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How a liberal arts education saved my career again and again
College graduation season is upon us and with it discussions about the importance of educating young people for the so called “jobs of the future.” With a daughter half way through college, I have plenty to worry about in terms of her future. Yet I am here to make a last stand for a liberal arts education, the one thing that has saved my career again and again.
07
Jun 13
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Photography as a second language
With graduation season upon us, thousands of photographers-in-the making will soon be graduating from institutions across the country. The commencement speakers those students would be listening to will be loath to admit it, but getting paid to be a photographer is dying as a career option and it is clearly time for a new paradigm in the business of photography.
10
May 13
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Copyright workflow of one professional photographer (me)
Registering your photographs with the Library of Congress is THE most important thing any photographer can do to protect their intellectual property (their photographs.) While it is not a difficult process, it can be tedious. In this podcast, I walk you through my copyright registration process, in great detail.
29
Apr 13
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How to Build Awareness for Your Work
This week’s blog entry is a cross posting of a blog that was the result of an interview I did with photographer and marketing expert Cindy A. Stephens for the Boston Photography Focus blog, which is sponsored by the Photographic Resource Center at Boston University. The blog was posted on February 13th, 2013 and was titled: “How to Build Awareness for Your Work.” Below is the full text (the interview and the blog that was built around the interview.)
22
Feb 13
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New Bollywood Satirized work from Annu Palakunnathu Matthew
Annu Palakunnathu Matthew (my wife) has created new work in her series Bollywood Satirized, work that she describes as “…a critical commentary on the societal expectations that I experienced as a woman growing up in India.” The work is going up outside, on the walls in Bangalore, India, to riff on the Bollywood posters she is satirizing. This video shows the process of displaying work that was made recently in response to the horrific Delhi rape.
20
Feb 13
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Being interviewed via Google plus
I had the pleasure of hanging out on Google plus (and being interviewed by) Frederick Van Johnson, the ball of energy behind many interesting photography projects including This Week in Photo. I enjoyed the hangout immensely wanted to share it.
25
Jan 13
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Alienating users, customers, members, readers
This weeks blog is angry and to the point. The only question is whether or not I should “name names” in terms the parties whose arrogance and stupidity prompted this rant. The obvious reason not to name them is because I might be “burning bridges.” There is actually another, arguably more important reason not to name them. Read on to see what I am so annoyed about and what my thinking is on the question of naming names.
21
Sep 12
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The business side of workshop teaching
In my last blog entry, I wrote about how interns/teaching assistants can maximize the opportunities that such professional opportunities can offer them. Since then I have received a few comments and queries based on what I wrote (including two that are at the bottom of that blog entry.) This week I want to answer another professional development question, in this case about photography workshops, which I saw posted in a forum. It was one of those rare questions that I see on line which I actually feel qualified to answer.
17
Aug 12
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A word to the wise for interns and teaching assistants
In the general media and especially the business press there has been a lot of discussion (yelling and screaming) in the last year about internships. Most of that noise revolves around the question of paid vs. unpaid internships, which can also be thought of as job stealing (unpaid) vs job making (paid.) I have blogged a lot on internships in the past and I can argue both sides of the paid vs unpaid question. What I am blogging about this week is what interns should be doing once they have internships, paid or unpaid.
03
Aug 12
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Learning to podcast the easy way or the hard way
An email came to me awhile back that was succinct and to the point. I filed it away in the pile where I keep things that I need to “think about it for a while before blogging about them.” It got me thinking about how I had moved from complete ignorance to a level of accomplishment in one area of modern communication in a short period of time. The teacher in me kicked in and I started wondering if I could really take someone else down the path that I took from beginner to practitioner. I am not 100% sure I can, but this is my best effort.
09
Mar 12
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In January I spent three weeks in Asia, mostly in Singapore. As always it was a stimulating trip on many levels. The food was great, the company equally good and the workshops were a blast. I have been trying to put a bit of distance between myself and that experience. I want to figure out which parts were really important and blog-worthy (and which parts were fun when they happened but don’t have much long term meaning.) I do this because unlike some bloggers, if I write about something to soon after it happens, I usually emphasize the wrong thing.
02
Mar 12
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The key to growth as a photographer? Prints on the table!
Over nearly four decades as photographer, I have come to believe that one of the best ways to grow as a photographer is to have other photographers evaluate your work in a process I call “prints on the table.” In this brief podcast, I explain that process and the thinking behind it.
