For photography, perhaps more than anything thing else I’m involved in, having a group of people who can give you solid feedback when you ask for it, applaud when you’ve done well, and give you a kick in the pants from time to time is absolutely critical. These need not be accomplished photographers themselves but people who are going to give you a relatively unbiased opinion, who want to help you succeed and will hold you accountable. To those people in my life thank you!
Disruptive innovation was coined by Clay Christensen in 1995. Clay Christensen’s website says that disruptive innovation ‘describes a process by which a product or service takes root initially in simple applications at the bottom of a market and then relentlessly moves ‘up market’, eventually displacing established competitors.’ Really we’re talking about those game changing innovations that spur a revolution in how we think, behave and do things. The development of the automobile wasn’t a disruptive innovation – it was a toy for the super rich – Henry Ford’s model T – a car for everyone – was. I haven’t done a comprehensive analysis but it’s hard to imagine a time in history where there has been so many disruptive innovations in such as short space of time.
In the last 10 years digital technology has changed the game across a variety of industries and has had a hugely impact on how we create and deliver our art. I first took notice of this in the music industry. Purchasing habits have changed dramatically, most of us rarely buy a physical artifact – the CD – any more. I bought a CD for the first time in probably a year recently, it was an album from one of my friend’s bands and I could get it before it made it to the iTunes site. This is a rare exception for me, but a typical lack of restraint, most of my music purchases are now digital downloads. Even the CDs that I buy will be imported into the digital music library that I have on my computer. In addition to changing how music is delivered to the consumer, digital technologies have changed how music is created. Musicians now have access to technology that makes it possible to record their work at home, with the production quality that a previous generation would have had to go into a big budget studio to achieve. They can upload their newly recorded songs to their website for their audience to download without the need for a record label. How cool is that!
The book industry, in denial for a while, is staring at the same kind of revolution that has swept over the music industry. The growth in the number of books that are being downloaded is remarkable. Take a look at how much real estate your local Barnes and Noble gives to their Nook reader – there’s a reason for this. Digital books are here to stay! The technology is available to make it very easy to write, edit and publish an e-book without the need for a book deal. It seems to me that Seth Godin is at the leading edge of this revolution with the Domino Project. Essentially he is throwing out the rules of how things were done in the past and reinventing the book publishing game. This is something that just about anyone can do, perhaps not on the same grand scale, but the technology makes it quite possible.
Photography has been hugely disrupted. I can imagine how it must feel to have been a photographer for 20 years and have the game change so dramatically in a few short years. The advent of digital has led to the demise of film companies, radically reduced offerings from others, specialty printers are feeling the pinch, stock sales are off and yet this is a great time to be a photographer. We’re in the middle of a revolution, the old rules don’t apply, which means we’re free to make it up and make it happen. Try some things, run with what works. Chase Jarvis appears to be the poster child for the new generation of photographers who are exploiting new technologies and new ways of doing things. He was taking photos with his iPhone before it was a very good camera, his photos became a book and an app. He regularly lifts the curtain on the inner workings of Chase Jarvis Inc. on his blog – from how he packs his bag for a shoot to a the occasional daily diary of a shoot. With the huge number of people taking up photography, there’s an incredible demand for photography education. What’s the most disruptive thing that you could do to the photographic education market? Give it away for free! With Craig Swanson, Chase started CreativeLive, a website that hosts and streams workshops with some of the best working photographers today – Jeremy Cowart, Zach Arias and Tamara Lackey to name but a few. While our projects may not have the same reach that Chase’s do, there are opportunities to be had, so let’s go be disruptive!
I’ve been reading a variety of art instructional texts in an effort to find things that will help build my photography chops. I’ve mentioned Betty Edwards’s ‘Draw on the Right Side of the Brain’ methodology previously. I’ve also been exploring a couple of books about watercolor painting too. A new one for me arrived this week, David Bellamy’s ‘Watercolor Landscape Course‘. David is apparently quite a famous watercolorist and educator, although not the David Bellamy I’m familiar with.
