Tomasz Trzebiatowski - editor-in-chief- What it takes to start photography magazine?
Hello fellow photographers. In this episode I am talking with Tomasz Trzebiatowski ( FRAMES Magazine ) and we are talking about what it takes to start a photography magazine, what are the steps to do it. what is the hardest part and much more. Thank you so much for joing us on this episode. Make sure you are subscribed if you want to be notified when I post a new episode. If you like this content and you think other people might like it as well Feel free to take a screenshot and through it out on your instagram story or share it with your friends. Thank you!
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YouTube Index:
0:00:00 - Hello There!
0:00:58 - Introduction
0:01:49 - How did you start with photography
0:03:55 - How do you approach taking pictures of children
0:08:22 - Taking pictures of children
0:11:29 - Taking street photographs of random children
0:16:40 - is it possible to publish street photography book without signet consents
0:19:40 - Is street photography in danger?
0:21:35 - When did you decide to start your own photography magazine?
0:22:51 - Do you prefer specific photography genre?
0:27:49 - What are the steps to create photography magazine?
0:31:59 - is it important to get physical prints?
0:37:07 - The hardest part of publishing photography magazine?
0:44:39 - How much a production of photography magazine cost?
0:51:03 - How difficult is to put together a team for photography magazine?
0:54:23 - How to reach famous photographers?
0:56:47 - Why did you avoid gear in your magazine?
1:00:34 - Should photography magazine keep one style?
1:03:28 - Is personal style important for photographers?
1:05:34 - Is there a place for projects and genras that are not so popular?
1:08:41 - What are the plans with the magazine in 5/10/20 years?
1:12:58 - FUJILOVE magazine
1:15:01 - What does it take to be a sucesful photographer?
1:22:06 - The End
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Why should you print your photographs? Talking with FRAMES Magazine editor Tomasz Trzebiatowski
Getting started with photography
How did you start with photography?
Let's rewind to when I was a little boy, because that's when I first realized something called photography existed. My father was into it, an amateur photographer, and to this day he's still deeply engaged with it, exploring different photographic subjects. He loves books, and I'd say ten percent of his bookshelves are photography books. Those first impulses came mainly from my father, and a little from my mother too, but mostly him.
I was born in seventy five, so you can do the math: by the time I was ten, it was nineteen eighty five. Needless to say, I grew up with analog cameras and film. I grew up in Poland, so a lot of Russian cameras came my way, some of them genuinely great devices. I think that's when something was planted in me, because for the next ten or twelve years I didn't practice photography myself. I knew it was there, but it wasn't until I was twenty five, maybe even twenty eight, that the fascination came back. When it did, it hit me hard, and it hasn't let go since.
Photographing his own family
You said you got your love of photography from your parents, and being a parent myself, I know you have children too. I imagine you take a lot of photographs of your family. Do you have any tips you'd share with us, either about getting your own children interested in photography the way your parents did with you, or about how you approach photographing them yourself, especially if you try to do it more artfully rather than just taking the kind of snapshots most people take with their phones these days?
So basically you're asking two questions there. Let me take the first part first: getting my own children interested in photography. I don't have any particular plan or agenda, no idea that I'll send them to a photography course and do this and that with them. I think I'm basically doing what my parents did with me. My elder daughter is six, and my younger one is two and a half, too small to really grasp it yet, but she already recognizes a camera when she sees one, she calls it "aparat," which is the word for camera in Polish.
I believe in something like a genuine, instinctive, almost contagious way of spreading and sharing this passion. They already see the photographs, they see me running around with a camera, and it probably looks like something new to them, the way it wasn't when I was young, since cameras weren't as accessible back then. Of course, I also always have my phone with me, and sometimes I'll grab a picture with that instead. I think today children see it, they see the results. I sometimes show them the photos, the prints, some books, since I'm looking at a lot of photographs anyway when I'm working on the editorial side of the magazine. My older daughter is already, quote unquote, helping me with the selections, telling me this picture is good. If they inherit this passion, that's great. If they don't, that's also fine.
I'm also a musician, an educated classical pianist, and I still teach at a music college. The same thing happened with me and the piano. My mother used to play, and I'm glad today that my parents didn't force it on me, they showed me what it was, they enjoyed it, and I happened to catch it and do it myself. So I think that's the way: show your kids that you're enjoying it, give them the camera sometimes if they want it, and if they take to it, great, if they don't, don't push it, because that won't work in the long run anyway.
