I was looking ahead at the month of May dreading another slow month with clients cancelling projects or postponing them till next month when I decided to do something about it. I declared May the "month of personal art" and sent an invite to all the people on my Facebook account asking them to come to the studio and have their portrait made. The project has been fun. I'm meeting new people by referrals and I'm sitting down and talking to old friends who are stopping by to participate. Belinda is happy to have a photo of Ben and our dog, Tulip.
I photographed a father and son earlier today and it may be the most beautiful shot I've ever taken of a small kiddo. I can hardly wait for the dad (also a photographer) to see the gallery. And I'm excited that I'm so excited about taking photos again.
I've been struggling to get my fourth book done and it started to seem like one of those projects that would just go on forever. Now I feel a bit of joy about the project and it looks so much better to me.
I had so much fun at my son's swim meet on friday and I'll post some of those shots over on smugmug in the next few days. I am the team's photographer and that gives me a good excuse to roam around with a neckful of my favorite cameras and blaze away. The funnest pix are from the little "six and unders". My son is an assistant coach this year and helps teach them to race. Can't imagine a funner thing for a dad to photograph!!!!
Since it's all for fun I feel free to bring along my favorite old art cameras. On friday I shot with the Kodak DCS 760 and an Olympus e-1 with a bit of Canon G10 thrown in for good measure. The Olympus is twice as good as I remember it. I'm thinking I'll get a longer zoom and make it the primary camera for the swim season. The raw files are delicious and most parents just want digital files. Nobody seems to want prints anymore which is great with me.
The G10 with face detection rocks for wide angle, quick group shots. Everyone should have one of these cameras. I really want to write a book about the new small camera phenomenon. Something like, "Getting Professional Results with Your Point and Shoot Camera!" I think that's where a lot of photography is going. And for good reason.
Speaking of books, David Hobby over at Strobist did his magic. He reviewed my second book, Studio Techniques, and drove sales off the charts over at Amazon.com. Last week the book was the #1 book in the photographic lighting category. Yahoo! That's two in a row.
I'm not sure that everyone gets that the second book is not meant to be a product extension of the small flash trend. It's very much about traditional lighting techniques and studio stuff. Check out the reviews.
Finally, I am jazzed about starting a new project for Zachary Scott Theater. We're spending four day this week doing their season brochure in one of my favorite styles. Should be a blast. This will be the first project I've done that will have a videographer along shooting the shooting. I'll try to figure out how to incorporate that into a blog next week.
The other image above is an example of how I light white backgrounds. The whole explanation is in the studio book.
Keep shooting. Keep loving it. Life is good.
7 comments:
What's the secret code written on your kid's hand?
Those are my instructions on how to light. He calls them out to me while I set up.....Actually, it's his homework.
Glad you are having fun again Kirk!
After reading your post about book writing and workshops I was afraid you were getting burned out. But the best way to get over that is to do something you love and enjoy, which you are doing. Have fun.
My previous post was so gloomy that it depressed me. So I plucked it right off and deleted it. So what if all the "name" photographers have bailed from actually shooting for clients and they now make their living doing workshops? Why should I care? I remembered a line from the Star Wars movie, The Phantom Menace. "Your focus determines your reality!"
So I decided to change focus.
I read between the lines on the previous deleted post and decided that you are concerned about cash flow in the current economy and the non-professional digital competition. All I can say is that I spoke with a pro friend of mine who is in his 80's about a month ago and he still manages to sell himself because he uses film/scanner and the clients he uses can tell the difference.
Do you ever wonder if you should have worked as an electrical engineer?
As a guy in my 30s I went to my first workshop with a photographer just like the one you describe in your deleted post- It was fine, I guess. I decided to pay to find out it was mostly about having a good time and handholding for $1000 bucks for a week.
It seems to me that the photo business is hard and getting harder if you don't have someone to assign you work-and there's a shrinking pool of assignments from what I hear- so is it so bad to make the internet, the photo lessons, the workshop experiences the main focus of your pro photography? There are lots of pro photographers out there that seem to have done this.
N-MD, I think it's fine to do these workshops but I think that the practitioners have an obligation to let students know that what they're teaching might not reflect the reality of the work place. Most are trading on knowledge and credibility garnered five to ten years ago. Showing the trappings of a big production shoot with lots of staff might actually sabotage a starting photographer by placing their expectation into an unrealistic time machine.
I kinda feel like it's selling out but that may just be my warped point of view......
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