Archive for November, 2011
15 Shots: Creating More from Less
Guest Posts 
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Wed 11.30.2011
I got to talk people photography (See the interviews here: Part One, Part Two, Part Three.) with Chris Marquardt last year for his top audio and video photography podcast, Tips from the Top Floor, and now this multi-talented media producer, photographer, and videographer has been kind enough to join me to contribute today’s guest post :) In this article, Chris talks about the unexpected benefits of limitations on your photography. It’s hard sometimes to make the argument for analog over digital – I can’t imagine living without the magic of digital photography anymore! But, Chris explains what a difference adding constraints can make, and his images make the point for him.
Follow Chris Marquardt on Twitter.
Post + Photos by Chris Marquardt
I produced some of my best work when I had to use some of the most limiting tools. Like many, I thrive on constraints. They force me to leave the beaten path and stretch beyond my boundaries. This leads to growth, and whenever I grow, it makes me very, very happy.
My happiness has also to do with choice, but in different ways than you might think. When I watched Harvard psychology professor Dan Gilbert’s TED Talk about happiness, it changed my approach to photography. It’s hard to put his talk and its implications into written form, but in short it is about choice and how we tend to set ourselves up for misery. I can only recommend you watch it! Possibly the best spent twenty minutes of your life: Dan Gilbert, Why Are We Happy?
The essence of Gilbert’s talk is simple, but the implications are huge: Choice is good and desirable, but only up to a certain amount. Choice beyond that level will make us unhappy. Which is pretty much at odds with most people’s expectations. Is more really better? After watching the talk, you might end up at a very different conclusion.
But what does that have to do with photography?
Whenever I talk photography and how to get to the next level, I also mention how limitation and constraint help me discover new creative ways in my photography. If I don’t challenge myself, I stay inside my comfort zone, I won’t grow. Today I often shoot with one single prime lens, I restrict myself by working along an assignment, I try to squeeze out the last bit of composition that a single location has to offer. And as a result I return home with a deep feeling of satisfaction. And with better photography.
About two years ago I started adding another constraint. I re-discovered film photography and its inherent limitations. I kicked it off with a used medium format camera that gets fifteen shots to a roll of film. Without a built-in light meter. Fifteen shots! All of a sudden every single shot counts. Initially that hurt. Then over time I learned to trust the medium, because I had to. I learned to trust my instincts, and I learned to trust my judgment. “If you load black and white film into your camera, your whole world becomes black and white until a new roll is loaded.” C.J. Chilvers said that.
And then here’s choice again. Digital photography is all about choice. When working in the digital mind-set, a lot of my decisions come down to increasing choice. I avoid strong contrasts, more choice during post. I frame a bit wider and make the choice about the final crop later. I shoot in color and then convert to black-and-white. I sometimes even bracket and make the exposure decision later. The list goes on.
At this point I usually get the question, “But isn’t choice what makes digital photography so wonderful?” Absolutely! I can quickly try out things, do several “developments” of the same picture and compare versions. I love digital photography for its speed, its surgical precision, its endless ways to get to the result, its super cleanliness and its way of being a wonderful learning tool. I owe a lot to the digital SLR.
But whenever I spend time in the analog realm, I am making a choice. A choice for a more conscious approach, a choice to be less casual about what I shoot and how I shoot it, a choice for a type of film and with it, a picture style. And all of a sudden, the limitation of film turns into an enormous freedom.
There is now a new generation of photographers who have never shot a single roll of film. It might sound old-fashioned, but I believe they could really benefit from spending an entire weekend with one single camera, one fixed focal length and two rolls of film in their pocket.
I was super excited to be a guest on Mitch Aunger’s planet 5D podcast , which is an awesome and comprehensive resource for all things HDSLR and photography. We talked about my dream job, my favorite gear and why I love Google+! Watch the video to learn my tips on portrait photography, what I’ve learned about copyright and building your kit wisely.
TWiT Photo Ep. 34 with Penny De Los Santos
TWiT Photo 2
Fri 11.25.2011
Don’t miss a chance to watch or listen to your favorite photographers – download the TWiT Photo podcast on iTunes for free :)
From beauties in-studio to grimy street food in Mexico City, Penny de los Santos has honed the skill of discovering and capturing the unique interactions between people and food. Just in time for Thanksgiving, the contributing photographer to Saveur magazine joined us to share her secrets for capturing the best photos at the family dinner. My favorite: “Sit across from the most interesting-looking people.” Watch the episode to learn Penny’s tips on telling a story even in the studio, how she gets by with just one lens, the biggest mistakes new food photographer’s make, and how to get inside people’s lives to capture the moments that will make timeless photographs.
Here are Penny’s top tips:
“Shoot beyond every assignment.”
