Making the most of my unique(ish..) situation.

[UaeExile]

A bit about me to set some context to this post: I'm a full-time employee at the British Embassy in Abu Dhabi. For the past few years I've been considering breaking out of this career, and possibly doing more with my photography. Up until now, I've only done a few (very amateur) freelance assignments around VIP visits, events and conferences, but what i'd really love to do is build up a portfolio of documentary/photojournalist shots - this is my real passion.

For personal reasons (expecting wife - yay!) I won't be leaving my day-job anytime soon, which is OK with me. But what I would like to do, is take full advantage of the opportunity my day job affords me, and build up a documentary/photojournalist style portfolio. As you might expect; we host a lot of events, most of which have Ministers and sometimes Royals in attendance. Only Sunday gone I could have quite easily tagged onto the PM's official visit to the UAE and covered his visit, if only I hadn't broke my hand (don't ask!). I can also use my connections to gain access to almost all of the large sporting/music events they have here in Abu Dhabi and Dubai.

Now i've written this, I'm not even sure what questions I wanted to ask. I know I need to just get on with it and shoot as much as I can. I guess I just wondered what others might do in my situation? What projects I could set myself? how could I share the things I shoot?

Adam

(typed quickly with one hand )

 

[Deleted member 67219]

I think the first thing I would do is to speak to my senior managers, discuss that I'd like to shoot this kind of work and ask them what kind of permissions I need in order to shoot it and publish it. If they say you can't publish it, it might be a little fruitless to spend lots of time shooting it?

But other than that - what a great opportunity!

 

[Fatheadedlizard]

Think you have a great opportunity. I would start with taking your camera along to the events / places you like and enjoy and try to capture what makes them special to you, then search through the tutorials and advice on all aspects and try to make the pictures even better. Think the main thing is to try not to over analysis it and GFDI....

 

[simonblue]

Documentary/photojournalist you probably picked one of the hardest way to make an decent living from theses days,so keep working on your portfolio build it up scan a few magazine that still do features see what stories are selling and photos