Let's get down to business.
We've talked a lot about all the preliminary stuff - things that will help you get acquainted with photography and prepare you for success. But now, it's time to become successful. Here's how I did it to get clients early on and even now sometimes:
“Try everything”
Friends
The best people to start taking photos of: your friends. Plain and simple because it's a riskless situation. Your friends already probably hang out with you for free and all you get out of each other is friendship and fun. But with something like this, everyone wins. YOU get photos and practice . THEY get photos. So everyone gets something out of it. Personally, if someone asked me to be a model for a shoot (even a test shoot) it's quite a compliment. Leverage your friends.
Another reason: if they post it or share it; your network and business grows - exponentially. You never know whos connected to who, so your friends are your best option.
Family (events)
Of course you want to also try taking photos of your family as well, especially since they're usually easily accessible. But notice how I labelled this category as "family (events)". There's a good reason for that. Family events are great since you get tons of networking done and, (the biggest reason I put it here): If you no even a bit of what you're doing and can offer a lower price, most people will give you a shot (obviously depending on what the event is and how important). But use this as a big booster at first. Event photography is very useful and one of the best ways to learn photography/settings as fast as possible.
School/Local Businesses
I categorized these both together intentionally. Especially university clubs/societies, both being synonymous with local businesses - all usually working for some type of profit/goal. School societies, especially if you're part of the same university will be more willing to use you as a media person - especially since budgets for them are usually a lot smaller/regulated.
Local Businesses are similar in the sense that they usually try to appeal to a niche market and aren't crazy corporate. You have less hoops to jump through to make a professional project/reach upper management for permission and so on. Another major advantage also being that if they publish it, your work again gets exposed to many networks and other businesses too. It's a massive win.
Conclusion
I'm going to end this post here. My goal with this post was to introduce you to 3 potential markets to take your first steps in. If you've read this far then you have most of the beginner stuff now. Don't stop reading the upcoming posts though, I'm going to go through how to become even better and more interesting information. Read the next post on how to get the best results from your camera and work.
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