Freelance Photography

Being a freelance photographer is one of the things I enjoy most about my life. Being able to work with my camera while interacting with the community around me is a dream come true. I managed to turn my love of photography into a business and have come a long way from my original relationship with photography in Salisbury, which was me wandering the streets at taking photos of the town at night.

Reflected Self Portrait At Night

For a long time there was no face to the name. I become known as an anonymous observer within Salisbury

Street Scene

Most of the people I shot were unaware of my presence and would only notice me if I wanted them to

After spending a year wandering the streets with my brother, improving on my skills and gaining an audience from people in Salisbury on Instagram, I began to think beyond street photography. While I had always used location tagging to share my photos to more people, I started taking photos in the places I would frequent such as coffee shops and cafes around the town. I would then tag the establishments in my photos of their premises and they would often repost the photos to their audience and follow my account. This led to more people in Salisbury becoming aware of my presence and my photography being viewed as marketing material by businesses.

Marketing Origins

Taking shots that businesses they would never have thought of and then they could repost and use to promote themselves

Logos Displayed Aestheically

Even if I didn’t have my proper camera on me I’d still take shots on disposables and tag the business

I began to become more well known through my photography being reposted and shared around my home’s online community. The responses were all positive and people seemed to love the way I viewed the world around me. It became a game to some of my audience who would go and visit the places I’d photographed to experience it for themselves.

Alongside all the positive feedback I was receiving from the general public, creatives in and around Salisbury began reaching out and offering their support of my work. I began to build a network of those more established in the world of freelancing. I met them and in good faith took some photos of them at work, which they then went on to share to their audiences. This helped me establish a little more credibility as a creative because I was being recognised by and working with established professionals.

Suzy Ellis Brand Photography

I met Suzy through a mutual connection and took some photos of her at work

AJ Roberts

While hired as a freelancer by other creatives I would always take a few sneaky photos of their clients

Brunton Media

I began to get hired to take photos of professionals at work and would create my own content alongside the work for them

After my work being shared around the community I had some work for another creative featured in print news which further supported my legitimacy as a creative within Salisbury.

New Valley News

This is a screenshot of the website of the newspaper. My photos and the article were in printed newspaper as well

After this period of growth and development I have really begun to settle into running my photography as a business. I realised that my photographic skills were probably at the level where I should stop just going around doing it for free. I began to offer my services to businesses specialising in social media content and behind the scenes of other creatives working. I am now working on acquiring more clients and building my reputation as a professional within Salisbury. I mainly showcase premises and incorporate branding in an informal and easy to digest way.

Sonder Coffee

Sonder hired me to create photography of their business they could use for their website

Champion Barbers

Champion hired me to capture some shots of them at work to market their services

Looking forward I hope to establish myself further as the first choice for businesses when they need content to promote themselves with. I also hope to get more work as a behind the scenes photographer on film and music video sets. While I hope to work as members of a crew in the future, I can also aspire to be hired to take photos of the crews and companies responsible for the creation of the video you’re watching. I think a strength to this method of interacting with production crews is I will be offering value to them, rather than needing something from them. A potential weakness is that the production crews themselves do not control the budget for the production, so either the production would pay as promotion for the project, or the crew members would have to pay for it themselves which they may not be willing to do. The opportunities available to me exist almost everywhere. While film sets will most likely not be interested in this service, smaller production houses and media companies may desire it for promotional purposes. There are so many opportunities to work with smaller productions as loads of people are making short films and content that might benefit from promotion. Its not like things were before with only the largest films being in production, people are making films and music videos by themselves or in small teams. I can start small and build a portfolio of work to market myself with. Threats would include competition from other more well established creatives, but as with all things there is plenty of work out there and more than enough to go around. The productions I will work with will be the ones that I’m suited for, if I’m not the best fit for a project there are plenty of other photographers who could be

In terms of CV to represent me as a photographer I am very proud of this website you see now. Both this and my Instagram serve as points of contact for people looking to hire me. And both are updated regularly to represent the best of my work at the time.

Follow My Journey