I’m Not Cut Out For That

Systems thinking about the society (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Anyone who has been reading my blog knows that I’m not the sort of person who would think or say “I’m not cut out for that”.  Most times, I tell myself that anything is possible and set out to face my fears.  But, there have been times when I’ve had to question taking on an assignment or assuming a role and ask myself, if in fact, I’m cut out for it.

There are generally two types of scenarios that mandate a decision to be made:

• When I am listening to my inner voice that is prompting me to do something.

• When I am listening to family, friends or colleagues who are encouraging me to do something

I’ve learned the best thing for me to do in either scenario, in order to make the right decision is to think of it in terms of what is the right fit for me. Is it in harmony with who I am?

Right now, I am working on a marketing plan so I am not only looking at what markets to target in terms of where there is a demand but also in terms of which markets I am suited for.  That doesn’t necessarily mean I’m thinking of what’s in my comfort zone, it means that I am thinking about which markets I can provide the most value to. If I do it right, everybody wins.

 

10 Ways Photographers are Their Own Worst Enemies

1. They talk themselves out of things.  – Telling themselves that it wouldn’t matter if they learned new skills or shot new images or whatever they didn’t want to make the effort to do.
2. They try to “educate” their clients (sometimes a bit too much) instead of collaborating and possibly learning from them.  A lot of “older” photographers are like this when they are working with younger art buyers or directors. I think the energy needs to work both ways.
3. They give themselves an A for effort for starting something but too many times their starts lead to nowhere if they don’t have an end goal in mind.
4. They don’t open themselves up to networking with others by attending industry meetings or events.
5. They treat their clients like their enemies where one needs to win instead working toward a positive outcome for both.
6. They make the mistake of creating for an audience, instead of creating for them selves.  (Thanks to Seth Godin for that thought)
7. They take workshops or pay for a service and then don’t utilize them. I’ve been guilty of this too many times.
8. They don’t shoot for the pleasure of it.
9. They rely too much on commissioned work instead of taking advantage of new opportunities and ways in which to market and sell their own projects.
10. They don’t stay true to themselves.

10 Ways I’m Making the New Year More Analog

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what I miss from my “analog” days. I’m far from being a Luddite; in fact if anything I’m just the opposite, continually embracing technology and using it to grow creatively. I’m having the time of my life right now exploring a variety of mediums and I’m amazed at the global reach that I have as an artist and a member of the human race.

It’s a powerful time to be alive, because the world is literally at our fingertips. But I’m finding that as much as technology has “connected” more of us together, these “viral connections” are vastly different than our “analog” connections.  I’m not just referring to how we connect with each another, but also how we connect to ourselves and figure that out amongst all the noise.

So, I got to thinking about how I could be more “analog” in the New Year. Here’s some things I came up with:

• Cut in half, the amount of time I spend interacting with people on social media platforms, and spend that time instead on personal interactions.

• Get together more, face-to-face with clients, colleagues and friends.  Gosh, I think this is what I miss the most – people just don’t make the time for this anymore. And chatting via text, email and FB isn’t the same.

• Write more letters, and send printed invitations and cards in the mail rather than always electronically.

• Go online less often and have a specific purpose or task in mind when I do.

• Make images the best I can in camera.  Just because I can change an image digitally in post – doesn’t mean that I always need to do that.

• Create something printed – a photograph, a portfolio, an exhibition or a book.

• Read more printed books on the couch, the porch, the beach or in bed.

• Read a printed newspaper on a Sunday morning. ( If I can find one.)

• Walk more in nature instead of on the treadmill.

• Stare at a fire and look up at the sky more often.

Anyone else have suggestions on how to live more analog?

Making a Movie With a DSLR and (crowd) Funding It

The first thing I will say is – I did it!  I successfully created a movie

State Theater, Traverse City, MI

– from soup to nuts – with the smallest of micro-budgets, a tiny crew and a lot of hard work.  We’ve had some nice awards at film festivals along with a slew of rejections, and it has been one of the richest experiences of my life.

