Architectural Photographer Based in LA and Miami making $360,000 a year

I am primarily an architectural photographer but much of my work blends into the commercial space since a good portion of my clients are retail and hospitality brands and just architects and developers. My business is a registered S Corp.

My clients range from mid size architectural firms to fortune 500 companies. It’s quite a mixed bag of budgets, expectations, usage needs etc.

Most of my overhead is travel expense for me and my assistants as 80% of my work requires it. So hotels , flights, transportation etc. Otherwise my overhead is pretty low. I don’t buy much gear these days as I already own everything I need, and the rest is just things like subscriptions to the various softwares and programs i need to run my business.

Last year was lightning in a bottle. Between shooting and retouching, i’d say I worked easily over 100 days. It’s usually closer to 50-60. 2022 was a crazy year for my business and I was booked to the point of burning out. I went from averaging around 120- 150k/ year to more than doubling that.

I have been working on developing passive sources of income and turning myself into a photography brand as I don’t wish to continue relying on client work exclusively.

An average shoot for me depends on the client. For the fortune 500 companies, they usually demand buyouts, so I charge appropriately and they tend to be very demanding for what’s needed in post production. Often times, the client doesn’t even know how “photo ready” some of the sites will be until we arrive, so we have very honest discussions about expectations and what can be achieved in post. I’ve gotten pretty good at the photoshop miracle. For architects and developers things are more reasonable and usage fees are pretty standard.

One project required two visits with an enormous amount of travel and two weeks of shooting. I had two assistants, and had to bring a retoucher with me to edit images as we shot because they needed to go to press ASAP. I would shoot for 12 hours a day and then join my retoucher to edit images all night long. For both projects I billed over 150k.

I pay my assistants 500-600 / day. A little higher than most, but they’re so crucial to me that I want them to drop what they’re doing whenever I need them.

I come from a heavy video production background and do my fair share of freelance DP work. It’s common for clients to want to bundle video and photography services. Although the last couple of years photography has been my main source of income and honestly I prefer it. It’s less work and the profit margins are much higher.

I am terrible at marketing myself. My biggest effort goes into SEO where I rank number one in google for several key terms in my target markets. It’s a mixed bag of results. It helps with website traffic, but 80% of it is people just kicking tires. Otherwise I suck at marketing. I am making a better effort this year to be more intentional and traditional with generating leads.

Worst Advice: you need to specialize. That might have been true ten years ago. But in this day and age, the more things you can do, the more value you can offer. Clients and agencies have arduous vendor uploading systems, so if you’re already in their database and can do something they need, you’re likely to get that call. Not saying you have to try to be a jack of all trades. But you should definitely at the very least be proficient in video services as well.

And you should start understanding AI. Whether we like it or not, it’s here to stay and will play a major role in the day to day development of marketing assets in the near future.

Best advice: If a client bitches about price. Don’t lower your rates. Lower your deliverables to meet their budget.

Don’t obsess about gear. Gear is just a tool and honestly any camera made in the last 5 years is going to deliver excellent results. Invest in the tools that make your life easier, like tilt-shift lenses for me. Invest the money you’d otherwise spend on gear into personal projects. Personal projects are what make you stand out and carry your own unique voice and perspective on the world, which is what attracts people to want to pay you to do the same generic shit they always do. You can polish your skills, and you have complete creative control.

And please stop undercutting the industry. You’re only hurting yourself and the rest of us in the long run.

The Art of the Personal Project: Matthew Brush

The Art of the Personal Project is a crucial element to let potential buyers see how you think creatively on your own.  I am drawn to personal projects that have an interesting vision or that show something I have never seen before.  In this thread, I’ll include a link to each personal project with the artist statement so you can see more of the project. Please note: This thread is not affiliated with any company; I’m just featuring projects that I find.  Please DO NOT send me your work.  I do not take submissions.

 

Today’s featured artist:  Matthew Brush

Fifty years ago, long boarding was sidewalk surfing, a faster, farther variation of skateboarding, and now it’s not. Over the past 20 years it’s evolved into something esoteric and fast like a medieval duel in the future. A future where post-apocalyptic nerd warriors in faded but colorful leathers, duct tape, aerodynamic helmets and two kinds of sneakers, race speed-boards downhill, over 50+ miles per hour, down jet-black spaghetti turnt roads in the magnificent golden wheat hills in Marysville WA. Just for some glory and cash and annual bragging rights.

Each year, hundreds of long boarders, and street lugers from around the world make their way to a remote hillside in Southwest Washington.
It’s the world cup Maryhill Festival of Speed – the largest gravity sports event in North America, which is held in a place most people have never heard of…. historic Maryhill Loops Road in Goldendale, Washington.
Maryhill Loops Road was the first asphalt road in the Pacific Northwest, constructed in the early 1900s by a man named Sam Hill, who was passionate about the Columbia River Gorge and building good roads. This private 3.5-mile road full of hairpin turns and switchbacks was created originally so he could teach his wife how to drive.
Today, the road is ideal for gravity sports because it’s closed to cars and the pavement is smooth and grippy, which allows racers to handle corners at high speeds.  Not to mention, it’s now used for major auto and moto commercials.
For years, I was into skateboarding and had somehow always found myself shooting it, especially early on in my career.  One of my good friends and OG longboard legend from Portland, OR, Robin McGuirk, had asked me if I’d be interested in coming out for the downhill weekend race.  This was back in 2009.  At the time, they were just 3 years into having these races.  There hadn’t been much documentation of the event as of yet other than just some of the riders and their buddies shooting what they could.  At the time, I think I was one of the first to really treat it as an actual sporting event yet make an attempt to create some fine art story from it.  It was wild!  You literally camp on a giant field like it’s a music festival with people from all over the world.  They party like there’s no tomorrow yet manage to wake up and race!  The first year I documented this race it was down pouring rain and terrible weather.  My cameras got annihilated, but I didn’t care.  I was in the thick of it, determined to come out with some amazing shots.  For the 4 days I was there it was wet, cold, and well… you can imagine.  Not a pleasant place to camp with equipment and try to be artistic.  I still loved what I shot that year!  Fast forward to 2013.  The race is much bigger now and almost like a giant sponsored Red Bull type of event.  This year was dry.  This year the landscape looked a little different, and now there were more windmills on the property.  I guess that’s how farmers make money these days. They lease out their land.  None the less, I was back to shoot more colorful leathered characters flying down the hill.  Of course, this time I also brought some help because I wanted to make a film about this event. https://matthewbrush.com/MOTION/2
As, I’m writing this, I’m really missing this place and would love to go back soon.  They had cancelled it and almost permanently called it quits for a number of reasons, however, it came back and is still alive today.  They usually run the race during Labor Day weekend.  Over the years, I’ve sold prints from these series, and they’ve also gotten me jobs!  Some people still comment on my downhill skate work.  Sure, I’ve shot more of it, but I’ve also moved on to other photo projects that seem to pique my interest.  For me it’s the curiosity of finding something during the process.  Mary Hill definitely delivered!  I’ll be going back again soon.  I’m not sure what I’ll do, but I’m sure I’ll figure out a way to make it new again.  To date it’s still one of my most favorite personal projects, and although it’s old to me, it’s still new to someone.

 

Professional downhill skater, Billy Bones, shreds through the rain drenched pavement during Finals at the Mary Hill Festival of Speed.

Edward Schmucker

To see more of this project, click here  and here

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APE contributor Suzanne Sease currently works as a consultant for photographers and illustrators around the world.  She has been involved in the photography and illustration advertising and in-house corporate industry for decades.  After establishing the art-buying department at The Martin Agency, then working for Kaplan-Thaler, Capital One, Best Buy and numerous smaller agencies and companies, she decided to be a consultant in 1999.  Follow her at @SuzanneSease.  Instagram

Photographers, How Much Do You Make?

