I
often write about the importance of staying informed to inspire your
creativity. This week I have added a widget to display my favorite
photography, printing and design blogs. If you don’t want to set up your
own RSS reader, you can simply come here frequently to link to some of the best
content on the web.
The
blog listing is located on the right side of The Creativity Paradox
below the blog archive. Each blog and the most recent headline are
displayed with the most recently updated at the top.
If you enjoy reading blogs, you might also be interested in:
If
you are involved in any image or graphic centric field, you need to be on
Pinterest. Pinterest is a rapidly growing social network where people
“pin” their favorite images to virtual boards to share with their
friends. When people see an image they particularly like, they can
“repin” it to one of their own Pinterest boards. Here are five reasons
why you need to join:
1.
Entertainment - If you enjoy art, photography or design, what could be
more fun or refreshing than spending a few minutes each day looking at
the images selected by your friends?
2.
Community - Like any social network, Pinterest is a way to find and
interact with people who share a common interest in a particular type of
imagery. Online interactions strengthen real world connections and
often lead to new real world connections.
3.
Discovery - New trends in design and photography will be visible on
Pinterest long before they are reported in the mainstream press. If you
make a point to follow the trendsetters in your field, you will be able
to see the evolution in their artistic sensibilities as it happens.
4.
Exhibition - The items that you choose to post and repin demonstrate
your tastes and skills to your followers. Over time, you will gather a
collection of followers who appreciate your unique point of view.
5.
Optimization - When you pin images from your own website or blog to a
Pinterest board, the image links back to your own site. Those links and
the links from every repin will lead people to your site and improve
your search engine results.
Your
strategy on Pinterest should be, to quote Seth Godin, to be interested and interesting. No different than any other social interaction.
Here is a link to my boards on Pinterest. As you will see, my interests include portraits, places, paintings and photo book ideas.
Hansol Kim is someone I enjoy following on Pinterest.
Next
week the Wedding and Portrait Photographers Association will be holding
their 2012 conference and trade show at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.
Each WPPI event draws thousands of professional photographers looking
for ways to improve their photography skills and their business skills.
Most of them are making the following three mistakes on their web sites
which limit their search engine results and their web traffic.
1.
Building the site in Flash - Adobe Flash is a powerful tool and the
websites that utilize it are dazzling for those who visit the sites from
full sized computers. But the world is going mobile with 7% of all web
traffic coming from smart phones and iPads. Most of those devices are
not able to view your website.
2.
Blocking image copying - Many photographers block the ability to right
click an image or copy an image which protects their copyrighted work from
misuse. By doing so, you also prevent your fans from sharing your work
and spreading the news about your talent. If you were to watermark low
resolution images and allow people to link to them, your work could be
shared on Pinterest, Facebook and other sites where potential clients would see your images and studio name. Those links bring people to your
website and improve your search engine rankings.
3.
Image only sites - Many photography sites feature images so strongly
that they neglect any captions or text explanations. People love stories
and a short caption can put an image into context and give it
more meaning. It also helps the search engines know how to classify the
images. When you are adding an image to your site, consider adding a
caption and be certain to name the image and include your copyright
information in the alt text field that the search engines read.
Are you making any of these mistakes on your site?
The most expensive painting ever sold is Paul Cézanne’s The Card Players which was purchased in 2011 for over $250 million by the royal family of Qatar. This masterpiece of French Post Impressionism, finished in 1893, measures approximately 38 x 51 inches. What were they thinking?
A new canvas of approximately the same size can be purchased from Dickblick.com for $251.10. For an additional $82.13 you can order a master oil paint set with 8 colors, a painting knife, three brushes and an instructional DVD. With the canvas, the paint and couple of passes through the DVD, could’t they have created their own painting of two card players?
The difference is the art! The original painting was made by the hand of a creative genius who saw the world in an exciting new way. It was painted after decades of devotion to painting which started with drawing classes, was strongly influenced by the Impressionists and evolved into something completely new.
Portraits by Natalie Licini
The difference is the art! That difference is important today when couples and families decide how to capture and preserve the memories of their senior year, their wedding and other important milestones. Most of us know a friend who owns a professional style camera and takes pretty good pictures. If they take some pictures and burn them to a DVD, we could use the kiosk at Walmart to order a photo book.
Albums by Black River Imaging
The difference is the art! A handmade leather album crafted from portraits captured by a talented professional photographer reflects the years of devotion that the photographer dedicated to learning the art of photography. The portraits reflect the attention to detail required to capture the beauty of the event. The pages reflect the care the artist dedicated to selecting, cropping and retouching the images during the album design. The final album shows the loving care of the photographer and the craftsman who assembled and bound it all together.
Like any fine art, the value of portraits will increase with the passing of the years. Sharing memories with your friends, your children, and eventually your grandchildren, makes them grow richer each passing year.
