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One Wedding in the Books...Site is Coming Along

We shot our first wedding last weekend and I was really happy with how everything turned out. We got some great shots and the bride was really psyched. We didn't have a lot of time to shoot prior to the wedding but we managed to squeeze off about 400 photos before the show got started. I wasn't real happy with the reception shots so I'll try and get some inspiration for next time.

I've really got to get out and shoot more and stop stressing about when the next gig will come along. We met up with some new friends last week also w/ Grayphotograph.com. They were really helpful volunteering info and giving us some stuff to think about.

We've also got the site "Up"! Well we bought a domain and threw some pictures. I've thought about just building a simple site myself, but it looks more and more like I might have someone build it for me. I've just sorta' looked at the guys who buit the Chase Jarvis site and they were surprisingly affordable. We hope to get some branding done this week so we can get some business cards printed out.


That's all for now.

Way Too Long

Alright, It's been way too long for me to post. We've been super busy shooting and haven't had a lot of time to post. About a month ago we sent out an email to basically everyone we know. It has seriously paid off. We've got tons of referals from those folks and we are now in a postion to actually charge.

Also, I bought a domain which is currently under construction. I'm just going to throw some stuff up there until I can have someone create a real site for me. I've put some maternity pictures of my sister up just to have something on the site.

I also downloaded the lightroom 2.0 beta and I'm loving it. I feel like I can get the skin tones really nice thanks to the clarity slider. Looks like I'll have to buy it... There goes a little more money.

Long Time, No Blog

I haven't posted anything in a while, but I thought I'd add something here. We've done two shoots since I last posted and picked up another job. I've also been trying to get better with my off camera lighting by playing with strobes in my bonus room.

One thing I learned is that I need to carry the shoot through umbrella more. I had several pictures with dark eyes and needed a lot of fill. A reflector may have helped also. But, that's why I'm not charging anyone...yet.

Another thing I've learned is that I need to have a good idea for the shoot before it goes down. The first thing my last two guinea pigs asked is, "What do you have in mind." It sure would be easier if they knew what they wanted. Next time I'll have a game plan for the shoot.

Kids!

The Calendar is full! Well not really, but we have several jobs lined up. The majority of these jobs are for child photography. We had one shoot this weekend and the weather barely cooperated, but we got some pretty good shots. I really have to watch my metering and fill flash. some of the pics were pretty under exposed and the eyes were pretty dark. Lesson learned...

Laurie was a big help with carrying gear and holding the light. I really wish I had popped out the umbrella but I was trying to travel light and keep things dry. The omni bounce did a servicable job. We have another shoot on Wednesday, and we're traveling to East Tennessee on Saturday to take pictures for one of our friends.

I'll post some pics when we get back.

Here is something scary I've learned since shooting with the 40D. When converting the CR2 RAW files to TIFF, in DPP, each file is 50+ MBs. So the 214 shots we took on Sunday used up 11 Gigs of hard drive space. It also took forever to convert.

It'll be nice when I get Lightroom :)

That's all for now.

A Quick Hello

So Laurie got me this book last week about word of mouth marketing. I would give it a 2.5 out 5 stars, but it did get me moving into action on getting the word out. The big thing this week was to let everyone know what I'm doing and basically offered to take pictures of anyone and everyone for free just to build a portfolio. I sent an email out to everybody in my address book which was a handful of people. As expected, got lots of offers for baby pictures and couples. What I didn't expect, was how many people replied. A lot of which were people I didn't email. I received several response from people that had been forwarded my introductory email. I'll have tons of practice over the coming months.


My little self assignment tonight is to fill two of my 2 Gig cards with the boys from Savannah Jack. They are playing tonight at the Blue Bird Cafe. It doesn't start until 9:00 pm so tomorrow morning will be rough. I'll post some picks after the show.

Pretty Similar Setup ;)

Here is a video from Chase Jarvis's website. I would love to have those Pelican and Lowe Pro cases. Too bad the rest of his stuff is Nikon.

It's Here!

I had to chase the UPS man around town but I was finally able to catch him. Yes, I tracked the UPS driver with my super survival skills and captured the most elusive prey...The 40D. Ok maybe a little to much Planet Earth.