Now for the other part of the question, photographing my own children. I do it a lot, though sometimes I have phases where I don't do it enough, and then I regret it. Life gets in the way, day by day passes, and I think, I should have brought the camera to that event, and of course I can't go back and catch those moments once they've passed. But like you mentioned, there's definitely something of an artsy approach in how I do it. I'm snapping images of my kids, sure, but I apply a lot of my own artistic ideas too. I love black and white, I love blurry pictures, it doesn't have to be tack sharp, I experiment with angles, I break the rules, and you can definitely see that in the pictures of my own kids, which aren't simply straight on snapshots. There's always some effort, some ongoing thought, even subconsciously, telling me to try something else, to make a special image. That's me, though I know everybody has a different approach, and that's the beauty of photography, that everyone does it their own way.
Photographing children on the street
When it comes to photographing children, we know it's become a real issue today, and everybody approaches their own privacy concerns differently. Whether you feel fine showing pictures of your children on social media is one thing. Whether you'd feel fine producing a book and selling it to the public is another, and that's extremely personal. For some people it's no problem, for others it's an absolute no. If you're in a relationship, in a marriage, with the mother or father of your children, this is also something your partner has to be in line with, it has to be discussed together. It's a very individual decision.
When I look at the Frames community and see people sharing beautiful photographs of their kids, I assume, if this person decided to show this picture, that everything is fine, that they've thought it through, even if there are worse possible scenarios I choose to exclude from my mind. There is one issue, of course: is the child old enough, say fifteen or sixteen, to actually be fine with it, does the child even know about it? That's a separate discussion in itself. What happens later in life when my daughter discovers a photo of her was published when she was two, without her knowing? Maybe she'll be upset with me, maybe we'll have some hard conversations, maybe not. It's a very personal decision.
I think part of it is also because of the internet. When we look at the old masters, someone like Henri Cartier-Bresson, they have a lot of famous pictures of children on the street, which today might be seen differently by a lot of people, though of course people from street photography communities tend to say it's fine, don't be angry about it. But personally, I don't know how I'd feel if I were outside with my daughter and a stranger suddenly took a picture of her. I wouldn't know what that photographer was going to do with it, whether it would end up posted somewhere. On one side it feels like a privacy issue, but on the other, it also limits the art itself, something that used to be possible and is now looked at badly.
That's the curse of our times, the vicious circle of the society we live in. I think it's mainly because of how the media has changed, mostly because of the internet, and all the ways a photo could now be used or misused. When Cartier-Bresson was on the street with his camera, maybe seventy percent of people back then didn't even know what he was doing, given how much less popular and familiar photography was at the time. And when he published a book, maybe two thousand, maybe ten thousand people had it on their bookshelves. Some of those children in his photographs are probably still alive today, and since his work continues to be reproduced, I'd guess that legally it isn't a problem, otherwise it wouldn't be possible to republish those photographs at all. But the internet multiplies everything. One photo can be seen by millions overnight if it lands in the wrong place.
Publishing street photography without consent
Is it even possible, from a publisher's standpoint, to actually publish a street photography book nowadays, given that it's often impossible to track down the people in the photographs and get their signed consent? Is it more a case of asking forgiveness rather than permission, publishing the work and dealing with any problems that come up afterward?
The thing is, there are different laws depending on the country, and I think what counts is the law of the country where the book is actually published. I'm not an expert on this, but as a publisher, what I do know is that when a photographer submits a portfolio with recognizable people, clear portraits, especially of children, the first thing I do is have a phone call with them, ask straight up if everything is fine, and get a statement confirming that the rights to those photographs are settled. If there's ever a problem, it's the photographer who's responsible for resolving any legal or licensing issues.
What's interesting about street photography, and this also varies by country, is that today it's generally considered art, and if it's an art photography book, you shouldn't have problems publishing it. Take photographs of Prague, in the Czech Republic, with recognizable people, some of them children. As long as they're in public, on public ground, that's generally fine. Once you enter somebody's home, obviously, you'd ask permission before sharing those photos in a book. So I think it's not as limiting or as scary as we tend to think, though talking about it constantly online makes us very aware, and sometimes very afraid.
