James Patrick is a Phoenix AZ-based commercial and fitness photographer. He has shot more than 500 magazine covers and today we break down what makes a cover photo unique and how to capture the concept.
Episode Timeline:
James narrates how he began his photography career.
What was the main source of your photography education?
How do you handle the concern that someone may take your photography style and compete with you after teaching them?
What is the job description of a Fitness Photographer and how did you get into it?
From a technical standpoint, what are you looking out for, that's going to make a photo stand out above the rest to be a cover shot?
How do you come up with ideas for the photos that you need to capture?
Starting out, was there a point where you had to just make do with your equipment because you didn't have the things you have today?
Key Takeaways:
Starting as a journalist, James had some misapprehension about photography as it did not seem very sustainable as a career choice, he was however open to different options while trying to figure out his passion.
James describes how he learned by testing constantly and working as an assistant photographer, even though he already had his own jobs. Key principles gained as an assistant included photography techniques, project bidding, client communication, the general business process, and most especially how to work with subjects onset.
There are two extremes of types of photographers, the overly technical ones who focus on measurements and precision when shooting, and the ones who rather feel their way creatively through their imagery. The latter appealed to him more, shifting his focus from taking great pictures which can easily be learned and done, to making images that work, and this became his brand
Ask for help, the more you ask, eventually, people will start to give you help.
A popular misconception James shared earlier on was that he had to be involved in many niches in photography to have enough jobs, ironically during the recession, he started to lose jobs because many clients would rather hire a niche specialist than a Jack of all trades. This nearly made him give up.
Following the decision to be intentional about photography, questions that started to arise include: what work do I need to create? Who do I need to be working with? What images do I need to be in my portfolio? Who do I need to be working for? James describes the importance of overcoming his fears so he could call companies to find people that would be interested in his work.
Addressing a common mindset that you need to recreate your portfolio before contacting companies about your photography, it is critical to understand that there is no perfect portfolio. You get better only when you show your work to someone and get feedback, without which you're just in your head and consumer behavior determines everything.
Shooting a cover is a construct. What I do with a cover is a commercially viable image. This is an image that is going to help sell the magazine, more often than not it is focusing on all the distracting things that you're removing from the photo, to create a post that's going to jump off the page without being too distracting from the message.
We get through the stuff that doesn't work so we can get the one thing that does work.
It is important to get a sense of what the client is looking for in the kick-off meeting.
Most times the gear doesn’t matter, when I look at upgrading gear, it's more so what can I do that I couldn't do before? In other cases, it may be client-focused, trying to meet a certain demand of the client that your current gear cannot meet.
Resources:
Standout Quotes:
"We don't necessarily find passion, we start doing things and we create passion" - [James]
"Now my position was that I am not going to take great-looking photos because anyone can do that... but I will make images that work" - [James]
"There's so much work out there, I'm not worried about the projects I'm not getting, I'm worried about the projects I can get" - [James]
"Never be afraid to ask, cos you do not get what you do not ask for" - [James]
"That's kind of the sign of a creative, you show up even when it's harder" - [James]
"Getting intentional about the work I was doing was a big game-changer for me" - [James]
"There is no perfect portfolio... but the only way we get better with our work is by sharing it with someone" - [James]
"My worst 10,000 photos were my first 10,000 photos" - [James]
"The fortune is in the follow up" - [James]
"This is what we do as creatives, we find creative ways to do things that are signature to us" - [James]
"The gear doesn't matter. I used any camera that I could possibly get my hands on" - [James]
Did you enjoy this episode? Check out more recent interviews with other great guests!
Full Episode Transcription:
Disclaimer: The transcript was transcribed electronically by Temi.com and may contain errors that do not reflect accurately what the speaker said. Because of this, please do not quote this automated transcript, it is only intended as a reference.
Raymond Hatfield: 00:00
I'll, I'll be totally honest here. I get quite a few email pitches from photographers who are looking to become a guest on the show. And most of them, it can be pretty difficult to find any info on them as far as what it is and what they do. But when I looked into you, you, you had quite a list of accomplishments, especially when it came to the world of fitness photography. I'm really excited to get into that. But before we do, can you just kind of start me off and tell me how you got started in photography and when did you know that photography was going to play an important role in your life?
James Patrick: 00:33
Yeah, I'm so glad you asked that question, Raymond, because I feel like so many of us try to resist that calling to jump into artistry or to, into a creative field because there's that, that nervousness or that fear, that hesitation, that this is not a real career. This is not a sustainable career. This is not a safe career to be in. And with that, we kind of go the safe route for me. I was a journalist and I was a journalist in high school and I went to college for journalism, not because I had a inherent love for writing. I eventually developed a love for writing, but it was just what was in front of me. And obviously my parents wanted me to do more, Hey, get into engineering or, you know you can make a lot as a pharmacy tech but you really, it was, I just, I was just pursuing this, this, this really, this passion I generated for crafting articles or writing stories now as a journalist in college, I needed money.
James Patrick: 01:30
And I was working at this newspaper and my editor said to me, one day says, you know, we're out of staff, photographers are all out on assignment. Can you take photos of your articles to go along with your articles? And I was like, yeah, sure. Do I get paid extra for that? And they're like, well, yeah, two, two by-lines to two paychecks. I'm like, count me in. Yeah, I'm all for it. And he's like, here's our staff camera go out and take some photos. I'm like, all right, fine. And you know, I didn't think anything of it. And he stops me as I'm walking out there is, do you have any idea how to use that? I'm like, no, not a clue. And this is, this is 19 year old. Me just kind of fumbling through really, without much direction in what I wanted to do with my future.
