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Introduction to Joey's Work

Lesson 2 from: Commercial Portraiture

Joey L

Introduction to Joey's Work

Lesson 2 from: Commercial Portraiture

Joey L

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Lesson Info

2. Introduction to Joey's Work

Next Lesson: 'Seeing Light'

Lesson Info

Introduction to Joey's Work

tell us about your history how you got started when you got started how old you were what were some of the first projects well if I were to stretch way way way back I got my first digital camera when I was about like maybe like maybe seven or eight I want to say it was like one of the first early like one megapixel wonders um at that time you can imagine I really loved jurassic park and I love dinosaurs um and I would photograph my toys outside and sort of like diagram a and I had a website called dino ramen dot com I know vary but yeah I would kind of do that and as I got older like jeff and jurassic park movies would come out and I had a website that was about the toys like any young young boy liking dinosaurs would and I would actually have contest of other people who would like to submit their dino ramez and then I was like affiliate linking two sites selling that drastic park toys and like making money you know being a photographer but that kind of like taught me a lot about photo...

shop because I would like put dino's in different photos and like learn about photo shop and like make their eyes club well it's so cool all right and that as I got a little bit older I stopped doing that I sort of just experimented a lot doing a lot of like what they call the teenage angst phase where you like our dark teenager and like oh my life so twisted and like yourself like that kind of photography do that for a while and then that could have translated into I had a lot of friends that were in bands a lot of heavy heavy music that we're listening to those days so I would photograph all my friends that were in bands because I can't play anything or I can't sing very well I have a horrible voice so instead I was the photographer so I built a lot of my friends bands early press kits I would go out on tour with different bands across america or like you know sleeping in a van doing stuff for magazines or um their album packaging and stuff like that and as one of the students asked um that kind of built my first portfolio and that entertainment work that I got off of that was all from music photography so I was photographing them in different ways you know using them as subjects to build the first portfolio which related toe entertainment and advertising that I do know the other thing all the while I was doing that was I was travelling in doing my personal work right so I was going out and some of that first money that I made shooting music I was just spending traveling because they grew up in a small town hadn't really been anywhere before I was sixteen on day really was interested in the world after seeing movies like baraka and things like that like holy I want to go there um almost did ten push ups there um so so yeah so all the while when I sort of had my first money I was using it to travel and build that side of what I do which lead to the kind of like a fine art personal stuff that I do now awesome a question that comes up often in our chat rooms over various photography courses is we have ah wonderful young audience that's just starting out and quite a few of them voice of the feeling of not being taken seriously as starting out so young and they're amazing photographers they have a wonderful products but people will just have a different view point to them and do you have any words of encouragement for them or or any similar feeling of when you were that young starting out for me um it's impossible to change people's opinions of you right if you're not being taken seriously it still happens to me um you can never change that about people they're always gonna judge young people in that way but what you can do is excel and just prove yourself right so even when I made a young person I started when I was like sixteen professional I see them doing like dumb kid even I do that right and I came from there but if they can prove me wrong then I will judge them like a professional so for example I've been working since I was sixteen not that many years but whether I started at sixteen or thirty is the same time an effort put into it so my thing would be you're never goingto be able to change those opinions but you can prove them wrong another thing is for me especially when I was starting is if something went wrong on set right if if I messed up something or something didn't go well it would always reflect back on my age I made that mistake because I was a dumb kid I made that mistake because I was irresponsible right but everyone makes mistakes so if someone older and they make a mistake it's not because they're young it's because oh mistakes happen so the trick is is to just be okay with that and just know like one day it's not always going to be that way and young people have a lot of advantages of getting started early then other people might not have so I think weighing pros and cons actually think there's more pros with it than there are cons what do you see it some of those advantages about being young well I do hide my age on my portfolio because I know that there's a lot of people that have a problem with that so I don't display my age but obviously when someone makes me they'll see so you ask me some of the pros some of the pros are is I think you're a lot more I'm on like what is cool and what trains are going it doesn't mean to say like someone who's a little older isn't but we sort of can't back away from it right because that's how we grew up so there might be people from a different generation trying tto learn what a school but we like our innit right so there's obviously that advantage there's some things about being young which are good just in terms of like being active in seattle you know to like go a few more sleepless nights but for the most part there's if you like I said if you start when you're sixteen years start when you're thirty you have to put in the same time in the same practice some cons are I've think that older people have much better taste and they have ah much developed sense of maybe curating their work right so for example I was talking about like the teenager phase that I went through right older people develop much more refined taste so if you're young you have to understand that your portfolio is going to change with you also fantastic I love what you said just about owning it and proving people wrong because if you go in with that attitude then that's what you're going to dio oh that's a good one so maybe one more question before we bring in mr chase jarvis who is in the creative live house right now and that is in addition to sort of proving people wrong with your age do you believe in formal education for photographers and did you have any or a new self talk I'm self taught I learned like somewhere to what's going on here like I went to workshops or red blawg posts bought dvds and editorials of other photographers online that's how actually learned reading books on things like that but I'm not really against formal education I have lot of friends that went to film school that learned stuff that I had to learn the hard way they have a lot of advantages that they learned in a like a very formal setting but for me specifically I can comment on myself as an individual I know my learning style and I know how it was like in a classroom I was doing good getting good marks but it's not really someone like me I'm very hands on and I would rather experiment and learn that way for me so some people prefer a formal setting for me like there's no way I just want to go out and like do so for me there's so much information available online and there's so much stuff which is accessible that there wasn't uh when a more traditional learning environment I was around so it's sort of like you can learn the same things but you have to make sure that if you are not going to school you can still learn when there's no structure discipline some people need yeah they need a school structure in order to soak in that information but you might save yourself fifteen grand not dewey like paying tuition well but I think it comes down to what you just said is that you still have to do the work you still have to practice because regardless of your path regardless of its in school or learning online you can watch as much education as you want but until you go out there and do it you don't become joey l and you don't become different strokes for different folks yes so speaking of chase jarvis were so excited to have him come in and talk with the joey l about the state of commercial photography but also all things that dangerous if you don't know him chase jarvis is a very highly sought after commercial photographer award winning and of course the co founder of creative live let's give a warm round of applause to chase her so these are your stools right yeah these are my stools how're you sit so far away it was closer to make you uncomfortable good morning everything's going well to just live it up a little bit good morning what's happening well we're being broadcast thousands of people hopefully and they're not noticing my socks don't match I covered up my socks they don't match either makes you feel any better um so this is your show thank you for having me as a guest so you want to talk about all things dangerous well like this is what we talked about just offset before he came back from the break was one of the things that I feel like gets talked about too much is all of the things that are obvious the things that you expect to find out a lot of the how to stuff which is I feel like um I feel like is easy pickings like what settings to put your camera on and for the folks that want to become a professional photographer especially in the commercial rome there's not a lot of talk about all of the stuff that happens behind the scenes behind the camera before the shoot after the shoot and a lot of those things I calm sort of the dangerous things or the things that we're not supposed to talk about s o I feel like just the common rhetoric online is all the stuff that you'd expect and there is a little sliver of that dangerous items and I'd like to like talk about money talk about contracts talk about being cool or not being cool all the things that aren't favorable and that's where they actually I think that the rubber meets the road so that was the the thing that I wanted to bring to your talk today because I know that you have um managed to escape all or a lot of those trappings and cut right through the b s to the stuff that matters why do you think people are afraid of talking about certain things do you think it's going to hinder like their image online we're afraid because they're not secure because like me I'm very honest like you are too in your block post some bloggers you khun like they scream bullshit and some don't I like to