Peekaboo Posts

Sometimes called "Expandable Post Summaries" - this has nothing to do with photography, but something I found useful when setting up this blog.

It seems some of these posts tend to get a bit.... well, "wordy". lol. The obvious need to shorten them into something a bit more readable for the main page sent me looking. I'd seen this behavior in other blogs but had no idea.

There are lots of hacks out there, but few of them worked. I ended up using a Java based solution which was super easy to implement in the stock Blogger issue templates.

Here are the instructions in detail:
http://hackosphere.blogspot.com/2006/11/selective-expandable-posts.html

Much thanks to Ramani - sounds like others found it to work by the comments also.

And if you prefer to see the post expand in the same (main) page rather than a re-direct as I've implemented - check this varient of the same instructions:
http://hackosphere.blogspot.com/2006/09/expandable-posts-with-peekaboo-view.html

Enjoy!

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Need more "TIME" ?!?!?!

Okay, a bit of an exaggeration, but in my world- everything changes next week. I'm ending one of my "jobs" as a full time stay at home daddy, plus getting another full time "employee", which equals to having LOTS more time on my hands!

Ten months ago, our first child arrived. We fell into a work schedule where I was juggling baby and business full time while mom worked out of the house. That eventally changed to her working from home a few days of the week which at least gave me some un-interrupted work time and a chance to run errands out of the house, but then she didn't get much work done herself those days either.

Amazingly, it worked. Sort of. As he's grown and started getting into eeeeeeeeeverything that wasn't bolted shut or nailed to the floor, it's gotten harder and harder to keep up with the clients - maintain our current level. Lettalone growing business and rising to the top.


We didn't want to do daycare. Huge expense, not ideal by any means, and only really solves part of the time crunch. We finally made the determination a few months ago for mom to leave her job to be a full time stay at home mom, and also to off-load all my 'business' and 'process' work to her which really doesn't take that much time and for some crazy reason, she actually loves doing that stuff.

We made a lot of determinations vs. loss of income / costs / time freed and time taken, etc, and I discovered something I hadn't even considered before. I really CAN grow much faster and much further, while making MUCH more money with the new found time than the cost of loosing full time middle class income from my wife.

"Time is money" was never more real to me than right there.


And it may also apply to you...
I share this with all of you to take a second and consider your daily workflow and workload, and make the same considerations we have in changing our world around.

Once my wife is at home to focus on baby, I can now work all day every day on business, shooting, learning, growing, whatever. I can come and go as needed without worry for what baby is doing. This will free huge amounts of my time each week. She'll also take over all the extra stuff on my plate that's holding up growth. This makes for a major increase in usable hours, while at the same time removing the most creativity inhibiting aspects of my job.

At first there's a concern of "loosing an income" when doing this. But, I off-set that in considering how much more money I can make having a more open schedule. Right now I pass tons of referral business in other areas outside weddings (families, kids, misc commercial gigs here and there, etc) simply because I don't have the time to field it. I also consider how much more of every kind of work I'll be able to generate simply by getting involved in the world and networking. Having time to keep up with past clients and such.

It also means I'll spend my days shooting and editing - which I LOVE, rather than constantly messing with "business" while holding a baby (determined to steal my mouse marble) in one hand . It means I'm free to go and get involved, network, market, TRAVEL to OSP events (yay!), as well as take on new clients in new areas.

It's like, I can breath again. I can grow again!


When just starting out...
It's easy to use that "spare" time to get started. At first there's not much workload. You spend all that time dealing with a small number of clients, just getting it all figured out. Then the clients grow, and you start to get busy. Eventually time gets short, and you start to get behind on important stuff, and the "fun and learning" is completely swept away. You figure ways to optimize your workflow, "efficiency" is the name of the game.

Eventually we hit this equilibrium between "what we have time to do" and "what we would like to do". We get to where we can dream it up faster than we can actually make it happen. Time becomes the limiting factor. Time limits who you can get to know, it limits how quickly you can learn new skills, it limits how much 'wow' you can give to each customer, it limits how you can generate new customers from your existing ones.

You stop growing. Every new thing requires that something else be cut down, removed, or made more efficient. You start cutting corners, which lowers quality and it my case, begins to take the wind out of your sails. Eventually this profession you LOVE is starting to become a "job". Just like Peter Gibbans on Office Space - I didn't much like having a "job", and that's just what my life was becoming.


