Giving Back Photographs Needed!

Good morning everyone!

I hope you all had a great start to the week. This post is going to be short so you can get back to your favorite activities soon.

As you know we have been doing the giving back photograph challenge. Well now is the time to get all those photographs in. I have created a location where you can all upload your photographs too.

 https://www.dropbox.com/request/k5RzDFo7FBn7x8QbadLS 

I am going to create a web site location once we get all your photographs in so that we can start the peer appreciation.

If you have any questions or suggestions then please do not hesitate to contact me at denzilern@stu.aii.edu 

Thanks everyone.

Denzil

Challenge Yourself

When it comes to photography, it’s always a good idea to challenge yourself to do something new and different, just to keep yourself fresh as an artist.

I personally, and many other photographers will agree, that one of the best ways to challenge yourself is to shoot with only one lens. I love to do these kinds of challenges myself. I went to a car show last Sunday called Wish Upon a Car, which was raising money for the Make a Wish Foundation of Georgia.

Shot with my Canon EOS 5D Classic with the EF 40mm STM F/2.8

For this car show, I challenged myself by shooting the car show with my Canon EF 40mm STM F/2.8 pancake lens. I love this little lens as it has the new STM or Stepper Motor auto-focus system, which is very quiet and the lens itself is very small and lightweight.

I know you probably have a telephoto lens or two as I do, but when you take your telephoto lens with you all the time, you tend to get lazy and hang back and shoot everything from a distance, instead of getting up close and personal with your subject. Plus, as I mentioned in an earlier blog post, even though zoom lens technology has come a long way, primes still give you superior image and detail quality, especially when you are up close and personal.

Canon EOS 5D Classic with EF 40mm STM F/2.8

So, your challenge for the month of October, go out and shoot something with nothing more than one of your prime lenses and get up close and personal, as long as you can do it without endangering yourself or anyone else of course.

Comments/Questions

Where do you find your Inspiration?

I am sure that everyone of us goes through this dilemma. What gets you going? How do you find the photographs that you need? How can you just start photographing again?

No it is not just about picking up a camera and starting to photograph. That sounds so much like snapshots to me and that is not what I am referring too.

Last week I had a really tough week. I had to find suitable subject matter for my final project, work was crazy and my son landed up in hospital. Not a good week for me.I really did not feel like photographing at all and to be honest all I wanted to do was curl up into a small ball and sleep for a month.

Well that was not going to happen! So how did I get my spark for photography back? Well, that is a really fun thing to do for me. I cannot say that it will work for you but here are a few things that I did that forced me to get my camera out again and start photographing once again. It is really ground breaking stuff so I think you might need to write this down. Here it is!

I went for a walk.

Yup, that is what the ground breaking thing was. All I did was put all my digital devices in a draw at home and I jumped into my car and went for a walk at one of my favorite spots. Now you must be thinking how this would help the creative process. Remember I had no intention of photographing so I was open to the beauty and surroundings of the walk. I think it was my subconscious that was in charge on that walk because as a photographer, as many of you are aware, you see compositions in so many different ways.

You are aware of line, texture, shape and form. You are also aware of tonal ranges and perspective. These are the things we often take for granted when we are photographing because of muscle memory. In most cases it is your brain and fingers working in tandem to formulate all this information into your own master pieces. By been open to just the walk I started seeing all the beauty around me. My muscle memory immediately noticed all these patterns, colors and textures. So my immediate reaction is to reach for my camera. Well it is not there. Remember I left it all at home because I did not want to photograph. So I had to return later that same day to capture that which I had seen. I had gotten my mojo back!

It is the passion that gets me up in the morning. It is the medication that gets me through those tough days of sick children and awful hospital visits. It is the tonic for finding final project themes.

So spend some time without your camera and it might just be the solution you were looking for.

Here are a few photographs from my 3 hour walk.

Have a great week and I will speak to you again next week.

Denzil

Your Signature & Your Style

One of the things you have to understand about photography when you are starting out is that your style is unique. If I take a pen and sign my name it is my name in the style that I write. It doesn’t matter if I use a pen, pencil, crayon, it’s my signature and unless you are a world class forger you cannot duplicate it and even then a forensic signature expert will be able to tell that it’s not mine. The same is true for photography, my style and yours is unique and cannot be totally duplicated.

The camera companies don’t want you to know this, they want you to believe that a LEICA will make you shoot like Cartier-Bresson, a Hasselblad, or 4x5” will make you shoot like Ansel Adams or a Nikon will make you shoot like Galen Rowell or Chase Jarvis, because if you think like that, you are more likely to buy their camera.

