PixelatedImage Blog

This looks awesome. I have a weakness for black fleece, and pockets. And anything that’s black fleece with a ton of pockets? Like crack cocaine. And this jacket from Gitzo is pricier than crack cocaine. The $400 price-tag invites the temptation to make jokes about getting fleeced. Sorry, I resisted the temptation but I am a weak, weak man.

Still, all things being equal, I would love one of these jackets. I wear a black fleece on almost every trip, even if I take it off on arrival. Gate agents getting picky about carry-on? No problem - empty your stuff into the pockets and you’re on your way. Want to go walk-about for a day and not take a bag of gear? This’ll do it. Unless you’re in Delhi in June, then you’re pretty much screwed - cause, baby, it’s hot outside.

Get the lowdown on this Gitzo fleece as well as their waterproof jacket, on the Gitzo site, or order them direct from B&H Photo - here’s the link to the fleece.

June’s wallpaper. Shot in Quito, Ecuador. Clicking the image should bring up a full-sized image. Click the thumbnail and a full-sized (1280×853) image will open in a new window. Right clicking that should allow you to save it and make it a desktop wallpaper. Enjoy.

Last month I offered to start making these in a larger size if anyone wanted me to do so. I’ve still had no takers, so let me know.

Want a look into some of the hoped-for possibilities for the next release of Photoshop? Want a say? Got a feature idea you want to let Adobe know about? Check out this post on Photoshop Insider.

While we’re on Scott’s site, be sure to read McNally’s guest article on his favourite photography books - here’s a list of the influences Joe considers really important, so it’s worth a look.

The Lumen Dei Photographic Workshop and Tour in Kashmir this September is now sold out. Check back early next year to see where we’re going next. But this one’s sold out. We really mean it this time.

Looking for a new 580 EX II? - Looks like you can get an instant rebate on them. Amazon has them on for $390.00 right now - that’s over $100 off the ticket price. Check it here.

This week Epson announced a new printer, the R2880 which replaces the R2400. I love my R2400 and would buy it again in a heartbeat, but now it’s close to $300 cheaper, AND it’s newer, shinier, and better. More about it on the Epson website here.

Unrelated to yesterday’s rant, Joe McNally has a post on his own blog about his now infamous desert shoot and the rational behind the number of SB-800’s. Not that Joe needs to justify himself to anyone, he’s just so bent on teaching that he can’t seem to help it. As always, informative.

My new buddy Gavin Gough is featured in this month’s Digital Photographer magazine (the expensive one from the UK.) Be sure to check it out. Gavin’s site is here, the magazine’s site is here.

I’m in the studio all weekend shooting yogis (those bendy twisty yoga people.) Have a great weekend.

This one’s a rant. Sorry. If you came here for plucky comic relief, move along.

I’m not gonna lie to you folks, the more time I spend online reading the interactions of some of the photographers out there, the more disappointed I get. Some of the arguing going on is enough to make Jesus drink gin from a cat bowl, and I’m not far behind.

Yesterday I read a thread that got downright vituperative about whether images shot with digital cameras were “photographs.” The week previously I read a thread about Joe McNally’s use of multiple strobes on an ad hoc photo shoot in the desert, and the amount of petty dissent I read in that column was staggering.

So I’m working on this theory and it goes thusly: Arrogance and receptivity are mutually exclusive. Receptivity is key to both creating great photographs and appreciating them. And so in the resulting absence of great photography or the ability to appreciate the images of others, we’re left with one thing only - technique and the endless opinions about it. Hence the in-fighting. You don’t find the humble there. You don’t find the artists with vision there.

That is the only explanation I can come up with for how a handful of people with considerably less talent, experience, and expertise can bone-pick about Joe McNally’s choices. Joe is no god, but he makes his choices as an artist and he creates gorgeous photographs - that alone ought to be enough to convert anyone to a posture of humility. And from that posture would flow learning, and better photographs, even if your choices of technique would be different. They should be different. You are you, and Joe is Joe. The technique you need to express your unique vision will be different from the technique of another - but it makes yours no better, his no less valid.

So, can I say something - photographer to photographer? Let it go. Spend less time posturing - this is not a contest. For the love of Ansel Adams, just get out there and shoot something you love. Is it art? Is it photography? Is it pure? Should you use a flash? Is film better than a digital sensor? These are all smokescreens and discussing them ad nauseum is nothing more than a counterfeit. Don’t mistake talking about photography for the act of capturing your vision. One makes you a photographer, the other makes you a talker. And if you must talk, precede it with good old-fashioned listening and some humility. Pretty please.

Thus endeth the rant. I’m going to dig out the cat bowl.

