Here's how to get your Next Step done (finally!)
That thing you know you need to get done…
The thing you need to put a Check Mark next to so you can move on to the Next Step in your progress…
When are you going to do it?
Go ahead, get your calendar out, and schedule the time. Schedule multiple time blocks (15-90 minute chunks) if you’ll need them. Figure half-as-much-again time as you think you’ll need.
Give yourself space, and eustress (positive pressure, ala a deadline), to do the work.
This photography dream is worth it, right?
Prove it.
Committing? Good. E-mail me at james@banderaoutlaw.com and let me know your Next Step, and when you’ll have it finished.
James Michael Taylor
www.parttimephoto.com
Your feelings probably aren’t helping you win as a photographer
When you look in the mirror, how do you feel?
What do you think?
Who do you see?
If you’re like most people, you’re self-critical: you see imperfections, flaws, mistakes, regrets, things that need to be changed, things you feel powerless to change.
Now, flip the script:
When your best friend looks at you, who do they see?
What do they think?
How do you make them feel?
The mirror is two-dimensional, and often, so is our negative impression of ourselves.
But the people who love us see us fully, in three dimensions - both literally and figuratively. They see our wonderful depth: our wit, our caring, our kindness, our compassion, our intelligence, our humor, our passion, our curiosity, our creativity, our beauty much deeper and richer and more robust than the superficial.
How we as artists see our photography is often the same:
We are eternally unsatisfied, even sometimes disgusted, by the art we make. We see only two dimensions: our art compared to the best art we’ve ever seen.
Again, flip the script:
When your best clients look at your art, what do they see? How do they feel? How does it make them feel?
You will always be your own worst critic.
The Superpower here is (as usual) self-awareness: Know that you are ambitious and thus self-critical, but also that your lens isn’t true.
How you feel about your photography is not how your best clients and potential clients feel. You do no one any favors, you share no blessings with the world, when you hide your work (and your self) from those who would be most blessed by it.
Balance these - ambition and awareness - and give yourself permission to stop feeling so damn bad about yourself as an artist and professional.
Do you struggle with self-defeating negativity? E-mail me at james@banderaoutlaw.com and let me know your story.
James Michael Taylor
www.parttimephoto.com
What to ask your photography clients for a great testimonial
Let this percolate in your imagination...and then go do it:
[After your in-person sales / proofing session...]
Listen [name], I really, really enjoyed working with you / your family on this photo shoot. I love your [personality trait, etc.], and I'd love to work with more clients like you...
Would you mind if I do a quick 'interview' with you for a testimonial?
Would you mind if I record the interview for later when I compile my notes?
Would you mind if I share the recording with other people? People love video, and it makes for the best testimonials. [many will say 'no thank you' to this, and that's okay - not many folks like being on video, but the few who say yes will be powerful social proof for you]
How do you feel about the photos we made together?
Which photo was your favorite, and why?
What did you enjoy about your experience with me as your photographer?
Would you recommend me to your friends? Why?
What could I have done to make your experience better?
Will you use me again for your professional photography needs? Why?
Can we go ahead and book your next shoot? Do you want to shoot again in three months, six months, or a year?
Who do you know who would be blessed with a photo shoot like yours? Could you share their contact information with me? Would you be willing to introduce me to your friend over lunch or coffee, my treat? Could we tentatively set that up now?
[protip: ask your client to sign a model release, so there's never any question whether or not you have permission to use their photos, name, and testimonial]
Harvesting and deploying social capital is one of the catalysts to success as a professional photographer. Don't be afraid to ask your client to spend a few minutes after the sale to help you reach more people like them and bless them with your art.
Need some help with your process to harvest social capital like this? Drop me an e-mail at james@banderaoutlaw.com and let me know what's holding you back.
- James Michael
Help! My photography prints don't look like what I see in Photoshop
Alaina recently asked for help with a technical challenge that has hurt her confidence to go pro:
---
When I edit in Photoshop CC, I save my RAW images as JPEG. When I went to print images from a print shop, the color looked terrible... I have been having to convert every photo’s profile from Pro Photo to SRGB before saving it, and every edit I make to the photo after saving it, I have to do the conversion all over again. It’s affecting my confidence moving forward into a business. I've asked many people about this, and found no one who knows what I’m talking about.
---
Ahh, color calibration - one of the more technical and frustrating of challenges we professional photographers face, as we try to get the prints we deliver to our clients to look like what we showed them on the laptop or tablet.
Early in my career, I shot sports photos for the Bandera Bulletin newspaper. The school colors were blue and white, but what looked right on my monitor came out orange and just nasty in print. It took me YEARS to upgrade my monitor and get it calibrated so that what I saw on my screen was close to what came out of my printer.
This can get complicated.
But let’s keep it simple, by working backwards from the end.
There are three ‘filters’ that can affect how your images look on the screen versus in print or on other devices:
- Your Printer’s color profile.
- Your monitor, video card, and computer’s color profiles.
- Your monitor’s calibration.
Do your prints come out looking like the images on your monitor?
Do your images on other devices (laptops, tablets, smartphones) look the same as the images on your monitor?
If the answer is NO to both these questions, it’s a safe bet the problem is either:
- Your monitor isn’t color calibrated, and what you see visually are not the ‘true colors’ you’re working with when editing. What you see is not what you’re going to get; or
- Your color profile settings have been changed to some obscure setup that looks good on your monitor, but not to anyone else who isn’t viewing the images in that same color space.
If your images look good on your monitor and on other devices, but your prints aren’t coming out right, the problem may be that your Printer needs you to export your files into their custom color profile.
To fix that problem:
- Go to your Printer’s web site and seek out their custom color profile. If you can’t find one, ask them for it. If they don’t have one, they’re probably not a very good printer. Tell them the problem you’re having: your images look consistent across digital devices, but the prints are coming out [warm, cool, color-shifted, etc.].