Is street photography in danger?
Do you think street photography is in danger because of newer laws, like GDPR here in the EU? Will it tighten up to the point where it's no longer legally possible to photograph strangers on the street, or do you think it will stay the way it is?
My feeling is that it will naturally split, and maybe it's already happening, into real art publications, whether that's Frames or any photography coffee table book, and news publications. We intuitively know the difference between an art publication and a journalistic one built around political or social issues. For journalism, it will get more and more problematic to use somebody's picture without permission. But when it comes to art photography, art publications, I think we're actually in something of a bubble right now, and it will get easier.
Who doesn't enjoy a beautiful street photograph? Nothing nasty, nothing mean, just a beautiful street photograph, who doesn't enjoy that? If I saw my daughter in a photograph by Michael Kenna taken in Paris, I wouldn't have a problem with it at all. Different people have different opinions, again, it's very personal, but in general I think we'll be fine, and street photographers will be just fine too.
Starting a photography magazine
When does a photographer realize he or she wants to start their own photography magazine? How did you come to that conclusion?
That's a really good question, because it's about a long process of growth and change as a photographer. I'm a publisher today, but deep down, in my heart, I'm still a photographer, that's my passion. Intuitively, I think we go through phases. First there's the learning phase, when photography sparks our interest and we start photographing. Then comes the phase of looking for your own style and language, when you look at someone who's been doing this for twenty years and ask yourself, what is mine, what do I actually want to do.
Finding his own genre
Do you actually prefer a specific genre?
No, I don't think so, this could be a whole other podcast. I went through many phases like that over the twenty years or so I've been photographing, phases of doubt, of searching, of giving up, of picking it up again, of forcing myself into a different genre from one day to the next. In the end, I know I have certain preferences. I'm also a musician, so I love photographing music, catching musicians on camera, and I love abstract photographs too, and black and white in general. But whatever visually strikes me, whatever catches my attention, I react to it, and one day I asked myself, if it catches my attention, it is me. Why should I deny it? If it makes me pick up the camera and go after it and try to photograph it as well as I can, it's me. Something else would catch someone else's eye, but this catches mine, so why limit myself?
I think our eye, or our emotional structure, whatever people call it, your style will always be there, because it's a certain set of visual triggers you react to. Whether you photograph your children, a landscape, or an abstract, if you keep doing it, and you show someone your portfolio built over twenty years, it will be recognizable as your work. That's my belief.
So during this evolution, I reached the phase, maybe not the final one, I hope not, where I realized I always loved looking at other people's work, for inspiration, but also simply because I really enjoy it. I used to be an extremely shy, reserved person as a small boy, but the internet opened me up in this regard, because it helped me get in touch and talk to people, there's a certain distance there where you don't have to look somebody in the eyes. I started making a lot of connections with other photographers, looking at their work, sometimes being amazed by it, and one day I felt I'd love to have a platform. I create photography, but you create great photography too, and I'd love to show your work as well. Thinking that way about many people, I felt it's all about inspiring and supporting each other in this passion. I can't fully explain it, but something in me said, let's do it, let's create the platform, let's create the magazine.
The steps to building a magazine
Nowadays it's much easier to do something like this than it was thirty years ago. Who would have thought we'd be talking live like this, recording an episode on a small budget, without needing a studio and expensive cameras? Can you walk me through the steps someone would actually have to take if they wanted to create their own photography magazine, thinking about content, the team, getting the pictures, writers, editors, publishers, printers, all of it?
Looking back at the beginning, when the idea of the magazine appeared in my head, before it was even called Frames, I'd say the first, absolutely crucial step is giving it a lot of time. You have to really define and specify the concept of the publication, because a publication can take completely different formats and ideas, it can focus on a certain kind of photography or not, it can have a completely different layout. You have to nail your concept, and as the editor and publisher, you have to feel genuinely good about it, otherwise it doesn't make sense. With every issue you'd feel this isn't really what I want, and you'd start making changes, and then it stops working, because it isn't consistent from the start.
Before Frames, before I even looked for printers, editors or writers, I spent, I'd say, two years with the wheels just spinning in my head, writing things down, defining the concept, the layout, pre-visualizing everything I possibly could. That's the first step. Once you have that, the rest isn't necessarily easy, but there are a lot of practical steps, like finding a place to print it.
