Q: “What were some of the first paid mag assignments and how did you get them? Do you really think it is a pyramid process where you have had to start small and then work your way up? Or do you think it is better to get your book seen and higher level mags?”

A: It’s not really this clear cut.  First off, until you’re major, forget including magazines and getting paid in the same thought, especially for fashion.  You’re probably going to have to foot most of the costs for these shoots.   A lot of people ask about this and look stupefied when I respond there is no pay, but here’s the thing: 1) this work should be the some of the most exciting and fun work you do professionally, and, 2) you need to look at it as part of your advertising budget, as it’s years of meager but fun editorial work that is going to build you and make you known, generally.  The exception to no budgets is regional magazines out of smaller cities. B/c they don’t have the immense, transient talent pool to milk like the A-markets, they tend to have some money to motivate with.  They can be a good place to get your feet wet with the whole process.

Now, the actual act of breaking into it is SO different for everyone.  Don’t look for a formula.  Some people nail it and pick up right away.  Some it takes decades and decades.  I’d suggest not to expect the standard 2-3 year get in the black or close the door business model.  It takes patience and attrition, but again, I think the part that a lot of people leave out when talking about how hard it is is that it is also a lot of fun if you love pictures and fashion.

As for showing work, well, in retrospect I think I showed too much work to too many people early on.  Then one day I realized where I stood (an important and difficult piece of perspective to develop).  After that I totally backed off and spent three years tuning things.  I’m still tuning, but now, I show work to very specific magazines (basically ones I think would be a good fit), but even then I don’t show or hustle as much as I should.  Alas, I’d rather spend the day out shooting on the street.  I know people that live for the hustle and bustle and networking though.  They don’t really do better or worse; it is simply different personalities and different ways of going about things.  I think at the end of the day, if you’re consistently present in a good market and you’re getting work out, and it’s good work, people will notice.  But don’t be surprised if it takes 2 years or so of subtle schmoozing and boozing to get into a magazine.  And then don’t be surprised if they use you once and never again.  It happens.  Lots and lots and lots of politics.  I personally ignore that as much as possible for my sanity and concentrate on good pictures.  Again, though, this is just me, and I’m by no means a staple fashion photographer.  I love it, but I also have my own perspective that makes me do things my own way.  I suggest the same to anyone, just for life in general.  Be good and honest and deliberate about it.

And, if in doubt, as a prison guard told my kid brother at a Med/Max prison while he was standing with a fearing-for-his-life gaze across his face: “Mitchell, keep moving, and look like you know what you’re doing.”

Finally, on this point, I think there is a common misconception of making it, so to speak.  As you get further in your career, I think you can rest a bit on some fronts, but I don’t think you can ever back-off.  Many of the big guys that line the rosters of the big reps work at this stuff as tirelessly as they did when they were young.  It’s an illusion that they’re sitting back and the work is rolling in.  The business is constantly shuffling and reorganizing, and everyone is trying to get ahead or hold their spot, no matter if they just moved to the city from a small town or whether they’re on the roster of A&C.

Q: “For the original fashion stories in your book, how did you put them together? Did you find people off Craigslist willing to do work for free? I’m not really clear on how this process works when you are starting out and don’t have a “Name” or connections.”

A: Find MU and hair reps and call them, ask them for names of people who want to test.  Find stylists assistants and ask if they want to test.  If your not in a big city, my first suggestion would be to find a local modeling agency (the best one you can) and talk to them about testing.  They’ll usually have connections with hair and MU people too.  This part seems intimidating, but once you start doing it it becomes second nature to produce for yourself.  One person leads to another.  You jive with some, you don’t with others.  Be up front that your testing, but if you love it and believe in your idea, others will get on board and work on it.  Don’t be insulted if someone says, “I don’t test any more,” just politely ask them if they know of anyone who does.  Over time you get better, and the people you work with get better.   It’s part of a process, and like I said, for editorial fashion starting off, there’s no money, so you eat rice and beans, you live in a small rooms, you learn to shoot cheap, you learn of networking while making friends, and you do everything you can to make it the best you can.

Q: “I read on your blog that you were in London a few weeks ago and read the article by Sebastian Kim. Do you think London is more receptive to young photographers than NYC or is it pretty much the same everywhere? Tough.”

A: Everywhere is tough.  London and NYC are pretty tied, and the community is small enough that most of it is overlapping and people know of one another, but there are some differences.  NYC has more money (or did ?), but it’s also much more commercial both business wise and aesthetically (think Vogue, Vanity Fair, etc.  W is amazing, but huge.  V is great, but still big name.  etc etc.).  London has a larger base of indie publications (Dazed, i-D, Tank), that tend to have more progressive work in them and more room for younger talent, b/c of this I’d argue it might be a better place to build a look and gather momentum.  On the other hand, an advantage to NYC is I find that here everyone just wants to connect and work…at least amongst the younger crowd.  People are excited to meet and give each other a shot, it’s a constant buzz.  So it may be easier to get things going in that respect.  While London, in my very very limited experience, has a bit tighter of a circle to get your foot into.

