Life of a dreamer: Editorial Photography Basics

I would love to start with photography as a job in general. As i have learnt in our Prof. Practice lectures, first of all, you must choose what you want to do and be able to migrate to another cities of countries, because most of the time you couldn't work at some specific job in photography if you are too far away from main capitols of photography i.e. London, New York or Paris. I would love to say that I am more than happy to move in either of them, but I am simply not a fan of big and overcrowded cities. One might enjoy the mass of people, chaos and noise - and it is ok, even perfect for photography business, which i could not do. But apart from cities too big I am more than happy to move somewhere else. Actually, I even had a plan to move to France or New Zealand next year which is not perfect and suitable for high standard fashion or commercial photography, but I am not even looking at that side. To be honest with you, I have only two thoughts about my work and what should I do. First of all, I would love to be an editorial photographer. I love telling story through photography in an artistic way and especially enjoy taking portraits. You would laugh at me, I know. It is ALMOST impossible to earn enough for living costs with this kind of job, since you would work only 120 days a year (if you are busy) and you would need to earn around £400 a day, to live out from it (which is not realistic nowadays), but it interests me. It is a good answer what is an editorial photographer if you have no idea what I am talking about: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_editorial_photography, I know it is not professional to refer it to wiki sites, but... oh well. So i would really love to be that kind of photographer, photograph people mostly and most importantly - tell a story. Editorial Photographers should join the NUJ - trade union who would fight for your cause, it also publishes a fees guide which can base your expenses on: http://www.londonfreelance.org/feesguide/index.php?language=en&country=UK&section=Welcome.
Another company you should register with is called Editorial Photographers - which provides you with all the latest news and what is happening in the industry http://www.editorialphoto.com/, which would help you to keep yourself on a track.

Laura Hynd

Editorial Photographers can't earn for living. I remember going to Guest Speaker Lecture, Laura Hynd was talking about her experience as a photographer and she mostly talked about being an editorial photographer - going to unknown places, taking photographs and trying to capture the story behind the walls or a person's outer look. She said that she can hardly live from it but at the same time she enjoys an artistic freedom in this job, she prefers working with natural light and Hasselblad medium format camera. I think I would be happiest person on earth if I could do that because I hate an artificial light, digital cameras and editing photographs with photoshop. The talk itself was very interesting and Laura covered topics as print framing, different layouts (you don't have to be stuck with A2 or A3 format images hanged on a wall in a row). She did explain how she got a job, that she was going for an opinion for her portfolio from a person she knows, who works in the magazine. That is pretty amazing, isn't it? Having contacts is the best thing in every life situation, I would say.

Websites I used: