Photography Q&A -Ask Me Anything About Photography

Yay! Answer number 1,000! 

I have a lot of questions about black and white conversions. I’ve recorded a 25 minute screen capture going through my process. I don’t have the market on the greatest B&W conversions. I show you what works for me. I do most of my black & white conversions in Lightroom. 

You can watch my video here on youtube. 

I work on these images…

I’m going to do a wrap up post this evening to talk about a few things and then I’ll see you on here next year! I’ll be blogging on my main blog over at zackarias.com/blog.

Cheers,
Zack 

PS - The master of B&W conversions, IMHO, is David Nightingale. He cringes when he watches me work. He once grabbed my computer from me and took over. I love him. :) Check out his tutorials. You can pick up a lot from him. He has two classes on B&W conversions. Part one and part two.

All right. Light meters. Do you need them or not in the digital age? Let’s have a discussion about meters, calibrating your cameras and lenses, and really nailing exposure.

I’ve often said that we don’t need no stinkin’ meters in digital. We have our screens on the back of our cameras, histograms, etc. But I always add a caveat. You don’t HAVE to have one. But they are useful. I own a few and use them regularly. The thing is, a good light meter will be somewhere around $300. When you are just getting started, that $300 is sometimes better served elsewhere. Eventually though, you’ll find a light meter on your wish list and you’ll most likely pick one up. An argument could be made that you should get one at the start. I could argue for that. I could argue against it. 

Just never get caught up in the “You never need a meter” or the “You always need a meter” camp. Some think you’re stupid for using one in the digital age. Some think you’re stupid for not using one in the digital age. I ride the fence and say that anyone who plants themselves in either of those two camps is stupid. Then everyone in each of those camps says I’m stupid. We’re all stupid. Ok? 

The reasons meters are important is they give you consistency in your exposures when you use them correctly. The more consistent you are as a photographer at the time of exposure the better your life will be in post production. If you are an inconsistent photographer at exposure then your post production life is going to be a living hell.

I use meters in the “incidence” mode 99% of the time. There’s basically two types of metering modes. Reflective and incidence. The light meter in your camera is a reflective meter. Spot meters are reflective meters. They are measuring the light reflecting off of a subject. Now then, your reflective light meter, spot meter, and in-camera meter doesn’t know what you are photographing. You can read the light reflecting off of something white or off of something black. It doesn’t see that what it is reading is white, or black, or grey, or red, or blue, etc. Since it doesn’t know the value of what it is reading there has to be a consistent measurement to bring that light meter reading to. That measurement is 18% grey. I don’t know why. It just is. Smarter people than me (I?) came up with that.

So you read light reflecting off something white and it’s going to give you a reading to make that 18% grey. Read the light off of something black and it’s going to give you a reading to make that 18% grey. White isn’t grey. Black isn’t grey. So you have to make a judgement call. “I’m getting 5.6 at 250th of a second off of the bride’s white dress. The dress isn’t grey. If I shoot this at 5.6 at 250th then the dress will be underexposed to grey. Therefore I need to open my exposure by X amount of stops to make the white dress white.”

Incident meters (that little white dome on the light meter) is reading the light falling on the subject regardless of whether the subject is white, black, green, grey, blue, dog, etc. You walk over to the subject, put the meter where the light is falling on it, take a reading. It says 5.6 at 60th of a second or whatever. You set your camera to 5.6 at 60th and boom! Balls on accurate. You don’t have to think about it.

Well… You don’t have to think about it ONCE you calibrate it. ISO 100 is not a dead on accurate thing across the board. ISO 100 on a Canon is different than ISO 100 on a Nikon and it’s different than ISO 100 on a Fuji. Camera manufactures play a bit with these numbers. There’s also a bit of room for your personal subjective tastes. Some like to expose just a little darker. Some like to expose just a little lighter. 

So here is what you do. Get ready. Effing boring ass technical talk. Since ISO settings across the board of manufacturers isn’t all that consistent you have to calibrate your meter. I found a full stop difference between my Canon and Nikon cameras. You may also find that ISO 100 on a Canon 7d may be a bit different than ISO 100 on a Canon 5d2. There isn’t much change within one manufacturer but you find a big swing from one company to another usually. To add another odd piece to this puzzle you’ll find that f4 on one lens can be off from f4 on another lens you own. The ISO (International Standards Organization) allows manufacturers 1/3 of a stop wiggle room on apertures in the manufacturing process. So I hear at least.

I’ve found this to be true though in real world applications. I have a Canon 24-70 2.8 lens that is about 1/2 to 2/3’s of a stop brighter than my Canon 70-200 2.8 at any aperture. That means if I shoot something at 5.6 @ 250th of a second at ISO 100 on the 24-70 and then shoot the same exact subject in the same exact light at the same exact settings with the 70-200 lens the resulting photo will be 1/2 to 2/3’s darker than when shot with the 24-70. It happens throughout the aperture range on each lens.

I’ve found that it seems my 70-200 2.8 is the most off from all of my other lenses. They all differ a little from each other but the 70-200 is the most off from a standard base line. So what does this mean?

If you’re really going to dial in consistency in your photography then you want to test your gear and you’ll want to calibrate your light meter to some sort of base line. I typically calibrate my meter to my most used camera and my most used lens. Here’s how I calibrate.

I set up an evenly lit shot. I take a meter reading with my handheld light meter. Let’s say it says f4 at 250th of a second at ISO 400. That’s what the light meter says. I’ll then shoot a bracket of images from one stop under that to one stop over that at 1/3 stop increments. I don’t shoot these at the most open aperture. You can get aperture vignetting at your maximum aperture that makes the exposure look darker. I’ll typically do this callibration process at a middle aperture like f4 or 5.6 or 8 or something. If it’s a 2.8 lens then I’ll do this around 5.6. An f1.8 or so lens I’ll do this around f4 or so.

I take the card out of my camera, pull the images into Lightroom with no adjustments made, and look at the images on a calibrated monitor. I then choose the exposure that I would most like to be the starting point for my post production. Let’s just say that I choose the exposure that is 2/3rds brighter than what my light meter said. 

I then walk around in different light (full sun, open shade, deep shade, tungsten, whatever, etc) and take photos at 2/3rds more exposure than whatever the light meter says to shoot in that light. I go back to Lightroom and see how consistent that is. If I find I’m hitting the consistency that I want then I go into the menu system on the meter and set it to +2/3. That way when I take a reading at ISO 200 at f 2 and it spits out a shutter speed I don’t have to do any further math in my head. I set to that shutter and I’m good to go.

I do the same tests with flash as well. Just to make sure. Then I test my lenses. Then I test other cameras. I make notes and remember that this camera is one stop under from the meter. This camera is one stop over from the meter or whatever. All the calibration is done with my MAIN camera and my MAIN lens. Then notes are made where other cameras or lenses fall from that base line. I once had an old 20mm Nikon lens that had +.5 scratched into the lens barrel. The photographer who once owned that tested their lenses and made notes. It’s been around since film y’all. 

Let’s say I calibrate my meter to my Canon. Then I find that my Fuji’s are 2/3rds of a stop under from that. Where I would set my meter to, let’s say, ISO 200 for the Canon if I’m shooting ISO 200 on the Fujis then I set the ISO on the meter to ISO 125. This is 2/3rds under ISO 200. I take a reading. Whatever that says I set my Fuji to that. I don’t have to look at the reading and then subtract 2/3rds from it. I want to look at my meter, dial that in, and go. I want to keep math out of my head as much as possible.

To the original question. Do you point the white dome at the camera or at the main light. Imagine having your camera on a tripod. Your subject is sitting on a stool directly in front of your camera. Your main light (sun or flash) is 45 degrees to the right of camera. You walk up to your subject and take a reading. Are you pointing the white dome to the camera or the light? This has caused PC vs. Mac types of debates for years. The best answer is to pick one and ALWAYS do that. I think I started out pointing to the camera. Then I got into more dramatic lighting and that wasn’t the best for me so I began pointing the meter at the main light and that is what I always do now. 

Another place the light meter is really helpful is when you are doing a multi day job and you can’t leave your lights set up between shooting days. I just did a job for the Coca-Cola company that required shooting over two days. I had to setup, tear down, setup, and tear down over these two days. Another day might be added to the job for more of these portraits. It was a three light set up and all the portraits had to be consistently lit. Once I was dialed in on day one I took meter readings and made notes so that I could get my lights EXACTLY back to where they were again. This is NOT something you want to do while chimping on your camera. You need to know that you are exactly back to where you were before. 

Oh…. another note about this calibration thing. When you finally get your meter calibrated to where you want it do this. When you have the images pulled up on your CALIBRATED monitor with zero adjustments made to them, put that memory card back in your camera and pull up an image on your monitor and on the back of your camera. Take a look at how that image is produced on the back of your camera. Does it look darker than the image on the monitor? Lighter? You can adjust your screen brightness a bit to try to match them but make more of a mental note. On my Nikon D3 the screen was really off from what I’d see when I pulled the image into Lightroom. If the picture looked PERFECT on the D3 then it was going to be too dark once I pulled it into LR. If it looked just a bit too bright without highlights clipping then it was going to be just right in LR. Make little notes of that so that when you chimp you can translate what you are seeing on your camera to how you expect it to look when you start editing.

I highly recommend getting a meter that reads ambient light as well as flash. Don’t mess around with just getting a meter for ambient only. There are a handful of meters out there. People are about to flood me with, “Well what about this one?” Here’s my list and I’m sticking with it. Based on price range and personal experience.

$168 Polaris - I had this meter when I was in school. It’s a good meter on a budget. The least expensive that I recommend to people.

$233 Sekonic L-308S - GREAT meter at a great price. Has a few more things under the hood than the Polaris. Sekonic makes the best meters hands down. 

$309 Sekonic L-358 - The nice thing about this meter is you can add a Pocket Wizard transmitter to it later for an additional $63. 

$469 Sekonic L-478DR - Touch screen awesomeness. Great UI. Pocket Wizard control technology built in. Not only can you fire your PW lights from this but you can control the power of them if you are using their control technology stuffs. You can set custom profiles and calibrations. Kick ass meter. Just got one of these.

$634 Sekonic L-758DR - If you’re one of those jerks who just has to have the best of the best then get this meter. It has it all except PW control. It has a transmitter but you can’t control power settings from the meter like you can with the 478. Note that you can’t control power via any sort of old PW. I’m not highly versed on all of that. Check their site for the details on that.