2019 – 100% assisting
2020 – 85% assisting 15% Editorial
2021 – 75% assisting 10% Commercial 15% Editorial
2022 – 60% assisting 20% Commercial 20% Editorial

I’ve been assisting for several years, trying to gain insight and experience in the industry. 2019 was my first full year assisting, I also had a full time job at the time that I was attempting to segue out of to pursue photography.

When Covid lockdowns started I decided to go all in on assisting and portfolio building; I took a decent loss upgrading / adding gear and trying to get my name out there. I worked with a few meal delivery services and local restaurants for trade that year.

Most of my clients are small, local businesses that only have budgets for me solo; those projects are all remote from my home studio or on location. For slightly bigger projects or when budget allows, I rent a studio and crew as needed: usually one stylist and one assistant.
I’ve been working mostly solo (including styling) since I started, but would love to outsource production, post processing, and marketing help as my business grows.

Currently I work with local small businesses in the food and beverage sector. Most of my client roster is liquor or wine brands, a few food brands, and occasionally food/bev product work will come in.

I also have one Bay Area specific web based editorial client. I had one national brand I worked with, but the experience was awful and pay wasn’t great either.

I’d estimate my overhead is about $3-5K per year: My current overhead is mainly business software subscriptions (Capture One, Adobe, Squarespace, Dubsado) equipment rentals, and consistently updating my prop collection. In 2019 it was $8K as I had to upgrade most of my gear from college, but haven’t needed to add too much since. I also try to buy refurbished as often as I can and only when necessary.

I do all of own my marketing through services I’m already paying for: email, newsletters, organic social media, etc. Due to the limited amount of work I’m getting, I really try to keep overhead to a bare minimum. I don’t have employees, I’m fortunate to be on my spouses work insurance, and only rent studio space when I can pass the fee on to the client.

I’m actively photographing about 10-12 days a year, with an average of 10-15 combined prep and post production days per shoot day. I now only assist a couple days a month, and the rest of the workweek is dedicated to marketing and client research. Prior to 2023, I’d average around 100 days assisting.

Assisting was very lucrative during 2020, I worked a lot and gained a ton of experience and knowledge in the industry. I was also able to supplement what I didn’t make in client work with assisting jobs in the two years following. But I have noticed a dramatic decline in income this year; I left one of my 2 main assisting roles to take on more of my own work, but haven’t had a ton of success booking consistent projects. I’ve also seen a considerable drop in budgets and increase in scope with the inquiries coming in. It seems to be the perfect storm of the market I currently attract, the overall economic instability, and the over saturation of food and beverage photographers contributing to the high demands and low budgets.

Pre-production typically takes about 1-2 weeks for commercial clients, studio days are standard 10 hours, I’ve only had a handful of multiple day shoots. Most of my clients are pretty small local businesses and don’t really need licensing beyond company website and organic social media use for a few years; I’ve spent a ton of time educating on licensing and found it’s easier for my current client base to digest if it’s included it in my Creative Fee. Paid advertising or print is additional in almost all cases. I think it’s important that clients understand they are still paying for usage even if the amount isn’t a separate line item, so I make that very clear when quoting my Creative Fee.

As I progress in the size of clients I take on, that will inevitably change. I raised my Creative Fee this year to $3000 per day (dependent on project scope) to reflect included usage and current inflation, take home averages $1900 after expenses and taxes. My editorial client pays $350 per restaurant, 2 hours max on location, pretty liberal online usage, and I’m usually assigned two restaurants a day. I’ve heard this falls within the standard range for editorial these days, but have minimal experience in this market.

My highest paid job thus far was a commercial shoot for the launch of a food brand, take home was $4500 after taxes / expenses for one 10 hour shoot, 10 images licensed for brand website, organic social media, and email promotion for 3 years. Pre-production, shoot, and post processing totaled 8-10 days.

The worst paid overall was for a product client I took on retainer a couple of years ago. I agreed to “test” at a lower rate for the first shoot, with promise to come up to my day rate after a couple of shoots together. I was to photograph 30-40 products for an online seller at their home, two days a month, 7-8 hours each shoot day. Rate was initially $800 for around 150 images with minimal post processing and use only on the shop site. After taxes and expenses, take home was about $650. I was never able to get them to pay anything close to my day rate as agreed, the working conditions were awful, and after about 4 shoots I had to terminate our work together.

I also had one editorial shoot that paid $150 for recipe testing, styling, and one hero image in print for a national publication.

I’ve just started experimenting with video and don’t currently offer it; but I will provide any bts unedited phone footage I take.

As mentioned, I do all of my own marketing. I utilize Squarespace for newsletters, and organic email and social media for direct outreach. I don’t use any paid advertising; most inquiries currently come from my social channels. I’ve noticed that even as my emails get more personalized and consistent for each client, I have better luck with Instagram and LinkedIn. I also know with the changing market and flux in social platforms this may not always be the case.

Best advice: ‘Be patient with your career trajectory; it’s a long game and it takes time to get established.’ I still don’t like hearing this, but it’s so true and I remind myself constantly.
Also ‘don’t forget to celebrate the the small wins.’ I tend to get especially down and critical of myself during slow times, it helps to reflect on how far I’ve come and how much those seemingly small moments contribute to where I am now.

Worst advice: ‘Never lower your price.’ I struggle with this, though. While I don’t want to devalue my work or the industry overall, I also need to work and a lot of budgets coming my way are low these days. I do have limits to how much I’m willing to depart from my current day rate, but I wouldn’t have any business if I didn’t fluctuate my rates.

I hope we’re moving toward more transparency regarding pricing with each other; it’s been difficult to gauge where my rates stand in the sea of other photographers in my area. Most tend to stay pretty guarded; and while I don’t intend to mirror anyone else’s business, I would find it enlightening to know where I fall on that spectrum especially as I’m in my first five years of business. I think we all benefit from more knowledge and are able to add more value to the industry as a whole if we’re able to make more informed decisions on pricing our work. I do see a bit of movement in the right direction, and I love seeing the openness with sharing rates on posts like this.

Photographers, How Much Do You Make?

Only the last 4 years my income was solely from photography. I have one large retainer client that allows a balance of consistency and flexibility.

My income is 30% – Lifestyle, 30% E-comm (in studio), 15% Product (in home studio, very basic,) 25% – Retouching. These are mostly west coast based brands that sell all over the US and a few start ups/local businesses.

Not much overhead other than basic rent/utilities. Most expenses are basic marketing/website needs. I own most of my equipment and will expense any additional rentals need for each project.

Does the lottery count as retirement haha.

I work 8-10 days per month on average. Sometimes more depending on the season. The rest of the days are spent marketing/networking/shooting for myself.

In my early 20s, after getting my BFA, I worked/pursued shooting action sports as a career but that quickly went away once I realized the income was terrible unless you were at the top 5% of the field. I transitioned to commercial fashion and spent a good 5-6 years assisting and working on my portfolio by doing test shoots.

I was fortune enough to have a great relationship with a local modeling agency that allowed me to quickly build up a book of some models that went on to be very big in the industry. At the same time, I assisted in a creative agency where I learned as much as I could about all the business side of the industry while expanding my network.

After I felt I had learned all that I could, I took an in-house photographer position at a local brand that was quickly on the rise. I enjoyed the team, but the brands overall aesthetics were not aligned with mine. I was often told my work was too “professional” looking, which admittedly did make sense for a brand that catered to the youth/IG/TikTok market.

So I decided to go out on my own full time freelancing… in February 2020. COVID put a halt to any plans I had for that year. So that first year was incredible hard and I had to take anything I could just to keep a roof over my head. That often meant shooting product from home in a makeshift studio and even shooting family portraits.

Over the last two years I was slowly able to start getting more work that fit my style. I’m lucky that my partner was a designer at a midsized clothing brand that was growing fast so I took on most of their photo work (lifestyle and ecomm). I was also able to start working as a second shooter for larger campaigns via some photographers I had assisted in the past which I’ve been very excited about as its allowed me to work with a great team and enhance my portfolio.

