Details. Post. Subtlety.

When I was young, I spent many Saturday afternoons building model airplanes. I began with the SnapTite ones that took like 5 mins to put together but I quickly realized that these well, sucked. They looked like crap and didn't do justice to the aircraft it was intended to portray.

So I sucked it up and started building the more complicated ones and spending more time on them and I learned one really important thing that bridges into most aspects of my life.

DETAILS MATTER

The little things add up BIG TIME! A little detail here, another one there. Suddenly things are beginning to look really nice. Same goes for anything really. It could be woodworking.

...but you're not reading this because you're into woodworking, or building 1:48 scale Spitfire fighter planes.

Details matter in all aspects of photography. Period.

From the composition, (are any trees or buildings growing out of your subject's head?), the subject, the light, the location and the post processing all contribute to the final product. I think we can all agree that we don't like to look at way overdone Photoshop work. But as with every other aspect of the shot, the post work is CRITICAL.

Now I'll not get into the debate about whether or not using Photoshop helps or hinders the foundations of photography because the reality is that nearly every image you've ever seen on a computer screen has been touched in Photoshop in some way.

The key is to be subtle and pay attention to the details. While the spectrum of possibilities in Photoshop are nearly limitless they are within reach thanks to the countless tutorial sites out there. See an effect you like? Google it or youtube it and you'll find multiple different approaches to achieve what you're looking for.

The key is to be subtle and look for every detail you can that detracts from the image. Stray hairs? bad white balance? Levels off? Minor blemishes? Dust spots? Dead pixels? An interesting trick I've picked up is to flip your image 180 deg and look at it upside down. You'll be amazed at what pops out at you that you may have not noticed before.

What details did I miss in this edit?



Personally, I think the intent is to correct any mistakes from your original shot (crooked much?) and then use the tools available to ADD to the appeal of the image. Remember, its about the details. ...the subtle details. Easy does it, don't overdo it, you don't want to appear (unless you really do) heavy handed and contrived because (in my opinion) that detracts from the appeal of the image. The last thing you want is someone to look at your image and say "I wish they didn't overdo it with the post, they had a nice image to begin with."

SO - As with my model planes, its important to pay attention to the details and not just throw a quick coat of paint on it and call it good. The same applies in the post processing of your photos. Take the time and put the thought into the right amount editing that will allow your photo to stand out for the RIGHT reasons. Remember, we're looking for quality, not quantity...


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Case Study - Carrera

Discovering what you're good at -

Some of us are lucky and know straight away exactly what we are good at. We're naturally gifted and things seem to work out swimmingly. I think we can all think of a friend or two that seems to be good at whatever they touch.

I can only assume this is true for photographers as well. Some are natural landscape photogs while others come more naturally to portraits. This is all well and good and I think we'd all be happy to go along in life being content in our innate abilities and not strike out a bit.

People move me. People are about the only thing in this world that matter. I'm drawn to people, be it in everyday life or in photography. Think of the most moving photo you can think of... I bet you there's a person in that shot. Bottom line, working with people is one of the most rewarding aspects of photography for me.

but... I want to be good at automotive photography.

So Nick and I took off tonight, I'd rented a lens and he was to stay out of the house while the Mrs. studied for finals. We managed to find a few decent spots to shoot his new ride but I wasn't really feeling it. At the end of the day, shooting a car is just that, an inanimate object (never thought I'd say that! ...I love my cars!). So drawing out some life can be a bit challenging. I needed a new approach.

So now for the meat of the post -

I know I'm not an automotive photographer. Its not my gig. I love cars, I love cameras, but I really struggle to take a good shot of a car. I don't know what it is but my shots always seem a little flat and don't move me when I look at them.... 'ok.... a car. so what?'

For me, photography is a bit of a slow burn, when I'm shooting things that dont move. I like to take my time and absorb the situation, the light, and spend some time looking at the details. Standing close, standing far, crossing the street...looking from as many angles as I can... circle around if I can.

With the 911 tonight, I was able to take a few minutes and just stare. See it in a new way. I've seen these cars tons of times, driven and appreciated them. I needed to get to know the car a little bit and understand it in a new way before I squeezed the shutter for if I didn't, I'd just have a flat xerox.

Which brings me to my point.

