Hello and welcome to Out of the Darkroom on AdoramaTV I'm Ruth Medjber
I'm here at Castlepalooza Music and Arts Festival. You guys have been really great
sending in some amazing career related questions for me all about how to make
it as a music photographer. Today I'm going to be answering those questions and sharing
some experiences with you too.
AdoramaTV presents Out of the Darkroom with Ruth Medjber.
Let's have a look at these questions that you've all sent in. Julie Mullan, Alexander Novak,
a lot of people actually have asked the same question which is how I got hired
as a music photographer. And I'll tell you a story. It actually happened when I was
in my third year in college that I happened upon the email address of the
photo editor of our local, well, national music mag over here. I simply just sent him an email,
along with a PDF version of my portfolio And, he didn't respond, so what I did then was I sent
him another email and I was quite persistent about it and I just very nicely said please
hire me, please hire me, please hire me and after about 5 emails of this he came
back to me said ok you're quite persistent obviously you really want
this let's meet for a cup of tea,
bring in your portfolio and we'll chat some more. So I went in, met the photo
editor of our national music magazine and that night he gave me my first job so
that's how I got my first press pass and my first job and then a week later I was
in print media. My picture appeared in the magazine which we call 'Hot Press' here, so
that's how I got hired as a music photographer. And it's not too dissimilar. That might have
been 10 years ago but you can still apply those techniques today, all you
have to do is get your PDF Portfolio looking really nice or get a website
that's really clean and easy to read
and then simply just contact people, contact the photo editors
of magazines or of blogs or anywhere else that you want to be published all you
have to do is reach out and connect with people.
So, Hog 427, Cody Ash, David Great. They've asked similar questions which is how I get
press passes. So the press pass is simply the credentials like I've got here which is
wristbands which allows me to get into the photographers pit and permission to
shoot the bands. It's quite different in all different fields. For a festival you
can apply directly to the festival for accreditation however the easiest way
that you'll find doing it is to align yourself with a publication whether
that's an online music blog or its print media such as like your local magazines
or your local newspapers. The best thing you can do is to have a body working
with you on this so it's difficult when you're starting off, but just keep trying.
Pick maybe a small music blog that is local to your area,
approach them say can I please shoot for you, and then get that blog editor to apply to
the promoter for your own press pass.
Earl Davis has asked a really great question.
He says I'm particularly interested in event photography, how is this different
from music photography and how can I get a job working with you? Well, Earl, if you live
in Ireland, send me an email we'll see what we can do about that bit, but event
photography is slightly different than music photography.
I'm here at Castlepalooza this weekend.
I'm the official photographer for the entire festival
Now, how I got that job was not because I concentrated solely on what's on the
stage. You'll see me this weekend. I walk around the entire festival taking social
photographs of people you know where they're posed, and I take their names
for the captions. I also photograph
more atmospheric type of shots, so people enjoying themselves like close-ups of all the
little bits and pieces, all the artwork and stuff that people have put effort
into. I tried to give this a good sense of the entire festival as opposed to
what's just on stage. Now you'll find if you open up, you know, your range as a
photographer if you become a little bit more versatile, you'll find that people,
events, festival organizers will be more inclined to hire you. They want to
see your portfolio as like a vast expansive "Oh, she can shoot this, she
can shoot that, she captured the entire event as it.is", I can't stress that
enough. If you want to go forward as a music photographer you really have to
shoot everything. Shoot the crowd, shoot the entire venue and shoot what's on stage.
So here's a question from Andrew asking "How does photographing a concert work?
Do you get to sit front and center for the whole show?"
Well, yeah, it's the reason I kinda got into this because I wanted to go to
all of these events I wanted to go to the gig. How photographing a concert works can be,
it can be different depending on the gig and depending on the promoted, the person
that's putting on the show. Most of the time, though, you rock up to the guest list you
get your press pass sticker and then you get brought into the front, a
photographers pit, which is a barriered-off area in front of the stage. You get
to shoot three songs. Over here in Ireland it's three and in the UK it's normally two and
the rule is 'first three-no flash' so you're not allowed use flash while you're in
photographers pit . So you get in, you shoot your three songs, after your three songs, you're
booted out of the photographer's pit and most of the time, you're allowed just enjoy
the show. Whether you wanna sneak up the front with the rest of the punters or
hit the bar the back, you just go and enjoy the show, i mean that's why
we're doing this for a living, is because we really want to be there at the gig.
So that's how photographing a concert works.
So here's a question from Black Raven, wanting to know
how big a role would I say social media has played in getting my work
noticed and if they need to be more assertive in charging for their services
at some point. Yes, yes, yes. Always charge for your services. When you reach a
certain level in your career or with your photography skills I always say to
people starting out, when you have a fairly decent portfolio, let's say ten
to fifteen images that you are super proud of, then
start charging. Now I'm not talking about charging a local bad hundreds and
hundreds of Euro or Dollars to come and photograph their show. I'm talking about what manageable. If the
band has no money
look for other ways in getting payment. So maybe one of them is a web designer,
maybe one of them is an accountant. See if there's some way of swapping services
with these guys. There is ways around it but the important thing is that you
value your work. You value your time and you value your own skills, so always charge
something, just so that you have that little bit of reassurance that what you're doing
matters. Social media is key these days to getting your work shared and noticed by
people and hired again and again and again so by all means get on the social
media, get your usernames in place, get your website up and running,
get yourself a good portfolio, and then start valuing yourself.
Start charging just a little amount for your photographs and you'll see that people
will appreciate you more, they will respect you more as a professional photographer.
Regina Mullan asks a great question: "Please walk folks through basic 'pit' and 'out of pit'
etiquette, especially how not to become the show, flash use, and share some of your
shooting locations", which is great, I mean, pit etiquette is it something that you don't
know about unless you're thrown into the pit. I entered my first photo pit when I
was 16 and I was completely clueless and I relied on the more experienced
photographers in that pit to show me the ropes. Now, a lot of these days the pit age is a lot
younger than it was when I started. Press photographers used to be like, in their mid-forties,
kind of thing, and now when you enter photo pit, everyone's in their twenties,
and pretty much no one has a clue what they're doing so what I'm
going to do Regina, I'm going to actually do an article on the Adorama Learning Center,
specifically for you and I'm going to outline exactly what to do in a photo pit,
all the etiquette, all the rules, what not to do and what to do, and how
not to annoy other people that are in the photo pit as well. So I'm going to put an article,
a full article detailing everything that you can possibly imagine
about a photo pit on the Adorama Learning Center very soon.
Thanks for joining me today, I hope you enjoyed the show. Please feel free to
subscribe to the channel because I'm going to be bringing back some more great videos.
Also if you want to brush up on your own photography skills, check out the Adorama Learning Center because
we post some great articles, tips and tricks. I'll see you again soon!
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