How to create personal projects to land new clients

Short on time, here are the juicy bits:

• Portfolio size and quality for photographers.

  • Joseph suggests 30-40 images in a printed portfolio to showcase work without overwhelming the viewer.

• Printed book or iPad for creative meetings?

  • Joseph uses both printed books and iPads to showcase his work, citing the importance of tempo and attention.

• Persistence in getting meetings with clients and agents.

  • Persistence is key to getting meetings, don’t be afraid to follow up and check in.

• Personal work and commissions for artists.

  • Personal work is crucial for emerging artists, and it can lead to commissioned work and career growth.

Full transcript

SPEAKERS: Joseph Ford, Emma Alexander

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Emma Alexander 00:46

Well, guys, thank you very much for joining us today and I'm really excited to welcome Joseph Ford fine art and commercial photographer. He's gonna be talking all about his own personal work and how he's used that to leverage his own career growth and his personal brand. So Joseph, welcome. Thank you so much for coming on today. I really appreciate you joining us.

Joseph Ford 02:33

Thanks for inviting me.

Emma Alexander 02:35

It's a pleasure. Lovely. And so obviously people know you should know you as the jumper. Man. But for people who perhaps don't know you, could you give us a really quick intro to you and your work?

Joseph Ford 02:48
Yeah, so I've been photographing for 18 years. And most of my work is involves people, often with some optical illusions.

Emma Alexander 03:02

I love that as a really good twist at the end to leave you wanting more optical illusions. That's amazing. I'm gonna just jump straight into your personal work because I think it's probably for me, it's certainly how I came across you as an artist. I think in some ways. It's how we were at an award show. Last month, I think and you won an award. Congratulations. And as you went up, so I heard someone say oh, it's the jumper man I thought because you are so well known for your series. Invisible jumpers isn't visible jumpers. That's correct. If you haven't seen it guys, please please go and have a look online. It is amazing. Can you describe it for me and I want to know how it got started.

Joseph Ford 03:49

Okay, so the concept is I find an interesting looking location. And I work with a friend who who knits called Nina dot look her up as well. She's amazing. I'll sort of work out her wants, how he wants to a piece of clothing to look normally a jumper and she'll knit it. And then I'll photograph a model stand in front of the background being blended in by a sort of camouflaged jumper amazing,

Emma Alexander 04:14

amazing the pictures if you haven't seen him guys are incredible. How do you find how do you find the pieces? How do you find the idea like what comes first? Is it relocation first or is it the person first or what's kind of process for you?

Joseph Ford 04:27

Yeah, it's always location first. So I suppose some of them I found because they're places that I've known for a while. And I've kind of always thought, Oh, this is an interesting place. What can I do with it? And I guess I've got a bank of I have a bank of locations like that on my computer and and in my head where I sort of think well, maybe I'll come back to that at some point in some places. I sort of come back to 10 years later or, or never. So some of the pictures are of places that I'd seen and always wanted to do something with others. I came up with an idea and then went location scouting. So I thought it'd be fun to do one with a cherry tree in blossom. And I spent weeks kind of going around finding exactly the right place to do the territory. Because you needed Yeah, I wanted to have sort of enough territories to be certain of getting being able to camouflage someone against them. For example, you

Emma Alexander 05:21
must have a quite a small window for that. One when the trees are actually in blossom.

Joseph Ford 05:26

I think a phrase quite a lot of people who I'm friends with or work with often bring up to me is rod for your own back. Because I yeah, I found the territories I wanted to shoot against. And I got the I got the you know who was doing the knitting to knit this sort of camouflage dress in in territory colours, which took her a couple of months so we had to actually shoot it the following year. I wondered if that wasn't the case. Yeah, yeah.

Joseph Ford 05:57

And as soon as as soon as we got to spring I was going up to this place, maybe every two or three days to see if blossom would come out. And it didn't. And I mean, I live in Brighton and I found after about a month all the other territories in Brighton had already blossomed and quite a lot of them had sort of blossomed and gone all the way to all the way to being a leaf and I thought maybe it's just not gonna blossom this year. But I had to do with the specific ones because I had all the angles worked out and stuff. So I couldn't have done it somewhere else because of course

Emma Alexander 06:26
the jump listed. Yeah, specifically.

Joseph Ford 06:31

Yeah, and eventually the blossom did come, but it was it was quite a nervous sort of month waiting for it. Sometimes it comes out and then you got a big storm and it's all gone the next day. So

Emma Alexander 06:43

did you have a model just on standby waiting? Yeah. Okay, um, so that must be absolutely crazy. How did you know when this when you started this project in particular, how did you know it had legs?

Joseph Ford 06:59

I think it was one of the first picture. So the very first one was a a hipster with big long beard in a bus on a kind of with a red jumper and a red pattern bus and we did that first one, I kind of thought this is quite nice. And then I sat on it for a few days and started showing it around to a few people and other people. Were getting really excited about it. So I was like, Okay, this is quite nice, but I think I can do something more with this. So the next the next one I thought well, let's try let's try a dog just to mix it up. So did one with a dog blended into a little bush that worked well as well and people like that too. And I don't know I suppose the idea just carried me away read the when did the press get involved, becuase obviously this went viral quite quickly. When did they get involved? How do they get involved? Did you put it out to the meme sites like Board Panda or was it quite organic?