Till today, we've printed three editions of Frames. It's a printed magazine, on paper, and our motto is that excellent photography belongs on paper. We're in the digital age now, most things are digital, which is great, it helps us connect, it helps us look at wonderful work, connect with photographers, publishers, gallery curators, it makes so many things easier and helps us show our own work too. But for some reason, photography has had a connection with paper for ages, and that seems to have gotten a bit forgotten in the last decade or two, especially among younger generations. I've had many conversations with people much younger than me, and when I showed them the magazine on paper, they were amazed, they said they'd love to have their photos printed. I'm talking about people in their twenties, teenagers, photographers, who until that moment simply hadn't thought about getting a physical print.
Why prints still matter
I wouldn't go as far as saying that shooting film is essential, but do you think photographers should print their photos and actually look at them? Is that something that can help you become a better photographer?
Absolutely, otherwise I wouldn't be producing this magazine. Let me try to explain why, because it's a good question. Today we produce huge numbers of images, because it's digital, because it doesn't cost us anything anymore once we have the camera, we can shoot forever, and we save them on hard drives, on our phones, everywhere. There's such a volume of images that we lose track of what we've actually shot. Over time, even staying digital, you learn to be more selective, you learn to look before you shoot, but we still don't match, in that sense, what things were like in the analog era.
I don't mean you need to switch to an analog film camera to become a better photographer, that's not it. But if you take your photography seriously, and you haven't done this yet, I'd absolutely encourage you to try the following. Say you're coming back from a holiday, or a project you've been working on, with a thousand images. You start your selection and end up with fifty. I know you can't make a book every day like this, but what I'd encourage you to do is keep going with the selection until you end up with your three favorite images, and print them. And when I say print, I don't mean going to the first lab around the corner, because those results can look very different, sometimes very bad. Look for a professional, experienced photo printer in your area, give them the files, and tell them you want the best possible archival prints of those two or three images. Let them do the work.
If you hold this print of your own photograph on a wonderful piece of paper, there's some kind of magic that happens. You start looking at the image for longer than you would on a monitor, because there's more to it than digital pixels, there's the structure of the paper, the feeling under your fingers, the way the paper reacts differently with the ink and the colors. You take your time, you cherish it, you feel proud, you feel empowered, but you also learn, because you improve your own photography by looking at the image for longer.
Would you frame it and hang it on the wall?
I would definitely frame it, though that's personal, and there's a limited amount of space. I have, I'd say, five or six photos framed at home. And this is also amazing about today, there are so many good ways to print a photograph. It can be on archival paper, photographic paper, some kind of bamboo paper, or you can print it on aluminum, on acrylic glass, so many different media, each giving the image a different character. By doing it, you find your own personal favorite way of printing. Long story short, believe it, try it once, and you'll know what I'm talking about. You enter a different, next level of your photographic journey.
The hardest part of publishing
Talking about the process of making the magazine, was there something that actually surprised you, something more difficult than you expected? Things you didn't think you'd need to deal with, like getting the text, the editors, the design, the printing or the shipping, but that turned out to be unpleasantly difficult?
Not much, honestly, because I did an enormous amount of research upfront. I talked to about ten different printers, to other editors who had already given up on their own magazines, to a lot of different people, so I was aware of most of the potential difficulties, and I did my best to approach things so those problems would already be solved. So I wasn't really surprised. But I'm definitely aware of a few points along the process of producing each issue that are trickier than others.
One tricky thing about printing photographs comes to life with black and white images. It can be a nightmare, because you have file profiles, CMYK, grayscale, and screens display things differently. Even the personal computers we have at home are very clever, clever enough that they often adjust everything on the fly so the image looks good. I was editing my own archive recently, around two hundred images or more, and I realized my Mac had True Tone turned on, which balances color toward warmer tones. When I turned it off, all the images looked completely different. Now I have a note that pops up every time I open Lightroom reminding me to turn off True Tone and Night Shift, because it was a nightmare editing everything with those on. So you see, even at that small scale, at home, something can go wrong.
I can tell you a quick story from our first edition, which featured the work of Michael Kenna. That's when I really learned how tricky it can be to print black and white imagery. Michael knows exactly what he wants his images to look like, so it took trial and error, several rounds, before we got it right.