The introduction has a number of useful comments for the prospective student. The section ‘Getting Involved In The Subject’ particularly resonated with me. Here’s an excerpt:
The best paintings, I feel, result from the artist having an affinity with the subject. Painting is nothing if not accompanied by the poetry of feeling. You need to find those subjects that excite you most, for only when you find an involvement with the subject can you do your finest work.
This as equally applies to photography and I couldn’t agree more!
As the days get longer I’m finding it increasingly difficult to get up for sunrise shoots. I’m not sure that there’s really a cure for that other than sheer dogged determination to get up and get going, something I was reminded the other day as being the hallmark of a true professional. It’s not hard to understand the motivation to get up and get going when you are often treated to glorious sunrises such as the one I was greeted with on a recent visit to what has become one of my favorite beaches. This shot and others like it are posted in prominent places around my home and every morning I don’t get up for a morning shoot they scream ‘look what you’re missing!’.
I was lucky enough to attend the flashbus boston stop recently. An amazing flash extravaganza, starting slowly with David ‘The Strobist’ Hobby and building to a crescendo with a live demo in the afternoon from the Dean of Flash Joe McNally.
I wasn’t quite sure what to expect or for that matter why I was even going – I rarely take photos of ‘people’ and when I do I’m not fluent enough with flashes to incorporate them into the mix. I’ve actually given presentations in the Long Wharf Marriott conference rooms but to a crowd smaller than the 250+ that were there to see Hobby and McNally perform. It was fun to have an opportunity to interact with Hobby before the event began – he worked the line of photographers laden down with all the gear they own as they waited to get the Adorama event band and associated goodie bag.
Hobby’s presentation was a walk through of a series of images to show how he builds ‘Layers of Light’ to get the look that he wants for a particular photo. I must admit that it actually made sense and seemed quite a logical approach to getting the photo.
I’d seen McNally up close a while ago now at the Acadia DLWS in 2007 that was just before the moment it clicks came out and his star as an educator began to rise. Then he did a couple of on location small flash lighting demos that were quite impressive. In the Marriott ballroom he started quite simply with one light building to a finale photographing Bruce (an audience member) with 4 lights including a gridded snoot for Bruce’s impressive beard.
The day really was a firehose of information and someone more practical than I would probably be able to put it to good use. I feel like I need some further study. Fortunately both Hobby and McNally have supporting DVDs. I have McNally’s and certainly recommend it (check out a clip here) and I suspect that Hobby’s 7 disc set would be well worth the money.
I think Zack Arias‘s one lighting workshops are also worth checking out. There are a couple of places to get these – the live workshop, the One Light DVD, and the CreativeLive workshop. Zack starts more basic than Hobby and his teaching style resonates with me more than Hobby and McNally. For me the progression should be Arias, Hobby, McNally although they all have something to offer for everyone.
Oh my goodness, there are few things that irritate me more than realizing that I have huge tracts of sensor dust to deal with when I get back from a shoot. The less time I have to spend tweaking my images the happier I am. Granted this is very easy now to deal with in lightroom or photoshop but I’d rather not have to deal with the problem at all. I’ve taken to making shots of clear sky at the end of a shoot in the vain hope that I’ll one day figure out how to automate the removal based on the imperfections on an otherwise clean background. If I ever figure that trick out I’ll share it here. Until then I’m going to develop a more rigorous sensor cleaning routing. I have no excuses really. I have sensor cleaning products from visible dust, including the sensor loupe, arctic butterfly and sensor swabs to name but a few of the tools of the trade. I question the utility of the arctic butterfly – I’ve never had this do anything other than make the problem worse. The sensor swabs however are great and highly recommended. Cleaning your sensor is not very difficult but it is a bit nerve wracking the first few times. Visible dust have a number of videos that explain the process nicely. I would also recommend taking a look at Moose Peterson’s website for his gear cleaning videos. This is a comprehensive set of demos covering everything from cleaning lenses to sensors.
