To achieve this she needed three things: knowledge of music history, understanding of the potentials of new technology, and mastery of her medium. She couldn’t have invented a new sound without an appreciation of classical music. She needed to envision what the new technology offered. And she needed the skill to actually play the music. Without all three elements it would not have been possible.

Why should photographers be interested in Wendy Carlos? How can a visual artist find inspiration in a musical one? Why should any artist be interested in the work of another artist, especially in a different medium? The answer is: process. Learning about another artists’ process can change the way you work and open doors to new creativity.

How many super-creative photographers do you know whose work is technically lacking? How many do you know who are technically perfect but boring? How many are completely unaware of photographic history and repeat interesting experiments of one hundred years ago with better equipment, but no new ideas?

I encountered Wendy Carlos’s Three Laws of Music fifteen years ago and for reasons I could never explain, they stayed with me, and influenced my thinking. Now I think I understand why. Let’s see how these three rules transfer from the musical realm to the photographic realm.

1. Every parameter you CAN control, you MUST control.

Cameras, lights, models, make-up, posing, composition, processing, retouching, and printing, are things a photographer can have within his control. To be professional means controlling everything you can. No part of the process is trivial and no detail is insignificant.

Control has a price: preparation. You must know your equipment—what it can do and what it can’t. And your knowledge must be second nature. You can’t focus on getting emotions out of your model if you are busy adjusting your camera or lights. You know how to get to Carnegie Hall—practice. Practice will take you other places as well. Master your equipment by testing it. Practice and test so that when you have only a split second to grab a shot, you react in a flash.

The inverse of this law is don’t waste time trying to control what you can’t. If problems arise focus on the solution, don’t waste time complaining about it. You can’t change the weather, but if you know lighting you can create sunshine on a rainy day.

2. What is full of redundancy or formula is predictably boring. What is free of all structure or discipline is randomly boring. In between lies art.

No musician could make a career of a single note, but some photographers try to. Their notion of style is one lens, one lighting set up, one look. That’s not style, that’s ignorance. The famous Bauhaus School of Architecture motto was form follows function—choose the design that best fits a building’s intended use. In photography you start with what the client wants or needs and try to create work that reflects that. Choose the form —camera, lens, lights, models, composition, and paper— that fits the project, Don’t try to squeeze the subject into a preconceived notion of what your “Style” is. You want your work to contain surprise.

On the other hand structure is as essential in a picture as in a sonata or a popular song. The standard AABA song pattern gives us a theme, repetition, the bridge, and the theme again. Structure tells the listener or the viewer where to direct attention, what is important, and what is background. Anyone who has heard aleatory music—music generated randomly by computer—will confirm that it’s randomly boring.

Structure in photography takes many forms, but principally its composition, the arrangement of subjects and background. You need a framework, a system of creating, that still allows for anything to be created. Cartier- Bresson shot with a 35mm and a 50mm lens. He didn’t go out with 3 lenses and 5 types of film. He had a structure, but he shot an incredible range of photos. The balance between structure and freedom is where the art exists.

3. If you find that a worthwhile task requires much more work to do really well than you ever dreamed, you’re probably doing it correctly. If you make it look easy, you’re definitely doing it correctly.

Successful photography is hard work. To do it well requires intelligence, talent, personality, drive, and— if you want to make money— a head for business. You can spend your life getting better at all of these things.

Learning follows the same four stages:

a) Unconscious Incompetence— you don’t know what you don’t know.
b) Conscious Incompetence—you know what you don’t know.
c) Conscious Competence you know what you know.
d) Unconscious Competence —you know what you know, without knowing it.

These are called the Four stages of Competence.

Unconscious Competence means that you have attained a mastery so deep and complete that what you know is second nature. You can get the effect you want without having to think about it. You can make changes swiftly. You are no longer focused on technique to the exclusion of everything else. You are in the moment.

Photographers have tried to shorten this process using the same lighting set up on every portrait for example. It does allow you to avoid thinking about those aspects of the shoot, but photographers of that sort are not true masters. Take away their special lighting setup, or their cross processing, and they couldn’t function.