Joseph Ford 07:56

So the very first thing that happened when when we done the nested bus picture was that a local newspaper in Brighton who fish a bit before saw this picture on my website or Instagram or something and got in touch saying Can we can we run this? And I thought well, it'd be nice to have it run but it's just a local newspaper. And although local press is great it's not going to get me significant coverage. And I felt that it was important to get enough pictures for it to be like a proper concept in proper series, rather than just a single one off. So I waited till I had I think seven pictures. And at that point I sent it to maybe two or three blocks that have been featured by before and I think colossal and through this and maybe another one and they I think two of them posted it and it just went viral overnight.

Emma Alexander 08:54
That's amazing. When you sent it what did you What did you send with it? How was your what

was the kind of email like what was the pitch like was just the pictures?

Joseph Ford 09:03

so I think when you see work like this, it's sometimes people assume everything's done in post. And this isn't retouch. This isn't CGI. It's actually done with real knitted clothing. So So I wanted to make that clear. So I think I just gave them a sort of brief explanation, every paragraph of how I've done it, why I've done it where I've done it. And I had been I had been lucky in that I'd managed to get Fat Boy Slim, to post for one of the pictures so it also I also had a celebrity in this first series that I was sending out so there was kind of that extra tag. Okay, for people to for people to pick up on. And yeah, so I think I just emailed them and said you featured me in the past. Just wanted to show you this. It'd be great if you're interested in featuring raised again. And

Emma Alexander 09:55

that was that simple. And then of course it was a massive snowball because you've been interviewed by the Australian you know, Morning News, CNN BBC. did was it just a snowball effect after that once other blogs picked it up other news agencies picked it up and then the

Joseph Ford 10:11

Yeah, so this this was particularly interesting because I did something I've never done before, which is I went viral twice. In on two separate occasions, several projects, know the same project twice, which is weird. You don't expect that. You expect like I don't know if you're really lucky. Something gets picked up once. So what happened was I got contacted by a BBC, ITV, various other people. CNN and featured a lot I think online offline in print, TV, everything. And while I was doing that, I was contacted by Hoxton mini press. For those of you aren't in the UK, if there is anyone who's not in the UK. It's a it's a photography, publisher in London. And they said, How many more have you got of these? Like, we'd love to do a book with this. Is this something you'd be interested in? And I said well really sorry, but I've only got seven. So that's gonna be a pretty short book. How many? How many do you think we'd need? And they reckon we'd need about 25. So as I said, Well, give me a week. I'll go and chat to the knitter about it and come back to you and because it was a massive time commitment doing this, yeah,

Emma Alexander 11:25
for you and for her, I'm sure. You know, for both of you. It's

Joseph Ford 11:29

huge. And they needed it done sort of within a year to be able to go to press. So we came back and thought, yeah, let's do this. How often do you get a book deal? So that's coming to you and asking you to? That's pretty rare. So so we did that. And then the whole thing went viral again, when the book was published, so

Emma Alexander 11:51

amazing because you had so much more new work to be kind of promoted. That's fantastic. Okay. So obviously, going viral is amazing. But in terms of what did you What impact did it have directly for you? Did you see an increase in commissioned work off the back of this work? Yes. Okay. Great.

Joseph Ford 12:15

Yeah, I think so. I would say the first time we went viral was, I think spring 2018. And it definitely raised my profile in general, but I didn't get any commission work specifically related to it. Okay. What I did get was increased print sales and kind of licencing fees for some of the images.

Emma Alexander 12:37
Did you notice a massive difference, uplifting kind of social media following and things like that?

Joseph Ford 12:43

Yeah, huge. There were I think it went from like 1000 followers to like 20,000. Okay. So yeah, pretty pretty. Big.

Emma Alexander 12:53

Was the the first or second time?

Joseph Ford 12:54

the second time it went viral, I think because it was a bigger project, but it got picked up by more international media. And then, that was when was that kind of awesome 2019 And I started getting an uptick in in sort of commissions and inquiries immediately, and then COVID came killed everything.

Emma Alexander 13:15
Did you have an agent at the time when all that work? .

Joseph Ford 13:18

Yeah, various agents in various countries. But I think because because most of my work is involving people, often in groups and abroad a lot. It was very difficult to do anything immediate and COVID. So I have various cancelled projects. And then in 2021, but yeah, late 2020, sort of six months into COVID. I've got inquiry and inquiry about doing a really big campaign based on this project in the States. And that happened in 2021. And it took from behalf of the year. Wow, what so it was the biggest single the single biggest job I've done

Emma Alexander 13:54
amazing, half a year in terms of the planning or because the restrictions on COVID or

Joseph Ford 14:01

I think it was so we shot for a month. Twice. And we had about a month prep and a month post on each of those sheets. Because it was also because of the specified specificity of the project. I was also working with the wardrobe designer to actually design the clothing and working with the creatives and the agency to sort of come up with the concepts. So it was a lot. It was a bigger project than it would normally have been for for that kind of size ad campaign. So