think that I'm a human being I can say like what went good what didn't quite go good normal life yeah but I mean obviously still being a professional with it yeah there's a way to approach it professionally for sure but those things the things that like the contracts that what rights you have to give and get on it son it's not always I think you can stand on stage at at a copyright conference and say that you know this is what I we always do it and then there's some exception and the exceptions never get talked about yeah failures don't get talked about you know how many times you have to try this before you figured this out did you have fear like overcome you and wear your paralyzing your creativity all those things happen to the best professional photographers in the world and this just doesn't get much of the mind share I think publicly so those are some of the things that I wanted to talk about and I think you had a list of other things too so there's a lot of dangerous topics like what what what what we do I mean you mentioned contracts I think that's interesting because a lot of the internet where photographers we love creative stuff we love to do it but at the end of day we have to like feed ourselves and put a roof over her head so you know pricing yourself is important that's something that a lot of people don't talk about in terms of how that's actually negotiated an advertising how that works how certain photographers can devalue that and ruin it for others if everyone's not on the same page so I mean that could speak in advertising it's always based on usage if you do a campaign which goes nationwide it's much different than a smaller editorial simon doesn't mean you're going to try harder on that set or trying less hard but ten hood how you're paid it's all on there has to be well there has to be one level of quality for how your images show up but in terms of getting paid it all depends on what the images and being used for because you are working to enhance and bring money to another entity so that's how advertising is always bases on message let's get into some meat on that can't we do that I'm going to go in a little bit deeper one well this is called dangerous all right so um ten dollars ten dollars all right so the first the first thing that I'll say is let's establish that it's about the work okay you could be the coolest dude on the planet you know the most beautiful photographer uh you could be the most handsome and dashing but that will get you exactly this far because you can only pull that shit once and then people find out you're phony so you have to deliver the work and everything that we're talking about from here forward has to assume that the work is good enough to get in front and to get the land campaigns to win jobs because if it's not then you have to go back to pine a which is just to continue to work on your portfolio so everything from this point is about the work I don't want to have to say we have to have the good work to get in and the way I often articulated is with a weird analogy with pro golf so could you imagine a pro golfer gets up on the first tee and then shanks it straight into the woods it doesn't happen because that golfer has been there a thousand times doesn't matter if there's ten people watching or ten million people watching it's raining you're sonny they can't say oh it was windy so I shanked it that doesn't matter and nobody cares they care that you hit it right down the middle on others better shots down the middle and less good shots down the middle but you're expected to hit the ball down the middle and as professionals that's the thing that I would stress that's the biggest difference between a really good amateur and amateur even a really good amateur and a professional is that we could make a picture regardless of the situation and there's a big difference in that small little gap you think that advanced amateur and pro or right up against each other I would argue that there's a big gap there so let's put that behind us and say that the work has to be there before you even get hired or you could get hired and you can blow it a couple times you don't get that much freedom to blow it sort of like if you went on stage at madison square garden is a musician and you sucked they're not going to invite you back and those concert promoters they talk so assuming that the work is good and there we are where we're going with that one cool cool so um I think there's a perception that cool is a requirement for being ah high end commercial photographer like joey you think I'm cool I think joey is cool was never cool but it's cool yeah but see this but we're getting but this is what we're getting to like the definition of cool is so broad and I think it's overly it's over it's missed its misunderstood it's inaccurate where you have to be is great at your craft because go back to point a it's about the work some of the best I think quirky and unusual and have if you have a vision yeah that's actually cool in the creative world that's not like it's not do you have a fancy car and do you world I'm looked sort of like I mean these are all I pulled these clothes off the floor I pentru before I came down here because he's running a little late but the idea that that photography and especially high in photography is synonymous with cool you have to chuck that out there so that is not the case and again the best photographers that I know they're quirky they allow their quirks tow have room in their pictures and that's why they get higher they get hired for personal vision so number one is not important to be cool it's more important to have perspective and training yourself to have a perspective is something that you will do by shooting over and over and over again and I think it goes back to what I was talking about earlier where we're talking about personal work right and shooting something which is true to you the things that's true too you are usually considered quirky toe others write your quirks is what makes you who you are so I mean personally I love hang around with like a bunch of weirdos because they're the people who are making usually the most creative stuff right so if we look about like nowadays okay everyone's connected to the internet before maybe in high school setting you might like not be very cool because you liked something weird or something quirky but nowadays on the internet you can find all of those one guy at that high school and like that's your niche right so when you're doing stuff you're sort of like pandering to a different audience now because everyone's so connected so even if you're like nish and do something really weird like if you love dressing up like a dog and walking like yourself you'll probably find someone on the internet who loves to do that do that do you think it's the the beautiful thing about internets right thank god I found someone who likes to do that when you got I think that is you know if we can extrapolate some meaning for the folks that are out there in those cameras what that means to you guys is having a personal vision is the most important thing and being true to that vision so it sounds really casual you can throw around but what does that actually mean let's dive into that for a second um you have to try and take pictures in the world that no one else can take that is why someone will come to hire you so if I understand that there's this method of learning where you look at the people that you aspire to be like whether they're you know professionals like joey or or others and is like I want to take a picture just like that so you practise taking that picture and he's trying to deconstruct how they set up their lighting and whatnot but ultimately what you have the gear that you have to shift into is taking that same sort of concept and say how would I do it differently and it's you know it's often said that there's no original work out there in the world anymore that's all derivative work based on people who have been before us the masters and whatnot I'd say that's that's not actually true because when you think about you taking a picture that no one else in the world could take there is something what do you have to bring to that you have to bring your own personal experience so you have sort of find out what's important in here before you go out there and especially relative to your the personal work that you're doing like you just take this gentleman over your shoulder here on the wall you had to spend a lot of time a lot of years to make the photo years to make that photo and why did you make that photo because it was important to you and you went there you made the relationship you spent time and energy to get that picture and that's something that there are pictures like that similar to that but there is not that picture and there is a world out there where as a professional commercial photographer you don't have to have two hundred clients a year you don't have to have fifty don't have to shoot a wedding every weekend if I have eighteen great jobs in a year it's just amazing here just because the economics of how much you get paid relative to other sort of editorial sam yeah I'm the exact same way like the clients that I go for with my work it's very specific right so it's going toe a lot of people are gonna not want it but the few people who do that's what I like shooting it explores what I'm interested in right um yeah I only have like a few select clients and it grows comes and goes but it's not like what you're saying it's not like two hundred things right because there's so many different niches in the photographer world that you start with what you're interested in first and then that could be the bass that you reach out for you and there's this people can people see it especially professional art directors photo editors they see they know if you're doing something that you love because it will be different let's have another sort of monica which is be different not just better incrementally better is is a trap that you can fall into you're going to be just want my life to be a little bit better because in that art world better only get you this far you have to build hit the ball down the middle but everything after that is about being different so when you can when you're different and you can put out that sort of a piece of work that other people wouldn't that's actually what gets noticed it's your unique take on something and this is why I think this is a dangerous secrets because most of the people that I know that I've mentored over the years they I work very hard to be like somebody else and the ones who have succeeded the most quickly have had really serious personal visions that's one reasons I invited you be uncreative life you think you've got great vision and you did so from age sixteen I don't know what you all were doing when you were sixteen but I know what I was doing and it wasn't what he was doing right on dh that personal vision is the thing that's going to differentiate you so you've got to be willing to put it out there because you only really need eighteen or twenty