I’m only touching on some of what a good meter can do. You can take several readings to find an average in a scene. You can figure out the ratio of ambient vs. flash in a mixed situation. You can add filter compensation into the mix. There’s a lot you can do with a meter beyond finding what shutter speed you should use at ISO 800 at f2.8.

Is all of this overwhelming? Does it all sound like it’s too much of a pain in the ass? Get over it. It’s called professional photography. Be good at your craft. Be great at your craft. Think a pastry chef trusts a new oven to be exactly 350 degrees when they set that on the dial? No. They test it. 350 on the dial might mean 380 degrees in the oven. You need to know that. You need to know your cameras. Your lenses. Your lights. Your exposure. Your screens and monitors. You need to test this shit. It’s boring and tedious and all of that. I know. It is. Get over it. Wait till you build color profiles for all your cameras, lights, and modifiers. Be a professional and do it. Don’t be another mediocre photographer. There’s millions of those. Don’t be one. Be great at what you do. Know what you are doing. Do the hard work to learn all this stuff. It’s worth it. It’ll save your ass one day.

Cheers,
Zack

For more info on light meters youtube “how to use a light meter” and go through some of those. I was going to make a video but I’m busy today… ain’t nobody got time for that! :) 

Because we got to medium format gear and Leica’s with crap gear. We started somewhere. Most of us got caught up in chasing the gear instead of the light, the moment, the photo. I had more gear at one point in my life than I knew what to do with. 

Give me a Canon Rebel and a kit lens and send me on a job and I can get the job done. Is it the camera I most want to use? No. Is there a place and time to upgrade? Yes. You build up to that. The reason I preach that it isn’t about the gear is because I finally learned… that it isn’t about gear. Great photography isn’t about the gear. It just isn’t. 

David duChemin has a great quote… “Gear is great. Vision is better.” 

So I have a PhaseOne hanging around my neck and I’m telling you it’s not about the gear. I got that PhaseOne by having to work my ass to the bone with minimal gear that was held together with gaff tape and the Holy Spirit. The PhaseOne didn’t get me here. The crap gear got me here. I’m also not shooting the same stuff I was with the D100 and Vivitar 285 that I used to shoot. The level of work I’m doing is rising and the quality of what I want to produce is rising. Gear helps. It does. It doesn’t make you a photographer though. That’s the stuff between your ears that makes you a photographer. That’s why Kim says to buy books and not gear. 

If you can do a lot with a little then you will grow. You’ll prosper. You’ll get to finally own some decent kit but I swear you’ll look back and realize that it wasn’t gear that got you to where you are. 

Cheers,
Zack 

I want this to be a completely true question! I really do. If it is then it may be the greatest teaching accomplishment of my life. Seriously. This has made my day!

Ok drunken husband. Wow. Ok. 

Shoot. I want you take a break from the Interwebs with me and go shoot a personal project with this new found love of a photography. It can be portraits of your family. Portraits of your co-workers. Maybe shoot a series of “drunk husbands”. Something. Put the internet down and pick up the camera and I want to see 10 of your best portraits that you shoot from now until, let’s say, the 15th of January. Then I want you to email me those 10 best images from this project to studio @ zackarias [dot] com. Put “drunken husband” in the subject line. I’ll be in touch! 

Shoot! Shoot! Shoot! I want to see what you create. I’ll give you solid feedback on it in January. I’ve put it on my calendar. I’ll be on the lookout for this email!

Cheers,
Zack 

I usually take the month of December off from social media and the web and all that. This year I’m starting early and I may… may, just take it to February or so. Maybe till spring. Who knows. I’ll pop my head up for Black Friday and Cyber Monday for our annual DVD sale for charity. We’ll also have a new limited run shirt for that sale. I will be blogging on my main blog though. I’m so looking forward to hitting radio silence this winter! I have a lot of stuff planned. 

First :: I’m moving into a small secondary studio space. The secondary space is for portraits, post production, experimentation, art, etc. It’s going to be more of a lab than a studio. By lab I mean in the “experimental” type of lab. Not a film and processing and printing type of lab. Hope to sign the lease this week and get the F to work on that.

Second :: NEW PORTFOLIO! My current print book is the same book I’ve been schlepping around since the end of last year. Every time I sit down to get to work on that I have some other thing I have to do. I like to take a lot of space to sort and edit my book.

With everything I’ve had going on I haven’t been able to do that. I’ll start to sort it out then I have to put it away. I’ve been doing inkjet printing for my books. This year I’m printing large 12x12 books using Blurb’s pro line.

I’m going to have a dedicated space for post production, planning, editing, thinking, and staring at my naval. It’s MY space. No one else gets to mess with it. Mine. Mine. Mine. Mine. I can close the door and everyone can leave me alone. I can turn on the music I want and just get to work. My shooting space is going to be pretty small. Large enough to shoot a full length of a band but that’s it. I’m putting a restriction on myself to push my studio creativity. 

Third :: Building a solid promotional campaign for 2013. Getting my promos ready and made (I make mine by hand), getting my leave behinds together, thank you cards, etc. I also want to send four print pieces out next year. I have two designed and ready. Need to shoot for the other two.

I also have to check my mailing list, make some changes to that, get a better system for managing it. Add some new folks to the list. Take some off. Get everything synced, in the cloud, and ready to go for January 1st.

Fourth :: Shoot new personal work. I probably won’t get to this until January. I need to get in my space. Get it set up. Get some post production things I have on my plate finished. Get the new portfolio going. Etc. I have two main projects I want to get started on. One will take a few weeks of pre-production to cast for it and then two days to shoot for it. The other will take a few months to figure out and get it shot. Those will be my other two print pieces I send out for 2013.

Part of this personal shooting will also be shooting some 8x10 for the first time in 14 or so years. A friend is going to let me borrow his camera and I’m going to tray develop B&W film myself then scan on my Espon v750. There’s nothing like 8x10. OMG. OMG. OMG. It’s slow. Expensive. Etc. You don’t want to blow a shot. There’s a lot you can mess up but dang it… when you nail it… mmmmmmmmmmmm. So yeah. I’ll do a series of portraits with that. 

Fifth :: Most importantly… ride bikes with the kids. Fix up the old playset in the back yard. Hang out with friends. Have a party or two. Build a fire in the backyard. Drink some beer. Turn 40. 

Sixth :: Planning 2013. Thinking ‘bout stuff. Deciding whether I do some new workshops next year or not. Maybe a new DedPxl. There’s some plans for this Q&A blog that I’ll be working on. Going to the dentist. Might start some guitar lessons for myself. Looking for the OneString workshop. :)

I’ll be listening to a lot of Joy Division.

Cheers,
Zack 

PS - This Q&A blog will not be dead. I’ll be back on it when I get back online.

Well, that is one way to put a fire under your ass and sometimes it’s the fire under your ass that you need to ignite your fuse. Boy… there’s a visual metaphor. Anyway…

You realize that when you jump you take your family with you on that jump. You fail, they fail. You succeed, they succeed. It’s a ton of pressure that I can’t just tell you to do it. I’d hate to pat you on the back, give you a big cheer and …. watch you die. But… that said. I did it. I just jumped. Eff it. I’m going for it. If I go splat then it’s back to a shit job. Ok. Here we go!

Have some late night talks with those closest to you. Get some sort of a game plan together. See if you can move to part time in your suck job or pick up a part time job. 20 hours a week at some places will give you some benefits and a bit of money. It’s kind of a half jump. Figure out who you are going to market to and spend the next six months marketing like hell to those folks. Get a bit ahead of where I was when I jumped.

Slash and burn your expenses. Get ready for beans and rice. 

I can’t say… Yes!!! But if you do… best of luck and God’s speed to you sir. May God bless you and keep you. Welcome to the storm! Have fun but don’t die! Wheeeee! More waves! Wheeeeeee! 

:)

Cheers,
Zack 

These are different enough that some thought needs to go into this process of which one to buy. 

The smaller the light source, the harder the light will be. The larger the light source, the softer the light will be. The rule of thumb when using a softbox is the maximum working distance from the subject should be no more than twice the diagonal measurement of face of the softbox.

Huh? Measure the diagonal dimension of the front of your open softbox. The 28” Westcott has a diagonal measurement of three feet. By this rule of thumb then the furthest you want to get that softbox from your subject is six feet. The 50” has a diagonal measurement of five feet. You have ten feet to work with from subject to softbox with this light.

Why does this matter? It depends on how you shoot. Shoot a lot of full length shots? Like to add a good bit of negative space to a photo? If so, then you’d first go to the 50” box because you can back that thang up ten feet from your subjects and still get a good quality of light from it. Like to shoot tighter? You do more headshot to 3/4 body shots? The 28” can work for that since you are framing tighter to your subjects and the light can be closer in. Also think about the light source you have. The further you back the light up from the subject the more power you’ll need. Using a hotshoe flash in a 50” softbox from ten feet away? You’re going to be living at full power on that light and still only get f4 or f5.6 at BEST. Inverse square law is a bitch. If I’m taking my 50” to a ten foot mark then I’m typically driving it with an Alien Bee or something like that.

Now then. We’re just talking about a basic rule of thumb. Yes… you can put a 28” box ten feet from your subject. You can. But you are starting to lose the quality of light that you got that box for in the first place. As you move the box further from your subject it becomes a smaller light source in relationship to them. Think about moving a 50” box to 100 feet away from your subject. It would be a pin point light source on them. Move it to ten inches from your subject and it’s massive on them now! Huge, soft, wrapping, light source. 

Another thing to think about is the spread of light from a softbox. Umbrellas and the like sort of wash an area with light. You can shoot one person or ten people with an umbrella. A softbox if far more directional than an umbrella. The smaller the softbox, the smaller the spread. I typically use the 28” when I’m shooting one to two people. Those two people need to be close together. I’ll shoot one to four or five people with the 50” box. 

So… you’re mainly shooting seniors and couples. The 28” will be a good starting point. The 50” can work as well. It would allow you to put a little more room between couples when you are posing them. You can increase the spread from the softbox by backing it away from them but remember that rule of thumb. You’ll want to only take it back to about six feet. Once you need to go beyond six feet then you’ll either sacrifice quality of light or you’ll jump up to the 50” box.

You could just about toss a coin and pick one. I guess I’d suggest the 28” to you first. Go with that and use it for six months. Get to know that light really, really well. Know what it will do and what it won’t do. After six months of shooting you’ll start to know if the 50” is the next step you need. You’ll know this if you are constantly finding that you need a larger spread of light for couples or if you are always living at that six foot range of the smaller box.

