Uncategorized – Page 2 – Journeys of a Hybrid

December 28, 2010December 28, 2010

Don’t Become a Photo”saur”

A lot of people tell me that I’m way ahead of things since I got into video/motion over ten years ago. Most still photographers weren’t even thinking about video ten years ago. Neither was I. Nor did I have a crystal ball. But I am a visual communicator and that means that I am always looking for the best way to communicate the message or tell the story. And twelve years ago, it became possible and affordable for me to deliver the message with another medium. Not instead of still photography but in addition to it.

My desire to explore video and motion at the time, wasn’t coming from a “tool” point of view. It was coming from a cultural one. When I think about it, I wasn’t fascinated by the technology – I was fascinated by what people were doing with the technology. Fast forward a decade later and I’m just wowed by where all this has gone. Our culture has changed dramatically in the last ten years because of technology. And while that is still “fascinating” and like creative adrenalin, it’s also a game changer in how it has affected the business of photography.

Don’t get me wrong and think that my message is to tell you to get into video or multimedia so as not to become a photo”saur” and become extinct. That’s not what I’m saying. What I am saying is that the cultural psyche has changed. Take notice and adapt. That doesn’t just mean, change the subject matter you shoot or how you shoot it to stay “fresh”. And it doesn’t mean to buy a video camera or a hybrid and start shooting motion. Those are probably good ideas but probably not going to be what keeps you in business.

The old days aren’t coming back. The ways of doing business have changed. Technology is democratizing when it’s placed in everyone’s hands. Understand that. Know that your clients understand that. So, think past the tool and technique and focus more on who you are and what you can bring to your customers to stay relevant. Some thoughts to ponder:

• Who are you? (why do your customers come to you and not your competition?)
• What services do you offer your client? If you don’t offer video and your client needs to look elsewhere – you’ve lost an opportunity.
• Are you still a one-man band? I don’t mean you need a large staff but have you considered setting up a virtual company when you need it with editors, sound people etc.?
• Do you continue to learn?
• Are you still using a dated business model ? Consider different licensing strategies for new media.
• Do you utilize social media?
• Are you noticing who’s “coming up” – the new talent? Do you try to see them through your customer’s eyes.
• Are you interested in other things besides photography?
• Are you willing to take risks? Creatively and otherwise.
• Ask yourself the question – how would I have approached this if I was just starting out?
• Think of solutions – then look at those decisions at a total 180.

Learn. Grow. Adapt.

Don’t become a photo”saur” and become extinct.

December 17, 2010

Getting Your Train Back on Track

I was going to write about audio today, but my mind wasn’t there – it was elsewhere. That’s the fun part about it for me, I write if there’s something I’m thinking about.

This morning my mind was drifting to other things, like the highs and lows of the last couple of weeks. But when I have weeks that are like life on a roller coaster, I remind myself that I have to focus on the peaks and the thrills to survive the plunges. I also know that if I really want to live life then I have to be prepared for both ends of the spectrum.

I’ll share some thoughts that have helped me keep my train on the track.

I love myself for who I am.
If timing is everything, then sooner or later I’ll get it right.
Work is not a negative word.
Do what I love to do, regardless of what others say.
Understand my adversaries – I may learn something.
Some of the things that have upset me the most, have helped me grow.
Value friendships.
True friendship continues to grow over the longest distance.
Understand, no matter how much I care, others won’t. That’s OK.
Be fearless to love.
Forgive those who have hurt me.
Forgive myself.
There’s a time for everything.
Be fearless to keep trying even though I’ve lost before.
If I create from the heart, nearly everything works.
Be fearless to think that anything is possible.

And one more from Yoda –“ Train yourself to let go of what you fear to lose.”

Maybe I’ll talk about audio next week.

November 30, 2010November 30, 2010

Don’t Let the Music Die Inside You

Einstein said “Logic will take you from A to B but imagination will take you anywhere.”

I have always had a vivid imagination, spending many waking and sleeping hours dreaming and picturing myself in all sorts of situations. Some of my dreams were just crazy ideas running through my head and some were very real dreams that I believed would come true. I was thinking about what I wanted in my life – not what I didn’t want.

Everyone has dreams for how they want their life to be but not everyone believes their dreams will manifest. The future has to become the present in one’s imagination. And one needs to commit to their idea for it to happen – not just have intentions. Intentions without conviction is a waste of energy.

