When clients grow, you grow - Photographer Ira Giorgetti
When a 20-year-old Ira flew to the UK in search of his biological father, he had no idea a new life awaited him in London.
Ira met his partner on that trip, and after 4 years long distance, he moved to London to be with him.
Ira had freelanced in the Philippines before his move, and he now runs freelance photography agency Ventana.
He chats to Steve about finding and keeping clients - by building relationships and being great to work with - and tells the story behind his decision to rebrand as an agency.
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TRANSCRIPT OF THE BEING FREELANCE PODCAST WITH PHOTOGRAPHER IRA GIORGETTI AND STEVE FOLLAND
Steve Folland: How about we get started hearing how you got started being freelance.
Ira Giorgetti: Okay, so I used to live in the Philippines and that's where I went to university for my Bachelor's degree. And I started working then just doing little jobs here and there as a photographer and I ended up mainly doing photography for fashion. First for myself because at the time this website called Lookbook was really big and I was starting to get a lot of traction on it and I started to work with brands in the Philippines who are looking for fashion photography content. Mind you, this is, gosh, it's 10 years ago. It was 2009 to 2011 when the whole of the internet, I guess, was just on the verge of exploding in terms of content. Yeah, I started out there. I actually went on a reality TV show in the Philippines as a photographer. That did not go so well because I was 80 and let's just put it that way.
Ira Giorgetti: I was not ready for that. For all of that. But it gave me some really good experience and broadened my horizon. So when I did move to the UK eventually I already had a feel for like what freelancing was like. Mind you it was hard because I basically had to start from scratch because no one here knew anything about the Philippines or the clients I worked with there or the brands I worked with there. So it was really a brand new start in 2015, 2016 when I first came here.
Steve Folland: So how did you get those first clients when you were in the Philippines?
Ira Giorgetti: I had a little bit of help. I'll admit that. My family has always been in advertising. I mean so much so that I was on my first photoshoot when I was three. One of the toddler models didn't show up. My mom, who was an art director at the time, was like, just use my kid. We can just pay him in McDonald's. And that's how it went. Leading up to uni I want it to be a doctor, but my mom said, "Why don't you do something creative?" So that's what I did in the end. I studied film.
Steve Folland: Wow. It's usually the other way around.
Ira Giorgetti: I know, especially for Asian moms, you know, it's really weird to hear no, don't do medicine. Do something in the arts. But I've always had that sort of background. And right out of high school my godmother gave me an internship at her company because she was a VP at a news agency. So that's when I did some crazy things. I was a paparazzi for a little bit.
Ira Giorgetti: I had to run into a burning building once because city hall was on fire and I came home smelling of barbecue and my mom berated my godmother after that. I was never sent into a burning building again. I was mainly stuck in the office after that. But that's kind of how I started. An internship at a news agency and eventually just through social media at the time, cause Instagram was super new, Twitter was super new. The whole blogger influencer thing was super new. So obviously the market back in Asia was a lot smaller then. So it was quite easy for me to start getting my name out there and getting jobs.
Steve Folland: But then you come over to the UK and you have to start from scratch and in quite an expensive city, as well. So how did you crack on?
Ira Giorgetti: So in 2012 when I first came to the UK I was actually looking to speak to my biological father, but I found my partner instead. We met here in London in 2012 and we were long distance for three, four years. And then I moved here. I moved in with him.
Steve Folland: Oh my God. You realize you've used about three stories where it could have easily been in a truth and liability and the end of this episode.
Ira Giorgetti: Oh, I've got those ready for you.
Steve Folland: Reality TV show. Went into a burning building and then went to find your biological father, but instead found your partner. These are all amazing stories.
Ira Giorgetti: I know. Someday I have to write these into a screenplay because this would make an excellent Netflix series. My life.
Steve Folland: So did you simply come over to the UK to try and find your biological father? As in, that was the only reason for the trip.