people to love what you do in a world of millions and millions how many art directors are there in the world how many photo editors like those folks are looking for different and unusual and that's what you should strive for it do not strive to be like the person that you aspire to be yeah there's a lot of people who rip off other photographers it doesn't matter if they were about me or apophis somebody else but the thing is is especially with everyone online it's like they're never going to get credit for that work they're just going to be a rip off artist so my advice to like people who are starting out it's like you got to start off experimenting that they wouldn't like wakes up with a personal vision so what you can do is like look through all the people who inspire you pick and choose things I love the way this subject matter feels but with this life but with this thing and then as you experiment with that on as you grow with that something happens some of your work looks starkly better than the rest of the like bullshit you were doing and then that is like a good path to go down more stuff like this and a rich eventually becomes what you're saying it becomes like very unique and personal to you because you've shaped it from all year experiences well said I couldn't have said it better myself I would like to maybe shift gears for second or suggest to the hosts that if you could start looking maybe into the chat room and on twitter and facebook for questions that you don't see all the time questions that are sort of in this more dangerous where it's sort of tab there you go can't wait to talk about so and we got some if you want to start um sure maybe we'll keep okay you keep collecting and we'll ramble on let us now okay but that's what I'm interested in fielding those questions because again go back to the opening statement that's the stuff that I feel like people really need to know right um so we talked about sort of a little bit about vision we talked a little bit about having your unique perspective we talked a little bit about how cool is some sort of bullshit metaphor that doesn't actually mean anything doesn't get you anywhere um what else and I am cool you're cool yeah that's why I e I think we could talk about you know what happens after the fact so you get the jobs and things happen where do you go from there how do you stay interested enough in what you do because I think another dangerous thing to talk about creative people are dramatically different from like a normal kind of job like our society almost doesn't have a structure yet for people who are creative and it shows in schools with like creative students just being pummeled with like very mundane work right so I think an interesting also dangerous talking point is how do you stay interested in what you're doing do you like for me what I do is I choose subjects that keep me up at night right I know if I have a project idea and I lose sleep over it it's probably one that I want to pursue right because if I'm like you know like this photo okay and awake like doing this kind of thing I know like it's going to suck some days it's not gonna be like all like uh people think photography is very glamorous oftentimes it's not so in order for me personally speaking in order to say interested I have to choose subject matter that I'm interested whether I'm a photographer or not so what about you what do you do when when you have like a rut and you you wake up and you're like I don't want to stay I go out the things that keep me up tonight I go out the things that sound hard that sound undoable that sound like there's risk involved in potential failure it's you know without being too cliche sort of with great risk comes great reward and nothing no safe path has ever delivered me a huge amount of reward whether that's money or success or any of those things it hasn't the things that where I was like wow this is going to be out there this is I don't know if I can do this I'm not sure if if I'm the right guy for the job I'm not sure if my vision is clear on this those things and started starting down that road when there is a bunch of fear built up and around what you're doing those have always been the ones that most that that pay the biggest evidence so you like fear its here's an amazing motivator and if if you were scared to do something then it probably is the right thing to be doing if you wake up in the morning and the first thing you gotta do is that that thing pops in your mind you gotta write that email that you don't want to write that's actually the one you have to start with and you know if it's a client it owes you money or you know whatever it is if it's something sitting there unsettling that's the thing you should take on and I take that same approach from my creative work no I think that's great you mentioned like fear being a driving for us it is for me to like the things that I fear doing are worth doing absolutely if I like I'm afraid to go somewhere do a certain project that's like I'm like yeah because once you succeed and you beat that fear you can only go upwards from there so like that feeling of like conquering something goes like a really long way uh speaking personally as well a couple of references so a friend of mine tim farriss who's actually been on creative life before I watched that one yeah tim's a studies that new york times best selling author a number one bestseller three times over um you know and he talks a lot about overcoming fear for him and he imagines what the worst possible scenario could look like you could actually go there in your minds like okay well this is going to fail this is going to fail this I'm never gonna get hired again at this ad agency and I'm gonna be out of money and then I have to let my studio assistant go and then it's just me not that bad I don't hear any like hunger death destruction you know at the end of the day outlining what the worst possible cases and then being willing you know there's that he actually talks about going there and actually putting yourself in that position every once in a while so you can feel how it's not that bad that would give you the way of us to go there so that's a little nut from tim and then a little nut from a guy called chuck close who's an amazing artist a photographer and a painter um chuck said something like uh if I only oh amateurs wait for inspiration pros get up and go to work and if I only waited to do work until that lightning struck my brain I wouldn't have got much work done so that's not to say that inspiration is an amazing key to catapult to great work but that's you have to sort of be working when that inspiration hits to be in a position to do something about it so if you just sit around pontificating and talking about what might be what could be someday I think that's probably a bad mode to be in and you should shift gears and put yourself in a position to actually do the work and embrace that fear thing that we were talking about earlier yeah you put yourself in a position to be inspired it's not going to like hit you one day you actually have to seek it and you have to be doing it and ironically the people who do more work are more likely to get inspired because you're in the moat urine in the creative moment yeah for me I love surrounding myself I was talking a little bit about this earlier but I love surrounding myself with like passionate people andi no that's kind of like yeah okay passionate people but when you're around so many people doing things and I surround people who are more talented than me who are like way better photographers or if I'm like in a room with like a bunch of guys I'd love to go into directing one day so I hang out with my friends on a production company called variable and they're like way better at that than me so when I'm with them I'm like so inspired because I'm like down here and they're there and that just makes me want to push forward and try more new things and the opposite is the other way around if you don't put yourself in those circumstances and there's nothing that's going to really inspire you right you're the average of the fine people you spend the most time with yeah I definitely believe in that also so who you spending time with you put yourself out there you're making yourself uncomfortable by choosing to be around people who are better than you at any given subject it ever get any given topic ideally if it's something that you aspire to that's the way to put yourself in an environment to succeed I feel like and none of these things like there's an ego component that tells us to put ourselves around our peers because there's comfort there there's ugh it's just by putting yourself in a comfortable position you feel like you're doing the right thing and you're not being you know hi flute I'd rather go be the the lowest guy on the totem pole in a room full of people that are amazing and have done things that other people in the world haven't done then take the more comfortable road so getting comfortable with being uncomfortable is uh that's a retweet herbal thing I've ever heard it right there's the quote for the quote contest do you want to do you want to go to their rooms I feel like yes let's probably maybe be a specific as we can about some of these things that are for boden just talk about in the creative industry yeah you open a floodgate of question you prompted them for fantastic stuff all right so the first one we'll start out with is from cb and they ask well regarding going back teo doing test shoots trying to build your portfolio our photographers hurting the industry by setting the expectation that they're willing to do the work for free no because when I mentioned test shoots it wasn't working for a client for free that's something that's very different so when I say test I don't mean you're approaching yeah I'll do all your stuff for free that would be devaluing when I'm it's a very big difference when I say test you're setting up something yourself where is like you're not under pitching for a job because you think it'll help your portfolio two very different things and I wouldn't concur with that the idea of us like about free for just a second and it'll go a little bit deeper I have this thing where I would either have it be free or my normal rate and someone doing something in the middle to mia's shape it's like this is how much I cost and if it's a non profit or whatever it's like oh yeah I'm interested in that and it's not a riel amount to make a living off of like oh I've got four hundred bucks like dude keep your full hair bucks I'm gonna come in I'm gonna crush it for you and then if at some point the future save your money so you can hire someone at a real rape because that's an embarrassment right there just you know I don't have to talk about that publicly but I'm gonna go in here if it's a test shoot for example I will treat it like a test you I will not take meager money to have them think that they could then go out and hire somebody else at that rate in danger so I'm educating the client at the same time that I'm sort of breaking them down and