Emma Porter is a photgrapher and graphic designer living and working in LondonA.E. What is your job title?
E.P. Photographer (sometimes Graphic Designer)
E.P. Photographer (sometimes Graphic Designer)
A.E. What does this role involve?
E.P. Photographer typically involves: Travelling to numerous different locations over London & surrounding areas with portable camera equipment. Shooting photos subtly with minimal noise (sometimes using a sound blimp) and no flash, capturing reportage style shots & a few posed under tv lighting which is out of my control. I then spend the evening or the next day editing photos & then sending them to the client via FTP.
Graphic Designer involves: Working from home on my Mac creating logos, stationary, web pages etc. Can either email work back and forth to agree changes and finalise designs, or go out to have meetings.
E.P. Photographer typically involves: Travelling to numerous different locations over London & surrounding areas with portable camera equipment. Shooting photos subtly with minimal noise (sometimes using a sound blimp) and no flash, capturing reportage style shots & a few posed under tv lighting which is out of my control. I then spend the evening or the next day editing photos & then sending them to the client via FTP.
Graphic Designer involves: Working from home on my Mac creating logos, stationary, web pages etc. Can either email work back and forth to agree changes and finalise designs, or go out to have meetings.
A.E. What equipment/ software do you use?
E.P. I have a Canon EOS 60D and a 50D camera, not top of the range but good enough for what I need to do. I have a variety of lenses which happily are all f/2.8 from when I shot a lot of gigs. There is a lot of similarity in the shooting conditions of gigs and tv sets, they are both really low light and I don't get to light it. I just have to go with the flow, so low light capable lenses are very important. Also on TV sets it is important to be as silent as possible, even the click of my shutter is too loud for most filming situations. I used to only shoot during read through or if the background noise could mask my noise. But I now have a sound blimp which practically silences my camera, it looks a bit odd, but means I can shoot while the tv camera is rolling too.
To edit my images I have a Macbook laptop, or an iMac for when I'm at home. I have lots of different software especially for editing photos: Aperture, iPhoto, Lightroom etc, but I always use Photoshop because I am used to it from years of using it for design work. I also use Fetch and FLICKR to upload and show my photos to clients.
To store my images I used to use CDs & DVDs, but now I have huge external Hard drives.
Design software I use most is Photoshop, Quark Xpress, Illustrator & Dreamweaver.
E.P. I have a Canon EOS 60D and a 50D camera, not top of the range but good enough for what I need to do. I have a variety of lenses which happily are all f/2.8 from when I shot a lot of gigs. There is a lot of similarity in the shooting conditions of gigs and tv sets, they are both really low light and I don't get to light it. I just have to go with the flow, so low light capable lenses are very important. Also on TV sets it is important to be as silent as possible, even the click of my shutter is too loud for most filming situations. I used to only shoot during read through or if the background noise could mask my noise. But I now have a sound blimp which practically silences my camera, it looks a bit odd, but means I can shoot while the tv camera is rolling too.
To edit my images I have a Macbook laptop, or an iMac for when I'm at home. I have lots of different software especially for editing photos: Aperture, iPhoto, Lightroom etc, but I always use Photoshop because I am used to it from years of using it for design work. I also use Fetch and FLICKR to upload and show my photos to clients.
To store my images I used to use CDs & DVDs, but now I have huge external Hard drives.
Design software I use most is Photoshop, Quark Xpress, Illustrator & Dreamweaver.
A.E. What company/ organisation do you work for?
(Just state if you are self employed).
E.P. Self Employed
(Just state if you are self employed).
E.P. Self Employed
A.E. Who are you (usually) hired by and how does this work?
E.P. For the photography a PR agency hire me on behalf of Channel 4 (usually Bite). Usually in the form of an email asking me if I'm free, followed by another with a 'call sheet' attached telling me where, when & who the celebs are.
The Photography agencies I have been hired by include LFI, Big Pictures, Retna and Matrix.
