Like and Subscribe

i think this might be one of my biggest wins yet. the client that i photographed last week reached out last night and asked if i would be willing to work with her on a regular basis as part of a monthly subscription. basically, meet for about 20-30 minutes per week during lunch breaks once a week. this client, who booked after seeing my photos of a mutual friend of ours on instagram, is set to become my biggest account ever. through instagram.

my mind is a little bit blown, to be honest. i would never have even thought to offer a photo subscription service, but it’s actually kind of brilliant. meet once every week or every other week, or once a month even. not only do you get a ton of photos without spending a whole day sorting through outfits and getting completely exhausted by the end, but i can work with three or four people in a day and still have hours to process and edit all the photos for a quick turnaround.

i think i may have accidentally been shown a way to offer something that no one else is offering. is this my future? we’re meeting tomorrow, for shoot number two, and i have a feeling that i’ll find out soon enough.

You Miss All the Ones You Don’t Swing For

it’s ironic, isn’t it? i post about no more rest days, talking about how i need to stop aiming for the day off, and then, satisfied with my conclusion, i blissfully forget to post the following day. dammit.

i’m going to make this missed post up, and will double-post today. but first, let’s talk about this. how did it happen? well, the truth is, as i’ve mentioned before, i am married. and therefore, my time is not always my own. yesterday, shanima and i had a full day of taking care of ourselves and each other, and we got a lot accomplished. two hours and 15 minutes in the gym, including 45 minutes of muscle-ripping arm and chest exercises, then 45 minutes on the elliptical machine running intervals (alternating one minute of medium resistance and one minute of high resistance) and clocking in 4.6 equivalent miles, then 15 minutes on the treadmill programmed to a high-incline fat-burning setting, alternately jogging and speed walking (with the treadmill alternating between its steepest incline and the two next-highest levels). after that, we came back home, slammed back a protein shake, and divided and conquered. she got the meal prep going while i ran the laundry downstairs. in between changing out the loads, i helped in the kitchen, and the. when it was all done, i laid it out in piles and then went to help finish in the kitchen, packing up the finished dishes into lunch containers so we can grab and go in the mornings. once that was all done, we moved to the bedroom and folded clothes, and then i cleaned the bathroom. by the time we were done with that, it was basically time to call it a night, and we laid down to watch a movie together. and i completely forgot to blog.

i would argue that it’s a good thing that i have my wife and our life my full focus yesterday. but dailies are dailies, and i missed one that is fundamental to this journey. gotta do better next time. speaking of next time, i should close this out so i can move on to post number two and give you all some good news.

The Day Off

i’ve got a problem. and i didn’t realize it until i was reading stock.henry’s latest posts. i am way too focused on the rest day. it’s a point of contention between shanima and i on a semi-regular basis. she never knows how to relax and take a day off, and i feel like the day off is part of the reason to work so hard on other days, as if it’s something that is earned. and maybe it is earned, but it shouldn’t be the reason for doing anything.

a day off for nothing, with no plans. why do i want this? i have so many things that i want to be doing, so really the day off in my mind is a day when i have no obligations to anyone so i can work on whatever i want to for a few hours. and then i can just veg out and binge watch some stupid show that shanima would never watch with me. i don’t think there is anything wrong with this per se, but the truth is, i don’t have time for days off. not if i want to meet my goals for the year.

so i’m taking a vow to stop prioritizing the rest day and the pursuit of nothingness. because that will only bring me nothing. i’m already running high octane, but i can do more. gotta step it up if i want to get to the top.

Three Qs

i get the sense that a lot of photographers out there are working from this perspective of trying to eek out every cent from their customers. charge by the photo, by the edit, by the retouch, and throw in expenses to boot. and bizarrely, make the clients wait some arbitrary amount of time before sending off the final product.

the truth is, i could probably get away with doing that, too. it’s status quo. but quo isn’t a q that i want to include in my business vocabulary. i’ve decided that my practice is going to be focused instead on three other q’s: quality, quantity, and quickness.

when i was arranging the photo shoot that i completed earlier this week, the client seemed surprised that i would be combing through the photos and sending off final edits within 48 hours. she said that she generally receives a link to an online album where she can select the photos she would like edited and then later the photographer will send her those images. to me, that just seems so old-fashioned and unnecessarily slooooowwwwww.

