On the 18th of October we had an Alumni session
where some past students came in to talk to us about the things they’ve been up
to since finishing the course.
Tim Bowditch
·
Independent photographer, London
·
Graduated in 2008
Tim graduated in 2008 and went
home for one month, but felt like you couldn’t go back to Guernsey so he soon
moved to London. The majority of his work at University was documentary,
however when he finished he found it really hard to decide what he wanted to
do. He went on to do an internship in a commercial gallery and at a
contemporary gallery and became an assist curator. However, he was still quite
confused and started to assist a few editorial photographers.
He ended up being part of a
project called Roof Unit. Him, Chris Littlewood and Tony Smith set up a pool of
7 or 8 photographers looking for an assistant. He explained this was the best
decision he’s ever made. Through this project he gained lots of contacts and
had to juggle a lot of things at the same time.
He went on to talk a little
bit about his website. He doesn’t have any of his commercial work on there, or
any Uni work (natural progression). He get the majority of his work through
other photographers or clients passing his name on to other clients. He also
talked about his experience assisting photographers, and explained it was
really good experience anyone should have. Now he doesn’t do any assisting
anymore, unless he could travel for it.
Vicky Chiswell
·
Aspex Gallery Participation programme manager
·
Graduated in 2010
Aspex is a contemporary art
gallery which features a lot of new and upcoming artists. She works with
toddlers to adults and helps get people more involved with art. She gets young
kids to interact with artists and feel comfortable about and around art.
While still studying, Vicky
applied to volunteer at Aspex gallery in order to get some experience. She was
asked to go along as a photographer for educational trips. After working there
for a while, asked for a part time job.
She also managed to get an
internship full time and paid – but she was already working at aspex part time.
She accepted the internship and explained she had to do a lot of juggling. It
was really valuable experience.
She is still working at Aspex
now, and is busy with all sorts of events – including New Creatives.
Chris Butler
·
Director of The Photography Lounge in Chichester
·
Graduated in 2004
Chris did a prediploma where
he had to do a different type of art every couple of weeks (sculpture, graphics
etc) but in the end he decided he wanted to go into photography. He explained
that less than half of his year is still in photography. It took Chris about
one year to get a full time paid photography job after he graduated. He applied
to all types of photography jobs and eventually got the chance to photograph a
wedding. He had never done a wedding before so had no idea what he was doing.
He ended up doing a good job and managed to get a portrait photography job. At
Uni he did a lot of landscape work, so originally he wasn’t interested in
portraiture and he explained that he didn’t pay any attention to his classes so
he had to relearn everything about portraiture.
The listed a few of the
positives and negatives about working for someone and later in his talk he
explained that he set up his own portraiture business and listed the positives
and negatives of that. He got the portraiture job in order to learn about the
world of photography and it was much needed experience. But once he was done,
he set up his own independent business. He searched for assistant, and
explained to us how important it is to have a professional email address and
studio name in order to be taken seriously.
At the moment he doesn’t take
as many photos as he used to, but is now more concerned with marketing. He
explained a bit about branding and how important it is to stick to the same
brand so people can recognize you.
Georgie Gillard
·
Staff photographer for the Daily Mail
·
Graduated in 2011
Georgie was my favourite
speaker of the day, she was so enthusiastic about her job and the things she’s
been up to that it was really inspirational. She worked as a sport photographer
for the Daily Mail and worked with the 541 Olympic sports athletes. She helped
to come up with a plan of how to photographer everyone as part of a group shot.
The athletes were put into smaller groups and photographed and then small
thumbnails were put on a board allocating where they would be in the group
shot.
She also shot all the medal
winners of the Olympics and Paralympics a well as the opening ceremony of the
Paralympics and managed to get the front page and the second, third and fifth
page of the Daily Mail.
Since being at uni, she knew
she wanted to be a press photographer and got a interview and a week of work
experience at the Times. In her third year she expanded her portfolio to get on
the press circuit and did work experience with various photographers.
Georgie submitted her images
for her final year project to source magazine competition and won. This opened
many doors for her and because of that she managed to get an interview at the
Daily Mail.
Nick Adams
·
Independent photographer, London
·
Graduated in 2009
Nick had a different journey
as he wasn’t initially interested in photography. He studied languages and then
ended up changing his course. He was able to start in the second year of
photography so had to teach himself how to use the darkroom and film.
He managed to win an award for
his final year images, but unfortunately he was trespassing so didn’t receive
the reward in the end.
When he left Uni he didn’t have
a clue what he wanted to do, but he knew he wanted to be a photographer. He literally
did every single job that he could and got a lot of experience from that. He worked
with esquire magazine and photographed for Kurt Geiger. Because he had such a popular
name on his CV it made it easier for him to approach anyone. He ended up becoming
really interested in interior photography and started working for architects.
He explained that the most important
part of being a photographer is being able to network, having a website, facebook,
twitter and a blog made it easy for people to find him on a search engine. Now,
most of the work he gets is from clients approaching him, rather than him approaching
clients.
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