I will sometimes take on select retouching jobs to supplement my photography income but its not something I put a lot of time or effort pursuing. I may do it more in the future as it can but pretty profitable but I don’t enjoy the aspect of having to lock myself in front of the computer for hours and hours at a time.

Average day for a lifestyle shoot is either a full day (8-10 hrs) or a half day (4-6 hrs) and my rate usually is a lump sum creative fee. Then Ill spend a few days after the shoot culling, color editing, and some light retouching if the client is willing to pay for that. Avg take home pay is $1500.

Licensing has been the most frustrating part educating clients about and I’m often stuck in a limbo of needing the money regardless so I often give just a simple 1 year usage that goes into my creative fee. But i’m hoping to change that going forward as I’ve had some clients take advantage of that. ( licensed for social use doesn’t mean the same thing as paid ads.

Best shoot was second shooting for a large international fitness leisure brand. It was a work for hire agreement but i was still allowed to use the images for my portfolio. The shoot was 4 days over two locations and take home pay was 5.5k. Great team and amazing producers made it feel like a breeze.

Worst paying job was a half day e-comm job where they asked to add a small lifestyle shoot at the end of the day. The client assumed a half day rate was hourly and tried to say the lifestyle shoot only took an hour so it should only be 20% of what the e-comm rate was. the half day rate was $400 and my lifestyle rate was $1000. they attempted to get both for $500, after having audacity to show my images on the front of the website before acting surprised that the rate would go up.

I quickly dropped them and I don’t do half day rates anymore or last min add ons without prior conversations. I also used it as a sign to up my rates overall to filter out cheap clients.

I did one small video job last year where I was brought in as a specialist (I have extensive experience shooting surfing in the water). All i did was shoot for 30 mins and the client handled the edit. I was pleasantly surprised to see a lot of my footage used in the final ad.

I would love to pursue it more but learning how to approach video vs stills is a bit daunting. My goal would to at least have some short motion clips to pepper in throughout my book.

I’ve upped my game in reaching out to potential clients this year via direct email with curated PDFs but still haven’t been able to translate them into jobs just yet. In addition to that I do my best to send out a quarterly newsletter. I’m not as consistent as I should be but have found its always easier if I have new work to show, so I focus on that first, and then go from there.

Best advice – Unfollow photographers you like on IG. All it does is fuel an inferiority complex.

Worst advice – Take any work you can. Its ok to say no to jobs/clients that you don’t feel like are a good fit to you.

Trust your gut and shoot what inspires you. Always be kind and pleasant to everyone you meet on set. Don’t be afraid to take the boring e-comm jobs because at the end of the day you gotta pay your rent (you don’t have to share them on you portfolio). Always aim to find one thing you can learn each day on a shoot. Fake it til you make it.

Photo Directors, How Much Do You Make?

I manage a team of other photo editors and we work with editors to produce food, interior, lifestyle, and style content for a few brands.

I was promoted a few years ago to Director which came with a decent salary bump.

I work full time (5 days per week) and often work weekends as well.

I have a 401k and the company matches up to 6% and I contribute 6%. I have about 100k in there right now.

If you are interested in my line of work: it’s a tough industry right now, but anything you can do to get your foot in the door; internship, contract work, etc. helps a lot.

Best Advice: Treat every shoot with the same stamina, whether it’s a product shot in the studio or cover image with lifestyle.

I want photographer to reach out to me via Email or Linkedin.

I find photographer in competitor magazines, regional magazines, portfolio introduction emails. I also use Instagram. Word of mouth in this industry goes a long way.

I (or someone from team) try to meet with all photographers who send me their portfolio so that I can provide feedback.

Creative Directors, How Much Do You Make?

My “day job” is with a very large holding company – I work on one of the owned brands. I report directly to senior leadership. They remain pretty stoked as long as our creative team is pressing on new ideas and innovative concepts to support the brand story and products.

There are 5-6 full time employees on my team. We also use a dozen or so contractors; designers, producers, copywriters, etc. This figure does not include freelance photographers/videographers of which there are many.

I started a side business in 2022 doing creative consultation and sniper style projects for brands; photo and copy mostly. I am very niched down in my zone of competence and specific knowledge – so if brands in the space I play need what I do, there aren’t many others to go to. The money that I make from this really a secondary “nice-to-have” to my real reason for taking on side work. In my main gig, I play within the sandbox. Just the nature of big orgs. But my side work is my creative outlet. It is boundless. I get to play, create, push ideas. That is where I scratch the itch. It makes me better at my main gig to let that energy out elsewhere.

My LLC has no overhead. Just me. Home based, registered as an S-Corp to save on self-employment taxes.

I work ~230 days a year.

I built a small brand on the side with my photography while working hourly jobs until getting my first agency job in 2015. That was a $48k gig, my first salary ever. Worked my way to another agency in 2016 at $75k + bonus. Left to go brand side in 2017 for $90k. Moved to another brand in 2019 at $110k. Moved up ranks to current position now. A side note on salary; the “golden handcuffs” thing is real. Consider that in the path you take.

I lead a team of art directors and producers that are all the time hiring stills and motion shooters to work on our projects. Having come up as a photographer myself, I am always keenly involved in that process. We are vetting new talent, assessing project fit, assigning work, contract negotiating, and running all phases of production at all times.

For retirement I have a traditional IRA which is comprised of my rollovers from previous companies. Roth IRA maxed every year. 401k at current company is 3% gift. Also have stock at current company that is vested and grows each year – this is part of my total comp package.

The photographer + writer + director pipeline is pretty unique I suppose. People will tell you to pick a competency or creative discipline and stick with it. “Do one thing really well.” I have never agreed with that. I think you should explore the edges of your interest and see where it takes you. Being multi-disciplinary in your creative work makes you a valuable asset to a team as you are able to see things from a unique perspective. Don’t be afraid to tinker.

Best Advice: As a creative, you need other outlets. You cannot always have a camera in your hand. Do something analog. Rebuild a motorcycle. Learn how to cook. See how fit you can get if you slept and ate well for a year. Do anything but sit at your computer. Your creativity and work will be better for it.
Worst Advice: “You’re too creatively altruistic – you want everything to look and feel just so.”- a former boss that just doesn’t get it.

My advice for photographers looking to get on my radar is to find a way to be my friend and engage me on anything other than hiring you. I’m smart. I’ll do my seven second search and see that you are a photographer and make an assessment on your talent which you have made visible to the world. It happens that fast. Your homepage or LP needs to be fucking dope. Impress me, and quickly.

I have worked with a dozen or so shooters for the last 7-8 years. I came out of their ranks myself. We are a community. I ask all of them to bring me fresh talent – “who are you seeing that is on the come up that I need to pay attention to?” They bring me people and I trust them more because of it. As a CD, if you as a photographer bring me fresh camera talent, that tells me that you understand my job. You are trying to help me succeed. You are not operating from a scarcity mindset. This action makes you more valuable to me, not less.

If you want to be making real money, you need to be networking with clients that actually have money. Once you are doing that, if the $ figure you bid does not scare you to type, it’s too low. You can always negotiate down – it’s very hard to negotiate up.

The Art of the Personal Project: Beth Galton

The Art of the Personal Project is a crucial element to let potential buyers see how you think creatively on your own.  I am drawn to personal projects that have an interesting vision or that show something I have never seen before.  In this thread, I’ll include a link to each personal project with the artist statement so you can see more of the project. Please note: This thread is not affiliated with any company; I’m just featuring projects that I find.  Please DO NOT send me your work.  I do not take submissions.

Today’s featured artist:  Beth Galton

Cut Food

Classic food photography involves the right people with talent and taste. Choosing the props, preparing the food in an appealing way, and lighting it so that it’s appetizing and beautiful creates a successful image.

