Building Your Career
The Business of Documentary Photography
Instructors: Michelle Bogre, Michael O. Snyder, Thomas Werner
7:00 – 9:00 pm Eastern via Zoom
New start date: Eight Tuesdays beginning September 27, 2022
Course fee: $600
Class Description
A successful career as a documentary photographer requires more than skill. It requires an understanding of the business of photography and the steps you need to take to run, fund, promote and protect your business.
In this class, three notable industry experts will guide you through law, funding and marketing. They will discuss professional practices; avenues to fund your personal projects; how to promote your work and career on and off social media; and make the murky world of law easy to understand.
Michelle Bogre, Esq., who has been teaching copyright to art and design students for more than 15 years, will dispel the many myths about copyright. She will cover what you need to know about copyright to protect and sell your work. She also will describe what contracts are, how to write a good contract, and what kinds of contracts you should not sign. Each class will leave ample time for students to ask questions or to request additional topics to be covered.
Michael O. Snyder will demystify the world of funding and provide you with the tools, knowledge, and examples that you need to get your project supported and get your story told. He will explore the secrets to success in identifying grants, awards, fellowships, fiscal sponsorship, partnerships, commissions, and writing compelling proposals. You will learn and practice how to write a project narrative and sequence images for submission to a grant. Snyder will review these applications, providing feedback to the group.
Thomas Werner will help you develop an integrated print, email, and social-media presence, essential to supporting your work and achieving your career goals. In this class he will bring clarity and simplicity to the process of building a strong social media presence, and provide step-by-step methods for bringing your promotion up to date.
If you are ready to step into the world of documentary photography or want to build your career, this class is for you.
Michelle Bogre
Michelle Bogre is a copyright lawyer, documentary photographer and author of four books, including her most recent, The Routledge Companion to Copyright and Creativity in the 21st Century. She currently holds the title of Professor Emerita from Parsons School of Design, after a 25-year career teaching almost every type of photography class and a class about which she is most passionate, developed to make copyright law accessible to photographers and designers. She regularly lectures, both nationally and internationally, about copyright and photography.
Michael O. Snyder
Michael O. Snyder is a photojournalist and filmmaker who uses his combined knowledge of visual storytelling and conservation to create narratives that drive social change. He is a Climate Journalism Fellow at the Bertha Foundation, a Portrait of Humanity Award winner, a Decade of Change Award winner, a Blue Earth Alliance Photographer, a Society of Environmental Journalists Member, a National Geographic Contributor, and a Resident Artist at the McGuffey Art Center in Charlottesville, Virginia. He holds an MSc in Environmental Sustainability from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland and a BSc from Dickinson College.
Through his production company, Interdependent Pictures, he has directed films in the Arctic, the Amazon, the Himalaya, and East Africa. His journalism work has been featured by outlets such as National Geographic, The Guardian, The Washington Post, VOX, BBC, PBS News Hour, Roads & Kingdoms, High Country News, Condé Nast, Orion, and NPR. His films have been selected to over 50 festivals and have taken home numerous awards.
Snyder grew up on 12 acres of woods in Appalachia and spent much of his early adulthood exploring the remote corners of this planet. These experiences set in motion an ongoing love affair with the wildness of this world and desire to re-connect people to it. Snyder’s projects are often built through partnerships with nonprofit organizations and harness the power of positive storytelling in order to shift the narrative about what it means to live well on this planet without destroying it.
An adventurer at heart, Mike has hiked the Appalachian and John Muir Trails, cycled across Europe, and ridden trains through Siberia. Originally from a small town in Appalachia, Snyder has lived around the world including long-term stints in Scotland, Japan, Hawaii, and New Zealand. He currently resides in the shadow of the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia with his wife and two children.
Thomas Werner
Thomas is the author of the book The Fashion Image, Bloomsbury Publishing, London and The Business of Fine Art Photography, Routledge, New York, August 2022 release. He is the Founder of TWP Creative Edge a consulting and education group working one on one with students, creatives, businesses, cultural institutions, and not for profits, helping them refine their messaging, and achieve their goals internationally across the commercial and fine arts. He is also an Advisory Board Member for Ithaca College’s Executive Education Program, a contributor to Adobe’s Lightroom Academy, an Editor at Large for IRKmagazine in Paris, founder of Thomas Werner Projects Podcast, and past Photography Program Director at Parsons School of Design in New York. Thomas was a recurrent instructor at the United Nations Education First Summer School, and is now presenting workshops on marketing, social media, effective message development, team management, and visual communication on an international basis.
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