Podcast 6: How We Get Work as Humanitarian Photographers Part 2

We’re so excited to continue our podcast series and we’re back today talking about other ways we get work. We recorded Part 1 a few years ago so be sure to listen to that episode if you haven’t already. We wanted to share some new things we are doing to find work as humanitarian storytellers. We discuss photo mailers, personal projects, requests for proposals, and being strategic about finding your target client.

Crystaline: : (00:00)
Hey everyone. I'm Crystaline Randazzo.

Laura: (00:02)
And I'm Laura Elizabeth Paul, and today we are going to talk about how we get work. We recorded a podcast about this subject a couple years ago, but we're doing it again because we get asked this question so often. So here we are to talk about it.

Crystaline: : (00:16)
And I think it's great that we're doing this follow-up because we have started to do a few different things over the years and so we're happy to share that. So Laura, tell us what you've been doing.

Laura: (00:25)
So, this year for the very first time I decided to create a photo mailer. I wanted to do this because I knew I would be moving soon from the U.S. to another country and I wanted to reach out to clients that I've always wanted to work with, but I've never worked with before. So I took a few months to design and create this photo book.

Laura: (00:49)
I just used what the whole world uses and printed my book with Blurb. But, I was very strategic about who I wanted to target this mailer with. So I kept an Excel sheet of all these different organizations that I'd always wanted to work with and I had like their names and mailing addresses, and then I picked five that I really, really, really wanted to target. I decided to have this whole kind of campaign, so I had the photo mailer. Then, I had a postcard that had the same picture on the postcard as was the cover of the photo mailer, and that picture is also the same picture that's the cover of my website. Then, I bought special envelopes that are the same color as my logo. So yellow is the main color of my logo. I had that same color envelope that I put everything in and on each postcard. I wrote a very personal note to each person that it was addressed to, so it was clear that I'd researched the organization. I knew what kind of work they needed. I ended up sending out five of these and I actually ended up getting two meetings out of it.

Crystaline: : (01:48)
Which is amazing.

Laura: (01:49)
Yeah.

Crystaline: : (01:49)
You guys those are incredible numbers it doesn't happen like that that often so...

Laura: (01:52)
Yeah, I was pretty happy. Now, the other three I never heard a peep from – even though I followed up a couple times with email. So I had these two meetings about a month before I moved to this new country and I haven't had any work from them yet. But that's okay, because I'm thinking about this is gonna be a longterm relationship – not just a short term relationship. At the end of one of the meetings, one of the people that I had met with, she said to me, I was so impressed by your mailer and the way all of the branding fit together. Everything just showed that you put a lot of care and thought into it. And I was like, yes! That's what I wanted to express with my little campaign.

Crystaline: : (02:33)
I mean, be creative when you're thinking about approaching these organizations. I think that was really creative what you did and what you made and thoughtful. If you guys are looking for something that will really connect you with an organization– that's a really great way to do it. So Laura, I want to ask you, because sometimes people are super discouraged and they feel so rejected – I've reached out to 20 nonprofits and I haven't heard back from one, and I know you used to hire people, so what would you say to people who are experiencing this just so that they understand the process on the other end?

Laura: (03:06)
It's never easy to tell someone no, but I wouldn't take it personally because it was never personal when I couldn't hire someone or I didn't hire someone. It might've been that there wasn't the budget, or maybe the timing was off, or maybe the photography aesthetic wasn't quite what we were looking for for that project. It doesn't mean this person wouldn't fit into another project, but maybe they just didn't fit into this project. So I'd say try to think of this as a long term relationship. If you can build like a longer term relationship, then that is better than just one-off sending a bunch of emails to people– hoping that something's going to stick and you're going to get work.

Laura: (03:49)
You and I have also been trying something a little different with requests for proposals. Do you want to talk a little bit about that?

Crystaline: : (03:55)
Sure. Well, over the last couple of years, Laura and I have tried writing proposals basically where we're watching online forums, online job sites, specifically for media proposals for nonprofits. And these are quite large. This is not like a one day shoot. Usually, it's a set budget of several thousand dollars. And then there's a set list of deliverables and it takes time folks. The last big proposal we wrote, which was quite large there were three of us working on it – Laura and I and one other party. And it took all of us a week to get that proposal straightened out and sent. And we did very well. I think we were runners up, but we did not get the work for that proposal. We learned so much in the process and I'm excited for our next proposal because I think what we learned, we can apply. And one of the things we did there is we actually followed up with the person and asked why we did not get hired. And they gave us some really great feedback. For us, even if we land one proposal a year, that could be a pretty big chunk of our income.

Laura: (05:18)
Yeah, I definitely see it that way too. And you know, I remember that proposal. It was so crazy, but also fun to work on it together. And I remember thinking at the end, wow, did we spend too much time on that? But I recently was working for this communications firm full time and we wrote a lot of proposals there, too. And what I learned from working there is that yes, I think it's completely normal to spend a full week or even more time putting together a large proposal.