Laurie aloud me to take this picture and then she packed it up and hid it until Valentines day. I'll see you soon my friend.

More Of the Same

Again, nothing new going on for the time being. I finished my goals for '08 and have my business plan mapped out, but that's an ongoing process. I'm still reading some stuff and I'm going to try and put my project plan together. After that's done, My only focus will be putting together a portfolio and marketing strategy.

The marketing piece is proving to be a lot more difficult that I thought it was going to be. Just coming up with a name is driving me nuts. If I use my full name then that will put me at the end of any listing that is sorted alphabetically, and my last name is a little unusual. So I'm debating on just giving it an arbitrary name. Once that's out of the way I can start thinking about colors, logos, site design, SEO strategy, etc.

Alright, I'm going back to my Planet Earth DVD. A wolf is about to eat this Tibetan gerbil thing... Yep, got'em!

New Gear!!!!!!!!

Well, nothing interesting has really happened this week. I've just been reading and practicing some shots in low light. Here's the good news. I've put in an order to upgrade some of my equipment. My wife ordered my new camera today, and I'll be receiving it on Valentines day. Did I mention that I love her! This is going to be a huge upgrade over the Canon 350D I've been using. I'll be moving on to a 40D!!!!! I.... um er, she also ordered me the grip, an additional battery, 3 two Gig CF cards, a shoot through umbrella, and a nice new Manfrotto light stand. I'm so excited, I can hardly stand it!

I've started to set up some jobs to help build my portfolio. So far we have one wedding scheduled, one bridal shoot, and my beautiful sister is expecting soon so we'll probably be doing a lifestyle shoot pretty soon. If anyone wants to donate a wedding dress let me know. I'm really wanting to do a "trash-the-dress" session.

Also, one of my goals is to build a pretty decent portfolio by June of 08. I'm going to try to land a bunch of gigs between now and then using some online resources. If it works out, I'll let you know what I've done. If it back fires...well, I'll probably let you know also.

In the mean time, I'll be reading up on "The Business of Studio Photography: How to Start and Run a Successful Photography Studio", "Guerrilla Marketing", and some other photography business book I picked up at the library.

P.S. Yolanda, thanks for checking out the blog. I've only been blogging here for a couple of weeks so keep checking back. I'll try to keep you up to date with what I'm doing. If I were you, I'd really check out Dan Miller's book.

What's On Tap For This Week

This is probably going to be a pretty slow week, so I'll just let you know what I've got planned. Really the only thing that I'm planning on doing is reading and setting goals. I'm still listening to Dan Miller's podcast but the Tweak podcast is really good also. I ran across it last night, and it's a little more photography oriented. One more thing, I'm about to start lining up some photo shoots so we can add to the portfolio. That way we can get the site up and running. We're going to try a couple of tactics, and we'll let you know what works. As of right now, we've only got one wedding lined up.

I'll try and get back at some point this week.

Here We Go

Ok, so now that I've decided to make this a reality it's time to start figuring out how to make this happen. Over the last year or so I've collect several books on photography, and I've really enjoyed learning this way. It's also a lot cheaper than actually taking class. It turns out that art schools are not very cheap. So I'll continue to use books to help guide me through the process.

The plan is to read 3 books a month in 3 specific areas. I'd like to find one book dealing with just photography (mostly portraiture), one that deals with business/marketing, and lastly a creative inspiration book. I have several books that I've picked out on Amazon.com that will keep me busy. If you are thinking about doing something similar, check your local library. I was able to take two of the books I was planning on reading off my list just by wandering through the stacks. If you are interested in starting any business or finding a new career path, I would seriously consider looking into a book called "48 Days To The Work You Love" by Dan Miller. It's given me tons of inspiration and information about how to get started. Since I'm currently in the IT industry, Ill also be using a Project Management book I've had laying around as a reference.

Websites and other blogs have been very helpful in learning how to take photos or just staying organized and motivated. Here are a few:

• strobist.blogspot.com


• zenhabits.net


• flickr.com


• photo.net


• dumblittleman.com

Podcasts have been another resource I've just gotten into. There are more than a few out there on the web, but Dan Miller's has been the most fun to listen to. There's another called "Up To the Top Floor" and "Tips From the Top Floor" where a guy talks about starting up a media production company. They tend to be pretty short but interesting to hear how he's gone about things. The great thing about these podcasts is than I can devote 8 hrs a day listening to great ideas while at work or driving home.