Another thing to think about is to get the 28” box and a 60” umbrella. The 28” is there for tight shots and single person compositions. The umbrella gets pulled out when you are shooting more than two people or you need a wider spread of light for the situation you are in. A good umbrella can be had for $30 or so. It’s good to have one in your bag at all times. They are the swiss army knife of modifiers.

Cheers,
Zack 

I sum up my thoughts in a video from a class I taught. You can find it here on youtube.

Every time I try to embed a youtube video in an answer here on Tumblr the video won’t show up. Just click the link above to head to youtube to watch it there.

Cheers,

Zack 

Yes. Absolutely. I maybe would have gone with a PhaseOne back and a Hasselblad body but I bet you had I done that I’d be wondering if I should have gone with the Phase body. Either way, I’m glad I made the jump to it.

Cheers,
Zack 

How did I make the leap? Like this…

9 years ago I basically did this. That capsule was a day job. The earth was photography. My day job was taking me further and further away from what I really wanted to do with my life. 

When Felix Baumgartner opened that capsule door there wasn’t any going back. No one was going to pick his ass up. There was no ladder to climb down. His only safety net was strapped to his back. He either jumped and maybe died or stayed in his capsule and definitely die. Jump for glory or hang on to security. There was nothing in between.

When I quit my job I was married and had one child at that time. When I quit the only thing I had to fall back on was going back to my hourly day job. Note that I didn’t quit a “career” job. I was making an hourly wage doing a job anyone could walk in off the street to do. My work experience is cashier, barista, temp worker, rental car agent, copy machine runner.

I had to make photography happen. Confidence or not. Jump! And jump I did. I had a safety net of my last paycheck and… if the photography thing didn’t work out I could go find some other $8 an hour job. I was living in a crap apartment. I was driving a crap car. My son was in a crap day care. One little thing going wrong and I was screwed or I was asking my mom for a set of tires. You know how much it sucks being 30 years old and asking your mom for a set of tires? Know how much that sucks? I couldn’t get a credit card because I had horrible credit.

Yeah. I’m jumping. I have to make this work. That’s how I did it. Not saying that’s what you do. I don’t know your position in life. I don’t know the responsibilities on your shoulders. I HAD to sell it no matter what level of confidence I had. I knew I could shoot. I knew I could come through. I had a solid foundation of technical ability under my belt when I jumped. When Felix jumped it wasn’t his first rodeo but that was THE jump of his life. After all his training and preparations he was hoping it would all go well. And… it did. One little thing going wrong could have killed him though. Luckily my life isn’t in that delicate of a balance!

You have a day job. Your spouse has a day job. Bills are basically covered. You hate your job but you like the security of the check. You dream of being a photographer. You dream of jumping but you don’t think you can actually do it. You beat yourself up. You think your work is crap. You compare yourself to others. You think you just need one more year at the day job THEN you’ll be ready. You said that five years ago. 

Look. If you want to jump you just have to jump. You may go SPLAT very quickly. Felix couldn’t tip toe his way back to earth. He couldn’t pull over for a rest if it got too intense. There was no one in that capsule to put a boot to his ass when it was time to jump. He had a coach on the phone basically and a bunch of people on earth cheering him on but that jump… that was all his.

Your jump? That’s all on you. 

Here’s what I’ve learned. If you wait until you’re ready you’ll never get anything done because you won’t ever be ready. “I just need to get my book ready then I’ll start a promo campaign.” Well, you aren’t ever going to be completely happy with your book. You’ll want to keep working on it and never get anything out into the world. “As soon as my web site is where I want it then I’ll promote it.” It ain’t ever going to be ready. “As soon as I have this or that or the other thing then I’ll do this or that or the other thing.”

Sometimes you just have to take what you have, stick a price tag on it, and jump your ass out into the world and figure it out from there.

That advice will never get you a loan from a bank. You know that right? There are a lot of business teachers cringing at this post. I get that. I do. I know. 

Cheers,
Zack 

Think of it like this… Grids aren’t a light source. They modify whatever light source you put on them. A grid on a hard light source is a hard light source. You’re just controlling it more with a grid. A grid on a soft light source is still a soft light source. You’re just controlling it more with a grid.

Let’s say you’re in a situation where a subject is three feet from the background. You want that background to go darker but you can’t do it because the light from the softbox is spilling on the the background and, let’s just say, you can’t get the subject any further away from the background. Pop a grid on the face of the softbox and you still get that nice soft light but now it isn’t spilling on the background.

Grids are there to direct light and control spill. The tighter the grid, or smaller the degree, the more directional it becomes. Right in the dead center of the grid the light maintains pretty much the same quality of light as if you weren’t using it. Start to get off the center of the grid and the light begins to fall off.

Put a big grid on a big light source like an octa and you can get this amazing beautiful soft light that falls off very quickly. It can be gorgeous! As with all things though it isn’t the best for all situations. Sometimes you need the light to spill on to the background so you keep your grid in the bag.

Cheers,
Zack 

Yeah. Totally. Huh?

Cheers,
Zack 

Abundance of education is never a problem. It’s the quality of education is what I sometimes question.

There are a lot of horrible teachers out there teaching new people. I read blogs, watch classes online, sit in the back of talks and workshops and hang my head in shame at some of the crap I hear. I’ve also had a lot of people ask me questions starting with, “I took a workshop and they said….”

There’s two things happening with bad education right now. One is someone has found a level of success and popularity based on who they are more than how good of a photographer they are. When you are new to the craft you don’t yet know how to judge if a photographer is a good photographer. Their pictures are at least some measure better than yours and they have thousands of people following them and they are platform speakers at all the big trade shows so they MUST be a good photographer. Right? If you don’t know… you don’t know.

So the mediocre photographers who are really popular start teaching. Well… they kind of don’t know what they are doing with a camera but they know maybe a bit more than you do so it seems like you’re learning good information. Or you’ll be told that “such and such” isn’t really of technical importance to them so it shouldn’t be of importance to you. So a new army of poorly trained photographers rises up and can’t shoot their way out of a wet paper bag.

It’s horrible. I sometimes feel like a chef watching the most popular cooking show on TV and the host keeps microwaving the food because they don’t really need to be bothered using an oven. It’s the blind leading the blind out there sometimes. Then you have really good photographers… who can’t teach. They can’t formulate into words how they do what they do or why they do what they do. If something isn’t important to them for one reason or another they also can’t articulate WHY it isn’t important.

I was recently listening to a good photographer teach. A question was raised about composition and what they are thinking about when composing a photo. The photographer basically said that since they are self-taught technical things like that don’t matter to them. They don’t use the rule or thirds because it isn’t important to their photography. They just imagine what their picture is going to look like on a page and shoot for that.

Ok.

OMG.

First… composition isn’t a “technical” thing. It’s a real thing. It isn’t lighting. Or camera settings. Or noise reduction. It’s freaking composition. AND it isn’t just about “rule of thirds”. There’s far more to composing a photograph than using the rule of thirds. OMG. I went back to this photographer’s site and guess what is all over their photos? Rule of thirds. It’s everywhere through their work. They do use composition. They do think through the framing of their shots. The problem is this photographer had no clue how to talk about it. Didn’t know how to translate their gut instinct into a teachable moment. They passed it off as being a “technical” thing that isn’t important to them. HUH???? WTF does that even mean? So off go some new photographers not worrying about composition because so and so over there is really popular and successful and they don’t worry about it either.

This popular person doesn’t like flash. They think it is harsh and ugly and too bright. They only use available light because the world is in available light. So new photographers go off thinking flash is harsh, ugly, and too bright. Available light can be gorgeous and is the right light for the job. It can also be horrible. Flash can be gorgeous. And it can be horrible. Jeebus. The problem is the person teaching doesn’t know how to use flash. Instead of just saying “I don’t know how to use flash” they come up with some bullshit answer and move on.

I’ve seen photographer’s talk about changing their ISO due to the color of someone’s hair. Wha?

I’ve heard photographers teaching others to never use 1/3 stops on their aperture or shutter speed. You have 2.8, 4, 5.6 etc. Then there are 1/3 stop increments like 3.2, 4.5, 5.0, etc. They said you shouldn’t use those. Just use full stops. I wanna slap a fool when I hear that stuff. So if a recipe calls for 1 and 1/3 cups of sugar you should only use one cup because that third of a cup is bad? FOOLS!

Blind. Leading. Blind.

That’s the problem in our industry right now as far as education goes. There’s a lot of really bad education. I’d go so far as to say there’s more bad education right now than good education. If you are just starting out how are you to know? Then you have workshops that make you feel good but then leave you hanging when you run out of light, your subject is a pain in the ass, and you have all of 1 minute to get the shot. All that feel good motivation doesn’t mean shit if you can’t get the job done when it’s crunch time.

I’d like to say the free market takes care of it. Bad workshops die and good ones thrive. I’d like to say that but it isn’t the case. There are so many people entering the industry that the bad workshop leaders just need to keep getting new people and not worry about what previous students are doing or missed from attending their workshop. Or watching their DVD. Or whatever.

I can’t tell you what to look for and what to look out for. I’m not going to start naming names. Look at their work. Look at their experience. Look at what they are doing right now with their life. Does it add up to being someone who knows what the hell they are doing? I think the bad photographers who run good business should just teach the business part. I think the good photographers should just teach the photography part. You can learn a lot from some of these successful and popular photographers about networking, blogging, and the like. As soon as they start teaching the photography part you’re screwed. There are great shooters who try to teach networking and blogging and social media to all 2 people who follow them. And one is their mom. They just need to stick to teaching the photography part.

At the end of the day though…. nothing. And I do mean nothing… replaces experience. Go. Learn. Pick up things from many sources but go shoot. And shoot. And shoot. And shoot some more.

Some of you reading this are the next leaders in the industry. You’re going to be asked to teach and speak and make videos. Just as you had to learn how to shoot and run a business you need to learn how to teach. If you don’t know something then say you don’t know it. If you don’t use a certain aspect of this craft in your work then say WHY you don’t use it and give an example of why you would if you were doing another type of photography. If you can’t articulate how you compose a photo then say you have a difficult time articulating how you compose a photo. Learn some key points to the academic discussion of composition and learn how to relate that to your work and to others. Ok? Be an open book. An honest open book.

Cheers,
Zack

I have a lot of questions like this one. Crop or full frame? What does “equivalent” focal length mean? Which is better? Is a 12mp full frame better than an 18mp crop sensor? So on and so forth.

Get a full frame camera. Take the sensor out and put a smaller one in there. Same camera. Same lens. Now just a smaller sensor. Light comes through the lens and covers the full frame sensor. Now that you have put a smaller sensor in this camera (and NO… you can’t actually do this) you now see less of the image being projected by the lens.

