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[ August 18th, 2003 ]
When Donna Day moved to New York City from her native Los Angeles, she was a newly graduated business major. Accompanying her husband-to-be to the East Coast, she began interviewing for jobs in the city's towering office buildings. But it wasn't long before she realized she had chosen the wrong field. "I got all these job offers," she says, "but then I freaked because I realized I just couldn't work with guys in suits all day."
So, Day started selling ads for a magazine in SoHo, and for a California-based art magazine. After seeing an ad in the Village Voice for a photography workshop, she went and was instantly hooked. Now all she needed was to find a way to make photography pay. Some 20 years later, she has more than found a way. Her work has been published in major publications and appears on billboards around Seattle, where she's been living for the last 12 years. Her clients include Microsoft, the Peace Corps, and Hewlett-Packard. Day spoke to altpick.com from her home-studio. It almost sounds like you stumbled into photography. The woman who led that first workshop in New York was into pure art photography, the black-and-white style of Cartier-Bresson. It got me to start taking pictures, and I just loved it. Later I was managing a restaurant ... my husband-to-be and I decided to move back to L.A. for a while, so we sublet our place in New York. [Through a friend] the Jewish Federation hired me to shoot all these events for them. There I was, in my pink glasses, shooting all these old ladies in babushkas. It was great practice. That helped me start shooting for myself. Then I came back to New York and got rolling.
I had some friends at small magazines. I shot a lot for Woman's World. I was their psychodrama shooter. Which means? They had a personal column with stuff like, 'My husband wants me to have sex when I'm sick,' or 'My husband beats me,' and I would have to illustrate these things. I used everyone I knew for those shots. I put my husband in bed with people, got all my friends into it ... Those were the pictures that really helped me develop a style. I realized I like to take a scenario and illustrate it on film. Did you stick with editorial work for a while? You know how New York can stick you in a niche: You're a 'this' photographer or a 'that' photographer. So I got all this work for parenting magazines. Then - my husband was an architecture writer and got to go on all these great trips - I said, 'Yo, I can do architecture.' So I took another workshop, and I got to be his photographer. We did Hong Kong, Moscow in the early '90s. I remember I was in Red Square photographing the Estee Lauder store, when there were still people waiting in line to buy socks. We went to Bali, India, L.A., Chicago, the Caribbean
After 13 years of it, we both just wanted a change. So we thought about where to go next: We figured the South was out, the middle of the country was out, we didn't want to go back to L.A., and Miami was out because we didn't want another New Yorky experience. So we checked out Seattle by doing a story on it. There aren't very many magazines out here, so I started showing my book to ad agencies. That's when I switched from editorial to advertising, for the most part. I did an ad for the Washington Dairy Farmers the first month I was here, where I shot these little kids with cheese. Was it profitable right away?Yes, after New York, it was pretty easy to break into the market in Seattle. That's also when I started shooting for stock. Back then you could shoot whatever you wanted and show it to agencies, and they would take what they wanted and pay you. Now they're a little more choosy What work are you most proud of?I did funny little full-page ads for Dow Jones that I really liked. They were really goofy - the disco guy and the lunch lady. I liked those. I did a campaign that looked like George Washington was coming to dinner ... Those are the projects I like the most, when I get to make up a story in a picture, when it's quirky and has a sense of humor. Sometimes it's hard in advertising because they come to you with a drawing or a picture and say, 'Make this.' But in this economy, what I'm most proud of is that I make a really good living doing what I love to do.
People at my gym call me, The Stalker. If I see an interesting person, an interesting face, I'm on them. I like to shoot real people - not models. All my assistants have to carry their cameras with them at all times. If they see anyone interesting, they have to take a picture. What's it like to be your assistant? I have a girl posse. We work really hard but like to have fun. All of my former assistants are my good friends. My gear bags have buttons that say, 'Girls kick ass.' Do you do much digital work? For work, yes. For personal, no. I just started shooting digitally. It just makes it all work easier. A client can walk away from the shoot with a CD of the finished product. But I still like film. I like to hold a contact sheet and look at it for a long time. I like to throw it on the ground and look at it later. It's funny, five years ago I was on a panel with women photographers. We were all saying we hated computers. And look at us now. You have to do it if you want to keep up. Art directors are 22 years old now. They want to see what they know. You have to know what they know. - Contributed by Kelly McEvers >> See more work from Donna Day >> See other member spotlights on the member spotlight index >> Find out more on how to become an altpick.com member |
