Rock, hard place

As I've discussed before, I believe that one of the most difficult road blocks young freelance photographers must overcome (especially ones coming from a photo-j background like myself) is their understanding of the awkward relationship between talent and success. I certainly assumed while in college that the best photographers must command the most and best assignments; or at least that talent was the main factor in the business. Yes, indeed, what a dispiriting lesson can the marketing influence be.

Recently I was thinking about another lesson of sorts that speaks to the strange middle ground that many of us editorial shooters occupy these days, which is finding that I'm getting stuck between the two extremes of clients who either have way too specific instructions/expectations for a shoot, and others that have far too little grasp on what they want or need. Every single bad shoot I've ever been a part of (maybe 3 real stinkers in almost 6 years) has been the result of either an incredible amount of provincial NYC pre-imagining gone awry or a total lack of engagement and specificity from a lazy editor. (There have certainly been times when I didn't kick ass either, but never without also delivering something solid and usable).

Somewhere between that rock and hard place, I find myself trying to claw out a little breathing room for my own creativity while also keeping the successful conclusion of the assignment in the forefront of my mind. And regardless of how great you might shoot on a job that has got fucked, and no matter who is to blame (editor, writer, subjects), the freelance photographer is almost certainly going to get the broom. If I was an editor who was being read the riot act by boss, I'd certainly want to lay blame elsewhere too.

Neither side in this pickle is pretty to look at. The too much editors often try to "ask" if you would "like" to see their sketches or mock-ups of what they want to finished shot to look like (uh, no thanks.) The too little editors want to give you a giant list of things that you might consider, and then no matter what you decide to tackle they will inevitably need something else, something more, something better, something different.

Part of this sounds like bitching and whining, and it is. We the photographers are playing the part of Goldilocks who can't quite find the right temperature for the porridge. But the truth is that you have to help your clients get out of their own way and allow you and the assignment to breathe. They must have enough trust in you that you are going to get something solid no matter what, but they also need to want something completely unexpected, and that passion isn't always common. On my most recent assignment I was given a lot of freedom and now at the end of a lot of discussions and shooting I am starting to tense up because I know that the project isn't really going to look like either the client or I wanted.

The true panacea for this roadblock is time. But time is money, and both are in short supply aren't they? With more time my current client could have put me in the proper and visually rich situations to photograph the subjects at work on the story, instead of trying to piece it back together with portraits and compromise. The final product will likely include several stock images (mine and others) in order to make the feature well-rounded, and how rare is it that a feature that has all of this going on really ends up feeling cohesive and dynamic?

Ultimately the other cure-all is simply me just caring a lot less about how it all sorts out, but why would I keep doing this if I didn't fucking care. You have to engage and be proactive, not turn your brain off and try to focus on other parts. And so as a craftsmen and mercenary, I keep at it and try to push my clients, gently or with a bitch-slap, to amp up their energy to help the shoots I'm working on with them have a fighting chance to make a solid clip in their magazine. Here's to the good fight; and if there are any editors reading this, please find some middle ground.

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Comments (4)

A Photo Editor made has an interesting post about professionalism which seems to directly correlate with your comment. I suppose the idea is that a professionalism does the same perfect thing right a 100 times in row. That would make you a machine. I would imagine a better description should be one where a professional does his/her best and delivers his or her best. WHEN things don't go right does his/her best to fix it. The goal always being to satisfy the client. I always get this sense of "perfection" required from reading PE post. Strange to talk about perfection in the world of art and creativity. It's such a subjective thing.

Way back in the film days, I learned a valuable lesson. Give the client more than they request.
I had a commercial shoot. The client had a specific shot in mind, but couldn't find an example or reasonably explain it. So, I shot what I thought he wanted.
I had extra frames to burn, so I made some extra images I liked. The client didn't like what he requested and used my "extra frames" for their ads.
Now, I never stop shooting until I hit 100+ digital frames. Some are for them. Some are for me. One will work for each of us.

Thanks guys. Sherman, I don't consider photography an "art" first... I have no interest in that so even though I understand what you mean by subjectivity its not foremost. I prefer to treat it as a craft, a job, even though its my passion. And as a craft the analogy to Molto Mario works pretty decently, except of course that we location photographers almost never get the same conditions to work under twice so that is certainly much harder.

My post wasn't really about shooting less or more (I always shoot way more), because I assume that if you are freelance you are automatically already shooting for them and yourself (together and/or separately). If you are not, you are really leaving a lot on the table regardless of the rock/hard place difficulties. Mark, its interesting to read "100+ digital frames" from a newspaper guy just because I think most staff shooters are sometimes pretty blind to how much more work each assignment takes in a freelance setting, where you are collecting many different great frames instead of just one. I definitely miss waiting for that 1 shot and then heading back to the office with a pretty high percentage chance that it was going to be used. Sigh.

Happy birthday, John!

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