Ira Giorgetti: I was 20 at the time and my parents decided to send me to London because usually we would go to Italy to visit family every summer and I would go with my dad somewhere else. But as I was 20 years old then and not 13 anymore, he was like, you know what? just go to London and explore a bit. See what you feel. I mean they knew what I was going to do given the opportunity to come here. Funny enough, my biological dad lives in Bali, so I flew ALL that way for nothing. But I discovered that when I got here. I mean I was in London so I wanted to see what was around. I was single at the time and I met Ryan and WE'RE still together now.
Steve Folland: So you went back to the Philippines, had a longterm relationship and then came back here in 2016?
Ira Giorgetti: Yes. That's when I finally finished my Bachelor's degree. That took me forever. I took so many breaks. I went to culinary school. I went backpacking. I did so many things that delayed my graduation. But the second I finished my partner said, "You are going to move here eventually for our relationship. You should do it now because we don't know what the situation is going to be in this country moving forward in terms of letting people from the EU in." I guess he was right. Because I mean my partner, he's from Yorkshire and he predicted everything way early on. He just wanted our relationship to be safe, which is why I moved right away.
Steve Folland: And to be clear, is that because you've got some Italian nationality passport-type thing as well. Have you? Italian passport?
Ira Giorgetti: Yeah. I'm British Filipino by descent. But I am now Italian by citizenship because my adopted father adopted me like in every way.
Steve Folland: Hence being from the EU. So, okay, even so, you're in London, you've got somewhere to stay. Obviously you know people but you don't have any freelance clients?
Ira Giorgetti: Oh gosh. No. I knew no one. I didn't know people. Honestly, the people I knew here were my partner, his best friend, my friend from the Philippines who was studying here at the time. And that's it. I mean I met my half-sister but she wasn't London-based at the time. I came here with nothing. I came here with some bits of camera equipment. My clothes. I just packed up my life and kind of went. I mean my parents helped me out for the first six months because they knew to start not an easy thing to do. But they also said if you're going to do this then you'd better be ready and you'd better be ready to make it on your own because we're not going to support you forever.
Steve Folland: So how did you?
Ira Giorgetti: Gosh, social media really. I guess how every photographer starts out. There's usually only one of two paths for photographers. Either you start out assisting either with one or a few photographers or at the studio where they assign you to photographers who are in the studio. Or you just take the dive and you go full up freelance, although that's often a less structured route but allows you for more freedom and often you get to do what you want and not spend hours and hours on shoots that you don't add to your practice. But I just started on Facebook groups, really. I was just hunting down ways to build my network and to meet more people and see what the London freelancing was about because it's very different to Asia. So yeah, I think Facebook and Instagram at that time were my main channels.
Steve Folland: So on Facebook, you were going into groups and doing what? Introducing yourself as a photographer or?
Ira Giorgetti: Oh no, people often post job listings, freelance gigs there. And they're not great. I have to immediately warn anyone listening to this jobs in Facebook groups, nine out of 10 of them are underpaid, will overwork you and undervalue you and maybe 50% of the time is something you won't be able to put in your portfolio. But when you literally are at the point where you don't know what to do or what's happening you go for what's in front of you.
Steve Folland: On Instagram, what were you doing there?
Ira Giorgetti: I was just trying to post consistently because I had to transition my profile from a person was in the Philippines, someone who worked more with my own brand of personality. People in the Philippines would follow my work because they were basically mostly pictures of me or pictures I took of other models back there. But it wasn't very commercial work. It had nothing to do with advertising or anything like that. It was just a bit of fashion here and there. When I came here, I really had to build up my book from the ground up and I think I only have maybe one to three photos in my portfolio now that are from the Philippines. Most of them I've shot in the last one to two years, three years here.
Steve Folland: But did you keep your own personality? Your own face as part of it on Instagram?
Ira Giorgetti: Yeah, so I'm very much my own person still in terms of Instagram stories at least, but I now run two separate Instagrams, if that makes sense. I have one that caters to marriage audience, mostly women and gay men who are looking for really nice pictures of male models both for fashion editorial and for portraits. And then I run my sort of agency brand studio event on Instagram as well. That's where all of my look books and my commercial work and my advertising work. That's where I post all of that because I find on Instagram you have to be really specific with the people you want to show your content to. So people who follow my main Instagram do not want to see pictures of Revlon makeup style in interesting ways. That just doesn't appeal to them. They just want to see boys either in cool clothes or very few clothes.
