If I Were You...

I have a friend who is interested in making photography a career. He graduated from a local state college with a degree in journalism, with an emphasis on photography. He has not been able to get much traction on his chosen career path, due in part to the decline of the printed media.


So where should he go from here? I am going to give some suggestions, but since I haven't had to "peddle my wares" in a public forum, I don't have any proven solutions. Instead, I have some ideas of how I would approach it the situation, were I in his shoes.


Step One: Identify The Photography You Do Best
Notice that I said "do", not "like". If you're looking for a career, you will need to distinguish yourself in some way. A client doesn't care if you enjoy your work so long as you produce the images he or she wants. Maybe you're good at macro photography, or maybe you're good with animals. If you're lucky, you'll be good at photographing people, since people tend to like photographs of themselves and those they care about, and are willing to pay money for a flattering likeness. For now, let's make it simple and not use the "W" word*. There are architectural photographers, fashion photographers, even some who specialize in photographing merchandise for on-line sales. Now collect your best images in one folder so you can refer to them from time to time. Let's call that your portfolio.


Step Two: Identify Your Immediate Competition
One of the things I like about old fashioned phone books is the categorical listings. Vendors who buy ad space in the Yellow Pages (or whatever they're called these days) need to decide where they want to place their ads. This isn't like the Internet where you search on key words and sort after the fact. If nothing else, you can see how other photographers describe themselves and their services. Look the ads over and note which words seem to spark your interest. If you like what you read, chances are good that your future client base will too. Check to see if they have a web site. If so, make them part of your collection of web favorites. 

Step Three: Compare Your Work
Here is the hard part. Find a photographer whose work you admire. Now be honest. No matter how talented your are, or think you are, there are dozens of images in the world you would be proud to say that you made, but didn't. Now select one of your competitor's images that fits that category. Let's call it your benchmark. Now check your portfolio of images to see if you one that is close in subject, composition, and technical competency. How does it stack up? Can you identify the qualities in your image that equal or surpass those of your benchmark? If your images are not "equal", you now have a starting point to find out why, and what techniques to begin refining. 


Here's a word of advise. If you're responding, "I could do that", you're missing an important point. These four words do not a sentence make because "could" is a conditional. The sentence should be "I could do that",  followed by a clause that starts, "...if I...". So what's keeping you from making a photograph the equals or surpasses your current benchmark? Need a more expensive camera? Need a different lens? Need more lights? You may believe this, but if you think that it's the equipment that made the photo, you seriously underestimate the photographer's contribution to the endeavor. Owning a Steinway piano will not make you the next Van Cliburn. It's all about technique, and now is the time to work on that. Read books, view blogs, do what it takes to change "I could" to "I did". I've listed some of my favorites in the side bar.

Ultimately, your response to a every one of your benchmark images should be, "I can do that" followed by a period.

Step Four: Lay Your Claim In Cyberspace
It's never too early to stake a claim in Cyberspace. In fact, one commentator suggested that every parent should buy the rights to an IP address in their child's name as soon as that name is selected. In the beginning, it could be as mundane as a place to post growing up photos and such, but one can never know what uses a young adult will have for personalized domain name twenty years from now. Sure, you can have a studio name, but if you sell your business the domain name goes with it. Just to be safe, your first and last name  plus the word "photography" or "photographer" will suffice, unless you have a name that is nearly impossible to spell, in which case you may wish to adopt a "nom de guerre" for the purpose.

Remember that this is just a reservation for the time being. It will be there, waiting for you, when you're ready.

The second claim I would "stake" is to an address on a free Blog service. Make sure it is the same as your domain name to avoid later confusion. Having a blog gives you a platform to display your work without going through the hassle of learning an HTML editor / web design program. If you can type, you can create a blog. My blog was designed primarily as a teaching tool for my photography students. But I always include images as samples of a specific photographic technique, which in turn can be used to show what I am capable of doing. I also include technical information, mainly as a reminder to the viewer that I'm not a point-and-shooter, but a serious photographer that has mastered both the aesthetic and the technical aspects of the craft.


Step Five: Join A Professional Organization
When you're just starting out, you need to get a sense of who's out there and what they're doing. If I were on this journey, I would join the Professional Photographers of California. They have monthly meetings in nearby South San Francisco, and non-members can attend for a nominal fee. Although I've not attended, I get e-mails on upcoming speakers. and they all appear to address some significant aspect of the photography business. Getting yourself known as a serious up-and-comer can provide you with established contacts in the field, and a chance to find out what it's really like. And having a chance to see the work of other photographers will certainly help you see exactly the market is really like. I'm sure there are similar meetings outside of the Bay Area.

These five steps are only a start. I made no mention pricing, monetizing your web page, marketing, and client satisfaction. If you get past these first five steps, the next person you talk to should probably be your accountant.

