Tag: Learning

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Business Model Generation

I wonder how many photographers seriously consider business models and even applying their creativity to developing new business models. Frankly I’ve always thought business models were fir the MBA crowd and not something that I needed to worry about. With some prompting from people like ‘Photo’ Jack Hollingsworth I’ve been giving the business side of photography a harder look in recent weeks. There are lots of great resources for photographers, such as Fast Track Photographer and Fast Track Photographer Business Plan both written by Dane Sanders, although I find myself more aligned with books such as ‘Taking the Leap‘ by Cay Lang which seem to have painters as the primary audience but easily translates to the other visual arts.

The Book Business Model Generation (get a free 72 page preview here) provides a visual tool that helps you build a business model that you can use to test your ideas. I’ve been able to easily flesh out some of my ideas and identify questions that I need answering before moving ahead. A video showing how to use the tool – the Business Model Generation Canvas is below.

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Friday Inspiration: Charles Cramer

Charles Cramer is a master photographer and printer.  I think that his work is just stunning and so I was pleased to come across videos of Charlie describing his exhibition at the Center for Photographic Art: earth, water, light and also describing the dye transfer printing process.  The videos are shared below.

I’ve mentioned Charlie Cramer before in my post First Light Three Different Ways in which I mention Charlie as one of the photographers who contributed to the book First Light: Five Photographers Explore Yosemite’s Wilderness.

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Book Comment: Outdoor Photography Masterclass – Niall Benvie

I’ve been trying to understand the key elements of ‘Intimate Landscapes’ – I’m still a long way from them making even vague sense to me – but I am looking at as many photographs as I can in this style and reading as much as I can too.  Niall Benvie‘s article in Outdoor Photography about ‘Deconstructed landscapes’.  You can find a version of the article on his blog here, certainly worth a read.

I enjoyed the article enough to look up his books and came across Outdoor Photography Masterclass.  Against my better judgement, since I’m trying to ween myself off ‘how to’ books,  I ordered it and spent last weekend flipping through it.  The book is broken up as though it were a 3 day workshop.  I haven’t gotten deeply into the specifics of workflow, basic processing etc., – it seems like the usual affair, generally solid advice, perhaps a little dated.  A minor quibble for instance – I’m using 8 GB memory cards, shooting raw I get about 280 images per card.  I generally delete the out of focus stuff and keep the rest.  It’s quite possible for me to have at least 8 GB of images from a morning or evening shoot more than will fit onto the DVD recommended for archiving purposes.

What I really liked were the more thought provoking short essays at the end of each chapter, covering topics such as ‘How Should we Critique Outdoor Photography’ and ‘Creativity, Style & Vision’.  I would have been happy to have a book full of these and I’m happy to have bought Outdoor Photography Masterclass for these writings if nothing else.

To find more of Niall’s writings, and I recommend that you do!, a great place to begin with is the blog ‘Images from the Edge‘ that Niall collaborates on with Clay Bolt, Paul Harcourt Davies & Andrew Parkinson.  Niall is also a regular contributor to the UK magazine Outdoor Photography.  This can be hard to find in the US but is available as an iPad app and well worth having a look.  Lots of good stuff to dig into.

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Are you on the Okay Plateau?

I am curious about how people learn, particularly why some people excel and whether they have an innate talent or is there something that they do that pushes them achieve more.

I was intrigued when I came across the video below from Joshua Foer in which he describes what he refers to as the ‘the okay plateau’ and suggests that avoiding this plateau is essential if you are to reach a level of mastery.

What is the okay plateau?

Foer describes the model developed by Paul Fitts and Michael that describes three phases of learning:

Cognitive – Identification and learning of the component parts of the skill being learned
Associative – practicing the skill and using feedback to improve performance
Autonomous – skill is developed and becomes second nature.

Once you reach the autonomous phase you run the risk of feeling that you are good enough, slowing any further improvement.

With photography it’s quite easy to reach the autonomous phase, to become fluent enough with the technical aspects of photography to make competent photographs. To move beyond this stage to make great photographs involves staying in the associative phase for as long as possible.

So how do you keep in the associative phase?

Engage deeply – spend time really looking at the images that you make, what you were trying to make and figure out how to close the gap. Spend time reviewing the work of the masters to make sure that you are familiar with the history of your field. Find a circle of trusted advisors that will give you sound feedback and push you further.

