Networking

Monday 11th March - Making a Professional Network

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As part of our Monday uni sessions we are often tasked with doing crits on each others blogs, developing our blogs to show the type of direction we intent to take our work and ways to extend our contacts within the industry (and more) as part of making a professional network.

During our recent Monday group we chose a handful of different sectors within the photography industry to research in our local area, Leeds. With this we were also pushed to send out emails to which ever photographers/businesses that sparked an interest to find out about potential shadowing/assisting opportunities.

The first search I did was under food photography in Leeds, which led me to Powerhouse. "Powerhouse is a creative content studio specialising in high end, commercial food, fashion and lifestyle photography and video content for brands and retailers".

I reached out to Powerhouse explaining that I am a third year photography student coming to the end of my degree and am very interested in gaining some experience in a commercial environment. I explained that I would be very interested about doing some assisting work if they had any available vacancies and would also like to ask some questions about working in a commercial photographic environment for part of one of my university assignments. Within the next couple of hours I received a reply,

"Hi Olivia

Thanks for the email, and I hope we are able to help you. 

Which Uni in Leeds are you at? We have recently had quite a few students in form Leeds Arts Uni, and have (hopefully) helped them get a better insight in to life after Uni!

I’m more than happy to show you round and answer a few questions. I would just have to ask you if you can wait a couple of weeks, as we are very busy at the moment so can’t really predict when I am free!

Let me know if that’s any good to you, and let’s get a date pencilled in our diaries…"