It’s been a busy past few weeks here in photography world in sunny TokyoLand. Lots of jobs, lots of sales of work, lots of emails and thankfully little stress. A lot of the recent work has come from new clients which is always good, it’s always important to broaden the diversity of bank accounts from which your invoice payments come. Or as the old saying goes “never put all your negs in one basket”. It’s never good to rely too much on one client, if they suddenly dislike you, or you have a lovers tiff ( or a lovers jpeg ), then you can find yourself with a stressful month or two. I’ve seen it happen to some colleagues, and it isn’t pretty.

Anyway, reason I tell you all this, as I say recently there have been many approaches to me from new clients asking me to undertake assignments for them, and the way in which they approach me varies greatly….In the following examples names have been changed to protect the guilty, emails have been paraphrased and sequences which appear in random order take place in imaginary cities..

Client 1….”Dear Jeremy, I am assistant to the Editor of X (not real name), who will be in Tokyo next week. We have seen your website, enjoyed you work, and think we may have asisgnments in Asia which you could helps us with. We’d be grateful if you could let us know if this interests you and if you’d have time to meet our Editor when he is in Tokyo next week”…”Thank you for your reply Jeremy, I have booked a lunch table for you and our Editor at Posh Restaurant. The Editor looks forward to meeting with you and discussing your work”. So I go along to the Posh restaurant, nice view of Tokyo from my table 36 floors up, waiter fixes my white napkins for me, offers me a better table when it becomes available, I meet the Editor, we chat, I get free copies of the books and magazines that they publish. I show some work on a laptop, eat the octopus starter (very tasty, I recommend it), and the curried pork for main course (not bad, needed more potatoes). We chat some more, I almost ask if I can eat the Editors desert if he is not going to eat it. One hour, bish bash bosh, Editor leaves to do important Editorial Work. Two days later I get a follow up email “Hi, thanks for taking the time to meet, we look forward to working with you, please also contact this guy who possibly will have more assignments for you…” Nice huh? Civilised. Professional.

Client 2 (not real name..)…”we have a job next week in Tokyo. We were given your name by John who is working with us. Can you do it?” No ‘Dear Jeremy’, no ‘let me introduce myself’. No ‘I work for Amish Cross Stitch Monthly Magazine’, so only by looking at the ‘.com’ email address and following the link do I find out who the picture editor represents. No description of the job. No ‘we look forward to hearing from you’, no nothing. Not even ‘best wishes, The Picture Editor’. Nothing. Just ‘we have a job, can you do it?’. I only knew the Picture Editors name from the email address also. Bish bash bosh indeed.

Client 3…”Jeremy (good they used my name, that’s a start). We may have a job at the end of the month for SuchAndSuch Website. We need detail pics of X, in DaCity (not real name). Please let us know if you’re available. SuziQ (not real name).” Job didn’t sound too exciting or my type of work, but I write back, yep, I should be around then, what exactly are your requirements, ( becasue you never know..) etc. Silence. Radio silence. Complete submarine at bottom of ocean in movie at moment of suspense when no one should talk and just before someone drops a hammer and the Russians know where they are type of silence. So I guess she changed her mind, I guess she didn’t need her detail pics as much as she thought. Probably they used an illustration ripped off the internet, or bought a pic from a MicroStock agency for a dollar.

Client 4…..”Dear Jeremy, I saw some of your images from story X and I’d like to enquire about using them in our magazine. Please let us know if they have been published elsewhere and if they are available and if this interests you. best wishes, Pic Ed.” I email back, yep they’re available. Two seconds later the phone goes, time differences and all that I’m still in my pyjamas, the Pic Ed is finishing his days work and calls for a 15 minute chat (Very nice. I like that. Pick up the phone, what a novel idea. A human touch, not just a faceless .com email), anyway, we introduce ourselves, we talk, we reminisce about our homelands, I sell him 10 pages of work (true), he offers me untold riches (untrue). Bish bash bosh, job done, story sold. Time for my bran flakes.

So that’s it, four shorts stories from TokyoLand freelance life. It always fascinates me, even after all these years of being down the pit at the coalface, how different picture editors find you, and then how they contact you and offer you work. It’s always different, never boring. Bit like life really.