livebooks blog

©Michael Lamotte

When I was taking classes at the Academy of Art, one of the photographers had a studio and they needed somebody to come in once a week and clean up. I thought that was a great opportunity to go see what happens in a real studio, so I took the job. And that sort of led into a full-time position as a first assistant with the photographer. I helped him build the studio from scratch, which was another great opportunity, to come into a raw space and turn it into a studio. He did mostly food and still life, and at the time he was one of the major photographers doing that kind of thing in San Francisco. He was from New York and after I had worked for him for another two years, he said, if you really want to be good you have to go to New York. You have to go become an assistant there. So I talked it over with my wife and we sold everything and packed up the car and drove to New York.

Again I was lucky; I got a job at a really good studio there. They did most of the major accounts, like Best Food, Shake ‘n Bake, and Jell-O…all the big accounts like that that were in New York at the time. I was a studio manager there and what was great was it was high volume, lots of work, and I got to experience lots of different situations and problems and how to solve them. So I worked with that photographer for a little over two years, then I decided I wanted to freelance. And I did work for some people, like Best Foods and Lipton Tea, but most of the people I saw said, your portfolio’s pretty good, you should be shooting, not assisting. So I started to do some jobs there.

©Michael Lamotte

Then I had to decide if I was going to stay there or come back. I didn’t particularly want to stay in New York. It was a great experience and I would highly recommend doing something like that, but I knew I didn’t want to live there forever, being from the West Coast. And the plan was always to come back, so we did. We were there for about 2 years, and we had planned to only go for a year. But we soon found out that was ridiculous. It takes a year just to feel like you live somewhere. We came back and I found a place on Mission Street where Bloomingdales is now. I had a studio there for eight years. Then I moved to my present location and opened up a new studio, bigger than the other. I had learned a lot from the other one as far as what did work and what didn’t work and planning the space.

I was always interested in how food and photography fit together. And I was always around food. My mother had a gourmet coffee store before that was really popular. My great grandfather was a chef at the Waldorf Astoria in New York. Then his son, my grandfather, was a chef at the Fairmont here in the ’20s. And his son, my father, he didn’t want him to get into the business because it was a way different business then. There weren’t chef superstars like there are now, and they probably didn’t get as much credit as they do now. So my dad made furniture. So food is indirectly in my blood. I like to cook and I like learning about food and wine and everything that goes along with it. Because I sort of think you have to be like that to be good at food photography, to have an understanding how it’s made and an appreciation.

But the most important quality you need as a food photographer is patience. I’m not sure there are things you need that are different from being a successful photographer in other areas, except probably just a passion for food. And I think there are usually two different personalities. You rarely see someone who is a great food photographer and a great people photographer. It’s two different temperaments. Like fashion photographers who are used to a really fast pace — this would drive them nuts.

"Hay Bales" © Brian Kosoff

At the end of my last post I had decided to close my studio. I open this post with the admission that I’m glad I did! I still keep in touch with many of my old clients and studio-mates, but talking to them about work is not a cheery walk down memory lane — it’s a bummer. Fewer and fewer photographers have their own studios. The majority share, but in cramped conditions. Now you’ll find five photographers sharing 2,000 square feet: a ratio likely to create stress and conflict. Some photographers I know shoot family portraits for the general public, something that would have been embarrassing for them to pursue ten years ago.

My work is much more solitary now and I miss the camaraderie of other photographers, assistants, and stylists (and the catered lunches!) that I had in the studio. Sometimes I don’t speak with anyone in person, except a motel clerk, for months. I joke that when I get back home from one of my trips, I hand my wife a credit card and ask for a non-smoking room. Still, I consider myself very fortunate. On an almost daily basis I get to see some truly magnificent sights and I get to drink some of the best and worst road coffee out there. (Best: ANY Scandinavian country. Worst: the U.S.).

"Dune Silhouette" © Brian Kosoff

As for my landscape photography, it’s still a work in progress. I‘m relatively new to it, and while it didn’t take too long to master the technical aspects, I’m still trying to figure out why I’m drawn to certain subjects. It took me a while to realize that my fondness for a minimal style, often having a center oriented composition and a high-key or white background, was a direct result of having spent more than 20 years shooting minimal, center oriented, often white background product photographs. I guess that even when you change directions, you still carry some of the momentum from your earlier motion.

