PixelatedImage Blog

Here’s the January 2010 wallpaper in both 2560×1600 and 1280×853, shot outside yet another monastery in northern Thailand this August.

Click the image above to get the small wallpaper, and HERE to get the large one. Enjoy!

I’m really excited to be announcing the release of the first collaborative book to come out of Craft & Vision. Hot on the heels of VisionMongers, my manager Corwin Hiebert has written Growing The VisionMonger, 10 Things a Manager Can Teach You About Running & Growing Your Business.

If you want to learn about f-stops and focal lengths, ask a photographer. If you want to learn about managing your business, ask a manager, and Corwin is a great manager. He’s not only the guy holding my own little world together but he performs management tasks for my friends Kevin Clark and Dave Delnea. He’s freaking great at what he does and he’s  neurotic about doing thing excellently and with efficiency. In short, he’s my secret weapon, and while not everyone needs or wants a manager in their back-pocket, using a the expertise of a manager is a sure way to grow your business.

Whether you’re a Weekend Warrior or a Working Stiff, there’s solid meat in here for you. And there’s action points with each of the 10 topics for both. If you made a New Year’s resolution to get serious about your photography business, this is a solid place to start. And for $5, it’ll leave you plenty of budget for that new logo and a retainer for your new accountant.

Still only $5, Growing The VisionMonger is available on the Craft & Vision website HERE or for immediate download with the fancy buttons below.

A Happy New Year from all of us at Pixelated Image Communications and Craft & Vision. May this year be the year you chase down your dreams.

“The practice of art isn’t to make a living. It’s to make your soul grow.” ~Kurt Vonnegut

Chase Jarvis recently posted about his Create-Share-Sustain paradigm. I’ve referenced it, linked to it, quoted it several times this past year. In that paradigm, the notion of sustaining the create-share cycle is generally seen as a financial one. It’s the grease on the wheels that allows you to keep going – whether that’s working at Starbucks or a day-job you love, or even making photographs as a career itself. But there are other means by which we sustain ourselves. Man, Jesus once said, does not live by bread alone. Of course, He was referring to prayer, a sustenance of the soul.

Art too sustains the soul. But how do you sustain art?

I’m ending, as you know, an incredibly busy year. It’s been exciting, and my work has certainly sustained and grown my soul, to use the words of writer Kurt Vonnegut. But you know that bit in physics: every action has an equal and opposite reaction? It’s like that in metaphysics too. As a result this year and the work I did, has also had something of a draining effect. I am tired. I am running out of images and words. I’m feeling it. So what do you do when the thing that sustains you begins to tire you? What do you do when the shelves are bare?

I think you go back and put stuff on the shelf. For the creative soul I think the way we do that is a little counter-intuitive: we shoot more, write more, we go back to the well and fill it with the same bucket we use for drawing water in the first place. We get intentional about the process and stop worrying about the products. We stir the paint. We take more risks. We work more, not less. If you’re a VisionMonger and your work feeds you literally as well as metaphorically, it means you take the time to do personal projects and create something for you and not only your clients. It is not just as important that you feed your own creative soul before you feed your market, it is more important.

I’ll tell you my plan in the coming days, but for now I’m curious about you. Forget resolutions and plans for the new year for now. For now, forget the steps you’ll take to improve your business. What do you do to stir the paint? Where do you go to fill your well?

Hi all. Hope you had a lovely holiday, filled with family, friends, and love. Ours was subdued, a close friend was diagnosed to have a brain tumour and that brought the tone of things down. But it re-calibrates you in a hurry, this kind of event; reminds you quickly of the things you truly want for Christmas – health, family, friends. The trimmings aren’t the main event.

Sharon gave me the gift of Wisdom, a book by Andrew Zuckerman. On my birthday I opened that book, along with books from a close friend. In fact he gave me Annie Leibovitz At Work, which I have, so I traded it in for Camera by Todd Gustavson and The Unguarded Moment by Steve McCurry. I also got to spend a couple mornings, while Sharon slept in, walking on the seawall and wrecking roll after roll of otherwise perfectly good film while I second-guessed my light metre and tried to get things level in the goofy inverted focussing screen on the old Hasselblad. It was, in a word, heaven. Wisdom, by the way, is a fantastic book, especially if you love portraits. Camera is just amazing if you are interested in the history of our craft, and The Unguarded Moment, it’s pure McCurry, and like his last two, it’s HUGE. The cover image is one of my favourites. I’m willing to bet it was a case of finding a great background and just waiting it out until the moment arrived. Very Henri Cartier-Bresson-esque

My muse visited and gave me an idea for what one day will be another book, and I wish I weren’t already working on one because this one just strikes me as way more fun No spoilers just yet, and who knows if/when it might actually come out. But ideas are like gold and getting one that just fits, that’s priceless.

