Eugenio Franchi

Eugenio Franchi can be summed up as being a still life advertising photographer who until recently used film cameras mostly shooting on 10x8 transparency's, and even though this is not the area of photography I am most interested in and see myself getting a career in,  I found his talk to be of great interest. I liked his passion for doing as much work inside the camera and not on photoshop and he kept stressing that photographers shouldn't rely on photoshop to make their pictures better. He was revealing some of his story's about how he produced some really well thought out pictures without digitally manipulation.   

His talk took us through his progression as a photographer starting of with his education and then joining a cruise ship and taking photographs of the passengers on board to becoming an assistant firstly for Adam Toher, Nadav Kander and then for Graham Ford. 

Eugenio mentioned how then he started to enter competitions which and started winning some (Absolute Vodka and the AOP Assistant awards) and how these act as god media he then went on to talk about how he made this transition from assistant to working for himself and how he did this on the back of winning the awards to help boost him. He suggested making a list of all the contacts that you make whilst as an assistant and taking them your portfolio as they are likely to be a lot more receptive and will grant you a meeting. In his first year as a freelance photographer two people gave him jobs out of one hundred contacts he had taken his work to.  The first jobs he said a photographer will receive once going freelance would be low paid and low risk work and that you must gradually build up until you start receiving higher paid higher risk work. 

Eugene also talked a lot about portfolio's and what should be in them he suggested taking a mix of commissions and personal work. He said it was important to keep taking personal work as this can create commercial work later on whether an art director wants the idea applied to a commission or it could be bought in a stock library. 

Eugenio talked about having a signature image for him it is city skylines made out of objects which he has redone time after time with different objects, he mentions how this is important as art directors will want to use the same photographer who shot the image they have seen before as this eliminates a lot of risk. He has shot this signature image for Waterstones, Channel Five, Galaxy which just goes to show how a signature image can go on to create a lot more work.