Ira Giorgetti: And my clients on the other hand, whilst the mainly follow my main Instagram as well to see what I'm up to in terms of Instagram stories and stuff. They mostly interact with me and message me on my Studio Ventana one because that is where the work they like to see is shown and curated.
Steve Folland: Cool. Okay. So let's go back into your story because I feel like we're jumping to Studio Ventana, whereas to begin with it was just you, right? So how did it evolve? You start getting bits and pieces of work.
Ira Giorgetti: Yeah, so, and this is probably what I would advise to any photographer out there, especially in London at this point in time, people you work with are always going to remember how you make them feel and how you guys get along onset. Even offset. Even in emails. Even in phone calls. And a lot of, I guess my growth, my development, my success, I would really have to link to making a good impression, showing up, and doing good work.
Ira Giorgetti: I'm not trying to toot my own horn there, but honestly that is at this point in time probably the best differentiating factor you can hope to achieve in the short term because ... Okay, I don't want to be cynical, but people always tell photographers you need to have a style, a personal style where people can see your photos and they immediately know it's you who took the photo. That has to be your brand and people have to recognize your work in the first 3 seconds.
Ira Giorgetti: That is not something you can do in five years time. That is something that people like Annie Leibovitz and Tim Walker have spent a career building and refining and perfecting. That look. That Tim Walker look, you just know that that surreal, very cold fashion editorial, that's wild with planes coming in through the window, all of that stuff. You know immediately it's him, but how do you do that in a market that moves this fast where people have to be churning out content on the daily? For me, it's more about the relationships you build within the industry and how that translates the continued work with their end clients. Because as they grow, you grow and if you help them they'll help you. I've found that to be the case. At least for me. I'm not sure if I answered your question.
Steve Folland: It was a great answer though. It's a really nice point. So basically you just keep doing good work and being nice to people.
Ira Giorgetti: Yeah. There's a lot of it that comes into play professionally, but at the end of the day, it doesn't matter if it's arts or law or medicine, there's just some things that are standard. If you can't deliver on the brief, then you didn't deliver on the brief. But if you delivered on the brief and you were a dick to everyone on set, I swear they will never call you back. They would rather have someone with a little bit less proficiency but is easy to get along with. Gives people the feeling of ease and lightness and who doesn't focus on problems and would rather create things creatively with solutions, if that makes sense.
Ira Giorgetti: And just as an example there, I've worked with a few producers who on our first project they do, I mean they were just working direct to client on some very small sorts of promotional material. But eventually they'd become producers at agencies and if they like the work and they like you, they often remember you and they will be the ones to reach out to you. Which I have found both heartwarming because oh, people remember me and also a sign I guess that I'm doing something right.
Steve Folland: So at what point did you start to work as a studio name rather than just yourself?
Ira Giorgetti: I got to a point I guess of frustration because I do work direct to client myself quite a lot of the time and they will often give me responsibilities that are honestly really meant for producers. They'll ask me to quote them to prepare an estimate for a project, but they want me to cast the models. They want me to scout locations or find a specific studio that works for them and they want me to do the logistics and to fill in all the other roles and all of that. And that's the point where I eventually told myself, you know what, it's hard to build a reputation as the photographer who does everything, I guess in that sense.
Ira Giorgetti: I mean I don't do everything now. I only do fashion and lifestyle with a bit of still-life. But the point I'm trying to make is they wanted an end to end solution and it's hard to present that to clients as a single person because how can a single person be responsible for all of that? In their minds at least it's hard for them to wrap their heads around that idea. So they feel a lot more at ease when they see a website that it looks like an agency to them. Because I don't have any full-time employees. Everyone I work with is also a freelancer. Sometimes represented, sometimes fully freelance, but it gives a sense that this is more than just one person taking pictures. This is a solution to my business. That's the feeling.