14
Sep 11
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Who really knows what they are talking about
As a blogger, I am competing, (in theory) with millions of other bloggers for your attention. In my mind, the hardest part of the job is coming up with things to write about that others have not already explored. As of late, I have discovered that the best blog entries arise out of the intersection of my personal interests, input from others and recent events in my life. This week’s blog came out of that same place. It explores the question of how do we know who really knows what they are talking about?
02
Sep 11
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To put differences aside for the common good
With summer vacation here (and all of Rhode Island’s many summer distractions calling me,) I worried that I might not have the patience to write something in depth. Knowing that most readers are probably equally distracted, I decided to write about something a bit smaller. In this case, I want to explore how the national headlines and my recent personal experience teach the same important same lesson, but only one of the two incidents came to any kind of really positive resolution.
05
Aug 11
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Blazing a new path in your photography education
For me, blogging, like life, is most interesting when seemingly disparate things come together in unusual and thought provoking ways. A recent series of events got me thinking about photography workshops in particular and photography education in general. Since I studied the history of photography, work as a photographer, and teach a fair number of workshops, this is not new territory for me. What is new is where my thinking ended up at the end of the mental twists and turns that I recently went through.
22
Apr 11
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Photographers often ask me exactly what exactly is Photo Synesi? In this short podcast you can go inside Photo Synesi to see how it works and listen in as some of the world’s greatest photographer review work of aspiring photographers.
12
Apr 11
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I am in California, working on my project “Foreclosed Dreams,” where I have been photographing inside foreclosed houses. I am also teaching a series of classes. I am spending a lot of time on my new MacBook Air, running my photography business from the road. In between all this, I am working on building Photo Synesi ( http://photosynesi.com ), a new on-line critiquing system that connects serious photographers around the world. Through Photo Synesi, we help aspiring photographers get better through personalized feedback of their work. The title of one of the projects that was recently reviewed caught my eye because it perfectly described what we try to do.
01
Apr 11
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Photography has been one of the constants in my life since I fell in love with the medium back in high school. In the nearly forty years since then, I have been continually experimenting with different ways to both photograph just the way I want while making a living at it. Along the way, I have worked selling cameras, done portraiture, weddings, studio work, fine-art photography, university teaching, etc. Of course, I have also done a lot of the editorial photography that has sustained me for the last decade. During the last couple years I have finally come to appreciate the upside of what once looked like an helter-skelter, ever-changing career path.
27
Nov 10
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Photography workshops as creative communities
I just finished teaching a great class in street photography. The students were lively, the locations we photographed were interesting and the creative community where I was teaching was incredibly stimulating. During the time I was working at the Maine Media Workshops, I dined with, talked to and saw the work of some of contemporary photography’s masters. In the class I was teaching, there were people who had the potential to be the next generation of photography’s masters. On the way home from Maine, we stopped in to see an old friend, a former assistant who I had worked with years ago at the Workshops. It was eight great days immersed deeply in the community of people who love photography. It got me thinking…..
30
Aug 10
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Even more summer-time snippets
I read a lot about photography every day. (Duh!) I encounter hundreds of links, varying from idiotic Viagra ads to Nigerian bank scams to interesting photography sites. Though I am pretty good at knowing what not to look at, and waste time clicking on, I default to the idea that it is better to look than it is to risk missing something of value. This blog entry explores recent links where I have clicked through and I have been rewarded for my efforts.
06
Aug 10
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In the first part of this series of blog entries, I wrote about recent ethics controversies spurred by student photographers going to places like Haiti in order to develop their skills and their portfolios, as they photograph the horror of that nation’s earthquake/disaster. I appreciate the ethical issues raised by such actions, but my overarching question was, and still is, how do aspiring conflict photographers develop the skills required for covering war/disaster? In this blog entry, I will talk about how I developed my own, limited skills in that area of photojournalism and what I learned in the process of gaining those skills.
16
Jul 10
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For the last few months I have been carrying around a copy of a commentary written by the National Geographic photographer, turned university professor, Steve Raymer. It appeared in the March, 2010 issue of the magazine, News Photographer (which is published by the National Press Photographer’s Association.) He talks about the photography of Haiti’s earthquake/disaster as well as the ethics of students going to places like Haiti in an attempt to develop their portfolios as they photograph that horror. All of this, and last week’s “bandh,” here in India, prompted me to tease out some of my own “war stories” and put them down in type.
