LUCAS PASSMORE

I think you’re referring to a recent post I made on Threads? Spending the money you’d otherwise blow on a specialty lens you’ve been wanting – which is rad and fun, but not really going to grow your professional career in any tangible way (not that it’s always about that, tho) – I had advocated that one should maybe more so consider investing money into people that can bring scale and production value to your (personal) projects… and would grow your body of work in ways that would be even more attractive to clients.

Professional retouchers, colorists, gaffers, elevated locations (figuratively, not literally lol), permits, etc… and more than anything: stylists and wardrobe…

…these are all things that no one wants to pay for or thinks they can get away with not having… and then still wonders why their career isn’t growing. In ANY other small business, you spend and invest money in order to grow – in photography, your investment doesn’t stop with gear, nor should gear by the primary ongoing investment.

Connecting with any of the aforementioned people… the best way to do that is to look into the broader community you have in your city. I find – or others find me – within the social media circles/algorithms I’m apart of. I also follow other photographers and see who they are using (when credited) and will reach out.

RE: color-grading for social media… you’re going to hate this answer, but I don’t really do anything. Or rather, I no longer use a calibrated monitor for coloring. I was finding that when I used both a dedicated photo-monitor and color-calibrator, my photos looked like shit on my website and on social media. So I stopped, and just used my Mac monitor with its factory default color space/calibration… and suddenly, everything looked “correct”. And that’s because 99.9999% of my work, both professional and personal, only is viewed online. I don’t print, and if a client says they’ll be printing a lookbook or having in store signage (which my last client just did), then when exporting I’ll change the color profile to CMYK and make a few adjustments from there… and then send off. And there’s never been an issue.

For better or worse, the iPhone screen is the primary screen and viewing platform for any photographer’s work – it’s the way of the world, and it’s not changing for the foreseeable future. Editing my work on an Apple monitor, with the known fact it’s going to be viewed on an Apple iPhone… what looks good on the monitor will look good on the iPhone and I haven’t been wrong (nor told something was off) by anyone, not least of all some of the brand name clients I shoot for.

If there actually IS a better method or approach, I am more than happy to hear about it, learn, or maybe even implement… but so far, what I’ve been doing is what’s been working.

I have plans to make a book of my work of the past 10 years… and for that, I’ll be approaching (re)coloring those photos with a different and appropriate method.