It may be tempting to go this route because some of these photographers have found success, and just like in music that one note can be held for a long time. For me, being a photographer is about creating photographs that interest me, that means constantly evolving, exploring, taking photographs today that I couldn’t have dreamt of yesterday. What is right for you is up to you, but there is a big difference between something looking easy, and being easy.

Carlos’ Three laws are HER rules for creating music, it is where her thinking led her after years of work. Your laws, rules or framework could be totally different, or you may not have any laws or rules. But beware of not thinking about your process.
There are plenty of people who spend little to no time thinking about what they do, they don’t ask questions, they are not curious, they don’t read outside of their fields or at all. What they have in common with each other is that they don’t grow much. When people like that create, their art begins with a faded quality and serves only to inspire boredom and amnesia. Listen to Wendy Carlos’ music, and I guarantee you will not be bored and you wont forget it, then ask yourself why that is.

In 2006 the PPA (Professional Photographers of America) released the 2005 Studio Financial Benchmark Survey Analysis, it was a survey of photo studios across the country, it included photographers that had retail locations or home studios. It was not good news, on average studios where not performing well. It was a glimpse into the industry that we face today. If you didn’t read it, here are the results

Now please bear with me as we go through some math. In 2005 the average sales from a retail photo studio were $238,689. and for a home based studio it was $129,394. Looks pretty good, right? Not by a mile. After expenses are factored in this left a net profit and salary of $46,036 for the retail store photographer, and $32,977 for the home based photographer. The average median income per household in 2005 was $46,326. So the Retail Photog made slightly less than the average, the home based Photog made $14,000 less.

PPA’s suggested benchmark is that photographers should be able to take home 35% of the sales, and yet the overwhelming majority of studios were not able to reach this standard. Retail photogs average 19.3% of gross sales, and the home based studios took home 25%. Bottom line, retails stores saw more sales, but the costs ate into more of the profit than with home based studios. On average studios are not run close to the level that the PPA thinks they should be.

A few things to take into account. The PPA may have an unrealistic goal for photographers, maybe photographers should expect to only take home 20-25% of sales. Ok maybe that is the case. But the real kicker here about the 2005 study is this. The survey was done when the economy was good. Where are we now, where are we today? It is safe to assume that the prospects have gotten worse.

Lets look at some new math here. Lets assume that you are a home based studio, and you are able to take home 25% of your sales. And lets say that you want to make $150,000. in sales. Assuming that you work 5 days a week, 50 weeks out of the year, that is 250 working days. That means that every day you work you have to bring in $600 in sales. Your profit for all of your hard work at the end of the year is $37,500. That is less than a retail store manager or an elementary school teacher . The average salary for someone with one year experience in their career is $41,647 So the business major one year out of college makes more than the average home studio photog, and close to what the retail store photog.

The simple truth is you cant afford to be average.You have to be better. So how can you insure that you are not average? First you need an understanding of what average is. In photography it means paying attention to the PPA, they are the only ones I know who compile this information. The results of the latest survey will be out in December, they are releasing it in book form, along with a slew of articles to help you make sense of it all and profit from the knowledge. When it comes out, get a copy of it, In my opinion it is vital to your success. Keep your eye on PPA.com for more information. If you are not a member, join up. (Its worth it just for the indemnification insurance alone, but there are many many benefits.) www.ppa.com

The next step is that you have to be smarter than your competition. I don’t even recommend you try to work harder than your competition. for the reason that most photographers work incredibly hard. Can you really take that 60-80 hours a week you work now and work more? That is just not sustainable. You have to work smarter. You will have to discover for yourself what exactly that means, but for me it is a commitment to being a lifelong learner, your formal education was just the beginning. The majority of Americans never complete a book after they leave school, that is the average, that is what you have to beat. Read a book, go to a convention, start learning more about business and photography than your competitor.