“Find your point of departure.”
“Spend time with your subject.”
Find out more by watching the video here or on iTunes. Next week: Action sports photographer Bob Martin!
Have questions, suggestions or praises? Please email photo@twit.tv.
Vital to any business is the big bad work of marketing. As a photographer, it’s important for me to make connections with the people I shoot, and it can be hard sometimes to traipse into the world of marketing. In today’s guest post, Social Media Explorer‘s Kat French explains how we can use social media to overcome the bad rap of traditional marketing. A web copywriter, search engine optimizer, and social media manager, Kat has figured out that we can use social media to create a positive experience for our customers – rather than simply try to sell them something.
Follow Kat French on Twitter.
Post by Kat French.
Marketers cause unhappiness.
Really, when you strip it down to bare essentials, that’s our job: to make consumers unhappy with what they currently have, so they’ll buy what we’re selling.
I don’t like this much. I never have.
While my career has been what could charitably be called “eclectic,” marketing, more specifically writing marketing copy, has been a big chunk of what I do for nearly 20 years now. My first job out of high school involved writing radio copy at a 250-watt radio station at age 18, and I’ll be 36 this year.
Back then, I was writing spots for toilet repair kits. Frankly, if your toilet isn’t flushing properly, you’re probably already dissatisfied. In my mind, I was just pointing you in the direction of relief from the aggravation. Ah, the innocence of youth. I’ve since learned a lot more about advertising, psychology, and worked on honing my writing into a razor-sharp scalpel capable of separating people from their disposable income.
As I get older, a business model based on making people dissatisfied and discontent seems less and less appealing.
For some people, the moral element of their work life isn’t really a consideration. I am not one of those people.
When people ask me why I want to work in social media, it can be hard to narrow it down. I love the authenticity, imperfection, and visceral honesty that it allows, even encourages. But I think that if I have to give a singular, most-important reason, it’s that in social media, I see the potential for marketing (or at least one channel of it) to evolve past making people unhappy, sowing seeds of discontentment, and being a massive envy-generating machine.
Sustainability is a big hot topic these days. A way of life that is fundamentally built on envy, acquisition, planned obsolescence, and pushing consumers to “need” more stuff to be happy is not sustainable in any sense of the word. I’m not naïve enough to believe that traditional, envy-driven marketing and advertising is going away anytime soon. But I’m excited about the new approach that social media makes possible. Really, it’s a set of old approaches that have been made more efficient, scalable and powerful. But that’s probably another post.
Social media offers a way to build your business by making people happier, rather than the other way around.
- Social media allows you to treat your customers as individual people whose problems and complaints merit at least a vaguely human response, if not a resolution.
- It allows you to speak honestly and imperfectly to people, instead of treating them like lab rats whose responses to your stimuli have been predicted, tracked, and already reported on the balance sheet.
- It allows you to hear their delight in your product and service more clearly, and it allows them to share that delight with their family and friends in a (mostly) non-Big Brother-y way.
- It allows you to tell the story of your company without it becoming another Hollywood adaptation where the soul has been sucked out in pursuit of demographically-targeted, homogenized perfection.
People who feel like they’ve been heard are happier than people who don’t. The guy who can share stuff he likes without getting a takedown notice from someone’s legal department is happier than the guy who was broadcasting someone else’s advertising for free, because he liked the product and thought the ads were entertaining, and was told via certified mail to stop. People who feel like they have some power to influence the businesses they choose to work with feel like they have some stake in and some level of stewardship for that company.
Lab rats don’t have the power to do much beyond gnaw holes in the maze.
The big irony is that here in the web 2.0/social media fishbowl, the effect of social media isn’t the same as it can be for the average person. That whole “bigger, shinier, faster” fixation I was condemning a few paragraphs ago? Alive and well in the fishbowl, isn’t it? More followers. More influence. Cooler tools. More power!
Heck, one can even be reduced to pandering for a set of awesome steak knives. It’s easy to lose your head.
Food & Detail Shots: Light It Right
Photo of the Week 2
Tue 11.22.2011
We’ve all been there – you cook a delicious meal at home and whip out your camera, and the resulting colors in the image are not as gorgeous as the design on your plate. Although I’m constantly learning how to vary and perfect my detail shots, one of the most important lessons I’ve picked up over the years is that the color of light influences the aesthetic quality of your food photography. As different types of light sources create different color shifts, my tip is to use daylight-balanced light wherever possible. This could be in the form of window light, strobe, or a speedlight.
Watch out for more excellent tips on creative and awe-inspiring food shots today on TWiT Photo at 1 p.m. PST from award-winning food and culture photojournalist, and contributor to Saveur magazine, Penny de los Santos!