Or… look at your computer monitor. Put strips of black paper across the top, bottom, and sides. You are now seeing less of your screen. You have now made a “crop sensor” from your “full frame” screen.

Where “equivalent focal lengths” come into play is all based on a size of 35mm film. Back in the film days a negative made by a 35mm camera was 24mm x 36mm. As digital started coming of age it was VERY expensive to make a sensor of this size. So APS sized sensors were made but put in 35mm camera bodies. You used your 35mm based lenses on these. A 50mm lens no longer had the same field of view that it had when you shot film. It was 1.5x that. Or 1.6x that. Or whatever the “crop factor” was for the sensor. We had to figure out how to speak about this so we talk about “equivalent” focal lengths. If you put a 20mm lens on a 1.5 crop factor body then it was “equivalent” to putting a 30mm lens on a 35mm film body.

The lens is still 20mm. It hasn’t changed optically. With a crop sensor you are just seeing less of it. It’s like putting the black paper around your computer monitor. Your screen resolution is the same as it was before. You’re just seeing less of it.

Now… which is better? Typically full frame cameras perform much better at higher ISO’s. This doesn’t happen with medium format cameras though. I don’t know why. We’ve been told over and over that larger sensors give better low light performance. Then you get a HUGE sensor and it sucks at high ISO. I don’t know why. If you told me the technical reasons why I’d fall asleep. Anyway…

If you love wide angle lenses then full frame is for you. If you love longer lenses then maybe crop bodies are for you. If you are shooting with a 200mm lens on a crop factor body and wanted that same field of view on a full frame then you’d have to jump to a 300mm lens. Can’t you just crop a full frame? Yes. You can. But you are throwing resolution away. Let’s say you have an 18mp full frame and an 18mp crop sensor. With the crop you get that field of view at 18mp. With the full frame you have to crop “resolution” out of your image so you may end up with a 10 or 12mp image.

At the end of the day it’s not MP numbers that count. It’s the quality of the pixels. Now we start getting into the size of the pixels and blah blah blah blah blah. OMG shoot me. If I was going to go into a car analogy I’d start talking about horsepower vs. torque. Or something. Not sure.

Easy peasy….

Full frame cameras typically perform better in low light, give you your full field of view on your lenses, and are typically found in better camera bodies. That’s not gospel. Just a wide brush view. I live in the wider range of lenses so I prefer full frame cameras. I prefer the higher ISO performance they achieve. If I had to buy a new DSLR today I would only look at full frame bodies.

I got started again on crop sensors. I shot those for five years. It’s what was available when I started again and then what I could afford until I got my D3. If I could have any new DSLR today it would be the new EOS-1D X. That is a hot camera. I have no need for a new DSLR so I’m not even going to put a finger on that 1Dx. I don’t want lust to enter my heart and cash to leave my wallet.

To the original question. For me… personally. I’d take the older 5d1 over the T3i. Better sensor. Full frame. Better body. Easier to use. More robust. Lovely camera. You could hand me a T3i and send me on a job and I’d get it done. I’d cuss at the camera. I hate not having dedicated dials for aperture and shutter but… I could do a magazine assignment with that camera. I could shoot band promos with that camera. I could shoot headshots. I’d hate it for an event but, after a lot of cussing, I’d get the job done. Overall though? I’d rather have the 5d1 if given the choice between those two.

Cheers,
Zack

Picking up the camera and taking photos is 10% or so of my job. 10% of my time. Think about that in terms of your rates too. You are getting hired to take photos but it’s a small percentage of your actual work to be able to do that. You have 100% of work to do. You have to be paid for that 90% of time when you aren’t shooting. The client mainly sees the 10% of what you do.

“It’s just pictures! It’s digital. It doesn’t cost you anything.”

You love to cook. Run a restaurant all by yourself and how much cooking will you be doing compared to everything else? Cooking, dish washing, cleaning, serving, bar tending, accounting, hosting, ordering food and supplies, marketing, menu planning, etc, etc, etc.

If you want to spend more time cooking and less time cleaning then you hire someone to clean. Don’t want to do accounting? Hire someone. Want someone else to serve the food? Hire. Soon you are spending more time doing what you love but now you have more people involved that costs you more money so you have to raise your prices.

That’s what happens for cooks. That’s what happens for photographers.

Cheers,
Zack

A film camera is the same thing as a digital camera. Lenses work on each. Each capture light. Each have shutter speeds and apertures. So it doesn’t matter if this is a film camera or a digital camera.

As you are learning this craft and and learning your gear then I’d suggest figuring out how to make the shot work with the lens you have. You’ve got the 35mm. You feel it isn’t the right lens. Still try to make it work. If it doesn’t work then you know WHY that lens doesn’t work. I can’t state this fact enough…

You have to know what your gear does as much as you have to know what it does NOT do. You’ve got to find the limits of your gear. You’ve got to push the limits of your gear. You need to find the edge of what it does and what it doesn’t do and learn how to live on that edge.

This sounds “philosophical” more than practical but I swear this edge is on every piece of gear you own. Your cameras, lenses, lights, modifiers, etc have something they do very well and they are poor performers for other things. Stick with one thing at a time for six months to a year and you’ll learn where the edge is.

Once you know… then you can pass on the photo because you know it just ain’t gonna work. 

Cheers,
Zack 

When you are just getting started I kind of have the blue collar philosophy of git what you can git when you can git it! You’re just starting. You’re inexperienced. You need to learn on the job. You’ll be doing crap work for crap pay for awhile. Hopefully you are keeping your expenses as low as possible. Hopefully you are handling $50 jobs as though they are $5,000 jobs. You have kids to feed? They don’t live long on plate of “integrity”. Sometimes you do a job just because you need grocery money today. 

You do that for awhile. Some will struggle here for a year or two. Some will go through this crap for five years or more. Eventually, hopefully, if you can shoot and run a business. If you can survive this sort of boot camp then you’ll start to get the jobs you want. The ones you’ve been fighting for. You’ll have experience and skill and talent. Your expenses will be growing a bit to handle it. Your rates will get to a point where you have to start picking and choosing jobs based on rates. 

Once you are at that point then you can politely say no. You have a track record to look back on and know what you can expect to come in. You will know that if you have to come down on a rate you will also have your client come down on their expectation. You want two days of work done for half my rate. I’ll do one day of work for that. You’ve made a compromise. They will have made a compromise. You navigate those things based on experience. You get that experience by doing anything you can get your hands on.

Some photographers tell new photographers that they need to get to X rate and stick to it. But new photographers don’t have the experience to get that kind of rate. Someone has to do the $500 weddings. Right? Someone with one year of experience can do that. Someone with twenty years can’t. Someone with twenty years shouldn’t be loosing sleep over the folks with one year of experience. 

So. If you have to eat… take the job. Hold on to your copyright. As the late Paula Learner used to say… “If you are getting screwed on a job then at least know that you’re getting screwed.” Know why you are working for a bad rate. Know why it is a bad rate. Know why you are getting paid dirt to deliver gold. You’re at the bottom. That’s ok. You have to start there. Just don’t stay there.

Cheers,
Zack 

I’ve talked somewhat in length about personal projects on this post.

I think it’s a good idea to have three of four ideas mulling about in your head but only work on one of them at a time. Or maybe have a short term project you can work on now and a long term project you can work on whenever. I have one project I want to do that can be done in two days from start to finish once I find all the people I need for the project. My #de_VICE project is something that will never really have an end until the plant our phones directly into our brains. It’s something I can work on anytime and anyplace.

Starting from zero is difficult though. Always be on the lookout for a project. I was at a Mexican restaurant earlier this year and was watching the Mariachi band roam around the restaurant. The lead guy was fascinating and was pouring his heart out with each song they played out. “I’ve got to photograph that guy.” I said. Bam! Personal project! Not just that guy… more like him. Like, I have to start showing up at Mexican restaurants every weekend now to shoot for this.

I was walking my son to his class the first day of school last year and saw this awesome light coming through the windows of one of the classrooms. “That’s awesome light. I should shoot some portraits here.” Boom! Personal project!

Watching a news program about a white man killing a black man. Everyone was talking “race”. I wondered if maybe it had more to do with “culture” instead of just “race”. Personal project. 

Was in the ‘burbs this weekend. Drove through an industrial park. Nearly every building had a “for lease” sign on it. Hmmmm. There’s a story there. Wonder if there’s a project there.

When I’m in New York I always love looking at the light reflecting off windows onto other things. Hmmmm. Personal project?

Look for things that grab your attention. They pique your interest. They make you google stuff. These kind of things can turn into personal projects. Ever looked at discarded things? Project. Intrigued by a culture of people in your town? Project. Are you a Democrat? Have some stereotypical view of what Republicans look like? Project. Break the stereotype or enforce it. Love dive bars? Project. Think nightculbs are stupid? Project. Always dreamed of being an astronaut when you were a kid? Ask kids in your neighborhood what they dream of. Make up sets and costumes and …. project!

You’ll soon find you have 20 project ideas. Now. Pick one you really like and JUST WORK ON THAT one for awhile. Let the rest of them simmer for awhile. As you are finishing one start planning your next one. 

Cheers,
Zack 

I’ve got friends in TSA and I just double confirmed this with someone I know who works with homeland security at Hartsfield/Jackson (ATL). This.. is… a… myth. Total myth. It doesn’t help. 

Carry your essentials on the plane that can get the job done if something happens to your checked gear. Arrive a day early so you have time for lost bags to catch up to you or you have time to rent gear if something is lost. Have insurance that will cover the rest. That’s the best you can do.

If this was a perfect way to travel with gear then the TSA wouldn’t have issues with agents stealing guns from checked bags. Along with lots of other stuff. You know… the gun can arrive safely… in a bag missing a lens. 

Cheers,
Zack 

Because I’m busy. Because I want to redo my entire portfolio. Because I shoot a job today for a magazine but can’t show the image until it hits the new stands so I may have to wait 60 days or so to show it on my blog or site but then I’m on to the next thing. I have a backlog of stuff I want to show. Because I lack discipline in staying on top of my own portfolio. Because I want it to be perfect. Because stuff I’m shooting today doesn’t quite mix with what I already have so I need to shoot more of what I’m doing today so I can begin to mix it in. Because I want to. I really want to. But then I get sidetracked. Because the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Because sometimes I get lazy. Because sometimes I forget. Because life goes by too fast. Because I can keep coming up with excuses instead of sitting down and getting it done. 