So now we’re in that weird space and time between Christmas and New Year’s. I’m settling in to keep writing, to pack bags for Kenya and Senegal, to make a list of resolutions I plan on breaking early so I can get straight to the guilt part (kidding), and wrapping up the loose ends of 2009. How about you? How was your holiday? Did you get a gift that inspired you? A moment that you managed to capture, with your heart or your camera? Trust it was a good break for you.

I had a simple “Merry Christmas” post planned for today. I scrapped it. I’m wavering between my desire to let this holiday pass with a simple Christmas greeting and something more personal. I had the same struggle last year and in the end I said everything then that I wanted to this year too.

It’s an unusually low-key year for us here, but so peaceful. Sharon and I are celebrating quietly with friends. A few meaningful gifts, a lot of meals and bottles of wine shared with family. We’ve stopped with buying token gifts and the usual insanity that comes with this holiday, not because we value it less but because we value it more. Somehow even wishing someone a “Merry Christmas” seems a little trivial, as if being merry were the best this holiday can offer. Maybe I’m just getting older and more cynical wiser. 38 tomorrow, as it turns out.

What I’m certain of, and remember I didn’t train formally to be a photographer, I trained to be a pastor (hence the sermonette), is that if this holiday means anything, and if there’s historical fact in the reasons for which we celebrate, then it means more than the knick-knacks and bacchanalia it’s become. So for Sharon and I this is a quiet holiday, we celebrate the incalculable gifts we’ve been given, ponder the sad mysteries of the losses we’ve experienced this year, and look forward to another year of similar gifts and losses. In our hearts we long for fulfillments of the promises that accompanied the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, namely; Peace on earth, good will among mankind. And we pray for the strength to do what we can to be part of that.

So, because I consider you all family and friends – thank you for being part of this year for us. On behalf of Sharon and I, we wish you health and peace, the comfort of friends, and the fond remembrance of ones you too might have lost this year. We wish you light and life, joy and happiness. And yeah, we wish you a merry Christmas as well. From both of us, we wish you blessings.

I have a bunch of things I want to point you to this morning.

The 23rd edition of the free online magazine PhotographyBB (above) is now up. The man at the helm of PhotographyBB is Dave Seeram and he was kind enough to interview me earlier this fall. That interview found its way into this issue.  Find more information and a free download of PhotographyBB Magazine HERE.

My friends Gavin Gough and Matt Brandon are leading a tour and workshop to the Kumbh Mela festival in India this April. I wish I could be part of it but my schedule doesn’t permit. Travelling and shooting with these two men is a privelege. I know the few spots available will go quickly and as the next Kumbh Mela isn’t until 2013, it’s not something you can just do next year.  More information on Gavin’s blog HERE.

The winners of this years Travel Photographer of the Year award were announced last week. The big winner was G.M.B Akash from Bangladesh and his work is stunning. Take some time to look at the work of the winners and runners-up HERE in the TPTOY 2009 Winner’s Gallery

Syl Arena rolled out the motherload of Canon-specific web resources on his blog last week. Find Part One HERE and Part Two HERE.

Last but certainly not least, my friend, and a member of this community, Jon McCormack has had one of his images selected to hang in the Yosemite Museum Gallery. Congratulations, Jon. It’s always exciting to see good people and good work recognized. See his announcement and his image, Vernal Falls in Summer, HERE

The holidays are nigh. I’ll be taking Christmas Eve, my birthday, and Christmas Day, off. So tomorrow’s likely the last post until Monday, the 28th. Check in tomorrow, then close the computer and go be with friends and family.

