Learning about the Industry – Dean McLachlan

Today we met Dean, who is a wedding Photographer. When he first started out as a photographer, he wasn’t interested in focussing primarily on weddings in his profession, the idea never really appealed to him initially. He started out working as an apprentice for a high end wedding photographer, gradually working his way up to becoming a photographer himself. 9 Years later he was taking photos of products and most notably taking pictures of the dogs of Crufts. Eventually he found himself picking his clients more freely and becoming more of a pro in the field. In 2007 he bought his first professional camera and went into the wedding photography niche – over time he had learned to love the subject and spoke passionately to us about how much he loved photographing people and their emotions as opposed to stationary objects and scenery. Most recently he has been working alongside the Bath Rugby team, capturing scenes of the game and the more interesting aspects of the sport, not just the players and the ball, but the people watching and reacting. He’s not getting paid for this project but he knows that because he is a Bath based photographer, this is a fantastic opportunity to work for a more well-known organisation and as part of the project, a coffee table booklet with photos he has taken will be produced and that will be a good form of advertisement for him as a photographer and will hopefully get him by more potential clients interested in obtaining some photography work. Dean explained to us how most of his most recent work has come from the networking site, Twitter. He recommended us all signing up to the site (which is ironically what I did minutes before he came in!) it’s good for getting your name out to the industry as well as your work, for potential clients to see. Another thing Dean has done is advertised in a local photography magazine. The magazine is a not particularly well known one and is dedicated to very local photographers and Dean as a photographer is a lot more established in that field, and he explained his reasons for this were that he would “prefer to be a big fish in a small pond rather than a small fish in a big pond.” I can see where he is coming from in this aspect; people are more likely going to notice him than they would if he had a small article dedicated to him in a large ubiquitous magazine. He taught us the imperativeness of getting yourself known and really showing your passion for your field. Follow people on Twitter and get yourself a good website up and running. Realise the importance of your portfolio, to a client, you’re only as good as that. Also if you’re thinking about going into advertising yourself, it’s important to advertise according to your current scenario. If you’re just one person, its best to advertise locally as opposed to all over the country, you’re not Superman at the end of the day, you can’t manage all that work and all that travelling!