June 9, 2012


Infinite Choices

When I start thinking about my next concept shoot I write down alot of ideas, and script as much of the shoot before I even bring out the cameras.  Some of my ideas cost to much and that is a problem I have stated before, that a photographer's imagination is sometimes too expensive for his/her own good.  I usually start gearing up for the shoot a week in advance and have the props I want in place and kind of have a general pre-planned idea of what I will shoot.  But rarely do I end up following it exactly.  It morphs and changes as I explore the subject and begin to see better angles, light, composition, details etc... that say more than just what is there but what isn't. Yes, these new images are related to the original script but seem more appropriate now that I am fully engaged with the subject and open to serendipity and begin to let loose the reins of my ego that wants to control my actions in a safe, foreseeable image outcome.

I had an idea years ago of shooting an out of control office at tax time. The business wasn't organized and had become overwhelmed by documenting their business expenses.

But as I began shooting the original concept I started thinking and adjusting my original idea and slowly started experimenting with the details of an office.

 This lead to images of a business or person overspending using a credit card.

Which lead to a cutting back of their use of credit cards                                                 

To a business where their client information has been stolen 

I could go on but I think you get the idea.  Be open to all the twists and turns that happen when your choosing from those infinite choices.

Niche or not to Niche

June 03, 2012

It seems that having a photo niche is the way to go in this fast paced billion image upload days on the worldwide web.  By having an in depth coverage of a specific subject means your images will be unique and have selling potential from those clients that need that particular subject matter.  But is any subject nowadays buffered from competition.  I think not. Any subject you have will be challenged by photographers from all over the world that will have similar interests and photo skills.

Having a niche also depends on what are your ultimate goal in photography is.  Do you want to be a commercial, editorial, portrait, fine art, nature photographer etc... I am not saying finding a niche is a bad thing what I am saying is that jumping in to early and focusing on a narrow subject matter can bore you out of photography all together.  Each photographers personality is different with unique gifts and energy levels that focus their attention.  Shooting a narrow subject range increases your chance of burn out and loss of inspiration to create better photos.

I think as you start out in photography you need to shoot imagery that obviously interest you and fits your personality.  And as you grow as a photographer you will try new techniques and lighting which will stimulate your confidence to shoot more daring subjects and concepts.  Gaining valuable experience through trial and error gives you a grounded work ethic that keeps you looking more and more for those unique moments when your subject is revealed and you capture that special moment.  No matter what area of photography you choose to stake your future in, you will have an infinite amount of choices to make concerning subject matter.  So in one way, even if you choose a narrow niche to focus on, you will always be discovering new ways to shoot old subjects and this will keep your interests alive.

A career in photography can take many twists and turns and if you focus to early on just one field of photography you could burn out before your career even begins.  Besides, shooting many subjects early is fun and inspiring and in exploring new subjects you just might find that one that interest you above all others and gives you the motivation to make it your life's work.

Eventually you will find your purpose but their is nothing wrong with being a generalist and shooting alot of interesting subjects in the beginning.  If you are bored with your images they will not inspire your clients.  You will be in a rut and your images will suffer.  To keep your enthusiasm level up you have to shoot subjects that keep your creative juices flowing.

May 26, 2012


Telling someone what to shoot already limits the growth in that particular relationship.  As Stock Photographers we get Want Lists/Briefs all the time from the big Photo Agencies.  These briefs give the photographer an idea of what to shoot and more importantly how to shoot it.  They will suggest natural authentic people doing active things in a hip lifestyle way.  By following their lead you have reduced your ability to be original and express a unique image.   You have to be in a position of power in order to create your best imagery.  When I was starting out I too would try and follow the editors lead and shoot what they wanted but over time I found that just letting go and coming up with your own ideas was a better way to go and much more rewarding.  I have had some hit and misses over the years but at least I know they were my hits and my misses. You can follow trends and be dependent on your editor coming up with photo ideas for you but what you are actually doing is following the herd mentality.  By the time an editor is suggesting an image to shoot the uniqueness is already gone and hundreds if not thousands of photographers will be shooting that idea.

