PixelatedImage Blog

Manfrotto School of Xcellence, Monday Oct. 24, 2011. 2pm – 3pm PDT
More information on the Manfrotto site HERE

On Tuesday morning I jump in the Jeep and drive down to Syracuse, NY to join Jeffrey Chapman for some spectacular Cambodian/Thai food before we jump an early morning flight on Wednesday to Oaxaco, Mexico for our Oaxaca Within The Frame, Day of the Dead Adventure. Very excited.

Tomorrow (Monday ,Oct 24, 2011), I’ll be on the air at 2pm PDT / 5pm EDT for the Manfrotto School of Xcellence (don’t get me started on alternate spellings. Just plain goofy.) giving a free one-hour webinar presentation about Building Better Photographs. The presentation is largely based on the principles of the newest book, Photographically Speaking, though in a much distilled form. I’d love you to join us. These presentations are always fun (read: fraught with tech issues) and I’ll be glad to have some friends in the audience. Join us! (Follow the link at the top to the Manfrotto site)

Manfrotto School of Xcellence, Monday Nov. 21, 2011. 2pm – 3pm PDT
More information on the Manfrotto site HERE

Next month, same time, I’ll be doing another one called Confessions of a So-Called Pro. Here’s the blurb: When professional photographer and best-selling author David duChemin left a 12-year career in comedy to pursue his first creative love, photography, he tried very hard to be the “professional” he thought he was meant to be. What he discovered along the way was that being a productive photographer that loved his craft had nothing to do with getting paid. More than that, he learned many lessons about the craft of photography that apply to everyone, from so-called amateur to so-called pro. Join David in a candid discussion about the journey of photography.

I’d love you to join us for that too. Between now and then I’ll be in Oaxaca shooting the Day of the Dead, and on Roatan, Honduras, doing nothing at all. The last trip I went really light, this time I’m taking a Nikon D3s, Sigma 20/1.8, Nikon 24mm PC-E, and Sigma 85/1.4. 4 batteries, no charger. 2 x 64 GB SanDisk cards. Gitzo Ocean Traveler tripod, and a couple Singh Ray filters. It’s a fraction of what I once carried but already it feels like I’m packing for an expedition! I’ll carry it all on my back in a Think Thank Photo Airport Acceleration, until I get there, when I’ll pop my working gear into a Think Tank Retro 30. Wow, that was a lot of gear talk in one paragraph. Let’s move on.

Lastly, Photographically Speaking is now shipping and I’m getting really beautiful early comments and reactions. Thank you again for the support! I think this one is the strongest of the so-called vision trilogy. If you haven’t got one yet, you can do so on Amazon.com HERE or Barnes & Nobles HERE. If you’ve already got yours and don’t mind leaving a quick review on Amazon, I’d be grateful.

Will try to check in from Oaxaca and Roatan and send postcards! See you when I get back!

As a follow-up to last week’s series on blogging for photographers, here’s a list of the blogs I look to as a standard. They’re mostly personal blogs with solid traffic, unique voices and good content. A number of you sent suggestions that included your own blog and I encourage everyone to go back to the comments on that post HERE – to see more suggestions both in regards to blogs and to hosting and blog platforms. Some excellent reader feedback there. So please don’t take offense if your blog isn’t in the list below, this is a pretty cursory list of solid, more established blogs that I hope will inspire you as you build your own blogs to reflect your purpose and passion. Being on this list means something, but not being on it doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Hope that makes sense.

M.D. Welch – http://www.depth-of-field.com/blog/

Scott Kelby – http://www.scottkelby.com/blog/

Matt Brandon – http://www.thedigitaltrekker.com/blog/

Gavin Gough – http://www.gavingough.com/blog

Joe McNally – http://www.joemcnally.com/blog/

Moose Peterson -http://www.moosenewsblog.com/

Chase Jarvis – http://blog.chasejarvis.com/blog/

Strobist – http://strobist.blogspot.com/

Tewfic El-Sawy – http://thetravelphotographer.blogspot.com/

Drew Gardner – http://photography-thedarkart.blogspot.com/

Bruce Percy – http://www.brucepercy.com/blog/

Zack Arias – http://www.zarias.com/

David Nightingale – http://www.chromasia.com/iblog/index.php

Kirk Tuck – http://visualsciencelab.blogspot.com/

Jessica Claire – http://www.jessicaclaire.net/

Jasmine Star – http://www.jasminestarblog.com/

Guy Tal – http://guytal.com/wordpress/

Kathleen Connally – http://www.durhamtownship.com/

Dane Sanders – http://blog.danesanders.com/

Did I miss someone that you think is an absolute must-have on the list? Doesn’t surprise me. The Internets are a big place. Drop it into the comments.