James Patrick: 02:08
I was just really meandering around to find what it was that I enjoy doing. And I have this, this belief that, you know, we don't necessarily find passions. We start doing things and we create passions. Okay. I had no passion for writing before I started writing. It took a lot of writing for me to develop passion for writing, with photography. How could I be passionate about something I've never done? So after a while of I'm taking lots and lots of photos I ended up working at a different newspaper. The publisher of this newspaper takes me out of the staff writer pool and puts me in the staff photography pool. Now he could have hated my articles. That's possible. I don't know. Or he could have loved my photos. I want to say he loved my photos more than he shared my articles. But then I started working there as a staff photographer.
James Patrick: 02:49
I became the photo editor of this little small community newspaper became the photo editor of a magazine. So I got to work hiring other photographers early in my career, building together team of photographers, analyzing portfolios, determining what imagery went into a magazine, what imagery would into a newspaper, why we're using certain photos, the post-production of the photo. So I really got to understand what clients were looking for because I was, I was a client while still building my freelance photography business on the side. Now, when I graduated college, I'll be honest with you, man. I took a safe job because Hey, photography is an expensive hobby, right? Or, you know, I didn't know any real professional photographers. It's not like I was surrounded by all these great professional creatives. So I took a job in marketing that I thought was a safe job, but I could not stop creating work on the side and that after a while, and I'll be honest, it took a long while for me to build that confidence to be like, you know, I can't actually do this.
James Patrick: 03:43
This is something I'm choosing to do. This is not a risk. In fact, it's riskier to stay at my current job than it is to create something my own. I found out as an entrepreneur, I control my future. I control my income. I control the direction of my business. When I worked for someone else, the company I worked for at our height, you know, this is 2006, 2007. We were at, I think in my, my local office that was running the marketing for 139 employees by the end of the recession, just a few years later, we're down to 39 and you want to talk about this being a safe job. Right. So I actually left my job at the bottom of the recession, took off in my photography career. And at that point I could not look back.
Raymond Hatfield: 04:26
Okay. So much to unpack right there. Obviously, you know, that's a, that's quite a journey to go from. I enjoy writing to, Oh, I guess I have to take my camera with me on this assignment to capture some photos to then going out and starting your own photography business. You know, when the time was right for you, I want to know what was your main source of photography education, you know, cause that's, that's a big part of it. We can all get that camera. We can all, you know, shoot an auto for awhile and fumble around and manual. But how did you, how did you learn to capture the photos that got you to the point to where somebody thought, you know, what he's done with the writing and we're going to focus on photography for him?
James Patrick: 05:05
It was more just learned by doing, I, I took one photo class in all of college and only because it was a prerequisite for my journalism degree, it was, it was a black and white photo journalism class that when we were using film at the time, didn't do particularly well on it. I want to say C minus was where I, where I ended up with that. I, in my defense, I don't think I had a good rapport with my teacher. But once I started getting serious about it, what I want to do apart from just testing constantly you know, and this is, this is before everyone had a YouTube channel, you can just learn by watching YouTube. It was really just trying to study photos and magazines and books and just trying to see how light was being done and manipulated as best I could while I'm working as a photographer though, I remember I got this job.
James Patrick: 05:54
I'm still working my marketing job at the time. So this was very early in my career. I got a job shooting for this magazine and the photo editor of the magazine hired me because she saw enough in my work to like my work. But at some point she says, you know, have you ever considered assisting another photographer? And I was like, well, no, I didn't know. That was something that could be done. I'm kind of going into this backwards. Like, you know, I had all these jobs in photography before I really even grew my own career. And she says, I recommend you do that. And Hey, when your client recommends you do something, especially a client that pays a lot of your bills, they're doing it because they're trying to help you. And she introduced me to this photographer who I ended up becoming his assistant, even while I had my own business.
James Patrick: 06:34
I became his assistant for, it was about three years, a little over three years and, you know, assisting another photographer. I was able to really gain a nuanced understanding of, you know, of course the technique of photography okay. And the, the technical aspect of it. But more importantly, what I learned was how he ran his business, everything from how he bid on projects, how he, how he communicated with clients, what that process looked like to try to secure a project, but also what his report was like onset, how he handled the energy onset, how we work with subjects on set. And that right there is invaluable. I could never have gotten that from a book or from a magazine or studying lighting. And I feel like, you know, if you look at the, the, the aspect of photography, it kind of falls on a bandwidth on one end of the band with you have very technical photographers.
James Patrick: 07:22
I have friends who are extraordinarily technical, who will quote from me the inverse square law, and they measure everything and they take the most technically perfect imagery, you know, where they're, they're calculating and measuring the light and they're measuring the color temperature and the, every they're tweaking everything on their computer while they're doing it. And, you know, they make these technically perfect photos, right? And then I have photographers at the other end of the spectrum, like the guy who I interned with for three years, who was a commercial and fashion photographer, who he knew the technical side, but he would never sit there with a measuring tape measuring how far his light source was from the subject. You'd never sit there with a color checker passport to get the perfect color temperature, because he wanted to feel his way creatively through his, his imagery. And that's really the method that I took.
James Patrick: 08:05
And the positioning I took, which is I wanted to feel my way through. So why do I put the light there? Because I want the light coming from that direction. If it's too harsh, I feather it. If it's too bright, I brightness, it's too close. I moved away. I just feel my way through, as I'm trying to figure out what it is I want to create. And over the course of my career, I realized that, Hey, you can actually take really good looking photos. And lots of people can take really good looking photos. And now today information on photography is ubiquitous. You find it anywhere. And it's so much easier to learn how to make great images now. So my position was, I'm not going to take great looking photos. That's not my position because anyone can do it when you hire me. You're not hiring me because I take photos, but I will make images that work.
