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[by Luke Copping]

The early part of my career was one rooted in duality, I often felt like I was living the lives of two very separate photographers. I had one foot firmly planted in my previous hometown of Toronto, Canada, where I was shooting for small fashion labels and designers, creating portraits for musicians and actors, and creating beauty imagery for salons. At the same time I was also pursuing clients in my current home Buffalo, NY – geographically only about an hour and a half from Toronto – but market-wise they were different planets to me. In Buffalo my focus was on advertising and portraiture (especially in the local healthcare market) and on creating PR imagery for local companies and manufacturers.

Though my style has changed over the past few years (moving away from fashion and towards my current style of portraiture that unifies several of my creative directions – which I market on a national rather than local level) I learned quickly during that time that relevance was the key to being successful in both of these markets. I made the early mistake of trying to show that I could do everything – I took around a bloated portfolio and wasted a lot of potential client’s time by showing them work that was completely inappropriate for their needs. I had to pare it down, sharpen it up, and be very mindful of the fact that I was dealing with two radically different market segments that had very different wants and needs.

One of the first things I did was start to prepare supplementary collections of work for each client to accompany my leaner and more specific portfolios – that way I could, on a moments notice, provide clients with examples of work that were extremely relevant to their immediate projects. The same became true of promotions and other marketing materials as I moved forward, and a key question I asked myself when selecting images for portfolios and promos was “Who is this relevant to?”.

The funny thing is that these constraints, rather than limiting me, actually provided a catalyst that pushed me towards the type of work I am doing now. I found my commercial work being more and more informed by my style and fashion work (and vice versa).  Soon, I was able to use my existing base of clients (who I was producing relevant work for) to test this new style I was developing.  Even when the new work wasn’t the proper fit for them, they were still excited to see the new look I was working with and often provided references to potential clients with a more relevant need.

Luke Copping is a commercial and editorial portrait photographer from Buffalo NY who made the Jeckyl and Hyde like curse of his dual photographic lives work for him.