Steve Folland: Awesome. So when faced repeatedly with clients looking for the everything shop you decide to instead of turning them down or just saying, "No, I can't do that. I'm the photographer. You find everything else and I'll do it." You decided to go out and find the other freelances to work with you and provide that solution?
Ira Giorgetti: Yeah, and I kind of package everything and liaise with everyone in such a way that I am at this point a creative producer as well as a photographer. You know what? I think it's also because clients want agency grade work but can't always afford agency grade prices, but they still want to feel they're working with an agency. So when they work with me and I handle everything, I'm basically an account manager and also the photographer, sometimes director, if there's video involved and I'm the one handling all the logistics of post-production. It just kind of feels a bit more familiar to them. And it's easier for me to handhold them through whatever processes that they might not yet fully grasp.
Ira Giorgetti: I'm working with a few Asian clients now who are entrepreneurs and they know nothing about content and media production and they literally just give all their trust to me. They're like, oh, we trust that you'll do exactly what we want. Even if there's no real brief. I have to like eat it out of them, like bleed them like a rock. But I get there eventually and I think that just being faced with the idea that this is a brand that produces content in our niche or in these niches, it makes them feel better than just working with a quote-unquote photographer who takes pictures. Does that make sense?
Steve Folland: Yeah. And how have you found bringing on other freelancers and managing them? I noticed that on your website you list their names and have their photos, don't you?
Ira Giorgetti: Yeah, I mean I've asked all of them if they'd be happy for me to list their names there. And of course, they are because if anything it means more work for them. Whenever I get a brief they're perfect for they're always my first point of call. And it's nice because they're all my friends. I mean these aren't random people they're found in the internet. These are people I've worked with on quite a few projects and I trust wholeheartedly with my accounts and my business. So it's really good. The only point of contention is when I'm working with big agencies as just the photographer. They look me up on Instagram and they're like, "Is this you because it's just full of boys? And I'm like, "Yes, but although all the work you're looking for is under my own agency brand." Which sometimes is confusing for people, but I'm trying to work out how to delineate that better.
Steve Folland: I noticed that you call yourself a social-first photographer. Was that something that came from client need as well?
Ira Giorgetti: So I've pretty much worked out through market research and competitor analysis. Yes, yes. Creative folk. You need to do that too. That's something any business has to do I think. I eventually realized that most of the work I was getting was creating content for social channels. Primarily other uses would be born of the images later on because I mean they are assets usually my clients need them in certain format so they can use them over a long period of time depending on how much usage they've specified. But basically I realized that hey, everyone is looking for content for social because that's where we have an ever-hungry audience of people consuming media nonstop every day. And it was really hard for me, I guess, and I saw this in my research, it was really hard for me to break into that 1% of jobs who were shooting international campaigns.
Ira Giorgetti: That's something that I think you really have to build up to. There's no easy, straight, fast way to get there. That is something that comes with a lot of trust in the industry and building a really good reputation. But one thing I could brand myself as was someone very knowledgeable and what the market needs now. So they need agile solutions. They need people who understand the platforms. What works well? What doesn't? And that's how I market myself as well. And it's been working pretty well.
Steve Folland: Talking about marketing, how do you put yourself out there as the studio?
Ira Giorgetti: A lot of it still comes from me as a photographer. For my outreach, for me reaching out to people, I utilize mostly Instagram and LinkedIn. I literally find people who I think are doing good work and are doing the work that I do. So I'm looking for art directors, art buyers, creative directors, integrative producers, project managers. They have a whole host of names and they're all in LinkedIn. And you know what? If you actually take the time to message people, and I don't mean, hi, I found you on LinkedIn. Can I add you? Will you look at my work? that never happens. They usually go, okay, and then that's the end.
Ira Giorgetti: Usually you really have to dig deep. You have to go find their website, go see what campaigns they've worked on, go see if they even do the kind of work that you do. There have been a few times where I've messed up a little bit and I've messaged an after effects motion graphics producer with my work and they're just like nice portfolio. I don't do anything remotely similar but nice work and I'm just there like shaking my head like, oh, whoops.