Although I do my best to make sure that I am up and out shooting on mornings when I’m likely to get ‘good light’ there are those days that I just don’t get it right. This morning was a good example of that. I had been expecting to add to my collection of photos of rocks at the waters edge but as it got lighter, or rather as it didn’t get much lighter I realized that the weather forecast of partial cloud cover must have been for somewhere else! In reality there’s no such thing as bad light, only light that’s not appropriate for your subject. With the even light that comes with cloudy mornings I turned my attention to the beach – patterns in the sand and anything else could find. I’m not sure what the story is behind this rope – how long has it been part of the beach scene?, where did it come from?, will it be uncovered the next time I visit? – but it was a willing subject on a day when I thought I was going to have to go home without making a frame.
One of the ideas that I’ve been kicking around recently is whether it’s better to invest time in developing areas of weakness or to put those same hours into enhancing strengths.
I’m increasingly of the opinion that most people can learn to do most things if they are willing to commit the time and energy. Granted, some people may have more of an aptitude for one thing over another (languages aren’t it for me!) and so may not have to work as hard or as long to achieve a basic level of proficiency as someone who doesn’t have the same aptitude.
To get beyond that initial level of proficiency, to achieve mastery, requires a more significant investment of time and energy.
Mastery = time + commitment
It’s been said that mastery of a skill requires approximately 10,000 hours. This is the equivalent of about 5 years working 40 hour weeks. It sounds about right to me. It’s about the length of a traditional apprenticeship or the number of hours that you would be expected to put in during a typical PhD, or MD training program.
So where to invest your 10,000 hours? In some regards as an ‘amateur’ photographer I’m in a luxurious position in that I can spend time working on what appeals to me rather than developing a skill set that is going to meet the needs of ‘the client’. In turn this means that I have developed a very lop-sided skill set, as I have focused on the things that appeal to me. That’s not to say that I’ve been successful with all the subjects that appeal to me. In fact one of the things that has helped, and continues to help, push me forward are portfolio review sessions with people that want to see me improve and will give me solid frank feedback. These review sessions have helped me steer away from those subjects that regardless of how hard I try I end up making ‘record shots’, to allow me to focus on those subjects that truly resonate. It’s taking some time and effort but I’m finding my focus.
There are a number of tips and tricks for landscape photography that I am slowly learning. I understand the application of neutral density gradient filters and have been using them to balance bright skies with foregrounds. I have been hand-holding the filter since it’s much faster and easier than using a filter holder. As I begin to explore longer exposures, holding the filter for long periods of time without impacting the quality of the shot is a challenge. Shooting with a wide angle lens, I experimented with a filter holder earlier in the year but was surprised when I got the filter holder in my shot. It didn’t make sense to me since I knew that many of the photographers that I admire use one. After some digging I found that my issue was with the size of the filters that I was using. I had elected for the Cokin P system, although I was using Singh Ray filters. The filters are 84 x 120 mm in size which means that this system is fine for lenses 24 mm and above, however it doesn’t work for the wide angle lens that I am favoring at the moment. For that reason I am now exploring the larger 4 x 6 filter holder system from Lee. I have the foundation kit on order from the good people at Samy’s Camera and I’ll share my experience with it in future posts.
I’ve been continue to work on photographing the seashore and in particular rocks in the water. As summer approaches sunrise gets ever earlier, making it increasing unlikely that I will hit my self imposed goal of being on location an hour before sunrise. I enjoy being on location while it is still dark and waiting for the right light. On this particular morning I was on location 30 minutes before sunrise, with it being almost sunrise by the time I got a shot that I liked. Once the sun appeared on the horizon I felt it was too bright to make the photographs that I was looking to make and I headed for home and breakfast.