James Patrick: 08:47
There's the difference that I wanted to have. And I want to make images that work. And what that means is when you hire me, I have to understand what you need these for, because then I'm going to get into making the right images, that work. And how can I do that? Well, guess what, I worked for newspapers, and I've worked for magazines. I know what images work. Okay. So that's what I built into my own branding very early in my career. But it did help to answer your question. It did help working for someone else to gain that insights because you know, this whole idea of being self-made or not, we're not, self-made one of the rules I have in my business with all my clients is you don't get what you don't ask for. Ask for help, ask for support, ask for guidance. Some people might not give it to you. That's okay, that's fine. You don't need to worry about them, but the more you ask, eventually people will start to give you help and they will start to give you insights and they will start to give you advice. And that's how you start to figure out what is that next step in front of you that you need to take.
Raymond Hatfield: 09:38
Wow. So I'm interested in that transition that you had from you know, working as an assistant, you know, at this point you had started, you said for three years, you had started you had already been in business and then you transitioned to doing assisting, are you assistant for three years?
James Patrick: 09:54
For three years? So I was, I had probably been shooting at that point for maybe four or five years. So it, you know, it almost like, you know, part of me would feel like, Oh, is this a step back? And the other part is, Oh, not at all. Like, look at how much I'm learning. I get to be on these really cool sets and work on these really cool projects as an assistant. And that right there just gave me that extra layer of confidence when it came to my own projects. So my business was increasing during this time as well.
Raymond Hatfield: 10:21
So I'm interested to hear your thoughts on maybe if you've done this, if you've taken on an assistant before, but as somebody who, you know, as you currently had a business where that motivation came, I suppose, from this other photographer to take you on, because I would think, you know, many new photographers would feel as if this is just, you know, killing your own business. Like there's somebody out there in my local network in my local area who is also a photographer who I'm going to be teaching these same things to that, then they're going to go use and, you know, run the, run their own business, I suppose. Do you have, do you have any thoughts on that?
James Patrick: 11:00
So I get this question when I post like a behind the scenes on how I light, like, let's say a big cover project I'm doing, and the question will come in. Aren't you afraid that someone's going to take your lighting style and replicate it. Aren't you afraid that someone's just going to copy it and they're going to do it, and they're going to do it for less than they're going to take your clients. Okay. I mean, sure. They could, but I've been doing it a lot longer and I've shot 500 covers in my career. They've got a lot to catch up to and if they catch up to me, great, great. When, you know, I have a lot of confidence in my clients. My clients are not going to hire someone just because they're less expensive, a cheaper option. They're going to hire someone because they're a better option.
James Patrick: 11:39
And if someone goes to my client with a better option than a client needs to hire them and not me. And we saw that a lot in 2008 what we saw in 2008, where clients were getting a lot savvier and more discernible about photographers wanted to be working with now, it was so easy for photographers to say, listen, young professionals are coming into the industry and they're ruining the industry. They're giving away too much. Like they don't understand photo rights and usage. They're doing photos and videos. They're not even charging for all this extra stuff. They're ruining the industry by lowering market value of photography. I saw it completely differently. I saw it as no, we're not determining where the market's going. The client is determining where the market's going, our job as photographers as entrepreneurs, whatever you want to call yourself. Our job is to understand what our clients need moving forward and to service them with that need.
James Patrick: 12:31
Now that need is never the same year to year. It constantly evolves. We're seeing it evolve right now where a lot of the work that I've done historically is becoming less relevant in a new media. Okay. We're photographers who do, let's just say massive content creation, where they're just shooting thousands of images and giving clients massive data dumps of photos. Hey, guess what? That's more valuable to a lot, especially social media influencers. Okay. So are social media influencers likely to hire me? No, probably not. That's okay. But if people want to target magazines and target media and get published, they probably are going to work with me. Or if people want to target, you know, fitness, you know, when I got into fitness photography really there's, it was not a thing. This was, you know, 10 plus years ago. This was not an industry of where it is right now.
James Patrick: 13:21
And at the time I didn't even call it fitness photography. I called it sports photography because fitness photography was, it was not even born yet. Eventually it blended into sports and fitness photography. But you know, for the longest time, I was the only one, not just in my state, in the entire Southwestern United States and the terror West of the United States. So it was really doing any of this. Now it's become a lot more common and a lot more popular. Yeah. I have plenty of competition. I never had years before, but I'm not worried about that. There's there's so much work out there. I'm not worried about the products I'm not getting, I'm worried about projects I can get. And if I'm not available for 90%, whether it's my rates, whether it's my availability, whether even my style, some people look at myself, I guess it's not for me.
James Patrick: 14:05
Right? So the, the whole, you know, back to back to your original question is the person who took me on as their assistant. He didn't take me on as an assistant because he saw me as a potential competition. He took me on as assistant because someone helped him out. And the reason I've taken on assistance is because, Hey, someone helped me out. Do you think I would not be where I am today had that publisher at that newspaper taken me out of the writer pool and put me into the photo pool. Had he not encouraged me to build my book? Had he not helped me get that job at that magazine as a photo editor, I would not be where I am today. Had I not interned for that other photographer who showed me his lighting styles, which are not my lighting styles, who showed me his cadence with clients, which is not my cadence with clients, but he illuminated so much for me and allowed me to figure out what the next step was in my career.
James Patrick: 14:54
And to this day, I mean, it's been over a decade. We're still really good friends. We still talk to each other all the time. We still support each other. When he lands a project, by the way we share clients too, when he lands it, when he lands a project with a client that I work with, he gets a letter of congratulations from me or a text or an email. When I land it, he's the first person to call me to say, Hey, I saw the cover. I loved how this turned out. Okay. I'm not worried about competition. You know, earlier this morning I had posted something on my Instagram, you know, a new project I'd worked on and some photographer. I have no idea who it is from. I, I don't even know. I don't even know who it is from some other state commented on my photo, trying to rip it apart. Okay. Does this matter to me? No, no, no, no, no. You'll always have that. If you want to pay attention to it, focus on the people in your ecosystem who are there to support you and never be afraid to ask. Cause you do not get what you do not ask for.