reminding them that this is the price and one other little nugget I'll throw in there is that if you ever hear clients say just do it this time at this rate and when and more money comes around we'll just make sure to give that to you next time I'm talking to you that and you guys over here to say but that is poisoned that's an absolute truth because I have never once I've had clients have swum clients upstream like I've drugged them with me over time and at a very very very carefully because I've been doing this for fifties only crave ever had for fifteen years but I have never once seen someone come in with five hundred dollars and then when five thousand dollars comes around call the same person because what's their perception you're the five hundred dollars and if I have five thousand dollars I'm going to go to the five thousand dollar dude so do not be fooled by that and I can say it I have there are no exceptions to this rule so chase pricing that could be a very taboo subject s o have a question that came in from stefan daniel schwartz in germany and he said how do you prevent or deal with other photographers trying teo devalue your type of work say in the industry commercial photography do you discuss and decide prices with others in your field of work or how to know howto others know how to deal with that so how do you even I don't personally go around and find out what my peers were charging mostly because it's none of my business I would like it to be but the reality is that we're not going to form a union anytime soon and we're not going to fix pricing what I try and do is maximize everything that I'm doing and I think the idea that I heard and then there's a little colonel that I wanted to address which is like do you try and go to them like my my belief is that that is their thing and this is your thing and you should maximise whatever it is that you think you're worth whatever do you think you can get and of course a lot of things have fixed budget so used you decide if you're going to do the work for that budget or not but trying to if you spend so much time trying to conjoined cajole the industry you're going to be disappointed you would be frustrated and you're going to be sucking a lot of time into a useless subject because this conversation has been going on since the beginning of time I'm more of a person who will focus on the client do the best thing that I can do get the most money and educate by doing so have my peers watch me succeed is the best education I can give them and all along talking to the client about how how much stuff in the world costs so what do you what your way I could add on that when I first started like I had no idea what to charge for things so instead of guessing on instead of coming from a place that could devalue others I just surrounded myself with professionals who do that so for example I'm like rough by an agency there in industry they know more than others that they depend on this so they're going to like quote correctly and through that experience I kind of learned you know what is what and the thing is is if I were to just guess it could really hurt me down the line because then you do become like kind of the cheap guy but the other thing is is I think a lot of people I think that there's some sort of guessing game going on often times with my clients at least that like the budgets defined they'll say this is what we have more or less like how much can you estimate you know based on your production values what what is it gonna cost if we have like this much toto work with and most of time it's just a matter of outlining what they have to work with and show where it's going and it might come out a little higher than that right but essentially and I are never lower no I didn't go lower but the thing is it's like is ah I don't really work with a lot of clients in my experience where like there is a back and forth guessing game unless maybe it's like a misunderstanding or it's like my first time working with them in terms of advertise now I know other people doing you know other areas of photography it might be different because you're not dealing with like a bookkeeper whose job is to tell you there's this much you can't go over this what do we do on these three days so for me it's just like being open with with with people and the thing is to is like when we have a budget we want to give the highest production value possible we want to show what we can do with that but we're also reflecting what people's rights are and what they're being paid that's an itemized budgets so never am I just saying oh you have a chunk of money give it to me it's always being designated to certain areas so they can see actually how much things are actually costing so later on if you want to re create that kind of work that is what it costs to do it the first time great so just to push on that for that person who's out there who has is getting their first client they ask what's your budget or is that person is that potential client just going to say here is my budget how does that just get in there work well I think photographers know how much it costs to do what they do but so much is the case by case a bit basis like for example advertising the photographer's fee is based on usage rite so yes they have a budget for the photo shoot which they can go and they're like what is the usage you can base it on that I mean typically I know for me when clients have have come they say like this is the area where we were thinking it might be different for you know I think that that is that is common but there's also like just give us an estimate for these three days and in my opinion having like knowing what it costs to run your business is a really important part of being a business person so if you're just throwing darts in the air you're not doing yourself any favors you have to know what it costs to run your business and you know based on how many assignments that you get what it's gonna cost to be successful and where your risk and where you if you do the work for that much you're not gonna be able to be successful so um I like to know those numbers and let's let's also be frank there are with pricing you're able to position yourself in the market place you are saying that I believe that this is where I plug in and I'm not for everybody but this is what it costs to work with me and the thinking is that you can on lee do that once you're established I will tell you that the very first day rate I ever got was two thousand dollars and when I threw that number out there I was quaking in my boots I didn't have an agent I didn't have a manager at nothing it was like okay well yeah it's going that's two thousand bucks a day and they said okay cool we needed for six days what's that what when can you be here e I should ask for three and so in the you know there's a lot it's more sophisticated than that generally speaking I don't want to oversimplify are the negotiating process but generally speaking when you were pricing yourself you have an opportunity to put yourself in the market place and the thinking of well I'm a newbie I can't be expensive I can't be worth that you can be brands launch all the time whether it's perfume or tennis shoes and there they could be really expensive they don't have a position on marketplace but that can create a perceived you know piece of value and I remember my dad saying I hope he's watching right now because all you should just give in those photos you need to you need to practice times I actually you know I'm gonna charge him I'm gonna charge and what I think is the right amount because I believe where I fit into the marketplace so um yeah I feel like pricing is an indicator of value it's not the only indicator you have to be able to deliver the work but if you have the confidence in the work that you're able to put out there and you can decide where to put yourself in the market place that looks like eric you have a question and I got a question so based on that like first time I was asked to give a bid for something I had no idea on I thought I did a bunch of research on the internet and I was like this is more than I would have asked him for us I feel like I said I was nervous about it but then when it was all done they hand me the check they were like by the way you might want to look into this because we'll pay we would've paid you five times you know when I was like thanks but is there a resource than for somebody in that position I mean that you guys would recommend to go look you know I go reference the one thing I realize is you can also get you could buy you know really good source of information online that's total crap when it comes to your pn the magazine does great breakdowns of budgets time to time as well as a photo editor dot com doesn't break downs who was the other one from the what's the art buyers bog does it too uh yeah our buyer I think our buyer's I don't know the you're all but those three things but european does like a study sometimes on on assignments and the reason why they do it is because they're the same they don't want to devalue the industry so you can see what an automotive advertising session cost those air great resources are really really good reverses and what I think there's insight that's delivered there that again teo talk dangerously that you actually get to see how much the world thinks this stuff costs and there's too much mud you can go and you can go you can actually go to that I can do it cheaper mode which what's that going to do to your brand and then industry I'm not here to tell you how to price yourself but you can just do the natural extrapolation of oh jeez stylist you know five hundred dollars a day for stiles I know of a friend you'll do it for one fifty if you turn in a bid that is one fifth of what it's supposed to be and the art buyer is an experienced buyer you will get automatically chucked on your ear not to be called again because they know that you're a rookie based on what you turned in so the ability your ability to find resource is like you know I a p d and like a photo editor where these sorts of topics are discussed and you can tell that it's normal to charge seven fifty down dollars a day for a stylist and that plus props plus wardrobe plus we know whatever those things are that is going to get you you're going to be in the realm of what's expected and this is specifically on price I'm not talking about what's expected creatively because you need to blow these people's minds but what's expected from a production standpoint and if you come in super cheap you're going to get laughed off the stage never to be asked back we pass them like that man I don't know if I'm hijacking this great thank you hope it's okay to ask another pricing question okay going to stand up for what's your name aaron aaron cool um in joey you should know you shoot a lot of both editorial commercial advertising work and I know that magazines budgets are typically much lower and say commercial work how do you deal with getting you know you're doing work for both one pays less or if you just found a way to get