Cheers,
Zack 

I want you to sit and think about this. If you were sitting across the table from me I’d ask you, “Well. What do YOU think you should take to a meeting with a potential bride?”

I bet you’d name everything you need to take with you. It’s common sense. You’re a photographer. You shoot weddings. You’re meeting with a potential client. They want to know who you are, what you do, what you offer, what they receive, etc. So…. for the sake of being thorough. 

Portfolio of work :: This can be sample albums, a laptop presentation, iPad, etc. Show your work. I’m all for printed samples in book form. I’m all for albums or, at the least, Blurb books. The printed image is still king in my opinion. I’d show up with some sample albums and expanded galleries on a laptop or iPad. Be sure you can run your electronic presentation without need of connecting to the Internet. I’ve shown up at various types of meetings and couldn’t connect to the Internet or the connection was slow. Don’t expect the Internet to always be running where you meet. 

Pricing / Offerings :: Have a package of your pricing and what you offer at each level of pricing. Package A, B, C. Let them take this home so they can go over it. Spend some time putting a nice package together. All of your material needs to be consistent in look and feel. 

Sample Contract :: You won’t sign the deal right then and there usually. Sometimes. But don’t expect it. Let them have a copy of your contract so they know the terms and conditions all parties can expect. What you do. What you don’t do. When payments are due. Etc. Google “wedding photography contract” and you’ll find tons of information. It’s worth it to hire a lawyer as you draft up your first contracts to have them gone over. There may be things in your state or jurisdiction that you are unaware of when making a contract. Don’t just copy/paste someone else’s wording. 

Sidenote - I hear folks all the time say “Well, I don’t have money for a lawyer.” Ok, first it isn’t THAT expensive to hire someone for an hour or two to look over your paperwork. You’re a business. A business has to do things that cost money. The price of a lawyer is worth it if you get into problems with a bad contract. Barter with a lawyer. You’ll shoot headshots and you get your contract written. I did that. There are ways to make this happen.

Stop being a person crying about not being able to afford the basic things you need to run a business. You have to buy a camera. And a lens. And some software. And a computer to run it on. And you need insurance. And you need some contracts. And you need a camera bag. And some memory cards. And transportation. And you need to get your shirt dry cleaned. And you need business cards. And sample albums. It’s what you do to run a business. Bust your ass and get it done. 

Anyway…

When meeting with a potential client ask lots of questions. Be enthused about their wedding/portrait gig/whatever. Be personable. Whatever it is you would want to know about a product or service then make that available to them. If you’d want to see an edit of a full wedding then have one or two of those to show. If you’d want to know what the contract looks like then have that. If you’d want to know if there was room to negotiate the price then be prepared for that. Right? Right.

Cheers,
Zack 

Magzines will typically dictate what they pay. They’ll say, we want to run this 1/4 page inside. We pay $200 for that. Or they want to run it full page and pay $1,500. Or we want to run it double truck but we don’t have any money to pay you. We’ll give you a credit. You can then turn that credit into your landlord. Oh wait. No you can’t. :) All this to say… pricing runs the gamut. A lot of times they’ll tell you what they will pay. You can try to negotiate for more if you think the image really has value. If they HAVE to have that image then you might get more.

You can use a program like FotoQuote to run numbers if they are asking you. We use that a lot to give us a starting point in negotiations. I rarely get what FotoQuote says I should get but it’s a starting point at least.

Cheers,
Zack 

All right. Let’s see.

It’s not about the gear. You need a decent kit of gear but not a lot. Don’t go spending all your money on gear. Don’t get a credit card to buy it either. Work your ass off to buy it. Less is more.

Art school and college level photography educations are a crap shoot. You don’t need a $30,000 a year college education to be a photographer. School is awesome. School helped me a lot. It is the foundation I build everything off of. Note that my degree is a 2 year associates degree from a community college. All of my teachers were part time instructors and full time photographers. They worked to teach you how to be a working photographer. 

Prestigious pedigree? Nope. Diploma hanging on my wall behind my desk? Nope. Ever asked by a potential client where I went to school? Nope. So… Go to college. I’m all for that. I wish I had my bachelors right now. I’d love to be working on a masters at this point in my life. I’m 39 and have to start from the ground up. Why I want my masters is I eventually would like to retire into teaching at a college level. Yeah. I know. Telling you to not go do something that I eventually want to be involved in. Funny. Anyway, I’d like to be a college prof when I’m older. At 39 and with 4 kids I don’t know where I’ll find the time to do that right now.

Take over the world. Travel. Get out of high school and take a year to travel the world. Take a camera and a lens and every dime you can save up and get the hell out of town and go see stuff. Meet people. Widen your perspectives on this world. You’re young but time does go by quickly. You’ll be 30 before you know it. Seriously. And then you’ll be 40 even faster. I can’t tell you how quickly time passes. Go see some stuff while you’re young.

Then get to work. Take over the world. Drive a beater car. Live in a shithole apartment. Do whatever it takes to build your career. Set very high goals and go after them with everything you have. Don’t take no for an answer. Go. Go. Go. Go. Build a book of work and start showing it to everyone you can. 

Don’t worry about your car. Or your clothes. Or the cool new piece of tech everyone has. Pour that time, energy, and money into seeing the world, getting an education (business, marketing, communications, etc) and effing take over the world. 

I didn’t get serious about photography until my mid 20’s. I wasted a lot of time being a stupid teenager and young adult. Don’t do that. Knock it out of the park. It’s going to be hard. HARD. But it’s so worth it. 

Cheers,
Zack 

I always deal with color in post. I’ll set WB to whatever conditions I’m shooting under at the moment but color and contrast always gets tweaked in post. I never leave anything straight out of camera. Same happened when printing from negative film. You’d always tweak your color pack in your enlarger or work with your contrast filters in B&W. The only thing that was “straight out of camera” was chrome (slide film).

One thing that helps me get to a neutral color is the X-rite color checker passport. I profile my cameras using that and their software. 

Cheers,
Zack 

I’ll challenge the first part of your statement… Glass is just as important as it was in film. That hasn’t changed a bit.

Now, to the sensor… You are absolutely correct. You could have an amateur camera body, a good lens, and then you would choose the film you wanted based on what that film did for you. You’d have one film you liked for portraits. You had another one you liked for landscapes. Etc. Etc. You could switch that film in and out of any camera body you wanted.

Now that we are digital we are stuck with the sensor in the body. I’d KILL (almost) to have a 5d sensor in a D4 body. Back in film I could pick the body I liked and the film I liked. The sensor these days is the film. Each sensor has a look. A feel. A way it handles color, contrast, etc. Camera manufactures also interpret that data uniquely. 

I never liked mixing films on a job and I still have an issue mixing different sensors on a job. The color from a 5d is hard to match to the color of a Nikon or Fuji etc. It’d be like shooting Kodak film and mixing it with Fuji film on the same job. It can be done… and I do it all the time… but yeah… it’s all about the sensor sometimes.

But glass… still as important as ever. 

Cheers,
Zack 

I can pretty much recall every thing from a shot while looking at it. I don’t have sooooo much gear that something would surprise me later. I can look at the meta data, the catch lights, and remember the shoot. I really wish I could remember my weekly schedule as well. Or what Meg told me she needed from the store. That would be awesome.

Cheers,
Zack 

Good question. It’s one I think about quite often.

While I have grown as a photographer and have grown in skill and confidence and all that I can look back at my work when I was scraping the bottom and see a fire in my gut. I was fighting for every pixel and every dime back then and there’s something to that in my older work. I can’t place my finger on it exactly but I see it. Maybe it’s an emotional thing really. Maybe that fire isn’t in the photography per sé but I see it. Maybe looking at those photos just reminds of me of those days. 

I also miss the extra time I had back then. Believe it or not I had more personal time back at the start. I mean, since I left my day job nine years ago I’ve never had a time where I didn’t have something I needed to be working on for my career. But I had more time to hang out. I wasn’t going going going all the time.

A year or so ago I was driving home and saw fellow photographer, Andy Lee, having drinks outside of Leon’s here in Decatur. He had just quit his day job and started photo full time. No going back sort of place. He was laughing. Having drinks with friends. I realized it had been two months since I just hung out with friends. I had too much stuff going on and by the time the house got quiet in the evening I was done. I knew then I had to scale back a bit or do something. I needed some more personal time.

So… you’re broke. You’re hungry. You’re fighting for every job. Remember to take $20 and go have a drink with friends. These are good days. I look back and cherish them. NOT that I’m completely out of the woods right now. Don’t read that into this. We have our tough months and periods as well. It’s not as hard as it was. It has gotten better. There is a point where you can take a breather for a bit. Be sure to hang out with friends when you hit that point. I’m trying to remember that.

Cheers,
Zack 

The main job titles you want to send promos to are the photo editor and/or creative director. There can be a number of different “editors” for a publication. Just direct your promos to the ones who deal with photography. You may see senior and assistant titles mixed in there. Senior photo editor. Assistant photo editor. Send to them as well.

As for adding a personal note. What kind of email do you appreciate most? A mass mailer or one with a personal note? Sure, you can’t add a personal note to a mailing list of 200 people but do what you can. Do an HTML template something or another that has a very short intro to the email. “Recent work” “Photo of the month” or “Introducing yet another photographer.” or something. Don’t drone on and on and on like I do with these answers. Keep it short and sweet.

Cheers,
Zack

I do a quick glance of file type (RAW or JPG), white balance, and ISO. I pick up my camera and those are the first three things I check and adjust before I start shooting. As for a “starting point” that is dependent on what I’m doing. For example, if I’m shooting in the studio then I want RAW, ISO 100, Flash WB as a starting point. Then I set the shutter to sync speed for working with flash. Then adjust aperture as needed.

Cheers,
Zack 

I have a lot of questions like this. x100 or DSLR combo?

There’s no perfect answer for that. Each one has a place in the life of a photographer. If you want a kick ass little camera as a take anywhere camera then the x100 is great for that. It is capable of shooting paid assignments. If you do a good bit of paid work then you will most likely need a good DSLR kit. A good body and some good glass will be your workhorse.

I also have a lot of questions about having one main DSLR rig with an x100 or XPro-1 as your second camera. I highly suggest, especially if you are shooting weddings or other event type work that you build your DSLR kit first and that would include a backup DSLR body. Then an X cam can plug in as a third camera in those situations. Maybe you start using the X camera more or you have your DSLR on one side and an X on the other. If all hell breaks loose though you have that solid second DSLR body on hand and ready to go.