There is a common misconception that tells us the more lenses we have, the better spec’d our cameras, the more software we own, the faster our computers, the less constraints we will have and the more our creativity will flourish. “Just think,” we tell ourselves, our spouses, our loan manager, “with this new gear I could really create! I could finally serve my vision! ”

Rubbish. If you’re lucky someone will call your bluff. This is where the Artist and the Geek need to sit down, shut up, and get some serious counseling.

Creativity does not flourish in the absence of constraints, it flounders. Constraints not only aid creativity, they are essential to it. Consider Frank Lloyd Wright, no slouch when it comes to creativity, who said, “Man built most nobly when limitations were at their greatest.”

As photographers we begin with the constraint of the frame, and the limits of our technology, but the forces that limit our choices, and therefore force creativity, are numerous. The more you see them as a catalyst to creativity and not a problem to be overcome, the more creative you will become and the less fruitless trips to the camera store you might make. If you’re feeling your creativity stagnating and wishing for a return to that feeling of flourishing creative photography, try getting counter-intuitive and start playing with your constraints. This kind of thinking is rampant on sites like David Hobby’s Strobist - where shoestring budgets force the hand of creativity and remarkable solutions emerge.

Looking to strong-arm your muse back into action? Here’s a couple suggestions.

Pick a focal length and stick with it. Not one lens, but one focal length. Anyone caught using the 28-200mm will be disqualified. Now go shoot.

Determine ahead of time not to use Photoshop. Or determine to use only black and white or your sepia presets in Lightroom.

Shoot faster. Give yourself an assignment and go fast. I mean really fast. Ludicrously fast. The faster you go the more you short-circuit the logical/analytical and force your intuitive side to kick in.

Pick a theme and shoot it. Green. Round. Wet. Texture. Horizon. Sign. Anchored. Free. I don’t know, make something up. The point is not the the theme itself but the constraint it forces upon you, helping you to find new ways to see, prohibiting you from looking in other ways. It focuses you.

Shoot out of focus for a day to help you concentrate on general shapes, light, and colour, rather than specific subjects.

Spend a day shooting anything but the Rule of Thirds.

For every image you make, turn around, 180 degrees, and make another one. Introduce the constraint of serendipity.

Come up with another one all by yourself and share it in the comments. Share the love.

The venerable David Hobby, single handedly responsible for keeping sales of Nikon SB-800 flashes and Pocket Wizard remotes well above average, has just released his 8-disc Strobist Lighting Seminar set.

There’s some whining and complaining going on about David’s choice to focus on content over production value, and some about the $139 price tag, but the 200,000 readers of Hobby’s Strobist blog can’t all be wrong - the man has made a niche for himself teaching strong, simple off-camera lighting. If you’re interested in putting yourself through an off-camera lighting bootcamp, this is a phenomenal deal. Read more about it here.

1. If you haven’t backed-up your data in the last couple days, now is the time to do it. Go now, the class can wait.

2. Floundering for ideas to create a streamlined back-up strategy? Check out Scott Kelby’s strategy here - it’s nearly identical to my own. I’ve been meaning to write an update on how I backup my stuff, but Kelby’s post this morning is so close to the one I’d have written, I’m just going to point you there.

I got my DROBO last week and have yet to fill it with drives, so for now I use a 1TB LaCie for the redundant archives, another for offsite backup at a friend’s studio, and I use Hyperdrives instead of the Epson P5000 (Here’s a solid review of the Hyperdrive from Luminous Landscape.) I haven’t used Apple’s Time Capsule either, and instead just use a LaCie drive and SuperDuper to create a bootable copy every two days.

However you do it, do it simply, do it redundantly, do it often, do it now.

When I was 16 I wanted to be a professional photographer, shoot for the yellow rectangle, all that. I think in part because I felt like I wouldn’t be a real photographer unless I was making a living from it. Then something clicked and I think one of the reasons I dodged doing this professionally for many years was because I didn’t want the demands of vocation to steal the joy from something I loved so much. But I was still dogged by words like “amateur” and “hobbyist,” if only because it felt like I was being defined by what I wasn’t - a “professional.”

Pursuing your vision and loving your craft has precisely nothing to do with how you make your living. The real photographer is the one who shoots what she loves and is committed to learning her craft well. Money often just makes it unnecessarily complicated.

In fact, abstaining from career photography can have advantages, and as a follow-up to yesterday’s post about “going pro,” I wanted to add a little perspective to the would-be converts. Abstaining from career photography:

Can mean having a day job to fund the gear you want. Pros are often forced to spend their money on necessities: marketing materials instead of the 14/2.8L lens they want. The hobbyist gets the cool lens, the pro gets postcards.

Can mean the flexibility to shoot what you want to shoot without the demands of clients hemming in your artistic impulses.

Can mean being free of the pressure to create on demand.