your magazine claims to pay you more no like magazines are actually very very like they have divided defined pricing structures if if if you're worried about like magazines were much easier than advertising so for example a certain magazine will know that's how much they pay for the cover image that's how much they pay for each individual images worth that much what might change is the production cost to actually create that so if that's why I'm a big fan of itemizing budgets because then your fees that you get paid as a photographer that you take away never change depending on how complex something was to set up so for example if we did a shoot for a magazine which has like a grandiose location we're flying people that never gets taken out of what I'm being paid that's a production cost right so magazines have a set rate for certain images that you get paid and then the other money might change depending on the gear that's rented taking people but it doesn't change for you yeah and I'll you know sort of dovetail with that which on average the price for a commercial shoot to be ten to fifty times more expensive than a magazine shoot that's just on average and the one of the ways that I when I started out I looked at that difference your letter and said why would I do any magazine and I went straight for commercial which is very very unusual and it's harder to get hired because the typical path is to you know develop a portfolio then work from magazines than your magazines they get a lot of tear sheets than commercial clients can see that you're in these magazines your trusted you performed and then they'll hire you for commercial jobs because of commercial job for a big brand especially a top one hundred brand in the world they spent a lot of money and there's a lot of risk and hiring someone who doesn't have experience so the perception is that you need to sort of be in the trenches long enough to get express to get experience now one of the beautiful things about this era of photography that went right now and just creativity in general is that is a traditional path that is not the only path I am living example of doing it differently I don't wouldn't recommend it um but it was just again being different not just incrementally better and when I had shot a bunch of commercial assignments and then I decided I want to go back to this magazine stuff because it looks really cool there's a lot about editorial opportunity to get your name out there when I went to these magazines like where in the hell have you been it was like I was busy shooting this this isn't this and they were like oh great so is automatically in at the editorial room so yet for me were more interesting thing about that is I didn't go the path of editorial first then adds I went straight to add a cz well but to me shooting editorial is just as important because it gives you kind of like a different playing field because often times editorial is more frequent so I talked a lot about adding fresh work to your book advertising there's so much pre production that goes into one shoot that you might shoot maybe hopefully you'll be in a good place you're doing like one or two per month that's awesome but like what about the rest of the time and it's like if you're shooting for magazines that are consistently shooting and pumping out stuff it gives you the chance to have a lot more work and keep things more fresh and relevant right because ads have a very long shelf life that's kind of how the usages dictated is going to be around for a while magazines you know they're on the shelf for maybe a month max right so doing things that are fresh help you as a photographer in all realms in advertising in editori and we talk about danger there is a danger of that and I've personally experienced that I mean I'm in that mode right now where I'm so busy as uh uh sought after commercial photographer and those campaigns whether you like it or not if you're shooting for a top brand you're going to come in you're going to put your stamp on it but there's a brand guideline book that's this thick and you you're you're in a small box relatively speaking you could go crazy in that box and you can deliver some unexpected but there are a set of paradigms that have been established long before you if you're shooting for one of these big brands let's just throw nike out there the brand book for nike is literally this thick I can do this can't do this has to look like this has its feel smell look color all this stuff and so the belief is that you get all this creative freedom you've got you know we like constraints as creatives actually we we perform well in a box but if you just do those and then when you put in your portfolio what does it look like it looks like the work that everybody else wants you to do so you can you can influence you khun wrench on this stuff over here but if you're not finding time to shoot personal work and you're not finding time to shoot editorial where you have a little bit more freedom than your book's gonna look like the book that somebody else wants youto have which ultimately is a dangerous thing so I'm personally experiencing that right now I'm in touch my website in two years the portfolio picture and I'm still getting calls but that's what keeps me up at night is like well I've got so much work that I have I haven't even taken the time to put it on my site because I'm too busy so there's you know there are things to be afraid of and success is reasonable reasonable thing to be scared too you were wasting your hey don't have to read it and you own this place man well you've got a lot of I'm I'm excited about it so building upon what you guys were just talking about alvito had asked to both of you in a real world scenario where you are hired for your cool factor or for whatever it is that it is your style and the client knows what they want but it's conflicting with your personal style or taste do you bend over for them or still try to fit it into your staff have walked away from lots of jobs because it I know knew that I couldn't deliver the thing that they wanted not like not technically enable but that I didn't want to be associated with that and I think that that's a position of privilege that I have earned over the course of a decade on dh so we should maybe in the next question talk about recommend I recommend holding onto a personal vision because that's the thing that actually get you hired and when you start diluting your personal vision too much that's not to say you shouldn't take jobs they're outside your sweet spot we'll get to that in a second but to hold on to the personal vision is something that that is that holds respect in the industry and you don't have to be a jerk about it there's a there's a really easy way to say you know it doesn't seem like we're seeing eye to eye and I think there might be someone who's better suited for it I can even make some recommendations therefore people that are my friends I think would be great what they just going I thought every photographer would kill to get an assignment like I I just want the ones that are the right ones for me where I could deliver something that no one else in the world could deliver and the person who's hiring you is insane like well what would you do you know and then you and then if there is an opportunity to shape the creative a little bit more towards what you want then you might be a better match but don't be afraid to walk away and I acknowledge publicly that this is a it's a privilege to be in that position but we'll talk next about what it's like to not be in that position and how to handle it but before then yeah I wanted to say that the whole reason behind building a cohesive portfolio it's like you're not like it's very often it is very uncommon that I'm asked to do something that I wouldn't normally do because my portfolio so cohesive and like structure it was the case maybe earlier on when I ask for starting why had more eclectic work if I didn't get a job people wouldn't really know what it is but I sort of since I have a sort of stamp of the way that I've been doing things lately it's like that's they want to hire me to do that so often times on shoots it's a collaboration I you know I I obviously they're hiring me I'm working for them at that point but the best thing of ah photographer khun do is interpret what they need which will help them and add something and bring something to the table most times clients don't want a photographer that just follows the diagram or follows like the reference they want a step beyond and the reason why they're hiring you to do that eyes because your book prove that you're capable of doing that so I have something called coco he said it's not gonna like no one would ask me uh you know to do like a like a a product shot of something like on a white background cause that gets nowhere in my portfolio but it might be like all of somebody else's portfolio they can go to a specialist for that yeah and just steering them in that way I think is really hopeful into sort of parlor off that I fully concurred that that's people are hiring you because they think that you do this kind of work that's generally how they want to approach things because remember their ass is on the line because if this doesn't go well it costs hundreds of thousands of dollars often and it could if they do have a bad shoot it could blow the whole products I go over launched you know time launch so these things there's a lot of pressure in there and doesn't have to cost hundreds of thousands of it even ten thousand dollars is no one wants to throw that garbage so there's a little bit more pressure there but I would say that the thing that is often not discussed is so they give you a creative reef in here's the tear she says looked like we wanted to look like this it's often a sketch because the photograph doesn't exist in the world and the way that you add value I like to start with the sketch and I like to nail that and elect a nail it really early usually so I can show him how easy it is for me to do that work and that's really not where we should end up okay here's your checks all the boxes that you help but let's go deeper and so I give them the thing that's expected and then when I try and do that early and then I have total freedom to within a box that we talked about to really blow their minds and nine out of ten times it's not the one that they sketched up in the creative brief that gets selected is the ad it's the exact same thing it's something that is that it completely blew their mind like whoa yeah or it's their idea but you like you've translated it to a photography medium or like you switched the composition slightly or did something like as a photographer to add something to it and more often times and not they use like the variation that I made yeah but that's that's again why have more repeat clients then I do like different people hiring me for random things I've repeat clients because they know when I come to set that only a little you deliver and they trust me more with every shoot on that then you end up being in on the