the way some photographer talk about editing, you would think they’re taking their digital negatives into a dark room. but the truth of it is, lightroom and other raw-to-jpeg editing software makes workflow extremely fast.

the antiquated slow-photo camp is only going to continue losing share as people get more and more used to the instant gratification that they can get from having a friend snap a photo of them with their cell phone. even more than that, a lot of cameras nowadays come equipped with wifi and bluetooth and allow instant sharing of photos straight out of camera. some even come with presets that let photographers do basic edits right then and there, and with lightroom cc mobile, you could feasibly take someone’s photo in raw format, export it to your phone or ipad, and then run a quick edit and send out a finished photo within a matter of minutes. so really even my own 48-hour guarantee is going to be antiquated in a few years. so i’ll need to make sure that once i join the mirrorless movement i am closing the gap and pushing for a 24-hour guarantee.

i would give photographers the benefit of the doubt and say that they’re excused from turning around edits quickly because maybe their calendar is full and they are taking thousands of photos per week. But I work 60-plus hours per week on non-photography work and so i don’t see myself as being any less handicapped than a busy photographer. besides, i used to be an editor for eight local newspapers and i was turning around thousands of photos per week while also producing written content to fill those pages. all of my edits were done the day of the event because otherwise there was no way i could get my papers to the printer on time. so i stick to my no excuses stance.

the bottom line is that quality, quantity and quickness are marketable skills that can be monetized, and once word gets around that i am delivering on this level, i can monetize it.

Photos for Lunch AAR

it’s been a while since i did an after action review, and since i did a photo shoot at a not-so-ideal time of day yesterday, i think it’s worth talking through the ups and downs of it.

what was supposed to happen?

i got in touch with an influencer when she followed me on instagram after seeing some of my photos from a recent shoot for a mutual friend of ours. we talked through a few potential scenarios and settled on a casual soho lifestyle photo shoot.

what did happen?

we allotted about 30 minutes for the shoot, and so i had very little time to him and haw about where to roam once we got on site. so in preparation, i took a virtual stroll through the neighborhood using google street view and picked out several potential stops along the way. this really came in handy. we started off at the roxy hotel and then wandered down white street. in my research, i found an historic custom neon shop along that street and we stopped in for a couple of photos there as well. the client’s cab was caught in traffic so we only had about 20 minutes to accomplish what we set out to do, and that made things interesting.

what went right?

the client was a true pro and we got a time and date locked in within a week of first contact. but the start of this was that i received a follow, i sent a kind note to thank her for the support, and we started a conversation through which i was able to close a sale. so that is the first thing that went right. next, my research really paid off, because i was ready for action and even though we only had 20 minutes together, i was able to deliver 82 images this morning.

and that is another thing that went right. my workflow has become very tight, and i was able to roll through the initial batch of about 140 images and select the best-executed shots and edit them in less than two hours. so that is a win. and finally, despite the short time frame, i was able to deliver photos that featured a wide variety of aspect ratios, expressions and movements so she has plenty of images to choose from. despite it being a single outfit shoot, there are enough differences between the photos to keep them from being too repetitive.

something that was out of my control that went right is that it was overcast during the shoot, so we had nice, soft and flattering light to work with and i didn’t have to resort to any tricks like diffusers or hiding in shadows to get good photos.

and finally, best of all the client loved the photos. she already shared the first of them today, and it’s beint well-received by her followers. what more could i ask for?

what went wrong?

something i noticed while i was pulling my 50mm lens out of the back was that there was some dust on the front of the lens. i tried wiping it off, but it seems that it was something other than dust and a bit sticky, so the few images i shot with that lens have some oddness to them, looking a bit dreamy around the edges. this wasn’t really a problem for most shots, but a couple were negatively impacted by the smudging.

another thing that went wrong is that i cut a few of the images to tightly so the won’t fit on instagram quite perfectly. there were only a few images that had this problem. but there were others that i shot too wide, so i ended up cropping out a huge chunk of the photo and sacrificing a lot of resolution.

what can i do to improve for next time?

i need to do a full and proper inspection of my lenses and sensor before every shoot. if i had relied on my 50mm for the whole photo shoot or even a significant portion of it, that could’ve been a major let down for the client, who would’ve received dreamy yet imperfect photos. of course some people would like that look, but i prefer a base layer of clarity. you can always artistically blur after the fact if that is what you want to do.

the results

i’ve talked about the photos and the shoot enough now. i’ll let you judge the results for yourself.