Were you in touch with him to show him proofs before it went to print? Did he have a condition that he wanted to see it before it was printed, since he doesn't want his work interpreted in a way that's different from what he intended?
Yes, definitely. Serious photographers, especially black and white photographers, are very aware and very careful about how their work will look in a publication. It's a tricky thing, because it's paper, we can't print an entire issue, or even just his feature, a hundred times before we actually go to print. Fortunately there's a technology called high resolution PDF proofing, a very specific format of the final pages that you can send to the photographer, though of course their monitor also has to be properly calibrated. Even with a professional like Michael, who knows exactly what he's doing, it took us three attempts to get the tones right. We're working on the fourth edition now, and again there's a serious black and white photographer featured, so I'm being very careful, since I know this is the trickiest part.
Is it only about the display being calibrated, or does the printer have to be calibrated too?
Of course, the printer has to be calibrated too, and there are different printing processes, different machines involved. We print Frames on a real machine, with real ink, real rollers, not a digital print, and it produces a beautiful result. Everything has to be compatible, and everyone involved, the publisher, the printer, the layout designer, has to know how it works.
Do you actually get samples? I imagine those machines are set up for a large print run, and it could be troublesome to end up with thousands of copies in the wrong color. Can you get a sample before it goes into a full run of thousands of copies?
I could, but it would cost me more to produce one single sample than to print a thousand copies of the magazine. So instead, there's this final high resolution PDF proof, and what you see on a properly calibrated screen is about ninety nine percent of what you'll see on the paper. The paper itself, a beautiful matte paper in our case, is different from a reflective computer monitor, but you can get really close. We're lucky enough that I also looked hard for really experienced printers. We work with Taylor Brothers, in Bristol, in the UK. I knew I was working with people who know what they're doing, they've been at it for around a hundred and twenty years, and that gave me a certain level of trust in what they tell me.
What it costs to start a magazine
Talking about money, can you give me a rough estimate of how much someone should save up to start a photography magazine? It can probably vary depending on whether you use services that let you publish and distribute a magazine for you, or whether you're doing everything from scratch, from printing to shipping to your final customer's door. I'd just like a range, whether it's a thousand dollars, ten thousand, or a hundred thousand.
That's a very difficult question to answer, and it's not that I don't want to reveal any numbers, it really depends on how many copies you're planning to print. The cost of one printed copy of any book or magazine changes significantly depending on whether you print a hundred or five thousand, it's a huge difference in price. Though of course if you print five thousand, you end up with five thousand copies of a cheaper unit. So you have to start somewhere, and know how many magazines or books you want, how many pages, and so on.
Do you think it might be a good idea, and did you take this route yourself, to do some crowdfunding first, to gauge how many potential customers you actually have before printing that amount?
Absolutely. What I did with Frames wasn't crowdfunding exactly, but something very close to it. I'd already been in the publishing space, including digital publishing, for a while, running another magazine, FujiLove, for Fujifilm users, so I had some experience running communities and connecting with people online. For a year and a half, I published a weekly photography newsletter, sharing interesting photography content, inspiring people, making connections and friends. After a year and a half, I had a community around that newsletter, and that allowed me to ask those people, I'd love to create a really beautiful photography magazine.
You also run the Frames Photography Podcast, and I believe you started that in March, but the first issue of the magazine was published in November. Was the podcast something that pushed you toward starting the magazine, or was it the other way around, using it the way you described, to build the community that got people involved in your project?
It was all interconnected. The podcast actually existed even earlier, under a different name, Photography Radio, and it evolved and changed format over time, while my idea for the magazine started to crystallize, until I could really visualize this whole Frames ecosystem, which is becoming what it is today. I can't say which came first, it's the chicken and the egg question, but I felt more and more, consciously, that it was all becoming one thing. Frames is a quarterly printed magazine, we have monthly digital companions, and we were about to release the Frames photography app for mobile phones and tablets, completely free, along with the social media side of things. It became one thing, complementing itself, content supported by audio here, video there, printed matter there, and also by our team.
Building a team
How difficult was it to put together a team? Were these people you already knew, or did you post something online saying you were looking for someone?
