How to Find a Photography Agent in 2024

I'm in the process of looking for an agent a photo agent to represent my photography my work here in Canada in the Toronto area but also in Los Angeles that's a little bit trickier but um going through the same process and I thought I would share that process with you you can come along on this ride for me this year this my primary goal for this year is to get represented here in Canada it is difficult to get work in advertising without an agent and it is also very difficult to get an agent whereas in uh New York La London there are dozens of Photography uh agencies here there are about 12 so what I have been doing is uh preparing for this in a number of ways I've already met with an agent that looks very promising actually so I'm excited about that I have a couple of more meetings set up and I'm going to be doing those one has said uh flat out she's not interested in representing me but she will talk to me and help me I think that's because uh she's getting close to retiring in fact I spoke to another photographer recently who's who's here in the city with me who used to be represented by this agent and said that agent has already retired once and has come out of retirement I'm not holding my breath on that one but I will definitely take her knowledge and wisdom and uh listen to what she has to say about my work my portfolio and what I can do to get represented and to get advertising work uh here one of the the first things that you need to do if you're looking for an agent is you have to tighten up your portfolio your portfolio needs to be it needs to be great what you are showing in your portfolio is not your best work necessarily it needs to be really good work but it needs to be work that you want to do if you have consistently been doing uh product photography for a number of years but now you want to focus on Automotive your port portfolio needs to show Automotive not product you might be able to bridge the gap by having an a product portfolio and an automotive portfolio but if you want to get into Automotive photography then your portfolio needs to be primarily Automotive so you've got to tighten your portfolio that means your website it also means your print portfolio I have a print portfolio which when you open it up has 11 by 14 prints of my work I use screw post so that when I'm going to see different clients I can swap out the images and adjust it for that client or that agency I'm not showing them work that isn't necessarily relevant to them the print portfolio is great to have when you're meeting people in person they love to see your work printed I print on this uh Epson printer behind me uh it's a pro 3880 I print on Epson hot press bright which was recommended to me by my colleague Matt Barnes it looks great it feels great have a print portfolio that I can take with me to meet in person when I'm meeting with an agent online it's likely going to be online a lot of people are working out of their homes right now they're going to look at my website but I also want to have additional things in uh a digital portfolio I can do that on my website that's one of the things that I have been doing so I can I'll just send them links to additional pages on my website that aren't public but you can see it if you have the link hidden pages on my website that have uh more images from series that I would have shot that would uh more than what would be in the portfolio so if they say hey I really like this image then I can say oh that's part of uh this series and and here's the link to that series and they can get a better overview of that entire shoot you can also do that in behance uh for your portfolio you can set up different projects in behance and in the behance app on your tablet then you can uh go through and scroll through so you can have that uh it's great to have both when you go into a client meeting or an agency meeting one person can have the pr portfolio another person can look through the digital portfolio tighten your portfolio it's got to be good if if your work's not good they're not even going to be interested in seeing you don't spam agents if you message couple dozen agents and none of them are interested in talking to you then that means they don't think your work is at a level where they can pitch you to potential uh clients on potential jobs that means you have work to do as a photographer next thing you're going to need to do is build your database the way that I do this because if I pay for something like agency access or bikini lists that info is not particularly relevant to me here in Canada I have paid for agency access in the past I was a lot of money I paid for a year and It produced zero results because there weren't enough Canadian listings in it a lot of them were outdated but then also Canada created the Canadian anti-spam legislation and agency access had stripped all of the contact info out of the the Canadian contacts so it was literally worthless to me and I honestly think I should have gotten a refund for that but I didn't it cost a lot of money yeah I'm still a little a little sore about it so what I do now is I use air table if you watch this channel then you know that I use air table for a lot of things so I've built a database in air table and that database includes ad advertising agencies it includes photo rep agencies it includes hair and makeup artists it includes set designers it is my industry contact database if for anyone that I need to contact in the industry they're in that database it's a pretty big database and I try to maintain it pretty regularly what I have done for looking for an agent is I go to LinkedIn I I know the agencies um so I I I find their websites and I enter them into the data database and the database has you know has the name their names their address their phone numbers their website their Instagrams their LinkedIn page profiles their Facebook pages it has all of that all that linked so that uh when I need to look up information I go to my database first I'm not going to LinkedIn and running searches every time you go back to LinkedIn and type in a search there's a limit most people don't know this but I've hit that limit uh pretty easily when I'm I'm working on the database so what I've done is I've included the LinkedIn URL for each company and each person in the database so if I need to check and see if their information has been updated has changed people move agencies a lot especially in advertising uh or maybe they got promoted I click on their LinkedIn Link in air table it opens it up in linked in and I can just check and make sure their information is current and uh I'm good to go I also uh grab their