Andre/Russell…that’s right on the screws.
A slightly different perspective.
My zen approach to business. After graduating from Brooks, a school for commercial photography for those that aren’t aware of it, I started to assist for whom I considered the best still life shooter on the West Coast. I was full time with him for five years. Everyday we shot large format, mostly food, and or food and wine. Now this photographer was different than many. After the initial placement of the camera, he was sorta through….but not really. He would go into the next room and shoot billiards or sit and smoke and talk with the AD. It was up to me to light, focus, determine exposure, expose the film. After the initial setup, he rarely looked through the camera again. Polaroids yes, decisions on prop placements and composition yes, decisions on food yes. Often once the polaroids would look good, he would leave for the day and I would finish the shoot. New clients or new Art Directors would look very confused and worried when he would say, “Paul will finish this up, I’ll be at home if you need me.”
He was grumpy too. And he had a reputation as a grumpy, hard to work with person. I would often try to figure out why he was so successful because of his business philosophy.
So I finished my five years with him and opened my own place. The very first job through the doors was a national comsumer ad for Young & Rubicam. I thought that was it, I had arrived. This was with an AD I knew from my assisting days, so in other words through someone I knew already. Business became very good, developed long term relationships with all the agencies and design houses in town, and direct for companies. But they were 99% through word of mouth. I did the cold calling, the setting up to show my book, the book dropoff with a face to face afterward but could count on my hand the number of times I got a job from it. I put in a self promotion page in the LA Workbook that first year. It wasn’t that I wasn’t shooting because I was, and it wasn’t that once somebody shot with me that they didn’t shoot with me again because most of the time they became steady clients. Business started to slow down after the go-go 80’s and I became very pissed off that I wasn’t getting work from my book.
I became depressed and holed myself up in the studio for over a year. Closed the skylights and sat in the dark for a year mainly. Turned down some work, took others to make the rent, etc. And I gradually lost all desire for work or jobs. I know this sounds stupid. It sounds stupid to me too.
The phone started to ring and it hasn’t stopped since. I haven’t done any self promotion, no business cards, no flyers, no reps. I don’t show my book anymore, in fact I don’t have a book. I want to fly way under the radar, I try very hard to keep my name off the internet.
But somehow the work finds me. I will take it if it’s given to me, but I will not go out looking for it and expend any energy or have any desire. I will shrug my shoulders and walk away.
And then something else happened. Started shooting for one of the large computer manufacturers in Silicon Valley. Big productions with lots and lots of people and lots of money involved. Over a hundred single or double truck national consumer ads. Hundreds of millions of this crap got printed. I never hit the 6 figure mark for any single invoice but came close. Afterwards I would look at the photo and think back on the amount of human effort, natural resources and money it took and know that photo would become tomorrow’s landfill. I never got off on seeing my stuff in print in the first place but would go out of my way of not seeing the finished piece because it was just so unimportant considering what it cost to produce it.
It didn’t feel good.
I mean for one photo I rented an elephant, I bought a car in order to smash it to appear that the elephant has sat on it, filled a small parking lot with right color and make of rented cars and the drivers that would be needed to transport, cherry pickers, assistants, food for everybody, etc etc etc. Or rent an entire block of houses and have people move out their automobiles so I could fill the place with period cars and props and people. I just couldn’t justify the means to reach the end and the stress producing something like entails.
I don’t have to be the biggest or the baddest or the richest. I don’t need to grow my business as big as I can. I don’t have to equate money with success. If you want to be big, you can…go after it. If you want to be small, be small. It’s ok either way.
For me it’s about photography, the business is just something that leeches itself onto it that I can’t seem to get rid of.
Ps…my disclaimer..Don’t try this approach at home.
