1st photography job - guidance, experience and tips?

nola.ron · Sep 12, 2013

I'm an amateur that enjoys my work as a hobby. My career pays the bills and capturing moments and being creative with my camera makes me smile. I recently saw an open position with a well known company that has been in business for quite a number of years doing school and organized sports photography. They have amazing training available for all contractors and staff and it looks to be an amazing opportunity to learn and grow as a photographer. I will never have any intention on replacing my career with a new one in photography. My career is my 1st passion... photography is my 2nd. However, I would love to have work after hours and during the weekends for a long time because it's just something I enjoy, so why not get to do it more and make some money on the side?

So, upon discovering the position I went ahead and applied. I included my resume (which is completely irrelevant to this industry), a link to my flickr page and current gear list. The hiring manager called me today and told me that she loves my work (Woa?) and wants me to come in for an interview. She also extended an offer for me to come see them in action at one of the local sports fields before the interview in order to make sure it's something I want to do. This position will either be still and/or action photography and not school shoots (to my best understanding). I'm floored to have received the compliments from her, because I honestly never expected to hear back on it since it is simply a hobby for me and one that I never really thought I was "good" at... at least not as good as I want to be.

Does anyone have any tips, advice or other words of wisdom? The monetary compensation does not matter to me, although the pay will certainly fund my "NEED MOAR GEARZ NOOWWWW" mission. I think it is something I will thoroughly enjoy and grow from, but I want to hear what real pros have to say about this. I believe they also supply the equipment, which I'm not sure how I feel about using a body I'm not familiar with. Hopefully they will deem my D7K as good enough and can just use their glass.

skieur · Sep 12, 2013

I have done a lot of in classroom shooting action, as well as sports photography. The main challenge is isolating your subject from a very visually busy background. Your location is therefore extremely important. If I can move in close, I use a 28mm wide angle. If not I use a 200mm to 450mm to isolate an individual runner or competitor. Burst speeds are useful for some action sports but getting all body parts in the frame is of course important.

imagemaker46 · Sep 12, 2013

Sounds like it is a fast food photo company. Set up a posed shot, or shoot a bunch of action pictures for them, they try and sell the photos on site. Chances are they will be using a mid level digital camera and a 70-200mm for you to use. These companies generally will take anyone that contacts them and has a basic knowledge of how to point a camera. Just have fun with it, as I imagine they aren't looking for sports illustrated photos.

sm4him · Sep 12, 2013

You really *don't* want to use your own gear. You may be familiar with it, but it's not very likely that they are going to provide a camera body that is going to be all that hard to learn, and you really don't want to wear out the shutter on your camera doing their work.

Other than that, I'd say go for it. Since you already have a day job, if you hate it, you just quit.

imagemaker46 · Sep 13, 2013

I shot last year for a group like this and came with a lot more experience than the group had combined. They had all Nikon gear, I used my own Canon gear because the lenses were better than what they were wanting me to use, I provided them with great hockey images through all the games that I shot for them. What they did do is put a limit on how many images they wanted from each game, it worked better for their system that they only have 60-70, I don't remember. They didn't want more than 1-2 shots per player, this was hockey, on a roster of 20 players per team, they said they would rather have 60 average pictures, instead of 40 great shots. It wasn't about the quality it was about getting a picture of every kid for the parents to look at. I would stand and listen to the parents reactions when they saw my stuff on the computers, most of them were impressed because they weren't just shots of their kids standing around doing nothing, but good action.

I shot about 70 games (30 minutes per game) for them. It was when the senior guy came up to me and told me how to shoot hockey that I knew it was time to move on, I really don't care if he was the senior guy, I had 10 years shooting professional hockey coming in, he shot weddings, and liked to shoot sports. It wasn't the way I shoot.

If they put pressure on you to produce a certain number of photos and those photos aren't happening during a game, you may find yourself getting stressed and then it snowballs into just pointing the camera and getting whatever you can, and with that comes crap pictures. Listen to how they want things done, and just do your best, but don't stress over it. As sm4him mentioned, you can just quit.