I’ve written about the journey and the technical aspects of the making of this film, on this blog and the Opening Our Eyes blog.  One of the most popular posts on this blog (it continues to get dozens of hits each day) is the post I wrote about gearing up for this movie. I’ve written so much about this project that I decided to collate a lot of my material and produce a couple of ePubs.  One is available now and hopefully, the 2^nd one will be online soon.

A good idea, hard work and a lot of determination are essential in pulling off something like this – and to be crazy enough and confident in yourself to think you can do it.  I can tell you one thing – the confidence factor had its ebbs and tides.  I found that many times my level of confidence changed with my “hits” and my “misses”.  That certainly came into play during both my crowd funding campaigns on Kickstarter and IndieGoGo.  I’ve been thinking a lot about crowd funding lately because it seems like just about everybody is doing it these days. It certainly has exploded since I reached my Kickstarter goal, a year and a half ago. Seth Godin announced today that he is launching a Kickstarter campaign to publish his ePubs – sounds like his traditional publisher doesn’t want to take the risk and finance it until he sees if “the people” are interested.

I have to tell you that I was somewhat bothered when I read Godin’s blog. Kickstarter doesn’t accept every project that gets pitched to them.  When I did it the acceptance rate was about 40-45%.  I don’t know what it is now, but it’s got to have dropped significantly.  And that’s the thing – when “publishers” won’t take the risk, and high profile writers turn to their readers to back them, it’s going to be harder for the true “indie” to get noticed.  The same thing has happened with a lot of film festivals.  Film festivals started out, as a place for indie’s to screen their movies.  Now, at many of the festivals, the “indies” are competing with the big indie studios.

Things are constantly changing.  It becomes harder for the “indie” to get funded and noticed but it’s also easier because of social media. If  you are thinking of embarking on a project – a film or a book – and you aren’t sure if you should do it or can afford it – you can either talk yourself into it – or out of it.  It’s kind of like looking at the glass, half full or half empty.  I can choose to muse on my losses and put myself in a funk, or I can reflect on my wins and the rewards that have come into my life with the making of this film, and feel good about myself.  Each day, I ask myself which way do I want to tip? it’s up to me to determine my value – not anyone else. And today, I think I will feel pretty good about what I was able to achieve.

Personal Projects

When I first started out in photography – professionally speaking – it wasn’t customary to show “personal work” to a potential “commercial” customer.  At that time, in the late 70’s, art directors and designers wanted to see that you could “shoot” the things that they needed shot.  So, if you aspired to shoot the

English: Double Stuf Oreos, by Nabisco. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Oreo cookie ads – you needed to have an image of Oreo cookies in your portfolio.

This was always a dilemma for me because my photography was “personal”. I became a photographer as a means to an end – the end being that it would enable me to live a lifestyle that I wanted to live.  I knew early on that I wanted to live a life, full of people, places and adventures along the way.  I wanted to live the kind of life that stories are written about.  And, I wanted to get paid for it. I wanted to make that lifestyle the foundation of my career. How bold and naïve of me to think that I could make my business – my pleasure.  Yet, somehow I managed to do just that and I have had the most extraordinary life because I was foolish enough to think I could.

Times have changed –they always do – and now art directors want to look at a photographer’s personal work.  They want to see what a photographer “has to” shoot to fulfill their vision.  It’s not only acceptable now to show personal work to a commercial client – it’s a must.  And it’s never been easier for a photographer to show many facets of their work and career via social media platforms and blogs. It’s also a lot of  hard work.

For me, it’s never been difficult to find something that I’m passionate enough about to be able to spend the kind of time and resources that’s necessary to complete it.  I think that’s the key to starting and completing anything – it has to be something that you really want to do. If you don’t really want to do something, even though you know it will be a good thing to do, you’ll just end up giving yourself reasons and excuses whenever a task needs doing.