Emma Alexander 14:34

thinking about the project, so obviously this isn't the only jumpers. It's not the only project you've done involving optical illusions. I know you have quite a few defenders a beautiful beautiful project that's that's on the go at the moment. Actually. Can you tell me about that? Because that's if you haven't seen it, guys, it's absolutely stunning. And again, it's suitably time consuming because I know you love making things really difficult for yourself. Right if you're going back of course

Joseph Ford 15:02

project of yours so the new project is called impossible street art. And I genuinely went into it with the intention of doing something simple this time. Like really, really, I honestly, I, I think obviously underestimated how complex it'll be. But I did think yeah, this this is going to be simple. It's going to be easier this time. But broadly the concept is, I'll find a place which I think it would be interesting for somebody to for street artists to paint but which would be impossible. So it could be like a big mountain or a protected building or like a surface you can't paint on physically like a wall as a water or snow or something. And I'll take a photograph of that. And then I do a big print. Give a print to a street artist. When they've printed directly on the print. I then go and photograph this painted print back in situ with the right perspective in front of the place I originally shot it in. So what you end up with is the printer has a white border on it and I have it sitting on an easel so it kind of looks like you just got a white picture frame sitting in front of a landscape which has been painted.

Emma Alexander 16:18

A love is so it's so simple. And yet it's so beautiful. I love this idea of like, I guess in theatre terms, it's breaking that fourth wall, making no bones about it. Trying to blend in by putting on an easel by putting the border it's very clear. This is not real. But obviously it blends in so seamlessly. That's amazing. How did you again how how did that come about? What What was the catalyst for that and when did you know that had legs?

Joseph Ford 16:48

So I suppose the catalyst was as part of the as part of the invisible jumpers project. There was a French street artist called Mr. Shah, who has worked I work I discovered about 20 years ago and always loved and I got it I thought it would be really fun to do a picture with him. So I got in touch with his agent who who Yeah, hooked me up with him. We did a picture together. And his agent was setting up a museum and France at the time invited me to come to a residency in the museum and artists. Yeah, it was great. And I met a lot more street artists and I suppose got got more interested in it and yeah, started looking at the way people work and did a few more invisible jumpers pictures with a couple of other street artists. And I guess I really enjoy the collaborative process. Of doing work where it's not just me on my own. And I started thinking about like, how, how can I do something with street art? How can I bring that into my own work? And yeah, I guess just from talking to people about places that they'd like to paint but couldn't paint. Maybe think well, actually, maybe there's something I could do about this. Maybe there is a way of making these places paintable I guess it is it is building on the invisible jumpers sort of concept.

Emma Alexander 18:11
How big are the prints that you are giving to the artists?

Joseph Ford 18:14
They're a metre wide.

Emma Alexander 18:17
Oh wow! So what are you shooting them on?

Joseph Ford 18:21
I'm on 100 megapixel Fuji, medium format.

Emma Alexander 18:25

Okay. And how long does it take you to set up that shot? How long does it take you to kind of set that all over the place is different but kind of find the vantage point that you've that you feel works for you?

Joseph Ford 18:38

Yeah, so I guess some of the pictures can be pretty simple. There have been some places where I've, I've kind of gone location scouting from somewhere, photographed it and it's been done in like 10 minutes. There have been others. There's one which where I haven't completed it yet. But I came up with an idea of a particular kind of place I wanted to photograph did research on where I could find places like this. It's kind of an industrial installation. found that the only accessible ones are in Switzerland, found a trip to Switzerland. I picked up a mountain spent three or four days photographing. So that's kind of the other extreme. So

Emma Alexander 19:23

this obviously hasn't got any people in it. I think about your work as often having you know humans and that kind of people element. Was this just like a cool idea you thought of and thought it'd be great or was there anything strategic behind it? Do you think in actually I want to, you know, have more architectural work. I want to have more kind of street street work in there. What was your what's your thoughts behind it?

Joseph Ford 19:45

So at the time that I was starting to work on this, it was I think I did the first picture in 2020. It was kind of in the period where things were beginning to sorry 2021 and the period where things had started opening up after COVID but COVID was still very much a concern. And I thought that it would be interesting, strategically to look at the possibility of working on ideas which can be done without people because at the time, I had started travelling for work again a bit, but it was still very much a situation where some countries were affected by lockdowns and rules which at all the time and because a lot of my work is abroad. I had found that the amount of work I was getting was falling off because people were simply worried about commissioning a photographer based in another country in case the rules changed. Absolutely. Yeah. So it seems advantageous to be able to shoot without people just to simplify one level of it. That's

Emma Alexander 20:49

quite interesting. Okay, so this was like a conscious effort to have work in your book that spoke to that. Another side of your skill set. Yeah, exactly. And obviously you've got an agent, the lovely, lovely lovely loo at Flog. Who is quite possibly one of the best Yes, lovely women. I know. How much is your agent? Obviously you have other agents as well. We have one of the US and other territories how much of your agents fed into this. Your creative ideas do you share it with them? Do you do you invite feedback, they give you any feedback about what might? How you could use that for kind of appealing to different clients or is it you get an idea and you run with it? And you just so yeah,