The Fuji X cams are awesome cameras. Amazing cameras. I love them so much. I can pull them out on jobs but note that I use other cameras a lot. I still use my Canon from time to time because it’s the best camera for the job. I use my Phase a lot. A lot. A LOT. It’s my “hero” camera. You hire me to shoot some portraits and it’s the first camera out of the bag. The Canon is a back up to that. The X cams are for secondary images or whatever. They are also there for when I want to travel with a kit that is light, small, and capable. Something which the Phase is NOT. 

So… To conclude and put these questions to rest. 

If you are shooting for pay or working toward that goal then you need a solid and capable kit. That kit usually looks like two DSLR bodies and a good set of lenses for it. Once you have a solid kit built that can handle most things for you then… THEN… something like an X cam can plug into your life. As great as they are they lack some things a DSLR can handle for you. 

If photography is a hobby or a part, part, part time gig for you then yeah, maybe adding an X cam as a second body is good for you. I’ve had a number of folks in this position tell me they actually sold their DSLR kits and went with the XPro-1 and a few lenses and are as happy as can be. They shoot a lot more and take their camera with them to more places.

Note these are my opinions based on my own personal experience and preferences. Some folks may find that something like the X cams are perfect for them and how they work and they build a working kit off of those cameras. They do so based on how they work and the type of work they do. They know the limits of these cameras and can easily work within those limitations. Some will add an X cam as a luxury item. They don’t really have to have the camera but just want one. 

So to the original question. I don’t have enough information to really give you advice one way or another. I don’t know if you are shooting for fun or for pay. I don’t know if you shoot portraits or events or both. I don’t know if you already have a second body in the bag. I don’t know what your goal with photography is. I don’t know what personal work you are working on.

If you are really wondering if something like an X cam is something you need in your life then head over to BorrowLenses.com and rent one for a week. You can get an x100 for $68 for the week or an XPro-1 with a lens for $116. Rent one. Shoot the heck out of it. You’ll then know for sure if it is right for you or not.

Cheers,
Zack 

As much as has been done in the past 10 years it’s impossible for me to think what is possible in the next 10 years. Look at what Apple did in 10 years. Amazing.

The main thing I want to see is a medium format system hit the $5,000 mark for a kit. They are starting to sneak under $10,000. Don’t think it will happen? I remember some of the first DSLRs costing $30,000. I knew one guy who took out a second mortgage to buy a used Kodak DSLR. It was a “steal” at $16,000. When Nikon released the D1 at $5,000 suddenly digital was “affordable”. I want to see medium format get to this.

I want to see strobes get more powerful and more portable. I’d love to see more leaf shutters or electronic shutter cameras that can sync at higher speeds with strobes. My old D70 could do it. Let’s see more of that happen.

Other than that, there’s no telling what will be up next. I’m sure things will be more automated and do more things like the Lytro camera. Our phones will have better and better and better cameras. Who knows. It’s exciting times though isn’t it?

Cheers,
Zack 

The better the sensor the better performance you’ll get in this area. Right? You get what you pay for. Right? Yep. 

You’re absolutely on the right path of thinking though. Light it a little flatter than you want and add the contrast you are wanting later in post. 

Cheers,
Zack 

Personally, for me, this is an absolutely true statement. I’m not at all a fan of the over the top HDR and I really, really, really hate that look on portraits. I cringe. I’d …. almost …. rather look at selective color photos. Can you imagine selective colored over the top HDR portraits? I think the world would collapse into a black hole if that happened.

Cheers,
Zack 

On the mobile photo side of things I use Snapseed, Photoforge2, Camera+ Diptic, and recently I’ve started using Hisptamatic. For Hisptamatic I’ve taken to just using the US1776 film and the Jane lens. 

For business I don’t have many apps I use. I’m looking for a CRM solution. Thinking of trying Insightly by google. I swear they will run our entire life soon. :) I use Calengoo as my google cal client on my phone. Both my personal life and my business life is scheduled via google cal. I also use ReleaseMe when I need to have model releases signed. 

Cheers,
Zack 

List your classes you have taken. List photographers you may have assisted. List gear, software, and techniques you are comfortable working with. “Proficent with Nikon and Canon. 4 years of experience working with Adobe Creative Suite. Proficient with off camera lighting.” Stuff like that. 

Also add any relevant information from your life that can be helpful just as you would with any CV or resumé. Experience with management, sales, production, etc. If you don’t have many strong images then don’t build a book of 30 “ok” photos. Build a book of 12 to 15 strong images and leave it at that.

Cheers,
Zack 

ETA - I’ve reached 1,000 “posts” but not 1,000 answers just yet. Super close to it. Then I’m taking a break from this blog for the rest of the year. Actually, I’m taking a rest from twitter, FB, and the rest of it until 2013.

I don’t have any experience with the lights you are mentioning but I have a bit of advice all the same…

When you are stepping up to strobes you are doing so for power. Hotshoe flashes are awesome things. I love them. I rebuilt my career on the back of them. I still use them for a lot for a lot of things but I have strobes too. I have the strobes for the power. When you are buying your first strobe go ahead and get the most powerful one in the line of strobes you are looking for.

When I bought into the Alien Bees line I got the 1600 first. It was more than the 800 and 400 in their line but I got it for the extra light. This is what I’d suggest to you. Get the 600 first. You can save up the other money for an Octa or whatever later. If you buy the 400 w/s light now you can’t add light to it later for $100 and there will be times you want that extra light. Then you’ll have to buy the light.

Now then… 400 w/s can get a lot done. My Elinchrom Quadras are 400 w/s. I wish they were 800 w/s. I always want more light. What made the Quadras attractive to me is how small and lightweight they are. A lot of my assignments are indoors and the Quadras have the perfect amount of flexibility for me on those assignments. They can fall short of what I need outdoors during the day time but then my Einsteins can take over and give an extra stop of light from there. 

So… get as much power as you can first. Then you can add other things later. I started with the 1600 and then added two 800’s after that. Once I had my main “big” light I could use less powerful lights for background lights, rim lights, etc. Also note that I would, and still do, mix in hotshoe flashes with my main larger lights. My current “editorial” lighting bag has two Quadra’s and two hotshoe flashes. The smaller lights make good accent lights where I need them.

Cheers,
Zack 

I should have said I have 50 to go because now I need to find this one photo I evidently have.

Where self deprecation goes wrong. :)

Cheers,
Zack

I think you sum up my opinions on them quite well. Dynalite makes awesome packs and heads. I really do like their stuff. They need some re-branding or something to bring them back to the market as a real player. Profoto. Elinchrom. Bron. Paul C. Buff…. Those are the big four that everyone debates. When I was at PPE this year I saw a Speedotron booth and thought, “Holy shit! They’re still around?” I don’t know who is buying those kinds of packs any more but yeah, they’re still around.

These days we want powerful AND portable and…. affordable. We’ll throw “affordable” out if the power and portability is there. That’s why I got my Quadra’s. When you add up what they do and how much power they punch though, they’re a pretty good deal.

You know who else makes awesome lights? Hensel. You know who sucks at getting them to market and selling them? Hensel. 

So… Yes. Dyna’s. They are great lights.

Cheers,
Zack 

I like Trey and he has some pretty awesome shots… or are they shots of awesome places? Do we say that is an amazing photo or is that a photo of an amazing place? I’ve asked this question many times about portraits of celebrities. Is that an amazing portrait? Or is that a portrait of an amazing person? This, to me, is where we begin to really split hairs in photography. 

Hawk wants to shoot and publish one million photos. Great. Fine. Whatever. Awesome. I’m not about that. I want to shoot 50 OMG AMAZING photos in my entire life. 50. I’ll shoot 100,000 times that. I’ll show 1,000 times that. But when my work is distilled I want 50 to show up as being something that I can truly be proud of. I think I only have 49 to go.

For those of us who live, eat, breathe, and sleep photography we have to remember that some folks just love photography for what it is. They aren’t trying to cure cancer with every click of the shutter. They like to take photos and they like to share them and that’s about it. It makes them happy. Yes they want to be “better” photographers but at the end of the day they just enjoy walking around and photographing whatever. 

Others of us are the dark tortured souls. We brood over photography. We sit on white thrones of judgement not only on the work of others but of our own. We are like those flagellant monks beating ourselves to be better and better and better. We seek those fleeting brilliant moments that seem to elude us around every corner. We deliberately walk past a thousand photos that anyone else would shoot. Anyone not seeking photography to this depth, to us, is a hack. They are the blogoraphers I went off about a few days ago on this blog. The AMWACs. They are the Trey Ratcliffs and Thomas Hawks of the world. They are the instrag.am stars.

But yeah… We, the dark souls, can be the self imposed gate keepers of the craft. We are diving head first into the rabbit hole and can’t think why anyone else wouldn’t be following us.

Aren’t we a bunch of jerks? We are but I’m glad we’re here. I’m proud to be one of the assholes screaming from the mountaintop. I’m proud to defend the craft. I’m by no means a leader of it. Please note that. I’m just one of several who hold the craft above the hobby or mediocre “pro” work out there. So yeah, we need some gatekeepers. That’s why I follow all of the anonymous cynics and critics on Twitter. They are keeping the gate as well. I appreciate them.

————————————

I just bought an electric guitar. I’m desperately seeking a hobby that I can do that won’t EVER EVER EVAR become a job. I will never be Jack White. If I could trade professions for a day I’d be Jack White. He’s the number one person in the world I want to shoot a portrait of right now. I get chills when I watch the opening of It Might Get Loud. I wish I could be to photography what he is to playing guitar. I know WTF I’m doing and I’ll never be that to photography. I sure… as hell… won’t ever be that to guitar playing.

But I sit in my living room when the house gets quiet. I throw “actions” on it via effects pedals and just pick notes and make drone. I enjoy it. I like it. I’m going to get some lessons. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing it but I do like it. I don’t ever want to play a show. I don’t want to make a record. I don’t want to share what I do. I just want to sit in my house late at night and be able to play guitar. Just for me.

There are a lot of photographers out there like this. Do you know how much some guitar players are cringing right now at the thought of some 39 year old hack like me thinking it’s cool to drone out with effects pedals? I don’t know shit for shit about playing guitar. The dark tortured souls of guitar won’t let me past their gate. I get that. And… I’m not trying to enter.

So Ratcliff and Hawk and allllllllllll the rest of them. They’ll knock out some great photos of places. They’ll knock out some photos of really great places. Hawk will hit his 1,000,000 photos mark but, you know, meh. Whatever. You can’t possibly create 1,000,000 amazing and noteworthy images in your life. He evidently enjoys the crap out of photography so let him enjoy it. Does it make him a great photographer? No. Will he get to stand next to Gordon Parks in photography heaven? No. Will he be noted in the history books of photography? Most likely. You get that large of a following and you get a note in the history books. 

