Recently as an assignment for my Business Practices course I was asked to chose and interview a professional in the photography industry.  I sent out several emails not knowing who would respond, or who would respond in time for my assignment requirement.  I was very lucky to have one of my favorite photographers reply with in an hour of sending the email.

Andrew Eccles is an internationally known photographer working in the commercial and entertainment field of photography.  His early education came from assisting for Annie Leibovitz for several years, as well as other photographers after that.  Along with numerous other magazines and clients, he has been working for the New York Times Magazine for many years, and was honored with being asked to shoot the Millennium edition of the magazine with Robin Williams, which was put in to a time capsule and is scheduled to  be opened in the year 3000.  He is the photographer of choice for the Alvin Ailey Dance Company in NY, and has shot the movie posters for several films which you have probably seen.

Andrew and I talked via phone for nearly an hour, which I have transcribed and posted here in a few sections to make it easier to read. (Taking a  note from my friend Chris New on that one…)

So with out further delay, here is the interview.

David Perkins – First question. Your representation appears to be based in L.A. right?

Andrew Eccles – Right.

DP –  But you primarily work in NYC?

AE- well, actually not true. Have we started recording?

DP – Yes I have.

AE – I guess you are going to play the interview, I assume?

DP – Actually I will probably transcribe it.

AE – Ok good, so you can turn all of my stuttering ums and awes in to English.

DP-  Yes, myself included.

AE – Hah, the truth is I probably do around 50% of my work in L.A. Although I am based in N.Y., a great deal of my subject matter is based in L.A. because of the entertainment industry.  And then the other 50% is divided between N.Y. and everywhere else.  So, the question would be, “well why don’t I live in L.A. instead of flying across the country once a week like I do?”  1. Because I love N.Y. and I’d rather live here.  2. I’m divorced, my ex-wife and daughter live here in N.Y. and she goes to a fabulous school, and she’s only 7 ½ years old and I would never ever dream of being across the country from her.  So, those are the main reasons, but I do spend an awful lot of time in the air going to and from L.A.  I go on average about once a week.  That’s the way it’s been for about twenty some odd years.

DP – So that works pretty well for you then?

AE – Well having an agent in L.A. we decided when this industry became more or less dictated by the internet, (and when I say that most of our work we do is really by email now), and when we’re working with a client and you are doing production you’re usually emailing each other pictures. A lot of work is done on the phone. Very very little of this is ever done in face-to-face meetings.  Half my clients are on the west coast. Some of them are on the east coast.  So we really realized that my agent would be more useful to me on the west coast because the bulk of my clients, certainly the ones where the jobs are more lucrative, which are the entertainment advertising jobs, like movie posters and the television advertising…  those are the clients that we want to schmooze a little bit face to face.  So, I leave that up to him to do out there, plus he wanted to live in L.A. anyway.  But, in a way we sort of divided our efforts, get the best of both worlds.

DP – Great, so the second questions you’ve pretty much already answered.  But you said about 50% comes from N.Y. and elsewhere, is elsewhere across the country? Is it international?

AE – Well it’s all of the above.  Again, the where is based on where the work is.   Depending on the economy and also the aesthetic decisions that the producers and directors make… you know a lot of my work was in Canada for a few years because the Canadian dollar was so weak and the American dollar was fairly strong.  Well, that was a handful of years ago, and now that’s reversed, and although they still do a lot of entertainment projects in Canada, they’re doing less than they were.  Now I’ll be sent up there a couple times a year to shoot stuff.  Occasionally productions need to be done in various different cities in the states, or various different places around the world.  For instance, earlier this week I was in Atlanta doing a movie poster for a movie that was being shot there for whatever reason.  Occasionally and thankfully two or three times a year I might get sent over seas to England or France, or once in awhile an editorial project will have me go to some place exotic.

DP – Very cool. So what are some of the biggest challenges you face in the industry today, and do you feel being all over the country as you are, helps or compounds these problems?