conceptual end of things and they really want to know your opinion that that's the thing that again it could be luxury because this is the only current ever had but I get brought in way earlier in the process now because they liked my brain as much as that my button finger the clients that I first start shooting for I'm not brought on early and then as we like shoot maura maura take together become almost like friends so to speak then at that time they start trusting me and be like oh you know we're thinking of this thing but you know we really liked what you did here like do you have any input for this and that I love doing that because I can be there in the early process yeah and I think that's an opportunity for you to demonstrate your vision most of the people that are hiring photographers there are some who understand they're hanging for their vision a lot of especially in large fast pace add worlds they're hiring you to check a box oh she's done this kind of photograph before here's the green apple next yellow banana check and so if you can come in and you can add something early on to that experience then they are able to put you in a different box is something someone who's not just a box checker but someone who has a real vision and then instead of the person who originally was going to get paid five hundred dollars and when the five thousand dollars comes around they wouldn't give it to you now when you've demonstrated that you're actually a very strong concept tool creative that when you're on this job and something comes up in the future where they know that you could deliver based on the experience of habit he wants said that's real value I think that has a ton of value so I want to go back into two things one was the thing that we left but behind the second ago which is hey I'm poor I'm just starting out how do I do this without compromising my vision chase thanks a lot for all the advice but I need to eat my kids need to eat my whatever so here's here's the approach I think this is another one of these dirty secrets and photography I feel like it's if you can make money with your camera early in your career you should do it here's what you should not d'oh if you are saying you want to be the next joey I'm going to do I'm just this is hung and shoot I'm going to shoot you know cool movie posters and that ass campaigns for some of the biggest brands in the world this is the only thing I want to do money's getting slim and your friend's friend says hey we should my wedding it's like I can get you twenty five hundred bucks to shoot my wedding here's what you do you look at your bank account you make a little go and then you say yeah I'll do that and what you don't do you you go shoot the wedding you deliver a great product what you don't do is you do not talk about it you do not that you don't say well that was easy twenty five hundred I'm going to go open a wedding I'm going to do a wedding photo site on the side and then because the thing that's gonna happen is you're gonna get sucked into a wedding for talking about that wedding photography is bad but you told me earlier that's not what you want to do you want to be a hard core commercial photographer working for the very best brands in the world if you start being that person plus the wedding photographer plus the kid portrait photographer your brand is going to be you know in shambles no one's going to want to hire you for you're going your work will be desperate all over the place I understand you have to eat we've all come up through this so do the work don't talk about it and as soon as you get right back to what it is that you pursuing your path immediately get right back to it that's done trying to think about anymore and go on to the next thing it's really that easy you're nodding like you think like that resonating with you okay good so I forgot the other thing we're going to go back too but what do you think about that no I agree I mean there's some shoots that I that I will do which are great even creatively very interesting why I signed on the first part but they might actually distract my portfolio and I do have a focus of where I'm going and it doesn't mean like that she wasn't good or even like you see said it was not paid well I can laugh all the way to the bank going the bank not the portfolio but if it distracts from the focus that I'm doing I won't put it on on thing I won't make another section for it I won't do anything because like you say you might get slowly going down that path which I think on a deeper level actually relates back to just being happy with what you do so it's kind of like a device I might be doing these shoots it's like great I had a a great time and said it's creatively fulfilling but if that's not the direction where are your trajectory of where you're going it's better to just maybe keep it off because you know sometimes I how about friends with their projects and whatever but it's very easy to like wow I made so much money on this that's like very temporary like currency has a current currency is a current you can come and go for me I'd rather think about the long term things that I'm doing and how is my portfolio gonna last me in my entire career versus just like taking everything that I can and like ruining in the end so I'm thinking of it like as a long term career of something that I hope to be doing uh tom dead yeah I think that that's a that's a fair assessment and they we understand that that the world revolves around money to pay rent and to eat food to buy food for your family so again we don't want to take a pretentious stan because I don't think you'll listen to what we're saying but the idea of be the way I approach it this is in a nutshell is I have a filter and I have a handful of things and that push every job through that filter you know we get requests not every day but every couple of days like way want you to do this work for this client in this agency or whatever way hold it up we say ok does it does it check a number of these boxes is eyes the brand of cool brand is the creative cool creative that's a good fit for me are the people cool is it paid does it pay well and if it doesn't check a bunch of those boxes then I know that it's not a good thing for me to be doing and you can laugh all the way to the bank and you could do something that doesn't isn't in your sweet spot he eats at your soul a little bit and I'm not too high and by your proud to do work for money because I'm in business and I think um having the having the comfort of understanding and being able to voice that and say that is important because this is the only job of her hat I'm good at it I have a long healthy career and if you didn't have sort of an understanding that money is an important part of that you're not you're not going to be around for very long so being able to think and talk about in terms of a filter and this filter has to line up with your your brand objectives what you want out of this whether it's happiness whether it's you know success whatever whatever measurement you put on there that's a good approach I feel like I have a filter and now back to you follow the head up how about with a question you guys have talked about the keyword agency quite a bit and that has prompted quite a few questions from the internet from z ten ph photo fashion tv in singapore there wondering a za commercial photographer how important is it to be right presented is working with ad agencies and production houses the way to go or can we make it by just being on her own don't start up with that go ahead so I can speak from personal experience because I do work with agents I do work with people who represent my work for me it's a matter of taking away tasks that I'm just not good at or test that I don't want to focus on so things to do with like money right so I have a very solid business plan I know what it costs to keep my business running each month and it goes into what chase was saying before it checklist okay is that drop going to do that or not but there's a lot of things that go on behind the scenes in between shoot so the most time that I can spend working creatively means I'm doing what I'm best at so I would like personally to designate those tasked agents and two professionals working in that industry same way is like I don't like my agents to to be producers will hire producer who's good at that right so do I think all photographers need agents to be successful there's some there's some who don't but they're also handling a lot of the business side of things that I've since removed myself from so um they're taking a cut for that but to me that is extremely worthwhile on dh not to mention like someone asked early about like who's helping me go through my portfolio and choose things like I'm very new to the industry um and aligning myself with professionals like that does good things for me um how does one go about getting an agent for those asking um well uh anyone could be your agent right you could get your mother and be like that's my agent but it doesn't mean that they're good at what they do right it's might sound nice on a card yeah let me call my agent mom I uh you know um but the thing is is um once you've built up a sort of unified body of work which has value uh that people want to hire you for of course an agency will run and represent you because they could make money from you right this is how the world rotates so if you've built out was the theme here yeah so if you've built up a body of work then you can start reaching out to agents you look a uh uh agencies who are established and they should a have a good roster of artists where you fit in right so maybe not everyone's doing exactly what you're doing but be there also very passionate about your work I want to work with people who actually know about what I do who know the kinds of assignments to think about me for and to pitch me for um and sort of have like a nice working relationship that way I would I can't align myself more concretely with joe on this one the I have throughout my career had agents and not had agents and you know started gone back and forth based on what I thought was the best match um the thing that I will I will add an exclamation point two is doing the things that you're good at is the best way to run a business and trying to get trying to spend a lot of time to get good at the stuff that you suck at is not a good you want to play to your strengths and outsource your weaknesses and in order to do that that may mean you get an agent it may mean you bring some of that stuff in house so um I have historically had a much larger staff than most photographers um you know I have on staff producers because I want a job produced a specific way I you know early in my career I felt what it's like to just go with the different producer all the time or have a couple and I just wanted that's another thing that I wanted teo control because I'm trying to give people an experience not just a photograph and at the end of the day that was important to me now whether or not you bring in a sales person or whatnot that is a personal