All the Fixins

i’m realizing that when it comes to editing, i have so much to learn. i’ve always avoided photoshop because lightroom is so much easier to work in, and it’s done fine for me so far. but there are some things i need to start doing if i want to take my game to the next level, and those require photoshop skills.

i’ve been watching a lot of tutorial videos on youtube, and they should definitely help, but there’s so much to learn. color grading, masks, compositing, object removal. people that i follow make these things seem so easy but when i sat down to attempt what should’ve been a quick composite last night, i was totally stumped. the image had an outline that wouldn’t go away. today i watched a video that explained what i can do to take care of that problem, but damn if it’s not a time sink. i guess that is why people charge so much for complex editing.

i guess the bottom line is that i want to start making more compelling images, and photoshop is the key. time to add this to my weekly to-do list (which i plan to publish monday).

Ego

whether we like to admit it or not, none of us would set out on the creative path without a solid dose of ego. only a fool sets out on a journey . without that ego element, we would probably never get past go. because no matter what you’re doing, no matter how much innate talent you have when you start out, only experience can bring out your inner pro.

but ego can’t be the only driver. ego is how you start. but ego won’t sustain you. ego tells you you’re good enough to put yourself out there, and only through being out there can your own vision of yourself become the version of yourself that is seen by those around you. ego is the spark. the kindling. but it won’t keep your fire going through the night.

for that, you need something deeper. you need to learn how to put a halter on the ego, take charge of it. use it to get you to where you’re going rather than letting it take you where it pleases.

it’s funny, i started writing this post a couple of months ago, and never finished. then, today i was running through my old content and realized that it was sitting in the box. i added a “daily” tag to it and then accidentally hit “save and publish.” so now i’m finishing the post. my ego tells me i should be embarrassed by the misstep, at the accidental posting of a half-finished blog that ends with an incomplete sentence. the blog equivalent of the covfefe tweet. but i’m glad this is going out. i was saving it, planning to get back to it. but there’s nothing else to say here.

bottom line: ego opens doors, but it’s up to you to make sure that something with more substance takes control when you enter the room.

Second Thoughts (part two)

ok i figured out tagging and it’s super easy. that’s the route i’m going. will start rolling that out immediately and launch a new blog landing page by monday so that readers can sort through posts easily. thinking of making the landing page live on my website so that it’s no longer hidden. it’s time to step out of the shadows and into the light.

Second Thoughts

ok. so earlier this week i came up with a plan to split up my photo and life posts. after some back and forth with stock henry i am rethinking that. this blog has so far been super focused on photography, and that is the bulk of what i want to write about. so really, it doesn’t make sense to create a new blog for photo posts.

instead, i’m going to take the route of splitting things up through tagging. i will be creating a separate blog for my fiction projects, but that is just because it doesn’t make sense to publish that stuff here. this is chasing realness. it’s my photo brand and it’s all about real life. fiction is the polar opposite of that.

so that’s the plan. the only issue that i have with that is that i honestly don’t even know how to tag posts on this squarespace blog. lol. so today that’s going to be something i learn. adding it to the dailies. also, on that front, i’m going to be laying those out on monday. it makes sense to start the next year of my life with my daily goals intact, so that’s the plan.

short post today, but time is short today and i really want to turn to my fiction project and get some scaffolding set up for the blog launch.

Recurring Revenues

back in december, on a few moments’ notice, i was called upon to photograph a holiday party that seemed like one i couldn’t pass up. the party was being hosted at a photo and video studio in bushwick, and was for a global organization of non-fiction and documentary filmmakers called video consortium. they loved my photos, and afterward, the group’s founder reached out and said that she wanted to talk to me about working together in the future.

yesterday, we spoke over the phone, and she told me that the group hosts well-attended monthly networking events and that they’d love to have me there photographing these on a regular basis. the pay is significantly lower than i would accept from any other client, but given that there is a high likelihood this gig could open up other an unknowable amount of other opportunities for me, i am not bothered by that at all.

aside from that, though, purely from a monetary standpoint, something i learned from my three days working with greenpeace several years ago is that a subscription model is always preferable to a one-time transaction. so despite the fact that i will be getting paid less per event than my typical rate, i can loosely count on this gig to bring in a set amount every month. between this job and my other recurring customer, i now have a recurring base income of $400 per month from photography alone, and the jobs i’m doing have a very minimal impact on my calendar (one lunch break per week and one weeknight per month). that means i can still book gigs during my prime time for photography on weekends.

of course i can’t depend on these two gigs to continue indefinitely, but i can celebrate the fact that whether or not these clients retain me for the long term, my work was good enough for them to ask me if i would want to work with them on a regular, recurring basis. that, in and of itself, is a big win.

