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!!

  • stank_bin_369@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    I had a photography business for just shy of 2 decades. I would often get other photographers that wanted to get into the business contact me and ask about the whole process.

    I’d charge them a consultation fee - and this would keep the drive bys at bay. I had probably 4-5 consults like this and 2-3 of them went on to be successful. The market I live in is really big, so competition is. It so much an issue. The niche they wanted to get into was different than what I did (portraiture, but they wanted to do baby and mini shoots and that is not my thing at all).

    Even so, I know of a few larger corporations CEOs that will give you a few hours of their time if you pay.

    Seems very fair.

    However, business is business and people are busy, out there hustling. No one is entitled to anything and no one owes anyone else anything.

    I’ve changed as now I’m doing journalism and not paid photo shoots anymore, so I don’t have the worry about training a competitor, so I do tend to help out more pro bono than I used to.

    The only thing I never understood was when photographers got all secretive about what gear they use, EXIF data and their post processing workflow.

    The “secret sauce “ is not the gear or the plug in you use. The key is cultivating the eye to see what needs to be captured, getting the light how it needs to be.

    Oh, and I’d say that about 80% of photographers think they are better than everyone else or are a-holes anyone - so o don’t think that this situation the OP is in is gatekeeping, it’s just probably people being busy, personalities.