Ask ten photographers: What do you wish you'd known when you started out ?

Whilst at college I’d have regular discussions over a glass or two
with my housemate, Ben Curtis. I believed that the future lay with the broadsheet photographer, in particular those of the Guardian and the Independent (and even argued for the usage of black and white over colour.)

Curtis, on the other hand, thought that the wire agencies would come through on top, and so we both went along our separate paths, him to the Press Association, me to the Independent.

Ten years later, I’m freelancing and Ben is running the Middle East desk for Associated Press; there are hardly any staff photographers left on the national papers and wire agency pictures run throughout all of the papers, where before they only got used on international stories or where the paper had no coverage.

I still think the future is in black and white though!

After graduating from Sheffield College with an NCTJ in Photojournalism in 1997, Jason Bye worked shifts for AFP, PA and Reuters in London before moving back to Norwich to work for a range of editorial and commercial clients. At night, he dreams of Tri-X.

But seriously? That our business is tough. You go to college and come out with some concept of composition but that’s about it. There are no jobs, there is no formal career structure, and nothing to help you along after you leave. You construct your own career ladder, without instructions.

And if that isn’t hard enough, you also have to manage your own business: invoices, chasing money, tax returns, company identity, marketing, it’s all part of everyday life for photographers. They don’t teach that at college.

I soon got my act together and enrolled myself on a business course. There are loads of free government ones available, and mine was fantastic. After ten weeks I emerged with a business plan strong enough to borrow £5000 from the bank and there my business started.

I’ve been going for 16 years now and doing quite well. I love what I do as every day is new. The learning curve is continuous. My recent swap to digital for instance has been interesting and such great fun.

So what do I wish I’d have known when I started out? Well, that you never know everything, but that trying to learn is half the fun.

Helen Stone has been a freelance for the last sixteen years, excepting a short time off for maternity leave. She doesn’t think she would have fitted in at Sainsbury’s anyway.

Nick McGowan-Lowe has been making Chief Executives and factories look more interesting than they are in real life for over a decade. In that time, he’s learnt that cleaning glue off a sensor is trickier than you’d think. His clippings book is surprisingly oily.

At the same time I was given a brilliant piece of advice: “Cut your teeth on less well known publications that use the kind of pictures that you want to shoot and then move onto the papers and magazines that you really want to work for once you are a bit more experienced”.

As well as being a staff photographer for the Times Educational Supplement, Neil Turner is also the owner and publisher of photography education website www.dg28.com, Deputy Chairman of the British Press Photographers’ Association, Father of Chapel of the NUJ’s TSL Education Chapel, and an EPUK moderator. He has more hours in the day than the rest of us, apparently

I wish I had realised that I didn’t have to be superwoman to impress. I foolishly thought that unless I was seen here, there and everywhere, I wouldn’t be accepted or considered a genuine sports photographer. I should have concentrated on quality rather than quantity and on marketing images as much as shooting them.

I wish I had understood the importance of keeping pace with the technical developments in the job and should have seen that the digital revolution would take over so many aspects of the work. Miss out on the bandwagon and you are for ever playing catch up.

I wish I had kept a diary. When I look back on all the travelling, events, people I’ve met and experiences I have had, it would be great to have something to look at and remember more clearly what I was living through. Who knows? I might even have published a memoir and made some serious money (yeah right).

And I wish I had not assumed that my picture archive would one day raise enough capital to bring my career to a decent end. How wrong I was!

Eileen Langsley became the UK’s first full time female sports photographer in 1980, and has since covered 11 Olympic games. At night she dreams of a ducky sized 400 f 2.8 weighing just a couple of ounces, which can fit into a pocket.