Street

let’s get back to the lesson plan. keep in mind these are purely built out of my own experience and interpretation of the art of photography. there is probably a lot missing. but at least i can give you a starting point.

outside of selfies, street photography is probably the most prevalent genre of photography today. it is accessible, and thanks to increasingly capable smartphone and consumer cameras, just about anyone can do it.

there are a lot of different approaches to street, but i’ll break it down into two central categories.

first, there is the purely incidental. you’re at the night market, the old couple is cooking and the only light is a neon sign, the cook fire and an old crt television. smoke is rising off of the stir fry in the pan, and diffusing the light. the old man is watching the tv with his hand on his hip. he is shiny with sweat and cooking oil. the old woman is standing with arm hands clasped behind her back, leaning forward on her feet and looking down the street with a determined and hopeful look on her face, hoping to see their next customer. snap.

the second type of street photography is a little more about the scene itself. you find a composition that is compelling. it’s mid-afternoon and the shadows are long but still harsh. you set up in an archway and wait for a passerby to cross the span of the arch. a businessman with a briefcase and a long coat pushes against the wind into your frame, giving his frenetic pace and posture perfectly counterbalancing the stillness and stoicism of your composition. the long shadows give a sense that the day is waning, and this man’s movements complete that statement so you let the shutter speed stay open just a hair longer than necessary. snap.

there is obviously a lot more to street photography, but these two approaches are a great starting point. they force you to work on your fundamentals while also being adaptable. to take the completely random and bring it to order. each of the two scenes i described above are lost in the chaos of the urban environment, passed by without a second thought thousands of times per day. it would be easy to miss them. to walk by and say that there is nothing interesting worth shooting. so i guess the challenge of street is to look at the world not as you see it, but as it could be seen if it was frozen in amber, locked into stasis.

High Noon

most people will tell you that the best advise for shooting outdoor portraits at noon is don’t do it. but sometimes there is no choice, because that is when the client is available. tomorrow i’ll be shooting some outdoor portraits in soho and i’ve been wracking my brain to put together the best way to make the photos pop.

my challenges are threefold.

first, the natural lighting at noon is harsh and unflattering, meaning that unfiltered it will leave deep shadows on the face. to get around this i am going to be finding pockets of shade and using my reflector as a fill light. i’m also going to use a diffuser to soften the direct sunlight so that i don’t have to only shoot in shade. and last, i will be breaking out the softbox for my key light and using the sun as a hair and shoulder light. i am going to have to be super efficient in my setup and tear down given the time constraints, and think that the best option will be to save the softbox for last if at all possible so that i can put it away on my own time after the client and i have parted or finished our shoot. to be honest i’m kind of hoping tomorrow is a bit cloudy, but i will work with whatever weather mother nature doles out to me.

second, we will only have about 30 to 45 minutes to get a good variety of shots. i generally like to have about 90 minutes witt a client to make sure that we have plenty of time to explore each scene and get just the right feel. to work around this, i’m doing extra homework in advance. using google street views to pinpoint specific places where there is interesting architecture to work with so that we can move straight from point to point with as little meandering as possible between the shots.

finally, the client has expressed a preference for a natural look, so i’m going to have to tone down the theatrics on this shoot. normally i would be thinking of a million ways to get creative with lighting and diffusion, but in this case, the less affected the photo, the better. i guess maybe this isn’t a challenge so much as a limitation, and one that i’m some ways makes my job easier. but a constraint is a constraint.

on the upside, tomorrow’s photo shoot is for what you could call an influencer. beyond just having more photos to share, the client will be sharing the images with a fairly substantial network of followers, and that can only help my own channel grow. speaking of channel growth, i should update. about a month ago, i had roughly 530 followers on instagram, and today, i am at nearly 640. so definitely the use of 30 hashtags in my first comment on each photo, the use of a couple of hashtags in stories, and just generally being friendly and following back people who follow me - and probably more importantly, sending them a personal thank you note for following and liking several of their images and leaving a comment or two, is a successful strategy. about 10 accounts followed and then unfollowed, so i cut ties with them (i have an app to track this activity because i find it so dishonest). beyond follower growth, my page has been a lot more active, with my photos now averaging around 45 to 50 rather than 25 to 30. so not a massive surge, but definitely an uptick.

