Notice: This post is made out of frustration and you can leave your thoughts and anger here too.

I am 25, female, german and a freelance photographer. Since a year I am trying to get into concert photograpy with pay. The first 10 concerts I did of course for free to build my portfolio but now I reached the point where I want to get real jobs and some respect for my work.

But as many fellows know it is a hard world out there and you have to give 200% effort to get 2% chance on landing a job. So one of my strategies were writing pm‘s to concert photographers on instagram with the question if they could be so kind and spill the tea about experiences in the business.

Guess what? The answers were vague and short or you would get ignored. Further it would stop at telling the simple thing of which lens they used. I get it that everyone has their own style and tries to protect it but you can nit be replaced that quickly by just helping one out with some info.

Can someone tell me about similar experiences? Is there someone who is not afraid of giving informations about this photography sector? I would really like to not feel alone anymore with this behavior.

Thanks guys!

Summary: Freelance photographer trying to get into concert sector but struggles to get paid jobs. Succesfull photographers won‘t have a conversation about their experiences. Hence their the biggest gatekeepers in my opinion!!

  • GoldenMic@alien.top
    BEnglish
    1·
    11 months ago

    I helped out a bunch of other photographers since I always also got help from other but turns out most of them were trying to exploit in some way. I am not doing paid work and still lost people due to this.

    But I still try to help others but I am more cautious because of my experiences and that’s why I understand these photographers you mentioned

    Another point is that concerts still have problems from corona and still are not paid as good as before, I heard of some cancellations because of to less preorders, and that’s maybe also a reason why you are not getting booked as often because they just don’t have money to spare. Also I don’t know your portfolio, maybe your pictures are not there yet but idk.

    Good luck anyways.

    Also from Germany btw