If you want to beat the averages, I can offer no better advice than listening to Skip Cohen of Marketing Essentials International. Skip was the president of Rangefinder, and the driving force behind WPPI. I have known Skip for years, but last year was the first time I saw him speak. He was entertaining and more important he offered killer advice for the photographer, I still look at my notes from that lecture to remind me of the things I need to focus on. This last summer Skip put together Skip’s Summer school, an event geared to educate the photographer about their business and where this industry is going. Trust me when I say you should listen to what Skip says and watch what he does. Check out the MEI website, and become a fan on Facebook, you will thank me.

Most of us became photographers because it was our passion. We had a vision that was best expressed in images. Our business don’t fail because we don’t have enough passion, they fail because we don’t have enough knowledge. Making money as a photographer, means learning how to make money, and that is straight business education. This bad economy wont last forever, but the results of bad business practices can. Take the time now to educate yourself because when the dust settles you don’t want to be left in it.

Jack Dunn, Joan Blondell, George S. Kaufman

During world war II my grandfather was in charge of recruiting in Baltimore for the WACs the Woman’s Army Corps. Part of that was doing a radio show called “This Woman’s Army” I am not sure how but my grandfather was able to get all of the big stars of the day to come on the show.  I had heard the stories, but I was young at the time, so they were just old stories, finding the the photographs years later helped bring them to life.

The name George S. Kaufman may not be a well known name today, unless you are an English major like I was, to me he is a rock star. A member of the famed Alqounquin round table, he would trade quips and barbs with the likes of Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley,  Alexander Woolcot, and Harold Ross (the founder of the New Yorker). These were New York intellectuals, and if I could go back in time to one place, I would choose to have lunch at the round table.

So why was Kaufmann so special?  Kaufman at one time was both a successful playwright and the New York Times theatre critic, at the same time. He wrote the classic, “Dinner at Eight”,” The Man who came to dinner” and “Stage Door”, writing with greats such as Moss Hart, Edna Ferber and others. … He gave up his job at the times during the depression, with so many people out of work, he didn’t think ti was fair for one man to have two jobs. He also wrote the stage play (and the move) “The Cocoanuts”,  It was responsible for breaking out the career of the Marx Brothers. He also wrote their movie “A Night at the Opera”. An astonishing fact (Thank you wikipedia) That between the years of 1921 to 1958 there was a Kaufman written or directed play on Broadway.

Kaufman was Jewish and during the war he received letters from many fellow jews asking for help to get out of Germany. Some would claim to be relatives, he knew they were not, he sent money anyway.  He was a decent man, and a comic genius, I can only imagine how much fun they must have had on the show. My grandfather loved telling jokes, and making people laugh, which he did. My grandfather never told me a dirty joke, but he told them to others, and they would get back to me. I used to think of my grandfather as the old man in the movie “Big Fish”. There were always these stories that seemed outrageous, but I know some of these things happened, I have photographic evidence.

The Author at the Gates of Hell

Hell’s Kitchen is a guilty pleasure of mine. The drama of competition is engaging, and watching the chef’s try to function while Chef Ramsay rips into them with barbs and insults, always brings to me a smug sense of schadenfreude.  It is fascinating to me the dynamics of the show.  There is something about watching people compete and lose which makes us feel superior to the players involved. Maybe we feel our decision not to compete is the better one, maybe our fear of losing overwhelms our fear of trying. As much as I am a fan of taking risks, and putting yourself out there, there might be something to this concept of not competing.

Years ago I made my living as a magician. I remember a conversation I had with a magician I worked with about sleight of hand competitions.  He told me he never entered competitions, so I asked him why, his answer surprised me. ” I am a professional, this is how I make my living. If I win the competition what does that mean? I am still a professional, I still make my living by it, and what if I lose? If I lose I am still a professional. What if I lose to an amateur, does that make him better than me? It doesn’t but he will get to go around and legitimately say he is better then me.  I have nothing to gain by winning, but I do lose something by losing.”  I never thought of it that way before. For the hobbyist who loses there is little risk, for the professional it could be different.