At this point in my life, I have been focusing more and more on pursuing my thoughts and ideas that have been running through my head. It was a year ago, that I made the decision to embark on the biggest personal project of my life, Opening Our Eyes. I’m now in the midst of editing hundreds of hours of footage. It’s tedious because there is so much, and there are interviews in foreign languages that need to be translated and transcribed before I can edit them. All the files need to be transcoded, which is taking far longer than I imagined it would, but now that I have my workflow down, it’s going faster.

When I’m finished with this film, it will be the most satisfying and successful project I’ve ever worked on. I use the word successful to mean that it was an incredible accomplishment for me personally and professionally. That’s not to say that it won’t be financially rewarding, and in fact every personal project I have ever self-funded has always been profitable, just not immediately.

More importantly, by executing my ideas, without needing validation from someone else, I am following my purpose. I am doing what I’m meant to be doing in my life. That in itself is the biggest reward of all.

We all have our own music inside of us. Find yours. Don’t die with the music still inside of you.

November 22, 2010November 22, 2010

New Stuff

I haven’t done a lot of tech talking lately, but a couple of new items have me thinking that way. Here’s some interesting news about products, firmware upgrades and video delivery.

To start with, for all of you who own a Samson H4N Zoom digital recorder, and have been frustrated that you aren’t able to independently change recording levels on inputs 1 and 2 – you now can. Here is a link to the firmware download and instructions.

For all you “big chip” aficionados, Sony just announced the PMW-F3

camera with a 35mm CMOS imager. However, with a price tag around $16,000 for the body and an extra $7000 for a set of three Sony prime lenses, it seems more like a competitor in the RED market, rather than in the DSLR niche.

HDSLR Video – The Camera is Just the Beginning

Many still shooters make the same mistake when jumping over to video – they only think about the camera and the shoot. When this happens, what quickly follows is mild to severe panic when they realize that audio is even more important than the visual and post-production is video is far different than in stills. On top of that, if you shoot video like a still photographer – you’ll want to kick yourself when you get in the editing room.

The good news is there are plenty of resources when embracing these various skills and learning curves than when I started shooting video over ten years ago.

Here’s a few great sites, listservs and blogs that you should bookmark:

http://asmp.org/tutorials/video-tutorial.html

http://photocinenews.com

http://www.cinema5d.com/index.php

http://phillipbloom.net

newspaperVideo@yahoogroups.com

http://worldwide-studios.com/Worldwide_Studios/Resources.html

So have fun and remember, the more your learn, the more you realize you need to know.

July 7, 2010July 6, 2010

Beyond the HDSLR and the G4 iPhone

Everyone these days seem obsessed with the tools. The blogosphere is full of tech talk but few mention the art of storytelling. Without that, we are left with technique with no apparent message – or one that is weak at best.

When I think about it, the videos and photographs

KopilaValley-5904 copy — School girl in Surkhet, Nepal

that really resonate with me and stay with me for any length of time are not examples of shifting depth of field or low light marvel, but rather pieces that have touched me because of the story that they tell.

The story that we have to tell is also one facet of video making where we can stand out as being truly unique. Our stories are our songs where we reveal a part of ourselves. If our films are solely portfolios of technique and examples of what our tools can achieve, then we do not separate ourselves from our competition. We can all buy the same gear, gadgets and gizmos and with that run the risk of being button pushers.

I suggest that we all work backwards. That we define the message that we want to communicate and then choose the right tool that will appropriately fill that need. In order to do that, we need to step back and experience life itself. See what the world has to offer, discover our passions and have something worth talking about before we even begin to pick up a camera – whatever camera that may be.

April 12, 2010April 12, 2010

NAB – Day One and Already Full of Ideas

Today is the official start of the NAB show in Las Vegas. Every April, the National Association of Broadcasters hold their conference and there’s absolutely no way to sufficiently describe the size and magnitude of this event – it’s simply overwhelming.

I’m already overwhelmed and the show hasn’t even opened. But I’ve spent the last two days sitting in on presentations at the Post Production World Conference. This in itself is a reason to attend NAB. The conference has about 10 different tracks going on all day where one can pick and choose a la carte the sessions they want to go to. There’s tracks for Final Cut Pro, DSLR Cinema, Advanced Motion Graphics, Producer/Director workshop, to Social Media and Web Video, to name a few. There’s also Apple Certified Pro Training.