My training has been as a classic food photographer; understanding the need for creativity and collaboration between the food and prop stylist and myself to produce an appetizing and beautiful image. For an assignment, we are tasked to photograph the surface of the food occasionally taking a bite or piece out but rarely a cross section of a finished dish. The goal is to make it appetizing and beautiful- to make the viewer hungry or influence them to recreate the dish.

This series was inspired by an assignment in which we were asked to cut a burrito in half for a client. At first, I thought it unappealing but soon realized the potential for a whole new perspective for looking at food. Cross sections are not new- a cake half eaten shows it’s interior. When applied to food items which are unexpected yet commonplace, even easily recognized within our food vocabulary, we move past the simple appetite appeal we normally try to achieve and explore the interior worlds of these products. In collaboration with the food stylists, we chose subjects which we felt were iconic symbols within our Western food culture; classic items that many of us grew up eating. As we shot each subject, it became apparent that some images needed to live in pairs such as the soup cans and the pints of ice cream. Shown together they create a stronger statement about their symbolic nature.

After testing various options, I came to realize that placing these subjects against a black background with a singular hard light helps focus the viewer on the hard reality of each interior; the texture and surface quality allowing each subject to reveal its own unique world within. There is a pictorial quality harkening back to magicians with rabbits coming out of black hats. My premise was to create imagery which looks as if it is happening magically, but as real as possible. Our approach is very low-tech using gelatin, glue, Crisco, scissors, and saws while fabricating each object. When necessary, some compositing was utilized but my background is of capturing everything in camera on a single sheet of film. I wanted these images to look this way.

It is important to mention the collaborators involved in these images. Without them, these images would not exist. Food stylists: Charlotte Omnès and Michelle Gatton. Retouchers: Daniel Hurlburt and Ashlee Gray.

To see more of this project, click here

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APE contributor Suzanne Sease currently works as a consultant for photographers and illustrators around the world.  She has been involved in the photography and illustration advertising and in-house corporate industry for decades.  After establishing the art-buying department at The Martin Agency, then working for Kaplan-Thaler, Capital One, Best Buy and numerous smaller agencies and companies, she decided to be a consultant in 1999.  Follow her at @SuzanneSease.  Instagram

Photo Editors, How Much Do You Make?

I currently work for a company (150+ mostly full time) in the women’s fashion/retail industry with a very small creative department. There are four employees in our photo department (including me), backed by a handful of freelancers.

I work 260 days in a calendar year (minus any PTO. I currently have Unlimited PTO).

I oversee all photography for both Ecomm and Marketing content. We have an in house ecomm photographer but also book freelancers weekly. For marketing, I book 2-3 shoots a month. With the pace at which we are booking/shooting – I lean towards booking photographers who understand my process, the turn around time, the budget and they are of course, on brand and can bring something fresh to the product and content.

I you want to get into my line of work I advise that you practice patience, stay organized, and learn how to manage many personalities and budgets. Stay assertive and take initiative!

Best Advice: Keep up! I lived in NY for majority of my career and if you want to stay in the competition, you have to keep up with the pace and everything evolving with it.
Worst Advice: Ive already forgotten it!

I am often happy to hear from a photographer whether its a quick hello on instagram/email just to keep their name on my radar. I am always saving and bookmarking photographers, agencies and photography I come across. But it’s also important for photographers to understand there is one of me in my current role/company, and thousands of you. I think transparent communication is important and I do my best to respond to a lot, but I don’t always have the bandwidth to respond to everyone. It’s not personal, it’s just the nature of the beast.

But also, I want to approach photographers with the same respect and consideration that they would give me. Some of my closest friends are photographers in the industry and I highly value photographers, stylists, set designers, etc. work and skill set. I want them to see that I come from that approach. I do my best on my end to make sure they are also excited about the project and are getting the most out of it. Any time a photographer (or crew member) leaves a shoot happy, gives me positive feedback, appreciates how organized or respectful me or my team is on set, that’s the most important to me at the end of the day!

Instagram is now my main source for finding photographers, I also use agencies, and recommendations from creatives I’ve worked with.

My advice to photographers is to be personable but stay professional!

The Daily Edit – Sara Hylton: National Geographic

 

A local carries fishing nets, made of plastic materials, which are often used only a few times and then disposed of, on May 14, 2019.
The ghats of the Ganges in Patna, Bihar on November 15th, 2019.
Vinod Sahni along with his family members and helpers prepare for an evening of fishing out along the Ganges. They spent several hours this day repairing their plastic fishing net before departing from the village of Rasalpur, Dharnipatti, Bihar on Nov. 14, 2019.
Fish for sale at a local fish market in Ayeshabag on May 16, 2019.
Sita Ram Sahni’s grandchildren play at their home in a makeshift swing in the village of Rasalpur, Dharnipatti, Bihar on Nov. 17, 2019.
Sita Ram Sahni’s grandchildren attend school in the village of Rasalpur, Dharnipatti, Bihar on Nov. 16, 2019.
Young boys play near a pond close the Meghna River on May 14, 2019.
Babu Sahni, 30, and his son Himanshu Kumar Sahni, 8, fish along a bank scattered with waste on the Punpun river, a tributary of the Ganges in Fatuha, Bihar, on Nov. 19, 2019. T
A wholesale flower market in Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh on Nov. 23, 2019. The majority of these flowers are sold for religious purposes and though many vendors use cloth bags, some flowers and garlands being sold contain plastic ornamentation.
Rajan Baba, a sadhu, poses for a portrait at Manikarnika ghat, his main location of meditation in Varanasi, India on Nov. 25, 2019. Rajan Baba believes that nowadays “people are spending less time exploring god and more time chasing after things…I’ve been born and brought up in Banaras, a lot has changed…[the Ganges] used to be much wider…as the waste has increased, the water has shrunk…what else would I want but that the water becomes clean again?” he said.
Municipal employees collect waste from Manikarnika ghat, the main cremation ghat in the holy city of Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh on Nov. 26, 2019. The cremation site runs 24 hours a day and hundreds of bodies are cremated. The ritual of cremation relies on textiles often made of synthetic fibers and religious offerings and garlands containing plastic. Though the municipal corporation collects some of the waste, much of it still ends up in the Ganges. President Modi has committed to cleaning up Varanasi, his constituency, but many believe that the clean-up is just surface level. However, according to municipal employees, some of the solid waste collected along the ghats is taken to the Karsada waste-to-energy plant, waste that is converted to electric power.
The ghats of the Ganges river in Haridwar, Uttarkhand, India on Dec. 7, 2020.
At Maitri Sadan ashram in Haridwar, Uttarakhand, India.
Swami Shivanand bathes and prays at the Ganges.
Har Ki Pauri ghat in Haridwar, Uttarakhand at sunrise.

 

Photographer: Sara Hytlon
National Geographic: Visual Story Editors: Alice Gabriner and Dominique Hildebrand.

The team of scientists and researchers was led by two incredible women (and the team itself was mostly women). More information on the Ganges: Sea to Source expedition can be found here

Heidi: You were in India for 12 years, what brought you there?
Sara: I was in the middle of studying a Master’s degree when my father passed away suddenly. I knew he would have wanted me to finish my degree, so I pressed on without really having the time to grieve or process what had happened. When I completed my studies, my best friend and I decided to travel to India for a few weeks. We were both going through big transitions in our lives, and we wanted to travel somewhere that took us out of our element and gave us some space. Funny, India doesn’t have much space. The idea of going to India during a crisis is an absolute cliché and I knew that from the start, but the Western notion of India is partly true, it is a very magical and spiritual place, and I say that while also acknowledging its deep issues and biases. I had planned on spending three weeks.

