2024 is the year of bettering myself and (attempting) to get my life together and one thing that I am desperate to sort out is my career. For years now all I’ve wanted to do as a job was photography. I’ve loved photography since I was a kid, I would always be behind the little digital camera in the 00s. In any photos from holidays as a kid I always have my camera case around my neck, there are many photos of me with the pink case.

I’ve known for quite some time now that I wanted to be a photographer. I did a couple paid shoots when I was still in school, I didn’t enjoy them that much though because they were events. It really wasn’t my style. This year I finally have a plan in place to try and get myself in the industry and shooting what I actually want to shoot. My main goal is to do live music and theatre photography. If you’ve seen my portfolio page on this blog, my Flickr, or my theatre pics Instagram then you’ll know I did a lot of theatre photography last year. I spent a lot of time in London last year seeing shows (mostly Newsies) and I loved it. When I realised I could bring my camera with me to Newsies everything fell into place. I have to thank Evan and Danni, two Newsies friends, for making me realise I could take photos at Newsies. I really recommend checking out their work! The only downside of doing theatre photography as a fan is you can only shoot at curtain call (please don’t take photos during the show! Especially if you’re using a camera!) and some shows don’t allow it. I had a whole trip planned for my birthday and it was a great time, I saw 5 shows during my trip and I wasn’t allowed to take photos at any during the bows which is a shame.

It’s taken years to figure out what my specific photography niche was and I finally found it. It’s just a shame it seems really hard to get into. I think I’d have more luck if I lived in or near London but I live an hours train journey from Cardiff and that journey doesn’t include the minimum of 30 minutes of travel to Swansea train station. It’s a bit of a struggle so I’ve had to figure out how I can get close to the dream.

I went on a walk the other day just to get some exercise in and I started the walk listening to a playlist on Spotify called “00s bangers” which unfortunately very quickly gave me a headache so I switched to listening to the audiobook version of the third The Summer I Turned Pretty series by Jenny Han but I wasn’t paying attention so I turned it off. Instead of consuming content, I decided to do my favourite pastime of sending my friends really long videos and audio messages. This is how I came up with my plan.

• Take photos at Rhys’ gig – Rhys is a school friend of mine and he’s a very talented musician. He does gigs every so often, usually in pubs, I have taken photos of him before but they’re film photos and film isn’t really doable careerwise because I can’t develop the negatives myself so it takes too long. I need to get some digital shots to use in my portfolio. Rhys has a song out on his YouTube, it’s in Welsh and it’s beautiful. Totally recommend! Hopefully he brings out more original stuff soon!
• Take portraits of football team – Amelia is on a football team and their Instagram uses random photos in promo content so I messaged offering to take portraits for free as long as I can use them in my portfolio. The team accepted. I can include these photos in the headshot section of my portfolio.
• Take action shots of football team – I want to do this as a way to practice shooting fast movement in natural light.
• Take photos of Amelia and Logan in the same style as the last time – I took photos of the two maybe 2 years ago now and Amelia wants updated photos. I was willing to do them for free as long as they did a shoot that I wanted to do also.
• Take photos of Amelia and Logan in neutral colours with a white sheet background – I got some inspiration from Pinterest for this one. You can see the examples in the photography inspo folder.
• Take creative photos – I want to experiment with different styles and techniques, again theres some inspo on my Pinterest.
• Offer headshots to actor friends/mutual friends – I know the theatre photography scene is not big in my area, but to get more work in that industry I want to offer headshots to actors. This may give me the opportunity to get contacts in the industry and could help me shoot shows.
• Put everything good/useful in portfolio (on blog and Flickr) – self explanatory really, you want your portfolio to be the best examples of your work.
• Send emails to music venues and theatres (use Flickr portfolio) – I’m going to email venues big and small. I know there’s a chance no one will want to work with me but I want to at least try and get my name out there. I just need the headshots and photos of Rhys to be able to do this. I have already started making a list of venues and their contact information though.
• Hopefully get some work – again self explanatory!
• Work on Etsy stuff in the meantime – this will hopefully be more explained in another blog post, keep your eye out. I am excited for this one!

It’s a fairly simple plan but I think there’s a chance it could go my way. I’ll keep you updated over here on the blog as I try and get my dream career going!

Big love everyone x