Invite your friend with a camera to preserve the memories of your next birthday party. Hopefully you will have many more. Use a real professional photographer for those once-in-a lifetime events.
Most of the time, we are told to dream big. Set big, bold goals and work hard to achieve them. This is generally good advice.
However, when it comes to being happy, smaller joys may be better. Recent psychological research by Ed Diener reported in the Harvard Business Review finds that the frequency of positive experiences are a better predictor of happiness than the intensity of positive experience. How good your experiences are doesn't matter as much as the number of good experiences you have.
As you pass through each day, a dozen mildly pleasant events will contribute more to happiness than one amazing event. Don't sacrifice all the little joy's of life to reach the big goals. The little joys are what makes life truly happy!
If you will be spending a lot of time driving this year, you have a perfect opportunity to explore new ideas through audiobooks and podcasts. Here are five of my favorite podcasts:
Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders - Few things are more inspirational than listening directly to successful entrepreneurs tell their own stories and what they learned during the process. Each hour long seminar from this weekly Stanford University series features one of the brightest stars of the entrepreneurial scene.
HBR IdeaCast - These weekly interviews include the leading thinkers in business and management from the pages of the Harvard Business Review. Most of these are between 10 and 15 minutes and provide some unique insights not found in other publications.
TEDTalks - TED is a nonprofit devoted to ideas worth spreading. These sessions, usually under 15 minutes, are from some of the world's leading thinkers and doers speaking from the stage at TED conferences. These are the ideas that are changing our world now and in the future.
Freakonomics Radio - In these podcasts, which vary in length, writers Steven D. Levitt and Stephen Dubner explore "the hidden side of everything." Using principles and methods from economics, these examples show the motivation behind much of human behavior and how marketing and policy decisions can have unintended consequences.
Grammar Girl Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing - If you are in a leadership position, or want to be, your ability to communicate is essential. These are short, friendly tips, always under 10 minutes, to improve your writing. These are fun grammar, punctuation and style tips that will make anyone a better writer.
These podcasts plus a couple of condensed audiobook summaries each month fill up the time that I spend commuting and have had a tremendous influence on my thought processes in recent years. They are an fun and easy way to learn during time that otherwise would be lost.
Photography and Videography by Vanessa Joy and Rob Adams
Portrait by Dawn Shields Photography
Each January, The Professional Photographer's of America hold their Imaging USA convention where the country's best professional photographers, and those who aspire to become the best, meet to learn from each other. This year, the group met in New Orleans and I had the privilege of spending much of my time in the Black River Imaging booth listening to the featured artists on the Cascade stage. I have never met a group of more talented or creative people.
Professional photography, like other creative fields, is evolving rapidly and here are five of the most noticeable trends:
1. Young women are embracing professional photography.
Many of the artists featured were young women or husband and wife teams which included young women who are unbelievably enthusiastic about photography and amazingly talented. Artists like Dixie Dixon, Amanda Reed, Dawn Shields and Natalie Licini exemplify this growing creative trend and I enjoyed listening as they explained how they found their creative vision.
2. Photographers are becoming more astute business people.
When David and Whitney Scott launched with a slide titled Behavioral Psychology and went on to explain concepts like anchor shifting and establishing norms, I knew we had entered a new age of studio management. Prem Mukherjee shared dozens of tips on how to structure your business to fit your life and Martha Dameron explained how to formalize these into a successful business plan.
3. Fisheye lenses capture scenes with drama and emotion.
When Gene Ho demonstrates his "Fisheye Five' technique for shooting with two cameras simultaneously, it is like watching a professional entertainer, Olympic gymnist and talented artist all at the same time. The way he finds angles no one else can see is amazing.
4. Fusion of video and still photography.
Vanessa Joy and Rob Adams are a husband and wife team who have also married their videography and photography skills to transcend the characteristics of either medium. They explained how the combination of short video clips with still images bring slide shows to life.
5. Social media sharing.
Facebook is now the primary way photographers share their vision with potential customers. Elise Ellis, who blogs and manages social media for Black River Imaging explained how a studio's website should be the center of its social media solar system and how to make every other site lead back to the website. Facebook, Flickr and Instagram are hot. Is Pinterest the next big thing?
The talent and enthusiasm of these photographers is contagious. I am looking forward to talking with many of them again next month at the WPPI convention in Las Vegas. In the meantime, I need to order a couple of Fisheye lenses and a second camera body.
Have you been to a photography show or professional studio lately? What are some of the trends you have noticed?
Portrait by Dixie Dixon Photography
Portrait by Amanda Reed Photography
Portrait by Natalie Licini Photography
Portrait by Gene Ho Photography
Portrait by Whitney Scott Photography
Portrait by Arising Images Photography
Portrait by Martha Dameron of Vaughn Portrait Park
