Learning about the Industry – Dan Brown

Today we were introduced to Dan Brown, who is a Bath based photographer who most recently started the ‘Bath in Time’ project where he cleverly blended pictures of various parts of the city of Bath with historic pictures. He got a book published on the topic and over 2,000 have been sold so far! And at £9.99 each, that sure is an impressive income!  We learnt that Dan didn’t go to University and his love of cars led him to being a mechanic, a few years later he became a chef in Devon, during his time there, he met a man who worked in a sports shop who later on helped Dan get a place at that shop! It was during this employment when he found his way onto computers for the first time, he was tasked with understanding the workings and technicalities of them and he quickly became adept at using them (although very basic systems at the time) He enjoyed the marketing side of this business and eventually went on to being a salesman for a large corporation (I forget the name) he dealt with stock control and selling of software. Over time he lost passion for this and dropped out in 2004. He had always had a passion for historic photos (especially those of Bath) and he decided to take up photography. Picture libraries became his field of proficiency, he had re-invented himself occupationally. He took a training course studying the technology and equipment in photography and got to work on his ‘Bath in Time’ project where he only recently produced a coffee table book of the project. His current work is being shown in an exhibition in Bath at the, I will definitely attend this at some point next week as it seems interesting and partially relevant to my own work. Dan told us the importance of earning contacts in business and self promotion etc. More importantly he taught us to be passionate about our work. The more you enjoy doing something, the better the outcome will be and the more fun you will have along the way. This advice has been some of the most helpful from all of the people we have seen, I think this is the case because it may be the difference between me as a digital worker finding satisfaction or aggravation in the field I choose. I’m hoping by the end of this course, I will have found a specific field of design which I want to specialise in.