THA BLOG IS HOT // Jake Stangel Blog: A guide to doing the damn thing aka get where u wanna go part 3 of 4: Personal Work →
Post 3 of 4:
Shoot more personal work. Work hard and then harder.
Constant mantra that I’m trying to achieve every day. I might be saying it while I’m on the couch watching an episode of The Kardashians or something very guilty pleasurable time-waster. But the following day - I’m always working (mostly ha). When I first started and said “I want to be a fashion photographer” I had this idea that I would test every weekend while I was working a full time job. Needless to say I crashed hard but at the end of like 6 months, because I had tested so much, I actually had a somewhat of a portfolio I wasn’t too embarrassed about.
One of the main things I hear from big time fashion photographers talking at seminars all the time is say something like this, “To be a good photographer, always shoot, even if it’s just testing. If you’re only shooting commercially, your work can become stagnant. But if you continue to test, you can shoot whatever the heck you want to shoot, be ridiculously creative, and push yourself.” I know this one photographer who gets TONS of advertising (which means bank by the way) but is always testing when she can fit it in because then she has new work to show the client.
I’ve totally went off on a bit of a tangent there but what I’m trying to say is:
Hell yes, shoot more personal work (which I’m trying to dooooooooo!!!)
Hey there girl.
Welcome back to the program. The program of making it. If you’re just joining us, I’m writing a large 4 piece post on what I think are the four most important things you can do to become a professional photographer. They are (follow the links back as the parts appear):
