The Photos That Launched My Editorial Photography Career

almost nine years ago I created a set of images that changed my career it launched me into editorial photography and started my journey into shooting magazine features and covers [Music] so I was in a phase of building my portfolio and I wanted to create a set of images I really loved Joel's work and the work he was doing with the History Channel one of the problems was it's very difficult to find uh costumes and wardrobe and locations and things like that to compile and put them all into a shoot but what I realized was happening was there was a war of 1812 reenactment happening and so I went to the battlefield which was a couple of blocks away from my house where I lived and I grew up going to the the house there and the monument my grandmother lived just one street over on Battlefield drive it's something that I remembered from my childhood and I thought this would be great to bring into into my work we would have reenactors present those people are very detailed in particular about the creating authenticity in their costumes and we were on the actual site of the battlefield and the had tents and everything set up so I went down with my good friend Meraki carried the light for me on the monopod uh Studio strobe a plug-in strobe connected to a a version one of a policy buff Vagabond which was essentially a giant 12 volt battery I think it might have even been like a motorcycle battery that it was really heavy you had to put it on your like in a in a pack like like that would strap over your shoulder I actually think these were shot with this beauty Edition it's a white Beauty Dish it's Bowens and I shot it with a diffusion panel on the beauty dish so I want to show you the images oh [Music] what we did is uh when we went out we we just approached reenactors Merrick was holding the light and and I would just stop them and say hey I'd really love to take your portrait is that something you'd be open to yeah they would just stop they would sit they would pose looking as they do and these images I shot with my Canon 60D using the 50 millimeter F 1.8 inexpensive uh crop sensor camera with a lens that I paid eighty dollars for to get these images and get me shooting editorial features and covers for magazines so I took these images and I put them into a portfolio along with some other images I went to have a meeting with an art director at the local City magazine here when she saw these images she she pulled out a big book that she had a binder full of images she started leafing through the book flipping page and saying these are this is what I have I have these ideas and I was like yes we could do that that's great we can we can execute things like that and we started planning uh shoots and that's really what got me moving into editorial and magazine work looking back on the images I don't think they're that great what I ended up doing was I went back the following year and that year I went with my big 48 inch octa-box I had another friend who was helping me out but again we were with the studio strobe a 600 watt second Studio strobe on a battery pack outside in the evening and at night we were taking these images there are no lights around the only lights that we had were the light source that I could bring so I shot a new series with new reenactors same location same event I like these images a lot better I think they look a lot better I was using better equipment thank you [Music] foreign [Music] I guess what I want to get at here is you have to go out and take chances yet you just have to grab your equipment and go and get the images that you want to get you can't sit around waiting for images to come to you it's not going to happen when you're building your portfolio you have to go and make it happen and that doesn't stop throughout your career the work that you get hired to do is not going to be the work that you put in your portfolio your portfolio is going to consist primarily of personal work that you're doing projects that you're creating and when people see that work they're going to say oh I really like what he does we want to hire him for our company or our ad campaign our magazine and do the thing that he does this is the same approach I took on a few other occasions with some public figures uh Canadian comedian Rick Mercer he was performing locally and I just contacted his PR person and I said look I'd love to come and photograph him they gave me 12 minutes and are some of the shots that I got from that Ralph Nader us politician and author the person who's responsible for getting seat belts put into every vehicle he was doing a book reading at the local library I contacted the library they knew who I was they were familiar with my work and they said yes come on down and I was able to get I think five minutes with him prior to him going up and doing his book signing another time we had a former politician premiere of Ontario Kathleen Nguyen she was giving a speech again at the library without any prompting I just put my equipment in my car went to the library and when I got there she happened to be just about to leave and I stopped her and I said do you mind if I just get a couple of images of you for my portfolio and this is the one image I got that I think is is good doing that just getting that one image is worth it that was about an hour of my time I had 10 minutes with her and eight of which I spent setting up a backdrop and getting the shot set up some backdrops set up some lights I did it as fast as I could and I had I think two minutes with her I got you know not many frames but all I really needed was one shot and that's all that really matters go out and get that shot let me know if you have a shot like that in your portfolio leave a comment below if you found this video insightful or helpful uh hit that like button that really helps And subscribe to this channel for more videos like this thanks for watching take care