preference I feel like on def we shift gears for a second go to how do I get an agent the idea is if you don't have work it's not time to go to an agent you have to get work and ideally you're very very busy and then the agency will have an opportunity to select from a number of them that like that like your work um because like joey said those agents are looking to make money there they have relationships reason you don't use your mom as an agent is because the purpose of an agent is to get you work and the purpose of that that agent is to live in that world where work is talked about in their opportunities galore they live in that circle of ad agencies and art buyers and they have infinitely more connections than your mom your mom might be nice but doesn't have twenty years of experience in the industry so in order to try and get one of those folks ideally you are busy enough on your own or you want to shift gears and you have a body of work that's finding and interesting and then those folks are gonna want to represent you so if you don't have that go there first how about it we have how many minutes left there we re answered enough questions from the universe you sure are and we have time for just one more question just one more question we may so fast I'm just going to stick around this next question resonates really deeply within me because I am just dipping my toes into commercial photography and the question is presented by in touch with jill who asked there is a cliche that in the commercial photography there are many there mainly male photographers and less female photographers do you think this is true if then why and um is there anything I can do that is different that makes me stand out I think I mean yes there are more male photographers and family photographers I know that just from working in the industry but doesn't matter like you know I just think it just if you want to trace the roots back it might we might be going very historical why that isthe right way might we we might trace it trace it back sixty thousand years why there's an unbalanced workplace but it doesn't matter now I think that female photographers can actually be more sensitive to certain issues as females are in real life and they could have pros and cons I'm a fan of equality but also their gender differences of like females can look make you guys look really good whereas like me I'm like I'm not really sure sometimes I'm comfortable with my enough with myself and I say oh this guy looks handsome here but like a female photographer can do so much more things and a guy can so in a way it is kind of a way tio to say something about your work and say a thing about yourself but really like doesn't matter female attire for his mouth it's like come on now yeah it does if anything that's an opportunity to be different to step in to uh on environment where there is one stereotype that is holding true gives you an opportunity to sort of blow that up and so I would encourage her to get after it and in the end again it's about the work first all these are the things that come into play but it's the work first do you have work that looks like the work that they want and you know I would say the second thing gender is so far down on this list I'm I'm frustrated that it is out of balance that would love to see many more females in our line of work because I think there's a tremendous value they're not based on gender but just based on equality the idea that the work is first remains second is probably are you kind are you nice because the people on set have to hang around with you sometimes for weeks on end you goto barbados and it's a three week shoot the art director is not gonna hire you if you're a dick just straight up because they have to live with you and the idea of just bossing people around and being a jerk lasts about this long that stuff that's made for tv not for reality because they will fire you in a heartbeat or just gently forget to invite you to the next one if you're not fun to hang out with and I'm not saying need to be the life of the party you just have to be a good human being because that's part of it's a very very close collaborative working environment and if you're just boston one around you treat your assistance like dirt and you're you're too opinionated and you don't approach it from a collaborative standpoint you're no fun to be around you're not gonna get the job yeah I agree if you like what you're saying gender is like so far down on the list to matter that there's so many more important things to worry about being hindered it's got it's got to be intimidating though if you do look at a market place that smell dominant I would say that's a great opportunity for differentiation so you want to be different not better that's right different not better so chase maybe one one last question we have a couple more minutes before we send you off what is the most disruptive thing that you see in the commercial photography world right now I feel like the most disruptive thing is the eye's context so a long time ago um a picture was just a picture you know the painting on the ceiling of the church or the chiseled cave painting was just a just a picture and then it became well who painted that picture who photographed that photograph and then what did they photograph it with and then where was it shot and who's in the picture and so there's this thing that's called context that is rapidly evolving into a very very important part of photography that's transcending just the photographer as picture maker so what sort of social following do you have how um you know who is who are you able to work with that somebody else might not be willing to able to work with and the reality is that those things are mattering now more than ever before and if you feel like that's a bummer because you don't know anybody has to feel like you know if you just feel like it's unfair I'm sorry because the industry doesn't care the industry wants you to be able to develop context around your work innocent doesn't mean rush out and shoot a bunch of famous people but it does mean do what you can do to develop a context around your work that is something that's desirable for me I really enjoy shooting this still campaign and directing the commercial I could do both of those things now and so that adds some context to my personal story and the fact that I have a large social audience and can point to that when the campaign's done that's also more context so over time we're continuing to evolve away from picture as final thing now I'll go back to thing we open this thing with if you have it if you take crappy pictures none of this is applies to anything I'm saying you have to be in the game if they get in the door before any of this matters so that's step one step two is creators much context around you work as you can I think I agree with what you said no I think like the original question was what is the biggest hindrance in the photography now what's the what's the biggest disruption going on photography disruption I think that ah photography is becoming less of a science and more of like a readily available thing for everybody you know everyone's on instagram everybody got drunk uncle bill with a dslr right at the wedding so I think perhaps it's just um remembering the sense of responsibility that goes with photography I can especially talk about my personal work like the travel portrait that I do when I'm dealing with sometimes a lot of politically sensitive subjects and back in the day when photography was more of a science you needed chemicals you need very like you needed someone um who really thought at what they did and it wasn't just so easy to do things so when those things go and the technology becomes easily accessible you also have a lot more people doing it and it's become so easy that they forget um that their sense of responsibility especially when you travel and photograph someone and you're depicting that person for the world in one frame or like one photograph if so often times I've seen you know photographers go to a lot of the same areas I do and you could just tell looking at the photo like they did not give a shit like they went there and like brain prey and the problem with that is it devalues people who do go in depth and people who do spend the right amount of time so if there's anything that I'm dealing with which is a little bit annoying is like all the people who like ruin it for me before I even get there or or go and create expectations around foreigners visiting and they do the wrong irresponsible disrespectful thing and then when I come as a foreigner I'm roop I'm roped together in that group yeah I like the sense sense of responsibility because it was a really good one and one of the things that I'll I'll end with I guess is that it's wishful thinking to think that industries don't evolve okay you know I have heard this discussion for years and years and years anyone with the deal's larkin blah blah blah if you believe that then you're actually not taking good pictures because if you can't take a better picture than a kid with the s a r a drunk uncle bob with gsr then the problem and the onus is actually on you so no industry waits for technology no industry puts the brakes on industries evolve at the pace that they've all that and sure we can infect or sort of hamper their evolution but only to a point technology moves very quickly these days and finding a way and understanding it being out for yourself that's what you have to work within rather than spend time fighting against the machine is in my opinion a way to move forward and to do so respectfully and as much time as you can spend educating your peers a cz reasonably possible then great don't get lost in trying to fight the you know if you just pick it at the if you just go to the picket lines and don't do any work then it's hard to have a voice so that's right I mean staying focused and just eyes on what you're doing and as much as you can help those next to you that's great but you gotta have your eyes on your target excellent we'll chase thank you so much for joining us today during both of your perspectives and the back and forth is has been fantastic and chase is what I say that jenna richardson prior on facebook said thank you mr jarvis for adding these probably next yes practical practical aspect to the education and business side of our field and I got to get me that exploding smiley face mess of a team well thank you very much and I want to say thanks to everyone who's paying attention to creative live this is something that has been a dream come true of myself of my partners for a long time and the fact that you know that a lot of people tune in from all over the world the fact that you guys travel in some cases across the country and joey the fact that you uh you know we talked about this maybe eighteen months ago in tow have you finally on the on the platform is something I'm eternally grateful for so thank you all for supporting what it is that we're doing and helping us make the world a more creative place much respect thier way