Multiplied Returns
Maybe it's cutting that full time job you have to clear up 40 extra hours a week to boom your wedding business. Maybe it's your spouse leaving a steady job, or maybe - (and the most over-looked key out there!) - it's as simple as hiring an assistant. Wow. Okay, let's think about it for a minute. It may cost you $10,000 to $20,000 a year to hire an office assistant (I have no idea what it costs really, I've never done it) - but imagine what a collage student could do for you 3 days a week. Or maybe a collage kid 2 days a week and a highschool kid 4 days a week, or.....

What if you could take all the "junk" of running a business and get it off your plate. I'm not real hip on outsourcing anything. I'm too much of a control freak for that, but do whatever works for you.

But getting all that 'junk' out of the way allows me to wake up and sleep every day thinking of making cool pictures. I can think it up, go create it, and show it off - and all without having to stop to file my monthly sales taxes, deal with my album company, or pick up office supplies.

You trade some $$$ for the second person, but you gain....

1. Better product with more time to create it, fewer cut corners.
2. Better product with more time to learn it - time to experement, read books, attend seminars
3. Better viral / word of mouth advertising - you can constantly fan the flames, maintain the buzz.
4. Know more people - you can meet a few new people every week. You have TIME to do things for them "favors on deposit".
5. Get into new fields and tap markets with little competition
6. Do what you do best and love - this adds passion, a burning desire to create something incredible, just for the fun of it. This in my opinion is the single most important quality of growing a business, putting out a product people rave over.

And all that translates into more business at a much higher price point.

The returns are actually multiplied. Just about every way I've figured the numbers, I can turn my new found time into much more money than my wife currently makes at her "real" job. And the same goes for an assistant. That yearly pay check with all it's zeros is scary. I would never guess having an "assistant" could actually MAKE me more than $20,000, or that loosing a full time middle class income and gaining a new full time "partner" could actually MAKE me far more than that. But you do the numbers, add some ambition and passion into the mix, and the returns truly do multiply.


It's hard to do!
Most of us, once arriving at the "time equilibrium" phase of business - can remember just a few months or the year prior being in the "buying business cards on credit" phase, followed closely by the "don't have cash to make my car payment" phase. Now we're finally at the "I'm making all my bills with money to spare each month" phase which is a huge sigh of relief and in our new found security, we don't want to rock the boat by changing things up. So we stay there. Crunched for time. Passing up business, slowing our learning curve, shooting less and less and "working" more and more. "Burn out" starts creeping in, and as soon as that happens - forget being an "artist". The "creative" flame goes out, then you're just going through the motions. You become just another business and begin to die as an artist. Maybe that's a bit extreme, but that's how I started to feel a few months back.


But it's all different now - I'm excited. Counting down the days. So many new plans in the works. I've taken stock and done a lot of thinking and soul searching for the past few months looking forward to this. I've tried to consider exactly who I want to be and exactly what kind of photographer I want to be. I've put plans in place to become just that and starting next week, we'll be putting the plans into action.

And I feel great. Like waking up from a long nap.


Just food for thought, for what it's worth.

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Are "weddings" the only way?

I've been thinking over this a lot in the past few months, then I saw a forum post from my friend Neal Jacob - he brought up some ideas that got me thinking.

I wonder if we even consider all the other areas of the professional photography market that are virtually untapped.

The weddings business is getting pretty hard - there is just so much competition now. A couple years ago, the competition was there, but they weren't very good. Now with all the training and workshops and great inspiration, a lot of the new business is getting darn good at what they do. That makes it hard to stand out.

Real success in this new market is all about who you know, networking, and referrals. Easy when you've got nothing better to do - nearly impossible when you're trying to get off the ground while holding down another full time "real" job.

With all the new digital photographers out there, the first direction many seem to go is to weddings - because there's money there, right?

But at the same time, we're passing over so many other niches that are dying for edgy modern imagery. While people are tripping over eachother fighting for a piece of the wedding pie (er, "cake", lol!) it's easy to miss.