My style for shooting Forgotten Pieces of Georgia

They don’t want you to know that the it’s you that make the image, not the camera. An image is as unique as your personal signature on a piece of paper, when it comes to photography, your images are your signature.

Cameras don’t know what to do and all cameras do pretty much the same thing when it comes to photography. Except for using filters, camera lenses are clear glass, and except for the Holga “toy” lens, all lenses are sharp when properly used by you. On the other hand, pens come in fine point, medium, heavy, gel tip, and so on, so not all pens will write your name the same way.

If I hand you my pen, will your signature look like mine? Of course not, no more than if I hand you my camera will your images look like mine. A moment ago I mentioned Ansel Adams shooting a 4x5” or a Hasselblad, Adams, used large format, usually 8x10” in the 1930s to the 1950s when he shot his most memorable work. But as he got older and maybe lazier, he usually settled for 2 1/4” Hasselblad after the 1950s, but did this make his images look any less like his own? Of course not, an Ansel Adams is an Ansel Adams. 2 1/4” and view cameras are as different as two cameras can be from each other and yet his work, his style stayed the same, because his style is as unique as his signature.

All photographs are reflections of the photographer who created them and good photographers are artists who have a style all their own. Crappy photographers are crappy because they spend their time trying to copy everyone else’s style or don’t think at all before they press that shutter. Buying the best camera in the world and leveling it on the most stable tripod and spending hours working over that RAW file in Photoshop is the best way to make completely forgettable images, but being yourself and showing the world your way of seeing things is how you make truly remarkable images.

Why are so many images boring? Because they lack a unique style and all look the same. Now get out there with whatever camera you have and make the world see things as you see them!

Comments/Questions

How to Keep Your Camera Dry in Bad Weather

So as you all know, we are headed into the fall and winter months here in the U.S., which means nasty weather. With the arrival of Hurricane Joaquin, we got a ton of rain in the Southeast, with massive flooding in South Carolina.

When headed out to shoot this time of year, you have to be mindful of keeping your camera dry with all the rain and eventually snow. One of the best ways to not have to worry about moisture getting into your camera is to buy a Professional camera like the Nikon D4S or the Canon 1Dx. Both of these cameras are weather proofed, which means they are sealed tight against rain, dust and dirt.

Now I am sure you are saying, “Yeah as a new photographer, I cannot afford a professional camera body, those things runs thousands of dollars.” I totally understand that and hopefully someday you’ll be successful enough to afford a professional body but in the meantime, there are a couple tips I want to share for keeping your camera gear dry.

1.) Don’t waste your time and money buying fancy camera water covers, you can go to a local store and just buy a shower cap to cover the top of your camera. It may sound silly, but those cheap shower caps actually work great for covering your oddly shaped camera.


2.) Don’t use your good lens cloth to get the excess water off your lens’ front element. Use a shammy to blot, not rub the lens to get as much water off as possible and then finish drying with the good lens cloth so you don’t get streaks in your photos.

3.) When done shooting in wet weather, put your camera body in a large Ziplock bag and toss in a Desiccant to absorb any lingering moisture. Canon support recommends ALWAYS using this third method when done shooting in rain or during the winter when it’s easy for your camera to develop condensation internally. I personally went on Amazon and bought a 50 count bag of 5 gram desiccant packs for $19.

So these are 3 simple tips to help keep your gear dry in rainy and snowy weather, now get out there this fall and winter and make some great photos!

Comments/Questions

Marketing and Promoting your Photography Business

Hello everyone.

This week I wanted to touch on another few aspects of marketing and promoting your business as we really move into the busy Holiday season.

I know we all want to be that creative geniuses that create all those beautiful imagery. It is the part of the business that I love the most. As I write this I am actually thinking about the wedding album that I submitted to my printers, Zookbinders.com and why they have not gotten back to me about the album design for my client yet.

Does not sound all that bad, but I have been working on getting photos edited and resubmitted with my client for about 2 months now and I am really tired doing this. However, it is an integral part of making sure that you get your photographs into the marketplace. You need to order sample albums, wall art and other promotional material that continual let's people know that you are in business.

Today, we see so many photographer's discounting their prices thinking that when I speak about adding value it really means offering lower prices. That is not what it is all about. If you keep doing that you are just going to be heading down a downward spiral of lower prices until you cannot afford to stay in business anymore.

One great thing to remember is that you are not only a artist, but a professional as well. You want to make a living as a photographer and to do that you have to think about the business side of your business as well. The side of the business that is going to be bringing in the clients. There is no magic formula.

