#professionalpracticeandpromotion

Niall O’Brien is from Dublin, Ireland. He started taking pictures of his mates and them skateboarding and eventually started getting published. H wanted to do sports photography until he started studying at a College in Dublin where he learnt about fine art, documentary, portraiture etc.

He did a lot of studio work and portraiture where he liked the lighting and experimented with medium format cameras and printed his work himself.

He references Larry Clarke the photographer and how his work is very honest and real and raw. David Farrell was one of his tutors, he made Niall understand how to take a picture and back it up with an understanding and a reason. 

He has done landscape photography in Ireland which has a dark story – they were locations where people were murdered by the IRA.

After college, moved to London to become an assistant with a company. Sam Taylor – Wood; he became her assistant for about 4 years. She did a project where she photographed a number of actors. The exhibition with Sam was called ‘Yes I Know’.

A lot of his personal work was about concepts and theory. ‘Porn Hurts Everyone’ was a project he did for over 5 years. Power of Christianity in America. Published the book 7 years later. Documentary piece. Travelling with friends.

Commission work – photos for Alexander McQueen. Wrangler. Hit&Miss for Sky. Levis.

Editorial – used editorial to help him further his personal work.

Film – Superheroes. Anger – used sound to create anxiety.

What to include on your portfolio:

Have a page about yourself called About/Bio and a link to your CV. 

Can be written in first or third person. 

An introduction into who you are as a student. 

Have a CV as a PDF. 

Can show exhibitions. 

With education – can list all the modules under the university. 

Don’t need to include A-Levels. 

Work experience in the creative sector, not commercial. 

‘Adobe’ is more creative than a skill.

Show photographs of the pages of the book

3 project would be enough

Can put personal projects on there as well

4 - 6 images is enough for a single project on your website, max. 8.

Files too big won’t load (1.4MB). Best way to do it is just the crop tool - 1200 px by 800 px. Resolution can be 72, or 96 depending on the platform you’re using. Save for Web. 163K is great.

 What to include in the blog:

Blog about guest lectures

Blog about website

Blog about research 

Student enterprise talk

-       Goal orientated

-       Resilient

-       Develop ideas

-       Strong communicator

-       Ambitious

 LSBU Student Enterprise Talks – Check out on Eventbrite

Nesta Creative Enterprise Toolkit

Prospects – prospects.ac.uk

The Dots – the-dots.com (LinkedIn for creative industries)

 Freelancing

-       Register with HMRC

-       Keep accurate records of profit, loss, bills, sales and spending

My work experience consisted of me working in the workplace where I already work, but in the studio instead of just retouching the images. My work experience last 10 days spread out over 5 weeks (working 2 days a week, Wednesdays & Saturdays). 

I couldn't have asked for a better work experience placement - I was the studio photographer and that’s what I want to specialise in, in the future and as a business. I photographed a range of subject from babies, pets, models to families. 

I was getting commission for any photographs I sold on top my average pay, which I was really happy about as it’s a decent amount for a part-timer. After the completion of my work experience, my manager offered me the job of becoming a part-time studio photographer. I was beyond happy, and now there is me and another photographer who comes in on the days that I can’t because of university. I’m work 2 days a week now, like before, but now it’s mainly just photographing subjects in the studio. I still do retouching, printing, passport photos and film developing when there’s no studios booked or when I have time in-between shoots, but my official job title now is Studio Photographer at Studios4u.

I was very lucky to find such an easy placement that didn’t involve me looking elsewhere, because I was already working 2 days a week, and going to uni 3 days a week, it didn’t leave me much room to find anything else for the other days.