Senior Sessions
This is HUGE! It largly depends on your area, but most areas have squat for good senior photographers. These kids have access to huge amounts of cash, and they want to get crazy and express themselves. If it's new and cool, they'll buy heaps of it. The fact is, they look at most existing senior work as old and lame. Even some of the more new and sexy studio work is now viewed as being "old". (You know how these kids are with their styles chaning every week, right?).

What if you totally apply the "lifestyle" PJ approach to the life of a highschool senior? Why not get a group of 'girlfreinds' together, follow them for a day of fun, shoot the whole thing PJ style, then the following day to a 'setup' shoot with them - high fashion style, lots of clothes changes, and make them all super stars for the day. Shoot it with an assistant, bring in some lights, go crazy. Do that with 6 or 8 girls in a group, charge each of them $1000 or so, and do the math. Include an album for each of them "me and my best friends from highschool" like (with most album companies offering killer deals on 'clone' albums, you could actually get the cost on 8 identical books pretty low), maybe even shoot some video on the side "the making of the shoot", whip it together quick with some music, live action, photo pop-ups, etc - and use the video as your marketing piece. Put the vid and pics out on a custom website made just for them (from a template, would require almost no time to put up) and they'll circulate it all on their own, and that video plus the pics would slam home your message. Your phone would be ringing off the hook.

A totally untapped market. Something totally new, and if you went after it full time, marketed it full time, and made it "cool" to the right kids full time - you could probably pull down $5000 a weekend (profit after costs!) in a shoot that is more fun and less hum-and-drum stress than your typical wedding.

Maybe that idea is ahead of it's time, but it'll happen. Be like Apple. Go sell the girls what they don't even know they want yet.

Child Sessions & Family
Another one. Everyone I know asks me to shoot their family picture. They've got the standard "tot shots" type deal in mind. They want something fun, new and hip - but they don't even know it. Remember, today's new mommies and daddies are part of the new trendy hip crowd. They like "new and cool" as much as anyone else.

Think of ways to depart from the standard studio shots and really create a product geared toward capturing the real life if children and their families, then get it in front of the right people. Find some mommies with money, and get it done. Every one of her friends will be calling you for the same treatment.

Think big, think beyond the standard stuff. Think "real life", think "commissioned fine art", think "sell them what they don't even know they want yet".

We're about to dive into just this. I'm going to begin shooting fine art prints which will be printed on gallery canvas with that real crazy artistic surreal feel. They've seen "painting renditions of photos", but I'm going to try and give them something totally new, more heavily editied, more impact and feeling. I don't know if it'll work, but I've got a hunch people will go crazy for it.


Animals
I've told a few people I'm getting into "pet photography", and they kind of chuckle. Like they thought I was kidding.

You know how much money people will spend on fluffy? Empty nesters have replaced their children with pets. If you live in an area with a large population of affluent people age 50+, this is a gold mine, and even the younger folks sure do love their pets.

Dog conventions, agillity shows, breed shows, "flyball" and the like have become hugely popular in just about every area of the country. How hard would it be to circulate some very well done fine art style images of animals at these events? You'd probably be the only 'real' photographer there, and if you've done any internet searches for "pet photography", you know that good photographers focused on animals are way few and very far between.

Take the bride out of the shot and replace her with a great dane and shoot it in the same way. Or look up your local flyball and agillity clubs, go and just hang out. Watch what's happening. See the action of these animals - eventually you'd be welcomed with a big lens on the sidelines - some great comissioned action shots of these animals and the books that go with them would sell huge. These people pack up their lives, kids, and fluffy and trek all over the country to these events. They have money, they love to spend it on their animals, and most have never even seen "good" animal photography.


Bands / Muscians / Theater
People are starting to notice the band scene. Unfortunately, most bands are broke. They're playing for beer money. But what about your local symphony? Most of those folks come from a more affluent circle, and their audience also tends to be more affluent.

These people likely already know "photographers", but have a look at your local symphony's website. Go take in a performance and see the signage, the programs, anything with pictures. Is it any good? What if you offered something beyond the standard 'program handout' snapshots? What if you got really crazy fine art like with them and their instruments. Think of ways to create dramatic compositions with people, hands, and strings. You don't even need a studio - you've already got one -the very stage they play on has all the lighting and backdrop setups you could ever ask for.