Experience leads to less dependence on the so called rules of stock.  That is, work closely with your editor and let him drive the concept and art direct your shoot.  With experience you tend to do your own research, have your own ideas fermenting in your active brain and you shoot images that go with your priorities and values.  Experience will let you look at the facts of a shoot and plot a course of action that suits your inner landscape and not someone else's.

I find with this new freedom to shoot anything and everything, to immerse yourself in the infinite possibilities,  allows your ideas to germinate and come to fruition.  As you experiment with subject, composition, exposure and perspective etc.. you begin to see an image form and then you can narrow your idea down.  This creative process becomes your bread and butter for original works and not a cookie cutter assembly line reproduction of someone else's ideas.

May 26, 2012


Memorial Day is coming up again on Monday the 28th.  A time to reflect on the sacrifices our military men and women and their families make each and every day.

May 5, 2012

Opening Day of Boating in the Northwest

Opening Day of Boating along the Montlake Cut in Seattle is how should I say this, crazy fun. The boats that will watch the parade begin lining up along Union Bay days before the event, where on the opening day morning, these boaters look like a gauntlet of partying yahoos as the decorated boats come down the Montlake cut. The size of your boat doesn't matter,  big and small coexist in perfect harmony enjoying the morning festivities as they party hardy through the late morning.  Along with the boats you have the crew races, where the UW usually dominates in the Windermere Cup.

I get there early before sunrise so I can get a good parking site and an easy exit to the freeway.

April 28, 2012

Along with street shooting I would sometimes go to the shady side of downtown Seattle and stay overnight in a run down motel or hotel and shoot images in the room.  Not the best idea in the world but when you are young you think you have to be in on the edge in order to get good images.  This particular photo was for a class assignment.

April 28, 2012


When shooting street photography there is always a chance that you will be approached by people that don't have your best interest at heart.  When I was doing alot of street shooting I was harassed by a homeless guy that wanted me to take his picture for a buck.  At first I resisted but soon found that the logical thing to do was take his photo and be done with it.  So, I took his photo and paid the fee and moved on.

Another time I was shooting in Santa Barbara of all places and was approached by a gang member who was suspicious of me taking pics on his turf.  The weird thing was that I was along the waterfront by Stearns Wharf on a beautiful sunny evening with tourists walking by and here I was being confronted by a gang banger (Tobias was his name) holding a beer bottle and asking me for ID.  I could have balked but once again my intuition took over and I saw the danger being presented so I took out my business card that was in a plastic sleeve and attached to this card was another plastic sleeve that had a 35mm slide enclosed.  Once Toby (we were fast becoming friends) saw this and was convinced that I wasn't a narc taking photos of him and his buddies, he said to me, "If anyone gives you any trouble tell them Toby said it was all right for you to take photos".

You have to be alert to people and places and not get yourself cornered in an awkward and dangerous situation.

Jumping Jupiter Overwhelmed By Choices

April 8, 2012

We have a Jack Russell or Parson's Terrier and he is highly energetic.  He loves his tennis balls and will pick the most inopportune times to want to play.  For instance at 11:00 o'clock at night right before we are getting ready to go to bed, we will hear the ball drop at the foot of the bed.  This breed of dog is also tenacious and when it gets a whiff of another animal he will track it until he finds it.  Using this instinct I decided to complicate his life by setting up a concept shot.  It was a concept of being overwhelmed by choices and not being able to make up your mind. So I put a large group of tennis balls into a plastic container and put little dog treats under the tennis balls so his nose would pick up the scent and he would start digging.  And sure enough his head was in the plastic bin before I could get the first frame off.  It was a fun shoot and I think Jupiter enjoyed it too for the special treats he had.

