Potential Employers

While bearing in mind the key aspects and characteristics of my chosen practice area - Fashion Portrait Photography - I have done some research into potential employers.

Assisting
Photography
Retouching
Styling
Fashion
Organisation

A potential employer for myself in relevance to my chosen practice area could be some of the visiting lecturers from university. I could offer my assisting services as I already have a connection with them and then go on to continue assisting or meet contacts through them. So for example, I could assist Ellen Rogers as her work falls into a similar category to my own.

A have a great and extremely relevant example for a potential employer for photographic services and that is Revolution portraits in Norwich who I am currently actually in the middle of an interview process for a role of photographer at their studio's. They photograph anything from pets to families and creative portraits. As the studio sessions are available to hire for anything, they get a huge range of clients through their doors. While this is not strictly fashion portrait orientated, it is portrait orientated and fantastic experience.

Being self employed retoucher seems to be the way to start your retouching career. Gaining experience through self-marketing and building a portfolio of local connections and using this to work your way up to a larger client base.
However becoming a retoucher through approaching agencies such as Factory311 (.com) is also a great route into the job role. They have a career's section on their website and always have positions available at their head office in London. A great way to work your way up through the company would be to take on one of their creative roles which is relevant to your degree so that you then have access to the other vacancies through the company.

A career progression route for becoming a stylist in fashion would be to build up a portfolio whilst gaining experience or interning at a fashion related company such as retail offices or studio's whilst also networking and making connections. It is through this experience and the connections that confidence should build and with that the opportunity for exposure and opportunity.

Through researching on job websites such as indeed.com and a-p-a.net there are actually a huge amount of vacancies for members of production teams across the uk such as working for the BBC, and other creative companies. This is a fantastic route into working for a production team because there are so many opportunities that with the right portfolio and qualifications it wouldn't take long to secure a position.