I'm super excited to announce two spring dates for the ONE DAY INTENSIVE.  Even more exciting is the fact that they're located in two of my favorite cities!  Click on the image above for more information and to sign up.  You can also CLICK HERE for reasons why you shouldn't attend the ONE DAY INTENSIVE.

If you’d like to know what others are saying, check it out here.

For everyone else, I hope to see you there!

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

This is a video compilation of a few of the speaking events I’ve done over the past couple of years.

In 2010 and into 2011 it seemed like all anyone wanted to talk about social media.

This coming year I’ll be talking a great deal about integrating online and offline strategies and tactics and the fact that social media has simply become a given that needs to be considered more like a behavior than a tactic.

I’ll be talking a lot about passion and purpose and how building and promoting a business based on those elements is a powerful way to differentiate.

I’ll be talking a lot about selling by teaching, building your Marketing Hourglass and turning your business into a platform.

Feel free to share the above reel with anyone looking for someone with a decidedly practical spin on marketing or point them to the Duct Tape Marketing Workshop page.

So, if you could design a workshop topic you would love to attend, what would the topic be?

by Jeremy Corbin

As some of you may already know, I was privileged enough to be a live audience member for Zack Arias’s creativeLIVE event Foundations of a Working Photographer, which took place in Seattle during April 29^th – May 1^st. Last year Zack taught the very popular Studio Lighting with Zack Arias, so when he put his ear out to the web to find out what photographers wanted to learn this time, and received an overwhelming number of questions about Pricing and Client Relations, he knew exactly what his theme would be for this creativeLIVE event. Instead of having a 3-day class about pricing and how to get an agent, he talked about the REAL business of being a working photographer. That real business is what happens when you press the shutter button.

You see, without being able to technically operate your equipment, you have no hope of being able to please a client. Without being able to please a client, how can you charge them any money? Without charging the client money, how can you get an agent to represent your work to get more clients? Zack knew that these questions needed to be answered, but in the right order. As you get better at the technical part of photography your clients will place a higher demand on your work, and that will make agents want to jump in to help you get the ball rolling even faster. It’s all about gaining momentum, but that ball must start rolling with your own energy before anyone else will even notice that it’s moving. There were many areas that I recognized I need to work on in order to make that ball roll fast enough for people to notice, but the biggest three are what I’ve chosen to write about today.

Jeremy shoots a portrait to Zack's specifications. He had less than 5 minutes to get what Zack wanted. (Screen grab from creativeLIVE feed.)

Know the limits of your gear

Most of us (okay, all of us) lust after the next piece of gear before we fully realize the potential of the gear we already own. Some of us want that new 500MP body that just came out when we aren’t even making prints or cropping heavily. We even lust after lenses that we only use during one season, or even one event per year. We dream of a body that makes clean shots at ISO 25,600 when we never shoot in the low light conditions of a bear’s cave in the Yukon in December.

How do we get to know our gear? We test it. I know, it’s not the sexiest thing to say, but really: Body tests, lens tests, and gear tests in general can push the limits of our gear the best. I’m not talking about some website with numbers, figures, and pie charts, I’m talking about putting yourself in common and uncommon situations that you shoot in and just SHOOT. Look at your color calibrated monitor when you get home. Look at your prints. Did your lens not focus correctly? Did your ISO have to be bumped because you couldn’t shoot at 1/15th and now there is too much noise across the frame? Did you have to shoot outside and didn’t have enough power on your flash to overpower the sun? These are all real scenarios that we can find ourselves in while trying to serve our clients. If we don’t put our gear in those situations, we’d never know what they can handle. If you need to light your subject outside, you might need a more powerful strobe. If your lens doesn’t focus when you need it to, you might need a lens that is better in low light. If you have so much noise in your frame you can’t deliver a clean file, you need to look at a body better suited for that task.

One area that I struggle with is focus. Why? I only own one Auto Focus lens. Every other lens I have is manual focus; I have my only focus point in the center and I’ve been making sacrifices in my compositions to compensate. Focus-Recompose can change focus at f/2. I need to pony up the money for an AF lens in order to use the other AF points so that my compositions aren’t suffering.