Joseph Ford 21:30

I tend to get an idea and run with it. But I do then once I've started running with it, I do tend to ask for a lot of feedback. So I find it I think one of the one of the things which I know a lot of photographers and other sorts of artists find difficult is kind of stepping back from your own work because you tend to be so involved in it. Absolutely. It is it is very tough to know whether you're doing something good or not. And obviously if you show something to friends, then sometimes as a sort of confirmation bias like they like you so they kind of think yeah, it's great, but you don't actually know whether they genuinely like it or not. And also I think one of the one of the important things about asking the view of other professionals working in a similar field is get if you aren't thinking about to strategically, you then get the sort of an informed opinion of somebody who's going to be able to look at work and say, Okay, this is a nice picture or it's an interesting picture, or it's a thought provoking picture. But it's all also a picture that I can think of, I don't know, say, an automotive client using or it's a picture that you can think of somebody using for like a mental health ad campaign or something like that. So where I might just get excited about the idea initially, having somebody else's input will then maybe help me see how you could use that in a in a business context.

Emma Alexander 22:59
Absolutely. What do you want clients to see when they look at your work? Certificate question, I

Joseph Ford 23:10

suppose honestly, the first thing I want them to see is to be intrigued, I think and to make them to make them question unnecessarily what they're saying. Obviously there is that element when you're looking at when you're working with optical illusions, but I also work a lot with I suppose more more traditional sort of lifestyle photography and people photography, and I want people to be drawn in because I think if you if you're showing something, someone a picture, and they just think great is a woman standing in the field then wonderful if they want to commission pictures of a woman standing in the field, but it doesn't actually say anything about me specifically. And it doesn't give them any reason to work with me rather than anyone else. So I think the other aspect is that if a client looks at your work, and they can see that it draws them in. They're also going to be able to project and see that it's going to draw in their targets. Which is which is obviously the the end goal of any advertising. Absolutely.

Emma Alexander 24:19
How much of your work comes from kind of print sales versus commercial advertising. What

What's the sort of split for you

Joseph Ford 24:28
split in terms of revenue ?

Emma Alexander 24:33 Yeah, print sales

Joseph Ford 24:34

Print sales are fairly insignificant. Like it's nice to have the money and it is growing, but compared to that, you might, you might work all year trying to sell a lot of prints and get the same payoff from one good job.

Emma Alexander 24:51
So it's advertising where you predominantly sit is that where you make most

Joseph Ford 24:56

of your it's where it's where I make most of my money. However, I think there is another split like I find that money on from print sales, although it's obviously the same money, I find much more satisfying. Sometimes somebody's work for money. And from advertising because I think if somebody buys a brand, it feels personal and it feels somebody has has chosen you for something more than just financial value. Whereas when you get commissioned for advertising work, obviously it's it's just about what you as a photographer can do for them.

Emma Alexander 25:30

That completely makes sense, I think it's that direct-to-customer kind of link when you're selling sales. It's something you have made and someone else directly wants and it's a really lovely reward system.

Joseph Ford 25:43
And I really enjoy having both I think, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

Emma Alexander 25:47
How did you find where do you have the princesses? Just new website because No, this is

something quite a lot of people want to do but don't know how to kind of start doing selling

Joseph Ford 25:57

so honestly, my experience is that you I personally get much better sales when people can see the work physically. And I think that's probably down to the specificity of what the images are likely due to be tends to be quite complex and quite detailed. And I think they look great on Instagram, but I think look even better when you can see them as a as a large print. So, for example, there's a museum in France, which has has half a dozen of my my pictures printed as kind of two metre wide prints and I get a lot of sales through their gift shop. People go in, see the pictures huge and then realise they can walk away with a coffee. How

Emma Alexander 26:34
did you how did you orchestrate that that partnership?

Joseph Ford 26:37
So it was I was talking about Mr. Shah, the French street artist earlier. So his, his manager set

up the museum and asked me to be part of the museum. So it was kind of kind of coincidence, really.

Emma Alexander 26:55

So you had the book obviously, you've done the invisible jumpers book through through Hoxton Mini Press. Yeah. Did you see an impact from that in terms of your own profile and a knock on effects in terms of commissions.

Joseph Ford 27:10

So it's very hard to tell where commissions come from. Occasionally somebody will like if somebody has commissioned you specifically for a project based on a personal project, then it's kind of obvious. And I do think I think that in in the case of the big job I was talking about in the States. I think that the people who the art directors who contacted me originally had either come across my work on on a blog or possibly in a bookshop. I'm not sure which was Yeah, I was just gonna say I guess I certainly saw increased profile as a result of having the book but it's hard to hard to tie a particular job to it. It's hard

Emma Alexander 27:50

to quantify when it's a tangible physical thing. As opposed to a trackable digital path. I guess it comes down to we often talk about that sort of that marketing old school marketing rule about you have to see something seven times before you buy it, per se. And you know, in the context of a creative it's about having those multiple points of being visible. You know, you go on a blog, and you're there you go online and you're there doing an interview over here you go in a bookshop and you're there, not overwhelming but just continually popping up continually kind of being visible. And reinforcing that kind of the idea of this is what I do. How did you how did you develop your style because I think part of that being visible is having a really strong understanding about what you stand for. And the kind of work that you make, you know, if you vanilla and appeal to everybody, you appeal to no one so the idea of having a really strong idea as a really strong kind of style I guess in your in your sensitive that idea of this optical illusions is so unique. It's so specific. It's an incredible nice to latch on to how did you drill down on that like how did you come across that