Crystaline: : (05:45)
Because most of the proposals that we're looking at, they're really a multi-person team and they're not necessarily just a one-person job. So we're trying to build these multi-person teams around what the needs of the organization actually is.

Laura: (05:56)
Yeah, I couldn't imagine writing that one proposal just alone. I mean...

Crystaline: : (06:01)
Intimidating.

Laura: (06:02)
I know, so intimidating. It was very intense, but it was also fun and we learned a lot.

Laura: (06:07)
When you're doing any kind of work, you really want to present yourself as a professional. When I made this photo mailer, I had this whole really streamlined good looking campaign. When Crystal and I and this other friend we were working on this proposal, we made sure that graphically it looked good and it presented us in a way that we wanted to be presented. Every once in awhile, I think it's good to look at your website or look at your social media channels and make sure you're putting information out there the way you want it to be. And that way you can attract the kind of clients that you actually want to attract.

Crystaline: : (06:41)
Yeah, I think this is so important and it's not something that I've heard a lot of conversations about, but I remember when I was in Nepal, I started doing a social media audit on myself. I started looking at the analytics on my Facebook and on Instagram and on Twitter, which were the sort of the three that I had. Though my Instagram was really not very professional. I have to say. It was just sort of photos of me traveling around the world. And I realized that I had a lot of followers specifically on Facebook and even my newsletter, but most of those followers were not my target client. Most of those followers were other photographers or people who wanted to be humanitarian storytellers. And so I was putting an enormous amount of energy into marketing in those spaces. And I had to, sort of, recognize that I actually wasn't reaching my target client by doing these things. And I had to sit back and re-analyze at that point where I wanted to spend my time.

Laura: (07:38)
Like how long had you been doing it at this point?

Crystaline:(07:40)
At this point, I would say years I had been doing weekly, or at least tri-monthly blogs for several years and upkeeping my Facebook and social media, um, probably Facebook more than the others. What I ended up doing is sort of re-looking at where my target client was and for me the two spaces where I'm finding my target client most frequently are Instagram and LinkedIn and so I've started to change the way I market and where I spend my time and you might need to do that also, if you're putting a lot of energy into Facebook, but you're not getting any return there, that might not be the best use of your time every week. And we all know the rabbit hole of social media.

Laura: (08:21)
Oh gosh.

Crystaline: : (08:21)
I don't know that I'm getting any new work. That's an interesting thing. I don't know that any new work has come in, but I have noticed that a lot more nonprofits are following me on Instagram. They're following me on LinkedIn. I count that as a win because that's exposure and eventually maybe that person will have a job and they'll remember that I was, you know on their LinkedIn and they'll give me a buzz.

Laura: (08:43)
Can you talk a little bit more about what you do on LinkedIn? Cause I haven't heard of a lot of people, or specifically photographers, using it to promote their business or put themselves out there.

Crystaline: : (08:53)
Yeah, so it's really two things that I'm doing regularly. First, I'm looking at who my connections are. I look at them and if they're involved in a nonprofit whatnot, I go and research that nonprofit and I'll send them a little note like, oh hey, I saw that you're working on X at your nonprofit. I do nonprofit media. I'd really like to follow you in this space. I'm not asking them for work at that point, I'm just saying I really want to follow your work here. Say I'm watching a webinar online and I see a speaker or I meet someone who I think is doing interesting work in the nonprofit space, then what I'll do is I'll reach out to them and say, oh hey, I saw your work on X. I think what you're doing is really interesting and I would like to follow you here. And then I start following them. And I think that opens up a, just the opportunity for conversation and collaboration, frankly, because you never know who you're gonna meet and what you're going to see. And then you start talking to someone, you realize you have a lot in common. So I think that's really great.

Crystaline: : (09:55)
The other thing that I'm doing is I'm re-publishing articles that I've written on nonprofit storytelling on LinkedIn. There's a section on LinkedIn where you can write articles. And so I'm re-publishing a lot of that work and I'm getting different people who are looking at that then who were looking at it on the blog or on Facebook. So it's a totally different market. I'm really happy with the results that I've seen considering that I totally shifted my marketing ideology.

Laura: (10:29)
So when we talk about all these different ways of getting work, I think one thing that people are maybe a little bit afraid to talk about is when you have a lull and we all have lulls. All of us. So we wanted to give a little insight into what we do when we have lulls.

Crystaline: : (10:46)
You guys, I have lulls like literally every two to three years. I relocate with my partner for his job every two to three years and I'm telling you it can be six months to a year before I start landing work. Sometimes longer. You just don't know. And I think it's so important to be honest about that because it's not like we're out shooting every day and I think there is sort of a misconception that maybe we are.

