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Showing posts from November 30, 2014

Mitigating My Mistakes

I've made a few mistakes with my business and will continue to do so.  Each mistake I make is an opportunity to grow, and continue building a successful and enjoyable career.  The following was my most substantial mistake and greatest growing opportunity to date: THE PROBLEM I was a "Shoot & Burn" photographer - after the photo shoot, I would burn a disc of images with a print release for the client and be done.  Clients rarely ordered prints off my website, though they often would gloat about how much they loved my work.  I would talk with them months later, and find out that they had yet to order prints from anywhere with their CD either. I now realize how much of a disservice that business model was to my clients.  By simply burning a disc and letting clients run free into the world with their beautiful images, I wasn't helping them to put the right image in the right place in the home, on the right type of product to tie everything together.  Witho

Finding Inspiration

Inspiration for photography is all around me.  I see compositions that interest me everywhere I go.  I love to look at a scene, weather it be in nature, a town, or in my camera room, and then find a new way to create a visual story about it.  For instance - in the collage below, are 4 images of the Courthouse in Coudersport - all taken on the same day, with the same camera, same lens, same focal length, and same f-stop.  Each image is unique, and presents the Courthouse in a different way - which I imagine is much different than most people viewed the building on the same day. The image of the Citizen's Northern was a hired piece.  I was asked to create something to use for their website's header image.  They allowed me creative control, which is excellent.  I had a vision of the bank being backlit by the sun, with beautiful lighting - possibly a sunset or sunrise, and no cars or foot traffic.  Unfortunately non of those conditions were ever going to happen within the time