AE – I think that the biggest challenge that we all face, whether we [have] twenty years experience in the industry or just starting out, is the American economy tanked last year.  2009 was a fairly unexpected crisis economically for those of us established in this industry.  I had always thought we were safe, like some how we’d avoided all of those little recessions along the way because they were pretty little compared to what last year was about.  But one of the things they’ve sort of found to be true over time is that when in tough economic times, most Americans will gravitate [towards] the few things they can afford, which is watching TV, maybe going to a movie, maybe buying music on iTunes, and those are all of the things that I take pictures for.  Those are all of the industries that one would assume would remain steady, and perhaps even profitable.

Well for the first time in my career, that wasn’t the case.  Movie studios, television networks, were also suffering.  Advertising agencies were suffering because the economy was so bad.  When the Ad dollars went away, the photo shoot budget dollars went away, and then the photo shoots went away.  Magazines were folding left and right, and suddenly we were finding ourselves with out very much work at all.  For the first time in my career, the phone stopped ringing.  That was pretty alarming.  So the biggest challenge was really after twenty some odd years of hard work and devotion and believing I had achieved some level of status and respect in this industry, I suddenly found myself having to promote myself, and market myself, and work as hard as I did when I first started.  Hah, and that was a challenge.  That’s still a challenge.  You can’t ever coast and you can’t ever quit.  But even when the economic situation isn’t as disastrous as it was last year, it’s improved dramatically since then, I still find that apart from the economy, I still have 5000 new photographers to compete against at any given time.  There are so many new people, like yourself probably, that to stay on top or in it at all you have to continually market yourself, improve.  You have to keep up with personal work and projects, and gallery projects, so that your clients respect you as an artist and somebody who is growing and still cares and all of those things.  So that’s a challenge. It’s never suddenly easy.  There’s never a place you suddenly arrive at where you can say, “Oh I’ve made it so I can coast now.”  That doesn’t exist in our line of business.

DP- I agree.  You mentioned promoting yourself and all of the competition, so I want to skip a few questions and ask, what you find to be the most effective means of promoting yourself?

AE – Well that’s a tough one.  Over the years, the medium by which we promote ourselves has changed.  It’s really websites, email blasts that are the most common ways to reach people.  I think that works, but I think old school promotional mailers can work.  I haven’t done them in a while, just because they’re expensive and they didn’t really seem to be getting as much reaction as I’d hoped.  But, ya know, all you have to do is visit any photo editor’s office in NY and look at the hundreds they get on a near daily basis, and you understand why they didn’t rush to the phone to call you to have you shoot all of their covers, hah.  And then there are those that sent them out every quarter, or in a series.  I like that idea. I don’t know if it works.

If you’re someone that is a little more like myself and established in the community, the best promotional tool is a gallery show/book project.  That seems to be the best way to get to people because 1. It’s something you can talk about.  My agent or myself can call and say “hey, I actually have something new to show you, I did this book.”  It’s a real physical thing you can give people.  If it’s a show you can invite people to come to the opening to look at your work.  It tells people that you’re an artist, because even if you are a commercial photographer everyone thinks they want to hire an artist.  It makes you appear established, once you have a book on the shelf no one will take it off, it will be there forever.  So I’ve always told up-and-coming photographers, you’re probably not going to get a book deal right off the bat, but doing personal projects seems to get through to photo editors more than showing them a series of random tests that you may have shot through out art college.  It seems that most photo editors respond to a fresh and new body of work that a particular photographer cares about.  That can arrive on a photo editors desk in the way of an email blast or a printed promotional piece that they can then find on your website.

DP – What are your thoughts on social media, like blogs, facebook, twitter as promotional tactics?