It is something that you have to do on a daily basis, day in, day out. Some times you have to just sit back and think of different ways that you can make your business better. What can you offer the marketplace that will differentiate you from the other few hundred people in your area? Yes take some time out and just think about ways that you can make the photography experience better for your client. Investment in your company is not always about buying a new camera or lens. It is also not just about coming up with new innovative ideas. You have to put them into action. If you don't do it then someone else is sure to come up with the idea and they want to succeed just as much as the next person, maybe more.

Remember, that no matter what the product is in the marketplace there has to be something to buy. Yes, there is a bit of selling in everything. Many of you might think that just because you are creative that selling is beneath you. Well, a reality check. If you do not make money then you are out of a job and you might as well pack-up and work for someone else. If you prefer photographing different genre's then make different pages for your different work and see what works best for you.

I love head-shots, family portraiture and weddings. They are all people connected, but what is stopping you from branching out and photographing peoples pets or even adding some great video to your packages so that people have these additional segments to add to their buying experience. I recently added mini-albums to my orders and packages, but the thing that pulls people in is the free HD video I add to the entire order. I recently started using Animoto.com and that monthly is now part of my clients packages. They land up buying more and I can offer more to my clients.

These are the added value items that you need to consider when marketing your business. One thing that we are all aware of today is that social media plays a very important role in getting out photographs to people in the market. How are you able to tap into your clients circle of influence so that you can build this referral business. Here are a couple of companies that use social media and your photographs to help build a circle of influence.

Pass.us - If you are a photographer just starting out then this one is for you. If you keep your clients photograph selection under 100 images then everything is free. You get social media exposure and you might even be able to pick up additional sales because you are able to selling prints.

Pixieset.com - is another great client photography web site where you can display, share and sell your photography. They have some great pricing structures and well worth the investment.

So in closing a few additional things you have to remember. If you have a web site, then Google likes that you update your content on a regular basis. If you don't you might just get a call from some business saying that your score is 1.9 on Google's rating scale and they have the solution to get you to number one spot. Just update your content on a regular basis and you will be fine.

Lat but not least. Blog to your fans and friends. No you don't have to get a wiki page or free blog page. Many hosting sites where you have your portfolio might have this option already. I also use Exposure.co to get my photographs out there. It is a visual blog and the cool thing about it is that you might get your page showing up on Google browser. They have a add-on for exposure so that every time someone opens their Google browser they might just see your blog.

So get out there and just keep putting out your photographs for the world to see. Have fun and keep on shooting.

Denzil

I will leave you with a great photograph I submitted to Gurushots.com  I made the Elite level with this photograph and it is giving me some really great exposure.

Ways to Improve as a Photographer

This week I want to post ways that I think we need to use to always grow and improve as photographers.

Railroad crane shot at Southeastern Railway Museum

 1. Stop posting on photography forums. Too many times when lots of photographers post to the same forum the work starts to look too much alike. We want to always strive to be fresh and different.

2. Begin looking at art sites more often. Don’t always just look at photography sites, spend more time looking at art in other mediums for inspiration.

3. Start going to more museums and traveling exhibits, this is another excellent way to get inspiration.

4. Read and look at classic and contemporary art books.

Prayer bowls at Laotian New Year's 2014

 5. Force yourself to use a different lens each time you shoot. Often we get stale in our photography if we use the same lens all the time as we tend to always shoot the same kind of stuff.

6. Purposely stop taking the same kinds of shots when out in the field, recognize your habits and try to break them.

7. Start personal art projects, even if they aren’t popular with others.

8. Keep your eye on new technology, software and hardware, even if it’s not directly photography related. There might be a way you can use this new tech in your art.

9. Use your smartphone as a whiteboard to spitball ideas and possibly catch ideas and subjects that maybe you had not thought of before.

10. Ask “what if ___?” a lot and try to use your curiosity to come up with fresh, new ideas and projects to shoot.

I, and many others, find lists like this a great way to keep our work fresh and new at all times. Sometimes as artists, we hit a rut and then have a hard time coming up with new ideas for our creative outlet. By keeping a list like this handy, hopefully, we can always continue to come up with new things to shoot and work on and always keep things fresh and new.


Comments/Questions

Six Tips for Maintaining Sanity During the Busy Season

Hello everyone

I had such a hectic day yesterday and today so my apologies for not writing anything and posting in a timely manner.

For this quick post I wanted to post a link to a great review of what to do during the coming holiday season. It is a carry over from what I discussed last week, but here are what some other professionals in the the business think you should be doing.

It is from the Shootproof website blog. It is where I host all my photographs for my clients.

Hope you like the article.

Denzil