That statement might sound pretty stupid, but I know there are readers out there that can relate. After all, how many positions for photographers have you seen advertised in newspapers or online?

Exactly.

For some time it really did remain a mystery to me. Photography – professional photography – was like a black box. Closed and out of reach.

With time though, that changed. I read, talked with other working photographers, thought about my target markets and began going about getting work. I still do it to this day and given my client list is growing, I figure I must be doing something right.

I recently read a post by a person wanting to get into photography asking how one goes about finding editors and pitching story ideas for potential publication. This post was on a moderated forum of working photographers and it sank like an anchor.

No one responded and that didn’t surprise me.

You see the thing is this – it takes time and effort to connect with editors and to develop working relationships. I really believe that the post in question went unanswered because as a photographer wanting to break into a market, there are some things you need to figure out for yourself and how to find magazines and editors is one of them.

If this is you, then remember this: it doesn’t matter how you do it, as long as you find a way that works for you and which gets you connected with the right people at the right publication.

You have to back yourself, learn from your mistakes and enjoy the wins.

No one can do that for you.

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Lesson number 3 – The gift of rejection.

This post follows on directly from Lesson 2 – Closing the creative gap, in which I had my first application to Aurora Photos rejected.

No one likes being rejected. It is just one of those things that most people would rather live without. As photographers, it can be especially hard, particularly when you are starting out.

There is nothing quite like putting together a body of work, sending it off to some potential client and either:

1. Not hearing anything back. Or
2. Receiving an email (lucky you!), with a ‘thanks, but not thanks’ response.

I have experienced two main types of rejection with photography.

The first relates to the quality of imagery you are producing and the fact that your imagery isn’t up to the standard for the publication / agency / insert photo buyer name here (my previous post about my first application to Aurora Photos was a good example of this). In this instance, your aim is to take the rejection and learn from it.

Your strength as a photographer doesn’t come from working on your strengths. It comes from working on your weaknesses.

If you can accept the rejection and look at it objectively, you will probably find that yes, you do need to work on the style and quality of imagery you produce. The crux is getting to this point and then doing something about it.

Looking at rejection in this way does two things.

Firstly, it takes something that is negative and turns it into a learning opportunity. Secondly, it should serve to help improve some aspect of your photography, which will ultimately make you a better photographer (remember: working on your weaknesses will make you a stronger photographer).

The second type of rejection that I have experienced is more about bad timing, than anything else.

Earlier this year I put together a tight pitch for Islands Magazine, a publication that I would like to work for. I included a one-page letter with a short, snappy pitch about my proposed article, along with 6-low resolution photos to help sell the overall package.

I received a response from the Photo Editor within a couple of days – a great response by any standard, given how much e-mail everyone gets these days. The response was positive and upbeat, but unfortunately for me, Islands Magazine wasn’t go to go with my proposal.

Why?

They have a 6-month to 1-year lead-time on stories and they had already scheduled a story on the Maldives into their schedule for the coming year. For a magazine that is only produced 6-times per year, you are not going to see two-feature length articles published on the Maldives. Despite this, the PE gave me permission to keep her updated of new work on my web site and to keep pitching stories that I thought might be suited to Islands Magazine.

If your pitch isn’t accepted, this is the outcome you want – permission to market and stay on the radar of the photo buyer.

Lastly, if you are starting out in photography, don’t take rejection personally. Instead, learn from it and become a better photographer.

Lesson number 2 – Close the creative gap

When you see an image and you think to yourself ‘I wish I knew how to produce an image like that’, you have a large creative gap.

In my mind, you should always be closing the creative gap.

This means that the image that you visualise in your mind, you can actually go out and create. If you can’t, then you have a large creative gap. If you can – and this is where you want to be – then you have a small creative gap.

I learnt the lesson about my creative gap the hard way back in 2005.

While I was happily living and breathing photography 6-days a week at the college I went to in Christchurch, I came across a call for submissions for the newly launched ‘Outdoor Collection’ with Aurora Photos. Aurora was looking for stylish and unique outdoor imagery for its’ newly launched Outdoor Collection. I reviewed some of the imagery on the site; reviewed some of the imagery I had been producing and convinced I would get in on the ground floor, sent off a submission.

A number of weeks passed. Then one day an email popped into my inbox from no other, than Jose Azel, one of the founders of Aurora Photos.

The email was a page long and it was a rejection email (more about rejection in my next ‘Starting out in photography’ post).

What made it different though, was the fact that Jose had taken the time to actually give me some pointers as to why my submission had been rejected. One line in particular has always stuck with me:

“Our jobs as photographers is to show the world to people in a different way”.

While I didn’t realise it at the time – I was pretty bummed about not being accepted – I would go on to learn just how valuable a piece of advice that was. To this day, I still remind myself of this sentence when I am out shooting.

The underlying problem of course, was that my creative gap between what I saw in the Outdoor Collection and what I was producing was a world apart. Yet I couldn’t see it.

One of the reasons I couldn’t see it, is because as a photographer starting out, I was not very objective about my work. And like most photographers, I was a terrible editor of my work (that has since changed, but editing your own work is still a talent in itself).

While this is a lesson about closing the creative gap, it is also a lesson about learning to be objective about your work.

If you are starting out and you are putting together a submission for an agency or even your own portfolio, seek some feedback from your peers.

They will be able to look at your work and give you good, honest and (hopefully), objective feedback.

[Three years later I signed with Aurora Photos to represent my work in their stock collection. If this isn't proof that you can close the creative gap, then I don't know what is].

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