LinkedIn profile image so in my database I have Gallery views so I can say show me all of uh the photo reps in Los Angeles show me all the photo reps in Toronto in a specific View and it gives me a grid of their faces it has their names has their company name a link to their LinkedIn profile a link to their Instagram profile for the people obviously I have their first last names their preferred pronouns if they have them the their LinkedIn page their personal website the city where they're at their again their profile photo their Instagram page their personal website things like that so that I have a way to follow them and check in with them and and see where they're at I also have their email address but I also have um along with the email I have a box a check box if they have said in the past that they don't want to receive emails from me I make sure that that box is checked so that I can filter them out of receiving updates from me in the future and that's a very important part don't want to spam people who don't want to hear from you I may have emailed the wrong person in the past and I want to make sure that I don't email them again another thing that I've done is because where I live in Hamilton just south of Toronto here in Southern Ontario there's a lot of filming being done the boys is filmed here genv is filmed here Reacher was there's a scene from Reacher that's shot right outside of my studio there is a lot of production that's happening here geal del Toro's new movie is shooting here gal Del Toro shoots in Hamilton a lot there is a lot of production happening blocks away from me there's a lot of production happening in the facility where my studio is located and I want to make sure that I can get in touch with the studios that are producing those film and TV series so that I can get on their radar as someone who can photograph key art that's a big thing that I want to do my background is in the entertainment industry I love going to movies movies are a big hobby of mine and and so I want to be able to shoot character galleries I want to be able to shoot key art and uh for a lot of the shows they fly photographers up from LA or New York and and they do the photographs here and I believe I'm perfectly capable of doing that so I'm in the process of continuing to build my portfolio to show that I can do that but what I've also done is I have a US telephone number I specifically have a West Hollywood telephone number uh based out of La I have a number that the agencies in La can contact a local number to them and they can contact me and that Rings directly uh straight through to my phone and I can pick it up and talk to them I got this number from sonatel or sonatel I'll I'll put a link in the description uh below if you are someone who wants that you can you can get numbers from all over the world I'm looking at getting EU phone numbers because I'm also an Irish Citizen and I have an EU passport but I have a Us phone number so that uh potential client I in the US can call me to shoot here locally I'm not going to the US to shoot without a Visa but if they have Productions that are here I'm here and I'm available for hire they might as well hire me I also as I just mentioned I have an Irish passport I got that through my grandfather who was born in Ireland and at the time Ireland was part of the UK so it turns out my mother is we were just discovering a UK citizen which might mean that I'm also a UK citizen so we're in investigating that and I might be able to get my UK citizenship which means I will probably also start looking for representation in London so I'm going to be looking in Toronto in La potentially London and maybe Berlin as well so now that I've got my database and I know who the agents are at the different agencies who the reps are at the different agencies what I've done is I've narrowed it down to the ones where I think I would fit in best where there isn't necessarily someone on their roster as far as I can tell who shoots similarly to me I've sent uh cold emails out to those agents so I've already had a meeting with one agent this week and I've have another meeting uh that I'm going to get on the books next week the email is basically just introducing them to me um telling them who I am that I'm looking for representation and a link to my portfolio so I've reached out and I've gotten some responses and that's good that's that that's that part of the process and if I do have a job that I need to bid on and I might want help with that I can uh refer them to this rep that I spoke to she has said that I can even tell them she is my rep even though we don't have a formal agreement yet and she will put the bid together for me and uh if it's successful she will get paid uh just a flat rate for that bit and that's a great start it's you know we're building a relationship right now and and you know she wants to see that I'm capable of getting work and I want to see you know what she can bring to the table as well so now that that's feels good I need to keep testing and keep shooting uh things that are specific to the work that I want to be creating and the gaps that exist within my portfolio there are some I think I need some more environmental work uh some some more conceptual work so I'm definitely working on that and I'm planning uh test shoots specifically around concept and character that's that's what I'll be doing and you'll probably see some of that on this channel uh throughout the year beyond that I'm growing my email list and I go through the same process I just do it in air table with LinkedIn I build my own database you know I I guess what I'll actually even do is I will create a copy without the records of my database and I'll link that uh down below for you so that you can get on that and uh build your own database and and see how I've set it up and play around with it I'm I'm I'm a air table kind of like a power user so there's some like really cool set and you can go through it and take a look at it but anyways that's how I I grow my email list too is I I find the contacts at the ad agencies new people are always coming and going from ad agencies so that's something you need to stay on top of you need to make sure that you're uh emailing the art producers the art buyers uh integrated producers people who are in charge of hiring photographers or recommending photographers for jobs if you have any questions please leave them below if you like this video If you you know if you sat through it give it a thumbs up you obviously liked enough and that thumbs up helps me and I hope this video helps you moving forward subscribe for more videos like this thanks for watching I'll see you in the next one