Bald eagles congregate along the Chilkat river, near Haines, Alaska, in November. Perched in the dormant Cottonwood trees. Click on the image above to view a larger version of this photo.
The Photographer’s Business Plan – part one
I’m sure all of the photographers reading this blog have written a business plan. Right? I mean, we’re all professional photographers, running our private small business with all the acumen and diligence of a studied businessman/woman. Right?
I wonder how many photographers out there calling themselves “professionals” have ever sat down and written an actual business plan. For their actual business. My guess, is very few of us have done so.
My guess, in fact, is that virtually every single photographer reading this post will spend more time on “liking” posts and “+1ing” comments and pictures on various social media than they will on mapping out some kind, any kind, of business plan. Rather than find 10 new facebook friends, or 25 new twitter followers for your business, how about spend 10 minutes working on your business plan?
Spruce trees in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska. Please click on the image above to view a larger version of this photo.
Hey Folks,
It’s a new year already. The days are getting longer, so I’m told. I’m another year older, slower, fatter and balder. But a new year can also mean a great time to focus on our work. Draw it into focus by outlining and giving voice to where we might like for it to go. Without that articulation, it’s easy to wander in circles, and not really move forward with our art.
I’m reminded of a great line by my friend Craig Tanner, when he was asked what is the most important concern to him, as an artist; his answer, so simple, was “the only thing that matters is, is my work moving forward”.
What can we do to move our work forward? Well, make some goals to move toward, for one thing. And really, goals is the wrong word, I think, for art. We don’t score goals. We don’t target anything; we make art, we create stuff. That’s all.
Silhouetted brown bear at sunrise, Katmai National Park, Alaska.
Timing is everything; especially for photography. Being in the “right place” at the “right time” is critical to making the “right photos”. Especially when photographing brown bears. So how, exactly, do we go about making that happen?
A million dollar question, I think.
One comment that we read and hear frequently, and I completely agree with, deals with knowing your subject. Knowing the behavior of an animal, for example, can help us predict where it might move to, what it may do, and so on. There’s no question, in my opinion anyway, that the better you know your subject, the better the photo opportunities you’ll have.
An adult polar bear sits on the shores of the Beaufort Sea, waiting for freezeup. Alaska. Please click on the image above to view a larger version of this photo.
Hey Folks,
So, I’m sure by now you’re all familiar with the 101 ways to heighten your photography reputation and business prowess through the magic of social media. There are nearly as many blog posts and articles on the secret mojos to becoming a social media icon in the world of photography and art as there are, surprisingly, photographers and artists out there in social media-land. Typically, these articles repeat the same tired old cliches: engage, time your posts carefully, be consistent, etc, etc, etc. Here’s another take on this ‘phenomenon’ of social media.
Recently I was in southeast Alaska photographing bald eagles. During that trip, I ran into 2 fellows from the BBC, filming for a wildlife documentary they’re making. Filming for another wildlife documentary they’re making. These guys have made several, and travel around the world filming for a company that makes some of the most amazing wildlife on the planet. The photographer, John Brown, also shoots stills (as well as video) and is represented by Getty images. Pretty cool gig.
I mentioned to him about possibly doing an interview with him, if he’d be so kind as to give me some time; he did, and I enjoyed a great couple of hours chatting with the 2 of these guys about wildlife photography and filmmaking and all the stuff the rest of us merely dream of. I’ll edit that interview down in the near future and put together an article from it.
During the course of the conversation, I don’t recall John mentioning social media once. Not once. He didn’t give me his twitter handle, or his facebook profile, or refer me to his G+ page. He mentioned his website, but the rest of the conversation was about his work; his photography and his art.
Mt Jarvis at sunrise, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, Alaska.
Hey Folks,
Catching up on some photo editing and processing and deleting and keywording and updating and blah blah blah. Just as boring as that stuff is looking at new (for me) software programs to assist with that stuff. One I ran across, that I’d heard about for a while now is Nik HDR Efex Pro 2; I gave it a whirl the other day, and so far, I like it. A very streamlined hdr process is exactly what I’ve been looking for. Something easy and intuitive, to ease the pain of processing hdr images.
For those of you unfamiliar with the term, hdr is an acronym for High Dynamic Range; most of the time, we simply mean we take multiple exposures of the same frame, and then blend those exposures together to best present the wide range of contrast in the scene.