All these are generalizations.  I’ve honestly not figured this part out yet myself, and am in a way still floating around trying to find magazines that fit.  I thought of a move to London for the reasons above, but after being there for just a few days I realized how much the day to day energy and people of NYC inspire me…even the light in NYC is something I constantly watch and learn from…and those sort of thing’s, right now, are more important to me.

Hopefully this kicks off some discussion or thoughts.

Oh, and to keep you on your toes, to show you what I mean by “good” work, here are a few younger guys doing rad shit:

Sebastian Kim (w/ Jed Root),

photo: ©Sebastian Kim.

Josh Olins (w/ CLM), (duder, way to go on pwning that first issue of LOVE),

photo: ©Josh Olins.

Chad Pitman (w/ CLM),

photo: ©Chad Pitman.

Benjamin A. Huseby (w/ Rep Ltd),

photo: ©Benjamin A. Huseby.

Chadwick Tyler,

photo: ©Chadwick Tyler.

You can check it, here.

Open parenthesis.

There is more than some apprehension on my part in writing and posting this.  Not b/c I’m harboring a secret, far from it, but b/c I feel like it is pedantic and pretentious to act in accordance as though some sort of secret exists to being with (it does not).  That’s not my intention, and I hate to risk it seeming so.  No doubt, I’m betraying something of myself here, but whatever.  With that, these are pieces of advice that were given to me at one time or another, or they’re things that I feel took me hard time to figure out.  Also, they’re things I will say light heartedly at one moment and then dead seriously at the next, b/c there really are no rules, so embrace them and mock them with propitiousness. As the intellectual Ivan Karamazov said, “everything is allowed.”

Though, some diffidence is maybe not a terrible idea, so it’s also good to keep in mind that, as a Lit. professor used to say when a student would make a eager, ill thought out, and soon regretted comment, “there are no right answers in this field, but there are certainly wrong ones.”

Finally, I implore others to offer their feedback here, agree and disagree, and most of all add your bits of advice too.

Close parenthesis.

-If you want to shoot fashion, forget the photo editors; rather, get to know the fashion editors.  In my experience, photo editors have remarkably little to do with the fashion work in magazines (sweeping generalization).  Now, if you’re looking for portrait work or feature work, then get to know the photo editors.

-Don’t set your heart on fashion b/c you think it’s going to make you cool.  It’s not.  In fact, it might be the least glamorous of the genres b/c it’s so saturated and near cliche and self-parody.  Plus, I believe there are many other areas of photography ripe to be reinvented.  I look at anything from portrait to landscape to still life and think they’re areas wide open for a new poster child from our generation.  But if you love clothes and the aesthetic of clothes, then by all means, jump in!  Be sure that jump’s with alacrity on your part though or I’ll suggest it’ll be wasted.

-Along those same lines: some of the happiest and most successful photographers I know work in B-markets and are names you’ve never heard of.  They have big studios, work all the time, make lots of money, and have really nice lives.  As you get older you learn that survival and maybe even quality of life might be better to come before those tunnel visioned dreams of posterity or fame.  Not that I heed this at all, but still: try to keep an eye on the big picture and be realistic.

-Study!  This forum is a testament to my love of learning from what others have done before us.

-This one is kind of personal, but adopt it to your liking: take walks w/o a camera and find pictures.  Often I find it makes it more natural to learn to see when the act of taking pictures is not even present.  This will inform your work when you do have a camera in hand.  It’s not a practice in Zen; it is a practice in developing an intelligence of envisioning a photograph before you pick up the camera.

-(Advanced advice) D-76 leads with the shadows, Rodinal with the mid-tones, HC-110 with the highlights.

-Do not be afraid of mistakes.  They’re often the best thing that will happen to your work.  But oddly at the same time, your mistakes better be damn fine b/c you can’t afford to get it wrong.

-You can’t control anything past the tip of your nose.

-Regardless, as the photographer, you are responsible for everything in the photograph.  As far as you’re concerned, the blame stops at you.

-I’m despondent to admit that it is probably true that if you make prints that are both big and with a substantial amount of red, you’ll probably get a show and sell it out.  (There was a wonderful list full of humor and truth on Alec Soth’s Blog by a professor of photography that humorously went over “to dos” and “not to dos” to be a successful fine art photographer, but Soth’s blog archive is currently down so I can’t link it…)

-There’s no substitute for raw talent and inspiration, but at some point it comes down to putting in the time.  As Gaddis wrote in one of his novels, and I paraphrase, a young artist can get by on honesty, but an old artist must rely on skill.  Wait…or was it Vollman who wrote that?

