This session will focus on pricing structures, how to read and interpret contracts, and best practices for business negotiations.
Presenters: Kwaku Alston Shawn Theodore Carmen Chan
Location: Online
Presented by:
Supported by:
Photoville is proud to partner with Diversify Photo to host their first set of professional development workshops together.
These workshops are aimed towards experienced and emerging editorial photographers who would like to take on commercial assignments and want to learn the business skills to do so. This session will focus on pricing structures, how to read and interpret contracts, and best practices for business negotiations. The workshops are especially geared towards BIPOC photographers, and are open to photographers anywhere in the world.
The workshop is proudly supported by Fujifilm with additional support by the Phillip and Edith Leonian Foundation.
Kwaku has photographed some of the most famous faces of our time–from Oscar® and Grammy® winners to Barack Obama and the First Family. His many and diverse clients include The New York Times Magazine, TIME, and ESSENCE Magazine, global brands like Amgen, Pfizer, Coca-Cola, Target, and Verizon, and media giants such as Universal Studios, Disney, Amazon, Sony Music, and ESPN. His portraits have a fresh, unaffected feel, and yet they celebrate the extraordinariness of his subjects, striking a balance between contemporary documentary photography and classic celebrity portraiture.
After graduating from the Rochester Institute of Technology, Kwaku launched his career in New York City, where he began shooting for major magazines and ad agencies while in his early 20s. Today he is based in New York and Los Angeles, and his photos have appeared on everything from movie posters to the covers of best selling books, and in advertising spreads for international brands such as Apple and HBO. Kwaku has also partnered with a variety of charities and nonprofits, including the Design-A-Cure Breast Cancer Awareness Campaign, the Black AIDS Institute, and the Smiley Faces Foundation. Giving both his work and his time, he traveled to Ethiopia to document a shoe drop by TOMS Shoes, which donates footwear to children in need worldwide.
Kwaku’s world travels continue to inform his work, and reminds him that curiosity, encouragement, and sincerity are universal languages. As the director of photography on a documentary titled In Search of Voodoo, he has made multiple trips to West Africa. He is inspired to bridge still photography and filmmaking to tell great stories.
Shawn Theodore (b. 1970, Germany) is an award-winning photographer, whose work opens broad conversations regarding the role of the photographer in the shaping of agency and imagery, engages in new forms of storytelling, and impacts the trajectory of the collective Black consciousness.
Carmen is a Los Angeles-based photographer, director, and mentor, committed to building an equitable and inclusive future through sharing stories about underrepresented artists and communities, and supporting the career advancement of BIPOC photographers. She worked as production coordinator on films and television shows like Heroes, before beginning her career in photography, creating images for brands and publications like: adidas Originals, Beats by Dre, Marriott Hotels, Soho House, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and CEREAL Magazine. Carmen was selected as an inaugural Adobe Lightroom Ambassador and as a finalist on the inaugural Lit List. Her work has been featured in The Fader, BOOOOOOOM, aPhotoEditor, the PDN Photo Annual, and VSCO.
Diversify Photo is a community of BIPOC and non-western photographers, editors, and visual producers working to break with the predominantly colonial and patriarchal eye through which history and the mass media has seen and recorded the images of our time. Our international online database is used by editors at major media outlets seeking to diversify their rosters of visual storytellers. We also create networking, exhibiting, speaking, community-building, and resource-sharing opportunities for our members.
Founded in 2011 in Brooklyn, NY, Photoville was built on the principles of addressing cultural equity and inclusion, which we are always striving for, by ensuring that the artists we exhibit are diverse in gender, class, and race.
In pursuit of its mission, Photoville produces an annual, city-wide open air photography festival in New York City, a wide range of free educational community initiatives, and a nationwide program of public art exhibitions.
By activating public spaces, amplifying visual storytellers, and creating unique and highly innovative exhibition and programming environments, we join the cause of nurturing a new lens of representation.
Through creative partnerships with festivals, city agencies, and other nonprofit organizations, Photoville offers visual storytellers, educators, and students financial support, mentorship, and promotional & production resources, on a range of exhibition opportunities.
For more information about Photoville visit, www.photoville.com
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