Graduate Benjamin Breading, discusses his work and his experience of studying on the Editorial and Advertising Photography course.
14th January 2020
In this graduate feature Photographer and Director Benjamin Breading discusses what he has been working on since leaving the Editorial and Advertising course.
When did you graduate?
I graduated in 2014.
Why did you decide to come onto the Editorial and Advertising Photography course?
My lecturer at college told me his son went there and it that was a great course, so I applied. They let me do my interview first because I was wildly jet lagged and offered me a place on the spot – from the very first moment I felt well looked after.
Were you able to draw on the transferable skills learnt on the course after you left and started working?
Keynote presentations/Portfolio reviews/Pecha kucha
It turns out being able to talk about who you are, what you’ve been working on and not mumbling is pretty important.
Has the course prepared you for working within the creative industries?
Briefs/creative specs are real and need to be followed.
One lecturer once told me “everyone wants to appear like they’re extremely busy and don’t have any time to see you” (paraphrasing)
This is true and you spend 90% of your day emailing people about it – which is where Matthew Murray’s lessons on emailing come in. Don’t use too many superlatives, don’t ramble on about “how much you love their work” and ‘reach out’ email with more than 100 words probably isn’t going to read.
And all those lessons from Trudie about tax, budgeting, VAT etc. taught me how to be more professional in my approach to the business.
What have you been working on since you left University?
I moved to London and worked at Spring Studios as a studio assistant. After a year I had enough contacts/experience to move onto photo-assisting; which I’d say is pretty important.
I’ve been lucky enough to travel the world, learn the industry, make friends and, more importantly, try things out that you want to try out on someone else’s work so that you don’t have to pay the price.
I have been shooting stills and dop/directing film for the last year or two, working for Holiday Magazine, QASIMI, Missoni, Tank Magazine, Farfetch and Axel Arigato. Along with shooting personal projects such as my zine ‘Hengdian’ an ongoing diary project all shot on FP100-C and my upcoming book project ‘Bodies in Flight’.
Would you recommend the Editorial and Advertising Photography course and if so why?
Of course I’d recommend it, if you want to learn how to be a successful photographer it can give you the foundations of how to do that – the rest is up to you.
More importantly the course was very patient with me, I’d say I had an array of issues going on between the points of joining to graduating and the lecturers helped push me through a lot of it.
Matthew Murray and I still bother each other to this day.
