Personal Projects (Part II) How to build out a passion project or personal project
Personal Projects (Part II):
How to build out a passion project or personal project
Exploring Feather Canyon, Iceland
To elaborate on the reel that went up yesterday and to continue to explain how to strive towards more personal projects, I’ve come up with some helpful ideas for you to build out your own personal project. Here are some helpful tips and insights about how you can put your personal projects and creative ideas in front of brands/clients:
Come up with a unique creative idea, that will give you the ability to subliminally insert products from clients/brands in an advertorial sense. For our project, we were pitching camera gear brands on light painting and the ability to get creative at night, even after the sun has gone down.
What is advertorial work?! “An advertorial is a form of advertising that is designed to look like an editorial feature in a publication. It is essentially a paid ad or advertisement that appears in print or online but is written in the style of a news article or feature.” via MailChimp.com
DECK MADE BY ROSS B. | IMAGES BY ROSS B. AND FRANKIE S.
2. Formulate a professional-looking creative idea pitch deck (using Canva.com or as seen in the reel on my IG page Adobe Illustrator, made by Ross B.). This should be short and sweet and get right to the point, no longer than 5 slides. If you can’t communicate your ideas or pitch in 3-5 slides there’s a chance you’ll lose your client’s attention before they even get to understanding your project.
3. Being your outreach contacting existing clients and new ones using a cold email approach. Connect with new brands and excite them with the ideas behind your personal project, ask if they have time to jump on a quick call so you can go over your ideas in greater detail and why it’s important for them to be a part of the project. Send a dozen or more cold emails to brands you’ve never worked with before and generate interest by asking them if you can send over your deck so further explain your ideas.
DECK DEVELOPED BY ROSS | https://www.rossbernards.com/ | https://www.instagram.com/rossbernards/
4. Explain the importance of each brand's representation in the project, different than just pitching them to shoot their products explain how crucial it will be to have them a part of the project and the visibility they will see as a result of partnering with you. This pitch isn’t just “Hey, I’m Bob let’s collab…” This pitch is personal and shows your passion and love of photography. Be impactful and show them how passionate you are about just getting out to create, for the love of making art. Isn’t that why you started this in the first place?!
5. Communicate the deliverables, timelines, and budgets required to bring your creative vision to life. (see our exact deck below) Are you seeking monetary compensation to complete the project? Are you asking for product trades? Try to calculate how much time and effort will go into bringing the project to life. Try to estimate how many brands you’d like to be apart of your project and how much involvement you’d like them to have.
DECK DEVELOPED BY ROSS | https://www.rossbernards.com/ | https://www.instagram.com/rossbernards/
6. Team up with other creatives who share a similar vision and want to be a part of a passion project. Even two creative minds are better than just one, you can bounce creative ideas off of each other, experiment, and assist one another resulting in high-quality resulting images. I am very fortunate to be able to team with another talented photographer on this project, Ross Bernards, check out his work: on Instagram and on his website here. Many of our creative ideas took two people and maybe even a third person to execute, so having an extra helping hand gave us an edge to create really dynamic imagery.
7. Execute your personal project. Have fun and immerse yourself in the project. Let your creativity come to life knowing that is what brought the project to fruition in the first place and use projects like these as a reminder to yourself why you started this thing... for the love of photography, videography, graphic design... or whatever your art form may be... for the love of getting out to create, for yourself, for the artist within.
Have any thoughts or questions? I'd love to help you out, drop me a comment below, DM me on Instagram, about what you're thinking after reading this blog post….And remember, never lose your creative integrity.
Until next time, thanks for reading along. See you out there…
-Frankie @fr33water