Zack gives his students the low-down (literally) on being a professional photographer.

Networking

One area that I know that I lack in is networking. I don’t attend local networking events in attempt to find new clients and new avenues of business. Why? I’m introverted. I know that about myself, and I have to work really hard to run out and meet people. I struggle with introducing myself as a photographer. I don’t meet someone new and say, “Hey, my name is Jeremy and I’m a photographer.” I have a real problem doing it. Somehow, deep inside, it feels like I’m committing a crime by this shameless act of self promotion. It could be that the person I’m introducing myself to is another photographer and I’m worried about being judged. What I learned at creativeLIVE is that professional photographers don’t shun other photographers. Beginner level photographers do that. We might be in the same industry, but the chances are good our style is entirely different. We might even be in the same neighborhood in the same price bracket, but if our styles differ it means a completely different kind of clientele. The honest-to-God truth is that there is room for everyone: I simply can’t shoot 300 headshots, 25 editorial spreads, 15 portfolios, 10 weddings, and 5 boudoir sessions a year, nor would I want to. I’d like to take a vacation someday, and that means I’m not available for everything.

Zack sits in front of his selected works before the portfolio building segment.

Critique

This area hit me the hardest. Without the thoughtful critique of our work it’s impossible to grow as a photographer. Zack and Meghan Arias were the first people that I asked for feedback on my work that sat down and gave me their time. Before the critique, I honestly felt that I was on my way to being a pro. I knew that a multitude of photographers were ahead of me on this path, but that I was ahead of many others as well. Zack let me know, in front of tens of thousands, that I need a lot of help with my work. I have taken a few photos that are pretty interesting, but for the most part, I need to start over at the beginning. Without sitting down and hearing his honest commentary about my work I wouldn’t have seen my work through someone else’s TRAINED eyes. That training is important. Flickr is not a place for critique; it’s a place for glad-handling. My wife is not a good option for critique; she isn’t trained and probably loves me too much to tell me I suck as a photographer. Forums can be good or bad for critique. Zack is trained, and Meghan doesn’t know me from Adam. They unleashed on me, and I’ll be honest with you: It really hurt. My work wasn’t interpreted the way I intended when I pressed the shutter, which means I didn’t communicate my thoughts correctly. That is a huge problem. I must now review my notes from the critique (with tear drops and shaken handwriting included) and go back to the drawing board to work on my vision with a better understanding of what I want to achieve.

With that in mind, I told Zack Arias and Chase Jarvis (who popped in from time to time) that this time next year I would be mailing them my book with a fat, red marker included. The title of the book will be,”Did I take a step forward this year?” and I’ll have them unleash on my photos. I want to get better, and that means that I need to put my work out there. They’re looking to get better too, and they put their work in front of people up the food chain as well. We’re all trying to be better photographers.

Zack works with Daphne Chan during Student Testing on Sunday Morning.

A final word

I told Zack that I had been shooting since I was 15 years old. He said that experience didn’t mean anything because you don’t begin to become a photographer until you put yourself out there to try to make a life from it, and even then, it will take TEN YEARS to become a photographer. Zack has been laying the hammer down for nearly ten years (on this attempt) and he just now feels that he has become a photographer. Before you hang your sign outside that you’re a photographer, you’re at Level Zero regardless of the number of years behind it. Before you get a serious critique on your work, you stay there. You think you’re growing and learning, but getting a serious critique on your work is like growing pains when you’re a kid: They hurt, but you have to get through them to be an adult. The ultimate fountain of youth must be never being critiqued on your work. I urge you to go out and get some feedback on your work from your peers, from those with less experience, and ultimately those with much greater experience in photography than you.

Zack congratulates Jeremy on a job well done. (Screen grab from creativeLIVE feed.)

Jeremy Corbin is a portrait photographer based in Denver, CO. Telling stories through blending photos with music, dance, and other artworks is one of his greatest aspirations. Follow him on his blog.