Back into the heat of Hell’s Kitchen. Colleen Cleek was the 5th contestant eliminated, she runs a cooking school in Nebraska The classy gourmet, She cooks live on TV everyday on “Omaha Live”. She took a big risk by being on Hell’s Kitchen. On the show she was portrayed as inept, just couldn’t get it together, but is she? In her market of Omaha she is a Professional Chef. She was one of the town’s experts. Her national exposure did not serve her well. You have to wonder what the effect of such a public loss will be on her business. What will the loss be like for all but one of the contestants, what is the reality of all of this?

When Producers put together a show like this, how do they cast it? Do they pick the top 10 chefs they can find? NO of course not, they pick some good chefs, and then they pick some people who are there for entertainment value, ones who have no hope to win the show, but will provide drama. Anyone remember Puck from “The Real World” ? It was obvious that he was going to clash with everyone, remember how boring the show was when they kicked him out?  So out of the top 10 who knows how many are really good chefs, but I bet all of them are a million times more the chef than I am, or most of you. Let’s assume Colleen is one of the best Chef’s in Omaha,  what could she possibly gain from going on Hell’s Kitchen? The prize is getting to be the head chef at a restaurant in the Borgata hotel and casino. I have stayed at the Borgata, it is a nice hotel, it is the only nice hotel in Atlantic City (IMHO). As a native son of New Jersey, I can tell you Atlantic City is not that great of a town.  I would much rather run a cooking school and be on the TV in Omaha than a head chef in an Atlantic City casino. They only thing Colleen could gain from going on the show was notoriety, and she got it.  We will have to see if it pays off for her in the long run.

In 1986 Journalist Alfie Kohn wrote a book called “No Contest : The Case against Competition” In which he makes the argument that competition is not all that its cracked up to be. “We seem to have reached a point where doing our jobs, educating our children, and even relaxing on the weekends have to take place in the context of a struggle where some must lose” It is a fascinating read, and the definitive book on this topic and may just change your mind on how you think about competing.

So should professional photographers compete? Should you enter that print competition or juried show? I can’t answer for you, It’s up to you to balance the rewards of winning against the risks of losing. Contests can be fun, they can be a way for the beginning Photographer to get their work out.  But ask yourself this question, who do you consider to be the top photographers? And when was the last time you saw their name as the winner of a competition? Why is that?

This photo from the archives is over 100 years old, but it is nice to know that back then they were preserving their images. I found a little history on the Photographer in a book called. “Ohio photographers 1839-1900″ By Diane VanSkiver Gagel”

The Portrait

Today marks the 9th anniversary of my Stepfather’s death.  He was diagnosed with leukemia and within 6 weeks he was gone.  I will never get over the loss, he taught me so much about what it means to be a man, and I feel cheated that he missed my graduation from Brooks, my wedding, and he will miss the birth of my son. He would have been so proud that his son Domingo Jr is part of the NYPD with a son of his own, and how well his daughters are doing.  So much has been lost and missed.

Photographs can mean so much. They have the power to move us, to inspire us, to change things. Before I left Santa Barbara to fly out for Domingo’s funeral. I printed this photograph for my mother. I had taken it only a few months before, when Mom and Domingo were out for my Brooks LP Show. It was just a quick shot I grabbed of them while they were sitting outside of the Santa Barbara Mission.  It wasn’t until he died, and I went through my negatives that I found this shot, to me it showed their love, and how happy my mom was with him.

Giving this photograph to her was one of the toughest things I have ever done, because I knew it would make her cry, and no son wants to make his mom cry. She placed it on top of the casket at the wake.  The photo may not mean a lot to anyone else, but it is one of the most powerful photographs that I have ever taken.

As photographers we have a privilege and a responsibility. We are honored to be a part of peoples important life moments, their weddings, christenings, bar mitzvahs. To us it is our business, to our clients it is their lives, we can have no idea how important some of our photos may be to them. If I had been careless in my processing, archiving and storage of my work. I would not have this photo. In fact the original print was destroyed, but I was able to replace it.

I hear too many photographers talk about not having a reliable backup and storage system. There is nothing to wait for. Preservation is part of what being a professional means. Now is the time.