As far as hosting goes I want to plug ETWebHosting again. (Click here to go to their WordPress hosting page) They also own DomainSmarty, so the process of registering your name and hosting it are seemless – I don’t like complications and doing it all in one place with a company that has brilliant customer service is my kind of service. The company is owned by my buddy, we’ve travelled around the world together, he’s photographer friendly, and unlike most of the companies I’ve dealt with or heard horror stories about, his company doesn’t speak geek to us mere mortals.  If you’re a pro, or plan to be, having a dedicated name for  your blog – like, for example, Moose Peterson’s MooseNewsBlog.com – is way better than moosepeterson.blogspot.com – it’s just one step closer to projecting a fully professional image. Of course there are exceptions. David Hobby’s Strobist site is as plain jane as it gets and the name is still strobist.blogspot.com, but his content is so good and so well known that it trumps other considerations.

I also want to encourage you to spread the word about your blog. If you take the time to write consistently, then take the time to publicize it. Connect to others, share the love, get on Twitter and direct traffic to your great content and images.

If I can answer questions related to blogging as a photographer, I’d love to. I know that some of the other readers will have some excellent feedback to, so drop the questions into the comments and together we’ll do what we can to get you blogging and doing it well. Now take a moment and visit a few of the sites above.

So if I didn’t dissuade you from blogging yesterday, and the lame photo above doesn’t turn you off, here’s a few suggestions for plunging headlong into blogging. Taylor Davidson left a comment on Tuesday’s post citing anecdotal evidence that many blogs don’t make it past the 3 month mark. Don’t let this happen to you. This is a short list, and it applies to long-term bloggers looking to breathe new life into their blog with an overhaul as much as it does to new bloggers.

1. Don’t let the name fool you, blogging is just writing. You are self-publishing a daily or weekly column, nothing more. So unless you’ve got a photoblog with no words, bone up on your writing skills.

2. Content Is King. Seriously. In fact it’s more like Grand Emperor. Unless you are a celebrity to whom people are drawn like desperate flies, people will come for what you write. If you’re hysterically funny, many will overlook what you write and come for how you write it. But most of you will draw an audience based purely on content. You must have something to say. And unless you lead a profoundly interesting life, or a boring one about which you write incredibly well, people simply won’t show up to read it. Unless it’s your mother and I’m betting even she has limits.

3. Skip the freebie webhosts, like Blogger, and go straight to WordPress.com or WordPress.org. Just save yourself the grief and do it right the first time. I wish I had. I reserve a special place of loathing for Blogger. Typepad is fine, but you pay for it so might as well go straight to WordPress. WordPress.com is a paid and hosted kind of deal, WordPress.org is free for the downloading, but you need to install it on your server and update yourself, so there’s a certain degree of geekdom required. If you’re looking for great hosting, I can’t recommend ETWebHosting strongly enough. Sure, you can get free hosting out there but you get what you pay for. I’ve been using ETWebHosting for years and their reliability and customer service is fantastic. If all you want to do is get a blog up and running, then spend the few dollars/month and get a WordPress.com blog.

4. Find a name you can live with for a long time. Getting the word out and the momentum going is tough work and will take you time to build a readership. Blogs are spread virally, so once your URL is out there it’s best if you can let it do its thing without changing it up.

5. Find a niche. Not everyone needs one, but it helps. Strobist is a great example. Another way of looking at it: play to your strengths. If what you most want to do is post a combination of images and narratives and leave off with the gear talk, do it. If you want to focus solely on macro photography, do it. Follow your expertise or your passion.