All images: ©Jeremy Corbin, unless otherwise noted.

Related posts:

1. Transform – A Video by Zack Arias
2. Don’t Miss Zack Arias’s FREE Online Workshop Tomorrow
3. About Peter Zack

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Read article with proper formatting.

If you don’t know who Zack Arias is, then you’re missing out on quite a character in today’s commercial photography world. We’ve posted about him before, so go check it out.

For those who do recognise the name, you might want to know that he’s giving a 3-day workshop in Seattle this weekend…and it’s being broadcast live…for free. The title is Foundations of a Working Photographer, and it will run Friday through Sunday, pretty much all day long each day.

Attending a workshop with Zack generally costs you in the hundreds of dollars, but now you have the opportunity to e-attend for free thanks to the folks at Creative Live. Here’s how it works: They film and broadcast the workshops in real time, for free; up until the beginning of the workshop you can prepurchase the video for a fee; once the workshop begins, the fee increases by about 50%. Workshops are available as downloadable video files.

In Zack’s case, the 3-day workshop (over 24 hours worth of learning if Zack’s pst workshops are anything to go by) will be available for $99 until May 1^st at 20:00 PDT; after that it goes up to $149. In order to watch it you need to register with Creative Live and then enrol in the workshop here. Below is Zack, presenting his workshop with his usual humour.

The Workshop Outline

Session 1 (April 29, 2011)
#1 – Know Your Camera
#2 – Know Your Glass
#3 – Know Your Subject

Session 2 (April 30, 2011)
#4 – Know Your Light
#5 – Know Your Limits
#6 – Creativity
#7 – Vision & Style

Session 3 (May 1, 2011)
#8 – Courage
#9 – Business & Marketing
#10 – Service & Balance

The workshop starts at 10:00 PST tomorrow, April 29^th 2011. I’m excited to tell you that EtL has managed to infiltrate one of our agents who will be attending the workshop and writing about his experience once he gets back and decompresses. Stay tuned for that article in the upcoming weeks.

Now go make sure you have enough popcorn for the weekend and pull up a comfy chair to the computer. It’s going to be an interesting 3 days!

Good light and good luck,

    —Miserere

UPDATE

Creative Live has already put up a couple of videos from Day 1:

Related posts:

1. Marc Langille: Fall 2009 Photography Workshop in Utah
2. Don't Forget Scott Kelby's Photowalk Tomorrow
3. Review – Golden Nuggets from Zack Arias at creativeLIVE

Start a FREE trial at zenfolio or get up to $25 off your subscription by using discount coupon E6P-UJA-UCX

Please consider purchasing through our affiliate stores. If you visit one of the stores through the links below and place an order, EtL will receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. We hope you don’t mind these ads; revenue from commissions is how we keep EtL running. Thanks!

B&H	Adorama	Amazon	eBay	Best Buy

© Miserere for Enticing the Light, 2011. All rights reserved, do not reproduce without permission. |
Read article with proper formatting.

______
Sponsored by CLIQ Photo Community

I only brought my iphone — hey, Chase says the best Camera is the one you have with you — and still got some really fun stuff.  It was so neat to see everything behind the scenes and then watch it again on the Instant Replay.  The whole experience left me with some great new friends and a new respect for all that goes into a live production.  At one point, Tamara was utilizing now famous white board to take notes and called me in to help.  Phew its a lot of work to be on camera!  And Tamara did it for five straight days.   That girl amazes me.

Alison Henrie shot the last picture of me and Tamara, just wanted to give her a little blog love.  Thanks, Alison!  It was so fantastic to meet you!

thanks again for including me, Tamara!  Fabulous job to the entire team at CreativeLive.

A fun shot photographer Jeff Rodgers sent to me during taping. Look ma, I'm on the internet!

Tamara up front and center, while the "famous white board" is still white!

Me, T, and Jerry G! Jerry had a cameo critiquing photos. I was the one who chose from the Flickr stream, so it was fun to see what he said about them!

i love this shot of Chase and his gorgeous wife, Kate. You gotta love a man who can rock a scarf like that.