We all have weaknesses, even in the things that we're generally good at. Don't forget to step back and think about WHY you thought what you saw was a good shot. What is compelling about it? Why does that make the shot interesting? Can you enhance that and add to the drama? ...are you just pushing the button to hear the CLICK? What is this picture about? ...or will you just delete it as soon as you get it on the computer?

Step back, think, absorb, understand; and with your new perspective - CLICK



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iPhone 3GS Is The Photographer's iPhone

iPhone 3GS Is The Photographer's iPhone

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Pilfered from Chase Jarvis' blog

Dead Presidents

The decision to begin turning your hobby into a revenue stream can be a difficult one. One many, many photographers struggle with. I would imagine that artists in any medium struggle with this prospect in the same way that a photographer would.

Will my art loose its meaning now that it’s tied to a revenue stream?
What will happen when money becomes my motivation rather than some other sense of inspiration?
Will anyone pay me?
Will it be consistent and sustainable?
What does it mean to be a professional artist?

The list of questions could evolve quite quickly if we put our heads together. I’m not going to answer all these questions in this post because in many ways, each of you need to be able to answer them yourselves, if they can be answered at all.

What I do want to share is the experience of making my first dollar as a pro photographer and how I was never able to spend that money and how ultimately, the lessons learned were far more valuable (cliché I know) than the value of the money itself.

By any measure, I was not expecting to get paid for my work the night it happened. I had been out killing an evening with a close friend with whom I shoot frequently. Our styles are infinitely different and we tend to feed off of that and provide each other a different perspective while challenging each other to push ourselves. I could write a whole post (and maybe I should) about the value of having a partner to challenge you, but I digress…

This particular evening we’d set each other a series of challenges to overcome weaknesses we’d identified in ourselves as photographers. For me, approaching people had been an issue when it came to street portraits. In the process of overcoming my fear of talking to people at random and photographing them, I also made, and lost, my first dollar.

I won’t go into gruesome detail of the situation because I want to focus more on how it impacted me as a person.

Long story short, a group of girls out for a night on the town had agreed to stand for a portrait and they like the result on the screen of my camera so much that they insisted in handing me what little cash they had on their person (who carries cash these days?).

I was floored! My only goal for the night was to overcome a personal challenge of mine and ultimately I was rewarded….with $6. I was elated! It might as well have been $60K! But the point here isn’t the money.

As the girls bounced down the sidewalk excited at the prospect of the evening ahead, my friend asked to see what I’d been given. Handing him the wad of bills, he carefully un-wrinkled them, straightened them so they were all in the same direction, and tore them in half.

A flash of anger hit me in the chest. It was like I’d been punched. It was honestly quite similar to the end of a long relationship. The hit in the gut feeling was profound if only fleeting. This feeling lasted maybe 1/3 of a second until I realized the meaning of what had happened.



Wile many of us are working towards making a living doing what we love, that night it wasn’t about making the money. It was about a number of other things.

First of all, I don’t know if we should really be paid to for overcoming our own personal fears.
Sure it’s nice to be rewarded for your hard work but this night wasn’t about reaping rewards, it was about growing together with my friend, both as people and photographers.

The second piece to this is that I dint earn that money myself. With out my close friend there pushing me, and I him, we wouldn’t have even been in the place to even ask the people for their picture. I was just the one behind the lens at the time. We’d been taking turns and it just happened that I was the one pressing the shutter release. So in another aspect, that money wasn’t mine, it was ours and the ceremonial tearing of the bills was symbolic of our achievement together and sharing the reward together. Having the money be unusable just added to the significance of the situation. He could easily have handed me 3 bills and kept the other 3 for himself. But he didn’t.

Tearing them slammed home the reality that 1) we weren’t here to make money, but we were here to learn and grow. 2) We did this together and we both share in the growth and reward. 3) I’ve got an awesome memory together with my friend and something to keep as a reminder. If he just gave me 3 dollars, I’d have gotten some coffee or something and the lesson would be long forgotten and the evening would have been about making the money, rather than making a step forward as a person and a photographer.

I keep those torn dollars on my desk even now as a reminder of that night and what we learned and why we learned it. It’s critical that we always push ourselves to evolve and be aware enough to learn from our experiences. I suppose in many ways, this doesn’t only apply to photography or at, it could easily apply in many areas.

What experiences in life do you have that you keep with you? What continues to motivate you when you’re not working for money?

