematics.
One more thing to consider is your insurance, now if using a small amount of
equipment, your health insurance will probably cover it, but if your like me and you carry a lot of
gear then you're going to need specialist camera insurance and the best place to find those
companies is on the internet.
So thanks for joining me here on AdoramaTV.
I hope this has helped at least a little when contemplating taking your photography
to the next level. So don't forget to subscribe to AdoramaTV for more great
videos. Please tell us what you think, you can like, comment or share on this video and do
stop by the Adorama Learning Center for more great tips and tricks.
Do you want great-looking prints at low-cost, be sure to visit our easy to use online printing
service. AdoramaPix has professionals who treat your images with
the utmost care that you can count on. For quick turnaround on photos, cards or
albums use AdoramaPix.com