Raymond Hatfield: 15:55
Oh, that's such a great last sentence right there, especially for new photographers. You know, those who are listening right now are those who are most unsure, I guess, of who they are, because they see all these other photographers who are established, who do have their thing and they're just starting out and they have no idea what it is that they want to focus on, what it is that they shoot, what their style is. They're always looking for their style. And I think that right there kind of sums it up. It's like, don't, don't worry about that. Kind of focus on yourself, put in the work and and get it done. So thank you for sharing that. So, but real quick, before we move on, you know, you, you talked about your magazine covers right there, and I definitely want to get into that, but before we do, I want to talk about the fitness aspect of it. Because as you said, when you first got into it, fitness wasn't even its own genre. It was sports photography at the time. So how did you get into fitness and what would you do in your own words? What would you describe is the job description of a fitness photographer?
James Patrick: 16:54
This is right near the bottom of the recession. When I started to make this pivot before then I photographed kind of a little mix of everything because I didn't really know. So I think we kind of all go through that where I was like, Oh, I'll photograph family portraits and fashion and headshots and corporate work and events. I did so many events. I got hired for events all the time, which by the way, events, I hated it so much. I did it though, because my fear was, if I don't do everything, I'll become irrelevant. So I have to kind of be a Jack of all trades that was wrong as the economy started to dip down. So did my work because if you're a client and you're looking to hire someone, let's say, you're trying to hire a food and beverage photographer to photograph a food and beverage issue for your magazine.
James Patrick: 17:38
Are you going to hire the person? Who's a generalist who can do it, or are you going to hire the person that's specialized? If you have a very finite budget, which is prior the specialist, okay, that's what you're going to hire. Well, I, wasn't a specialist in food and beverage. Are you, when you, when you're hiring for fashion, are you going to hire the person who could, has done it once or twice or the person who does it all the time? No. Hire the person that does it all the time. Right. So I lost a lot of work as the recession was kind of really starting to ramp up or I should say fall down. And with that, I started to think, well, fortunately, I have this job in marketing at the time. You know, maybe, maybe photography was a fun hobby while I had it. Maybe I'll just put the camera up and just focus on my real job. Okay. Which is, it's like, it pains me to say that, but Hey, guess what a lot of your listeners have been there too, or maybe they're there right now. I've been there. Absolutely.
James Patrick: 18:33
I wasn't able to put the camera up though. And I think that's kind of the sign of a creative is you show up, even when it's, even when it's harder, you still show up because you, you feel that call calling to create, I cultivated that calling to create, so I still was showing up, but I was like, I can't keep doing what I'm doing because it's just not working. What if I just did one thing and just made one thing, my thing and you know what? I got my job. So I'm not worried about it taking off, you know, just do one thing. So I looked at my portfolio of all the imagery that I was doing. And I was like, what do I like doing the most? And for me, it was working with athletes. It's like, I love working with athletes. I was an athlete all growing up.
James Patrick: 19:08
Maybe I'll just work with athletes. Maybe that will be the thing. Now simultaneously to this I'm reading in business magazines, you know, I worked in markets. I constantly would read business magazines, entrepreneur Forbes, Inc money magazine. And I was reading that the health and fitness industry was going to explode. Well, when I thought about health and fitness and wellness, this is a lateral step from the sports industry. These two are very closely connected. And so I was like, well, that could kind of be my thing is athletic photography, sports, photography. I can kind of make that my, my zone as it were an only do that. And if I get some work great, that's fine. Okay. But if I'm going to do this, I want to be very intentional about it. And getting intentional about the work I was doing was a big game changer for me.
James Patrick: 19:57
When I got intentional about it, the intentions are with what work do I need to create? Okay. Who do I need to be working with? What images need to be in my portfolio? So I went out and started making those photos. But the second side of that, which is even more important is who do I need to be working for to make this work that I started to do research? What are the companies? Just in my state, I started looking at my state only. And when I looked at companies, I looked at really three things. I looked at magazines. So any publications that feature sports or anything, health and wellness related. When I made a list, there was quite a few of them. Okay. So I got a list now, what are the ad agencies that work in sports, fitness, and wellness? I made a list of those.
James Patrick: 20:40
Okay. What are the companies based in Arizona that are in sports, fitness and wellness. And I made a list of the companies. Then I started to get very focused and started to pick up the phone. I started to call them that was not fun or easy. And not that it's technically complicated, not hard to call. We all know how to pick up a phone and call someone, but to call someone and say, hi, this is my name. I'm doing this kind of work in photography. I'd love to show you some samples of my work. That brings up a lot of fear, okay. That, well, who am I to do this? What if I'm, what if they don't like my work? What if I'm not good enough? What if I don't have enough experience? And you know, what I learned in making all these calls is that it doesn't matter.
James Patrick: 21:20
None of that matters in the sense that, that the thing that comes up when we talk about this is imposter syndrome. You know, that that I'm not going to be good enough. And I'm going to be judged for doing this. But listen, what I want to say is that every single one of us is an imposter. I had no idea how to be a photographer until I picked up a camera and figured it out. I had no idea how to host a podcast. Just like you. We had, we didn't go to podcast school. There was no manual. We followed on creating a podcast. We figured out how to make a podcast by sitting down in front of a microphone, talking and hitting publish. Same with blogging. I had no idea how to start a blog. I just blogged. Okay. Same with any of the things I've done.
James Patrick: 21:58
I wrote a best-selling book. I had no idea how to be a best-selling author, but I figured it out. Same with this being an imposter means. You're figuring it out. Being a posture means that you're doing the work that's required to get to where you want to go. And I gotta be honest with you of all those calls I made. I don't know if I can think of a single time someone was turned off by my work. Oh, we can never hire you. Oh, you know what they might say. The worst thing that might happen is you might not get a response that is almost quite literally the worst thing that would happen. You might not get a response because why would someone be rude to you? Even if they were, who cares? Because someone else is going to be open to it. Oh, okay.