AE – Well, I don’t feel like an old guy yet at all, but I’m on facebook, I’m not on twitter… I’ve never asked people to become a fan of me on facebook.  I just find there’s something sort of offensive about that, ha ha.  But, whatever works.  I think it’s different out there today, and I think that all of those are extremely valid and interesting ways to put oneself out there.  Ya know, why not?  If it works, it works.  It seems that because there are so many avenues now to potentially get your name and information to various people that you might as well do them all.  As long as there is something worth looking at or reading once you arrive.  That’s really the difference.  At the end of the day, no matter how many little avenues you chose to take, you still have to have something worth looking at the end of the road.

DP- You mentioned a second ago about personal projects and doing what students are passionate about.  What other advice can you give people just starting out in the industry?

AE – A couple things that I always tell people I teach, I teach usually once every other summer for a week down in Santé Fe at a workshop there, and that’s a pretty common question – everyone sort of wants to know what they should do when they’re getting started, what’s the formula for success? – I think a couple things can be very helpful when starting out. One is to assist a photographer that’s established.  If you can land a full time gig, it’s the closest you can really get to experience how it would be for you yourself.  I was very fortunate; I landed a gig with Annie Leibovitz. That was back in the early 80’s and I assisted her full time for three years.  Then I worked with some pretty good people freelance after that.  I got about five years of assisting, I got a really really strong education.  I learned a lot, saw a lot, and was pretty prepared for what was to come.

Now the other advantage of working with an established photographer for a while, is that you meet their clients.  Clients that hire big photographers for big jobs, usually hire smaller photographers for small jobs.  A lot of my assistants have gotten or are beginning to get work now from some of my bigger clients who need things shot.  You can build those sorts of relationships, but that takes time, it takes hanging out with people on the road and on jobs and on a regular basis over time.  So, that’s one piece of advice.

After that I think the personal project thing is huge.  A lot of assistants try.  If you’re a busy assistant, or you’re in school, you’re either shooting assignments that are given to you by instructors, or you’re desperately trying to squeeze things in to a schedule that’s already packed.  Or, if you’re an assistant and you’re busy you might just be plain too tired when you have time for yourself to set something up.  For people who are in full time situations, I sometimes tell them not to stress out over it.  Just worry about being an assistant.  Save a little money, and then at some point look out for a couple of days, take some of that money and go take some pictures.  Do a coherent body of work that you can then proudly print and feel good about taking to people and showing them.  Those are the two main pieces of advice I usually tell people.

DP – You mentioned you do gallery shows as part of your promotion.  It seems that a lot of importance is put on photo contests, but a lot of these contests seemed geared towards fine art rather than commercial.  And I was curious what you thought of the importance of contests to commercial photography as apposed to fine art.

AE – Well I think the line between those two worlds got a lot fuzzier in the last decade.  A lot of fine art photographers are shooting commercial jobs, and vise versa.   The first part of that question is about photo contests, as far as I can tell I think they are a pretty good idea.  The ones that seem to be seen and respected are certainly American Photo, Communication Arts, and probably PDN.  PDN probably offers more opportunities for young photographers.  I think people look at that stuff.  It can’t hurt.  Again, whatever gets you out there, and seen, and I think that’s a pretty worthwhile way to do it.

Gallery shows are useful to but I think it really depends on where you are, what the gallery is, what the show is.  But, looking for a space to show your work…  I remember when I was young I went to an advertising agency here in NY, I think it was Young and Rubicam, and they had a lobby area where they sometimes showed work.  They hadn’t hired me for anything but I said, I know you have this, and I have this body of work and it’s matted and framed, would you consider hanging it? And they did.  It was up for like, three weeks, and I got a call at some point form an art director.  I think that kind of idea is pretty smart.  For you personally, I don’t know your work, are you coming in this industry from a fine art point of view or a commercial point of view?

DP – Well my goal is to shoot commercially, but I seem to have a fine art aspect to my work.

AE – That’s probably a good thing.  Right now I think that’s much more of the trend.  People want really creative, interesting imagery.  The more images that are out there and around, people are going to be drawn towards something that’s creative and artistic.  So that’s probably a good starting point.

Continue to part  2.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 28th, 2010 at 5:29 pm and is filed under Discussions with the Green Fairy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.