Chase Jarvis and Tamara Lackey chattin it up on CreativeLive

Behind the scenes!

I stole this from the blog of the talented Alison Henrie! Thank you!

There’s been a bunch of chatter on the Internet this year about photo workshops. I marvel at the fact that there are people who have the free time to complain about photographers who teach workshops. I marvel even more at the fact that most of these complainers are – wait for it – wait for it – photographers who themselves teach workshops. So the bottom line is, be careful of what you read online about workshops because the person writing that review may very well be someone with an axe to grind.

The workshop business is harder than it looks and pays less than people think. The leaders often pour their guts out only to be attacked by pedantic trolls. It’s not something you should sign up for if you’re thin-skinned.

But what about workshops from the perspective of the student? I think I have a pretty simple set of guidelines for students and how to pick a good workshop.

1. Attend workshops led by photographers who have work you find inspiring and who seem to want to share their approach with others.

2. See number one.

Yep, that’s it in a nutshell. No matter where you turn online, you’ll see photographers attacking the notion of a photo workshop. You can’t rely on third party endorsement for or against these days. The nature of the Internet is that anyone can say anything about anybody true or not – so nothing there has credibility. What DOES have credibility is the work. If someone tells you they are leading a bird photo workshop and you like their bird photos, you should consider attending. If they tell you they are leading a wedding photo workshop and you like their wedding photos you should consider attending. That’s all there is to it. If you don’t respect the work of the teacher you shouldn’t attend the class. On the other hand, if you DO like the teacher’s work, then don’t be influenced by trolls with suspect agendas.

Case in point. A prominent wedding workshop leader has been pretty much mercilessly attacked by a set of Internet trolls using Facebook and Twitter. They hide under the false assumption that people can’t find out who they are. In one case, I tracked the troll to New Orleans using IP route tracing and discovered she was merely a disgruntled photographer who’d been repeatedly turned down when asking to speak at a couple of the national conventions. Instead of figuring out what she needed to do to get hired to teach, she attacked this other photographer. And her attacks worked to some small degree. His workshop attendance fell off ever so slightly. If she couldn’t teach then by golly nobody can teach.

If the prospective students were smart, they could have looked at this teacher’s body of work relevant to the workshop topic. If they like that work, chances are very good they’d like the workshop – no matter what the trolls say.

The moral of the story is simple. Look at the work offered up as examples by the instructor. If you have time, money and interest and like the work – go ahead and sign up. If you don’t like the work – don’t sign up. But make the decision based on something factual, not a string of lies told by jealous trolls. You might be cheating yourself out of a great opportunity to learn otherwise.

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This post sponsored by WHCC – White House Custom Colour – Get Five Free 8×10 Prints From WHCC

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

Every now and then people ask me when I’m coming to their town! So, here are three dates where I will be speaking at public events and I hope you can make one or all!

New York Times Small Business Summit – Thursday September 23rd at the Hilton New York
as part of OPENForum Roundtables – you can join a table and discuss small business marketing pretty much all day!
Register here

Teaching Your Business to Market Itself – October 5th from 4 to 7 PM at Stonehill College in Easton MA.
This is a workshop focused on creating a referral system based on my best selling book – The Referral Engine
Register here

Conquer and Grow will be held on October 7th and 8th, 2010 at the Bellagio in Las Vegas.
The line-up of small business experts including Michael Gerber, Bill Glazer, Mark Victor Hansen, John Jantsch, Rich Schefren, Pam Slim, Rich Sloan and many more!
Register here

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PartnerCon NOLA is not only about taking a closer look at “Where Y’at?”… the underlying value of this gathering is our community. With 500 seats available (that we’re sure will fill up fast) there is no doubt you’ll walk away not only inspired by our instructors, but by the new friends you’ve made.

Check out this film, created by Ron Dawson of Dare Dreamer Media ( http://daredreamer.net/ )

We hope to see you there!

To see the full schedule, click here. To reserve your spot, click here.