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Richard P Walton fswpp & Alistair Campbell The Benefits of shooting yourself - part 2 of 1 2 3 4 5

Published 01/12/2015

Richard P Walton: Alistair tell us a little bit about yourself

Alistair: I began taking photographs about three years ago now, I had been a filmmaker for six years and when there was a movement in the market from big HDV cameras across to much smaller DSLRs, I bought one. After having it for about six months for my video work, I did something crazy and put it into 'Photo' mode ... I was hooked! Still to this day I am in awe of how quickly you can create a finished piece of work; if you know what you want you can go and shoot it, be back home within an hour or so and have work up online within half an hour. I've spent days, weeks and months and lots of sleepless nights working on video projects, dialogue and images floating around in my head, how to edit them together better, what to change, what to delete, syncing up audio/video, waiting for clips to render, encoding, exporting video, burning finished projects to DVD, etc. Although I still work part-time as a filmmaker, most of my work in this field is based around working for other people on their vision and the stories they want to tell. Photography is now really the only form of creativity and expressionism for me. Over the last two years I seem to have managed to really lock my style and form down; I'm still not entirely sure how I've managed it, and sometimes I get a little bored of my own work and will change it up quite a bit, but the creative character portraits and street-stylised fashion is what works best for me. I still haven't quite managed to shoot what I want, but I think if you ask any photographer then they will probably say the same...

Richard P Walton: Interesting, I am similar, but the other way around, I started filming when the DSLRs added the option. In terms of shooting what you want, that's what this article was supposed to be about. *laughs* moving on, How often do you shoot personal projects?

Alistair: Without going back and counting them up, it's hard to tell, but if I had to guess, I try to do a shoot every six weeks or so. Sometimes things just all fall into place and I may do two or three in a week, but then I might not shoot anything for three months or so. When I do personal projects I try to be as efficient as I can, and will usually split one photoshoot up into two or three different styles/genres/looks, etc so I always have new content available to post up all year round.

Richard P Walton: That's great, I'm very similar, I go through phases which are sometimes dictated by what work I have on. I try to get out as much as possible though because it's a great way to build the portfolio and attract new clients. Have you ever had any paid work based on photographs you've shot in the past for free?

Alistair: Yes, quite a bit actually; I have a regular client who has four or five big shoots every year based around their new stock available in the coming seasons, some shoots have been two or three days long including promotional material to go alongside product images. I also have a couple of other smaller clients who are also after the same style on a smaller scale, but it is all based around the types of images I shot when out on personal shoots. I had very little money to buy equipment and no access to a studio so I just used to use different textured walls that matched the outfits; the world we live in basically became my 'studio'.

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1st Published 01/12/2015
last update 09/12/2022 14:58:54

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