10 Years, Student Photographer to Professional - With Sophie Traynor

I had the great opportunity to take in some information from a practicing professional photographer recently.

Sophie Traynor shared a thorough timeline of how her career has panned out over the past 10 YEARS since she left University.

With work ranging from beauty, food, fashion, and product, Sophie was so well-informed in the industry and had so much insight into how an upcoming practitioner could find a way to operate.

Such pearls of wisdom included the paramount importance of networking but not to force it. When interacting with other professionals, in the industry, it is vital to remain professional yourself whilst also ensuring that you are friendly and easy to work with. This includes working with certain models, stylists, directors, make-up artists, and any other presence there may be on a set of a photoshoot.

This feeds into another takeaway from this talk which was that you never know who you could end up meeting on a job or assignment. So much of work in the industry comes from referral or from word of mouth. More often than not not, these recommendations come from people that have worked with you on other projects who then have passed on information and these people skills are vital for progression in one’s career.