- If they do offer a color profile, download and install it into Photoshop per their instructions. Export some test photos using the new profile, and send them off for test prints. When you get them back, see if this fixed the problem. Consider grabbing a color chart online and having this printed as well - if the chart comes back perfect but your photos don’t, the problem may still lie on your end. If the chart and prints both come back off-color, send this info to your printer and ask for their guidance.
If your images only look right on your monitor and nowhere else - not in print, not on other digital devices - your monitor is probably not showing you true colors.
If your monitor, video card, and/or Photoshop are set to a color space other than good old SRGB, change it back. I know... I know what you read about Adobe RGB and Pro Photo and other fancy color spaces...gamuts and raw data and such. Let it go. If your prints look like dookie, none of that other stuff matters.
Reset everything back to SRGB? Very good. Process some test photos (and a color chart), look at them on other devices, and see if you’re getting consistent results.
[Due to the prevalence of Apple products among consumers, you may as well use someone’s iPhone or iPad as your standard against which to measure your calibration results. If your photos don’t look right on those devices, they won’t look right on most devices used by your potential clients.]
Still look wrong?
Odds are good your monitor isn’t calibrated - it isn’t showing true colors. Monitors can display warm or cool, color shifted, too bright, too dark, highlights too light or dark, shadows too light or dark, compared to ‘true.’]
If this is the case, you’ve got three options:
- Expensive: Buy a new monitor well-reviewed for its trueness of color.
- Less Expensive: Buy a monitor color calibration tool like a Spyder, with the caveat that if your monitor is too old or worn out or cheap to display true colors, no tool can fix that (although it may get you closer to true).
- Cheap: Eyeball it. Manually adjust your monitor settings (color temperature, brightness, contrast) until what you’re seeing on other devices is what you see on your monitor. Edit and export some test images and see if you’re getting closer to true. Repeat until you’re as close as you can get without a calibration tool.
What’s your favorite process to get consistent results across print and digital mediums? Share in the comments below, or drop me an e-mail at james@banderaoutlaw.com.
Of Dungeons and Dragons and Professional Photography
Don’t worry.
Whatever you’re doing right now to make better art and be a better professional, even if it feels like you're spinning your wheels, is forward momentum.
Steve Arensberg and I were talking recently about that hard, frustrating, slow “grind work” when you’re slogging through a motivational dip, and compared it to “killing rats for experience points in Dungeons and Dragons.”
Keep that in mind when you’re clumsily playing with Manual settings, practicing depth of field work, and photographing your kid/friend/cat for the 316th time.
You’re killing rats for experience points.
It all adds up.
What's the biggest challenge holding you back today? E-mail me and let me know.
- James Michael
Winning as a pro photographer looks like Work + Busyness + Farming
Here’s how to win:
* Do great work
* Stay busy
* Harvest social capital
* Deploy social capital
Some clarity:
Do Great Work
Early on, this is going to look like 20% art and 80% how you treat people (or, for most, 5% art and 95% how you treat people).
(I know your immediate reaction is to ask me if your art is ‘good enough,’ and if that's what's holding you back right now, please e-mail me and let's talk about it. I can tell you for a dozen different reasons that if you’re reading these words, the answer is yes: your art is good enough.)
Stay Busy
Be shooting as often as you can with any mix of clients: free or paid.
Every client you work is the catalyst to let you…
Harvest Social Capital
Farming is not a passive employ. To reap the social capital you’re earning, you have to work for it; you have to ask for it.
1. Don’t wait for a client to decide to write you a testimonial out of the blue. After your proofing or sales session, ask your client if you can ask them some questions and put together an honest testimonial. Ask questions about their experience with you and your art, write the testimonial for them, and ask them to approve it. (Absolutely ask questions that lead your client to talk about what is unique about the art and experience you crafted for them.)
2. Don’t pray a client shares your shots on social media, or writes you a nice review on Google or Facebook. Provide them a nice one-sheet one the ways they can help support your business, and what that support means for you, your family, the charities you support, etc. Then ask if they would be willing to support you in this way.
3. Don’t hope a client refers you to their friends. After helping write their testimonial, ask who they know who they think would be blessed by a photo shoot like theirs. Ask for an introduction over lunch or coffee, your treat. (This is part of the powerful concept of slowing down to speed up; get human-to-human interactions out of the too-fast, too faceless digital realm as much as possible.)
Deploy Social Capital
Get your client’s photos and testimonials in front of other people like them. Nothing you can say about yourself will ever compare to the influence of what your clients say about you.
Train your brain to see every potential opportunity to get your art, message, and social capital in front of your target market, and test every opportunity. Don’t overthink it; all marketing is just experimentation and feedback.
What questions do you have about this process? E-mail me and let's get a system going that works for you.
- James Michael
The only 'should' you should worry about
Of all the "shoulds" I have in my life, the one that stands above all is that I should be more grateful.
When I walk in a state of gratitude, my actions, thoughts, and focus align with what's most important in my life: my kids, my friends, my health, my art; the beauty of the people, places, and ideas around me.
What are the things you're most grateful for in your life?
(Gut check: are you approaching your professional photography work as a creative blessing or a chore?)
What can you do to get more of that good stuff into your days?
What choices are you (not) making each day that put distance between you and what you’re most grateful for?
E-mail me and let me know.
- James Michael
NEXT STEPS
1. Check in with yourself. Ensure how you're feeling about your photography is how you WANT to feel. If it isn't, how do you want to feel? What perspective change do you need?
2. Write that perspective change on a sticky note, and put it where you'll run into it every morning. Learn to cheat: stop holding all your goals and dreams and intentions in your head, and surround yourself with reminders of the person you want to be and the life you want to live.