6. Don’t take it too seriously. It’s just a blog for gosh sakes. Enjoy it. Know your audience but write what you want to write – it’s your blog, not theirs.

7. Be consistent. If you want consistent and growing readership, and not all people have that as a goal, then writing consistently is important. Doesn’t have to be everyday, but if you decide to post every Wednesday, make sure you show up or your readers won’t. But make sure you have something to say. Better to post actual content people care about and only post once a week, than to post junk every day.

8. Use social media to support your blog. If you’re already on Facebook or Twitter, be sure to let those people know when you post to your blog. This draws in people from that outer circle of your immediate circle of friends, people that otherwise wouldn’t know about your blog.

9. Interact. Part of the payoff of blogging is meeting new people, making connections, and expanding your world. Reply to comments, link to others, and in general keep the love flowing.

10. This one’s yours. Got a suggestion for successful blogging, specifically for photographers, then this is your spot. Actually the comments are your spot, so consider this symbolic.

For tomorrow’s post I’d love to assemble a list of photographers who are blogging and really doing it well. Could be a blog like mine with lots of words and opinion, could be strictly a photoblog like David Nightingale’s Chromasia, but if you’ve got a favourite, throw it into the comments and I’ll compile them.

Yesterday I wrote about the benefits of blogging, and while I gave you three pretty compelling reasons, I’m pretty sure that what I gave you was a short list. But given all these benefits, is blogging a tool you should be spending time on?

I think so. But what shape that takes is different for everyone. I love to write. It’s not usually a chore for me to sit down and communicate. If anything I tend to over-communicate at times. But some of you don’t like writing. Perhaps with time you’ll get better at it and grow to love it. But some of you, well ya know I love you and so this might be hard for you to hear – heck, it’s hard for me to say-  well, you just might want to do a photo blog and speak through your images instead. Look, if you stink at writing in the same way I stink at math, why put yourself – and your readers – through it? Do what you love and do what you’re good at and if writing ain’t either, find something that is. Or don’t, that’s just my two cents worth. But if you’re an exceptional photographer and your writing is simply lousy, then you’re doing a disservice to you work and misrepresenting yourself. If you insist on writing, then find an editor to work with, someone who will respect your voice and polish your writing so it is aligned with the quality of your work. By the way, if this is the route you choose, I have more respect for you than you know, because this is not the path of least resistance and it shows real commitment. Good on ya.

Writing is not the only way to create content on a blog. You could do audio or video podcasts, or simply post an image daily. But closing your eyes to the fact that your work and your words are at odds with each other isn’t going to make that go away. Again, fine if you’re a hobbyist, I suppose, but if you’re a working pro, or aspire to be, then your words and your work need to compliment and support each other and, ultimately, support the goals you have for your blog.

What is missing in the discussion of photographers and blogging is often a rationale. Doing it because everyone else is doing it is a rationale but not one that’s very helpful. So many blogging photographers have no intended audience whatsoever. None. Their design, content, and writing style suggests strongly that they’re just puttin’ it out there in hopes the someone, anyone, will read it. If you’re a hobbyist, then more power to ya, an unfocused blog is groovy. But for aspiring professionals the very first questions you must ask and from which all your content decisions must be made are Why am I doing this? Who am I writing this for?

If you know the answer to that, then you can make sound choices about what should and should not be part of your blog. If your audience is potential clients then long Photoshop tutorials and discussions about your last assignment that blew up in your face and left you frustrated are probably poor content choices. They won’t read them. They shouldn’t read them. If your audience is other photographers because you’re a trainer, lecturer, author, workshop leader, etc, then these are exactly the things your intended audience might get strong value from.

I know I beat this horse so much there ain’t much left of him, but what you do – particularily in the professional arena – will be better served if it is informed first by why you do it. The Why will determine the What and the How. Oddly, so many people seem to be asking “Should I blog?” and fewer are asking “Why should I blog?” Both good questions, but the second one interests me much more.

I did an interview with Frederick Van Johnson of TWIP last week. Easily the most fun I’ve had doing an interview in the last 15 or so years, and there have been some real doozies. One of the questions he asked me was about blogging and while I can’t recall the exact question, or my reply for that matter, it’s had me thinking.

