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!!
This is probably the rule almost everywhere with some exceptions and indian classical music can be one of them. The debut concert or first time a student does a full length solo performance can be a big deal. Sometimes parents will go the whole nine yards and pay for lobby decorations and a catered dinner for the guests. In this case where the parents are paying for it as a mile stone event they will pay for studio photos for the fliers and the invitations before the event and then also pay for a photographer to shoot the concert event itself. This is an even bigger deal with indian classical dance schools for debut full length solo performances. So getting connected with a school that has a lot of students can actually work out pretty well if you are the photographer the teacher or the director of the school refers to the parents to hire when their students reach the level to do this. This isn’t the only source of income for me but it is a considerable part of my business.