Starting a Photography Business: Part 39 – Alter Ego

I read an article in the British Journal of Photography that fired my imagination and helped me to work out how to unite the two different forms of photography I like to do. The article was about an exhibition being held that features work by photographers who use a pseudonym. By working under a different name it allows them to sell work that doesn’t quite fit in with their main band of work; it frees them to work without restriction or be judged by other people’s pre assumptions about their normal work.

Gosh this was a freeing article to read; I quite often do photography that doesn’t really fit in with straight landscape photography and although my Signature collection allows me some leeway, there are times when I know and feel in my heart that some images I’ve taken just don’t sit well alongside my other work, and so I leave them stored on my SD card waiting until I find that right place for them.

I’m sure we’ve all taken images where we are veering slightly away from our original brief of what our customers expect of us; by creating an alter ego it allows us that freedom.

I love taking things within a landscape; close up of flowers, shapes of trees, animals and quite often things I would describe as arty; the type of images that you might see in an exhibition though probably not on someone’s wall in their sitting room. The article has given me a new lease of life, and I’m seriously considering how to move forward with this.

I guess the first thing is a name, on that I’m half way there; when I lived in Italy the Italians would struggle with pronouncing my name, the ‘th’ sound doesn’t appear in their language, so I was re-christened. I’m not going to tell you what the Italian name is, as the whole idea of the alter ego is no-one knows it’s you, so no pre conceived ideas about your usual work are imposed onto the other you. You’ll need a bit of bio though and maybe even new social network accounts under your new name if you can spare the time. Just think, if no-one knew it was you, what type of photography would you do? What pictures do you leave in storage for the right moment?

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