James Patrick: 22:33
Yeah. We'll keep you in mind. Or, Oh, I really like what you're doing here. So I got used to calling people and then all of a sudden I started to get some people saying yes. And that turned into more people saying yes. Which turned into more people seeing us, which turned into more people saying yes. And now I'm taking from targeting my state to target in the Southwestern us to targeting the entire us, to targeting, you know, nearby countries, targeting any company that I can find across the world, within my zone, within what I was creating. And it was that, that got my business to skyrocket. And within just a few years of doing that, now I'm walking away from my marketing job because my photography work is more than doubled my income.
Raymond Hatfield: 23:09
Yeah, absolutely. So now at this point today, say 10 years later, you have, as you said, you know, you photograph more than 500 magazine covers and you know, that cover photo, when you tell anybody, you know, a cover photo th there, there there's this, there's this feeling that that's the elusive capture. Right. You always think about the cover. Now, when I think of what that image looks like from a technical standpoint, you know, it's something like w well, I guess I'll let, I'll let you describe that. You know? So from that technical standpoint, what are you looking out for? That's going to make a photo stand out above the rest to be that cover shot.
James Patrick: 23:49
I think there's two parts to this. The one is I want to address what might be going through the minds of some of your listeners, because we can kind of make it sound really easy, right? Like, Oh, I picked up the phone. I called a bunch of people. I shared my work. Okay. The hesitation that some might have right now is, you know what, maybe I just need to rework my portfolio a little bit. Maybe I just, before I show it to anyone before I pick up that phone, before I send that email, before I put out that postcard, before I walk into that office, let me just rework my portfolio a little bit more until it's perfect. Right? I'm just going to tell you, this is, there is no perfect portfolio does not exist. I still, to this day, I've been, I've been making images a while, 19 years, something like that.
James Patrick: 24:38
I still don't have a perfect portfolio. I'm still trying to get closer to it. We, we will never create it, but the only way we get better at our work is by sharing it with someone else. It's the only way we get better. Okay. I would have no idea what images I actually needed to create, unless I showed it to clients and got their feedback on it. Because without that feedback loop, we're just in our own heads, trying to create what we think might work well, what we think might work doesn't matter because what is matters, consumer behavior dictates everything. Okay. I'll share a quick example. I was trying to apply for this photo agency and we thought it was just going to be one-on-one meetings with this photo agent to try to get signed to this agency. It wasn't what he wanted to do was he wanted to interview us in front of everyone else who was applying. There was about 20 of us there by putting our workup on screen and slashing us in half. Okay. Panic set in instant sweat. I was like,
Raymond Hatfield: 25:36
Ah, this is, this is going to suck. And he did it
James Patrick: 25:41
All right. Who's next. Okay. Who's next? So of course, I'm just like, Oh, I do not want to feed next. I'll just wait until the end. But eventually I was like, all right, you know what? I'm just going to rip this bandaid off. And I went up there and he put my website up in front of 20 of my competitors. And then he started asking provoking questions. Like, what do you want to shoot? Why do you want to shoot it? And then he says, all right, so you want to shoot sports and fitness portraiture? I said, yes. He says, that's your area said, yes. Well, you do. Okay. Work in that. Do you like shooting events? I was like, no, I hate events. He's like, then why the hell is events on your website? I'm like, that's a good question, sir. I don't know.
James Patrick: 26:17
And he says, do you like shooting architecture? I'm like, well, you know, site sort of, he's like, take it off your website. Do you like shooting? You know you know, he was putting all these things on my website that I still was leaving on my website, even though I was trying to say a specialize in something, I had all the, the, you know, this, this miscellaneous stuff. He says, all of this stuff is distracting from your message. Get rid of it, focus on your area. That's what will move you forward. Now had I never gotten that feedback that was about as intense or difficult feedback as one could imagine. Had I never gotten that feedback, I would not have removed that stuff from Jose honed in my work more and take myself to the next level. I ended up hiring the he was the former photo director of sports illustrated.
James Patrick: 27:00
And he's now the current photo director over at the WWE. I hired him to just go through my work and cut it in half. I paid him money to cut my work down. Why? Because I want to clients like him to hire me. So I hired him to tell me what to change, what to keep, what to get rid of, what to hone in on what to look at when I'm cultivating the next phase of my portfolio, then the next phase and the next phase. So I feel like that's an important thing to distill down now to, to hone in more on, on the question of like, as we're trying to create that perfect image or that cover image, or that cover worthy image, you have to understand, like, I just did a cover shoot two weeks ago, and it was a two day production.
James Patrick: 27:34
We had to shoot the cover ahead of shooting into your spread. Normally we do it in a day, but the person was traveling out. So they want to spend more time in Arizona where I am. So I'm happy to do it. And I'm happy to make more photos now in this, in this two days, I mean, we shot thousands, thousands of images, so many thousands of images one makes it on the cover. It's about one. Okay. Yeah. So, you know, that, that kind of gets into part of it, which is, you know, we really spend the time to focus and to construct an image shooting a cover it's it's a construct. Okay. And a lot of people say, Oh, you know, covers. They're so overly photo-shopped well, yeah, they're Photoshop, but that's not really what makes a cover a cover. It's the setup, it's the lighting, it's the subject.
James Patrick: 28:17
It's the emotion that you're trying to evoke through that person. It's the angle, it's the law. It, all of it. That's the hair that make up the outfit, the styling it's, everything is what you're trying to communicate with this, with this cover image. And, you know, in this cover, shoot, I, what I usually end up doing in a cover shoot is I do what I consider a commercially viable image. Okay. Commercially viable image is an image that I know is going to move the magazine that's going to help sell. Okay. Usually that means you know, obviously the tech tech inside has to be there, but more often than not, it is focusing on all the distracting things that you're removing from the photo. Okay. So it's like, what is the pose that's going to hit. That's going to jump off that cover, but without being too distracting and the sense that you're going to look at something, okay.