Gear Lust (part three)

i’m finally coming back to it, i started this blog writing about gear lust and i’m falling into that old trap again. but this time i am coming at it from a lot more skeptical angle. whereas three months ago i could have told you the fifty reasons why i absolutely need a drone to bring my game to the next level, today i am asking a new question. do i even actually want a drone? i have been pining over this idea that i am going to get a drone before the big trip. i’ve spent countless hours thinking about how necessary it is for me to get one so i can get sweet buttery footage of all the places we’ll go. and now i’m coming up to the point where i will actually purchase one and thinking…wtf am i even doing? why do i need this?

as i dive deeper into the photo game, i find myself realizing how out of date my canon 5d mark iii with its 22.3 megapixel sensor has become. and i wonder if the smarter decision would be to invest in a higher-resolution camera so i can take seriously out-of-this-world photos on my travels.

i’m so glad this isn’t a decision i need to make now or even within the next two months. because i realize i have a lot of weighing of options to do.

part of me is very attached to the idea of getting the drone and moving forward with the travel video plans. but another part of me wonders, if it’s so important and i see it as so valuable, then why haven’t i stitched together the footage i already have from iceland? my primary obstacle is that every waking hour lately has been sucked up by job, workout, travel planning or photography lately. but the truth is if i wanted to be doing it i would be doing it. and i’m not doing it, so how do i get myself to want to be?

going back to the original quandary, i am starting to think that maybe there is another option. maybe i need to go cheaper on the drone and buy a 42-megapixel or higher mirrorless body. maybe that would be the right call. or maybe the right call is to buy nothing. live in the moment and leave all the tech nonsense at home. bring the camera i have, the lenses i have, and do what i can with them. forget about travel videos and just be a person out there being present in the world. the more i think about it, the more i feel like that might be the right answer.

i’ll probably still buy a drone. and whether it’s before or after this trip, i’ll absolutely be buying a higher resolution camera to take my portraits and landscapes to the next level. but maybe this need i’m feeling to upgrade is manufactured, driven by gear lust and not by actual need.

i have a lot of thinking to do.

The Long Game

for me, it’s always important to understand the why behind the what. i can’t endorse something unless it’s part of a larger scheme. if i am playing a video game i need to be recording it and turning it into a youtube series. if i’m taking photos, it’s about building the portfolio or the client base. if i’m writing a novel, it’s part of a series. i’m kind of all or nothing in my approach.

as i sink into this omnichannel mode, i am starting to realize that i need to be more disciplined. i haven’t made much progress on the novel since the first week of january after i hit a point where i need to introduce more characters and am trying to figure out who they should be. i came up with a possible scenario to give them shape, but i rolled it back after realizing that it kind of blows the load a bit early on some of the elements that i want to trickle in piece by piece as the story unfolds. back to the drawing board. and i really find myself wishing i had an actual drawing board to scribble this stuff out on sometimes. i need to look on amazon and see how much a whiteboard is and just get one. write it out, take a picture, erase, start again. take the stock henry approach.

on the photo front, i think i’ve found my rhythm, and i’ve pretty much abandoned my efforts to solicit customers on thumbtack because i’m getting organic inquiries and bookings at this point that are sustaining me. i’m only one gig away from paying off every penny that i’ve invested into my photo gear and online presence. one gig away from being able to buy that drone and maybe even start looking at a mirrorless camera body. from investing in nd and polarizer filters—absolute must-haves for my upcoming travel to europe in april and australasia in june through august. i haven’t really talked about that here, so that will be fodder for posts to come, but the exciting news is that the logistics for europe are 100% booked and australasia is about 75% booked with only two local connecting flights and about a week of hotels and buses left to lock in. we still have some tours and attractions to book for both trips, but essentially we’ll be able to do both of these without dipping into savings and that is huge. especially since as far as we know, i might not have a job when we get back.

i’ve been soft-offered a position at a pr firm that would be a pretty good move from a financial standpoint, and that will hopefully be what i end up doing since we are really focused on investing in a multi-family home sometime in 2020 as part of our retirement plan. depending on how that job pans out, i may find myself with less time for photography and fiction writing, but i’m willing to make that sacrifice for the short-term in order to secure financing and start building equity. once that process is settled out, i plan to take a step back from working for others full time so that i can dedicate more time to writing and photography and build income my own way. of course all of these will depend on how the economy shakes out.

this is a bit of a ramble, but i need to lay all this out. i need to put it on the board so that i can start really organizing this into a salient process and make it happen. i’ve been lucky enough to ascend through journalism purely based on recruiters calling me up for better and better jobs at opportune times, but from here on out i’m going to have to be a lot more proactive when it comes to taking charge of my career path. we only get one life, and i want mine to be mine.