As I’ve said before though, don’t take someone’s “following” and equate that to talent. Don’t take a huge body of work as an impressive body of work. For people just getting started in photography it is easy to think that folks with huge followings and really colorful photos of amazing places is amazing photography. All of us jerks on our white thrones will quickly point out that that isn’t always the case. We point to the rabbit hole. We point to Parks. Avedon. Smith. Lange. Ritts. Winters. Salgado. “No kids… there are the great ones. There is the great work.” 

Some people get angry and upset about all this stuff. I have too and I still get my feathers ruffled from time to time. But this is what I’ve learned.

Don’t get bitter. Get better.

Cheers,
Zack 

Once you are in the pit…

Sometimes it can be an all out shoulder to shoulder boxing match with elbows. If you are tall then God bless you… and stand in the back. Don’t be that 6’4” asshole standing in front of the 5’6” dude. Ahem. That would be me. Let the short guy up front please. :)

You’ll get to one side of the stage and then something amazing will happen on the other side of the stage. All lenses go swinging at once. Always be aware of the other photographers around you. If something is happening to your left then there are photographers to your right trying to shoot over you or get past you to get it. 

Do not go live view and hold your damn camera up over your head trying to get the shot UNLESS you are at the back of the pit and all the other photographers are in front of you. Then you can hail Mary over your head. If you are doing this from the front then you are most likely blocking someone else’s view with your damn camera up in the air. I’ve come close to removing the arms of “music bloggers” who are shooting with a Canon G10 and somehow got a pit pass and are being total assholes with their cameras. Be aware of those in the front row as well. They have to look past you to see the artist. Don’t be a jerk to them. 

Have two cameras on you. One with your wider option. One with the longer option. 24-70 on one and 70-200 on the other. Or whatever rig/lens selection you decide to go with. Something will happen far from you immediately followed by something happening 5 feet from your face. You have zero time to be changing lenses. If you have to change lenses or something goes wrong with your camera then step to the back of the pit and get the hell out of the way of everyone else until you solve your problem.

Be respectful. Get your shot then let someone else in to get their shot. Be ready to be a bit fluid. Leave a gap. Take a gap. Don’t let your emotions get fired up when some asshole is being a total jerk and pushing people around to get their shot. You can rip them a new one AFTER you leave the pit. Don’t cause a scene in front of the band because that’s going to make everyone look bad. Let the asshole be a jerk and then rip into them after you are out of the pit. It’s rock-n-roll damn it. Get in a fight back stage every now and then. :)

If you are going over someone’s shoulder just let them know, “Hey. Right over your left shoulder here.” You get tunnel vision when you are shooting and don’t realize someone is standing on top of you. You get your shot then go to take a step back only to trip over the person standing six inches behind you. 

Best case scenarios in the pit are when there are just a handful of photographers. Plenty of space to move about. You aren’t stepping on toes. Everyone has an angle to a shot. Then there are the feeding frenzies. Remember that the artists are on stage having to perform. They don’t see past the first few rows as it is. From their perspective the pit is front and center in their view. Don’t let it be a bunch of monkeys fighting each other. Be a pro and require the same of those around you. If someone is being an ass in the pit then peg them to the wall later and tell ‘em to cut that shit out. It hurts everyone else. I got ripped into when I was green. I learned quickly. I’ve ripped into others since. Usually it’s the music bloggers who don’t know shit for shit about being a professional photographer.

Everyone there has a job to do. Don’t let someone tell you that their job is more important than your’s is. I’ve had guys grab my pass to check to see if I was shooting for a “credible” outlet or not. If they felt their outlet was better than mine then suddenly their job was more important and I had to yield to them. If you are being respectful. If you are giving space and not being pushy. You still have to do your job too. Don’t let the old fart push you around. Again… be respectful but stand your ground when you need to. Take it out with them after you leave the pit.

Cheers,
Zack 

Top five books about photography :: 

VisionMongers by David duChemin :: This is one of the best photography books about the thought process of photography I’ve ever read. It is a MUST read by any photographer. 

The Moment It Clicks by Joe McNally :: I cried when I first read this book. It’s filled with a lot of great nuggets of information from one of the greatest photographers around.

The Passionate Photographer by Steve Simon :: Great great great book of ten steps and things you can do to grow as a photographer.

LIDLIPS (Lessons I didn’t learn in photo school) by Syl Arena :: Perfect bathroom reader. Oh c’mon. We all need one. :)

Best Business Practices for Photographers by John Harrington :: If I’m perfectly honest with you… I’d rather smash my face through a brick wall then cuddle up in bed with this book but damn it… it’s a great book on the business of photography. John knows this industry inside and out and his book is the bible of photography business.

Top five books of photographer’s work ::

Physiognomy by Mark Seliger :: This is my most worn out and tattered photo book I own. I’m in this game partially due to the work of Mark Seliger. He was my first photo hero.

Ashes and Snow by Gregory Colbert :: OMG. OMG. OMG. A fellow photographer gave this book to me and it is my favorite photo book. It’s gorgeous.

Avedon: Murals and Portraits by Richard Avedon :: Just get any Avedon book. Get all of them. I still need to get all of them. Can’t ever get enough of Avedon. Woman in the Mirror is also great.

Herb Ritts: L.A. Style by Herb Ritts :: Droooooool.

W. Eugene Smith. An Aperture Monograph by Eugene Smith :: I’m going back to Smith a lot these days and studying his work again. What an amazing photographer he was.

Those should all be on your Christmas list to Santa.

Cheers,
Zack 

If you’re the only game in town then that’s a pretty good idea to try. Get a year lease and see what happens.

One issue with renting your studio is scheduling. I rent mine out very rarely just because scheduling has turned out to be an issue when I do. I typically agree to rent my place when I know good and well I won’t be using it for anything or I’ll be out of town. If you are planning on shooting in your space then you need to plan on having a plan B in place if you have a shoot and someone wants to rent your space. There are some online scheduling tools out there that you can use. I haven’t used one yet so I can’t give a personal recommendation.

Just this morning I looked at a studio space that would be in addition to the place I already have. I’m out growing the space I have right now and need to get another spot for me to just go work, be by myself, and do shoots that don’t get in the way with the production work we have going on in my current space. One thing I’m looking at to offset the cost of this second space is renting it out on a regular basis.

The space Meg and I saw today would be perfect because it has two separate office spaces that can be closed off from the main area. I could rent the main space out for shoots and still have my own space to work in while someone else is working in the space. 

One thing I’d suggest is keeping your main space “brand” free from your own photography. Allow other photographers to bring their clients into a space that isn’t screaming “THIS IS ANOTHER PHOTOGRAPHER’S SPACE!!!” Know what I mean? Allow it to be generic enough that other photographers can feel a bit of “ownership” of the space on their shoots. 

Make sure your insurance will cover anything that happens in your space by anyone in there. Become an LLC or get incorporated (speak to an accountant about this first) so that there is some level of personal protection between your personal life and anything that happens in your studio. Some studios require insurance from the photographer they rent to. If you are dealing with a lot of photographers just starting out then most likely they won’t have liability insurance on their own and if something happens to their client in your space you could have some major issues. Make sure you get that figured out.

Also have a plan on hand for what you will allow to be shot in your studio and what you won’t allow to be shot in your studio. There’s a line you need to watch out for when “fine art nude” shoots turn to teen porn shoots. I’ve heard stories about this stuff happening. One photographer I met had to check the ID of the subjects being photographed because he really thought they were under 18. That doesn’t happen all the time… just have a plan in place for it.

We live in a weird litigious society these days and if you are going to open this space to strangers you need to make sure you are covered for anything that might happen there.

One last thing. I’ve seen some photographers these days opening up a sort of co-op kind of thing with their spaces. Photographers can pay X amount a month and get access to the space X amount of days per month. They use an online scheduling program (again, not sure which one) to book the space. Each photographer paying a monthly fee to have fairly regular access to the place knows that the shooting space is on a first come, first served basis. This is nice for photographers because they get a good space at a good rate and just have to deal with it month to month instead of signing a lease. It’s good for you because your overhead is getting taken care of. Just make it an application process so you can meet the person, get an idea of what they are like and what they shoot, and see if you can trust them to have a key to the space. A lot of these co-op places to give keys to folks. You don’t want to have to worry about being there anytime they are there so you have to trust these folks.

Cheers,
Zack 

When my travel started ramping up I would always take the cheapest flight, the cheapest hotel room, the cheapest car rental, etc. I never accumulated a lot of points with any particular brand for those to be worth something. 

Meg finally signed me up for a few programs and we decided to stick with one airline, one hotel chain, one rental car company. I’m so glad we did. Just for airlines it’s worth it. I fly everywhere on Delta now. Being that I live in Atlanta and this is their main hub it’s good to stick with them. I can fly anywhere in the world with Delta. 

Also, the bank I use for personal banking and business has a Delta program so for every dollar I spend on my debit card I get one mile. When I buy tickets on Delta I get 2 miles per dollar spent. 

“I want my two miles!” :)

Now that I’ve been doing this I’m so glad Meg pushed for it. I get upgrades a lot. I rarely pay extra baggage fees. Meg is happy too! She’s taken some trips on miles. She was able to fly to Paris last year for $90. Not too shabby.

ProTip - If you find you start traveling a lot I’ve found a few little things that make life easier.

1) Build a toiletries bag for travel and only use it for travel. When you are packing up to leave on a trip you just throw that in your bag. You don’t have to worry about leaving toothpaste or hair gel or whatever at home.

2) Keep an extra cell phone charger or two in your luggage that are dedicated for traveling. 

3) Get some good personal luggage. I’d buy those cheap $79 sets at Target and they’d last about six months before they started falling apart. Then I’d buy another cheap set. I got tired of that and bought some stuff from Eagle Creek. I went with their bags because they have a lifetime “no matter what” warranty on them. Anything that happens to these bags… no matter what… are covered under their warranty. I’ve had them for over two years now and have never had a problem with them. 

4) When loading your stuff on the xray belt in the US (where you still have to take your laptop out and take your shoes off in most cases) load your stuff on the belt in this order…

Shoes & Belt / Laptop / Laptop bag / (let the belt run for another 10 seconds or so) then put your camera bag through.

What happens, 9 times out of 10, is your shoes and personal items and laptop fly right through. The TSA agent usually stops the belt when the camera bag comes through because they have to really study that bag. Your shoes, laptop, etc are usually out of the machine by now. You can get redressed and be ready to roll once the camera bag is cleared.