Feel free to comment with your experiences as well in the comment section below or you can email me: mailto:rick.donohue@gmail.com


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Photography isn’t about taking pictures

Photography isnt about taking pictures

Sometimes photography isn’t about taking pictures. Sometimes its not about waiting for the light to be just right, its always about pushing yourself and I’m not talking about seeing something that’s been shot a million times in your town in a way that no one has before. I’m talking about personal growth.

I’m sure as I begin to write more and more about my adventures in photography you’ll come to and understanding about not who I am as a photographer but also about who I am as an individual and how that in turn, is displayed in my photography. I’m excited to start creating more than just images and how my journey will continue to play out. I hope you enjoy and stay along for the ride.

Before I get too existential about the act of writing itself, I’d better get to the point of this post. Sometimes photography isn’t about taking pictures, it is always (better be anyway!) about personal growth. Very regularly I shoot with a great friend of mine ( http://www.flickr.com/photos/orangeradish/ ) who lives in a nearby town. We’d met up in his town (a fairly liberal, artsy hipster town if I’m honest) to hang out, shoot and attempt to make something of our Saturday evening.

As the sun set and long shadows streaked across the sidewalks, we’d managed to make a couple loops around the center of town on foot, shooting things from one side of the street, and then the other…practicing chicken shit street photography. Long lens, across the way from the subject, sniper style. This is the worst kind of ‘street’ photography in my mind. Its not creative, its not challenging and people see you straight away and think, “another weirdo with his camera.” ...it has its place when you catch a moment, a couple, a fleeting look...but generally, its cowardly.

I called it chicken shit street photography for a good reason. Despite my friend and I being rather friendly, out going personable guys, we both struggle very much with approaching a total stranger that has caught our eye and asking to snag a quick picture. I think this is something that any photographer struggles with if they’ve ever pointed their camera at a person before.

Full stop: It’s a daunting task to approach a random person.

Maybe you’re gifted and have no social filter but for many of us, we’re dying to snag a picture of that old man with a cane or that fashion forward lady marching down the sidewalk in the city, or the construction worker who wears 20 years of hard labor on his face. These are the shots we all see and all want so desperately to nail…if only we weren’t chicken shit and too intimidated to ask. …so what have we been doing? Hanging back and getting an ‘action’ of the subject from the other side of the street.

Having had enough of what we find to be a weakness as a photographer, we decided to set ourselves a challenge. A modified game of truth or dare. …portrait chicken.

Simple game. I pick a random person of interest and assign my friend the duty of approaching and posing the question; he too would present me with the same task.

Naturally I chickened out the first couple times. LOSE.



Soon enough though, I’d spotted my target, I hate that word but it was a subject of my choosing that I knew I could be successful with. I think he’d just landed a front side kick flip on his skateboard and was pretty serious about his business. Ear buds in, he was focused on landing his next trick. The first ‘Excuse me!’ failed to hit the mark. Thankfully, his friend noticed and helped me grab his attention.

“Can I snag a quick portrait?”

-huh?

“Can I snag a quick shot of you with your skateboard? I’m working on my portfolio of street photos and I’d love to have a shot of you in your element with your board, doing what you do.”

- uh, k. just stand here?

-CLICK-

"Awesome dude - you look epic! THANKS!"

It was a mediocre shot at best. There was a drain pipe on the wall behind him sticking out the side of his shoulder and the exposure wasn’t spot on. But this isn’t the point.

This time, the photography wasn’t always about taking the picture. It was about so much more than a lousy shot of a guy on his board. It was about identifying a weakness and overcoming it. Its pretty basic stuff at the core but very liberating once you've summoned the courage. ...Thanks J.

As I walked away, I felt lighter. Empowered, accomplished, successful. This shot was about pushing the envelope and taking myself to a place I’ve never been before, as an individual or a photographer. That was the first of many that night. By midnight, we had setup with a strobe, stand and a shoot through umbrella and were nailing street portraits left and right from happy-go-lucky pub crawlers. We had a great time, met some great people and even scored a couple bucks...another post on that to come....

Saturday wasn’t about taking pictures, it wasn’t about getting the perfect exposure or seeing the street art in a different way. It was about overcoming a personal limitation. It will still be intimidating but I’ll have the experience of having posed the question tucked in my back pocket for the next face that catches my eye.

What weakness sticks out in the back of your mind, or perhaps the front? What hurdle are you afraid attempt? What boundary are you afraid to cross? Liberate yourself. Elevate your game.

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