Pay-to-Play

i was planning on continuing with the lesson plan today. and then i thought i would put together a post talking about how i had the chance to get my photos featured on an 111k-follower instagram account. but then i started working through the “application process” and realized that it was just a pay-to-play scheme. i feel bad for all the suckers that fall into that trap. glad i’m not going to be one of them. and wondering what it is that people think will come of the investment into being featured alongside a bunch of other paying customers to an audience of…who knows. really sad.

but on the positive side, i have a booking for tuesday afternoon that was sourced through instagram as a result of some of the photos i took last friday night. so i guess while some people have proven they’re out there to waste time and feed off of other people’s feeds, others are out there truly looking to participate.

Editorial

it could be argued that the best place to start as a photographer is with editorial work. well maybe street photography would be a better jumping off point, but what i am talking about is paid photography work. editorial is work that comes with a purpose, and that purpose is usually assigned and clearly defined in advanced. having a purpose takes away some of the hesitation that can be a part of initial forays into photographing people in public. it establishes the parameters, and when you’re starting out in photography, parameters are just the training wheels you need!

when shooting editorial work, chances are you’re not going to be in full manual mode. aperture priority and time value (shutter speed) priority are going to be your friends. the truth is, a lot of times during editorial shooting, the lighting and subject speed is constantly in a state of flux, making it nearly impossible to keep up if you’re constantly tweaking your settings. the best thing you can do is set your iso as low as the environment allows, and then let your camera decide what shutter speed or aperture is required to get the shot. if you’re in aperture priority with a locked-in iso, your camera might decide that you need a long exposure to get the shot, and that might not be an option for you. if that is the case, change your exposure compensation by a stop or two so that the camera adjusts the shutter speed to be faster by one or two stops (or a third of a stop, two-thirds, etc.) as needed.

the key to editorial is to be flexible, responsive to the environment around you. you can’t be thinking about what your camera is doing the whole time you’re out shooting editorial or you will miss the moment and you’ll miss all the best shots.

another thing to keep in mind as an editorial photographer is that your body is very much a part of the process. you need to assertively put your body in the right place to get the shot. you want to be as sensitive as you can be not to interrupt the environment that you’re documenting, but you also can’t afford to be timid because you’ll miss the shot. or maybe you will get it but from an amateurish angle that makes it clear you weren’t where you needed to be. that can almost be worse.

finally, editorial photography is also about being patient. no one wants a photo of what happened a split second before a baseball player swings his bat to hit a series-winning grand slam. or the moment that a groom is reaching in his back pocket to grab a ring to propose to his girlfriend in the bleachers. you’ve got to be patient with your trigger finger and attune yourself to the rhythm of the moment so that your shutter snaps at the exact millisecond that you need it to snap in order to cleanly and accurately capture the bat hitting the ball, the follow through and the eyes of the batter as he watches the ball soar toward the fence, and the rest of the team losing their minds, pouring onto the field when they realize what just happened. you want to capture the moment the girlfriend covers her mouth, arches her eyebrows and widens her eyes in surprise as the ring box is opened, the hopeful and dopey grin on the face of the boyfriend as he realizes she’s going to say yes, and the eruption of joy from the family and friends around them who knew this moment was coming when she actually does say yes.

in essence, editorial work forces you to learn the basics of your camera’s abilities on the fast track well enough to ignore them.