Q: Should photographers blog?
A: Depends.

This is a little like asking if architects should use telephones. Taken the wrong way it’s a bit on the far side of non-sequitor. On the other hand, if the architect needs to make a phone call the telephone will be a much better tool – assuming he uses it right – than, say, a turnip. Of course the question Fred was implying was: are there benefits to blogging that photographers who abstain from this social media might be missing? And the answer is a resounding Yes! Clearly if you’re reading this you see value in the blog as a form of communication. If you didn’t you’d be doing something else with your time. Possibly even out making photographs.

I did a post months back called You Definitely Should(n’t) Blog and followed that one up with Blogging Tips for Photographers so I won’t repeat it again. If you’re interested in this topic, by all means go back and read those two articles.

I just want to follow up because Fred’s question got me thinking and I haven’t been able to shake it. So forget all the rational reasons and let me give you three more that are a little more experiential. Used well, with some skill and intention, using a blog as a form of social networking and promotion can bring gifts you never expected.

1. My best friends in the photographic world have come through my blog.
I have a circle of friends that I am every day grateful for, and most of them came through this blog. They are now people, many of them, that I’ve met in person, travelled with, taught with, photographed with, and shared meals with. If it all fell apart tomorrow I’ve made lifelong friends. If my blog had done nothing more than that, this would be enough.

2. My best client has come through my blog.
Two and a half years ago I got an email out of the blue from someone who’d been reading my blog, lurking in the background for months. One minute I had no idea she was even out there, the next minute I had an email on my desk asking if I’d be interested in a high-profile assignment in a couple countries in Africa. I wasn’t angling for work, I wasn’t writing for clients. But something in the way I wrote and the common interests and values we seemed to share made her think I was the photographer she wanted. We still work together and that account is both my largest and my most enjoyable.

3. My best opportunities have come through my blog.
Every one of the best opportunities I have had over the last three years, including my book, have come as a result of conversations that were initiated on, or because of, my blog. Without exception. I have booked lectures, workshops, and writing assignments solely from this blog.

I love blogging. I get more personal and professional satisfaction out of the time I spend on this thing, and on the blogs of others photographers, than I ever imagined. The blog can be a powerful, career-building tool, when wielded right. If you’ve ever wondered if blogging had any benefits for a photographer, and if the three benefits I listed above didn’t seal the deal, read the article I mentionned at the top of the post – You Definitely Should(n’t) Blog

This week I want to talk about blogging as photographers. If you have questions or ideas for topics you’d love to see covered, leave a comment. I have a couple ideas but as is often the case I’m kind of just launching the ship into these waters this week without a solid course set. It’s just more, uh, organic that way. If you’ve seen your own blog bring you solid benefits or have some wisdom to share, leave it the comments and share the love. Tomorrow we’ll talk about why you just might wanna leave this whole thing alone.

If you’ve been around these bloggy parts for even a few weeks you’ll know that I’ve been wrestling with the whole 2.0 world. The social networking world which these days revolves around Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, etc. At times this wrestling has been more like a death match and more than once I’ve been left gasping for air and ready to give in. I haven’t because I think it’s worth the trouble to figure this stuff out.

Right now I am up to my neck in social networking, affiliate accounts, and things like AmazonConnect. My book comes out in 6 weeks and I want to get things in place to really do a proper job of promoting it. So I have a reason for all this frantic social networking stuff. But so do many of you.

Social networking, Web 2.0, whatever you call it, is nothing more than a set of tools. For some of you it’s a set of toys and you’re content to litter the information superhighway with details about your cat or your breakfast. I guess that’s ok, too. But the business applications for these tools are immense if you (1) use them with intent and (2) use them well. Not easy.

So, let’s talk Twitter. I use it because it can be whatever you want it to be. It can be a chat room, a newswire, a polling service, a micro-blog. It can be a tool to connect you to more people faster, and give you opportunities to go deeper. But it’s not magic. You gotta learn to use it. Here’s what I’ve learned after a couple weeks of living and breathing this stuff.