Ratings and Reviews

mc
 

Are you keen to learn about creating painterly portraits - as much in-camera as possible? Then you likely get how important lighting is. What you may not realise is how little a role photoshop plays in creating such effects: what such JoeyL like portraits seems to mean is: - thinking about portraits - what they are - how light creates them - how therefore to see and manage light "if you can use one light you can use many" - how to tune the image to create the output in your vision. Within this there are thoughts about photography as a business, workflows and data management. It's all remarkably accessible, too. Joey's teaching approach is calm and effective: he has mastered the art of the recap to make sure everyone is on the same page " first we did this; then we did.. then we did..." THe pragmatics of the course - the lighting/shooting sessions - are sensible progressions from one light (including using a flashlight and a foil lined cardboard box) to a multi-light set up. Intrigingly the lenses are limited no. of primes in the dlsr sections; the medium format is well motivated too, and clearly not a limiting factor for creating the desired image look. This course should get bonus marks for going above and beyond expectations on two counts: the portfolio section for people looking for work is v.well done in that a) it exists at all and b) Joey is not just highlighting his own work, but showing the work of others to allow him to explore options in presentation. Fantastic. The discussions of workflow- including data back up strategies - and image processing including print and web - are also sufficiently detailed and rational to be able to test out quickly. Delighted to see this work being done in PS v6 for those who haven't leapt to CC versions yet. It's also rewarding and inspiring to hear Joey say "i don't have a studio" Likewise, though Joey does work with a crew, it's clear they're working as a team and for very specfici purposes - all of which get costed into a budget. There's a lot of questions about the experience of shooting for a client - about the air of calm one has to maintain even if freaking out - to get through these points. It's all very real. WHile joey is clearly very confident about what he does, he's not arrogant, and the confidence is earned and reassuring. IT's clear he's an alpha kinda guy, a little competetive, and working for him (preferring folks who don't sleep - oh dear) may be different than attending a class - but this IS a class and his manner and way of teaching/organising/presenting work extremely well. Because the course is so complete, going not just from a to z but -z to +z it seems, these next bits are small beer: There's a rather surprising section with CL founder Chass Jarvis - but many CL courses have guest teachers bring in guests to add perspective. Here the section mainly demonstrates how gracious Joey is as an interviewer. And because all the other bases are covered it's no loss to have this business discussion of de-bunkings about how to get into this game. In other sections we see Joey as a patient guy too - answering quesitons it seems several times that had been answered previously in the course - while not everyone has tuned in for the whole thing, it's undrestandable why live questions weren't better filtered to highlight new questions - but Joey calmly will indicate as discussed before...and then give the answer. Never get the sense he's irritated by the repetition. While we hear his father as a strong critique his folks must be well pleased with how Joey's doing. This course has no extra materials - and that's ok: the links to the portfolios and software used are all in the discussions. Joey's blog also goes through a lot of discussions about gear lists. So head to his blog for supplementary detail. Overall it's hard to find a more complete course in CL on a complete portrait photography workflow. Scott Robert Lim's somewhat more frenetic but incredibly detailed 10k wedding photography and Joel Grimes Strobe workshops are also v.good in this end to end regard. But this one goes a bit beyond these perhaps in terms of vibe/cohesion (that may be unfair - it's just a feel thing between the three). Some folks label courses as "something for everyone" - i don't know if that's the case or if this case largely appeals to keen beginners who are exploring lighting and thinking about business thoughts, or if more experienced/pro photographers will be gripped by each moment, but my suspicion is that even for experienced portrait'ists it will be engaging at the very least to see how a fellow pro manages a shoot. Excellent excellent offer. With the guarentee, this is a no risk, slam dunk if commercial portrait photography (or painterly /cinematic and maybe earthy portraits) are for you. Thanks CL for bringing this together.

duane hodge
 

This guy is amazing, so easy to listen to, great personality and style; very engaging, worth every penny and more. Joey L. sparked my creativity and tied up some lose ends and misunderstandings I had concerning lighting. Creative live has some great courses but this is one of my favorites, thank you Joey I hope you continue on in your success and I love the end of the class when you said what is the worst thing that could happen if you fail. Great point of view, very encouraging, AWESOME ATTITUDE!!!

Vinh Huynh
 

I think this is a great class. You can definitely tell Joey L is a master of his craft because of his simple explanations. He's concise in the way he teaches, demonstrates, etc. The most important thing is his workflow or process he uses while setting up the shot, how he builds, etc - it's essentially a "checklist" of how he likes to do things. Something newer photographers need to know. He did forget a couple of the models' name here n' there, but I'm sure he met them shortly before filming for the day started, lol. This is something you should not do, but he apologizes and openly admits. There are times a couple questions are asked and he has no shame in admitting that he's just "openly thinking of what would happen," but does not know for sure because he shoots in a specific style. For someone his age (younger) who has penetrated this tough industry, you can definitely tell why he's successful - very mature with a great knowledge base. You can definitely tell he sees lighting differently from how an advanced amateur or even semi-professional photographer does... even in the introduction he talks about how important lighting and the quality of that light is. For those who are more advance, there might not be as many nuggets and pearls. There isn't any information on how he got into the industry, how he grew his business etc - with exception to how he feels you should display your portfolio in both web and print format. Overall, I think someone who's looking to get into commercial photography would benefit from this workshop. However, someone who's already getting paid and just looking to advance his or her own career probably already has the skillset that Joey L teaches and is best spending time just studying light. A little about me... I'm primarily a natural light portrait photographer specializing with families, kids, pets, etc. I'd consider myself an advanced amateur and I found this workshop beneficial. I hope that helps!!

Student Work

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