Another thing I've done the past week is carry around one of those old school composition books just to jot down ideas or things that I might want to look up when I have a chance. You wouldn't believe how much this has helped. In one week I've filled 5 pages with ideas about marketing the business, new photo techniques, and operational ideas. Today's fun little exercise will be creating a gantt chart to time out all the areas involved.

I still have a lot of research to do (such as whether or not to set up an LLC). I'll hopefully have that done by the end of this month or the beginning of next month. If anyone has questions or words of wisdom, just leave them in the comments. I'd love to hear them.

That's all for now. I'll keep you posted on what's going on...

My Quarter Life Crisis

I guess the next step would be to let you know a little about me so the most logical step would be to start at the beginning. I'm a 28 year old guy living in Tennessee and have spent the last 27 years wondering what I wanted to do with my life. Even as a kid, art always interested me. I liked to draw,but most of the time it was just pencil sketches on notebook paper.

As I got older I still enjoy to paint and sketch but never thought of having a career that was also something that could be passion. Most of the folks I knew seemed to hate there jobs. I just assumed that's the way it worked.

So when I was old enough I took on retail jobs that taught me how to interact with people, but the jobs themselves were often tedious and boring. That's just how jobs are I guess.

When it was time to head to college my only thought was to find a hot job and see if I could survive. I decided to go into the information technology field. It seemed that they were passing out good paying jobs at the door of the graduation ceremonies so this was obviously the way to go.

Well over those four years I did my best to struggle through my IT classes while maintaining stellar grades in anything unrelated to my major. Accounting classes didn't help the GPA much either, but I digress. I finally graduated with a BS in Business Management with an emphasis in Management Information Systems. During those 4 years the bubble burst in the Dot Com industry and companies started to outsource IT jobs and decrease the workforce.

After 8 long months I finally got a job that I felt I was way too good for, which was a Helpdesk "analyst." In this case, the term analyst means the guy I call when I want to scream at someone or when I've forgotten my computer's password for the 7 thousanth time. Rumors of outsourcing circulated and I almost prayed that it would happen. At the same time, I needed the paycheck and finding a new job was stepping out into the unknown. Scary!

Luckily I was promoted to a position supporting what is essentially a tax software. It came with a nice pay raise and a little less stress, but now I'm working in two areas that were probably the least intresting subjects to me in school. On top of that, I'm driving 33 miles each way to work which hasn't fostered much goodwill towards going there.

Thankfully, God put someone in my life that kept encouraging me and supporting me. We've been married for about a year and a half and I can't imagine surviving it all without her.

I guess I had to be hit over head before I'd seek out my calling. I mean seriously, could I have been any more off track.

So for the sake of not making a long story even longer, I"ll explain -- why photography? Well, I came to photography via photoshop. I had a nice little Point and shoot 4mp camera and I loved to edit the photos in PS. It was almost like painting again. I actually took pictures at a wedding using this little camera as a favor for a "Bride on a Budget." We were all pretty happy with the results, but I quickly learned what the limitations were with this camera. I missed several shots b/c of the shutter delay. After playing with that camera for a couple of years I bought my first DSLR right before our honeymoon. I was instantly blown away at what a difference it made. It wasn't long before I was thinking about composition, lighting, mood, etc. Since I bought the DSLR, I've been Sponge Bob photography pants. Soaking up everything I can with regards to making better captures. Right now I'm really getting into off camera lighting and trying to learn as much as I can to improve the light.

Well that's all for now. Stick around, this could get interesting.

Times, they are a changin' - Bob Dylan

Genesis

I had so many things that I'd planned on saying on the first entry, but I decided to just get this train rollin'. I guess I should just quickly mention what the game plan is for this blog, and then get into the nuts and bolts next time.

I plan to use this site to document my trasition from cubicle dweller to professional photographer. I've come to the realization that my dreams and talents are not really suited for my current job and I'm ready for a change. So for tonight, I'll just leave you with this...

"Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose."

- Viktor Fankl