New Chapter

my birthday is next week, and it’s got me thinking. 36. fuck. how the fuck did i get so old all of a sudden? i don’t feel it but i feel like i should feel it. eh, whatever. the point is, i’ve still got a lot to do in my life, and what i am really feeling is just how precious every day is.

so here is the thing. i’ve been writing this blog every day (with three exceptions) since the third week of november. two months of daily writing about photography, life and sometimes other things. one of those other things is writing, or more accurately, becoming an author. before i launched this blog, i was of the opinion that i should create more than one blog, one for my writing about photography/video, one for general life stuff, and one for my fiction. maybe even one about music, though i rarely put much thought into that these days with all of the other projects i’m wrapped up in. i realized that i was getting way too meta about the whole blogging thing, and running the risk of having a bunch of blogs that never went anywhere. the point is to blog every day, and having one place to do all of that was really the best option as a starting point. too much complication could only get in the way as i set my pace and got into the groove.

this morning i started to think that maybe the time has come to start a new blog about my fiction project. a whole new outlet that would only be focused on the nitty gritty of the writing process. i am kind of waffling on this, but i think it’s the best option. before that happens, though, what i do need is to start organizing the blog i already have. i need to start tagging and create an index.

today, i am going to look into creating a landing/home page for my blog(s?) with links that will let people sort through my posts. i want to create a beautiful page that draws people in, of course, but the focus will be on function.

part of the reason for this is that as i start to really dig into the fiction process, i’m going to be writing about that a lot more, and i don’t want that to get in the way of, or replace, my daily posts. and that brings me to the final point. i have this week to organize and build infrastructure, and beginning next monday, on my birthday, i am going to take a new path forward. my daily post will be about life and my own journey. the behind-the-scenes. no longer will photography- or fiction-related posts count as a daily post. those will be extra. but i am also going to set a minimum frequency for those posts.

as i conceptualize this, i think that photography posts will be dictated by how often i am working, whereas fiction posts will be something that i need to keep up at least five days a week. that is not set in stone, but it’s a working model. something to toss around. the idea is that if i am blogging about the writing process several days per week, i will be focused on it and will actually make progress. the blog posts about writing will be part of the writing process, and will chronicle the struggles i face as i move through it.

it’s time to up the ante. new year, new me.

Getting Ahead (of Myself)

i realized this morning that i am getting ahead of myself. my latest win, which came in the form of a regular subscription to my photography services, has got me feeling pretty hype. and that is a good thing. but instead of saying, thank goodness i am finally in the black and turning a profit, i immediately turn back into a gear lust monster.

yes, there are a few filters i need to add to my bag before traveling later this year if i want to be able to capture some of the long exposure photos i am craving to add to my collection. and with my current camera body turning six this year, it’s definitely time to start thinking about getting a more modern replacement. and yes, despite my questions about whether i should get a drone at all, i am pretty much dead set on doing it, so that is a thing.

but i need to really think these things through. what is the order of operations? and is there really a case for me to get a new camera before our big trip? i mean, i am going to be doing some serious landscape photography when we travel, so the more megapixels i can squeeze into my bag, the better. although i’m sure that large prints from my canon 5d mark iii will look just fine to all but the most scrutinous observers.

i have a fear that while we are traveling, my camera shutter will die on me. i can’t remember how many photos i’ve taken since buying it, but it’s definitely in the dozens of thousands. it’s almost definitely an irrational fear, and one driven by the desire to justify a new camera in disguise.

the truth is, the best decision i can make is to wait to buy a new camera until we get back from the big trip. if the camera dies on me while traveling, i can always buy one on the road.

so my plan of action is this: wait for the next good sale on a drone and buy. wait for filters to go on sale (if that ever happens) and buy. and just fucking wait until the trip is over to buy a new camera or anything else. unless a job calls for some other item, or i book enough business to fully pay for a new camera body, i will hold fast and maintain my profit margin.

all in all, this is just more motivation to hustle harder. potential new mantra: if you want more, work more.

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.