Were you planning on staying that long; did you speak Hindi?
I had no idea that this initial visit would involve me meeting two loves of my life – a man and photography. I had no plan to live there or spend long in South Asia. But it was a place that understood life and death in a way that made a lot of sense to me. The way South Asians see the world is both incredibly practical and poetic all at once. I felt completely thrown into chaos, but also held. I was hooked. I slowly built my photography practice, and my network to a point where I felt I could really make it my home. I have taken intensive Hindi classes over the years and used my broken understanding of the language to delve deeper into the culture. It was always one of the things that bothered me the most though – that I could never get to a place with my Hindi where I could make jokes or get angry. Indians have such great, cinematic humor. 

What did you learn about reverence for the Ganges?
When the roots of a culture believe that everything is a manifestation of God, and even the Ganges is revered by Hindus as a Goddess, how do you begin to visualize something that is believed to be so sacred and yet practically environmentally vulnerable? And how does one reconcile their own conditioning and culture so they can really see it? 

I’ve learned that the concept of “progress” and time is completely different. In the West, we are always rushing to get to the finish point, to have something to show for our efforts so we can quickly move onto the next thing. We miss the whole process of getting there. I have felt that so often in India while working. That if I do this one thing, this other thing must happen as a result. It just does not work that way. Nothing is linear, people aren’t there when you think they’re going to be there, and everything is basically an unknown. People don’t have time for you and you are not that important. But once they start to trust you and maybe even like you, they would give you the shirts off their back. It’s honestly the most humbling place I’ve worked. You are constantly being challenged on a professional and granular level. Broken down until your ego is nothing. And that’s when you start to make the work that matters. It’s a beautiful thing. So I think the biggest thing I’ve learned is that if you show your patience and your authenticity, the thing that you need will happen, but probably not when, or the way you expect it to. Also, never refuse a cup of chai or prasad, you’ve ruined it already. 

Your last project for National Geographic was three years in the making and so much terrain to cover. What were some of the adventurous moments/biggest obstacles that you encountered? India is so full of rich surprises especially with COVID and the political unrest.
Traveling across the Ganges through Bangladesh and India was one of the most memorable projects I’ve ever worked on. We went through some terribly rough waters in Bangladesh because of cyclones. At one point, the bottom of our boat started to flood with water and it was so rocky people were getting sea sick. Then there was the extreme heat waves where we could only work very early in the morning and late at night, it was actually quite dangerous if we tried to push it. Then there were the absolute moments of elation and joy where the team would dance to Punjabi music under the rain and laugh hysterically. As a freelance photographer I’m really used to working alone, but this was such a different type of project that started off with a group of female scientists that I was fairly integrated with. We traveled a lot of the time together and this made navigating the adventures and challenges a lot less daunting. My favorite moment on the trip was when I was in a small village outside of Patna, Bihar (about a four hour drive) and my film camera broke. I didn’t have a backup with me, but miraculously someone from Mumbai (where I was living at the time) was able to transport the backup to Patna, and exchange the broken camera to get fixed. I ended up with both cameras in a few days, but it was a terrifying moment.

Were there any circumstances/interactions that moved you the most while making the work? India has a way of exploding your heart.
There are way too many moments to count. That’s what I miss about India the most. When you’re feeling hardened, angry, assertive, something always happens that just blows your heart wide open and you are instantly reminded of your humanity. Oh, I remember a funny moment when I was bitten by a baby goat and everyone went out of their way to make sure I was okay and even found me a doctor to get rabies shots. Then there was the time where me and my collaborator were in a village and it became very late at night (and we had quite a drive ahead), a mere stranger who knew nothing about us offered us a bed to sleep on and gave us chai in the morning. The stories are endless. I was constantly astounded by the generosity of people and lack of pretension. India has my heart and always will.

There are both advantages and disadvantages of being a westerner in India. You certainly earned trust for your portraits, Demigods of India. How did that project develop/evolve?
I had been wanting to do something with the Hijrah community in India for many years but I think I didn’t have the courage or the understanding of the community to really do it with integrity. I had spent several months meeting with NGO’s and organizations that worked with the community across Mumbai. Two helpful friends and amazing photographers – Zishaan Latif and Anushree Fadnavis – helped me navigate the project, and it wasn’t until I had their help that I really felt it was possible to make photos with sensitivity. Anushree was particularly experienced and was so generous in her willingness to help with translating and gaining access with the first community I worked with. At first the community was fairly closed off and ambivalent about photography, so I showed up and visited often before I even began to make photos. I met one really special person, Radhika, who was the gateway to the rest of the community. Radhika trusted me, and so others trusted her. It was quite a long process, getting to the point of making portraits. But I think curiosity and showing up goes a long way.

Being a Westerner is helpful at times because folks become as curious about you as you are them. But that can only go so far. They must feel your integrity and your heart, and that can take a long time to build. The disadvantages are of course language and commonality. Being a woman is particularly tough, but in this instance, I think it helped because I could spend time just sitting in people’s homes without too many concerns.

What have you been working on recently?
I’m based in Brooklyn, New York now and continue to focus on environmental issues and vulnerable communities, especially related to water. I’m working on a multi-year project through an Explorer grant from National Geographic Society and the Royal Canadian Geographical Society on the sanctity and scarcity of water among First Nations communities in Canada. I’ll be traveling to Nepal in a couple of months to work on another grant about faith and conservation, and I’m also really excited to be working with some brands and outlets whose values really align with my own, including Patagonia and the New York Times.

 

 

Photo Editors- How Much Do You Make?

I work a standard 5 day work week with additional hours needed around shoots. I have a company 401k for retirement. I recently received a slight 3% or 4% raise only after asking several times for years.

My average work day is a mix of constant email correspondence, searching for affordable shoot locations, processing vendor paperwork, excel spreadsheet budgets, making payments for shoot production, editing images, overseeing retouching, putting together call sheets, trying to find ways to stretch out an already low budget that’s been cut yet again, and production meetings.

My advice for people who want a job like mine: Don’t. Your job will eventually get cut and the number of years experience you have in this industry only makes you less employable :\

Best/Worst Advice: “It’s way more important to know how to take a picture than use a camera.” – Olivia Bee

I want to be approacehed by photographers through email. You can DM through Instagram to ask for my work email. Then send a promo or a new project drop every few months or so. Don’t email again and again if I don’t reply. Just because I follow you on Instagram, doesn’t mean I want to hire you.

I find photographers through Instagram, other publications, Diversify Photo, and Women Photograph.

Any photographers reading this, please stop putting people in the middle in every single frame it’s so boring and I am sick of it. That is all.

Photo Editors, How Much Do You Make?

This is my salary + additional freelance photo work (per year) over the last few years.

I am a former full time freelance photographer who is now a salaried photo editor. I was making $45-60K gross when I was a full time freelancer for the first several years of my career.

I work for a mid-to-large size publication and it is mostly remote. We have enough work to hire a handful of photographers every month and can pay between $1-2K per day for shoots.

I understand that it’s easier said than done, but leaving full-time freelance work and getting a salaried job within the industry was probably the smartest thing I did financially but, more importantly, emotionally. I was not built to be a full-time freelance photographer. It’s a hard life and is very difficult to maintain relationships, have kids etc. The up and downs are too great and it’s hard to live off of the $450 day rate that the New York Times, or other publications, would occasionally send my way. It was the absolute worst not getting work for a few weeks. It made me jealous of people who were getting consistent work and big advertising jobs and I did not like who I was becoming. I was always anxious and my work suffered. Being able to rely on a salary allowed me to become a better photographer since I was able to focus on my craft and get better, rather than having to constantly try to get hired and paid.

Between full-time job and freelance, I probably work 250-300 days each year.

Since getting my current job I have been able to max out my company matched 401(k) every year. I have $100K+ in savings, vast majority of which has come in the last few years.

If you are still a student – intern anywhere you can. Work for photographers, see what their world is like. Work for museums, see how they operate. Work for publications and see what life is like as a photo editor. The stakes are low and you will likely hate some of them, but that is incredibly valuable information for you to take with you.

