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!!

  • telekinetic@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    There is a photographer that I respect that is totally out of my market (in Ukraine, actually) who was doing an amazing shot unlike anything I’d seen duplicated that I wanted some details on figuring out.

    I found his email, stated that I admired his work, asked for his venmo, and asked if he’d be willing to give me the details of his lighting setup for $100. He was incredibly helpful :)

    He probably would have helped me for free, but I wanted the information because I wanted to make money from it, so I felt it was only fair to pay for it.