My camera bag does get pulled for extra inspection about 50% of the time. In small airports it’s pulled every time. In large airports it’s pulled about a third of the time. My Einstein and Quadra batteries are ALWAYS pulled off the belt and swabbed. I’ve learned to just take them out of the bag and put them in a tray on their own. They’ve never been cleared just through xray. Always swabbed.

5) Finally… When you leave on your trip make sure you have a day or two of clean clothes ready for you when you get home. Nothing sucks more then getting home wearing your last clean pair of drawers and you have to do laundry as soon as you walk in the door. 

It’s the little things that matter when you travel a lot.

One other traveling note…

The hardest part about traveling for me is getting home. Here’s why. Travel sucks it out of me. When I get off a plane and get to my house I just want to collapse on the couch for the rest of that day and into the next. Hot dogs and mac-n-cheese sound like the greatest meal on earth at that moment. 

Meg has been home with four boys while I’ve been gone. She’s worn out and ready for adult conversation and adult beverages. I’m worn out and ready to hang out at home. I hit the door and she’s ready to go. I’m ready to stay. Learning to find a balance there is something we are always working on.

Hemingway had a quote that went something like… “Travel is only romantic in the planning of and the telling of stories afterward.”

Cheers,
Zack 

I’ve only shot one job that was direct to the web. The usage spelled out was for web only. I had to deliver the file 1100 pix on the widest side by 72 dpi. Other than that one job, I’ve had nothing else asked of me for web specific content.

Cheers,
Zack 

Thanks!

I have hit the 1,000 posts mark on this blog but not the 1,000 questions answered just yet. I’ve had a few silly Q&A’s and some off topic ones as well. I want to take a break from this when I feel I hit an actual number of 1,000. I’m giving myself to 1,050 posts or so. I figure that ought to do it.

Cheers,
Zack 

Let me just say you are screwed. There’s no hope for you.

The reason I can say this is because the work of Ritts, Weber, and Rolston sucks. Look at their trash! It’s visual pollution! It’s all clean, and beautiful, and gorgeous. Yuk. Who wants clean and beautiful these days? You could also use words like “striking” and “powerful” in regards to their work. There’s no use for that kind of image any longer.

They shot work that we can call “iconic.” No one wants that. They want “disposable” and “forgettable” these days. In fact, I think most people are just going to stop using photos all together so they can be even more forgettable. It’s really hip to have no one remember your brand. 

Yeah. You’re hosed. Hang up your camera if those are your influences. Striking and beautiful and powerful. Meh. Whatever. Gorgeous photos. Blah. 

Cheers,
Zack 

Yes. As far as I know. I’ve photographed my kids with strobes and they don’t show too many signs of being effected by it. Now, I wouldn’t go firing off 2,400 watt seconds of light on a newborn but it’s not like you’re trying to overpower 1pm sun with an infant in the shot either. Use common sense. How many millions of children have been photographed with grandma’s camera with a flash on it? And those are bright pinpoint lights. A hotshoe at 1/8th power in a 50” softbox? No issues.

I went googling around before answering this. I found someone pointing to one study done on rats. Results…

Exposure of the eyes to 1,000 flashes at 0.1 m increased the fluorescein staining score significantly (P = 0.009, the Mann–Whitney test). Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) of the cornea showed a detachment of the epithelial cells from the surface after this exposure. The amplitude of the a-wave was decreased significantly by 23.0% (P = 0.026) of the amplitude before the exposure, and the b-wave by 19.7% (P = 0.0478) following 1,000 flashes at 0.1 m but not by the other exposures. TUNEL-positive cells were present in the outer nuclear layer only after the extreme exposure, but no significant decrease in retinal thickness was seen under any condition. The fluorescein staining score and ERGs recovered to control levels within 1 week.

And now in English…

Light exposure to a photographic flash lamp does not induce damage to the cornea and retina except when they are exposed to 1,000 flashes at 0.1 m.

So don’t do it 1,000 times from point one meters away. 

Cheers,
Zack 

Scratching head. 

I can’t answer this other than you have to get up off your couch and go out into your world and meet people. And meet more people. And get “connected”.

You have to be able to communicate WHAT you do and HOW you do it and WHO you do it for and WHERE you do it and HOW MUCH it costs for you to do it. You know… like a prostitute. That theme pops up on this blog far too often lately. But it got me quoted on APhotoEditor this week so I’m going to keep running with it. :)

You have to turn your love of photography into a business that isn’t any different from running a dry cleaning place or being a landscaper or CPA or dentist or whatever. You have to set up shop, open for business, and do what you do. This isn’t saying you need a physical location like a studio. You get what I’m saying. 

I’m sure dentists are glad that they never have to say, “Boy, everyone is a dentist these days.” but I’m sure they have their industry issues.

“Anyone with a calculator these days thinks they’re an accountant!” 

“Someone gets a washer and dryer and then they think they’re a laundromat!”

“Anyone with a hammer these days just thinks they are a house builder. Business sucks for me right now.”

“Ever since Ikea started selling pots and pans there are dozens of new restaurants popping up everywhere and taking all of my customers!”

Yeah. Those folks don’t say that. We do. And it’s sort of true and it’s sort of false. A camera does not a photographer make… but there are enough folks out there thinking that it does and it’s whacking away at our business. So you have to be smarter than them. You have to be more agile. You have to be more skillful. You have to be more talented. You have to market better. You have to find different clients. You have to move up the food chain and get off the bottom.

True paid work? Put a price tag on it. Find people who want to hire you. I know that answer is like…

How to climb the mountain? Go up. Left foot. Right foot. Climb. Have fun! Don’t die!

But in reality that is the reality. In learning to climb a mountain you have to learn technique. You have to have X amount of gear. You need to attain a certain amount of fitness and strength. A high level of it I guess you’d say. You start with hills. Then small mountains. You have to learn to breathe in thinner air. You have to be able to walk when your body is screaming to shut down. There’s a ton of training involved here. But at the end of the day. When you have trained. When you have gathered your gear… you go up. Left foot. Right foot. Climb. Don’t die!

People just entering this industry haven’t a clue as to how deep this rabbit hole goes. They take some photos. They get the background out of focus for the first time. Their friends and family think they are OMG AWESOMEZ! They hate their day job. They are unfulfilled in some part of their life. They’ve always wanted to be “creative” but couldn’t draw or paint or play music…. but they can get some OMG BOKEH with their new camera! 

Hmmmmm. “I could be a photographer!” They exclaim. People do this for money. Real money! This person makes $100 a day at their shitty day job and thinks that shooting one wedding for $1,500 is fifteen times the money in a day of work than what they do now. How is that not awesome? And then you get to hang out in coffee shops and twitter with the cool kids all day. They see folks like me bitching and moaning that I have to get on yet another airplane. Oh poor me. Poor Zack having to travel around the world. “Let me cry for you Zack.” They sit in a cubicle all day.

You don’t need a license to be a photographer. You don’t need a degree. You don’t need anything really other than a half ass decent camera and a lens. So and so did it. That person did it. This person over here did it and has 50,000 followers on twitter. They’re famous. They must be rich. They travel the world. I bet they fart rainbows in the morning.

What a fantastic f*cking life it must be to be a professional photographer! Aperture priority and stars in their eyes and blur in the background and zero freaking business knowledge and off they go! Wheeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!

I can’t tell you how many scores and scores and scores mores of people I’ve met in this spot. Hell… I was there. We all were. But there they go skipping and smiling and singing songs of love through the field of sunflowers and trust me… mark my words… they hit their foot at the edge of this rabbit hole and down, down, down they go. Everyone hits the rabbit hole.

Some go down in flames. Some come scrambling out of that hole as fast as they fell in it. Off they go to do something else. Some, few I may say, stay down there and want to see how far it goes. Those people figure out how to navigate the waters of doing this. Those folks who go deep into photography figure it out. Like I said in the sales post this week… they are hungry. The rabbit hole isn’t as pretty as they thought it would be. 

It’s so much work. It’s hard. It takes a toll on you. I swear to you that “day jobs” are far, far, far easier than being a full time photographer in this market right now. Photography calls many and chooses few. A photo product company recently sent me an email saying they are looking for a marketing person. They asked if I could spread the word to help them find someone to fill the position. I looked at the job description. I fit that job perfectly. I’m the person who could do that job. I showed it to Meg. I told her that I was considering applying for it. Do you know how awesome it would be to have a day job again? To have some stability in my schedule? To have a job description made up for me and I could just connect pre-determined dots all day? I sat on and stewed on that for three days. I know a guy who did a similar sort of thing. He found a perfect balance of having a secure gig and it allowed him time to just shoot his own personal projects. He’s far more relaxed looking than I am. 

So you love this artform. You can love it without attaching dolla dolla billz y’all. To turn it from a love of the art to a business that sustains you sometimes requires you to throw that love out the window and just do what you have to do to survive. Somedays you are more of a technician than you are an artist. Somedays it’s for the money and not for the love. Then you have to do taxes! And come up with new marketing ideas. And sit for hours on end doing post production. And dealing with emails and phone calls. 10% or less of what you are asking to do here will be taking photographs.

You have to love what you do. The good and the bad. You have to go make your own paycheck. No one gives you the desk, the phone, the computer, and the regular schedule to get stuff done. You have to do all that yourself. I sometimes tell folks that want to quit their day job that they’ll be trading it for a day AND night job.

There’s great satisfaction in all of it though and you have to find that satisfaction in the struggle. When your body is screaming to shut down and you’re only half way up the mountain you have to keep going. You have to find satisfaction and joy in the pain and the suffering it takes to get you to the top. And by “the top” I mean just being able to regularly pay your bills with a camera. Not be Chase Jarvis or something. Just a regular full time photographer is sometimes the best thing we can achieve. Just doing that is “the top”.

Those who make it in this industry have tenacity. 

noun

the quality or fact of being able to grip something firmly; grip.

• the quality or fact of being very determined; determination.

• the quality or fact of continuing to exist; persistence.

Do you have tenacity? Can you go ahead and fling yourself down the rabbit hole and see how far this thing will go. Is your family ready to go down that hole with you? Are you ready to kiss the security of a regular paycheck and benefits goodbye to go after it? 

If you have this tenacity. Then go up. Left foot. Right foot. Don’t die.

Cheers,
Zack

Don’t quote me directly on this but I’d imagine they would work with the Vagabond Mini. Just googled to see if anyone is using these two together and couldn’t find a definitive answer. 

Cheers,
Zack