“Time it was, and what a time it was, it was
A time of innocence, a time of confidences
Long ago, it must be, I have a photograph
Preserve your memories; They’re all that’s left you ”
Bookends – Simon and Garfunkel

Rest In Peace Domingo

The PPA (Professional Photographers of America) just published an interview I did with Erin Kenly of Erin Kenly Photography. She left teaching portraiture at the Brooks Institute of Photography to reignite her photo business in her home town of Phoenix, Arizona. Read the entire interview here. You do have to be a member of the PPA to read the article, but of course you are a member of the PPA, right? It is worth it. Even in a poor economy there is no reason not to have a wealth of ideas.

Image © Erin Kenly Photography

Presenting Mr & Mrs Douglas Fir

The way to make a million dollars is to start with two million and become a wedding photographer.

I was reading an article from mid 2008, and it stated how now is an exciting time to be a wedding photographer, because with digital expenses being low photographers were going to make a lot of money now. The author ( A well know wedding photographer) also added that a lot of other photographers would start shooting weddings because they are so profitable now, and his article was going to walk you through how to become a great wedding photographer.
Let me talk about this second part first. If you believe that an article can teach you everything you need to know about being a wedding photographer or any kind of Photographer. I invite you to have your next major medical procedure done at “Thann Clark’s El Cheapo Hospital” where all of our Drs. have read at least one of the “I am Joe’s Liver” articles from the Readers Digest. Its a great hospital, our ambulance is an Ice cream truck, and will get you to El Cheapo quickly unless we pass by an elementary school or a park, but don’t worry we will bill your insurance for the cost of the circus music, although you will have to pay for any bomb pops or creamsicles you eat on the way.

There are many ways to learn Photography, articles are a great resource, but you only get experience by doing, and doing again. It takes experience to be a wedding photographer, a lot. But maybe you shouldn’t take my word for it, I have only shot a few weddings myself, I am not a wedding Photographer, and I don’t claim to be, and the famous Wedding photographer who wrote the article says he can teach you all you need to know from his article. What is your gut telling you?
You can’t have too much of a good thing!
Competition is good for the market, right? If you are the top photographer in your town, you want a lot of competition don’t you. You want your potential customers to have a large selection of Photographers to choose from, don’t you? Supply and Demand baby, more photographers means less for everybody, and while no one can stop them from crashing the party we don’t have to invite them with “Come on over, it will be fine, its easy to get in” That is not reality, and it is not respectful to those that value quality Photography.
So am I telling newbies to quit.
No, far from it, you want to be a wedding Photographer, then go assist a wedding photographer. Find the best one you can, and work your butt off to learn the vocation, Join the PPA, Join WPPI, get serious. Sure you should read articles, but more important find a mentor, and listen to your gut, and not some Jackass who write articles (or a blog for that matter).
So are you feeling rich yet?
The whole concept that because our expenses our lower, our profits have increased, is a sound one, but not so much for photography. See photographers used to mark up everything. 20-30% on film, developing, printing, retouching, EVERYTHING. This mark up covered other expenses, like the cost of going to the store to buy the film. Yes a healthy profit was made, it was necessary to cover expenses that are hard if not impossible to bill for. Cut to today, There are no processing fees, no film costs, Digital is perceived as costing “Nothing” and you cant charge a lot for burning a dvd, because people know what dvd’s actually cost. There are fewer places to mark-up. This sounds good for the client, its a bad deal for the photographer.
A lot of photographers are not good business people (sorry, it’s true) they don’t know how much every aspect of their business is really costing them, those extra trips to the photo store, that memory card, that new lens. These items are rarely factored in to the estimate or the final bill. Ask your friends, (If asking yourself is too painful) if they keep track of the mileage they put on their car traveling to and from weddings, or to the camera store. Business people keep track of this stuff and bill for it. The mark up of the past covered a multitude of bad business sins. But those days are gone there isn’t as much room to hide.
You want to be a wedding photographer and make a lot of money? Learn business, and learn your business. Learn from the best, but understand this is your journey, no one can just give it to you. Its real work, not just something to do to earn some extra cash.