Travel vs Staying Close to Home

3/17/2012


I love to travel.  My family traveled along the West Coast through the nineties in an RV and stayed at all the major cities and parks along the way. There was so much to shoot that you could never run out of great subjects.

Fast forward to the present and the major changes that are taking place in the Photo Industry and more to come and you would have a hard time convincing me that travel photography can give you a good decent, consistent living in today's market place for Stock Imagery.  It used to be that you would travel, take photos and then submit those images to your agency and then as those images began to sell, you would use that income to fund the next trip and so on and so on.  But nowadays because of the digital revolution destroying the dollar return on the license for an image and agencies fighting to gain market share by giving imagery away for almost nothing, you cannot survive and prosper on Stock Photography income alone. That is why you have so many professional photographers doing weddings, portraits, seminars, workshops, consulting and working at other jobs outside of the photo industry.  They are all scrambling to stay afloat in this topsy-turvy world we live in.

With photos dirt cheap, why would a client pay more for a travel image from you when all he has to do is use the web and find some photographer from that area of the world that he is interested in and deal directly with him.  Who cares if he is an amateur, ultimately we are all amateurs learning new things all the time and becoming better at our hobbies.  The lesson now is to be smart and not waste your time thinking that you can travel thousands of miles to exotic locations and create great images in these beautiful locations and expect those images to sell automatically.

So even before you start your journey and get on a plane you are already traveling with an albatross around your neck,  no matter where you go everybody is a photographer and everybody can take an image and sell that image on the web.  They also have the leisure time to wait for the best light and not rush their shooting because they are not on a deadline.

There will be alot more crowd sourcing sites popping up like istock photo, Flickr and Tumblr and once they reach a critical mass of subjects the people running the site will contact the big photo agencies and allow them to troll through the site and cherry pick the best images as long as the photographer gives them exclusivity.

Plus,  you have the cost of getting to your "exotic"location and then paying for a room, food, rental car, family, entertainment and more.  I put in family above because if you are a travel photographer and leave your family behind to shoot in far away places then your also losing out on quality time with the most important relationships in your life.  That is why I took my family with me.  I regretted not doing this with my older daughter.

So as a travel shooter you have no guarantees that your images will sell anymore.  Actually you can do the math, as more and more people get the photo bug and buy digital camera or cell phones your imagery becomes less and less critical for buyers who have an overabundance of photos to choose from any one of which will fit their editorial and commercial brands.

Right now I am spending more time creating conceptual images and when I do travel, I travel in Washington State.   Washington has all the seasons, mountains, rivers, lakes and cities I will ever need.  By staying close to home I can still create images but not go broke traveling and spending money with no guarantees that I can recoup my investment and time.  Also, I got out of the rat race, you know what I am taking about, that feeling that you have to keep producing more and more just to maintain your level of income and even as you produce an assembly line of imagery you know that nothing can compete with the millions of imagery being uploaded on a daily basis on the web and being sold for pennies on the dollar.  The race is already lost and you might as well create images you enjoy making because you might not see any income from them anyway.

That doesn't mean I will not travel again but for now I am satisfied by shooting subjects locally.

New Technology

March 10, 2012


New camera technologies are coming at us all the time.  These new technologies are taking over the image making process.  Technology, that gives anyone the ability to take a bad photograph and using the new technology, make that image a decent image.
The latest one that caught my eye was this box camera that can focus an image even though the photographer didn't focus the subject properly.  It got me thinking about learning the craft of photography, reading and looking at the masters of the craft and being inspired to create your own personal images.

I learned photography from the bottom up.  Taking darkroom classes in black and white,  rolling our own film and developing the film and printing the negatives.  We learned about exposure and contrast and how you could underexpose and overexpose your film by varying your times in the developer. This worked well if you had a very contrasty scene and needed to back off from the deep shadows and bright highlights.  You simple wouldn't develop the film as long.

