Photographer profile: Justin Kase Conder
At first blush, you might not term a guy who once drove across the country in a three-cylinder Geo Metro, waded across waist-deep rivers in Costa Rica with his camera gear (falling only once) and who just resigned from his full-time job in favor of a life with no guaranteed income as a “cautious” kind of guy.
But though photographer Justin Kase Conder definitely takes risks, he looks before he leaps, and he always has a backup plan.
“Let’s call them ‘calculated risks,’” Conder said.
Thus far, his risks have paid off. He worked solely as a freelancer for two years. There have been lean times and a few instances where his gear has gone kaput, but he has always been able to sidestep calamity — he’s continued to work as a photographer without being fearful of a couch-surfing spell or resorting to other types of work.
And now, after a two-year stint with a newspaper publishing group in Baltimore, Maryland, he’s relaunching his freelance career, this time with a renewed emphasis on commercial photography. He’s confident he’ll be able to make ends meet, and believes he may even be in for a raise.
“Any income that I’ve ever produced in my entire life has come from taking pictures,” Conder, who had his first photo published in Sports Illustrated at the age of 16, said. “All I’ve ever been paid for my entire life–maybe I mowed lawns when I was 12, but aside from that, all my income has come from taking pictures.”
Conder knows that isn’t a typical career path. When he started classes at Fresno State University he was warned it would be extremely difficult to break into photojournalism. He was told most people aren’t able to make it a career.
But he decided he would pursue it anyway, since it met all of his requirements for a profession: It would allow him to work outside, he’d meet different people every day and he could show up to work in a t-shirt and jeans.
While he did take photojournalism classes, he majored in liberal studies so he could teach in the event photography didn’t pan out for him.
Thankfully, pan out it did. He landed five newspaper internships, working for the Modesto Bee, the Auburn Journal, the St. Louis Post Dispatch, the Boston Globe, and the Grand Forks Herald in North Dakota.
The Boston Globe is the stunning big name there, but Conder said that of the five experiences, he looks most fondly upon his time in North Dakota.
“The people that I met and experienced there were unlike anybody I had ever met or experienced anywhere else, and they totally fulfilled what I wanted when I got into this profession,” Conder said. “Humongous sky country. I loved it. I loved every minute of it. It was an awesome experience.”
He also landed a gig working for his university’s athletic department, traveling to photograph Fresno’s nationally ranked football team. He put all his money into photography gear, and maximized it by spending hours scouring eBay for the best possible deals.
“I had to save a tremendous amount of money to purchase the gear I needed,” he said. “Back then, I was an eBay fiend.”
Conder said his portfolio was given a shot in the arm after he got the opportunity to photograph professional sports for a wire service. One problem: He only made money if his photos sold.
Nonetheless, he traveled the country shooting NASCAR, NFL football and Major League Baseball. He was a full-time freelance photographer, living on a shoestring budget.
“I was kind of thrust into the pro market,” he said. “I wasn’t making a lot of money–I wasn’t making any money.”
But he remained confident that both the experience and the shots he was accruing would eventually pay off.
“It enabled me to build a huge portfolio of that kind of work,” he said, adding that many photographers run into a frustrating paradox while trying to accomplish that. “You can’t get to that level unless you’re shooting that kind of stuff in the first place, but you can’t shoot that stuff until you’re at that level.”
Though he had amassed all the necessary gear for the job and he was getting by, the stability of a regular income began to sound enticing; it would enable him to pay off all his debts and put him in a position where he could take even more calculated risks.
He took a job with Patuxent Publishing near Baltimore, where he had the chance to work briefly with an inspiring photography director he had met while on an assignment in Deleware. He continued to freelance as often as he could–shooting NASCAR, NFL games, both the Summer and the Winter X Games, and taking a jaunt to Central America at one point–and started to beef up his list of the sorts of clients he would need in order to earn a full-time income as a freelancer.
Conder had a solid a portfolio and a reputation as an accomplished editorial photographer, but he didn’t consider venturing into commercial or portrait photography because he thought it involved a skill set that was as yet foreign to him.
He discarded that notion, he said, after assisting a few commercial photographers on shoots.
“I realized that they didn’t do anything more than I did,” he said. “They did a guess and check—you evaluate the scene and try out some different things and see what works.”
For those people interested in pursuing a career in photography, Conder has a few words of advice.
While taking pictures is obviously a vital part of a photographer’s job, Conder stressed that in many cases the actual act of taking the photos represents a very small part of the process. He mentioned a shoot with Baltimore Ravens fullback Lorenzo Neil as an example.
“I spent probably two or three hours in preparation, and I got 13 minutes with the guy, and then I spent another two or three hours tearing everything down, processing images and sending them to the client,” Conder said. “I took pictures of him for literally only 13 minutes.”
While photographic quality is always important, Conder said that in the world of commercial photography, being business savvy can count for a lot. If you’re headed into editorial photography, however, he said you should be prepared to deal with scathingly critical eyes: Editors in that area of the profession see a lot of photos, and they know their stuff.
Overall, he said, the profession can be challenging.
“I wouldn’t discourage anybody from pursuing what they’re interested in doing,” he said. “What I would say is to have realistic expectations and understand that it’s going to be hard.”
Conder said he’s ready to work hard as a freelancer, and he isn’t worried about starving.
“Right now things are going well and I seem to have a lot of work lately. There’s ebbs and flows, and right now there’s a lot of flow.”
Justin Kase Conder is a commercial and editorial photographer based in the D.C., Baltimore region who regularly has his photographs published in major national publications. A partial list of his clients includes the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Sports Illustrated, Kaiser Permanente, Clark Construction, USA Hockey, NFL Networks, the Western Athletic Conference and the Boston Globe. Learn more about his work at www.justinkaseconder.com.
This is a great read! I can’t believe you (justin) were in sports illustrated at the age of 16. I pray nightly to be so fortunate. Stay up!
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