1. Be Relevant. For the love of all things good, PLEASE ask yourself this one question before tweeting: Who Cares? Seriously. If the answer is limited to you and your cat, keep it to yourself. If you’re micro-blogging as a professional then stupid tweets about absolutely nothing will only dilute the way I think about you. Perception is reality and if you’re Twittering makes you look vapid and silly, sorry, you’ve just become vapid and silly.

2. Know Your Audience. Who are you talking to? Professional photographers? Amateurs? All photographers? This guides what you say and how you say it.

3. Be Yourself. But be a carefully edited version of yourself. What you say on the Twittersphere and the rest of the internet ripples a long way. You can’t control where it goes or how it gets used, only what you say. So be mindful. Careers have crashed and burned.

4. Be Community-Minded. If you are looking to be a leader within a community you have to interact with, and serve, that community. Web 2.0 is fueled by reciprocity. For every person that follows you, follow them (unless numbers don’t matter to you). For every tweet you throw out to the Twittersphere, comment or respond to another. Re-Tweet.

5. Know The Limits And Move Past Them. Twitter can only do so much. It’s like an internet dating site. You find the girl, you chat with the girl, but if you don’t graduate from the online service to a face-to-face encounter, y’ain’t dating. Twitter is great for meeting and chatting, but you can’t live life at 140 characters all the time. Don’t be afraid to take it further. I’ve already had coffee with folks I’ve met on Twitter, in fact I have one tomorrow morning. And the more conversations you have, the more opportunities you find.

6. Get a Reader, like TweetDeck, to make heads or tails of Twitter and keep your head above water. What it took me a while to understand is that Twitter is a reciprocal numbers thing. If part of your goal is more followers, then you need to follow more people. But no one can keep track of all this noise, so Tweetdeck allows you to create columns for favourites, and groups. So I’ve got one just for photography in which I place the folks who generate actual content. Keeps me sane. Not everyone wants numbers, but I’m experimenting with something so that’s part of my goal. Tweetdeck allows me to do that and remain sane. Without Tweetdeck I’d have jumped ship.

7. Repeat The Tweet. I don’t do this, but probably should. If you want your tweets to reach the most peeps (what the heck kind of language is this new technology encouraging?) then you need to repeat your tweets a few times a day. I guess I’m I just don’t care that much because this seems like too much work. But if you’ve got something important to say repeat it, and ask people to RT.

8. Remember Your Purpose. If your purpose is to direct people to your blog, then do that – intentionally point people to new posts, but consider this: if you come off as too self-promotional, as more of a taker than a giver, the community to which you appeal is likely to be smaller than if you also point to great related content on other blogs. If your purpose is just to make a name for yourself then the usual rules of celebrity management/leverage apply, but here’s another: be a fan, not just a celebrity. The more you point people to others, the more valuable you are to others. People like folks who are givers.

9. Extend Your Brand. If I go to your Twitter page will I find your logo? Do you have a great avatar? Your web 2.0 activities are marketing activities, little chances to say Here’s Who I Am! The usual rules apply – be creative, consistent, and congruent with your brand and core values.

10. Please Control Yourself. You need to update Twitter a dozen times every hour? Seriously? Do you know that makes me want to poke my eye out with a fork? Remember tip #1 – Be Relevant – but please, be relevant IN MODERATION. The more you say the less impact each thing you say will have. More signal, less noise. Please.

Got a great tip for using Twitter as a photographer? Comments are open.

A quick 5-minute video to run you through my personal back-up system. Click the screen capture above to see the medium-sized Vimeo version.  If you’d like to download a tiny version for the iPod or iPhone, click HERE.

Well, nearly made it through a whole video without the cats interrupting. Not that I mind when they do but soon y’all are going to get your expectations up and start coming here just for the cats and that’s when they’ll go on strike. Keep an eye out at the end, the cats start doing a scene from Fight Club. They’ve been rehearsing.

Here’s an oversimplified cheatsheet.

When it all comes down to it what matters is not whether I use DVDs or not (I don’t) but whether the system you have works for you well enough that you’ll use it. If your computer blows up or is stolen tomorrow does it leave you high and dry? With the cost of harddrive space these days, there’s no reason not to have some kind of back-up plan, even if it’s not as paranoid as my own.