12
Jul 10
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A Lesson About Lessons in Photography
Golf, as a sport and the popular obsession with it have long mystified me. Even in the wake of the recent crash and burn of Tiger Woods, I normally would not follow it much. However, a friend who is as much a golfer as he is a photographer has pressed me to write something about golf and photography and I did so back in October of 2009. I would have left it there but I recently stumbled on a great article in the New York Times titled, “A Lesson About Lessons,” by Bill Pennington. As I read it, I thought that much of what he wrote applies to photography as much as to golf.
17
May 10
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About a month ago, my teenage daughter saw the new, sleek Olympus camera (the E-P1) that I have been using lately. She said she wanted to try it out. I was not sure if she was motivated by purely adolescent curiosity or her generation’s obsession with the newest, latest thing. I do know that although she spent her childhood in front of my camera being photographed for fun and work, she never has shown much interest in being behind the camera. Watching her use the new camera and then looking at the work she made set me to thinking (and blogging.)
05
Apr 10
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Learning how you learn, photographically and otherwise
I recently finished my annual class built around photographing the Tucson Rodeo. The weather was great and the pictures were even better! Most everyone we encountered was happy to be photographed. The class was a small group, so everyone got lots of attention. Because it was such a small group, I had time to analyze how each person learned. By the time the class was over, events had reminded me that in some ways, the most important thing ANY student should learn is exactly how they do learn.
12
Mar 10
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Lessons in the business of photography
Last Monday, November 9th, I gave a presentation in New York City at the Apple store in SoHo. It was titled “It’s the journey not the destination (but who does not like a good destination shoot?)” I was one of two photographers presenting that night. When I agreed to do this talk, months ago, I thought it might have made for a somewhat interesting evening. Little did I know, just how interesting that whole evening would actually be!
16
Nov 09
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What can the assistant bring to the photographer?
When I wrote the recent post on “Group questions versus individual questions,” I was obviously writing about that topic. But, I was also using the process of writing to clarify my own thinking on that subject. As I started to answer a query from a student in the Fotovision class that I just finished in California, I ended up similarly clarifying my own thinking on another topic.
25
Sep 09
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Why photographers need editors
There are numerous aphorisms about what separates the serious/successful photographer from the amateurs/posers. Great quotes, such as: “Hobby photographers worry about equipment; Professional photographers worry about money; Master photographers worry about light” are already out there. In this blog entry, I propose to add one more to the list.
18
Sep 09
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Working outside of the Photo-shop centered mainstream
On my ride home from the Maine Media workshops, where I was teaching a class in street photography, I reflected on everything that happened during the workshop. It was a great group of photographers, who grew as individuals AND supported each other as they went through the sometimes-difficult process of growing and changing. Many things that were said and/or done are potential seeds of blog entries. One difficult question that I heard from two different photographers is what I am writing about this week.
31
Aug 09
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An update after a week at the Maine Media Workshops
I am finishing up a great week at the Maine Media Workshops in Rockport, Maine. There were a whole bunch of small highlights during the class that I think are worth sharing.
28
Aug 09
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Free, useful photography tutorials
Last Monday night I spent an hour watching an on-line photography tutorial, in this case a lesson in Photoshop. This coming Monday I plan to do the same. In fact, for as long as the “Monday Night Light” program is continuing, I hope to be enjoying free photography tutorials.
14
Aug 09
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Workshops, teaching and the transformative power of photography.
I am heading off to Guatemala later this week. Besides getting away from the lingering winter cold in Rhode Island, I am going there to teach. That got me to thinking about workshops and teaching as well as why I do it and the transformative power of photography.
23
Mar 09
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The history of photography of California farmworkers
In politics there is the so-called “Washington read” which, according to Word Spy is: “The perusal of a book in a bookstore that consists of checking the index for references to oneself and reading only those parts of the book.” I never thought I would live to see the day when I did my own version of the “Washington read” of a book, but that happened recently.
01
Dec 08
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Marketing is the key to being a professional photographer
The longer I work as a professional photographer, the more I am reminded that taking pictures is the easiest part of this job. The hardest part is marketing your work and yourself. I have tried various marketing strategies over the years, some more successful than others. All of them are built on the idea of regularly getting your work in front of the folks who will pay to use your images. So how do you find those folks?
21
Nov 08
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Some thoughts on being a professional photographer
This podcast explores important questions that aspiring professional photographers should be thinking about.
19
Nov 08
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Highlights from the PhotoPlus expo in NYC
There were hundreds of new and interesting things to see at the PhotoPlus expo in NYC. A couple jumped out at me as interesting and important to the aspiring and accomplished photographers who visit this site.
27
Oct 08
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One of my favorite photography books of all time is a remarkably simple book called On Being A Photographer.
29
Sep 08