E.P. For the photography a PR agency hire me on behalf of Channel 4 (usually Bite). Usually in the form of an email asking me if I'm free, followed by another with a 'call sheet' attached telling me where, when & who the celebs are.
The Photography agencies I have been hired by include LFI, Big Pictures, Retna and Matrix.
Design work usually comes from word of mouth of people I know or work with already.
A.E. Do you have to liaise with many other people or are you mostly your own agent? (Both as a graphic designer and photographer).
E.P. I am my own agent, but a lof of my current tv work comes through one PR agency.
A.E. Do your clients give you directions about how they want the shots to look, or do you have creative freedom to shoot them the way you think would be best?
E.P. They sometimes give me a brief if there are specific shots they need, but they mostly leave it up to me to just capture the general scene.
A.E. What are your photographs usually used for and is anything else done to them once you have sent them to your client?
E.P. The TV stuff goes on 4music.com & anywhere else they want to advertise the TV show. The gig & red carpet shots went in news papers, magazines and websites. The only thing they do to my TV shots are send them to be approved by the artists PR people, & sometimes they crop them.
A.E. Do you promote yourself, if yes how so?
E.P. I have always had a website to promote myself, especially in the early days. Now I have clients that use me over & over I don't need it as much. But were I to need to find new clients I would definitely get on top of it again. It's a really instant & handy tool to just show a lot of people your portfolio without having to schedule a lot of meetings.
E.P. I am my own agent, but a lof of my current tv work comes through one PR agency.
A.E. Do your clients give you directions about how they want the shots to look, or do you have creative freedom to shoot them the way you think would be best?
E.P. They sometimes give me a brief if there are specific shots they need, but they mostly leave it up to me to just capture the general scene.
A.E. What are your photographs usually used for and is anything else done to them once you have sent them to your client?
E.P. The TV stuff goes on 4music.com & anywhere else they want to advertise the TV show. The gig & red carpet shots went in news papers, magazines and websites. The only thing they do to my TV shots are send them to be approved by the artists PR people, & sometimes they crop them.
A.E. Do you promote yourself, if yes how so?
E.P. I have always had a website to promote myself, especially in the early days. Now I have clients that use me over & over I don't need it as much. But were I to need to find new clients I would definitely get on top of it again. It's a really instant & handy tool to just show a lot of people your portfolio without having to schedule a lot of meetings.
I also keep a portfolio of photography and a portfolio of design work printed out in case anyone wants to see my work in the flesh in interview situations.
I have previously found myspace a good promotional tool to get live gig work from local bands. At the moment I use Facebook a lot more, it's a great networking tool.
I know quite a lot of photographers now so when we can't make shoots we cover each other.
A.E. What qualifications and prior experience do you have and how has this effected or lead to your current job?
E.P. I have a HND & a degree in graphic design which really helped me to get my first few jobs. After a few years when you have a portfolio, & especially if you work self employed people rarely ask about qualifications anymore as the proof I can do the job is in the portfolio.
Photography wise I don't have an official qualification, I never studied it other than 1 module on my Design HND. I have taught myself. I started off shooting gigs for fun and found I was good at it. So I started to offer my services for a small fee and just take my camera into small venues with no restrictions and just practice. Then amassed enough for a decent portfolio and took my portfolio to magazines & made a website.
The gig work lead to being hired by agencies for celebrity red carpet events as well as gigs, which gave me a lot of experience and some huge names for my portfolio. The shoots included gigs in the Apple Store Regent St, where the PR agent who sorted our passes out one day asked me if I fancied shooting TV set stills for a new client they had, which turned out to be 4music. That was about 3 years ago and I'm still shooting for them more and more and they are my main source of work.
Photography for Channel 4
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| Westlife on set |
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| Tinie Tempah on set |
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| JLS on set |
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| James Brown |
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| The Libertines |
Magazine photography
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| Paris Hilton |
Click here to see more images on flikr
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