Steve McCurry's advices

• Insatiable Curiosity
• Hard work
• Leave home
• Fortitude and Determination
• Dig Deep
• Evolve, reinvent yourself, grow
• Don’t wait for the phone to ring

Read the full post here.

Going Pro

After finishing this excellent book, I read the following:

• Have a plan
• Have a style or a vision
• Be a marketer first and a photographer second
• Start small
• Do it right

Read the rest here.

Cheap friends

He comes close to me and starts poking his finger into my chest saying,

"Let me tell you this, kid.

If you do a cheap wedding,

they'll recommend their cheap friends.

Shoot expensive weddings and

they'll recommend their rich friends."

You know I took that advice to heart and started to do just that.

Found it here.

Faces of the 2009 Rally Acropolis@Greece

Very happy

Happy

Tired

Working

Thinking

Smiling

What Every Aspiring Photographer Should Know

What Every Aspiring Photographer Should Know

These are my thoughts, nothing more and nothing less.

I get asked all the time, during workshops, in e-mails, in private messages, what words of wisdom I would give to a new and aspiring photographer. Here’s my answer.

- Style is a voice, not a prop or an action. If you can buy it, borrow it, download it, or steal it, it is not a style. Don’t look outward for your style; look inward.

- Know your stuff. Luck is a nice thing, but a terrifying thing to rely on. It’s like money; you only have it when you don’t need it.

- Never apologize for your own sense of beauty. Nobody can tell you what you should love. Do what you do brazenly and unapologetically. You cannot build your sense of aesthetics on a concensus.

- Say no. Say it often. It may be difficult, but you owe it to yourself and your clients. Turn down jobs that don’t fit you, say no to overbooking yourself. You are no good to anyone when you’re stressed and anxious.

- Learn to say “I’m a photographer” out loud with a straight face. If you can’t say it and believe it, you can’t expect anyone else to, either.

- You cannot specialize in everything.

- You don’t have to go into business just because people tell you you should! And you don’t have to be full time and making an executive income to be successful. If you decide you want to be in business, set your limits before you begin.

- Know your style before you hang out your shingle. If you don’t, your clients will dictate your style to you. That makes you nothing more than a picture taker. Changing your style later will force you to start all over again, and that’s tough.

- Accept critique, but don’t apply it blindly. Just because someone said it does not make it so. Critiques are opinions, nothing more. Consider the advice, consider the perspective of the advice giver, consider your style and what you want to convey in your work. Implement only what makes sense to implement. That doesn’t not make you ungrateful, it makes you independent.

- Leave room for yourself to grow and evolve. It may seem like a good idea to call your business “Precious Chubby Tootsies”….but what happens when you decide you love to photograph seniors? Or boudoir?

- Remember that if your work looks like everyone else’s, there’s no reason for a client to book you instead of someone else. Unless you’re cheaper. And nobody wants to be known as “the cheaper photographer”.

- Gimmicks and merchandise will come and go, but honest photography is never outdated.

- It’s easier to focus on buying that next piece of equipment than it is to accept that you should be able to create great work with what you’ve got. Buying stuff is a convenient and expensive distraction. You need a decent camera, a decent lens, and a light meter. Until you can use those tools consistently and masterfully, don’t spend another dime. Spend money on equipment ONLY when you’ve outgrown your current equipment and you’re being limited by it. There are no magic bullets.

- Learn that people photography is about people, not about photography. Great portraits are a side effect of a strong human connection.

- Never forget why you started taking pictures in the first place. Excellent technique is a great tool, but a terrible end product. The best thing your technique can do is not call attention to itself. Never let your technique upstage your subject.

- Never compare your journey with someone else’s. It’s a marathon with no finish line. Someone else may start out faster than you, may seem to progress more quickly than you, but every runner has his own pace. Your journey is your journey, not a competition. You will never “arrive”. No one ever does.

- Embrace frustration. It pushes you to learn and grow, broadens your horizons, and lights a fire under you when your work has gone cold. Nothing is more dangerous to an artist than complacency.

By PhotoDino. Found it here.

10 Advices for Photographers from Martin Bailey

"15 – Would you like to give any final words of advice to photographers who want to improve their photography?

[Martin Bailey] Absolutely — here’re ten!

1. Get closer, it will improve 90% of your shots.
2. Use a tripod unless there’s a good reason not to.
3. Keep your eye on your bokeh. Just because it isn’t in focus it doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter.
4. Look for the right light and use it.
5. Travel. Very few people live in places where everything is on your doorstep.
6. Pixels do count. It’s how the details are recorded.
7. Get up early. It’s beautiful just before dawn.
8. Don’t be a fair weather shooter. Overcast skies are big diffusers. Rain saturates colours as well as yourself. Harsh conditions make dramatic images.
9. Print your work as often and as big if possible. It not only feels great to hold a quality print, but it shows up flaws in your images that aren’t always obvious on screen.
10. It’s easy to find reasons not to do something, or for why something didn’t go as well as you’d hoped. At the end of the day though, it’s all down to you. You make your own success."

Found it here.

My Canon Speedlite wishlist

• A dome diffuser with every Speedlite. Nikon has it; I think that Canon should do it too!

• A gel holder and gels with every Speedlite. Again, Nikon has it with its SB-900 flash.

• Better zoom range. Nikon's SB-900 has a 12-200 zoom range in DX format.

Amy Wenzel's equipment

"Secondly, I wanted to take a moment to answer one of the most frequent questions that comes to me on a regular basis….”What equipment do you use/recommend?” First let me say that I can’t recommend a Canon over a Nikon for the simple fact that I’ve never picked up a Nikon in my life. All I can say is that I love my Canon to death and it does everything I want it to do, so I have never needed to look elsewhere! Here’s a list of what’s in my bag:

• Canon 5 D Mark II
• 85mm 1.2 L
• 50mm 1.2 L
• 24-70mm 2.8L

One of the best decisions I ever made for my business was to upgrade to the pro lenses. I previously shot on the 85 1.8 and 50 1.4. The difference in upgrading to the 85 1.2 and 50 1.2 was ASTOUNDING. It was like having a whole new camera. I could have wept eternal tears over the tremendous quality increase. When you pay for the 1.2 you aren’t just paying for a faster lens, you are paying for professional glass. You will see differences in the contrast, light distribution, creaminess, sharpness, and tons of other technology related things that I don’t know names for. I realized how much time I was previously wasting in Photoshop just trying to compensate for what was coming off my camera. The nail in the coffin was when I rented the 50 1.2 for day, and once I saw the difference I could never go back. And oh my soul, I would have sold an organ on the black market to get that new lens. So I did. (Got the lens, I mean, not sell an organ). And I like to use fixed lenses because they are so much sharper. I plan to replace my 24-70 2.8 zoom with the fixed 35mm 1.4 very soon. (I borrowed the 35mm and now need to sell another organ. dear, me.)

Upgrading to the 5 D Mark II was the same hysterical aha moment of “Oh my gosh, my life just got 10 million times easier and now my photos are finally coming off the camera the way I want them too!!!!!” There really is that much of a difference. So that is me on my soap box telling portrait photographers everywhere, that yes, it’s worth the investment, and yes, if you can do it you definitely should!"

found it here as I was browsing on the Internet.

The best Camera

This is a new book by Chase Jarvis. I have already ordered it and I am anxiously waiting to read it.

The bottom line: the best camera is the one that you have with you!