The conference is sponsored in partnership with Future Media Concepts, a top notch-learning center, so speakers are always fantastic and run the range from colorists, to editors to producers and even attorneys. The sessions are short – 75 minutes and cut to the meat of the topic immediately. It’s a great place to start learning and even if you’re experienced in video production, it’s a great place to pick up some tips from your peers.

The best part about NAB for me is the networking and I’ve made some interesting connections stay tuned. I’m cutting this short so I can get back to filling my head with information but I’ll keep you updated.

March 1, 2010

Snow, Plan B and Sheer Determination

Once again I’m back at the airport – this time Phoenix heading back home after a much shorter stay than usual. My flight this past Friday heading to Phoenix was canceled due to a major snowstorm hitting the Northeast. The flight I was rebooked on was also canceled. That was just the start of my day, which turned into an 18-hour saga getting from Newark to Phoenix.

The snow in NJ had started the day before – snowed all day Thursday, through the night and was still snowing when I arrived at Newark airport – yet my flight was still showing an on time departure. Somehow though I had a bad feeling and I soon as I walked into the terminal and saw a line a ½ mile long that wasn’t moving and I knew I was in for the long haul. It looked like the fall of Saigon – hundreds of people clamoring to get out. I immediately started multi-tasking – got into the end of the line, got on the phone with Continental and had my husband who had driven me to the airport wait in another long line. The lines weren’t moving and my first call to Continental was dropped after holding for 45 minutes. When I finally got through on the phone after another 45 minute wait – I was told I was rebooked into Phoenix on Sunday. That clearly wasn’t going to work because I needed to be in Phoenix at 9AM the next morning, Saturday to give a seminar for ASMP: Multimedia and Video. Not to mention the fact that my return flight headed OUT of Phoenix back to Newark was on Sunday – technically leaving Phoenix before the airline had me arriving in Phoenix. I found out that when the airlines rebooks your flight – they just look at that one leg and not the whole itinerary.

I asked the agent if she could get me out of any of the NY area airports into Houston that day. I knew if I could get out of the Northeast, I was a jump ahead of the thousands of people who had flights canceled on Thursday and Friday. She told me she could get me out of Philadelphia and into Houston that afternoon but couldn’t get me from Houston to Phoenix until Saturday morning, arriving at 9:30AM – ½ hour after my presentation was supposed to start. Oh well I would be fashionably late – but at least I’d get there. So she rebooked the flight – I grabbed my husband and said – how do you feel about driving to Philadelphia? He said, “let’s go” and we did.

So we started our two-hour drive to Philadelphia airport. Keep in mind we had just gotten over 18 inches of snow, so we knew that two hour drive could easily turn into double that in time. However, as we started heading down the NJ Turnpike we quickly realized we were one of the few vehicles on the road. Being that it was Friday and the schools had been closed for the second day in a row, most intelligent people were still home in bed. We pretty much had the road to ourselves and about half way to Philly the road got better and the snow became less and less. I was beginning to feel a bit more hopeful.

Philadelphia airport was a much calmer scene and within a couple of hours I was airborne to Houston. When I arrived in Houston I checked a monitor and noticed that there was still one more flight to Phoenix that night so I quickly went to a customer service desk and asked if I could get rebooked on that flight. The agent told me it was full but I asked her if she could kindly check. She did and sure enough the gods were with me because two seats had just opened up. She snagged one, gave me my boarding pass and I headed toward the gate.

By this time it was about 9PM after a very difficult day. I cued up with the first class and elite passengers as they waited to board the flight and two men were talking about how messed up the airport was in Orlando, Florida that day. I couldn’t help myself and interjected “Orlando! I started out in Newark this morning”. One of the men, a seasoned road warrior looked at me and said, “You got out of Newark? I’m impressed”. As we boarded the plane, he said to the flight attendant “This lady came from Newark!” (still impressed over my achievement) and the flight attendant looked at him and said “Well I came from Cancun”.

So I was one of the lucky ones – but only because I’m a very determined individual – not to mention that I always have a plan B, C and all the way to Z. I went with my gut and it paid off. And then I thought about the 3 month round the world sojourn I will be undertaking this summer and I thought to myself that I should have my head examined. And then I thought – No – I’ll just leave plenty of time, keep a cool head and an open mind and follow my instincts and I’ll be fine.