I've never posted a single "we're looking for someone" call in my life. I believe, and this is a very particular road, that if you as an individual have a project, an idea, a passion, and you manifest it, show it, share it, talk about it, and you undertake certain steps, a podcast, a newsletter, whatever it might be, your YouTube channel is the best example, you started from zero subscribers too, people will come to you. My team, for the first half a year of Frames, consisted of me and my turtle, that's how it started. But what I really believe is that if you have this passion and you show it and share it, people will come to you, people will want to do something with you, they'll offer their help. Ninety percent of the people who write for Frames today, or work on the layout, or work on the podcast, I didn't know two years ago. I created a Facebook group, I was sharing ideas, and you start talking, and who knows, martina, what we'll be doing together in twenty years.
Whose idea was the motto, "Excellent photography belongs on paper"?
That was mine, it came to me during one of those sleepless nights. I'm the kind of person who's spontaneous, who just believes in what he's doing and shows that passion. My wife would be the first to confirm there were certain sleepless nights, or times I was gone for a week preparing graphics for the podcast or whatever it might be. And then, since you also have a family, you learn along the way to keep a balance, private life, work, passion, it's difficult to fit everything under one roof for many years, so there's no reason to burn yourself out in six months. You learn it gradually, along the way.
Reaching well known photographers
Talking about people who might be starting from a similar position to yours, as fans of photography, how do you actually get names like Steve McCurry or Michael Kenna to be published in your magazine? Is it not that hard, or is it genuinely difficult to approach them?
People ask me this quite often, on different broadcasts and podcasts, was it hard, was it difficult. To be completely honest, my answer would be no. Of course I had to write to Michael Kenna, I had to write an email to, I believe, Steve McCurry's assistant, which I first had to track down, and explain what I was doing and that I'd love to publish his work. Is that difficult or not? You don't know until you try. So many people have brilliant ideas, I'm convinced of that on a personal level. What people are afraid of is sending that email, because they already assume the person won't respond. But maybe they will. He did, and he'd never heard of me in his life before that.
I have to say, the photographic community in general, and we know this, is mostly amazing people, people with passion, like us right now, exchanging ideas, wanting to show our work, wanting to do things together. There's no place for jealousy or competition in that. If you started a magazine tomorrow, I'd be the happiest person for you.
Leaving gear out of the magazine
We can't lie to ourselves when talking about the most popular topic in the photography community, which is gear. How did you avoid that, not exactly a temptation, but when I look at platforms like YouTube, or various websites, or Instagram, gear is something that gets clicks, that has traction, that trends. I understand your approach is different, more focused on art, but did you have any side thoughts about maybe getting more views if you covered it?
Of course I had those thoughts, and I know it as a fact. If I had created this quality magazine with great photography inside, but positioned and marketed it as a publication that also presents exclusive insight and tips, technical things, gear, cameras, lenses, how people created the work, I think we'd have ten times more subscribers. I'm pretty convinced of that. But I'm not interested in that. I'm interested in people joining and subscribing to Frames for what it actually is. That's not to say gear isn't important, without gear I can't make a photograph, so I don't agree with people who say gear doesn't matter. It was simply about what I wanted the magazine to be, rather than what I thought people would want.
There's no place for gear in the magazine, apart from one page. You go through it, you watch the photos and read the stories next to them, and there's a last page called Context, where, say, you can see Michael Kenna's page nine was a plastic pinhole camera, page eleven was a Hasselblad medium format camera with various lenses. If someone's interested, they can look it up, but it's never right next to the photograph, because it would disturb the experience of enjoying it. We focus on the image, each one gets its own dedicated page, on the emotions and the stories behind them. Gear is really secondary.
Keeping one consistent style
When we talk about the style of the magazine, and you mentioned it's important to you, I was thinking about how photography monographs all tend to look different from one another, even from different photographers. That's something I actually like about a project, that it can become a small book or a zine one time and a proper monograph another. But when I look at your magazine, the format stays the same issue to issue. Is that because you want it to be recognizable, so people know exactly what to expect from Frames?
Definitely, and it circles back to that first phase I mentioned, defining the concept. I came up with a clear concept, and even a very specific layout, so each issue is constructed and laid out the same way, with the same number of pages, and people know what to expect. At the same time, people can still be surprised, because in each edition we print six photographers plus two interviews, all different genres, styles, different camera formats. The common denominator is great photography, a great vision, though it's something less than a monograph, since we're presenting six different artists in each edition.