If you are already a working professional – Don’t wait to get hired to start making the work you want to make. If you want to, for example, photograph protests for the NYTimes, don’t wait for them to hire you. Photograph it anyway and put it on your instagram. Treat it like an assignment and ask your friends for feedback in how you can improve. The best thing to do is always be shooting. If the work is strong enough, there is a good chance the right people will eventually see it. If you are not making work, you lose any chance of getting seen.

Best Advice – Shoot what you know.
Worst Advice – Any advice I received from professors in college who hadn’t been a working photographer in decades. They had no knowledge or desire to learn about how the modern photography industry works.

Instagram is the best way for photographers to approach me- If you follow me, I will at least look at your work. If I like it, I will follow you. If you’re looking for freelance work, please put where you’re based in your bio.

I find photographers everywhere: friends and I talk about who is making interesting work, instagram, reading magazine/newspapers and checking credits, being online too often…

You do not have to go to photo school to be a successful photographer, especially in this day and age and especially if you would have to assume substantial debt in order to go. This is not to say photo school is not valuable or doesn’t give students a leg up. Some of the best photographers I’ve met either didn’t go to college or studied something else before becoming a photographer.

The Art of the Personal Project: Chava Oropesa

The Art of the Personal Project is a crucial element to let potential buyers see how you think creatively on your own.  I am drawn to personal projects that have an interesting vision or that show something I have never seen before.  In this thread, I’ll include a link to each personal project with the artist statement so you can see more of the project. Please note: This thread is not affiliated with any company; I’m just featuring projects that I find.  Please DO NOT send me your work.  I do not take submissions.

Today’s featured artist:  Chava Oropesa

Con Mucho Cariño

A soul-warming collection of my Mon’s recipes.

Let me tell you why this project is so important to me. My mom was a great cook, she was a full-time home maker and made all our meals from scratch. She created a handwritten cookbook with all her recipes, and some handed down from her mother and grandmother. There were over 120 recipes and my dad, being an engineer, created a way of organizing and indexing as my mom continued to add new recipes to her book.

The recipes are so delicious and remind me of my life in Mexico while living with my parents. Both of them have passed on, and for a few years I have been thinking of a way to honor them by cooking my mom’s recipes and photographing the process. I am also hoping this project will help keep some of these wonderful recipes alive.

Why “Con Mucho Cariño”? Because that’s the way my mom would sign off her letters when writing to me: “With lots of love”.

I also believe her recipe’s secret ingredient was that too, lots of love.

_____________________________________________________

I’m Chava, an Oakland based Photographer and Creative Director whose love for photography and food, and even the packaging it comes in, has transformed into my life’s passion.

Growing up in Mexico City filled my life with colorful culture which has deeply influenced both my design style and photography.

To see more of this project, click here

Instagram

APE contributor Suzanne Sease currently works as a consultant for photographers and illustrators around the world.  She has been involved in the photography and illustration advertising and in-house corporate industry for decades.  After establishing the art-buying department at The Martin Agency, then working for Kaplan-Thaler, Capital One, Best Buy and numerous smaller agencies and companies, she decided to be a consultant in 1999.  Follow her at @SuzanneSease.  Instagram

The Art of The Personal Project: Jennifer MacNeill

The Art of the Personal Project is a crucial element to let potential buyers see how you think creatively on your own.  I am drawn to personal projects that have an interesting vision or that show something I have never seen before.  In this thread, I’ll include a link to each personal project with the artist statement so you can see more of the project. Please note: This thread is not affiliated with any company; I’m just featuring projects that I find.  Please DO NOT send me your work.  I do not take submissions.

 

Today’s featured artist:   Jennifer MacNeill

The farm auction project grew from childhood memories of attending the liquidation sale of my stepfather’s family dairy farm and my current interest in local history and desire to gain entry into old barns and homes that surround me in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. We have some of the richest farmland in the United States and so often our farms are being replaced with housing developments, warehouses, and shopping centers.

When I started working on the project in 2021, I had little idea that the private worlds I would gain entry into would be filled with so much mystery and tinged with sadness. Many of these auctions are used to settle the estate for a farmer who has passed. They lived a hidden life many of us never even think about.

There is a secret thrill in exploring these old houses and barns with little restriction. Studying the architecture, disrepair, and personal belongings to learn about the history of the area in properties dating back well over a hundred years. Mingling with auction-goers and engaging in conversation to further investigate the lives of the people who once lived there, to get a sense of who they were.

Through my images I seek to piece together clues showing how the farm owners lived, the process and people that attend these auctions, and visually preserve a vanishing history.

To see more of this project, click here

Instagram

APE contributor Suzanne Sease currently works as a consultant for photographers and illustrators around the world.  She has been involved in the photography and illustration advertising and in-house corporate industry for decades.  After establishing the art-buying department at The Martin Agency, then working for Kaplan-Thaler, Capital One, Best Buy and numerous smaller agencies and companies, she decided to be a consultant in 1999.  Follow her at @SuzanneSease.  Instagram

The Daily Edit – Conveyor Studio


Conveyor Studio


Co-founder & Creative Director: Christina Labey

Co-founder & Production Manager: Jason Burstein

Heidi: You recently published a gorgeous book Moemoeā by Brendan George Ko, along with photography the book included unique type design, illustration, and an essay. What was the essence of creative direction as the photography honors sharing Polynesian knowledge of celestial navigation.
Christina and Jason: When we start a project, I always ask the artist to provide their inspiration as a point of departure for my research rabbit hole on the creative direction. One of Brendan’s inspirations for making this project was a book called Vikings of the Sunrise by Te Rangi Hiroa, so when we started the project I bought a beautiful hardcover copy on eBay. We used the lettering and illustrations from this as a point of departure, alongside a haul books and ephemera we’d recently bought at a used bookshop in Hawaii.

Our designer Elana Schlenker brilliantly suggested that we commission Sophy Hollington—who uses linocut, a relief printmaking process—to create the lettering and illustrations throughout. The geometric patterns on the covers of The Spell and The Story were inspired by Hawaiian tapa designs, a form of printmaking typically made from hand-carved bamboo stamps. In The Story booklet, instead of page numbers we used the phases of the moon to illustrate the passage of time through the book as a nod to celestial navigation and tracking time though natural elements. The illustrations are set in a vibrant vermilion that echoes the color of Hōkūle‘a’s sails and Hawaii’s iron-rich volcanic soil.

The book includes a wire bound and a singer sewn booklet. Why did you choose these particular binding styles for the two parts The Story and The Spell? From the start, we knew the book would have a hardcover case but wanted to something that felt unique to the project, so we chose to wire bind The Spell to give the feeling of a nautical logbook. Practically, we wanted an option that would lay flat and allow us to occasionally insert iridescent paper stock to emulate the sheen of the ocean’s surface or the night sky.

For The Story, the booklet reminds me of a small field guide or scrapbook that provides an objective and historical account after The Spell, which is more of an experiential book. The singer sewn binding allowed us to bring some color into the binding edge and the center spread, it also recalls the color and stitching of Hōkūle‘a’s sail which appear as the opening image.

Roughly, how many books do you create and print annually since you are a bespoke studio honoring craft?
We publish two or three artist books each year in addition to Mercuria, an experimental magazine that explores art and science in chapter form. We typically release one book with an artist we haven’t published before, this takes form in a more ambitious, research-based project that includes significant text and custom design elements. The other books are usually something a little more informal, little to no text, and experimental from one of the artists on our publishing roster.

We went on a bit of a hiatus during the pandemic, it was ideal for reflection and research, but not so great for connecting with our artists, editors, and designers. There is something irreplaceable about in-person design meetings, creative brainstorming, pulling out all the material swatches, and reviewing proofs and prototypes together.