2008. Sleeping on the train to Tunis, Tunisia. Or Sfax. I can’t recall now. Photo credit: The Legendary H.

On Friday I posted a letter from a photographer asking a very pointed question about his future in the craft. I put the note out there and invited replies from you, and boy did you ever step up to the plate! If you’ve not read the email, or the replies contributed by this community in the comments, you should do that. Thanks to all of you for the diversity of perspectives.

One of the reasons I gave, tongue-in-cheek, for not replying immediately was that y’all would just read what I wrote and say, “Yeah, what he said.” The irony, of course, after reading all your replies, is that I’m forced to do the same. There’s not much more I can add. The other reason, unstated, was that I was short on time, and throwing it out to you seemed like a good distraction. Again, the irony is that it forced me to read through over 70 comments. Next time I’ll just answer the darn question

The question, as far as I could see it, was from a photographer really wanting to know whether being a generalist, as opposed to specializing, would prevent him from becoming a successful working photographer. Those were the broad strokes I took from the question. Some of you followed this tack, other picked up on other subtexts. Here’s my reply to the question as I understood it.

Dear Doomed(?) in Duluth,

While your question begs for you to define your terms, I think that your situation comes with both potentially strong advantage and disadvantage if what you’re after is to make a living in photography, in addition to just doing it for the sheer pleasure of it. You alluded to being easily distracted. Sounds like you photograph people for a while, then move on to animals, then to landscapes, then someone shows you HDR and you’re off running in another direction. If that’s what is going on, keep at it. Follow your inclinations in every direction they lead. This is part of you and you need to be true to that. One of two things will happen; you will remain easily distracted for the rest of your life and your life’s work as a photographer will reveal a person who was insatiably curious in a limitless amount of things, or you will one day find one thing that you love to photograph so much that you slow down, and begin to focus a little more specifically in one direction. Nothing wrong with that.

That’s the advantage. You will learn so much from so many different areas, and each new thing you learn will bleed over into other things you photograph, and that’s a strength.

The disadvantage is that it’s very hard to market that if it remains so all over the map. However, what some people neglect to consider is that choosing a niche market, like being a wedding photographer shooting destination weddings in the arctic, doesn’t for a minute mean you need to limit your creative efforts or photographic exploration of other subjects or other disciplines. Shoot the weddings, get paid well for them, then come home and shoot long-exposure abstracts of hummingbirds with a pinhole 4×5 camera to your heart’s content. Elsewhere I encouraged photographers not to the let their marketing niche become their creative rut. The inverse is also true; there’s no reason your love for photographic exploration of a million different subjects should exclude you from marketing to a niche and being seen as a specialist in that market. One need not define the other and that’s one of the great things about a healthy disregard for “it’s always been done this way.”

Marketing to a niche is not the only way to do things. I wouldn’t choose to do it any other way, as marketing is really just communication and it’s a much, much harder task to talk to an undefined audience about an undefined subject. Niche marketing allows you to pick your topic and your audience and to speak with authority.  Explore to your heart’s content, follow that next shiny thing, whether it’s a subject, a technique, a new piece of gear, if you must. But if you want to make a living, you’ll have a much easier time if you pick one area to which you can direct your marketing. Do it well, charge well, and you’ll have plenty of time to pursue your hummingbird project or photographing fire hydrants with your iPhone in your spare time.

Most importantly, as others pointed out, shoot what you love. Enjoy it. Strive for excellence. If you want to make a living at it, find a niche and make it yours. Don’t sweat the rest.

Got a question that needs some group-therapy applied to it? Drop me a line via the contact link at the top of the page. I can’t promise to reply to all of them, but from time to time it might be good to sit around and bounce the ideas back and forth like this.

I got this question in my inbox this week:

In the past two decades I’ve learned at least one thing about myself:  I don’t do expert well. I do bouncing around, try everything once well.  Chalk it up to my being Gemini, too much coffee or ADD. I can get good, and focus for short periods of time but when the next shiny thing comes along – zoom, off I go.  Does this doom me to a life of mediocrity as a photographer? Does this mean I’ll never develop a “style” or “vision” that will be consistent enough to market?

Sincerely, Doomed In Duluth.

I’ve got a response. But I’m interested to first hear yours before I write mine. Otherwise you’ll totally copy me or just write, “yeah, what he said.” and we’ll miss a chance to hear other voices, encourage each other, and hold hands around the campfire while we sing Kumbaya. Or something. Seriously, how would you reply to this? It’s a good question and I know it gets asked more often than we admit, but usually it gets asked with our inside voices, the ones we try to ignore or medicate. Give it a shot in the comments.

