Today Marc Wilson who is a very successful commercial photographer from Bath but definitely not based in Bath came to visit us today here are the notes I took from his talk:
Early life:
Studied a sociology degree to start off with
Worked as an assistant for 3 days and realised he didn’t want to be a commercial photographer
Took a year out and went travelling
Then went back to LCP to finish his second and third year
Started working commercially about 10 years ago
Commercial photography is the work that gets him all the money to then be able to go and travel
He wasted 15 years of his life partying and working in bars pretending to be an artist not making any work
Got his work planned out for October and November
When he gets to the end of October he’ll have £20,000 more than he had before - from doing his commercial work
Some months he won’t have any commercial work for 3 or 4 weeks which is really nice because he can work on his personal projects - as long as he’s had work the month before to make money
3am starts pretty much every morning
Commercial work:
Clean and precise, kitchens and interiors, can be slow work though because he has 6 hours to make 6 good photos - which is why he can make a lot of money on a short space of time
One really important person - client
Personal work:
The last stand 2010-2014
Looking at second world war coasts and military - concrete structure that has changed over time
Shot with a large format camera - would arrive where he was going to shoot, take reci shots of where he wanted to take the images, would then stay overnight and wake up as early as he could and stand exactly where he wanted to take the picture and take 1 or 2 images because he knew exactly where he wanted to stand from doing his reci shoot
84 images in the work
Colour neg
Gets people talking about something they wouldn’t normally talk about
Book was really important - had a book launch, got lots of press
The publisher was a new publisher which meant his book didn’t go to photobook fair like Paris Photo which meant he didn’t go to the festivals to get his name out there and promote himself, the publisher did put the money in themselves so he didn’t have to crowdfund himself to publish the book
Has two books in his bag - RRP £40 we can buy them for £20 and he’ll sign them
Book called contact which he put his photos in and spent money on and got nothing out of it - when he first started out
He gave someone his business card 4 years beforehand and had a call from him and asked whether he wanted to do a shoot for him and up until now has done about 45 shoots for him
If you don’t have prints, people don’t buy a book but if you have prints and a book they’ll buy both - not sure why
Twitter and Instagram are good for networking
If you could talk about 1 picture for hours then it’s good because it means it’s interesting and you know your work, he’s recently done a talk to about 40 people and he spoke for 2 hours and showed 3 images
A wounded landscape - work in progress
Flowers reminded him of the children that would have been there but were taken away and would have eventually been taken to Auschwitz and probably killed
20 stories all together - all come from a child’s account - all about the war
Travels to all the locations on his own
The work will be an archive then exhibition then book (insure how much text will be in the book but each story has a transcript and research behind it)
Wants the archive to be accessible to everyone
Spends quite a few hours at each location
Each shot is intensely considered
By January he hopes he will have all of the images he needs and will be about 500 images in total will look through them all and see if there are any gaps and if he needs to go back to anywhere and then by February he should have all of his images
Will be a lot of editing so won’t do it all himself
Even if you’re telling stories about the past it can be showing the present
Can tell stories that are important
Project - Last Stand gets more likes than A wounded landscape
I really enjoyed Marc's talk and felt really moved by his personal work. I also found that he didn't brag about how much he earned and didn't show off about it either, he was just being honest. If I could then I would do something like this but after I've got a bit more experience.
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