Competitive City
In August, I stopped in NYC for what was supposed to be a month of freelancing before returning home to California. Long story short, I accidentally got a job in a photo studio and decided to stick around.
Between figuring out the difference between express and local stops and scrambling for an apartment that wasn’t a windowless five story walk up, I also found myself learning more about photography than I ever thought possible. No, my understanding of composition hasn’t reached new, otherworldly dimensions and sadly, I can still barely work a lighting kit. But goddamn, do I now know how to hustle in the photo business.
There is no place in the world with more work for photographers but inversely, there is also no place with a higher concentration of photographers. Building on the fact that New York City residents have a natural propensity to go out as often as possible while also getting to network, there are a lot of events for photographers. These gatherings inevitably have free food, new contacts to give my business cards to ( if stickers of my photos with my contact info written on the back count as business cards)or at the very least allow me to look at art for a few hours.
These events aren’t restricted to NYC, however. I read about cool events in LA, San Diego, Chicago, Atlanta, and even places like Tampa and Kansas City have some legit events going down. And where the hell is Turner Falls, anyway?
So, even if New York photographers have an unfair advantage, everyone else has the advantage of not being in “Competitive City” (my friend Nick refuses to call NYC by any other name). I’ll be posting about NYC events anyway, so you can cheat and read about them here as the sparknotes to the actual events.
My next victim? This man right here:
photo by jaz_photo on flickr
For those who don’t know David Alan Harvey, he is a Magnum photographer and driving force behind burn magazine . Harvey also established the Emerging Photographer Fund, which myself and 1,028 other individuals just applied to on April 1. He posted an invite on burn to come by his loft to check out some student work tomorrow. Besides being a mere 10 minute bike ride from my new place (I<3Williamsburg), he mentioned surprise guests in his invite. MORE Magnum photogs? Be still my heart. Check back soon for a low down on my DAH adventure.