Environmental Portraiture

the first thing to know about portraiture is that it’s all about intent. everything that is in the frame is there for a reason. the setting becomes an extension of your subject, and the subject matter defines what action or position will be chosen.

photographing a chef? the portraits could be captured in the kitchen if the subject matter is something that the chef cooks. or it could be standing in the dining room of their restaurant. or in front of the restaurant. are they cocky? arms crossed, with the photo taken at a slightly up-tilted angle. are they timid? one hand on their neck looking down and smiling with the other hand placed on the counter, with the fram captured straight on or even aimed ever so slightly downward.. wardrobe? probably their uniform, but that’s not a given since allowing and expressing personality is important. chef’s hat? again, that depends on their personality. the point here is that a lot of what happens in environmental portraiture will occur before the camera is even brought into the picture (sorry for the pun, i couldn’t help myself). the more meticulous the observation, evaluation and conversation about implementation prior to snapping the photo, the better.

and what about the lighting? again, it depends on the subject and the subject matter. but it also depends on what natural light is available to you. chances are you’re going to want to light the subject up with a soft box or similarly diffused light, but it’s just as important to make sure you’re lighting up key background elements in the scene as well. i saw a video on linkedin a while ago that illustrates this point brilliantly (another pun, forgive me). a photographer was taking a portrait of a beekeeper wearing his full beekeeping suit and the mask was making his face dark, so he had to light him accordingly. at the same time, the sun was just peeking over the trees in the background and giving nice ambient light, however the bee boxes, which were about 10-15 feet behind the subject, were in a pocket of shadow. so the photographer placed a remote flash just outside the frame. by adding this lighting at the time of the photo session, the photographer was able to draw out the elements he wanted to be focal points of the portrait in post without sacrificing quality.

in portraiture, quality is everything. iso must be low, and blurring should only happen if it is intentional. to achieve this, it might be necessary to utilize the exposure compensation on your camera - that is a separate lesson - and shoot on either aperture value or time value (shutter speed) priority mode with iso locked in to around 500 or lower (200 or less would be ideal if it’s at all possible). and just important is the quality of the edit. does the subject and subject matter call for a high-contrast, low-saturation, high-clarity edit, or would it be better communicated by a low-contrast, high-vibrancy edit? this is something to think about as you’re setting up the frame, because it will influence lighting placement.

Lesson Plan

when you really stop to think about it, the amount of time it takes to take a really amazing photo can be kind of ridiculous. on the surface it seems so simple. point and shoot. but no, that is really not how a good photo is taken most of the time, except by accident or coincidence.

so how do you boil down the most essential knowledge about camera handling and photography into a digestible lesson plan? how do you know what to include and what to leave out? and in what order to present the information so it doesn’t get all jumbled up?

that is my task over the next few days. and it’s made easy by the fact that this lesson plan will be related to one specific type of photography, which is by coincidence one of the best places to enter into the photo realm: environmental portraiture.

at the outset, my hypothesis is that my goal will be to build a template on which the student can apply their own style once the principles are mastered, or at least understood and adopted. once it is built, i will share it here.

For the Gram

i have a confession to make. i get caught up in the whole instagram thing. i see other people with these massive accounts and i don’t really get how they grow. so i watched a bunch of youtube videos yesterday and no matter how many items were on the lists of dos and don’ts, they all boiled down to these points:

1. don't cheat - buying followers or playing the follow unfollow game is not worth it. fake engagement isn’t what i’m after anyway, so no cheat codes.

2. use hashtags - little did i know there are actually apps that generate hashtags for photos by type, location and other parameters. wild! so i tried one of these out today and it definitely worked. i followed the advice of one youtuber who suggested using the iphone’s create keyboard shortcut function to plug in 30 hashtags so all i have to do is type the word “portrait” and 30 hashtags magically appear.

3. use instagram stories - stories, especially stories that are hash tagged, generate a lot of traffic, and that brings people to your page. i’m not seeing a massive influx of visitors to my page as a result of this, but there is certainly a steady trickle.

4. engage with other people on the platform. - leave real comments that mean something and give people a reason to engage with you, too.

5. maintain a unified look and feel for your page - while i don’t really want to agree with this, i’m sure there is logic to it. personally, i don’t like the idea that i should have to create one account for trace photography, another for macro and miscellaneous photography, and another for portraits. i think if the sole focus is on being huge on instagram, then this probably works wonders. but i also think that pigeonholing ourselves and creating too many channels has more drawbacks than it does benefits. i support the omnichannel approach, but being a huge instagrammer isn’t my focus. instsgram is my daily photo blog, a place to show my photos and be engaged with others who are doing the same.

so those are my five takeaways from hours of youtube content. and the lesson i learned along the way was twofold: listen to those who have been successful, but don’t take what they say without scrutinizing it and putting it through your own filter of desire and intent. take the rules, mold them to your purpose, and make them work specifically for you. that is going to be my approach. i will chase realness and see where it leads.