And speaking of the stage - what about your local theater group? What about fine art style setup images of the actors in costume? Think "movie premiere poster", and go create it. Not during the show, but once you're hooked up with them, it would be easy to shoot this stuff before or after a nightly performance - just you and the actors. Position them however you'd like, use the sets, have them act parts as you shoot it.



The Point
It's not weddings, but it's the same thing. The same skills, the same feelings, the same income potentials. The only difference is you're not up against 2000 highly qualified competitors.

I would like to go much further in weddings, and honestly after much thought, it's my very involvement in weddings that is holding me up. See, I have to pay my bills. That means when someone calls to book a wedding a year out that I'm not totally thrilled about, but she's able to afford the rate, I really need to take it. I'm in no position to turn away paying clients simply because they won't further my career.

I'm beginning to look into these other ares to find wedding clients - a very specific kind of wedding clients. I absolutely love small weddings in beautiful places. Of all my weddings, the ones I put tops are these smaller more out of the way deals. These also tend to involve clients flying into my area from other areas. I make them very happy, make it clear I want to travel, they go back home and spread the word, and eventually my phone begins to ring for destination weddings - with the same idea. Small family events, beautiful places that don't cost $15,000 to open their doors, which means the couple has more budget to spend flying in the photographer of their choice.

The fact that I have to fill my calendar by competing for weddings to make a living, rather than to make connections with the 'right' people is actually holding me back. As it stands, I need to shoot 25 weddings a year to make the living I want to be comfortable. I'd like to cut that to 12. Not because I'm bored of weddings, not at all. But rather, to keep those spots open for the 'right' twelve couples. In the last year, I've turned away at least 4 "dream" weddings just because I was already booked for the date. While at the other wedding, I'd be kicking myself the whole day. "Why am I here dealing with a stressful high maintenance client, when I could be liad back with a really cool couple at a beautiful elegant garden event accross town?"


So to keep your calendar open for the right people, to find the right people, or even to just make the choice that weddings aren't for you - there are SO many other areas that are less stressful and probably more profitable. These other areas don't cost huge ad dollars to get into. Just get good at what you do, and find new ways to apply the 'wedding skills' to other untapped areas.

I really think this will be the next big revolution of photography. Most people get into this game at weddings, watching the paid photographer limp through the event and they think "hey, I can do that", which is probably the major reason people start so heavy toward weddings. But it's getting hard to make a fulltime living at weddings, and it's even harder to 'start up' in weddings.

As people fall out, or as people even come to re-define the postion of the modern creative photographer, I think we'll begin to see a huge influx into these other markets. The time to get establsihed in weddings was 5 years ago befor all the competition arrived. The time to get established in these other markets is now.

The digital revolution has actually helped in these other areas I believe. Everyone now owns a digital camera, and everyone has taken pictures of their kids, fluffy the mutt, and everything else and they've realized that their wizbang 8 megapixel camera doesn't create pictures any more compelling than their old-skool disposable Kodak film camera. People are starting to re-discover the idea that paid professional photography is worth something, that those expensive 'pro' guys didn't become obsolete after all.


And wedding shooters are the best of the bunch. I firmly believe that practiced wedding photographers are some of the best photographers anywhere in the world. Shooting weddings will make or brake your skills really fast. If you can hang and constanly improvise compelling images at stressful fast moving weddings, then you can create compelling images anywhere.

Check out more of Neal's work at his website www.nealjacob.com - thanks for kicking off the thought process Neal!

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Your training schedule?

Okay all, let's see if we can get an honest answer to these questions...

1. How often do you shoot outside of paid gigs? What are you shooting? How many frames? Is it deliberate practice and training, or is it just because your kid or fluffy did something cute?

2. How did you "train" before getting into weddings? Did you figure out how to load batteries, a memory card, slapped it on green mode, then went out the door? Was amature fun good enough, the rest O.J.T.? You assist anyone? Any other concerted effort to "train up" to shoot the most important day in someone's life?


I ask this for several reasons. Mainly, I see on most forums, people are generally talking about the business of photography, where to get post processing tools, "what gear to buy", and very little discussion on how that gear is actually used. I realize it's hard to discuss on a forum, but still an observation.

It seems like people talk more about taking pictures than they actually practice taking pictures.

So I'm just wondering, do any of us actually "practice" or is game day alone good enough?


