We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Dave Tada. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Dave below.

Hi Dave, thanks for joining us today. Are you able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen?

Over the past several years, somehow I’ve made it work, at different times as a full time employee and also as a freelancer. It definitely took a lot of meeting people, but so much is just plain luck. You know someone, that knows someone, that knows someone else, who’s roommate is dating some big art director. Even to this day, it’s been very difficult to find consistent work and that’s really the only thing that makes me reconsider going back to full time. Moving from Salt Lake City (I was working as the photographer for a model agency at the time), my first job in LA was retouching for a celebrity photographer, which didn’t last too long, as I quickly found out I was in way over my head at the time. I was able to find some small jobs here and there, but one day I reached out to a pal that was one of the freelance photographers at a pretty large clothing brand and she was able to help me get me a job as one of their full time retouchers. I worked at this brand for YEARS, retouching, but also helping out the photographers and learning lighting, and I’d use those things I learned on model test shoots.
Eventually I caught the eye of a men’s clothing brand and left to be their in-house photographer. In time, the brand shut down so I went back to freelance and have been enjoying being on my own schedule and working with different teams and learning how they run shoots and using that new knowledge with future clients.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I currently work as a fashion/editorial/ecomm photographer in Los Angeles, and on occasion provide retouching services for any jobs i take on. I’m also currently working on adding videography in the future. I do shoot on film for several clients as well that enjoy the film aesthetic. I can also help with shoot production as far as booking models, location, wardrobe stylists and hair/mua as well.

Are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

I don’t think i fully utilized the larger photo community when I was starting out and tried to just figure things on my own. I was in my little photo bubble at the time and I think I would have grown much quicker would I have looked farther than my own limited vision at the time. Also, linkedinlearning which I believe had a different name before, but my brother turned me onto it during the pandemic. It’s free with a library card and they have a ton of different online courses.

What’s worked well for you in terms of a source for new clients?

To be honest, even to this day, I still struggle finding new clients. I’ve had several conversations with fellow photographer friends, asking how effective cold mailers/e-mailers are, and everyone seems to agree that they don’t really help. I did pick up one client from a post in a facebook group earlier this year, but honestly, I think it just comes down to who you know and expanding your network as much as possible.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.davetada.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/analogpics
• Other: http://www.analogpics.net