James Patrick: 29:02
Like, Oh, a great example of that is, you know, when someone's doing a side pose and their arms hidden behind their body, people are going to wonder where that are missed stuff. Like sure. Okay. Yeah. So it's getting the right pose that works for the subject. Cause not every pose works for the right subject. So this is why it takes a while to massage your way through. Okay. To get to that, to that point where you're getting that right image, where they warmed up and they're giving you that, that, that energy through the photo. And is it the photo? Yeah. Is it your rapport with the subject? Yes, absolutely. It's that rapport that you have with the subject? It's what you're able to bring out to them that no one else can. And like I said on that bandwidth, I am not the most technically competent photographer.
James Patrick: 29:41
I, I know how to do it, but I'm the person who's going to be on the creative side. I'm the person who's going to have the best connection with my subject. I'm going to pull something out of them that they didn't know was possible. So when they see that cover, they're like, wow, did not even know we could do that. That's what I want to get to with my photos. But we go through a lot of photos and that's the whole idea. There's that? There's that adage of, you know my, my worst 10,000 photos where my first 10,000 photos. And I think, you know, let's, let's honor that a little bit. We get through the stuff that doesn't work so we can get the one thing that does work. You can look at that, like a success to failure ratio. You look at that like, well, I'm nervous to call clients because what if these five first five clients they know? Well, what if my first 9,999 photos didn't work, but the 10,001 did, right. That's a bad success ratio, but it's this cetera we have as artists. And I'm okay with that. So it's about honoring that, that, that craft or that practice in order to create what you're trying to create with your work. And that was a long answer to your question.
Raymond Hatfield: 30:40
It was a long answer. But you covered so much in there that that I think is really going to help out the listeners. But my, I guess, follow up question to that is what you were talking about. You know, you may not be the best technical photographer, and I completely understand that I'm right there with you. I as well, want to kind of get that emotion out of as a wedding photographer, my, my couples, right? I want, I want to show off photos that are going to make them look at those photos 10 years from now and think this was the happiest day of our lives, right? That's, that's what I want. But when it comes to a wedding, like I know exactly what's going to happen. This is going to happen here. This is going to happen here. I'm going to do this. I'm going to say this. I'm going to get a laugh. We're going to get the photos day's going to be over. But when it comes to fitness, when it comes to, you know, commercial work for magazines, there's more of an agenda, I guess. Right. There's something that is trying to be pushed, either a story or something like that. So how do you come up with the ideas for the photos that you need to capture?
James Patrick: 31:41
I think it's two parts. I think one is, I have the experience of knowing what imagery is. And I go back to the idea of commercially viable. What is commercially viable, what is going to work on this cover? Okay. And I know that all right, more often, that's going to be a three-quarter length photo more often than not. It's going to be high, key lighting, as opposed to low-key lighting more often than not. It's going to be on a very bright background or a white backdrop versus a very dark setting. Okay. So here's the things that are just pretty, pretty immutable. Then from there, it's understanding the specific client and what they need. So this is a nuanced example, but I have a client who they never want to have. Their subjects have their arms above their head in the photo. Never want it. So I just know when shooting for them, you keep those arms down.
James Patrick: 32:22
It's not going to happen. I have another client who they will always want motion on the cover, even though it's a three-quarter studio shot, they always want motion. So whether it's someone punching or jumping or kicking or something, there has to be a motion to it. But that's the conversation you have in your project. Kickoff meeting is what are you for? And you're talking to the photo or the art director, the magazine editor, to get a sense of what they're looking for. But after that, then it's on you as the creative to really choose what story you want to tell. So when I'm doing a cover shoot, I always start with the safe image first. Okay. The safe image is the one that checks all the boxes for my client. Then once I shoot the safe image that I know I have that then I'll shoot the image I actually wanted to shoot.
James Patrick: 33:03
And from there that comes through, maybe I wanted to try a different lighting. Maybe I want to try different pose or different action or different emotion that I'm trying to show through. And for me, this is what we do as artists is this is our testing ground. I think we get a subject in front of our camera. It's time to it's time to test and STEM, to see what we can create. Okay. There's no sense making the same image, you know, 10 years running. If I was taking the same boat as I did 10 years ago, that'd be, that'd be a short career for me. I wouldn't, I wouldn't even be taking those photos. So while I can take a commercially viable image off the bat, now I'm going to test something and I'm going to try something different. It doesn't always work. That's okay.
James Patrick: 33:37
This is what we do. This is why we do it. It doesn't always work like in this cover shoot. I did two weeks ago. We did this, the safe, viable shot first work that shot for, for a couple hours. Then I was like, you know, I have this other idea. And I, and I, the photo editor at this magazine trust me enough to allow me to do it. So, you know, I, I kind of built this set up and I tried something completely different and I absolutely love, love how it turned out. I'm so excited because I've never seen this on a cover this, this style of light before never seen it on a cover. I don't know if they're going to use it on a cover. I think they, they liked it. I don't think they, I think they're nervous about the viability of it on a cover, but they want to use it on the inside of the magazine.
James Patrick: 34:19
So I get my, I get the work that I love published as well. And this is kind of the balance that we have as artists, which is you have to take something the client's going to love, but at the same time, you don't want to sell yourself short as a creative. Okay. And that's really the, the best way I've found to do it, which is do the safe work. First, the work that you just know is going to work and do it the best you can then start to play, then start to experiment, then start to test. And I got to tell you, when I look at like, you know, not that I care about the awards I've won, but I look at any photo I've taken, that's won an award. It's always the second photo. It's always the photo that I was testing with after we took the safe photo, say, photos don't want awards.