Before I started shooting paid weddings, I did tons of drills with my camera, almost military style. Really boring, repetative, regimented....... but worth every second of effort. I'd set up shooting situations in all kinds of different conditions, then move between them very quickly. Outside direct sun, in shade, mixed light inside, window light, lamp light only, and a room in total darkness with one object - then run between them in full manual attempting to make one single perfect exposure with perfectly blananced flash of each item.

It's a lot harder than it sounds.

I also spent about 3 nights a week placing stuffed animals aound the house and shooting them with off camera flash - direct, bouncing, multiple flashes, mixed light with lamps, high ISO, low ISO, no flash, fill flash, you name it. Then I'd go back and really study the images on the computer screen and really look at every shadow and hit of light. I'd figure out why the good ones looked so great, and also figure out why the awful dark or blown out images looked the way they did.

Now with the studio, I'm in there a couple nights a week just tinkering with the lights. "I wonder how it would look if".

Whenever I'd watch TV, I'd just sit there with the camera in my hands, clicking ISO's up and down, switching modes, adjusting exposure comp and FEC by feel only - getting an actual 'feel' for how many clicks it takes for an adjustment. I'd goto manual and go from 1/100 to 1/1000 by feel - then see if I got it right. Not counting, but just building the muscle memory for about how much dial is required for a given change.

It's dumb, and it's repetative. Like running drills on a football field. Or spending hundreds of hours on a driving range hitting thousands of balls while focusing on each individual component of a swing.



I sometimes hear people struggling, trying to get it figured out, but then I wonder, what are they doing to practice? Do they just show up, flip on the ole trusty, click a few frames, then toss it back in the bag until the next gig?

Photography really is a practiced sport. The really great photographers are not accidents. They don't just "get lucky" shoot after shoot. They know what they're doing, each shot is very deliberate and intentional. They have their camera skeeelz smoothed and as second nature as breathing.

I've got a long way to go, so I keep practicing, but I can say that in a day of shooting, I very rarely give a second thought to camera settings. I'm thinking about DOF, what miinimum ISO can I get away with, where the light is coming from, what it's bouncing off of, and where are the shadows that need filled, and by how much.

I look at the EXIF and clearly I'm riding all those settings all day long, but I don't think about it. The other day I tried to tell someone over the phone the button combo to change ISO on a MkII. I had no idea. I can however make my fingers into the right shape to hit those buttons, like playing a guitar chord in the air. I don't know what buttons to push, but I push them many times without any thought during each wedding.

This is no super human skill - it's a practiced and aquired skill. Just like riding a bike, typing, playing the paino, or painting.

Imagine yourself right there shooting a wedding, in the middle of stress and madness - what are you thinking about? Do you think about your flash settings? Or do you just frame the images in your brain and your hands almost automatically manipulate the camera and capture them? If that's not happening, then you really should practice. Just like setting up a workout schedule - set a time, and do some drills. If they frustrate you, then that's all the more proof that they can really help you if you keep at it.

Give it a shot. I absolutely assure you - if you can stick with it and just do the work, you will be less stressed and feel far more confident on game day. You'll nail the "great catch!" shots more often, and you'll spend more time observing what's really happening around you, rather than burrying your head in your LED display.

If you're not ready to Q.B. the super bowl, the time to realized that and practice till your fingers fall off is _NOW_, not on game day.

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Get your eyes checked!

I've always had near perfect vision, no glasses for me.

About 8 years ago I realized strain when I started working in front of a computer full time. Turned out I needed a very slight perscription to wear just at the computer. Got the glasses, and have used them ever since, but only in front of the computer.

About 4 years ago I went in just for a checkup. No change in perscription, kept the same glasses, and it never occured to me that my eyes may actually get worse.

I figured they'd been the same perscription for 4 years, that's probably how they'll stay.

Then about 2 years ago I started leaning in toward my screen more to see the really small details. I ignored it and just figured it was just "tired eyes" being stressed, starting a new business, not getting enough sleep, etc., and since it's only gotten worse. I realized things were actually a bit fuzzy most of the time, the glasses no longer helped much, and I was always rubbing my eyes feeling sore.

So I went back in today on a whim. Big surprise, my eyes have gotten a lot worse. Still a fairly slight perscription overall, but stronger than before.

