This photo was shot quite some time ago and I threw it out as part of the culling for a Vancouver Musician. I originally though the bird and the hard shadow across his jacket was distracting and didn’t help the image. I was looking back through some of my work and noticed it again with a completely different eye. I fell in love with it. I liked his gaze off to the distance, the hard shadow on his jacket, the seagulls wing, and the railings both foreground and background helped bring you to his gaze as he arrives in a new port contemplating what is in store for him. If I had not been looking back at my old files I would have missed this picture in the rush of deadlines and culling.

Reflection is an art. It is important to sit and reflect on the past to make sure you are as prepared for the future as possible. Often as professionals we are moving forward so fast we forget to look back at our lives and work and learn some lessons from ourselves. We can get so tied down in the must do’s of our daily lives that we loose track of what is important, what is valuable, and what is necessary. Quiet time in reflection of your work and life will help you move forward with greater resolve and clarity.

We all have success’s and failures. Remember that both will teach and guide us into our futures. It’s easy to look back on our successes and try to ignore the failures but that is not always helpful. We can learn a lot from our failures. The key is to make sure you don’t dwell in the past. Celebrate your successes and contemplate lessons from your failures but dont get caught up dwelling on either. If you dwell on your success you will become arrogant and self absorbed, if you dwell on your failures you will become depressed and useless. It’s a delicate balance. Look back and learn then turn around and sprint with new clarity, vision, and wisdom.

Photo Credit: Tyler Smith – D3s 50mm f/4.5 1/8000 ISO4000

I went on a photo walk with my two kids Tyler (8) and Tava (5). The three of us spent some time wandering around Fernwood near the Belfrey Theater snapping pictures. It was a fun process for me but what was most interesting was to see the world through the lens of my children. As creative people we try hard to look at things in new ways and are often inhibited by our past or the way we have learned to see the world. We constantly filter the content in front of our lens through our own experience.

One of the things I enjoy about my watching my kids is their constant discovery of new things, their giggles, and their open hearts. I loved to see all the pictures of telephone poles with paintings on them, man hole covers, fences, and cats. What they found interesting they just pointed the camera at and shot. I looked through my own pictures and noticed that I had focused on people, composition, lines, subject matter. All these things were for the benefit of other people. How would they see my work, how would they perceive my vision, how would they react to my photo. My work was inadvertently being done for someone else.

My kids on the other hand shot what intrigued them, what they liked, what they thought was interesting or noteworthy. They shot what they wanted to capture for themselves. They might have just liked a color or shape. They though the “go canucks go” imprinted in the concrete walk was fun and worth taking a picture of.

They were, photographically, uninhibited by the demands of others and it showed. They have some images I would never have shot but love.

As a business man and photographer I think it is important sometimes to ignore the chatter around us and focus on what we want to accomplish, what we want to create, what we want to do. We can’t be produce something extraordinary if we limit our selves with the confines of ordinary. Many people around you will tell you to give up on an idea or dream, to limit yourself to normal because that’s what people do. The people around you are quick to tell you to conform and slow to encourage your creativity because it’s different.

Bottom line is that if you don’t ignore the world around you and strip yourself of the confines of others, you will never achieve anything extraordinary. I say “Be Extraordinary!”

Have you heard the saying “do what you love and the money will come”? It’s been a hard saying to understand for me because I’ve been programmed by those around me to think “work hard and the money will come”. Although I have done lots of things that I love I have never found it easy to attach monetary value to my loves. Another challenge for me is that there are so many things that I love to do that I don’t have enough time to get it all in or to the point of making money with it.

That lead me to believe that there was something missing from that saying alone. I do a lot of things I love constantly but they don’t always turn into money.

“focus a lot of your time specifically on doing one thing you love and money will come from it”

You can’t just “do it” you have to “do a ton of it”.

Yup that about sums it up for me.

That means that I need to spread myself less thin and start devoting myself to one of the things I love so that I will be able to make money doing it. The one thing that is true in both is that it is possible to make money doing something you love. I think that will be the focus of the next few years for me. Choose one of my many loves, focus on it, and see if I can turn it into a full time lucrative revenue stream. Now to figure out which one. I’ll keep you posted.

Working as a photographer is extremely rewarding but making money as a photographer can be a completely different beast all together. We work with commercial clients and put together licensing structures for prints while balancing the cost for the client.

I find it extremely useful to do a 6 month review of my work and the way it was used while matching that up with the way I billed a project.

Here is an example of where I would have done something different had I thought about it at the time.

The client was a U-Pack storage company that delivers these nifty little yellow boxes onto the street in front of your house so you can pack it up. Then they pick it up and store it at their warehouse for you. I did the job and billed as usual but now that I’m reviewing the idea I realize I missed a huge marketing opportunity.

Had I realized these boxes would have been EVERYWHERE in my city I would have done the job for FREE  as long as I was credited on the box for the photo’s! I love to do pro bono work for non profits and help my community but I forget that once in awhile it’s good to think about what the marketing potential of the job you are doing will be if you can be somehow involved. I’m kicking myself for not thinking of this at the time because I think this particular client would have been totally open to the idea. The worst part about missing this opportunity is that I have to drive by them all over the city every day and am constantly reminded of it.

It’s the end of the summer here in Victoria, BC and I really enjoyed all the weddings I shot this summer. I love the need for creativity mixed with short deadlines and do or die style. If there is one thing I know its that shooting weddings will really help you learn your gear and make sure it gets out of the way fast. If you have to think about your camera settings you won’t be able to move fast enough to capture the moments you need to.

The piece I enjoy most about weddings is the portraits I pull off for the bride and groom. I will be posting some of this summers portraits here so you can see them. I’m also going to talk about my gear as I switched to Nikon this year and although I’m loving it my pocket book certainly had a stroke!

I’m glad you are here and look forward to discussing business and photography with you.