58 PPMAG.COM
PLAYING IT SMART
Having continued photography as a hobby,
Wallace long dreamed of returning to it as a
career. He was competent with a camera and
had professional experience at various levels
but would have to adapt to digital. His strength
was being unconsciously competent at busi-
ness. He knew negotiations and contracts;
he knew that people seek value in whom
they hire. That meant distinguishing himself
in both style and market. He assessed his
skills and desires. His images tended to be
“quite dramatic, dark moody sky, the hero
shot,” he says. “That’s naturally the way I do
things.” He liked photographing people but
didn’t want to be in an industry that focus-
ed on people. He looked into commercial work
and determined his style best fit the automo-
tive industry, particularly the high-end market.
“When you buy a Ferrari, it’s not for prac-
tical purposes. It’s an emotional purchase,”he says. “An emotional purchase requires an
emotional image, to get your hair to stand
up on your neck.” When he makes a carbon
splitter look sexy, he’s earned his client sever-
al thousand dollars per look. High-end man-
ufacturers also would have the budgets to
commission his style of work.
With his vision in place, Wallace worked
out his game plan. Its most important com-
ponent: commitment. This is no mere plati-
tude but a specific strategy. Starting a busi-
ness, he says, “is a massive stone ball. The
hardest thing to do is get it moving, and the
first few years it’s really hard to keep it go-
ing.” That first year he committed seven days
every week to AmbientLife, spending the
first five hours of each day researching po-
tential clients, introducing himself to people,
and building contacts.
“I call it farming: research and planting
seeds,” he says. “Some seeds pop out of theground in a month, some seeds might take
two or three years.” After an hour’s break for
lunch, Wallace spent 10 to 12 hours practic-
ing. “A car is a multiangle, multilayered sur-
face, a nightmare to light,” he says. “If I do
something really difficult and try to perfect
that, then my competition is drastically nar-
rowed down.” Wallace often worked on im-
ages of dark cars in dark environments:
hence, switching out his own Audi. Now
based in Manchester, still far from U.K. ad-
vertising centers, Wallace had to address
his geography. “You get your name and brand
known in the area you live, then in the county
you live, then in the country, then worldwide.”
The Aston Martin plant where vintage mod-
els are restored is located in his area. Wal-
lace paid to take a tour, and when he met the
workshop manager, he made a point to get
acquainted. A few days later, he made an ap-
pointment with the manager. “What’s your