Joseph Ford 29:07

very difficult one, I think but it started out to photography. I was mostly shooting, I guess people on location doing humorous things is probably a fairly good way to sum it up. And it's it's a niche but it's quite a big niche. There's there are a lot of people in that space. And I think it took me a while to to start exploring other things. And part of it part of it was just luck and chance. I did a job in in Sicily where I was flying around in a helicopter quite a lot for a few days. Which was nice. And because every time we like the helicopter ran out of fuel really quickly, we had to fly kind of to the other side of the island regularly to go and refuel. And every time the pilot went did this I hopped in the helicopter as well, because it was like, when are you going to get to fly around? Why would you? Yeah. So all the time that I wasn't actually doing photos for the job. I was also taking pictures for myself. And I came back from that job with a sort of Bank of images, aerial images, which I thought were interesting. Yeah. On to a magazine. I think something I've noticed while I was in the helicopter was that you the change of scale, gets you looking at things differently. So I remember flying over a train line. That kind of looks like the, the rails on the track and the sleepers kind of reminded me of a zipper on a jacket. So suggested to a magazine that maybe I could do a series of pictures where we linked up an aerial picture with a kind of close up of still life close up of kind of fashion. And that's that did pretty well and I think we did maybe five pictures. This is also on my website. In Yeah, it's a series called side by side. And that was really when I started playing around with optical illusions because we had to have like a a bunch of roofs kind of blending into a check shirt and a zipper blending into a train line and a few other things. And that got me they got me interested in optical illusions and I suppose a that was my first project that went viral. And I ended up with a load of commissions and probably for about five years. A lot of my work was based on that. Which was was really exciting, really fun. But after a while, I was kind of like well, like I can't just be the guy who does this all the time. I've got to start thinking about and yeah, and I suppose around that time I met this knitter and started thinking about the the invisible jumpers project.

Emma Alexander 31:59

Oh amazing. That makes complete sense. I can see how how that kind of evolved. And as your work ever been copied, I can imagine it has but yeah, how did you feel about that? And what do you do about it?

Joseph Ford 32:13

It's incredibly difficult to manage. So the first project I had to Pharrell was the was this sort of side by side series. And I saw very soon after that, a lot of advertising starting to be created using this kind of side by side concept. Some of that was done by me a lot of it wasn't but honestly, it's not like I was the first person ever to do thing. Like people have been doing things with with dip ticks for forever. I think what I really what I did differently was bring two very different things together with a massive change of scale. And from there, I hadn't seen anybody else doing that before and when I started seeing that, that specific thing done, I guess, yeah, it made me a bit grumpy at times. I guess. You could have called me I could have done that. I'll tell you, you can't copyright an idea. So and sometimes there is there is a sort of synchronicity. People to People come up with a similar idea at the same time, just because they've seen some similar influences. See, it's very hard to say, okay, this person actually copied me.

Emma Alexander 33:28
And what a lovely vote of confidence, though, to reinforce that your idea was amazing to have

someone isn't it the sincerest form of flattery or something like that.

Joseph Ford 33:38

I've heard the same thing with the invisible jumpers. I've definitely seen again, it's there have been serious with I suppose the most common one is where people, principle paper and printer print like a shirt the same and photographed people in that way. And that's been done for a long time as well. But I definitely saw an uptick in the amount of advertising like that after my project came out. That's interesting. Whether that was down to me or whether it was just a Zeitgeist thing. I don't know. Yeah.

Emma Alexander 34:10 Responding to a movement. Yeah.

And how do you just go back to this idea? You know, how do you test an idea when it's just an idea, like how much energy and actually how much money are you willing to put into testing an idea?

Joseph Ford 34:31

The first thing I tend to do is try sketching things out. Okay. And I'm awful at drawing like, I my drawing skills are about the level of four year old but I find I find even with those very, very poor level of skills, you can test an idea very, very simply. And I think if you sometimes I'll sketch something out, and if I show it to somebody, and they can understand what I'm trying to do, then I guess that's the first kind of indication that maybe I'm on something.

Emma Alexander 35:04

OK, you can't do you can't do a talk these days without talking about AI. Have you used AI as an idea, sorry, as a tool for kind of bringing creative concepts to life in an idea stage. Not a final thing. I'm not talking about this being the work, but one of the ways I definitely see AI assisting the creative industry is actually being able to use it as a as a as an idea to kind of test or as a tool to be able to test an idea and and see if it has the legs to be able to invest in further. Have you tried that already?

Joseph Ford 35:37

That's specifically no I have tried playing around with it, playing around with various of my existing ideas and seeing how easy they'd be to replicate. Because I think it's very interesting to see. I've got to be aware. If somebody's thinking about commissioning me that they're also going to be thinking about the other options, so not shooting me in and doing the same thing. And so it's been interesting to explore that and see how easy it is to get to the kind of results that I'm aiming for.

Emma Alexander 36:09
What did you find, if you don't mind me asking?

Joseph Ford 36:15 Awful! But obviously, I would say that

Emma Alexander 36:16
I have seen some, some really amazing pictures with like, you know, three hands kind of coming

out of a shoulder and what have you. Like, everything else is amazing, but what's this?