And last but not least; If you have a day job, keep it.

*Wedding Photography

Long Distance Bounce Flash

As the resident "old guy" in this forum, I remember first attempting bounce flash in the early 70's. I used a Vivitar 180, a  shoe-mounted flash that could neither tilt nor rotate. It had two power settings: Full and Half power, plus a snap-one wide angle adapter. In order to use it in the bounce mode, I purchased a 3' extension flash cable and carried the flash in my pocket rather mounting it in cold shoe of my father's Pentax Spotmatic. When I was ready to make an exposure, I would locate a suitable bounce surface, estimate the distance from my flash to the bounce surface, estimate the distance from the bounce surface back to the subject, then add these two distances together. The correct aperture could then be read from scale on the top of the flash. This would give the proper exposure based on distance alone, which would probably work in a room with mirrored walls and ceilings. Unfortunately, this was never the case, so an exposure factor, usually 2 f-stops, was added to compensate for the varying degrees of bounce surface reflectivity. You could now set the "proper" aperture and hope for the best. Needless to say, high ISO/ASA films were the norm, as were large shooting apertures.

The lead photo was published on May 23, 1973 in East/West, a San Francisco bilingual newspaper. I used a 28mm F 2.5 Vivitar wide angle lens that allowed me to include as much of the foreground as I wished. I also bounced my flash, determining the exposure the old fashioned way. This technique revealed detail in Ms. Wong's face more effectively than mounting the flash on-camera. It also provided an even exposure from front to back.

Today's automatic flashes self-regulate their output based on exposure data processed from either a sensor eye mounted on the flash, or from exposure information gathered by the camera through its built-in meter. The latter method requires a dedicated speedlight, usually one made by the camera's manufacturer, that can communicate directly with the camera. This insures compatibility between the meter's interpretation of the situation, and the speedlight's ability to correctly apply this information to achieve proper exposure.

This particular assignment was to bring back an image from a talent show held at a local community center. It was a large room, and the closest bounce surface was the ceiling. Available light would require exposure times too long to be practical. I decided to see what I could do with bounce flash. There were going to be some exposure problems, as the camera-subject distance was unusually long, about 20'. This would be a relatively long shot even for on-camera direct flash. After some quick tests, I settled on 1/250 of a second, F 2.8, ISO 800. The lens was a 70-200 2.8 zoom, shot wide open. The on-camera flash was an SB-900, zoomed to the 200mm setting to tighten the light spread as much as possible. I also attached a square of gaffer-covered cardboard to the small patch on Velcro on the lower edge of the flash head. This gobo* would insure that the subject would receive only the light bounced from the ceiling. The speedlight was set to manual with full discharge, requiring  a relatively long recycle time. Notice how the light fades off in the background due to the greater distance it had to travel. Here Roger Mariucci sings Tom Jones' "Delilah", and carries it off very well.

I couldn't help but notice how incredibly even the light was, but shouldn't have been surprised. The light traveled a long way to reach the ceiling on an oblique path, which minimized the intensity difference between the light hitting Mr. Mariucci and that which hit the background. Also, the ceiling essentially became an enormous light box, creating an even frontal lighting that was very flattering, but a little short on character.

Mr. Mariucci was the last act, and true to form, his "fans", dollar bills and handkerchiefs in hand, charged the stage to the delight of the audience. From where I stood in the background, I couldn't get the shot. However, at the prompting of one of the guests, they re-staged the shot for his benefit. I made my way over to the site of the re-shoot while I pulled the SB-900 off my D300 and put it on my D7000 which was equipped with a 28-75 Tamron. I didn't any time to check the settings, so I just took the shot, and hoped that RAW processing would salvage the image. It turns out that the ISO was 1600, the exposure set to 1/80, the aperture to 2.8 and the white balance set to Incandescent. The flash was still set to Manual and Full Power. Needless to say, I was really pushing my luck.

Since another photographer had "set up" the shot, I needed to make a quick introduction, so I announced, "Can I get one too?". They obviously cooperated, and gave me a really cute photograph. Having the second camera ready to go was a real lifesaver, since the 70-200 would never have worked in such close quarters. Immediately afterward, I quickly introduced myself to Mr. Mariucci, and asked for help with the names.

The final shot was overexposed, but recoverable. The shadow patterns in the eyes shows that the on-flash was essentially pointed straight up. The gobo on the flash prevented any hot spots on the subjects. But the expressions say it all, and my editor was very pleased with the final product.

*gobo is camera speak for "GO Between Optics". It is some sort of shade placed between the light source and the camera lens. It prevents stray light from striking the lens on an oblique angle, the cause of most of the "ghosts" found on images that are lit from behind.