In retrospect, the long pause was beneficial because I allowed myself to embrace the fact that I work slowly. I put a lot of time and thought into each project, when there are a lot of events I feel the pressure to launch new things, but once you publish something it’s forever. Our books will outlive us in libraries and collections, so it’s important that I feel happy with it, and most importantly that it represents the artist’s project in the best possible way. This was the case with Moemoeā, which slowed pace during the pandemic and ultimately took an extra two years because we wanted to commission an essay to include historical and cultural context, we also added a lot of extra production embellishments. In the end, I’m so happy we waited until it felt completely right.

Same Sum is a lovely interactive book full of surprises, what were the challenges with the unique shuffling of the sequences?
It was a really strange experience to try and sequence a book that would also be sequenced by both the reader and by chance as every shuffle and flip-though is bound to be different. It started with the initial edit, narrowing it down to 120 photographs from 400. I find that as an editor you become really familiar with a photographer’s patterns, compositions, and motifs, you start to see how they experience the world through their camera and then present that to the reader. The edit embraces the patterns I find in Peters photographs and lay the groundwork for the reader to make their own connections between images. For example, many images have a central circle or strong angles in the composition, certain pops of color that resonate, a repeated spiral theme, or very similar images made moments apart that occur several times on different panels of the book. It seems random, but it was very considered.

The challenge came when we started to print proofs and prototypes, after I finished a sequence we would immediately print and bind it because it wasn’t possible to experience it on screen, no matter how much we mocked it up to mimic the real thing. We went through five or six rounds of sequencing this way: revise, print, bind, flip, repeat. When we were on press with the final, there were still surprises that popped up from the fact that one book was bound on the left, the other on the right, which shuffled the images further and blew our mind a bit.

What inspired this type of book?
When Peter pitched this project to me, it included 400+ photographs culled from his daily life that were both mundane and magical. He’d experimented with different ways of installing them and was curious if we could make a book from the project. When we begin a new book, the artist fills out a questionnaire—brilliantly created by our long-time collaborator Liz Sales for I Write Artist Statements—so we can identify the themes at the heart of the project before putting together a design proposal. In describing the project, he said “I’ve never been able to effectively lay out the entire deck, extras are always left in small bundles on the table, so while every picture is tangibly together the contents of all pictures are not visible. In this way, the project feels like an epic deck of cards that can never be fully dealt.”

From that moment, I knew I wanted to nod to magic tricks and a card deck, there is a certain sleight of hand that goes into framing and photographing. I also liked how he described the process as a cycle of practice and playing feeding off one another, this made me think of spiral binding and the double-bound format was inspired in part by Amber Gambler by Dylan Nelson.

We published Peter’s debut monograph Half Wild, so I knew this could be a more playful sequel since our audience was already familiar with his work. I also knew that he would be open to experiment with format so long as it doesn’t distract from the heart of the project or the photographs—a principle that is important in all of our publications.

How does the digital age intersect with your work?
The digital age is what makes this all possible, from the Indigo (our digital offset press, which allows us to print books essentially on demand) to social media for sharing our projects or collaborating remotely with artists and contributors. But it does feel like the hours are spent on the screen are endless and never enough, from answering emails, designing books, researching projects, and documenting our work (studio photography and a lot of retouching). We have an amazing team, but we are also still a small studio, so we are hands-on with all aspects!
I think this affects our personal life in that we are drawn to activities that don’t revolve around the screen, our weekends or travels revolve around being immersed in nature or the studio. Our personal studio practices have also evolved away from digital; our foundation is in photography and even though we both shoot film, there is so much time spent on screen from scanning and retouching to designing books or installation ideas. We find ourselves exploring other more tactile and meditative mediums—woodworking for Jason, watercolor and natural pigments for myself—and also thinking about how they can intersect with photography, for example experimenting with custom frames, different materials, and installation ideas.

How has your own artistic background informed your practices at Conveyor Studio?
In a way, my personal practice and my Conveyor Studio practice are so interwoven that it’s sometimes hard to distinguish, they continue to constantly inform one another. When we opened the studio I was just starting the MFA Photography program at Parsons and only beginning to find the direction of my own art practice. Simultaneously, we started experimenting with publishing and started Conveyor magazine, it was my first experience with editing and curating yet it felt really natural. This idea of arranging started to trickle into my personal work which takes form in installations and artist books that mix of images and text, curated from archives and my own writing and photographs. Whenever I start a new project, I inherently think about it in book format, from scale to tactile and temporal experience.

It happens with research topics too, at some point I became very interested in both science and the metaphysical, so naturally the themes for each issue of Conveyor magazine began to reflect similar topics like Alchemy and Time Travel. This continues even further with Mercuria, which explores art and science and is mercurial in format. I wanted the ability to play with the design and format of each booklet, not fit each issue into the same mold. The next volume is going to have the theme of Botany, which is currently a main focus in my own research. I like to think that if I’m going into it with a lot of passion and excitement, it will reflect and spread to the readers.

I also find that design commissions and our publishing projects, even though they aren’t explicitly my personal work, for experimentation and collaborations that are inspiring. I’m lucky in that I get to choose both my design clients and the projects we publish, and usually there is some kind of overlap in areas of research or interest so that I both learn something from their work and can also bring a uniquely, informed element to their book.

As artists, what compelled you to have a studio that celebrates print?
Jason trained as a darkroom and digital printer at Lightwork while studying at Syracuse. He has an extensive knowledge of color management, this combined with his family’s longstanding history in book design and production in the New York City area, started to carve a clear path toward print. In addition to photography, I studied graphic design and art history, which all lend quite well to publishing.

We started Conveyor Studio in a small annex in the book printing and binding factory in Hoboken, New Jersey. Initially, we were just tapping the resources available to us and dove headfirst into printing, publishing, and even curating exhibitions in the space. In the beginning, it was as much about building a community of artists as it was a love of print, and amazingly those things have just continued to grow together over the last decade.

 

The Art of the Personal Project: Zach Anderson

The Art of the Personal Project is a crucial element to let potential buyers see how you think creatively on your own.  I am drawn to personal projects that have an interesting vision or that show something I have never seen before.  In this thread, I’ll include a link to each personal project with the artist statement so you can see more of the project. Please note: This thread is not affiliated with any company; I’m just featuring projects that I find.  Please DO NOT send me your work.  I do not take submissions.

Today’s featured artist:  Zach Anderson

The Millennial zeitgeist is ever shifting, though there is one thread that weaves its way through the fabric of the cohort: acceptance and admiration of uniqueness. Amplified even more by Gen Z, it’s hard to ignore the pursuit of a sense of self among this group.

Zach Anderson strives to share his experience and perspective in his photography, including his friends as subjects. His coming of age has shaped his visual aesthetic and can be seen through the attention to color, freshness, and youthful communication through his imagery. And as a Millennial, telling stories of identity through his art is a priority.  

Combining his love of distinctive color to communicate emotion, music as a barometer for feeling and his celebration of the queer community, Zach’s new project highlights Drag Queens in Boise, ID. Sense of self and acceptance at the forefront of this art form, Zach aims to emphasize the talent and effort that goes into each performance.

To see more of this project, click here

Instagram

APE contributor Suzanne Sease currently works as a consultant for photographers and illustrators around the world.  She has been involved in the photography and illustration advertising and in-house corporate industry for decades.  After establishing the art-buying department at The Martin Agency, then working for Kaplan-Thaler, Capital One, Best Buy and numerous smaller agencies and companies, she decided to be a consultant in 1999.  Follow her at @SuzanneSease.  Instagram

The Art of the Personal Project: Kremer / Johnson

The Art of the Personal Project is a crucial element to let potential buyers see how you think creatively on your own.  I am drawn to personal projects that have an interesting vision or that show something I have never seen before.  In this thread, I’ll include a link to each personal project with the artist statement so you can see more of the project. Please note: This thread is not affiliated with any company; I’m just featuring projects that I find.  Please DO NOT send me your work.  I do not take submissions.

