Today we’d like to introduce you to Alex Martinez.
So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
As a fresh-faced newly college grad with degrees in Philosophy & Art, I moved to San Francisco to take a full-time in-house photography gig for a luxury retailer in 2005. As we all know a few years, later everyone lost their jobs so in 2008 I began to strike out on my own.
Slowly, one gig at a time, one client at a time, a real career began to come into focus. A decade later, scores of productions and many hard lessons learned, my name is at the top of many apparel brand’s short lists of photographers.
More recently, I have been focusing on partnering with fashion & lifestyle businesses up to elevate brands through photography. What “elevate” means will differ from one business to another, but either way, my team and I work with internal teams to build image libraries of captivating images that are designed to engage the customer.
These images engage our customer through authenticity. Simple, real moments with purposeful lighting are principles I take into commercial photography from the world of portraiture. I learned on film where you have to make purposeful calculating decisions before you click that button.
This, I believe is what makes me a little different than many photographers coming up. There is not a lot of run and gun on my shoots.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
To quote Mad Men, “The day you sign a client, is the day you start losing them.” It took me some time to really understand the spirit of what that means. To put it another way is to say Don’t Get Attached Stupid.
Your first clients that don’t pay much are one day going to have bigger budgets and hire someone else. That’s just how it is. This has nothing to do with your skill set, rather because you unknowingly establish a mental value and it is impossible to change that. I struggled with this in the beginning.
Being a freelance photographer during the recession was like being in a canoe in a storm without a paddle. You were tossed around from one gig to the next with almost no control over the terms, rates or even quality. Many gigs were too small for too little money and asked for way too much work.
Once you said yes to a job for too little money, the client immediately forgot that they are getting a deal began to poor on the workload and expectations. Honestly, you can’t blame them. It’s their job to get as much value out of every investment, or at least what they think is valuable.
The real burn is that the work suffers. It’s a terrible feeling to look at a finished job and think ” I could have done better.” If/when images underperform the client is not going understand how they hamstrung the project. They are going to blame the photographer and move on and not come back to you with better budgets.
So one of the struggles along the way was a business one. I said yes to too many jobs where I failed to get the client’s resources to match their expectations, and I paid the price.
Photosophic, Inc – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
What I believe that I do better than other commercial photographers is preparation. The success of a photo shoot, I believe, is determined in those first pre-production meetings.
In those meetings, I ask a lot of questions to better understand the needs and aspirations of the customer and the internal team themselves. I listen, ask a lot of questions and listen some more. People have lost their jobs putting their trust and a budget in the wrong photographer’s hands, so I do not take the responsibility lightly.
I listen to the what the everyone at the table is saying and importantly what they are not saying. Then I act as a creative consultant and begin to translate their vision into my world of photography. Photo-sets should operate like the kitchen of a Michelin star restaurant, and this is only possible with preparation.
What is “success” or “successful” for you?
Respect amongst my peers.
The older you become, the more that matters to you and so many other things that you thought were important just don’t matter anymore.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.amartinezphotography.com
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/amartinezphoto/
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