Get Started in Fashion Photography: First Understand The Market

If you want to be a fashion photographer and shoot for magazines you'll need a good level of competence with a good grasp of the technical aspects of photography and can take a good well-lit well-composed shot, consistently and you'll need a big dose of talent too. You'll also need tenacity and persistence. Perhaps you have gone to art school, maybe you've studied photography. Maybe you've just picked up a camera and worked with a photographer. You certainly won't get anywhere in the highly competitive field of fashion photography without a good level of competence.

The first step in starting any business is market research. Photography is no different. It's just complicated by factors such as art and passion. You need a market for your work. You therefore have two choices.

1 Find an existing style of photography that sells and copy it. 2 Develop your own style and find a market. It's this method you will be familiar with if you've studied photography.

The two paths with determine the direction you follow. Successful photographers develop an individual style that is commercial. It is on this magic formula your career will sink or swim Most businesses are based on the fundamental law of basic supply and demand. But by starting out in fashion photography you have already broken this first rule of business as supply outweighs demand. You will be entering an oversupplied market.

Fashion photography is a desirable profession that requires minimal training and has a low cost of entry. Supply of this type of content will always outweigh demand. The advances in digital photography have magnified this effect, with almost anyone able to call themselves a fashion photographer. it is an enormously competitive industry - you have to compete against a huge number of other people - and really stand out. This makes your market research absolutely vital.

You need to really understand exactly what your client wants. Get inside their head. Really research a niche, position and sell yourself to that niche. You need to thoroughly research:

1 The demand for content in that niche - what publications are there, how many, where are they based, how do they commission work, who do they commission, what is the work like, trends, styling, look and feel, who are they aimed at, what do the different audiences want?

2 The level of competition - who are the leading players, how do they operate, how well established are they, who are the key stylists, who are the rising stars, what's good about them, how do they operate, where do they come from, do you get stylist and photographer teams?

3 Payment levels and methods - day rates, working free for credits, contracts, syndication and rights, how do they all work? Dig for detail. Talk to people. Look at publications, research on the web, get to know people. Build up a detailed picture of what's going on in the niche you want to target.

For example: if you want to shoot for a magazine such as Dazed and Confused, they have a group on flickr which they say they look at. This group has 17,500 members, not all of them are of them are serious contenders, but that number still shows you are going to be one among very many.

So - how are you going to get noticed? How are you going to differentiate yourself? That's the next step - so go and do the research and then we will discuss getting noticed.