Ira Giorgetti: But most of the time you will get a response and after a few times the response is enough to just start that conversation and once you're in it then that's when you can start asking the other person for advice or if you can take a little bit of their time to show them your work. I have to say it through LinkedIn, I've worked on a whole host of very big accounts. My Durex shoot was from LinkedIn. A recent thing I did for Disney was with a producer who took me on a Topgolf campaign earlier this year and remembered me for this Disney thing. That we did and that was through LinkedIn. And it doesn't always have to always quote-unquote convert into a project.
Ira Giorgetti: If you think about it, how often is it that you are available and at the top of someone's mind when they have the perfect brief for you then and there in their hands? That is a very rare circumstance but if you show them the work that you do that they want to see, chances are you might come to mind when they do get that brief for you. It works a lot less on Instagram. I think Instagram is not as good a platform as LinkedIn for reaching out to people professionally. I get lots of, not safe for work, pictures sent to me on Instagram, as well. That inbox of mine is really not that ...
Steve Folland: I love that going after the individuals within the industry or the companies rather than approaching the companies themselves and building those relationships.
Ira Giorgetti: Oh gosh, no you can't. I've learned this now, this past year. This past year for me has been really learning about all business. All professional interactions. People say business to client. Business to business. None of that exists because businesses are made up of people. So the only one that is your real is human to human. And that approach so far has got me really good results. I mean the second you start treating people like a member of a faceless corporation it's not going to go very far. You really have to dig deep and talk to them as a person you're genuinely interested in talking to.
Steve Folland: How do you find managing your time? I can't decide whether that was a good inhalation or bad?
Ira Giorgetti: I needed to take a breath for that. I was scared of this question because I know it's your speciality. Work-life balance. The time management that comes with that. I'm actually not that great at managing my time. Although it is something I'm working on. I find that my life situation right now, just got a new dog, my partner is in a job that it's not new, I mean he's been there five, six months now. But you know there's always the getting used to things sort of period. And just, I guess my personality, I'm not one who sticks to schedules that tightly, but when I do I see amazing results. I'm like, oh my gosh. I should do more of this. Yeah this works. Knowing what you're about to do that day. Because I have to schedule things roughly because as a freelance photographer sometimes I get estimate requests and stuff at very short notice. And sometimes I will get people who have asked for an estimate or a treatment in March messaging me in June going, "Can we do this in three days?" And it's like, oh, okay.
Ira Giorgetti: I think time management comes with intent. So if you are intent on managing your time and measuring where you are spending your time and whether or not that's working for you, that's where I think you get growth and progress and development and that's where I would like to be. I'm currently not there. I'm currently still writing things on little index cards and Post-its and trying to organize my life but I'm slowly, slowly building up a better way of working. I think as a freelancer I had one coach who recommended basically building up an operations manual for your business.
Ira Giorgetti: So you kind of break down all the major aspects of work and you put that in like a book or a PDF or something. That way you're doing things, not just consistently, but you kind of have an overview of your process and if you do get sick or whatever, you can hand it off to a trusted partner and they can do it a similar sort of look. What you do. It's really hard for me because I don't know if I have just one way of working. I think I have several. In answer to your question, how do I manage my time? Badly, but I'm working on it.
Steve Folland: And how about the actual work-life balance there? Do you manage to, I don't know, switch off at the weekend or in the evening? In fact, for that matter do you work from home? Obviously, you shoot on locations and stuff, but are you based at home?
Ira Giorgetti: Yes, because I have a home office and a home studio. There's pictures of it on Studio Ventana website if you want to see my dog, although I think the picture of the dog is our last dog, Charlie. We have a new Chihuahua. But I do work from home quite a fair bit. You know what? There are some days when I'm like I want to get away from everything and I troop it down to Covent Garden and I work in a cafe because I feel a real London freelancer when I do that. I part of the club. Working there with my laptop and my £7 coffee. But to answer the first question about work-life balance, do I switch off on weekends? No, because my partner's days off are Thursdays and Sundays. So those are the days I mainly quote-unquote switch off.
