Marketing Personal Work

Monday August 9th, 2010

When I ask our photographers about their creative process, most of them make sure to emphasize the importance of personal work. It’s a space to develop creativity, hone your skills and explore new ideas.

But it’s also potentially a way to provide clients with pictures they hadn’t realized they needed—that is, to generate a body of work that leads to a paid assignment for the photographer and a fresh set of images for the art director.

A case in point is our Atlanta photographer Ryan Gibson. The first thing you need to know about Ryan is that he loves baseball.

So he decided to take some time to do a fulfilling personal project, following the progress of a local high school baseball team, the Calhoun Yellow Jackets (below), posting his photos and some of his thoughts on his blog.

The Calhoun Yellow Jackets (Photo by Ryan Gibson/Atlanta)

Ryan wrote in the first post about what he hoped to achieve:

I want to document a high school baseball season in a way that is personal to each and every participant. Perhaps more than that though I want to document the game of baseball – in my opinion, the greatest sport ever invented – in a way that will portray not only the action on the field but all of the details, large and small, that add up to make this game so great.

Well, the Calhoun Yellow Jackets went through their season undefeated. In the middle of the State Championship playoffs, Ryan contacted our lead producer Jess, wondering whether it was worth the investment of time and money to follow the team to the State Championship. Jess figured that Ryan just needed a little encouragement to make the jump, and assured him that it was a marketable opportunity.

The team went on to win the championship, and Ryan found himself sitting on a valuable pile of photos. He checked in with Jess to find out where he could most effectively market the images. Jess suggested that Ryan get in touch with ESPN Rise, the high school sports magazine.

At first ESPN Rise wasn’t sure what to do with the images, but they were so impressed with Ryan’s work, they gave him another feature/cover assignment (he blogged about it here). Eventually they decided to run the baseball photos as well, and Ryan is optimistic about providing more photography for them in the future. “It’s a great example of someone turning an unpaid personal project into a marketing opportunity and making out in the end,” Jess told me.

Our Seattle photographer Nick Hall has also had personal work on his mind lately. He has a very useful and detailed guide for photographers, in which he concludes:

Personal work demonstrates artistic initiative and a thirst for creativity. People who hire photographers like to see that the person they are going to hire does more than just fulfill a creative brief and instead brings a unique set of ideas to the table.

It’s well worth going over Nick’s example of a personal project, which he calls Seasons of Subsistence, images of a Yup’ik summer fishing camp in Bristol Bay, Alaska.

He shares more images in a blog post, and goes behind the scenes. I’m especially captivated by the strikingly red salmon being hung up for smoking.

Recently our Kansas City photographer Austin Walsh was part of a Photoshelter event called “Focus on Your Passion,” in which he discussed the importance of “passion projects.” The Photoshelter crew recounted the experience on their blog, and mentioned being “blown away” by a particular passion project of Austin’s, a video piece about a local tattoo artist named Whispering Danny.

The video was produced entirely to provide an example of these personal projects for Austin’s seminar. He has recently posted it on his blog, and we’ve embedded it for you below.

link

The responses to the presentation on co-sponsor Digital Labrador’s website show that many photographers in attendance were inspired to pursue their own “passion projects.” Share your own experiences with personal work in the comments!

-Asad Haider