Change is inevitable and it’s often feared, but I consider my change from advertising to landscape photography an opportunity. For me now, my work is more satisfying than ever, and life is simpler. That’s a change for the better.

Michael Rubenstein's "Party Kids in Portland, October 3, 2008," an image from Redux's upcoming American Youth book*, published by Contrasto and due out in May 2009. © Michael Rubenstein

Most agent fees are either 75/25 or 70/30.  As far as I know, they don’t vary by level of photography or industry.

At Redux: Assignment fees are split 70/30, stock sales are split 50/50. Photographers being represented  can expect the agency to send out their portfolios, target clients, design, print, and mail regular promotions, help edit your portfolio and website, submit bills to clients and collect payment from them, give an advance if needed, set up meetings for you, pitch story ideas to clients, work on ways to build your portfolio, split expenses 70/30 on mailing/promotion and stories for portfolio use and resale. Photographers considering an agency should ask if the above are done for them, when they will get paid, how often their books go out, and to whom. Same goes for promo pieces.

We do one big agency promotion per year at Redux, which is usually a promo piece featuring the best photography of the last year and that we expect buyers to keep. We also send out individual photographers’ promo pieces throughout the year, usually once a quarter. We also do a monthly Redux email newsletter that goes out to clients. That email includes information on special photographer whereabouts, new feature stories, notable tear sheets, upcoming Redux events, and photographer exhibitions.

Photographers who license stock through Redux can expect that we are packaging and pitching relevant work during newsworthy events, keywording and captioning their work for optimal searching, syndicating their work overseas through a network of experienced and trustworthy international agencies, and making sure their work is available for licensing as soon as it is off embargo.

* Click here for more images from the America Youth book.

"Refinery" © Brian Kosoff

Over the course of my advertising career I followed a pattern of continually trading up to larger studios and adding more subtenant photographers to lower the overall cost per foot of the studio. My first NYC studio, in 1980, was about 2,000 square feet. All mine. My next studio, which I built in 1985, was 5,000 square feet. With this one I decided I would rent space to other photographers. My thought was that this would keep my costs more reasonable, and if I were busy there’d be more than enough space to produce the work.  Ultimately I had two other photographers in that space with me. This worked well for 15 years, until the dot-com bubble (the internet!) caused rents in the Photo District, where my studio was located, to go skyward. I had to move.

For my last studio, built in 2000, I partnered with another photographer and we shared responsibility for the space. This space was 7,500 square feet and we built facilities to accommodate us and three other photographers. Around this time the dot-com bubble burst (the internet!). The economy and the ad industry slowed down. I still had a large client list, but they were producing fewer ads, also in part because print media was less effective in a media environment diluted by the Internet. And what they were paying for each assignment was lower. The assignments themselves became less photographically challenging and less satisfying, due to a switch from still life photography (my specialty) which required the creation of sets that illustrated mini environments, to more silhouette-type photographs that could be photo composed into digital environments or stock photos. All the signs said it was time to move on.

Fortunately for me, a few years earlier I had started to shoot landscape photos again. I got married in 1999 and moved to a cute Hudson River town just north of Manhattan that had several galleries, including a few co-op ones. My wife encouraged me to join one, and I thought it would be a good excuse for me to actually print up a few of my landscapes, so I signed on. In April of 2001 I had the first solo show of my work since 1976. It did extremely well and was very profitable –- enough to make me think that I might have found an alternative to advertising photography and the high overhead of a Manhattan studio. Within a week of the show I had representation offers from several galleries in Manhattan. I ended up at Edward Carter Gallery and my new career shooting landscape really began.

"Snowy Ridge" © Brian Kosoff

A few months later were the September 11 attacks, and the aftermath devastated the NYC economy. A large chunk of lower Manhattan was closed off. For the galleries in Soho, it could not have been worse. Many businesses came to a screeching halt. Ad agencies had massive layoffs. The amount of work now available to advertising photographers was dramatically reduced. It didn’t seem like there was a real future in that field anymore. For the first time I thought that I might close my studio and leave Manhattan.

It’s not easy to walk away from something that you built over the course of two decades. My business was still viable, I still had a large client base and they would start to produce advertisements again, but there was a larger change. Even if it was still profitable, the kind of work that client’s wanted was more about cost than content or quality. That’s just not where I wanted to be. So at the end of 2002 I made it official and closed my studio.