Raymond Hatfield: 34:55
That's got to feel good. So thank you for explaining that. You know, again, that this is, this is kind of a world that I don't know much about as a wedding photographer. This always interests me because I have a couple who need something. They're getting married. They want photos of their wedding. They look for a wedding photographer here. I am, they book done deal. Right. But when it comes to the sort of work that you're doing for magazines for ads for publications, I'm always interested in how that relationship works as far as getting you hired because a magazine is always going to need photos. Are they, you know, you're not on at this magazine, so who is it that you're talking to to get these jobs booked? And then can you talk to me a little bit about how the pay works as well in terms of, is it just, here's the gig that we need? Here's the money or here's the gig that we need. Send me a quote.
Speaker 3: 35:53
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Raymond Hatfield: 36:16
As, as somebody who, you know, as just from my personal life has had to send out, you know, constant emails for couples to, you know, here's the information that you requested, Hey, are you still interested? Hey, I still have your data available. Like what's going on that feeling inside of, do I follow up or do they hate me? You know, is something that can, that can really dig deep and it can really, you know, hurt. So hearing that story right there is just motivation, I hope for not only me, but I guess everybody listening to not worry about that too. Go ahead and do that. Follow-Up reach back out and try again because worst case they say no, and as you said, you know, they're not going to be super rude about it and you know, try to crush your dream. So again, thank you so much for, for sharing that, because as you said, that, that that's a, that that's a big, that's a big light bulb moment
James Patrick: 37:11
In like you have to look at it this way. So think about like put yourself in the shoes of the buyer. Okay. Yeah. You only are actually paying attention when you're in the market to buy it. Okay. Like you own a home. How many ads do you get for landscaping services for plumbing services for, for pest inspection services? Do you know when you start thinking about hiring a pest inspector, when you have a pest problem? Okay. And you're like, Oh, what was the last thing I saw? The fortune is in the follow-up. This is, this is why we follow up. And this is not messaging them every day or even every week. But Hey, guess what? Every two weeks is fine. Every three weeks is fine. No, one's gonna be upset about that. When I think about like with my podcast, I get pitches every day for people to be on my podcast. And all they do is they go into a folder. I don't even read them when I received them because I'm not looking for podcast guests right now. And then maybe once a month or once every other month, I'll sit down with my assistant and we'll say, all right, what pitches have we gotten for our podcast? And then we look at them all. Okay. And so if you're sending followups, guess who I noticed first people sent the followup.
Raymond Hatfield: 38:08
That's a great tip right there. I'm going to write that down cause I can absolutely use that. Thank you. So moving on, you know, oftentimes new photographers are very limited in the gear that they have or the resources compared to most professionals. Like you, can you tell me maybe about a time when you first started, where you just, you personally had to just make, do with what you had because you didn't have all the, that maybe you have today.
James Patrick: 38:37
I mean, the first story that comes to mind is when I forgot the batteries for my camera on a commercial, That that was panic inducing. Oh my God,
Raymond Hatfield: 38:47
Did you just make camera sounds all day long.
James Patrick: 38:50
I Stalled, I stalled so hard and I, I sent my assistant running a, to, to a nearby, best buy, to buy a backup battery for my camera. It was, and it was like a group portrait of all these CEOs. So like people whose time I should not be wasting. And it was like their board of supervisors. And the second I re so they were in a meeting. So I was setting up in their lobby to take this photo after the meeting ended. And once I realized that my camera, cause I went to take a test shot once there was my camera, wasn't turning out. I'm like, this is my camera broken. Then, then I realized that the battery pack is gone at that very second, their boardroom doors opened. And I just turned to my assistant Mia. I says, run to best buy, buy me this battery. If you get a speeding ticket, I will pay for it. Go. I probably shouldn't be advocating that. But so he, he, he,
James Patrick: 39:42
Yeah, he bolts off and I spent the next 20 some minutes posing them. Okay. Okay. Let's, let's move you over here a little bit. And Oh, you know what it looks
James Patrick: 39:52
To switch you know, I was wrong, switch back, you know, 20 minutes. Oh my God. And then testing, testing, testing, you know, testing by like using the light meter. I never used my light meter. I used it that day because, Because I had to look like I was doing something. And then he, he rolls up and I just, I have my hand behind my back
James Patrick: 40:10
And he dropped the battery in my hand and slapped in the camera and we were off going, but Matt. Okay. So it wasn't that wasn't the best answer to your actual question, which is things that to make do, listen, we we've all been there. We've had to bootstrap our stuff together and it's, this is what we do as creative as we find creative ways to do things that, that are signature to us. You know, I mean, I've, you know, through my career, I've developed a certain lighting style that I tend to do in my lighting style for my cover shoots usually involves it's it's about an eight or nine lights set up. So that's pretty big. But guess what? The last few cover shoots I did, I used one single light. That's it? One head, nothing else. Like I could have bought that for $300 and there you go.
James Patrick: 40:53
And there I'm off making photos. You know, I've I, every now and then I'll have fun or I'll just play with around with natural light. I never consider myself a, a very savvy, natural light photographer. I've always considered it. It's something that I always want to get better at. So it's something that, because it's something that makes me uncomfortable. I do it more. So I actually bought a a medium format, film camera, and I just run, run rolls through it, shooting natural light, just testing. Like the photo I posted on my social media was wasn't a natural light photo where I opened up the store or the door to my studio and had all this natural light pouring in my studio. And I was just doing some natural light portrait just because it's something that, you know, 20 years doing this, I still want to better.
James Patrick: 41:34
So if I can make a photo that I'm proud of using natural light and I can make a photo, I'm proud of using a single light as much as I'm proud of the photos where I use eight or nine or 10 or 11 lights. Well, okay. It's, it's the gear doesn't matter. And this is why like I get so like, when people are like, Oh, well, what kind of camera do you use? I think they ask it because they don't know what else to ask. I'm like, Oh, I use whatever camera is I'm using. I I've used every camera that, that I could possibly get my hands on. Some, I liked some, I didn't like they all kind of worked. So whatever was fine. I remember my first, my first digital camera was this like advanced compact Sony cyber shot. But guess what? I shot some magazine covers with it and they looked okay. So it worked it's it's whatever I had in front of me that was working at the time.