Macro Monday

a couple of months ago, i picked up some kenko macro extension tubes and i have been really wanting to use them for some close-up small work for a while. i love all kinds of photography, and each specific type of photography has its own draw. and while a lot of people gravitate toward macro to shoot pictures of eyes, bugs and flowers, i think i am more interested in shooting miniatures, like toys. i am attracted to the idea of building small scenes and bringing them to life.

over the weekend, i was doing some cleanup and found some souvenirs we picked up from puerto rico last spring that we never gave to anyone, including some miniature fishing boats that were just so fucking cute.

so this morning, i took some inspiration from a youtuber who suggested using bokeh backgrounds for macro shots. i found a nice sunset image online, wadded up a blue hoody, and made myself an ocean scene. then i dropped the little boat in there and slapped the 30mm extension tube on along with my tamron 70-210mm lens and went to work.

i came away with two images i really liked. the first, because the folds of the shirt were catching some nice ambient light and the boat was at a nice dramatic angle, and the second because the setting sun is in just the right spot and the netting is very clear due to the angle i shot the photo.

the one issue i have with these photos is that the front of the boat is catching some ambient light from the room and reflecting that a bit, which makes no sense because the sun is behind the boat and the color of the light is off. i’m being super critical to find that problem, but i feel like those details matter, so next time i engage in macro work, i’m going to try to correct for that issue. live and learn, act and review.

anyway, since i’ve already broken the photo seal, here are the two images i shot this morning. don’t get too spoiled, though. i don’t necessarily plan on posting photos every day.

Friday Night Lights

up to this point, i’ve consciously avoided including photos on this blog. and there’s been good reason for that up until now. but today i am breaking from that tradition. i have decided that it makes sense for me to include key shots from the events and portrait sessions i am working here because a lot of them will never make my portfolio but i still think they’re worth sharing for worth giving more than an instagram post to.

so here are 14 shots from the portrait session that i’ve talked about in the last three blog posts. i took a lot more - around 350 clicks from start to finish - and i delivered about 50. several of the photos were different versions of these shots. i like to provide my clients with many options for each situation to give them a chance to sift through several pleasing options and pick favorites. knowing that they’re likely to only share a fraction of the images, i love being able give someone as many examples of their individual aesthetic beauty as i am able. i guess that is part of my aim to be something of an unlicensed photo therapist. maybe that is a topic for another post, but for now, i think the point is made.

About Last Night…

the photo shoot last night was an epiphany come to life. it was one of those nights where everything came together perfectly and i couldn’t have asked for better results. i tried out a lot of different ideas i have had building up for a while and they all worked how i hoped they would.

it’s late, and i have an early morning tomorrow so i will talk about this more in the after action review tomorrow or monday (depending on whether or not i am inspired to write something different tomorrow!). but for now i just want to say that the last few months of research and immersion into the world of photography have really started to pay off.

Let Your Control Freak Flag Fly

i saw a picture yesterday that made me question everything. it was such a simple thing. a photo of a girl sitting in central park taken on an iphone xs. the lighting was beautiful, and the portrait mode background blur was, well, it was actually really good. in fact, i’m pretty sure it looks better than the bokeh my canon 50mm f/1.8 stm lens would’ve produced in the same scenario. smoother, less messy, and just generally more pleasing on first glance, which if we’re being honest is all that matters. the photo could be printed at decent size and look fantastic.

it got me to thinking. what am i doing trying to get back into photography nowadays? people don’t need photographers anymore, because they’ve got smartphones with algorithms that are smarter than i’ll ever be. the camera in their pocket is nearly as capable as my first dslr, and it’s only a matter of time before large format cameras are completely obsolete.

it got me thinking about what truly sets a photographer apart. we spend so much time thinking about gear and spec sheets these days, and that’s just the opiate that assuages us. we revel in our f stops and our megapixels, but without the right application, none of that means anything.

after seeing that photo yesterday, i found myself lusting after another lens yesterday - the sigma 135mm f/1.8 art lens. i started going down the path of “my current portrait lens isn’t even as good as a smartphone in portrait mode, so i should get a lens that will produce an effect that a smartphone can’t.” but after stepping back, taking a deep breath, and meditating on it for a few hours i realized that i was looking at the problem all wrong. just because a smartphone can’t produce a result equal to that of a 135mm f/1.8 lens today doesn’t mean it can’t be trained to do it tomorrow. getting a new lens won’t solve anything.

