Interview with Tim Gundry

Me: What made you go into photography as a practice?

Tim: I was already working as a freelancer doing marketing consulting, web design and copyrighting. And I got the chance to some photography work for the charity that I was working with, because they said that they needed some photos done. Increasingly I just started doing more and more photography as part of what I was doing, which made me decide to go study it and do more of it.

M: You do some landscape photos; do you prefer landscape to portrait?

 T: Absolutely, I am an unashamed landscape photographer I’ve always been interested in going out into landscape and photographing, I’m more comfortable photographing places than faces.

M: I want to try and do that, I’m still unsure what specialty I want to do I’m more into landscape and the idea of teaching people about the landscape. Obviously as soon as you say photography people think wedding photographer or commercial photographer. And it’s that landscape doesn’t have to be large prints it can be commercial as well.

M: So you prefer working with landscape rather than people?

T: Yes, places rather than faces. It’s much more about your experience and relationship with the landscape. So it’s much more personal to me than working with people.

M: Do you prefer film or digital?

T: Difficult one, most of my stuff has been done on film purely because the film camera I that I’ve got is better optically, so I’ve got better sharpness from working in medium format with a good quality lens. And I’ve then scanned the negatives and that’s given me better results. The problem is it is much more time consuming and much more expensive having to buy the film and get it processed and then get it scanned, whereas just shooting digitally it does make it much quicker.

M: So if you wanted to do your own project and you had a certain amount of money to use, you could go out and do more film?

T: Yes, if money was no object and I had a lot more time on my hands I would work solely in film probably because I quite like the process.

M: How do you make yourself stand out as a photographer? How do you advertise yourself? Because there are so many photographers out there and trying to get a client is a bit harder than it used to be.

T: I have website by having a network of contacts really, I mean that’s the thing. I haven’t had to do a lot of marketing because work has come through contacts. I did some product shots for people and they said “we know someone that’s doing a book can you do martial arts photography?” I knew someone else that led me onto someone else; I’ve kind of got work through networking. Through business really.

So I don’t think I particularly stand out as a freelance photographer, I think I’ve just built up the connections and done a good job.

M: Have you had your own exhibition and how expensive was it?

T: Yes I have had my own exhibition and it was hideously expensive.

M: Was it a small room or a big space?

T: It was a relatively small space, in the guild hall in Looe. But it was very expensive to set up, very expensive to do. Getting all of the prints printed and mounted, in some cases framed, actually hiring the space for the evening as well, it was hundreds of pounds. I probably spent about £700 on it, and I didn’t sell £700 worth of prints.

M: So do you have to price lower than what you think it is, but it might be a little bit more is you  have 2 people going for the same print ?

T: You’ve got to sort of price it for the market really, and I knew it was a local exhibition so it’s that sort of market where people pay £30 £40 for a print; it’s not going to be hundreds of pounds. That’s the nature of that kind of circle unfortunately.

M: So if you wanted to do a really big print but obviously you had to pay a bit more out of your own pocket, how would you try to sell it to get a bit of profit? So if you printed it for £30 and you wanted to sell it, and the person only wanted to pay 20, how would you get them to pay a little bit more?

T: I’m not salesperson so I price the work at what I think it is worth. People either pay it or they don’t. If someone says they only want to pay £20 I say well you can’t afford it. I wouldn’t ever get into bartering and haggling; because I think that cheapens it, it then turns you into sort of a market stall trader trying to get the best price for it. The work is what it is, it’s the value you decide based on how much it’s cost you to produce it, your time. It’s value artistically and that’s the price if people don’t want to buy it people don’t want to buy it.

M:Because you work as a freelancer does that mean you’re more open to do different things other than landscape?

T: What I was talking about there was art photography. As a freelance photographer it’s a different business. Pricing in freelance photography is completely different, that kind of depends on what people are prepared to pay.

M: With weddings they do a whole package they do whole packages don’t they.

T: Wedding photography is one thing, doing publicity type photography is something else. I often do local work for instance a holiday cottage might say to me they want their interiors photographed but they only want to spend £100, which I’ll say do you want to do it? I have to think normally I charge £200 a day; can I do the job in the morning? Probably not, but £100 is better than nothing so I’ll probably do it.