Photo Tips: Building a Career in Commercial & Fashion Photography

🌍 Our Photo Tips online talk series offer a safe digital learning environment for the photography community worldwide. These sessions provide insight, inspiration, and open dialogue with industry professionals and creative community members.

🎤 In this Photo Tips session, we’ll be joined by award-winning British Pakistani photographer Shahfaq Shahbaz. Shahfaq, is a freelance portrait, fashion, and commercial photographer and she will share the practical realities of building a career in fashion and commercial photography.

✨ Shahfaq will share practical advice on building a targeted portfolio and turning your creative work into opportunities. She’ll explore how to create work that reflects the clients and industries you want to attract. For example, this could mean creating sports imagery for sports brands or event photography for brand-event clients.

🔎 Themes explored

 💼 The realities of freelancing 
Exploring the advantages and disadvantages of freelance photography. This includes creative freedom, variety, exciting opportunities and strong earning potential, alongside financial uncertainty, limited job security and the pressure to continually find new work, especially in a world of AI.

🧭 Freelancing from a working-class background 
Looking at the practical realities of building a freelance career, including unpredictable income and quiet periods throughout the year. We’ll also explore the value of having a flexible part-time job while establishing your career.

📣 Marketing yourself and finding opportunities 
Exploring different ways to find work and get your photography in front of potential clients, including pitching, cold emails, LinkedIn, Instagram and TikTok.

🤝 Building professional relationships 
Looking at the importance of assisting and shadowing other photographers. This includes asking questions, capturing behind-the-scenes content and becoming a reliable extra pair of hands on set.

💪 Building resilience and managing rejection 
Discussing how to deal with rejection and setbacks without allowing them to affect your confidence, motivation or sense of self-worth.

💬 The session will close with an open Q&A and informal discussion, creating space to connect, reflect, and share ideas.

About the Organisers

Shahfaq Shahbaz is an award-winning British Pakistani freelance portrait, fashion and commercial photographer based between Milton Keynes and London. Inspired by culture, youth, diversity, heritage and colour, she creates bold, story-driven imagery that celebrates people, identity and human connection. Her clients and collaborators include ASOS, Whistles, Sainsbury’s, The Telegraph, InPost and Dishoom, alongside photographing at London Fashion Week. Shahfaq was named a Portrait of Britain winner for The Power of the Veil, a portrait celebrating Muslim women, and has exhibited work exploring South Asian identity and heritage. She has also featured in a Science Museum documentary and delivered a guest talk at University of the Arts London. Through her work, Shahfaq is passionate about increasing representation and encouraging emerging creatives from underrepresented and working-class backgrounds to pursue careers within the creative industries.

The Photography Foundation is a London-based charity set up in 2019 to create pathways into photography careers and the wider creative industries. We are driven by our belief that everyone deserves a fulfilling creative career, and that creativity thrives when barriers to opportunity are removed. We have grown into a dynamic hub of creativity, community, and career development for diverse audiences. Our events programme is designed to support a sustainable creative career by enhancing your skills, promoting wellbeing, and underlining the importance of making time for inspiration and creativity in your practice. Our programme brings together a range of events with different pricing levels, allowing us to better reflect the breadth of the photography and creative careers landscape. To ensure our events remain accessible, we offer a select number of bursary tickets for paid events, and all ticket proceeds help us to continue to deliver low cost and free events for our community. We are The Photography Foundation - empowering emerging creatives to see, capture, and shape their futures

📸 Photo Tips Online Talks FAQs

🎯 What Are Photo Tips Online Talks?

The Photo Tips Online Talk Series is a safe learning space for photographers of all experience levels. Hosted by The Photography Foundation, these one-hour virtual sessions feature guest speakers from across the creative and photographic industries.

Whether you're a beginner or a seasoned pro, our talks offer a chance to:

• Learn new photography techniques and career tips

• Understand image licensing and brand pitching

• Hear firsthand insights from professionals in the industry

• Ask questions and engage in open discussion

👥 Who Can Join?

• Age: Open to anyone aged 16+

• Experience Level: All levels welcome — from total beginners to professional photographers!

🎟️ Tickets & Cost

• Pay What You Can - Suggested donation: £3 per session

• Can’t pay right now? No problem — enter £0 at checkout to join for free.

As a registered charity, your contributions help support our mission: using photography as a tool to drive positive social change and fight poverty.

💻 How to Join

1. Book your ticket via our Ticket Tailor event page.

2. Receive a confirmation email with the Zoom link.

📹 Recording

Can’t make it? Register anyway and we’ll send you the recording afterwards. Faces from the participants will not be publicly shared. You can watch all previous Photo Tips talks in our YouTube digital library.

📧 Accessibility

If you have any accessibility requirements or questions please email Events@thephotographyfoundation.org

Image credits: @ShahfaqShahbaz