For the most part, my personal projects have picked me, not the other way around.  They’ve all started with an idea that just wouldn’t leave my mind. Then I’d start to see my idea in vivid imagery as it played out cinematically in my head.  That’s how my film project, Opening Our Eyes, got started – with an idea that planted itself in my brain, until it was time for me to act on it.  Thankfully, the idea didn’t go away and that I did act on it.  It’s hard to believe that I’m still acting on this idea, more than two years later.  But, I have learned that making a film is a process.  A young filmmaker told me that “a film is never finished – but there comes a time when you are ready to let go”.

I supposed you could say that this film has been my ultimate personal project.  The fact that it was collaboration with my daughter Erin makes it even more personal.  But the lines between work and personal and family have always been blurred in my life.  That’s exactly the life that I set out to live.

Technology – Connecting our Past and our Future

These days with social media it is so easy to connect with people all over the globe.  We can make new friends and reconnect with old friends with ease. We can use social media to share knowledge and ideas or simply stay in touch with friends.

One thing I have learned in reconnecting with friends from the past is that even though time has passed and changes have transformed our lives – the underlying character traits of most people, remain the same.  If someone I knew had been an adventurous soul in college or high school – they were still adventurous souls.  At least this has been my experience when I have reconnected with people from my past.

Quite honestly at this point in my life, I am so involved with my “now”, I don’t really have the urge to dig into my past. I’ve never been to any of my high school reunions and there have been many.  But when I do reconnect with people from my past, they are always people I have a natural and lasting connection with.  What attracted me to those people then, are usually the same things that attract me to them now and vice versa.

With any type of relationship, I take the attitude that the people who are in my life are those that are meant to be there at this time. There’ll be good relationships and not so good relationships, but each is meant to play its purpose in my life.  The same holds true in business relationships – there’s always an ebb and tide in most relationships, and we learn by it…. Or we should.  There’s the sweet and the bitter side to anything in life and it’s almost like those two ingredients need to be there for a “life well lived.”

I’ve learned a lot about filmmaking and the art of storytelling over the last couple of years, and the one thing that stands out, is that every story needs a “conflict” or an “opposition”. Every story needs contrast.  If it doesn’t – it’s not a good story – at least in terms of the entertainment business of films, TV shows, books, magazines etc.  I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately and I try to identify those themes when I watch a movie or read a book.  There is always an element of conflict or opposition to almost all stories and stories are taken from real life.

So when I look at my ultimate story –my life’s story –I tell myself to accept both the pain and the joys of life, because they are meant to be there. They are part of the process. I tell myself to expect the unexpected and leave any and all possibilities open. I tell myself to bridge the past with the now and allow the future to be what it’s meant to be for a life well lived.

Monetization of Photography in Spite of a Lousy Economy

I talk to a lot of photographers. I don’t define the word “photographer” by the type of camera he or she shoots with. Whether someone is shooting with a still camera, a traditional video camera, a motion picture film camera or a hybrid camera that shoots both stills and motion – a “photographer” these days is apt to embrace more than one of these tools.

Regardless of the tools you may use, I’ve come up with a few tips on how photographers can stay afloat and make money in this continued stagnant economy.

• Think outside the box – don’t think of yourself as one who just shoots still images. Even your “still” clients will have a need for motion imagery these days.  It may not warrant the need for them to hire a big video production crew to make a broadcast spot.  But it could be one of your corporate clients needs a “talking head” for their website. Even if you don’t shoot motion or don’t want to – collaborate with someone who has these skills to fill your client’s needs instead of sending your clients  elsewhere.
  
