[Images: www.sophietraynor.com and sphtrynr on Instagram ]
Today, 20th January 2021, Sophie Traynor a commercial beauty, fashion, food and product photographer from Huddersfield gave a lecture to my class showing us a timeline of her career so far and the defining moments that carved out her freelance career. Traynor’s talk was insightful and helped put my future carer in photography into perspective, of course it may not be in the same genre, but it has made me more confident in my decisions.
Traynor herself has had a vast career so far, when she first started, she was working 2-3 jobs a week to pay her rent but to also give her time to shoot. In the beginning she was taking photos of everything, though sometimes the jobs she took she did not connect with, until 2016 when she decided to go full time freelancer. Most of her work from this period of her career were simple and clean. As soon as she got her foot in the door, her jobs she took tended to have a snowball effect and all linked in some way. Traynor was lucky as most of her jobs, especially the ones she enjoyed, came from her friends/connections. Her work progressed and depending on the client e.g. industry or a real person completely depended on how much risk she took, there was no reward without the risk.
Traynor like the rest of us is now facing lockdown, she is currently working from her home studio. Still working but mainly her product photography for the brand collection.
There were a few standout things that Traynor said that really stuck out that I would like to share. Everything takes time from building your portfolio to getting the shoots you enjoy. Always say yes to a job because you can always practice before the job. Remember to have a confident front-fake it till you make it, but most are probably just as scared as you. It is also a male dominated industry, so women please command the conversation and having a community around you is a good thing because being a photographer can be lonely. When working with moving image there will be a huge team as it is so specialist and sometimes working with people and budgeting can be challenging, but most of all what are you prepared to risk?
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