Can mean the freedom to pursue the art of your vision without commercial concerns or distractions. Ideally a working photographer finds/makes the time for personal projects she is passionate about; it just doesn’t always work out that way.

Can mean the freedom to love your images without feeling like they’re only truly good photographs if someone buys them. Allowing your vision to be validated only by dollars is a terrible trap.

In the best-case scenario, doing this for a living is as good as doing it as a hobby. Sometimes more so. Doing this for a living can mean doing it more, pressing deeper into the art simply from necessity, and being able to write off some cool gear. I love doing this and making a living at it, right now I wouldn’t change that for anything. But the notion that you aren’t a real photographer until people are paying you is rubbish. Vincent Van Gogh didn’t sell any of his work during his lifetime. Sure, he went crazy and lopped an ear off, but he was incontrovertibly an artist.

So if “going pro” allows you to both make a living and pursue your vision - go for it. If remaining a hobbyist allows you to pursue your vision without the pitfalls of making it your trade, go for it. Either way, serve your vision with passion. Shoot what you love, even if it costs you (and it will!), that’s when you’re a real photographer.

When I first started blogging I did a Home Office Smackdown and readers sent in pics of their home offices. Very complicated. A friend, Jordan Nielsen, posted something similar this morning and in a moment of boredom I decided to play along and will link this to his comments. I invite you to link yours in mine. Why? Why not? (Click the pic to embiggen it.)

On a side note - anyone out there ever have Photoshop’s Photomerge go through its paces with a small handful of jpgs only to simply end up with nothing at all, as if you’d never started the process? Very strange - for the life of me I can’t get it to work. Gurus feel free to chime in. But only once you’ve shot your office/studio/workspace and linked it in the comments.

I just read an article online that’s pushing me to react. It’s an honest account by a man who’s giving up the freelance life in favour of going back to “working for the man.” Good for him for being so honest and candid, but the article saddened me. So, I’m reacting and writing another of those advice posts that always, months or years later, seem so presumptuous.

So, if you’re thinking of making “The Switch” and going freelance or professional, here’s a couple thoughts. I’m going to use the word “freelancer” rather than “professional” because it’s often more accurate. I’ve known hobbyists that were very professional; and I’ve known people who do this for a living that are far from it. Making a living at this ought to mean you’re a professional, but there’s professional and then there’s Professional. If ya know what I mean.

1. Go in with your eyes open.
This is not easy. Very rarely will your phone start ringing relentlessly the moment you print a business card. It takes deliberate time, effort, and money to gain momentum. Plan on it.

2. Go in with your wallet full.
Things might take much longer to get rolling than you initially thought. Meanwhile camera’s break, marketing materials cost money, and the bills and rent still need paying. Going in with 6-12 months of reserves in the bank is a very good plan.

3. Go in through the back door.
Want to quit your day-job and live the dream? Who doesn’t? Are you getting clients now? Why leave the safety net until you’ve got enough clients to (1) sustain you financially and avoid months of a totally empty calendar and (2) give you experience and feedback. Going through the backdoor is my metaphor for building a small base of clients while still in the safety of your day-job. It’s a lousy metaphor, but solid advice if your circumstances permit it. Shoot part-time as long as you can, flex your business and marketing muscles while the Boss is still under-writing your efforts.

4. Go in slowly.
Why rush this? While you have a so-called “real job” you have resources to spend on gear, you likely have medical/dental insurance, you have the luxury of planning your transition - make the most of it.

5. Don’t Go In Alone.
Going into this without honest fans, critics, and mentors is foolish. Find someone who you can talk to about this whole thing - listen to their stories, learn from their failures. If you are lousy with numbers and finances, find a great bookkeeper and account BEFORE you launch this ship into a harbour full of hazards.

6. Go in LOUDLY (or find someone to do your shouting.)
What do you know about marketing? I used to be in show business and the saying went, “show business is 10% show and 90% business.” So too with photography. The ratio might be different, the principle is not. You must know how to market yourself or have someone in your back pocket who can do it for you. Read up on marketing, establish a relationship with a designer, and have a plan.

7. Go in Balanced
Want to keep your friends and family? Want not to burn out? Set some boundaries, find some release mechanisms. Do what you love and love what you do, but don’t mistake it for the entirety of life. Find some balance - it’s as pragmatic as it is idealistic - it’ll give you inspiration and rest from the pressures.

I love what I do, and I love the life it has given me. I’ve been self-employed for my entire adult life with very brief early forays into the real world from which I always recoiled in horror. Being your own boss (and your own janitor) has its rewards, as well as its stresses. For some people this is truly the dream, for others it’ll be less so. Going in with your eyes open will give you a fighting chance at making this a dream and not a nightmare.