Got a plan? Share it with us. (And yes, I know I got the date wrong. I recorded this on March 23, a Monday. Sigh…)

Ok y’all – Lightroom 2 has been released. Many of you assume that my sponsorship with Adobe means I get the inside scoop on things like this. I don’t. I wait with the rest of you. And hold my breath. And beg the gods to be merciful and intervene. And today it’s out.

The Abobe site has posted their Lightroom 2.0 page HERE. And NAPP, as always, has a learning centre up already – The Lightroom 2 Learning Center is HERE.

Matt Kloskowski, the man behind the curtain at Lightroom Killer Tips has a great list of links and resources relevant to Lr2. Check it out HERE.

As they say elsewhere in cyberculture: whoot! Once I get my own copy I’ll let you know how it’s impacted my workflow, but I can already tell you I am excited about features like the brush capabilities, the post-crop vignette, and the graduated filter. Small things I once took images into Photoshop for, now I can do more of this in Lightroom itself.

Multimedia

The pundits are all in accord on this: multimedia is where things are going. Not ALL things, but big, important things. They’re going to Multimedia. No idea what it means. But hey, they said the Pet Rock would never catch on and, man, were they wrong.

But folks, this shouldn’t scare you. If you’ve already embraced that the job of a photographer is to be a visual storyteller, then adding multimedia to your toolbox is time well spent.

In Kona last week Gary S. Chapman led a session on getting started in multimedia presentation. I was amazed how easy it was (important) and how powerful the results were (way more important). Here’s the gist:

1. Lay out your sound first – Gary used a simple mix of audio interviews gathered on an Olympus DS-30 and pulled into Garage Band via iTunes, and royalty-free music from Magnatunes.

2. Pull the resulting audio into Soundslides Plus ($70 for the full licensed version) and add your photographs. Add credits.

3. Congratulations, you’ve just put together a basic multimedia presentation. I’ve oversimplified it, and you can get as complex as you like if you use programs like Final Cut Pro.

Looking for some inspiration on this kind of thing? You need look no further than MediaStorm which has some truly powerful pieces.

Don’t think of this as a change of discipline, but as a chance to present your images in a way that, when done right, can multiply the impact of your story. Still not convinced? Read this article by Michael Clark on the O’Reilly site.

*Be sure to check the comments from Brad – he’s added some solid recommendations and alternatives.

Writing Software

While we’re talking about stories, I was just turned on to a great piece of writing software while in Kona. It’s called Scrivener and it’s freaking amazing! Unlike MS Word where the document is a single written piece, in Scrivener each document is an entire project, with the ability to outline, to gather resources and links, and to keep it all organized. I’ve never been this stoked about writing since that ill-fated experiment with caligraphy back in grade 5. It’s going to make my book WAY easier to write. Scrivener is a whopping $39.95, and there’s a fully functioning 30 day trial.

It’s just past noon on Monday and I’m only now getting to posting something. We had guests this weekend and I’m only now recovering. I usually put in more work over the weekends, just didn’t get to it this weekend so it all got bumped.

Ok, lame apologies aside, here’s something I discovered this morning while trying to organize some new projects. It’ll appeal to you if you’re visually oriented and kind of anal-retentive about being organized. Another apology: this is Mac OS-X only. I’m on Leopard but assuming it works on Tiger too. Could be wrong. For those that are left out – sorry. (Update – I’m told this is OSX Leopard only)

I like my desktop and folders to look good. I also like them to be easily identified and since I am a visual person I’ve taken to making custom icons for important files. But this morning I just wanted a down and dirty icon for a new project folder. Here’s what I did:

1. Make an image and make it square.

2. Save it in Photoshop as a JPEG.

3. Find that JPG in the finder, click it and hit CMD+i – this will bring up an info pallette with a little thumbnail at the top. Click that and hit cmd+c (Update – Follow the instructions, and the REVERSE of the image below. I mixed it up. Sorry.)

4. Find the folder for which you want this ad hoc icon, click it, hit cmd+i, find the little thumbnail as you did in step 3, click it and hit cmd+v

5. That should paste a new icon. If you used a square you won’t have transparency issues. Now just delete the jpg image and you’re done.