getting my mind back onto the track it was riding while i wrote up yesterday’s post, i am remembering that the camera and the lens are only a part of the equation, and as much as it hurts me to say it, they’re probably not even the most important part. instead of ramping myself up to justifying a $1,000 new lens, i need to be thinking about the creative ways that i can take photos that can’t be taken with a smartphone, or at least not casually.

it’s time for me to branch out and work around the camera. controlling my setting, placement, lighting, atmosphere. all of these things are what will make my photography interesting and relevant. tonight i’m going to push my own boundaries. rather than documenting what i see as an observer, i’m asserting myself and taking control. i will encourage my model tonight to do the same. this is about more than simple photographs—it’s about empowering myself and my subject to be more present, more individual and less basic.

i’m not going to be doing anything that hasn’t been done before, at least i am not planning to. but i am going to be doing things i’ve never done before. who knows that that will lead to.

I See the Light

for some types of photography, having a specific camera and lens combo is actually important. if you’re shooting fast-moving subjects in a low-light scenario, then not just any kit will do. your best bet will be a full-frame camera, at least a sony a7 ii (probably the cheapest new camera you can buy in this category at the moment) or a canon 6d mark ii. and you’ll need a wide aperture lens. best to make sure you’ve got a nifty fifty handy, and if you have any 2.8 glass around, that will help.

on the other end of the spectrum, if you’re shooting landscapes and hope to print in large format, chances are you’re going to want to get your hands on a megapixel monster like the nikon d850, the canon 5ds, or the sony a7r ii or iii. and you’ll need impeccable glass to match or those megapixels will be wasted.

being that i have a penchant for landscape photography and do happen to shoot a lot of events, i operate with a hybrid system, with gear that works decently well for either of those scenarios.

but something i’m realizing lately is that having a good camera and lens - and knowing how to use it - is less than half the battle. especially as i dive into portraiture, i am finding out how much forethought and ingenuity is required to take a photo shoot to the next level. photos that i would be so stoked about a couple of years ago now seem basic to me. just having a model in a good pose, in a decent setting, and with great natural light isn’t enough to satiate me. i want more.

so tomorrow night, i’m heading out on a photo adventure that is going to push the envelope a bit. i’m bringing a speedlight with colored gels, an led light with a blue color diffuser gel, a can of smoke, a tripod, glow sticks, sparklers, and some other odds and ends, like a collinder and a shelf liner. those last two probably seem out of place on this list, but photography is all about light. whether the artistic choice involves accepting light and manipulating how a subject interacts with it, or controlling and shaping it to fit the theme and intent of the session, without the appropriate light there can be no photo.

the importance of lighting applies to all of the above scenarios. while it is crucial to have a certain tier of equipment if you want acceptable event or landscape photos, without the right lighting, you will probably just end up with high resolution garbage.

Omnichannel

a buzzword in the business world these days is “omnichannel.” stripping away all the corporate bullshit, omnichannel essentially refers to expansion beyond brick and mortar into the digital realm.

but for me, this word has a different meaning. a long time ago i wanted to be a singer in a band, and nothing but a singer in a band. it was a limited vision that probably caused me to miss a lot of opportunities that were right in front of me. when, after years of throwing myself against that wall, it didn’t go as i had hoped it would, i sort of abandoned that dream. i took some of the reasons behind why i wanted it so bad in the first place and applied them to my next quest: becoming a journalist. and then of course, through journalism, i discovered photography.

after years of non-fiction writing, i started to get an itch to dive into the fiction world. i have always had a knack for creative writing, and when i’m in my element, the written word is my most powerful weapon.

today, i’m realizing that while all of these things - music, photography, fiction and non-fiction - seem on the surface to be disparate, they are all connected by unifying themes. the lyricism of music and the prosaity of long-form fiction and non-fiction are just different ways of telling a story—lyrics are essentially a well-written outline. photography and video are alternative storytelling devices that can replace or reinforce the written word.

so rather than choosing between photography, fiction, music or any other form of expression that opens itself up to me, i am making a conscious choice to become omnichannel. today i have capacity to write, so today i write. if tomorrow i feel the urge to produce a song, then that is what i’ll do. no limits. no holds barred.