When I’m not taking photos, most of my work is now on film and TV sets as Standby Carpenter. I’d been a photographer for well over twenty years and had watched it decline in many ways, digital had made it superficially cheap, clients always seemed to know a guy with a camera who could do it cheaper, but at the same time the style had become far to retouched and illustrative for my old school sensibilties, photography was no longer and good business and I wasn’t enjoying it, so I quit, retrained as carpenter, and then spent a very happy a couple of years on sites before meeting back up with an old friend who worked in Film & TV.
Very rapidly, I swapped from sites, to sets.
Having a background in creative imagery and studio work in general made the transition into on set work very easy – most of the etiquette and horrific hours were already very familiar to me, so this is now how I split my time – when I’m not on set, I just swap over to shooting headshots, and when the movie business is busy, I just shelve the headshots. Finally, two businesses that complement each other.