A short post this morning as I’m swimming (drowning?) in the business and task-management end of things. Consider the brevity a chance to catch up on other reading

My learning curve feels endless and steep these days. New software, new business models, new cameras, shooting film and remembering what it’s like to get a bunch of crap back from the lab. I spent yesterday morning at my lawyers signing final incorporation documents and spent this evening with my accountant trying to not be a knucklehead about all the changes that incorporation means. It just doesn’t end and I feel like I’m drowning in it. But oddly it’s energized me. I’m busy but I’m reading, playing, and learning in the small gaps my schedule allows me.

I am also up to my neck in Vision & Voice, and writing the draft of Volume II of The Inspired Eye. But in all the stuff I’ve been thinking and writing about re. the creative process, I should add this: learn something new. When the rut starts feeling too deep, or the inspiration seems more like boredom, learn something new – anything, just make it new. If all you have is 20 minutes, sit down with Lightroom and try duplicating an effect you saw earlier today, or learn one of the plug-ins you haven’t had time to sit down and figure out. Don’t have time to learn? Then play. Just mess around with it. You’ll be surprised how well we learn when we’re actively trying to avoid learning and are just playing. Find 10 minute blocks to play.

Whatever you do, one thing is sure either as a creative, a business person, or a creative business person – to sit still is to stagnate, to not move forward is to move backwards, and the antidote to both is simply to learn something new daily. Make it intentional, carve out the time somehow, but learn.

I get a kick out of this one. It’s a spread from my first eBook, TEN, and it’s in Polish. Published by Galaktyka, the same publishers who will be publishing Within The Frame in Polish as well. Any idea how wierd it is to see your own book in a language you can’t read? This is the beautiful face of the Legendary H.

I want to point you to two books, but I swear I didn’t write them. The first is relevant for you VisionMongers out there. The second for creative photographers of all stripes, and some of you are going to be surprised by the recommendation, I think.

The first is called Inbound Marketing, by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah. I’m about half-way through it on my Kindle and it’s a refreshing book on a topic often reserved for slimy snake-oil sales and SEO hucksters. It’s an exploration of marketing tactics involving Google, Blogs, and social media, it’s an easy read, and there’s some good stuff in it, especially if those three topics give you a bit of a head-ache. It’s written for mortals, not tech geeks, and the authors’ overuse of the word remarkable, while as tedious as my own overuse of the word vision, serves to remind us of the value of being exceptional, and creating & engaging in conversations about us and our products – which is what so-called web 2.0 marketing is all about. More information on Inbound Marketing on Amazon.com HERE; It’s a good book for further study if the stuff in VisionMongers got you started in this direction.

The second is Trey Ratcliff’s A World In HDR. I got my copy of it last week, and I’m almost done. Some of you know that I don’t do HDR (High Dynamic Range) images. I’ve never even come close. It’s not my thing any more than giant polaroids are my thing. However, the backlash against HDR is also not my thing. Is it as overused as any other of the treatments or styles used as the Un-Suck Filter of the Week to rescue otherwise poorly conceived images? Sure it is. Sometimes. But that doesn’t mean the use of HDR should be tossed out any more than sharpening should be tossed out because too many people abuse it.

Where Trey’s book succeeds for me is in two areas. The first is the images. They’re presented large and I’m enjoying looking at them. They stir my paint, and if you’ve been around these here parts for the last while you know I put a lot of stock in creative paint-stiring. The other thing the book does well is address some of the Whys behind HDR and creative photography as much as the Hows.  If you love HDR, this book might give you the tools and the mindset to begin using HDR more mindfully, and it will, I think, give you some inspiration. If you aren’t a fan, it might be time to put the disinterest aside and look at the book all the same, not in the interest of becoming a convert, but in seeing what you can learn.

Here’s the interesting thing about HDR images – a lot of photographers seem to dislike them, it’s a love it or hate it kind of thing, sadly. But the general public, the non-photographers out there, love them. And we should be asking why. Anyways, I love my copy. You can get more info on Trey Ratcliff’s A World In HDR HERE on Amazon.com