The Dogist/Alias Freedman– dog photographer practitioner
(https://www.instagram.com/thedogist/)
A few years ago I stumbled across the Dogist instagram and have been an avid follower since. He posts pictures of dogs with their name, age, breed, location and a small story about the dog. This has turned into a massively popular business for him and I have been curious as an aspiring dog photographer how he started and continued his practice.
In this article he gave some insight to where it started:
https://www.pri.org/stories/2017-04-08/how-do-you-take-perfect-dog-portrait-dogist-has-you-covered
‘The idea for the site came to him a few years ago, when he realized that there was nothing like Humans of New York or The Sartorialist for dogs. It was a glaring hole on the internet, he thought, and one that he could fill.’
This quote from this article made me realise how the Alias Freedman had seen a gap in the internet market and had aptly filled it, where he stated he knew if he was consistent he would fill this gap
It may be useful for me to look for gaps in the dog photography market, and try to encompass that
This article with Freedman was also useful in this context:
“That was the first opportunity I had to do something I wanted, instead of doing what I was expected to do,” says Friedman. “Social media made all that possible.” -I know that I need to get better at using social media, it has never really been something I have been bothered by or been good at, however it keeps popping up to me as an essential part of putting yourself out there and think I really need to up my game with this.
Further than this, as much as I hate to say it, I need to be more active and thorough through my instagram. I have been posting on my dog photography account for years now:
And I have never really been very active in trying to get my photos seen, I have more just been posting for myself. But after reading this article where Alias mentions:
“It was a little bit of hacking, going through #dog and liking people’s picture so they see me and then come to my page. And there were only a few pictures up but they were nice portraits of dogs and it was New York City. The first 10,000 followers I got through that method.”
It has made me realise that if instagram has given him his main break into being seen as a professional and book offers from the biggest publishers (as he mentions in the article) maybe I need to take it a little more seriously and treat it as a portfolio.
