Twenty Four for Dubai Hilton
This new photography career has taught me so much in such a short space of time. I certainly knew it wasn’t going to be easy, but I had absolutely no idea just how time consuming and utterly draining the business end of things would be. Why can’t I just take cool pictures and have them magically appear in awesome locations while the payment automatically pops into my bank account! There is so much to learn. For instance who knew how important it is to put the heading of your blog post (Twenty Four for Dubai Hilton) in the first paragraph of your blog? See how I craftily did that? What’s interesting though is the list of ‘to do’s’ in order to ‘become successful’ is really quite short. However, all but one are heavily loaded: 1. Take some really neat pictures. 2. Make a name for yourself. 3. Get big city galleries to sell your work to influential people. 4. Find and engage agents to sell to corporations. I think you guessed the easy one. Why is it always the one that’s most fun?
But before all that started, I had to decide what I was going to focus on. I mean, pretty much everything in photography had already been covered and on top of that everyone’s a photographer now, right? So what’s missing in the photography market, and how do you know what’s missing if you don’t know what it is? And then, when you eventually have your, “Ah ha! I know, it’s Photo Luminism!” moment, you then have to figure out who on earth would want to buy it – your goal client. Oddly enough, although that has become abundantly clear in the last 6 months, I still struggle with it, because for some inexplicable reason I want to be on the walls of well known galleries and in demand by famous collectors! It’s obviously an ego thing. And I suspect this internal struggle will continue until my dream is realized, the simple reason being, it’s still one of my goals. I have always had both as my goal. Almost as soon as I produced my first Photo Luminism images, I knew they had to be in hotels; they’re so bright and colorful, inspirational and thought provoking. No brainer. But deep inside I also wanted to be the next Damien Hirst, albeit rather an old one! What I’m trying to say here is that you HAVE to know your realistic market above everything else. I spent the better part of a year chasing galleries before I realized they had no interest in me finding them, no matter how much homework I’d done. They want to discover you on their own terms. So then I focussed on my secondary goal, the hospitality market. And that was when things started to happen.
The bottom line is: Passionately love what you do. Know your desired end result, and then work your butt off to point yourself towards that eventuality for it will surely happen.
And oh yes, if you didn’t already hear, the Conrad Hilton in Dubai just purchased the rights to print twenty four copies of ‘Gold Wire’ on canvas. I’m very happy. I’ve been aiming at that market for over a year 🙂 See what I mean!
