Notice: This post is made out of frustration and you can leave your thoughts and anger here too.
I am 25, female, german and a freelance photographer. Since a year I am trying to get into concert photograpy with pay. The first 10 concerts I did of course for free to build my portfolio but now I reached the point where I want to get real jobs and some respect for my work.
But as many fellows know it is a hard world out there and you have to give 200% effort to get 2% chance on landing a job. So one of my strategies were writing pm‘s to concert photographers on instagram with the question if they could be so kind and spill the tea about experiences in the business.
Guess what? The answers were vague and short or you would get ignored. Further it would stop at telling the simple thing of which lens they used. I get it that everyone has their own style and tries to protect it but you can nit be replaced that quickly by just helping one out with some info.
Can someone tell me about similar experiences? Is there someone who is not afraid of giving informations about this photography sector? I would really like to not feel alone anymore with this behavior.
Thanks guys!
Summary: Freelance photographer trying to get into concert sector but struggles to get paid jobs. Succesfull photographers won‘t have a conversation about their experiences. Hence their the biggest gatekeepers in my opinion!!
I honestly think you’re playing too much into the victim mentality.
This is my advice:
What you described happens in just about every field and will continue to happen. I’ve experienced many similar things. When people said to me in a drunken rave one night, “Yeah man, just give me a call I’ll set you up with all the best contacts in that place / country.” Yet when I call them and leave a message they never call back etc. It happens and it’s almost to be expected.
You know what I did? I just went and did it anyway – in my own way. I went to those places and countries and I made my own luck. It worked out way better than I could have imagined because I found my own path.
The other thing is if your concert photographs are great you are eventually going to get the paid work. If your photos are not great yet, then you won’t get the paid work.
It means you have to keep working on your skills and craft until your work is really great. Unless you are exceptionally skilled, it’s going to take you way more than a year to be really great at anything in photography.
It took me many years of work and making many mistakes to get paid to do theatre and event photography.
Getting paid for concert photography is an incredibly small niche area of photography – and it seems almost every new photographer wants to do it.
Remember – no one out there in the photography world owes you anything.
Yes, people can choose to freely share their advice and experience – just like I am doing now.