• You don’t need someone else to commission your services in order for you to make a living. When photographers take on personal projects, not only are they creating a buzz and getting noticed by potential clients, they are also creating their own “content” to monetize. It is possible now to get our content to market without the need of a middleman. Portals are open and plentiful to all.
• Take advantage of what is “free”, rather than be put out of business by it. There are so many ways to build your brand and get noticed without spending a fortune. The costs of building and maintaining a website have dropped significantly because of advances in technology. And utilizing social media to create a buzz and get the word out about your company is virtually free with Facebook, Twitter,LinkedIn and YouTube. But be prepared to do the work and discipline yourself because this territory is ripe with distractions.
• Re-purpose your content. If you’ve been blogging or have something useful to share – consider packaging your “knowledge” into ePubs, podcasts or “how to” webinars. One thing I’ve learned about making an ePub is that you can either do it yourself or hire a formatter so that it gets to market quickly – via Amazon, Barnes and Noble or the iTunes platform. Price it right – and offer more than one ePub at a time. (I’m working on my 2nd ePub now) In this market, if someone has just spent $3 or $4 to buy your ePub and they see you have another one for sale – it’s not a big stretch for them to buy that other book you offer at the same time.
• Collaborate with others. Partner with others to put on webinars, podcasts, call in phone seminars etc. Use this opportunity to build your own brand. Don’t always feel that you have to be the only “act” offered. In fact many times, if you join forces with other creatives, it will get you further than if you are the only speaker in a half filled room. Get out there and get noticed and learn from your colleagues at the same time.
• Be authentic. I cringe when I write that word because it has become a bit trite. I guess in a way I have always been authentic. In fact I just can’t help myself. If you are true to yourself, you will be ready, eager and able to work hard on your dreams. And hard work is exactly what is necessary to make it in this profession.  You’ve got to want it bad enough in order to do the work. If you are a clone of other photographers, you’re career will be short lived. I guarantee the photographers that you are emulating will be “moving on” because their passion is driving them to new things. So, what happens to the cloned versions then?
• Don’t focus solely on the money. Easy to say and really hard to embrace when you can’t pay your mortgage. But look at any successful person – I don’t care which business you choose to look toward in terms of finding successful people – but you’ll see that most people who have “made it big” were not driven by the money. I’m not saying that money is not important, but if you are solely focused on the money and not on the act of creating – it will show.   Being too focused on the  money part of the equation, can sometimes push it away. People sense it. It’s human nature to want to be around a “winner” – not someone who is begging for a job to keep them afloat financially.
• Be patient. Everything turns around. While the old days and ways of doing things won’t come back, better opportunities will replace them. Don’t be paralyzed by your own fears. Do what you can that won’t cost you a lot of money and there is plenty you can do. Work social media, learn new skills – audio, editing, writing etc., network with people, create new content for ePubs, webinars, and podcasts. Use your imagination, pursue what you are passionate about and when the economy turns around – you’ll be ready.

Being Yourself

Yesterday, I gave a talk and showed a bit of my film, Opening Our Eyes,

Movie poster for Opening Our Eyes

at the PACA conference in New York City.  I had been asked by ASPP to speak about the making of the film and my plans for distribution.  To tell you the truth, even though I’m always thrilled to show and/or talk about the film, I was a bit nervous with this crowd.  PACA stands for the Picture Archive Council of America and its member include some of the biggest stock photo agencies in the world, including Getty, Corbis, Masterfile and Alamy. I was nervous because part of my message was that I no longer needed the validation or others to get my stories to market.

I thought my message would be somewhat threatening, because I was telling the audience that content creators no longer needed the traditional gatekeepers of the past, to get their stories “out there.”  That because of technology, it was possible for the individual to have a global reach and if one is willing to do the work – the prize is all theirs – meaning the monetary rewards.

I had a tough time slot to speak – right after lunch  -  I knew that I would be dimming the lights for the film and that is never a good thing to do in that time slot.  But, Tom Kennedy had given his very inspirational talk about new media and new opportunities in the  marketplace.  I had heard Tom’s talk  as part of ASMP’s SB 3 series this past year – and I knew that my presentation was a great follow up to his – and in fact it was almost like a case study example of what Tom was talking about.

My presentation went amazingly well and as I looked out into the dimly lit audience as the film was playing – I couldn’t see any closed eyes.  I felt that I made a connection, and that perhaps in some small way, I had made a difference.  Maybe, I just got people thinking about what they could do to make a difference in their own lives.  And maybe I had influence beyond that.  But, I know that I stayed true to myself.  My intent was not to come off as threatening  – but I did want to make people feel a tiny bit uncomfortable.  It’s when we get uncomfortable that we push ourselves to a better place.

