How to have a good relationship with your agent

I know….I haven’t written in over two weeks. I don’t like to have such huge gaps of time in between posts, but I had a tiny disaster recently over a shoot and I’ve had to figure out how to work around it. Plus I signed with an Australian agent and have been busy sending her images from just about everything I’ve ever shot so she can edit down what she wants to put up on her site. AND we’ve been knee deep in post from the beauty shoot (sneak peek shown above!) that I wrote about in my last post! So my plate has been full and my attention has been on “damage control” over the small hiccup from a recent shoot. I will write a post soon on how to side step problems, because they do happen and it does come up from time to time. But not today. Today, I’m going to share my thoughts about agents. How to get a good one and then how to keep the good one.

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The Portfolio

Ice Nine Porfolio

Seems strange in this current internet age that photographer’s still need portfolios to show prospective clients in order to solicit work. One would think that with websites and email marketing campaigns, we wouldn’t need portfolios anymore. But it isn’t true. We still need to have a portfolio to show off our prints and tear sheets. It actually gets me a little irked, to be honest. I need a website, a portfolio (actually I need 2 portfolios…one I keep and one my rep keeps), a promo card and a business card. That’s a lot of money and a lot of time and energy to put into your marketing tools. But it’s an industry “must” and so I must conform. And you must too if you want to compete in today’s highly competitive market.

I intend to write a lot about the business side of fashion photography, with marketing yourself a main subject. Today I will start with the Portfolio! I have had one since graduating from college in 1987. “Back in the day”, can you believe I wrote that?, we all had the same style of book. 11″ X 14″ black leather Brewer-Cantelmo book (shown below).

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© 2008 Melissa Rodwell Photography LLC.

Fashion photography is the business of photographing fashion. That means that the product we are selling are the clothes. It is important for the young, aspiring fashion photographer to understand this. When a client hires us, we are being hired on our technical ability of understanding garments and the way they will photograph. I see so many photographers who are just starting out and building their books and the weakest part of their photographs is the styling.

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