Today’s featured artist:  Kremer Johnson

“Palm Springs Bears” – Capturing the Soul of Palm Springs’ Bear Community”

In the vibrant oasis of Palm Springs, a unique culture thrives, embracing an extraordinary sense of community, design, and humor. Within this warm and welcoming enclave, we discovered a profound admiration with a group of individuals known as “bears” – gay men who exude strength, authenticity, and a profound sense of belonging. “Palm Springs Bears” is a photo series born from our deep affection for this remarkable community, a whimsical portrayal of their lives and the spaces they inhabit.
To create this visual narrative, we searched social media, reaching out for potential subjects. The process of casting our subjects through social media platforms allowed us to connect with individuals who were not just willing to participate but eager to share their stories. Their enthusiasm and willingness to be vulnerable in front of the camera opened a door to a world of authenticity, enabling us to portray their lives in an uninhibited light.
Embracing the spirit of innovation and creativity, we rented a house in the heart of Palm Springs, a place that symbolizes a sanctuary for many members of the bear community. Within the living room of this temporary dwelling, we constructed a wall, symbolizing both unity and the protection of a sanctuary. For each subject, we adorned this unique backdrop with distinct wallpapers, carefully chosen to reflect their individual personalities, aesthetics, and stories.

 

 

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APE contributor Suzanne Sease currently works as a consultant for photographers and illustrators around the world.  She has been involved in the photography and illustration advertising and in-house corporate industry for decades.  After establishing the art-buying department at The Martin Agency, then working for Kaplan-Thaler, Capital One, Best Buy and numerous smaller agencies and companies, she decided to be a consultant in 1999.  Follow her at @SuzanneSease.  Instagram

The Art of the Personal Project: Sara Forrest

The Art of the Personal Project is a crucial element to let potential buyers see how you think creatively on your own.  I am drawn to personal projects that have an interesting vision or that show something I have never seen before.  In this thread, I’ll include a link to each personal project with the artist statement so you can see more of the project. Please note: This thread is not affiliated with any company; I’m just featuring projects that I find.  Please DO NOT send me your work.  I do not take submissions.

Today’s featured artist:  Sara Forrest

Mention the state of Kansas and maybe you draw a blank and wonder “where is that state anyways” or perhaps you think of the history of the state.  The Brown vs the Board of Education case, Bleeding Kansas or even just the arduous drive passing through on I-70.  For me, it’s memories of wading through creek beds, watching the stars on the hood of the car with curious cows staring at you in the moonlight, chewing on summer clover and taking long drives to nowhere, half enjoying the ride and half keeping an eye open for adventure.  For me, the adventure always found me in the tallgrass prairies.  The land is quiet, some folks from the cities and coasts may even claim desolate.  There’s always a coyote scattering on the horizon or a meadowlark keeping an eye on you from a nearby post.  Late afternoon clouds open and close in the sky like a giant house curtain on nature’s stage.

This series of photographs are part of a larger series on family friends and communities in the Flint Hills tallgrass prairies of Kansas.  “Tallgrass prairie once covered 170 million acres of North America, but within a generation most of it had been transformed into farms, cities, and towns. Today less than 4% remains intact, mostly in the Kansas Flint Hills.” (via nps.com).  Every spring, prescribed burns snake through the landscape.  Native Americans were the first people to use prescribed fire, as it attracted buffalo to the new grass for easier hunting.  Research has shown that cattle gain more on pastures that have been burned because the old grass and thatch have been removed.  Without these burns, invasive Eastern Red Cedar would choke out the native grass and use up a lot of the water in the soil.  As you walk the prairies you often see buffalo grazing in the distance.

I can not speak to the cowboy way of life, simply because I do not cowboy for a living.  The only way to really get a taste of what that kind of life is like is by getting yourself a good seasoned cow horse, a good mentor and submerging yourself into the lifestyle.  I can throw a rope off my horse and am learning to work cattle, but the demanding, often life or death work in the elements day in and out is not for the faint of heart.  The experience and the opportunity to become friends with and be welcomed into this way of life has not only humbled me, but taught me more about heart, respect, and dedication than anything I have been a part of so far.  These are a few photographs that put a lens behind a typical day of the life of a cattle rancher on the great plains.

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APE contributor Suzanne Sease currently works as a consultant for photographers and illustrators around the world.  She has been involved in the photography and illustration advertising and in-house corporate industry for decades.  After establishing the art-buying department at The Martin Agency, then working for Kaplan-Thaler, Capital One, Best Buy and numerous smaller agencies and companies, she decided to be a consultant in 1999.  Follow her at @SuzanneSease.  Instagram

The Art of the Personal Project: Hugh Kretschmer

The Art of the Personal Project is a crucial element to let potential buyers see how you think creatively on your own.  I am drawn to personal projects that have an interesting vision or that show something I have never seen before.  In this thread, I’ll include a link to each personal project with the artist statement so you can see more of the project. Please note: This thread is not affiliated with any company; I’m just featuring projects that I find.  Please DO NOT send me your work.  I do not take submissions.

Today’s featured artist:   Hugh Kretschmer

 

Normally, I steer clear of clichés in my work; it’s a bit of a rule of mine. But there was something about this series titled “The Perils of Being Ken” that was different. The concept relentlessly occupied my mind, inundating me with ideas. The decision to proceed was solidified when fate introduced me to Kristopher Ohlsson, a student who walked into my Portrait Class I was teaching at a local college – the living embodiment of the character in this series. It was an unmistakable sign to move forward, hitting me like a beautiful slap in the face.

This seven-image series is the only exception where my rule clashes with the creative surge. The initial concept sparked a torrent of ideas, resulting in more photos than we ultimately included in the final edit. Some worked well, while others fell short. Yet even the ones that didn’t quite hit the mark inspired new ideas that ultimately brought coherence to the project. Consequently, the shoot stretched over two days, with a six-month gap in between.

The series’ essence hinged on creating a “small world” appearance, achieved through perspective control lenses in real locations across Los Angeles. However, after testing an array of perspective control (PC) lenses on my DSLR under similar circumstances, I found the results weren’t as strong as I had hoped. Dealing with too many uncertainties, I opted to achieve the desired effect through post-processing in Photoshop. This gave me complete control over points of focus and allowed me to guide my audience’s attention precisely.

The production’s success rested heavily on the makeup and wardrobe aspects, making it essential to have the proper support. For this, I turned to the expertise of Make-up Stylist Isaac Prado and Costumer Gillean McLeod, two seasoned veterans with whom I had collaborated multiple times before. Their contributions were the linchpin of the project’s triumph, and their ingenuity and skills left me in awe.

Wardrobe, Gillean McLeod: https://www.instagram.com/gilleanmcleod/

Makeup, Isaac Prado: https://www.instagram.com/pradoisaac/

    

To see more of this project, click here

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Hugh Kretschmer’s work has been exhibited in Paris, Berlin, São Paulo, Montreal, Serbia, New York, and Los Angeles and was the subject of a retrospective at the Hoban Museum, Seoul. His photographs are permanently displayed at the 9/11 Museum at Ground Zero and in the Library of Congress archives. His work has been recognized by the International Photography Awards, American Photography, Communication Arts, Graphis, Siena Awards, and Society of Publication Designers. His client list includes Vanity Fair, New York Times, Fortune, National Geographic, Time Magazine, Old Spice, Penn & Teller, Sony, Honda, Purina, and Evian, among others.

APE contributor Suzanne Sease currently works as a consultant for photographers and illustrators around the world.  She has been involved in the photography and illustration advertising and in-house corporate industry for decades.  After establishing the art-buying department at The Martin Agency, then working for Kaplan-Thaler, Capital One, Best Buy and numerous smaller agencies and companies, she decided to be a consultant in 1999.  Follow her at @SuzanneSease.  Instagram