Well, I just put on the new glasses in front of the computer and woah!! It's like I can see every tiny spec of dust on my desk, I can actually see individual square pixels in the screen, it's nuts! Like I just got superman vision or something.

I also sprung for a pair of perscription sunglasses and went all out for the polarized super crazy ultra clear glass with anti-glare and the whole package. I put them on walking back out into the parking lot from the mall and once again I was totally blown away. The colors of all the cars jumped right out and things were amazingly clear. Every tiny little detail jumped right off of everything. I just wanted to walk around and "look at stuff". lol!


So if it's been more than a year since you've seen an optomitrist - do yourself a huge favor and have a checkup. Just about every mall has a couple, they're open for essentially "walk in" appointments, it's not very expensive for an exam and most insurances will cover the whole cost or close to it. The exam itself only takes about 10 minutes (and I even had the extra field of view, color, pupil dialation, everything).

Just sitting here typing this post I can actually feel my eyes more relaxed than before. I wish I'd made that simple visit a year ago. I had no idea what a huge difference it could make.

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Are you an artist?

I'm trying to really consider where people are with their artistic knowledge and why. How much do we really know or apply when it comes to actually making images? How many of us really know and understand our gear? How many of us really understand lighting, or have even experemented with lighting? How many of us really understand the digital workflow process that goes from the CR2 file to the finished "work of art" product? How many of us really understand this artistic process we call "photography"?

How much of our life is filled with "creative photography" and how much is filled with "running a business"?

I think that's a key.

It's like we're all creative professionals, but we spend so little time actually creating.
We're wrapped up in marketing and meetings and bookings and album orders, and packages and figuring out which "I'll solve all your problems because I've got it all figured out myself" products to buy at WPPI, and checking your google ranking and..... - and we forget that we're artists.

And then we burn out.

And it's no longer an art form you love, but rather - a job. If I wanted a 'job', I'd be working in an office someplace right now, and so would you.

Is photography an art form, or a job to you?


I think many of us are trying to create a business that generates money as a result of clicking the button on a digital camera. Which means the business of running a business is first and foremost. The end product and the process itself is minimalized. We become little photo production lines - "how quickly can I slap out images that people are still willing to pay for?" Because quick equals profit. And anytime you can raise production and profit with minimal investment of your own - you've created a wonderful little business - but you've just cut both your hands off as an artist.

I wonder, if instead of totally wrapping ourselves up in the business of making a few more dollars and saving a few extra minutes, we started clicking the camera shutter not as a necessary step in running the money machine, but rather as the first step in the creating of a wonderful image.

What if, we opened our editing software to complete an image we began in camera. What if we actually experemented a bit and see what happens. That's how Edison discovered the light remember - by experementing. Others were too busy making money to care or consider what could happen with a bit of trail and error. What if we opened our software up and said "hey, what does this do?" instead of "where is that one action...." or reaching straight for presets.

What if we carefully considered and selected the lighting where we shoot our subjects instead of just sticking them any random place? What if we took a subject out and moved them around an area and just focused on how the light hits them. Just for the fun of it. Just as an excersise to become a better photographer.

What if we actually had some say in how our final images turned out? What if we got to inject a bit of our own mood and influence into our work - you know, like the other artists used to before us. What if completing this really nice set of images today was more important than the stack of paperwork calling your name?



I get thinking this way because I see SO much talk about the specifics of the business, but not so much about the art. I see people looking for sources of quick effects and actions, rather than looking for the source of knowledge that will allow them to create the effects themselves from scratch. Then the actions can be time savers in one's own creative process, rather than the crutch used to skate through post production.

We want to learn how to go as quickly as possible from "picking up the camera" to "going on to collect a check from the next customer". And we wonder why we burn out, are uninspired, and are having a hard time standing out amoung our growing pack of competitors.

I see people so worried about how their logo sells them, but not so worried about how thier images sell them. We're in a business of recording feeling and emotions in fleeting once in a lifetime moments - yet we put so little feeling into the actual creation of the images. There are quicker ways to slap on a quick effect, and the client doesn't know the difference anyway, so no harm done, or is there?

There are artists throughout history who have created great wonderful works, and there are artists that profited huge sums of money from their work. But it's interesting - they're usually not the same artists. It's like the minute the profit margin becomes first and foremost, the art itself is doomed.

Just a thought. Responses welcome.

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