Ira Giorgetti: But you know what? To be honest with you, as someone in the creative industry and a freelancer and someone who is an admittedly addicted to his phone. It's really hard to switch off. It takes a conscious effort. When I do leave my phone in the car for a walk in the National Trust, I feel so good. I feel a weight is like lifted off of me and I'm not at the constant beck and call of one person asking how retouching is going and another person asking me about coloramas and another person asking me to amend the quote. These are things always churning in the back of my mind and I have an Apple watch, so I actually seem like a very rude person who's just checking the time all the time. I'm not. I'm just seeing which email has taken precedence in my mind for my clients.
Ira Giorgetti: But I think it's healthy to have time away from all of that, which we try to do. We knew we both like nature a lot. We live in front of a National Trust property. It's so important for both me and my partner to take the time to spend together and without our phones, I think, which is something we're trying to do more and more. It's really hard, although I have to say, being a freelancer, let me go on holiday when whenever I wanted this year. Finances allowing, which is something you can do working in an office. I would have been fired really quick with all of that. I think I've literally taken two and a half months off this year so far.
Steve Folland: Oh wow.
Ira Giorgetti: A lot of that happened very last minute. I got a friend who was getting married in Bali and a job I was supposed to work on got deferred. I booked a ticket the week before and then my family was coming to Italy so I booked flights to meet them. But my partner said that we hadn't been abroad in two, three years now so we should book that. So we did. We did like a 10,000-mile road trip around Europe from London over three weeks or two and a half weeks. And these are just things you can't really do if you're not freelancing because no company is going to allow for what is between two to three months a year of take time off. But on the flip side, because I was freelancing that means that my London rent, my London expenses and all of those other things still had to be paid and I wasn't making money on holiday.
Ira Giorgetti: I mean money was coming in from projects that were finishing up, just in post-production, which I couldn't coordinate remotely. But I wasn't shooting when I was out. So there's all these things you have to consider I guess being a freelancer like time and money are a lot closer in terms of correlation. It was fine for my partner. He was being paid for those two and a half weeks that we were around Europe. I was not.
Steve Folland: If you could tell your younger self one thing about being freelance, what would that be?
Ira Giorgetti: I'd like to think of myself as still young but if I could tell something to my very young self it would be shoot more of what you love. Stop comparing yourself to everyone around you. I know that's really hard to do when you're young because it's basically your only reference point for the rest of the world. Even worse now with social media, but just try to find what makes you happy. What gives you flow experiences. I'm not going to go into that very much but it's something I do believe in because I have experienced it and you have to keep at it.
Ira Giorgetti: The number of times I have told myself I give up. I'm going to go be a doctor. No, just kidding. I've just been like no, I don't know if I'm doing the right thing. I don't know if there's a future in this. I don't know if this is what I'm meant to do. If you keep on doing it in spite of all the reasons why you might have thoughts like that, then you probably really want to do this and you should just keep at it because that really is the only way. There is no shortcut. There is no magic bullet.
Ira Giorgetti: You just have to work a hard. Work in the area that you want to work in because you have to have that end goal in mind. At least roughly. Have some idea. I know when people start out as photographers, and I did this too when I was young, you do everything. Portraits, events, still life, e-com, fashion, corporate, dogs, weddings, everything, everything, food. But when you start to find out what makes you happy, and I know that's really hard to do. I mean Marie Kondo built a whole career in getting people to touch clothes to know if they want them. But once you find that thing that does excite you even just a little bit and it makes you more curious, it makes you more interested, it makes you happy, I guess. Or it gives you a feeling. Wakes you up inside a little bit. Explore that. Sink your teeth into it. Go to a library. Look at photo books. It's not just Instagram. There's loads of places to find inspiration. Work that relates to your work. So yeah, keep at it, consume more media in a good way and don't give up.
Steve Folland: Ira, thank you so much. All the best being freelance.
Ira Giorgetti: Thanks, Steve. That was fun.