-Be prepared to discover that much of the biz is politics and who you’re friends with, and that there’s lots of independently wealthy, good looking, connected people that seem to have a serious upper hand.  No point bellyaching about it; it’s the invariable games we humans play.  But, at least in rags to riches ethos of this country, it doesn’t matter who you are as long as you make yourself valuable to others.

-The petty and ubiquitous statement that the other guy could shoot it so well b/c he/she had lots of assistants and a grip truck and a budget is, to put it simply, bullshit.  Even if it’s true, and it probably isn’t, nobody cares or wants to hear about it.

-Be patient.  Like any business, and certainly like any competitive business, it takes a long time to get your footing.  Don’t let the insta-rising-star stories of McGinley and etcetera confuse expectations.  I know talented guys who have been sweating for a decade and are still just getting by.

-There is no secret club or secret world in NYC or London or ____.   Sure, there’s bars that most people can’t get into and that are good to be known at, but for the most part you can call art buyers at any major agency or photo editors at any major magazine and make an appointment and they’ll meet with you and see your work.  If you’re not in NYC or London or _____, then spending money on a plane ticket and doing this twice a year is, imo, a way better investment than getting that new camera.  Then again, Meatyard kind of proved years ago it doesn’t matter where you’re at, just what you do.

-Do not be afraid to begin something great.

The list, of course, goes on, ad infinitum.  But at some point it becomes less about photography and more about the crags and gullies only your therapist is qualified to be digging around in.

So I’m ending here.

School’s out.

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell 2002.

We of course touched on technique and equipment, and it was nice to see most of the students embracing 35mm for fashion work and their surprise and positive reaction to much of my work being on 35mm. It’s obvious from this blog that I’m far far far from an equipment junky or even from being interested in equipment beyond its working and not breaking. I will use about any camera within reach or that I happen to have film for, but with that I’ve always been fond of 35mm b/c it’s a format, like all, that if given a certain kind of love can give unique results other formats can’t. The smaller negative if well shot has a bite and crunch to it that can’t be mimicked by other formats, and well shot is the key word here, b/c you really need to be a technically superior photographer to shoot well on 35mm: any errors are magnified many fold when repro sizes get big: try printing a soft 6×7 neg to 11×14 and it’s pretty; try it with a 35mm neg and it looks, well, soft…that is if sharp is your cup of tea, which it may not be, like H.C. Bresson you might facetiously humor focus as conceit of the bourgeoisie. Also, a lot of people pick up 35mm and default to candid on all production fronts including the very basic use of light, while a seasoned 35mm photographer (hey, Peter Lindbergh) never forgets that good light is good light, no matter what size the film is. You know? Anyway, this is an ode to those guys who don’t shelve the Nikons on shoot day and to those up and coming kids I met burning up all 36 of them frames. 36 chances at fame! Keep doing it.

photo: from men’s fashion story, ©Graeme Mitchell 2006

A hidden gem, it’s been out of production for ages as far as I can tell, but it basically amounts to a Linhof Technika on a rail. It’s built like a tank, sexy, and I can fit it, a few lenses, and holders in a Domke bag.

As I side note, yeah, sure, for the most part a 67 RZ can cover almost everything, but for that extra 3%…well, a nice piece of sheet film can be something else.

photo: Covet Spring ’07, ©Graeme Mitchell, 2006

The idea here is, that there are a few things I’ve learned and much I’ve unlearned, and I’m not talking about how to take pictures or make art or anything like that, one is on there own amid those deserts, but I’m speaking more about basic advice. Or let me say it like this, if I ran into a younger I, someone about to partake in the adventure of moving here to shoot and work, what could I offer them. People told me anything from “become inspired” to “make lots of money.” Boring. The only really useful one was, “have lots of fun.” So sitting here this afternoon, I came up with my small list, which is as follows:

-attrition: it takes time, hard time, and chances are you’ll have to do ample amounts of it before you take even a small step.

-a sense of humor: the chances are you aren’t going to make it to the top, only a few people do out of many, and even then, it’s only pictures.

-ideas: good photographers are a dime a dozen, good ideas are not (ideas is interchangeable with style or vision).

-connections: as the old adage goes…

-work ethic: shoot as much as you can, and work your ass off. Exhaust yourself.

-direction: at least in an A market, don’t come to dabble or figure things out, come knowing what you want.

Gosh, there’s more, but I’d say that’s plenty for the time being, and frankly the rest are more vague, opinionated, and artsy fartsy. And I fear what I have already needs more than a grain of salt…
This isn’t intended to sound curmudgeonly, or discouraging, the opposite actually. I write it with a harrowed grin and a hearty pat on the back, as I’d encourage anyone daydreaming of jumping into the deep end to do it without reserve.

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell 2006

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell 2006