In my opinion she is one of the most forthright, honest and genuine persons I have met in over twenty years in the business.

Yes, she talked about my personal work, she’s interested in how we “see” when there aren’t gaggles of people influencing what we do. If you guys think that having Art Directors, Creative Directors, account people and clients hovering over you in shoots doesn’t influence your work then your kidding your selves or have much stronger ego’s than I.

Some of you are getting the words “fine art” and “personal work” mixed up.

For example- I represent Thomas Chadwick, and he shoots personal work all the time. And it pays off for him in a huge way. But he would never call his personal work fine art. His personal work has an artistic way about it- clearly. But he knows he is not a fine artist.

He’d probably say his personal work is his work, and his commercial work are his assignments.

Personal work, professional portfolio. I don’t care what Kat’s wearing at least she’s interested in what you’re shooting when you’re not shooting cars, beer bottles or hamburgers.

I was wondering should I separate personal projects from professional or not and I guess yes is the answer.

thx,
Borut

JILL GREENBERG
Her meddling monkeys and crying babies directly landed her many big jobs, such as Gwen Stefani’s album packaging, the Burger King crying adults, numerous magazine covers, etc. Check out her site and you’ll see how many jobs were shot for advertisements using that same exact lighting. I have personal insight into just how much work she got because I was her digital tech for two years. Brilliant business woman, no matter what personal opinion anyone has of her.

EWRIN OLAF
Same thing as with the personal work. Check out his site and you can quickly make the connection. BEAUTIFUL photography.

MICHAEL GRECO
He’s a big promoter and marketing guru. His seminars, articles and books definitely land him commercial work.

DAVID LACHAPELLE
No explanation necessary.

Chris, or was it Andrew, Eccles? Tim maybe?
Whatever his name, this guy has created a few published personal books, one of them was of animals. He’s recently done another one too in a similar style. Just saw it at Barnes and Noble two weeks ago. Studio guy, can’t remember his name. Not my style of photos so I can’t recall his name too easily.

What if a photographer doesn’t have time or just doesn’t want to shoot personal work? Or what if they can’t afford to do personal projects because their commercial work is costing so much it becomes personal? Uh huh, exactly.

Seems that a lot of big advertising photographers get most of their work based on what they do with their spare time and cash, whether it’s for a book, a gallery, or a magazine that doesn’t pay. I can think of a few prominent examples.

To claify my above statement, and what APE is (I believe) saying in his reply, clients know that your commercial work is someone elses comp. If they like your personal work there is likely a similar taste in common, which leads to drinks and happy feelings before, during, and after the overlit smiling cell phone family shot that pays for Packer.

I think your take on the fine art market is pretty right on. Now that all those Lehman brokers (and their analogues) are broke the demand for shitty art photography might calm down and starve this symbiotic fine arts racket of its lifes blood: money.

Why would you deny someone the joy of finding great photographers to work with even if the end product doesn’t require any of those skills?

Exactly. About time somebody told it how it is. There’s a whole bunch of smoke and mirrors guff that these consultants get off on. You want to see how I see? Then you want to strap me to some lame ass AD who has zero understanding of photography but “knows art when he sees it” and who attempts to make me shoot the same overlit hackneyed crap that Donnar Party references. Where’s the personal vision in that.

Put Crewdson, Hido and their ilk in a competition with some 6th form art school students and you’d not tell them apart. Smoke and mirrors. Emperor’s new clothes.

There’s a whole little disgusting world of “art photography” that’s grown up supported by these rip-off ‘competitions’ and perpetuated by people who want to hire us for our ‘inner vision’ and perpetuate the myth that personal work isn’t just something you do when nobody’s hiring you to shoot for money!

You hire me because I can shoot stuff that sells your product. Lets not forget the 75% of my “look” which I don’t do (that’s farmed out to retouchers of course).

You know, shooting red shoes does not prove that you can shoot green shoes.

was an attempt at humor. the damn shirt looks like it went thru a shredder during fall in new england. her insight however is excellent.

“I see lotsa very good commercial photographers who trot out some pretty lame ‘ART’ that falls under their personal work category because they feel they have to in order to appear….artistic!”

Check the shortlisted pictures from this year’s AOP Awards (primarily UK-based ad and editorial shooters). Always a mixed bag, but this year I feel like I could be looking at the final year show for a bunch of German photography students…

http://www.the-awards.com/2009_Images

“…we wanna see how the photographer sees….”

and…

“…the acknowledgment of the photographer as an artist and that ‘higher-level’ skill which is, as an artist, is also very desirable…”

Huh?!! If I wanna see how a photographer ’sees’, I think looking at his commercial book will give you a pretty good idea. Everybody knows that shooting ads requires a tremendous amount of interpretive skill and that what makes a commercial photographer worth his weight in gold.

Oh sure…I get what she’s saying, but I often fail to see how elevating commercial photographers to ‘Artist’ standing simply because he or she shows a ‘personal side’ has any validity if you’re looking for them to shoot commercial assignments. There are carloads of commercial (advertising and editorial) photographers whose work I admire where I have not seen their personal work, but it wouldn’t change my opinion about them as photographers or make me think they we any better of worse if they don’t push their personal projects. Alternatively, I see lotsa very good commercial photographers who trot out some pretty lame ‘ART’ that falls under their personal work category because they feel they have to in order to appear….artistic!