Duncan Philpott
Duncan Philpott is an
action-adventure photography based in Sheffield, UK. He was originally
completing a degree in Mathematics but decided to drop that and become a
photographer. His career started through a community of action sports fans and
has rapidly grown into a photography career with plenty of work coming in. Photography
magazines were his main inspiration to start photography, and from there he
made connections with the right people in order to grow his career.
Duncan
Philpott describes his everyday life as being packed with work, but worth it
because he is passionate about the subject. His day usually involves going
somewhere with him camera and taking hundreds, if not thousands, of
photographs. He can be doing this for a company, working to a brief, or for one
of his own personal projects. He says the perks of being a photographer are:
Travelling the world, doing something he loves, being outside and being able to
showcase who he is through his work.
The
downsides described by Duncan are that there is no job security in this
photography industry and there is no fixed income. Also he works very long
hours which leaves him with very little personal time, and because of the
photography he does, there is always a chance of hurting himself. There is a
lot of paperwork to be done including; proposals, marketing and personal
projects. One of this biggest things about the work Duncan does is the fact
that he is his own boss. He has to make sure everything gets done for the
deadlines set, and budget everything he does. There is nobody there to tell him
exactly what to do all the time, he is free to do what he wants, as long as it
fits the brief given to him.
Working
to a brief is one of the main things that Duncan does. He will get given a
brief by a company, this may be a few bullet points or a very precise
description of what they want, and from this he must produce a series of
photographs that fits the criteria presented. Duncan has worked on a few big
projects, with one of the biggest being a project for the Sheffield City
Council. In this project Duncan had to take photographs for a campaign to make
Sheffield look like a ‘green’ city. To do this Duncan was told to take
photographs of 5 different sports with Sheffield city as the background for
each one. He then went on to plan, scout locations and hire actors for his
photographs. After a week of shooting, Duncan ended up with over 3600
photographs, only a select few photographs were chosen for the final
submission.
As
a part of the planning for this project Duncan had to scout locations for
taking the photographs and hire professionals in the selected sports to come
and be in his photographs. For the location scouting he used a lot of his
knowledge of the sports, as he himself takes part in some of them, and Google
Maps to find locations for the shoot. This is to prevent a situation where he
goes to a location and it turns out that there is no clear view of the city.
To
select his final submissions Duncan used Adobe Lightroom to sort through him photographs
and sort them with the rating system. This allowed him to take the best
photographs from his 3600 and narrow them down to a few hundred. From there he
can more easily select the best ones for the brief and add any effects or do
any touch ups if necessary.
In
his downtime Duncan mainly does paperwork, personal projects, proposals for
projects, marketing and self-promotion. This means that he is always doing
something related to his work and can keep himself occupied all the time.
Duncan has a lot of ways in which he promotes himself. Some of these methods
include; Networking, blogging, social media, personal projects and
collaborations with other photographers. All of this allows him to get himself
known in the photography industry by making sure that more people are able to
see his work and make him a viable candidate for a lot of different projects.
He said that the best way to get work in the photography industry is to get
your work known. This helps massively as if somebody needs a photographer for a
project they will think of his name as a potential candidate as they have seen
what he can do.
Duncan
now runs his own website http://www.duncanphilpott.com, his Twitter account (@DuncanPhilpott)
on which he has nearly 2000 followers and his own Instagram account
(@DuncanPhilpott) on which he has 16.8
thousand followers. He has travelled the world while following his career and
doing something he loves with his friends. His networking and self-promotion
skills are two of the main reasons why he is as successful as he is today.
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