Raymond Hatfield: 42:24
So I got one last question for you because I know that we're, you know, closing in on, we've actually gone far past our allotted time here. So I really appreciate you you know, sticking around. Do you have time for one last question? Oh man. Okay. obviously, you know, as you just said about the gear and I hear this all the time and I believe it as well, you know, the gear doesn't matter, the gear doesn't matter, just shoot with what you have, but I've heard a lot recently from, from listeners of the podcast and members of the beginner, photography podcast, Facebook group, then why upgrade? Like what, like, what's the point of buying that top of the line gear if the gear doesn't matter. So what, what's your take on that?
James Patrick: 43:02
I don't buy the top of the line gear. So, so there's the answer right there. I don't my, my light heads. I have I still have some of the first light heads I ever bought. Like like almost, almost 15 years later when I started to buy lights. So I got some like old alien, B eight hundreds in there. I gave away my four hundreds. Cause that's all I can afford when I was in college was the four hundreds. I still have them and guess what? They make great backdrop lights. I don't care what you think. I need to buy a, you know, expensive profile light to light my backdrop. No, no. It's like, Hey, they throw light. That's that's kinda all I need them to do is to throw light. So, you know, when I look at upgrading gear, it's more, so what can I do that I couldn't do before?
James Patrick: 43:46
So an example would be, I have a different lights that I take on location that are more portable. I got some battery packs with them now, are they more expensive than, you know, the Einstein's or the abs or all that stuff? Yeah, there are a lot more expensive, but why did I buy them? Because it make my life a lot easier because they're portable. I don't have to take this massive kit with me. I can put everything in a backpack and I'm good to go. Okay. So I bought it for the, for the convenience factor and because, you know, especially I shoot a lot on location. Sometimes we have to like, you know, we shoot on like mountaintops, we got to do a bunch of hiking. I don't want to lug up me, I don't want my system to lug a bunch of gear.
James Patrick: 44:24
I have a photo of, one of my assistants, like climbing up a mountain with this like bag of light stands, like both shoulders, like trying, like just trying to keep his center of balance forward versus backwards. Cause if he went back, I mean, there's, he's going down. It's, it's not, it's not going to add well. And when it comes to upgrading cameras or, or, or, or lenses it's, what am I going to do that I can't do already with my current thing. And sometimes not often, but sometimes it's client focus. So, you know, we were doing a shoot for a magazine and they're like, we want to show this progression in this motion. And we need, we want like, you know, 30 to 40 photos showing this progression, this motion. I'm like, well, I mean, my photos, my camera shoots, I think five or eight, I don't, whatever the Mark four shoots so that it probably won't work bottom line.
James Patrick: 45:16
My Mark for won't work for it. Well the Sony alpha or the a nine or whatever that kind of does it. Right. So I'll just rent it and just do it. And then it makes the client happy. Now, did they, did they need it? Well, they thought they did so, and they were paying the bill. So I just rented it. That's about as much as I kind of upgrade it with the exception of like, I would say most of my investment, honestly, Raymond has been downgrading because I I've kind of loved buying older cameras and just running rolls of film through them. Just to kind of see, like I'm kind of learning like, Oh, I bought like a a Mia six, four, five, and been running some roles through that. And that's, that's fun. I've also bought a six, seven which takes a lot longer too.
James Patrick: 46:03
Cause it, cause it has the hip view finder. And you know, the, the back on it catches a lot. So I gotta, I gotta kind of Jimmy the film through it sometimes. But and the only reason I do is just to, just to see what else I can make. So I buy, I buy a lot of used stuff. I'll every now and then I'll go on like Craigslist or Facebook marketplace and just see what people are saw. I'm like, could I have fun making something new with this? But it's usually all older secondhand stuff.
Raymond Hatfield: 46:29
Well, James gee, I don't know how to end it any better than that. You have been an open book today. You have been very open as far as, you know, every question that I've thrown at you, you have answered it you know, far beyond any expectation that I had for your question. In fact, I had a lot more questions for you, but you answered all the questions that I asked so thoroughly that we didn't get to them, which means that I'm going to have to have you back on at some point to to have a round maybe would happen. I'd love it, but before I let you go can you let the listeners know a little bit more about you as far as where they can find you online and what you got going on?
James Patrick: 47:01
Sure. So easy to find online, you can just Google James Patrick, and most of my stuff will come up. My website's James patrick.com. My Instagram is at J Patrick photo, but, you know, I could give a gift to your listeners. I did create a free lighting guide, which I just go through a handful of some of some photos that I really enjoyed. And just what I thought about when lighting these photos. So if that's of interest to any of your listeners, easiest way to get that, send me a text message. (480) 605-3254. So that's four, eight Oh six Oh five 32 54. Just send me a text message. Say that you heard me on the beginning photography podcast with Raymond and just say, Hey, can I get that guide? And I'll just text you the link to download it.
Raymond Hatfield: 47:43
That is awesome, man. Thank you so much. I really appreciate that. James, I look forward to keeping up with you in the future and seeing what you got going on and hopefully, you know, maybe even attending a Dodger Cubs game and watching the Dodgers take home the win for the day. And yeah. Well, I mean they,
James Patrick: 47:59
I mean, yeah, they probably will. Now that, now that we,
Raymond Hatfield: 48:03 Yeah, so, well,
James Patrick: 48:05
I completely dropped our entire team, but I do want to say Raymond that had shows like yours existed. When I got my start in this industry, I would have done it a lot faster. I would have gotten to where I wanted to go a lot faster. So I just want to give a vote of thanks to you. Just you know, one for having me on your show, but two for doing a show like this, because doing shows like this are empowering your listeners to take the steps for that they need that gives them the clarity. It gives them the confidence to move forward. So just a huge vote of thanks for you for doing this show. It is Epic man.