I’m coming to realize that while I may create my photographs alone being part of a community is important to keep me moving forward. If you don’t have a circle of friends to give you feedback how will you build one? I’d be interested in hearing you thoughts.

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Friday Inspiration: Paul Caponigro

My copy of the catalog for Paul Caponigro’s exhibition ‘The Hidden Presence of Places‘ arrived this week.  I was of course familar with, and particularly like, ‘Running White Deer‘ and aware of some of his still life studies but otherwise largely ignorant of much of his work.  This was an attempt to fill in that gap in my knowledge.  I was very pleased that I did.  The collection in ‘The Hidden Presence of Places‘ has a number of images that resonated with me – quiet and contemplative, exactly what I am striving towards.  The essay that leads off the book has a number of references, many of which I will add to my library over the next few months.  In the meantime I’m going to study the images in the catalog and plan a visit to the exhibition at the Farnsworth Gallery in Rockland before it closes Oct. 9th.

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Watching the Weather

As a photographer and a sailor the weather has a major impact on my activities. As a photographer I look for weather that suits the style of photographs that I’m currently working towards and plan appropriately. As a sailor I’m watching the weather and modifying the sails to match changes in wind and changing plans to account for storms.

We need to be equally skilled at looking for and responding to the winds of change in our careers and personal lives. We must change and continue to innovate if the hope is to build and sustain our business and career. Being creative, looking beyond the obvious, offering something more than just what the camera is able to bring seems to be the way to succeed. Opportunities abound for those willing to try small experiments, review the feedback from those experiments and try again until something is found that works.

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Fogged In

It always surprises me that summer days along the coast can start off very foggy. This is typical of summers in Maine but also happens often in long island sound. Perhaps you already understand the phenomenon, I didn’t but after getting up at 3 am on a couple of mornings to find myself socked in with fog I thought that I ought to understand how to predict whether the morning will be foggy or not. This link seems to provide the answer.

Of course we can’t control the weather and with limited time sometimes you just have to roll with what nature serves up. This is exactly what I did on this morning. I was at a new beach and although I had a general sense of where I was going wasn’t 100% sure. I could hear the ocean but couldn’t see it. I headed along the beach until I found the rocks that I’d seen using google maps. Once on location I played around for a while and made the image below.

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Friday Inspiration: Joel Tjintjelaar

I’m continuing on with my theme of photographers that shoot long black and white exposures today with Joel. Joel has an interesting website that has features tutorials for those people interested in pursuing the long exposure images that he’s known for.

I first became aware of Joel’s work through the Nik Software ad for Silver Efex Pro. In fact the video below is a Nik Software promotional video in which Joel discusses his intent and the process for realizing it.

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Friday Inspiration: Michael Levin in Japan

I first came across Michael Levin‘s work last year when it was featured in George Barr‘s book – Why Photographs Work: 52 Great Images Who Made Them, What Makes Them Special and Why. Michael works in black and white using long exposures, as long as 60 minutes, to create images that have been described as ‘soulful and evocative’. Read an interview with Michael in ‘The F-Stop Magazine’ here.

The video below was shot in Japan by Brad Kremer and is a showcase for who Michael is and what his work is about.

KI: Michael Levin from Brad Kremer on Vimeo.

More videos featuring Michael’s process can be found here.

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Practice Makes Permanent

In his book ‘Welcome to Oz’ Vincent Versace says that practice doesn’t make perfect, it makes permanent! Perfect practice makes perfect. This should be familiar to anyone who’s learned how to play a musical instrument. Practice builds muscle memory that can be hard to unlearn once established.

I think that the same can be said for patterns of behaviors, the rhythms and routines of life. It’s certainly true for the way that I approach photography and change is hard to do.

The Maine Islands workshop that recently attended with John Paul Caponigro marks another step in my evolution as a photographer. I’ve heard many times before the importance of ‘working the scene’ and frankly thought that I was but now realize that I’m not working hard enough. The challenge that I’ve set myself is to go ahead and make the obvious image but then make something more creative and keep pushing until I have 6-10 distinct images. Easier said than done! Even though I set out with the intention of doing that what I ended up with was not too much of a departure from what I’d done before. Breaking old patterns of behavior is tough but certainly worth the effort.