So this image is a blend of 7 different exposures, taken one stop apart. I converted the original nikon RAW files to tif files, via Nikon Capture NX2. Efex Pro 2 quickly processed the images and then offers a variety of presets for different modes of compression and toning, etc. I found the program pretty easy and intuitive, which was something that is rapidly becoming a real priority when I look at new software programs.
Grizzly bear gives me the once over, Katmai NP, Alaska.
Hey Folks,
Reading a recent post from someone on facebook reminded me of my start in stock photography, and I thought it might make a good subject for a blog post. How’d you make your start in selling stock photography? Every photographer wants, or once wanted, to be “published”. It’s the hallmark for aspiring photographers, I suppose.
I guess every photographer has their own story about how this happened for them.
Here’s mine.
I received an email from a magazine editor in Europe requesting the use of this image, at left, for the cover of their magazine. They’d seen the image on the website, and wanted to license it. The email included the fee they pay for the image usage, and asked that I ftp the high-res file to them if that was acceptable. It was.
I dug the file (a tif file, scanned from a slide) from my external hard drive, saved as a high quality jpeg, and ftp’ed the file right away. I got a nice check and 2 copies of the magazine son after, with my photo sitting ever so proudly on the cover. My first ever sale, a cover photo for an international magazine. And it took my all of about 2 minutes to negotiate. “Wow; this is TOO easy”, I thought; “I’ll be rich before I’m a month older”.
A backpacker walking in the Aquarius Valley, Gates of the Arctic National Park, Alaska. Few of the visitors here ever get this far back up in the valley; it’s a bit of a mission to get way back here.
Hey Folks,
Looking over a few old Image folders on my hard drive I found this photo (among others) that I hadn’t yet processed. This one I took on a hike in Gates of the Arctic National Park. We backpacked up into the subalpine area with 5 people, and did a combination of basecamping/dayhiking and backpacking. It’s rugged, steep country, and can be challenging underfoot.
This dayhike, we started out with myself plus 4 people, and by mid-afternoon were down to just myself and one other; Jodee V, who’ll walk just about anywhere! The rest of the group had stopped along the day, each person reaching their own threshold of how many rocks they wanted to walk over.
What struck me about this photo is how, for me, it perfectly evokes the exact feeling that walking in the mountains gives me. It’s infinitely vast and expansive, yet also confined and defined. It’s a feeling of being both everything and nothing, all at once. It’s an amazingly “alive” feeling.
A brown bear (Ursus arctos) sits in long green sedge grass. The low tide provides great habitat for coastal brown bears in spring and summer, in places like Kukak Bay, Katmai National Park, Alaska. Please click on the image above to view a larger version of this photo.
Hey Folks,
Getting ready to leave soon for another trip to Katmai National Park, after a busy summer hiking and backpacking. I’m excited, as always to head to Katmai and photograph the great coastal brown bears down there.
This photo was taken in June on the Coastal Brown Bear Photo Tour. A beautiful young brown bear, maybe 4 or 5 years old, in nice, soft light.
This fall we have 2 weeks of trips, with a few returning guests, as well as a number of people coming out for their first Alaska trip. After that, I have a week scheduled to photograph in the Arctic, then the summer/fall season will be over for me, and it’ll be time to catch up on website updates, etc, and planning for 2013. The aurora borealis photo tours have generated/are generating a great deal of interest, so that should be a fun time in the spring.
Oh, that and some fun skiing/snowboarding of course.
Mount Sanford and reflection, Wrangell St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska.
Here’s a shot from my trip this last week to Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve. I’m so wanting this shot to come together – as many times as I’ve been here, and waited for the right light, it hasn’t happened yet. This particular morning the air was calm, so the reflection was nice, and the mist added a nice touch, but the alpenglow, earlier in the morning, didn’t happen.
What’s the longest hour of a landscape photographer’s day? That hour between when the light first touches the clouds/mountain tops and when the sun actually rises high enough to light up the valley floor. Standing around, wet and cold, for an hour waiting to see if “Stage II” of the morning light happened, is a tough choice. But, then the light comes up, and it’s all forgotten. What fickle creatures we can be.
I’m pressed for time folks, but I’ll try to schedule another post or 2 for this next week. I just got in this evening and am heading out again sunday morning for 10 days. See ya soon.