The underlying idea was for somebody who simply wants to enjoy photography, or maybe support their own photography by looking at other people's work. I believe that when you regularly look at very different kinds of work, say you're a landscape photographer, but you look at great macro work or great portraiture on a regular basis, your landscape photography will actually improve, because you pick up little pieces from everyone who's passionate about something else, and you inject them into your own. That's the idea behind the magazine.
Does personal style matter?
Talking about the photographers themselves, do you think personal style is something worth chasing? What I'm thinking about, especially in the digital age of Instagram, is that when you have a page where all your photographs share the same look, people tend to prefer that. But I wonder if it also limits you, in the sense that maybe you're a wonderful landscape photographer, and then you see something on the street, or want to try a portrait, or you usually shoot black and white and then you see something with beautiful colors. Does that limit you, or should you keep your style consistent within whatever project you're working on?
We touched on this a little already, and I don't think there's one definite answer, because it's very personal. I went through phases telling myself I couldn't make a color photograph because I was "a black and white photographer," but then you're missing out. If you have to push yourself like that, it means you're limiting yourself. If you want a color photograph, and you're convinced a scene should be photographed in color, do it. But that's personal, another person might not feel the same way, so I don't think there's a definite answer.
I do increasingly like sticking with one project for a while, though. The idea of working in projects, rather than letting it define your whole life, because then the photograph on your coffin would also be black and white. Don't let it define your whole life, let it define your projects instead.
Room for niche genres
A lot of magazines throughout history, something like Life for example, were more inclined to publish photo stories and documentary photography, but nowadays it feels like a lot of magazines lean toward whatever people are buying, more celebrity photography and that kind of thing, and documentary photography feels like it's being pushed toward wherever the money is. Is there still a place for projects and genres that aren't so popular today?
That certainly applies to a lot of publications, and we know it, what sells sells, and people have to make a living. But I still believe there's a place for those niche projects, for genres that aren't so popular today. Remember that everything in history also moves in waves. Take Cartier-Bresson, he was really the one pushing street photography forward, but in the decades after him, street photography wasn't nearly as popular, there was actually more documentary photography, meaning war photography, political documentary work, and then street photography resurfaced again. Why exactly, I'm not entirely sure, but a lot of people got their hands on cameras because they became cheaper and more accessible, and once it became more accessible, more people started exploring all the genres.
There are always so many factors, and we can't predict everything, but I think everybody should just focus and concentrate on whatever is fulfilling to them in that particular moment or phase, and do it, and show it, because that will be your best work anyway. Right now, for me, my heart beats strongest for the magazine, to be honest, and given the amount of work it takes, I've been struggling with time for fulfilling my own photographic passion. I'm trying now to find that balance and grab the camera myself more often again.
Plans for the future
What are your future plans? If we sat here again in five or ten years, do you have plans to expand the publishing side into photography monographs, or something along those lines?
Yes, as a matter of fact, I do, and it's already been discussed within the Frames community. It's not fully defined yet, I'm still in the phase of making notes and analyzing the best approach, but I'm definitely thinking about a series of Frames photography books, possibly monographs, that was actually the initial idea, along the same line, that excellent photography belongs on paper. Alongside that, we were just about to release the Frames photography app, a digital product, which should be in the app store by the end of May if everything goes as planned. Here's a comparison that might put it in perspective: there are around twelve million photos posted to Instagram every single day. On the Frames app, there will be two photographs a day, for you to enjoy, to really go deep on, to read the story behind it from the photographer, and possibly to connect with the photographer directly through comments or a chat room. A completely different experience, less is more. This is happening thanks to the enormous support of a crowdfunding campaign from the Frames community.
Looking forward to it. And for five or ten years down the line, do you want to share any of the wilder ideas?
I'd love for Frames to have at least one physical location eventually, a photo gallery. A monthly publication, I don't think so, not on top of what we already have, since every subscriber already gets a monthly digital companion alongside the quarterly printed edition. I like the fact that every three months you get this book, and I want people who enjoy that experience to gather around Frames, people who like having it on the shelf, on the coffee table, wherever they keep it, and who go back to those roughly eighty photographs several times, going deeper into them, rather than just moving straight on to the next issue. Less is more, maybe I should change the motto to that, though I know that one's already used by plenty of other people too.