We learned the Zone System created by Ansel Adams.  The meter averaged everything to an 18% gray,  therefore if you were shooting a subject that was bright you would have to adjust your exposure so those bright areas of your image didn't get dark and muddy looking.  To bring up those highlights that you saw through your lens you would have to overexpose the negative/slide but not so far as to lose the highlight detail.

We learned the camera controls before everything went Auto mode.  It was Eye/Hand coordination as you photographed fast paced action subjects.  You practiced which way you should turn the lens depending on whether the subject was moving away from you or toward you.  You used a tripod and set up your composition carefully and deliberately.  We learned composition and lighting.  We learned the business side of making pictures and then selling them to make a good living.

Now cameras are getting to the point where they can virtually take a picture for you without you being present in the scene and aware of your composition and exposure.   The mantra now is take the photo and enhance it after the fact. You can correct exposure by new HD merge technology.  You can photoshop out any detail you shouldn't have included in the frame.  If you didn't like the color you can filter it to be anything you like.

Everyone is a photographer nowadays and they proliferate the internet with subjects of  internal revelations, as if they are showing the world an important event, a plate of eaten vegetables.  When everything is important then nothing is and we see the minutia of daily life, the mundane details of our existence raised to the level of significance that lowers our expectations of what quality subjects should be.

But there still is a way of seeing that is unique to you, and finding that vision only expands your ability and willingness to learn and grow as a photographer and as a person. It has nothing to do with technology, but your inner landscape being manifested.

Once you learn the craft of photography, then you can break the rules and use these emerging technologies to your advantage, not letting the technology use you.  Adding new techniques that enhance your style and helps you express your vision is a good thing, and the new software out there can do that, but you have to be careful and not let this new technology interfere with the meaning behind your images.  Special effects for its own sake usually leads to a shallow perception of the photographs you are making.

Look at new technologies in the film industry and the special effects they can do now.  The book series by J.R.R. Tolkein "Lord of the Rings" was great, but to bring it to the big screen, as Peter Jackson did, took time for technology to catch up with the human imagination.  Same with photography.  Learn your craft and then use these emerging technologies to enhance your imagination and make authentic images and not bland, sterile, automated, assembly line copycat images.

WestPort along the Washington Coast

February 20, 2012


Last summer I went on vacation at Westport.  It was great to build fires at sunset in the fire pit and sit around and talk and enjoy the peace and quiet at the cottage we rented.  When you are a photographer are you really on a vacation time-out from creating imagery.  I don't think that is possible.  So holding to my nature as a photographer I created images as we visited different locations around Westport.  I think my family knows, that even though we are on vacation, I will be shooting imagery and yes they will have to sometimes participate in a concept image that presents itself to me.

Social Media Eating Away at Your Creativity

February 4, 2012

I feel like I am being consumed by social media and losing valuable time running my Photography Business.  Time is short, and getting caught up on all the ways to promote yourself, keep in touch with every friend and acquaintance you had in High school, College, past business partners, past co-workers etc.. How can you live your life now in the present and create great imagery and focus on what is truly important to you and your photography if you spend all this time with Social Media Consumerism? The more friends you link to, the better you feel.   More and more I see people using their cell phones to check in on their lives rather than looking up and seeing the physical world there in front of them and interacting with that rather than a window into cyber space. How many apps you have on your cell phone is becoming the "how big is your lens in your bag?" debate, meaningless.  All these things distract you from your purpose, your goal of making great imagery.  What this new technology does is allow you to play at photography and not really do it.  Photography is something you do after you play with the newest, greatest app on your hi-tech phone.

Time is too short and it gets shorter as you get older, so I will use Social Media to promote my photography but will not allow Social Media to become the purpose of why I take photos.  I will find what works for me and gives me the best time to do what I love to do, take photos.   I will focus on my strengths and concentrate on a routine using Social Media as a means to and end and not an end in itself.  Technology, if not used properly will destroy your energy to create.