arrow_back Back to Dashboard search Browse Jobs
Fulcrum logo

Fulcrum

Lead Photographer and Studio Manager

🗓️ Posted 2026-09-10 Canberra Fulltime Hybrid Advertising Arts Media

Company shared salary

NA

Market rate

A$6,500–A$9,000/mo (A$78,000–A$108,000/yr)

Based on similar roles (title + domain + location).

About the Company

Fulcrum Canberra On site We have partnered with a major Australian cultural institution on a newly designed role leading their photography studio. They hold a collection of national significance, only a small part of which is ever on display, so photography is how most of it reaches the public. The studio is heading into a period of real investment and unusually high access to the collection, which makes this a good moment to take it on.

About the Role

This is a player coach position. You will lead a small in house studio team, and you will also shoot. Object and studio photography makes up the bulk of the work. The rest of your time goes to the things that make a studio function: the standard the team photographs to, the priorities you agree with curatorial and exhibitions colleagues, and the judgement about where the studio's effort is best spent when the requests exceed what a small team can deliver.

Responsibilities

  • ● and there is appetite to develop 3D and emerging imaging approaches where they earn their place.
  • ● What you will do
  • ● Photograph the collection yourself. This is a hands on role and you will carry a meaningful share of the shooting.
  • ● Lead a small team of photographers, covering standards, workflow, priorities and development.
  • ● Set the technical standard the studio photographs to, and hold contractors to it when the team scales up for busier periods.
  • ● Agree priorities with curatorial, exhibitions and collection colleagues, and decide which objects come to the front of the queue.
  • ● Plan how the studio works through periods of high collection access, when objects are photographed at the point they are handled.
  • ● Photograph the institution's significant public events with a considered style.
  • ● Keep the studio current on capture technology, and build those skills across neighbouring teams rather than holding them in one unit.
  • ● Oversee studio spaces, equipment and environments, including input into facilities as they are upgraded.
  • ● What you will bring
  • ● Professional photography experience where the image itself is the product. Studio, object, product, editorial, food and agency backgrounds are all relevant.
  • ● The ability to shoot to a studio standard at pace and outside a controlled set, not only under ideal conditions.
  • ● Real leadership experience. You have set standards, managed workload and shaped how a team works together, not simply held the senior title.
  • ● Sound judgement on prioritisation, including the confidence to decline work that does not warrant your team's time.
  • ● A working knowledge of contemporary capture and imaging technology, and a view on where it is heading.
  • ● Cultural or heritage collection experience is welcome but not required. What matters is that you grasp quickly how object handling, access controls and conservation requirements change the way you work.
  • ● Who this role is for
  • ● You are a photographer who has stopped measuring success purely by your own portfolio. The work you are proudest of now includes work you did not personally shoot.
  • ● You are patient. Access to the collection is mediated and controlled, and the pace reflects that. You will wait for a conservator, a logistics officer, a truck. The best collection photographers use that time rather than resent it. They watch an object as it is retrieved and unboxed, and they are composing before they pick up a camera.