Frede Spencer talk

We had a talk from Frede, who is both a director and agent at Twenty Twenty Agency - he represents artists, photographers, illustrators and the like. He gave a talk on what his roles are within the agency (of which he said there are 3 full time employees, which means that it is quite a small company and that means that they only represent people they think are worth representing), and some artists that are included in the agency. I am going to mention some of the artists that I personally found of interest;

Will Sanders:





Will works a lot within the fashion side of photography, and I really like his images as they are really bright and colourful, which is something I enjoy including within the work I create. The bottom image I have included is his work with the brand Vespa - Frede told us that the company gave Will a brief for this shoot and he created the images he was commissioned for, but had a little play with some props himself when the images had been shot. The company ended up liking what he had shot off-brief and used this for their advertisement.

John Higginson:



Although not the type of photography I am interested in, I wanted to include this photographer because I think the imagery that he creates is really stunning. With the first image, Frede told us that they could only close that section of the road for between 5 and 10 seconds, so this means that they had to be quick with getting the shot - they only had one chance each time the cars came around the bend. The second image is a digital composite so the car was edited into the image, which I think has been done really well as you cannot tell that this was not all taken as one shot.

Lulu Ash:




Lulu is a new addition to the Twenty Twenty Agency and she works a lot with fashion and portraiture, but also shoots lifestyle imagery too. Her images have a very vintage air about them due to her shooting on film - this works really well as a lot of the images she has are shot on a beach and I think this film print works better as it adds a slightly grainy feel to it which adds texture to the photographs.

Kell Mitchell:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkJhpv671RA
http://www.vogue.co.uk/article/harvey-nichols-100-year-old-model-campaign

I wanted to include this video that was shot by Kell because I think it is so well-made in the editing process and the way she has used the camera to focus on the model. Frede mentioned that in the modern day most people are multi-talented, whether that is photography and video, video and illustration or a mix of a variety of mediums. The video is about the first 100 year old model to appear in Vogue and, although Kell didn't take the image that appeared in the magazine, I thought it would be interesting to add to this page.

Valentine Reinhardt:

Valentine is a client who is part of the agency who is not from the United Kingdom, she is based in Paris. Frede said that representing someone from a different country is difficult but he wanted to represent her, so they try and make it work. She is primarily an illustrator, and I wanted to include her on this post because she is very different to the other people I have mentioned.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhNXb8vJnhU

Valentine storyboarded, directed, did the casting and worked with animation on this video. I think this is a really interesting concept for a video as it uses a lot of different creative people to make this one thing. Here are some screenshots from the video:




She has tried to represent each person in the video's personality of their character with the drawings she has created and I think it makes the video so pleasing to watch.

To display her innovative, creative side and to show how she is always trying out new things, she has created some work on an iPad which I think is quite unusual but really interesting:


Frede mentioned some things that may help us when getting into the photography industry or even help whilst studying at university:

Create a website - make sure it works on all platforms
HTML mailers - some to consider are mailchimp, sendicate and campaign monitor
Create a social media profile - Twitter and especially Instagram
Email blogs - It's Nice That, 1000 Words
Make contacts
Contact photographers
Attend shows, exhibitions and photo festivals
Keep shooting and keep knocking on doors
Make moves and if it goes wrong, worry about it later.

At Twenty Twenty, they look for artists:

That don't fit in set boxes
Who are different to others, but still good
Who have multiple skills - lifestyle and fashion for example
Who have existing client relationships
They know they would get along with
Who create work that excites them.

He also mentioned that they took on one girl for an internship and ended up really liking her and hired her at the end of her placement - this is something I may look into as an internship is something I am interested in doing after graduating.

He is involved with Photomeet. (photomeet.org) This is a place to go for portfolio reviews and everyone that goes is seen as equal to everyone else, no matter their status. In the past, they have had reviewers from British Journal of Photography, Rachel Brown from Harper's Bazaar who I saw on Monday, and have also had an art buyer for Unilvever. He said for a portfolio review to keep it coherent so that the images don't appear to be a mix of random photographs.

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