FujiLove magazine
You're also the editor in chief of Frames, but I know you're behind FujiLove magazine as well. Can you tell me more about that project? Is it yours from scratch too, and what's it about?
Yes, it's also my project, also from scratch. FujiLove has been running for about seven years. At some point on my own photographic journey I discovered Fujifilm cameras, and I'm still using them to this day, creating all my personal work with them. I got so impressed with what they were doing with their cameras that I created a community around it, seven or eight years ago now, a Facebook group, a website, a blog, all the standard steps. At some point, somebody from that community actually suggested, in a comment on Facebook, that it would be cool to have a magazine for Fujifilm users, and I said, okay, let's do it, and the rest is history. We now have a thriving, sizable community of members and subscribers. It's a completely separate project from Frames, Fujifilm oriented, still very much about great photography, but with a lot more focus on the cameras themselves, the ways people use them, their lenses. In a way it's a mix of art and technology, specific to Fujifilm, a completely separate entity from Frames.
Do you even have time for that?
Well, I still have the time. If I didn't, I'd have to close one of the two projects, but that's my job, that's my work, that's my life, and I have an understanding wife.
What it takes to be a successful photographer
As someone in the photography business, what do you think it actually takes to be a successful photographer? We see a lot of people on Instagram taking amazing photographs, but not many of them end up hanging in galleries or actually making a living from it. Maybe you could think about it in terms of percentage, is it something like fifty percent good marketing and fifty percent being a good photographer, or how would you frame what it takes?
I know what you're getting at. Think about someone like Peter McKinnon, who isn't doing landscape photography specifically, but making content around photography, compared to someone like Steve McCurry, who's doing photography itself. Both successful, some would say not really comparable, but both making a living through photography. I'm a firm believer in following your passion. Peter McKinnon, I don't know him personally, but I'm pretty sure he's been at it for ten or fifteen years, and his YouTube channel keeps growing, he clearly seems to be enjoying it. He couldn't sustain that level of energy and engagement for fifteen years if it weren't for genuine passion. The same goes for Steve McCurry, and for Michael Kenna, who's been photographing black and white, square format images for forty years. Without passion, it's difficult, you'd be verging on burnout every few months.
People sometimes ask me what they should do if they want to make a living from photography too. If you're a good observer of the market, of people's psychology, of what people want to see, you can pinpoint the trends that might help you make a living doing this or that. The question is for how long. If you don't like what you're doing, if you hate it, you'll either burn out or you'll stop. Hopefully the latter is the better outcome. In the end, there's no single answer to this.
I watched a video once where a well known photographer was asked what he'd recommend to people who want to make a living from photography, and he said that nowadays, when everyone wants to be a photographer, not everyone, but many, you should start with photography as a passion, and as it develops, as you do it for a while, then maybe you can transform it into something you make a living from.
Absolutely, remember what I said before, do your thing, do what you're passionate about, do it for a while, and people will come to you. Only then will you start creating your best work, and people won't just see your best work, they'll also feel your energy, and that's a contagious combination. That gives you the best chance of making a living from something you actually love.
A lot of people, for example, decide they want to be a photographer, so they get into wedding photography, but then it takes up all your weekends. If you genuinely love wedding photography, that can be a good path, it pays reasonably well, depending on where you live, but eventually, if you don't like going to weddings anymore...
It can go in phases. I did wedding photography myself for a while, I think I had two years where I did around twenty five weddings a year, three years pretty intensively in total.
Did you like it?
Yes, I enjoyed it at the time. But you need to be in a comfortable enough position to be able to say, no thank you, I don't want to do this anymore, and that's what happened, at some point I simply didn't enjoy it as much anymore, and that's when I stopped. I understand, though, if it's your only source of income, that you always want to try to have two options for making money. Try having a wedding photography business, but also, say, landscape workshops, or whatever it is that interests you, not only to keep yourself balanced, but so you can do one thing for half the year, weddings during wedding season, and something like winter landscape photography when it's winter. You'll be healthier, happier, more balanced, and you'll always have an income. Do what you love, and your audience will follow.