My message was simple.  Someone doesn’t need to lose – in order for someone else to win.

New Opportunities for Photography

For this post, I’m going to use a very broad definition for “photography”.  I will define photography as any image still or motion shot by any camera – still camera, video camera, hybrid or even and iPhone.

The business of photography has changed with technology. To start with it demands more than just “still captures” in terms of content. These days, our clients are asking us to create stills and motion content and sometimes even 3D.  On top of that technology has made it possible for almost anyone to take a reasonably good picture or video.

So where does that leave us as far as new opportunities in the business of photography? While some look in their rear view mirror and lament the passing of the good old days, I for one have my eye on the possibilities that are open to anyone willing to do the work.

My top 5 pick of opportunities out there:

• Once Magazine – An online photo magazine made for the iPad. Photographs and video look great on the iPad and Once, magazine shares subscription revenue 50/50 with each issue’s contributors. You no longer need an assignment to shoot those long run stories you love and monetize them.
• Crowdfunding – With Kickstarter, RocketHub
• Distribution – Film DIY,  Distribber
• Funding and marketing  - Sokap
• PR and Marketing Tools – Topspin Media
• Portal for e-commerce (also integrated websites) – Photoshelter

That’s a start.  It’s never before been more possible than it is now to create, promote, market and monetize your “photography.”  Be smart.  Be authentic. Be courteous. Have a plan and be prepared to do the work.  Anything is possible. Validation for your project is no longer necessary.

If you appreciate what I have shared – here’s one last link, a shameless plug to our funding campaign on IndieGoGo for our film, Opening Our Eyes.  If you can, please contribute. If not, please pass along the link.

Marian Kramer, one of our subjects in the film says:
 “We all just have to shine each other up.”

Resources, Sharing and Good Karma

I love the time we are living in.  If there is anything I want to find out about – and I do mean anything – and I can get “connected” online – I have access to a universe of information. For someone like me who always has a hundred questions running through my mind – it’s like the “time of Aquarius” – only better.

This morning I was poking around ASMP’s CameraCake, a cool new social bookmarking site.  It’s kind of like getting references to all sorts of interesting people, ideas and services from your colleagues. I posted a link to a great new online magazine that I had heard about from friend, David Sanger on Facebook.

So, now that information and link to Once Magazine will be shared with a lot more photographers and motion shooters than if it just appeared on my blog.  Why all this sharing?  I don’t know, but I do know that when you give, you get more in return and on many levels.

I spent two years, giving seminars for ASMP about transitioning to video.  In those two years, I got a lot of emails with questions from photographers as they added motion to their businesses and I  hope I answered each and everyone.  I’ve also shared a lot of info about video on this blog . That’s why I started it and titled it “Journeys of a Hybrid”, almost 3 years ago – it was a journey for all of us. I’ve recently started offering seminars in The Business of Video, because I see there is a hole to fill. There’s plenty of  “HDSLR” workshops out there, but rarely do any provide practical business models and/or guidance that speaks to the new media opportunities that are opening up in the hybrid area.

Giving seminars doesn’t provide me a living but it does help me in a business sense because by providing knowledge to my competition and people just starting out, I am helping all of us to sustain a decent living, working in a creative trade.

I also like to share because it makes me feel good.  I’ll be speaking at the PACA conference on Oct. 22nd, in New York.  ASPP asked me to talk about my film, Opening Our Eyes in a seminar entitled “Passion to Profitable Distribution”.  I’m delighted to do that because there’s nothing I like doing more than talking about what we as creatives are capable of doing and the global reach we have as individuals.  It’s an empowering time.

I’ll close with one small request and that is to share this link to our recently launched
campaign for Opening Our Eyes on IndieGoGo. The film is finished and is already making a difference, but we need to give it a push in order to “get it out there” and to be seen.

As Marian Kramer, one of our subjects said “We just have to shine each other up.”