Laura: (11:10)
Totally, totally.

Crystaline: : (11:10)
I can have long periods of time without work. In fact, I'm in one of those periods of time right now. In that time what you can be doing is figuring out ways to build your work and also working on creative projects that inspire you. So, even NGO Storytelling, it started as a passion project and I want Laura to tell us a little bit more about that.

Laura: (11:31)
The way I started NGO Storytelling was I had all these people that were emailing me questions about getting into humanitarian photography and I just saw a need for a website where I could write answers to people and reach a wider audience. So that's how I started it. I was actually working at a nonprofit at the time and I was just doing this on the side whenever I had extra time. And then, you know, a few years later, Crystal joined me and we've been working on this together now for four or five years. I mean, it's been a while. And the crazy thing is when I, so when I started NGO Storytelling, it really was just this passion project. It was like a fun hobby. What was actually happening was I was positioning myself as an expert. It was not my intention, it was totally accidental. But then I started hearing from some nonprofits and some sort of bigger names in the industry also asking me questions and it was totally shocking to me because that was not why I started NGO Storytelling at all. And now I guess I'm kind of an expert and you are too, Crystal. Congratulations.

Crystaline: : (12:33)
Yay. I've been elevated to the level of expert everyone. I mean I think that's important to note is that sometimes when you start these things, that's not the end goal– it's just you're excited by something. You're passionate. So if you're in the lull right now, find something you're excited about and work on it. Right now, I'm in a lull and I'm working on a documentary project on the lives of Foreign Service spouses because I am one and it's really inspiring and it reminds me why I love storytelling. For years, older, more established photographers have told me, work on your passion projects. Have I done that? No. I'm like, I've got to grind it out on Instagram and Facebook folks, you know? Okay. I'm going to tell you, now, what they told me 10 years ago. Work on your passion projects. It works. And I want Laura to share her experience on a recent passion project that she did and what happened because it's incredible.

Laura: (13:27)
Yeah. So first of all, have a passion project, not just to fill the lulls, but because this is probably the work that will bring you the most joy. That's what I've found when I'm working on passion projects. It was the case with NGO Storytelling. I used to love being able to escape into NGO Storytelling and write posts, and it was the case with this most recent personal photo and audio project I did. About five years I worked on a project, I was photographing and doing audio interviews with Koreans and Korean Americans separated from their family in North Korea since the Korean war. And I did this because I was personally interested in it because it was a part of my family's story. My mom is from Korea, she's originally from the North, her whole family is, and I had some relatives who were still in the North.

Laura: (14:11)
So I wanted to know more about this situation. I funded this whole project by myself. I fit it in whenever I had time and I didn't know where it was going to go. I always had this idea that I would publish it in a newspaper or a magazine or I'd have an exhibition, but I didn't really know. But what I ended up doing is having this exhibition in the U.S., where I printed the exhibition on a big truck and I drove up the East coast of the U.S. and parked at public libraries and had people come look at it. And again, fully self-funded, fully self-funded. But I was so happy to do it. I loved this project and I loved being able to show it to people and what happened afterwards shocked me. It, it still shocks me. This project I just started exhibiting last year with the truck and then afterwards I started getting inquiries from people saying, “Hey, can we have exhibit this at our place?” I didn't have the truck anymore but I had prints so I have now exhibited the prints at five different locations and now I make people pay. I'm pretty sure I'm never gonna get like the full amount of my investment into the project back, but I was never trying to do it for money anyways. I was trying to do it because this was my passion and I'm just so happy that people want to exhibit it and then people want to learn about this issue. That's why I started the project.

Crystaline: : (15:29)
I mean Laura inspires me. I mean that whole project, I knew her from the beginning of the project and all the work and time takes a lot of dedication.

Laura: (15:37)
And let me just add one, one more thing, something I think that is very important. When you're looking for work and even working on your creative projects is to have another photographer there to help you. Because when I started this personal project, I did not consider myself a portrait photographer at all and I had really no idea how I was gonna pull this off because I considered myself a documentary person. But Crystal is very good at portraits and she gave me so much wonderful advice about how to make these portraits look good and I honestly don't know how I would have found my aesthetic for this project if I hadn't had Crystal actually helping me. So find a person to also help you in your journey.

Crystaline: : (16:17)
There is no easy solution on this list that we're offering you and we don't have any easy solutions.

Laura: (16:25)
No.

Crystaline: : (16:26)
As far as I know, everything that I have tried and that’s worked for me has been an experiment. It's not easy, but you put in the time and sometimes we'll just say sometimes, not all the time you see return. Thanks for listening guys. We hope this helps you and gives you even more information on how we get work.

Laura: (16:43)
Thank you. Bye.

Image: ©Crystaline Randazzo