February 8, 2010February 8, 2010

Fear, Blame and Responsibility

The title of this entry alone will probably stop most people from reading on, but for those of you who’ve continued, be prepared for some cold harsh comments.

I had a lousy weekend – one of those weekends where everything went wrong – first the power steering went on my car while I was driving, then my printer broke – I got a message saying something like it was past it’s life – and then I fell halfway down the basement steps and landed hard on my elbow. My elbow is still throbbing but as long as I can move my arm, I think I’ll opt out of a trip to the emergency room because I can’t afford the medical bills – I’m already strapped by paying an annual premium of $18,000 with a $7500 deductible on each occurrence. What’s wrong with that scenario? But I’ll rant about that another time.

What really bothered me most this weekend – even with all the crap above – were some comments made in response to an entry I wrote as a contributor on the blog of my trade association. My entry was about “The Business of Video Production” and it was the last post of the week in a series of posts about video. The person writing the comments was clearly upset that his photographic trade association had been blogging about video. He was angry that so called “experts” who had themselves just recently gotten into video by buying a DSLR were claiming to be “god’s gift to video production” and encouraging members to move into video which he was sure was a terrible business move. I took offense with his words. I have been involved in video production for over 11 years and not new to the game as he implied and I don’t shoot with a DSLR but a “real” video camera and even if I did – the tool in itself doesn’t define my skills as a motion shooter. But what bothered me was the fact that he took his time to complain about a blog entry that I wrote, in my own free time with the good intentions of “sharing” my knowledge with my peers. No good deed goes unpunished.

After thinking about it, I realized that I had written something that he didn’t want to hear. He wanted to hear that the photography business will go back to the way it used to be. He was angry and he took it out on me. He needed someone to point the finger at – to blame for the poor economy and its effect on the photo business. This morning Seth Godin wrote a blog entitled “Frightened, clueless or uniformed” where he writes “In the face of significant change and opportunity, people are often one of the three.” And this was a perfect example where this person was all three.

My first reaction was to question why I should devote my time to writing and sharing with others through social media only to be criticized for it. But I’m not one to retreat and let the whiners of the world win. I was raised by a father who was a city smart kid growing up on Chicago’s West Side and a mother who grew up in the remote reaches of the Upper Peninsula in Michigan. They didn’t tolerate whiners and complainers and people who wouldn’t take responsibility for themselves. They taught me that if I wanted something, it was up to me to make it happen and if I didn’t – I had no one to blame but myself. More importantly they taught me to believe that I could achieve anything I put my mind to. And that is how I try to live my life – in pursuit of my dreams.

So my suggestion to people who don’t happen to like what I’m suggesting or writing about – make some suggestions yourself. Contribute – share – do something positive for yourself and others. Come up with solutions – find opportunities – keep your mind open to possibilities. Stop kicking the dog. Stop being angry that things aren’t the way they used to be and start looking at how things are better because of technology – and start using it to make a positive change in your life.

Life’s too short to spend it complaining.

January 18, 2010

On the Road (Again)

I’ve been doing a lot of traveling these days, quick one or two-day stays in cities all around the US. But that’s not the kind of traveling I do when I’m on a destination shoot where get totally absorbed in a city because I’m there to tell that city’s story through my images.

These days a lot of my travels are quick trips in and out of cities all around the country, giving seminars for AMSP to still photographers who are thinking about getting into video. So I rarely have time to see the “sights” of the cities and really get my bearings on where I am.

One thing I do try to do while I’m on the road is walk because that is what I do when I’m home and it helps me get clarity on the day. This morning I went out for a walk in the area just outside my hotel. As I walked by various chain restaurants and stores, I almost forgot where I was, because it could have been just about anywhere in America. And that kind of made me sad – that in the US, our towns and cities have lost their unique attributes.

When I got back to my hotel, I saw a posting from a friend on Facebook on how photography introduces you to people whose lives and stories humble you. His words really hit home because I became a photographer for this very reason – to allow me the privilege of meeting people and hearing their stories. For me, photography and my camera have always been a “means to an end”.

Then I realized, that a place isn’t really defined or not defined by its stores and restaurants but by its people. And that even though I may only be in a place for a quick overnight – I always try to connect with the people. Whether that may be a chat with a taxi driver or a waitress or with some of the wonderful people I meet when I do a seminar.

Such is my life, enjoying and being humbled by all the people and their stories as I continue my travels. How lucky I am – to be able to combine my career in photography with my passions.