Joseph Ford 36:28

I think? So. I've seen some I've seen some really interesting images. Can we use vi Yeah. But what I've found so far in my tests is that to do specifically what I'm looking to do, I haven't managed to get anywhere. I

Emma Alexander 36:44

have seen a real push back to a sort of purest form of photography of late, lots more people being open lots of clients being open and receptive to using film, for example, last couple of shoots that I've done for a particular sportswear company that I've produced, the photographer's have really wanted to use film, and the client has been open to that. So I wonder if there is the, you know, with the advent of AI, or with the advent of all these tools, making and it's not new. I'll say machine learning is not new. And everyone's talking about it now. But these things have been around for ages to kind of for years and years to help us. But just not the level we're seeing now in the creative output. But they have been really open to the, to the photographers also shooting a couple of rolls on film. And actually in one case, they ended up using all the all the 35 mil scans and none of the digital work which is you know, a massive win, especially for the photographer who who really, really wanted to push for that. So I wonder if there is a bit of a kind of, I guess, part of your niche, you know, being a purist is probably the wrong word. But you know, the fact that it is all done in camera, the fact that it really is a physical thing that you're seeing is kind of half the appeal, rather than just we can do that with AI we can mock it up in Photoshop. Yeah. Yeah, I

Joseph Ford 38:07

do find it to be a interesting because it reminds me a bit of the debate around CGI. Yep. Because I know when I started doing advertising, not very long after people started using CGI and I know for for a while everyone was very, very scared that photography was just going to disappear. And I think in some sectors it did. But other sectors, people realise that. Actually, you can just integrate CGI as part of a tool and it'll be part of the image but it's not necessarily going to replace the whole image. And I think I suppose my feeling is for for AI that it's going to be similar and that there is going to be a lot of a lot of AI used which will kill certain bits of photography. But there might have might be other bits where you can actually use it to to create parts of an image that you want to that you want to do. Or where if you find the right kind of niche where you are creating things which can't easily be done by AI, you're actually going to be fine.

Emma Alexander 39:11

I think one of the things we haven't talked about here is retouch. I think it will be instrumental in retouch, unfortunately. But, you know, I think it'll be I think we're still finding our place, but there will be you know, there'll be a kind of an uncomfortable period of readjustment for a lot of people, then I think we'll find it tools that are actually aiding us and I'm sure I'm sure that photography, pure fluffy will still reign supreme in that. Just thinking about your invisible jumpers again. Are you finished with that? When do you know when an idea is done?

Joseph Ford 39:49

So I did do I did the last picture last year. It's one that I've been one that I've been planning to do. I think it was supposed to do it I think the weekend before the first lockdown in 2020 That's supposed to be doing it in France, in a town that turned out to be the epicentre of Francis COVID outbreak. Amazing. And yeah, so I cancelled that taking quite a while to do. I ended up doing it for two years later. I think I am and I was chatting to the chatting to my knitting friend a couple of weeks ago. And we were kind of thinking maybe we ought to do another one. But I think broadly the the project basically over

Emma Alexander 40:37 how does that feel?

Joseph Ford 40:43

Good in a way. I think I think it's I think it's important to know when you've when you've when you've kind of done something and I feel like when you've done a project I think I've done about 30 pictures now in that in that series. And there is a there is a diminishing return I think I've done a lot of the things that I wanted to experiment with. I really use the project to test out lots of ideas and to test out photographing different kinds of scenarios, different sorts of lighting, that kind of thing. That's interesting. Yeah, I'm gonna do tend to be fairly strategic with it. Yeah, like if you if you're aiming to do 30 pictures. I can't see why you do 30 pictures all the same. Like for me, firstly, it's intellectually interesting to do a broader range of work. And secondly, from a from a business perspective. I think if you can you show someone you can blend, blend people into their background with special clothes. That's great. But if you could also show that you can blend still life into the background or the blend of animal or that you can do it with old people and young people. And you can do it in studio, where you can do it with kind of more of a lifestyle you feel then I think it just broadens your appeal and shows potential clients that actually you're not just like the jumper guy. You're also the jumper on a dog guy. You can do it with a rat or you can do it with Yeah, all these different scenarios, which makes you much more multifaceted. Much more employable.

Emma Alexander 42:18
So did you use the jumper project as a way to kind of fill holes that you felt were in your

portfolio?

Joseph Ford 42:28

Yeah, so I think one of the things I did one picture with a teapot, and I think because because my a lot of my work is conceptual. I think you get some photographers who like the only thing they do is shoot like people looking happy in the sun. And so there'll be there'll be called for those kinds of jobs because my work tends to be more conceptual, like people might call me for people looking happy in the sun on a beach, but it'll tend to be like as part of a bigger project where you've maybe got a unifying theme. So you might need people looking happy in the sun, but you might also need I don't know, like a still life picture or people interacting with a car or or people travelling or something like that. And one thing that I found that people were asking quite regularly was like, Do you know have you got Have you got some kind of food setups. Have you got some? Some most likely things so I thought okay, this is an opportunity to shoot a a monster knife one so I photographed a banana pretending to be a watermelon for example, as you do and a teapot teapot pretending to be part of a tablecloth and things like that. And so it does. It just kind of fills gaps in your portfolio.

