Port Douglas
The Junk above is an icon of Port Douglas – a lovely sailing boat that takes tourists out to the reef and on sunset cruises. One of my favourite sights!
Port Douglas. Love this town. I’ve been back here about 10 weeks now, done about one photo job for every week I’ve been here. Which is a nice handy pace considering I’m working my ass off as one of the coordinators of the towns annual Carnivale, 5 days a week. I’m working towards that day when Carnivale is all over (June 1) and I can focus on being a full time photographer here.
To that end I just tied up a sponsorship deal with the local Chamber of Commerce in which I become the Official Event Photographer for 2009 Port Douglas Carnivale. This means that I am going to do a truckload of free photography for the community events which are a part of Carnivale in an effort to get my name out there. I hope that doing this will pay off for me:
- by getting my name and services out there and widely visible,
- and that the commercial event managers will employ me.
Doing pro bono work as a photographer is sometimes seen as betraying yourself and your fellow photographers by devaluing public perception of photographers rights & services, but you know, community participation is vitally important and none of these community groups have the money to pay a professional photographer. Yet without great, dynamic images, the entire event suffers because it’s so hard to get decent media coverage. So actually, rather than devaluing public perception, I hope that I actually garner some respect and support and the whole action-reaction process society runs on will see me get rewarded with paid work.