Emma Alexander 43:53

Yeah, that's a really smart way to do it. I can see that. I mean, as a commissioner in advertising, we used to get asked by the client all the time, you know, if you've got some do they have someone or they shot someone with a beard it's like they've got all these beautiful portraits. And they got some with a beard.

Joseph Ford 44:09

Yeah. And then that ends up is like, Oh, they've got somebody with a beard, but they're wearing a red jumper. Do someone in a beard wearing a green job? zactly Yeah, it does. It can get a bit silly like that. So, but you I think you have to recognise that it's a game. And you have to think about, okay, like, I've done this. I've done this picture with a guy with a beard. Now I could do another guy with a beard for the next picture because the guy with beard worked well on the first picture, or I could think actually, I want to shoot an old lady, because I've got an old lady on my portfolio. And then rather than doing another old lady after that, you think, Okay, well, I'm gonna shoot a teenager for the next one. And that means you can say, Yes, next time somebody asks you if you've done that particular

Emma Alexander 44:56

thing now I think that's really smart. So you're absolutely right people do they want to see things before they're shot but you need to have a breadth of options that your you know, your arsenal as it were at your disposal for when clients come and asking and talking about portfolios because I know you are joining us at Wisern to be, you know, offering portfolio reviews as well. Do you have a printed book or do you use PDFs? Both? Okay,

Joseph Ford 45:20

so I would say my go to rather than PDFs would tend to be keynote because or sometimes I'll present stuff offline with pitch, for example, because then you can integrate movie image as well, which is a big part of my work and I like being able to present it in a seamless way. But yeah, like I was in Paris last week for Profoto and I had a few meetings as while I was there, and I took a printed portfolio with me, and also showed stuff on an iPad. So you can then kind of show all the all the printed work. And I think in that context, you do get a much higher level of detail in print than you do showing something on the iPad. Firstly, because it's physically bigger, then I think people also interact with it differently. So I see. I see people with my portfolio my physical portfolio, and they'll pick it up and actually take the time to look at it and sort of feel the paper and there's there's something really nice about having a tangible object that slows people down, which isn't always appropriate, but sometimes can be really good.

Emma Alexander 46:27
No, I think that's lovely. There is something really beautiful about a printed book. It's like really,

really tactile and really tangible. Absolutely. And I think if

Joseph Ford 46:34

you if you've got something on that context that takes like you could have a portfolio review that takes five minutes if you're just someone's just flicking through an iPad or whatever. If you can stretch that up to 20 minutes because they're slowing down and looking at your portfolio. Then, not only are they paying more attention to your work, but it's also time that you can be using to tell them about how you did the work or ask them about what they're working on. And it just makes that conversation deeper and makes that connection better.

Emma Alexander 47:01

It's the beginnings of that forging of a relationship isn't and building trust in your clients. And obviously you have an agent who does a lot of legwork for you but how important has it been for you to kind of still be going and meeting commissioners going into agencies going into brands and building your own sort of profile alongside your agent. So

Joseph Ford 47:25

it's crucial, I think, from talking to my agents, I know, particularly since COVID, things have gotten much more difficult in terms of agents getting into agencies and a lot of agencies gotten much more difficult in terms of agents getting into agencies and a lot of agencies working with freelancers, so it's not like 10 years ago where you could walk into an agency and everyone you would need would be there all day every day, and you'd be able to see a bunch of people. Now, the agency might be working with a freelance producer who might be working from home. So actually getting to see those people it's very difficult. I think what my agents have said is that it's more or less impossible for them to see creatives now. So I do go and try and see creatives. And sometimes that's sometimes that's for a portfolio review, but sometimes it's just have lunch or have a coffee or something and I guess keeping the connection going with people I've worked with in the past seems crucial because it's it's much easier to get somebody who's already worked with you to work with you, again, than it is to forge a completely new relationship. So if you can go out with someone like that in an informal way, and just chat about the work you've been doing, and maybe that ends up ends up with them going to look at your website, even if you don't actually show them something there.

Emma Alexander 48:40
What advice do you have for new or emerging artists trying to get those first meetings? How

can you how do you do it? How do you get in front of people?

Joseph Ford 48:53

I think the first thing is be persistent really, I guess you do have to be on those do you have to be thick skinned? And I suppose you have to you also have to believe in what you're showing. So I think somebody told me very, very early on. I think it was a photographer that I've been assisting, said you just showed me some of your pictures, and you've apologised for them, which immediately makes me think they're crap. And I was like, oh, yeah, and I think like we've all done it like you show someone something and you're like, this would have been a bit better, but I didn't have the money to do X or Y or it would have been a bit better by I didn't know how to do this. It's like, don't tell them why it's bad. Like you want to be telling them why it's good. So either you've got to work that you genuinely think it's good or I think that like this is a it's an industry that attracts a lot of perfectionist. And one of the things that goes with that is a lot of self doubt. So I think you have to be realistic about what you're what you're getting right and try and concentrate on that

Emma Alexander 50:04
has been lovely. I like that a lot. Yeah.

Joseph Ford 50:07

And when you're contacting people recognise that a lot of people aren't gonna want to see you, they're going to be busy, but other people might want to see you. They might just not want to see you this week. So what I tend to do is if I get in touch with someone and I don't hear anything from them, I'll get in touch with them again and maybe like a week later. Because they might well have not seen my email or it might have gotten a junk or they might have seen it and thought looks interesting. But then they've got busy on something else. It gets married.

Emma Alexander 50:37
Yeah, I haven't seen all the time but things that get bombarded with emails and I do want to do

that. But I've got 400 things, really. And then it gets buried

Joseph Ford 50:47

badly. And I think I guess if you're really pragmatic about it, you can think if you contact someone once and they don't reply to you, then you definitely won't see them. So it kind of doesn't really matter if you annoy them or not.

Emma Alexander 51:02 I'm not gonna invite you

Joseph Ford 51:05
because if you if you contact them a second time, and they're annoyed by being contacted, you

haven't actually lost it think because they were never gonna see you in the first place.

Emma Alexander 51:12
It's a great way of reframing. I really love that.

Joseph Ford 51:15
But you might win because they might actually have been busy first time and second time,

they might say yes,

Emma Alexander 51:20

yeah, that is true. I think the other thing I'd like to add to that is remembering you have something of value. If you believe you have something of value, you know for for commercial brands. Your work in your skill set has a literal value, it's going to either push sales or or do a brand kind of reinforcement job for them, which again, is always driving to sales. So if they could do it themselves, they would so they need you. If you have something very much of value, then you've got to remember that it's a it's an incredible thing that you're offering them and you're solving

Joseph Ford 51:53
the problem thirdly which is you might you might not be the right person for them today, right or even forever. But equally you might be so I think everybody that you're contacting as long as or even forever. But equally you might be so I think everybody that you're contacting as long as you've been sensible in your contacting polite, you're being polite, but also you kind of think strategically about it. Like there's no point going to if you if you shoot animals, there's no point going and contacting a cosmetics company. But, but if you shoot fashion, maybe there is a point in contacting a car company because they might think, actually, you might you might think you might be able to shoot sort of people in context with those cars or whatever.

Emma Alexander 52:34

And actually, there's an amazing amount of cross pollination in ad agencies as well, where producers are working across, you know, lots of different, different brands and they're sharing as well back on we used to have the Bank of desks. People would say we're pitching on Sony, we need to underwater job, who who's got underwater photographers, and we'd all go chin, even though it wasn't our job, our pitch that's sharing on it's really important, and I'm conscious of the time you've given us so much. I want to ask a couple more questions. One is if you could spend an hour with somebody who would you choose?

Joseph Ford 53:08

I think probably a Spanish film director called Petro Almodovar. He's He's very well known as one I think he's one can at least twice and I just think he he was really one of my one of my biggest influences when I started doing photography, because he he has such a strong approach to castings and lighting and styling and everything. And yeah, I've just he's kind of one of my all time heroes, so I'd love to meet him. And yeah, and also Yeah, just find out about his process.

Emma Alexander 53:44
Perfect. That's amazing. Well, thank you so much for joining us today. Where can people find

you online? So

Joseph Ford 53:50
Joseph Ford dotnet or Instagram Joseph Ford photography and

Emma Alexander 53:56

of course on Wisern wisern.com forward slash Jason. Guys, Dyson Hudson has joined us on Wisern He's gonna be doing a one to one power hour sessions and also portfolio review so you can come and book him with him whenever you need. I've just got one question. Time for one question. And it's how many images per project do you put in your printed portfolio? That's a really that's, I would say that's it's a bit of a How long is a piece of string question because my printed portfolio we will reject significantly depending on who I'm seeing. So some people I might have a portfolio which is very much tailored towards a particular project, because I know it's somebody who works on something relevant to that. And other projects I might have, yeah, it might just you might want to sort of more general portfolio. So I guess I would say probably in my in my portfolio, there's maybe like 35 to 40 images total. And I think I probably have I don't know maybe four or five pictures from each project, something like what's your

Emma Alexander 55:16
ratio of personal work to commission to work roughly, in a portfolio?

Joseph Ford 55:21
Again, depends who I'm saying.

Emma Alexander 55:23
So you read it for each client, each person each meeting,

Joseph Ford 55:28
not every single time but quite a bit. Yeah. Um, I would say I would say it's, it's certainly more

than half personal work. Yeah, interesting. Sometimes up to three quarters.

Emma Alexander 55:42
But it's such a strong, you know, part of who you are as a creative I think makes perfect sense.

Joseph Ford 55:48

Yeah, and sometimes I'll have I'll have personal work that's directly kind of inspired a particular campaign. So maybe I'll show personal work, and people recognise that there is a campaign that's derived from that. Anyway, thing. Beautiful.

Emma Alexander 56:02

I'm gonna wrap up there because of the context of the time. Thank you so much for all your time today. Thank you for giving so much, and sharing all your insights and your wisdom. Guys, you can find Joseph like say Joseph ford.net on Joseph Ford photography, on Instagram and of course on wisern.com as well. Have a fantastic day and I really look forward to seeing you guys soon. Thank you, Joseph. Thank you so much. Thanks,

Joseph Ford 56:27 everyone. Thanks, guys.