Some Pretty Things

Here are the rest of the photos from the film I last developed. Well, I didn’t do it myself, I got camera house to do it. In addition to this, there is a gorgeous photo of my mum, but I’m pretty sure she would kill me for putting it on here! The family portrait is of Kaidin, Avalon, my step sister Georgia, my Mum and Dad and my Grandpa Lindsay, who is now2 deceased. It’s a great memory, especially given that I’d taken it so long ago I’d completely forgotten it was on there!

It’s Friday again! Well, it’s not – it’s Thursday evening and I’m going to schedule this post because I have to go to K9 tomorrow (got my tetanus shot and i’m all ready to go back) and I wont have time to play with the blog in the morning. But lets pretend it’s Friday and say “Yay – hello weekend and hello Robyn Geering!”

I found Robyn on facebook. I find lots of people on facebook by looking at what my other photograher friends ‘like’. Proof that social media is awesome and should be used by everyone as a business venture. But Robyn is super impressive. She’s very talented, incredibly pretty and just so nice! I’m so glad she agreed to star in Friday Inspiration and you should go and visit her blog once you’re done reading here!

Who are you and where do you work?
Robyn Geering Photography, Canberra Australia.

How long have you been photographing? How long have you been a vocation photographer?
Since I bought my first SLR about 15 years ago – it was a Pentax K1000. I still can’t bring myself to part with that camera. I decided to go pro about 2-3 years ago.

What do you think is the most important part of your business and why?
I think it is probably the old fashioned value of picking up the phone and talking to people. It sounds crazy, but people respond so well to a telephone conversation. In this era of never ending different methods of communication from emails, to sms, to facebooking to blogging – you name it, people forget sometimes to pick up the phone and actually talk to their clients. It is a much more personal way of communicating, and lessens the risk of miscommunication. One telephone conversation can save days of back and forward emails, and achieve so much more.

What do you enjoy most about being in the photography industry?
For me, it is the flexibility of my job, mixed with being a brilliant creative outlet. It is also being able to touch people, being able to move people. I remember one of my very first sessions, seeing a man cry when he saw an image that I had taken of his daughter. It was at this moment that I realised that I had the ability to evoke such emotion. I love it.

What is your favourite image (yours or someone else’s)?
This is a hard one to answer, because I have so many favourites. My favourite photographer and the person that has inspired me beyond words is Sally Mann.

I have mummy goggles on when I see images of my own children, so it goes without saying that my favourite image is this one (see below).

How did you find your style? Do you find it’s constantly evolving or have you always had a certain style?
You will laugh, but for me it started by copying. Man, there are so many awesome photographers out there, and I just wanted to be like them, so I tried this style and that style, and I tried so hard to make other peoples styles work for me. Oh wow, I look back on some of those images I took and giggle, I thought I was so clever and creative. This was actually a real growing period for me. It helped me learn so much about myself, what made me feel good. It helped me identify who I really was and what made my heart sing, and once that happened, everything all started to fall into place for me. This is an ever evolving journey for me, and no doubt my style will change as I grow, and I learn. I will never stop being inspired.

What is the hardest part about running a photography business? What parts of your business do you not handle yourself?
The administrative stuff. I kinda get a bit bogged down with it, cause after all, I just wanna take photos. I have an accountant, but I NEED A BOOK KEEPER.

What would you suggest is the first step on the road to being a vocational photographer?
I think that the first step on the road to being a vocational photographer is to value what you do, it’s hard to put a price on something you love. It’s a confidence issue.

How long have you been blogging in association with your business? Do you think it’s made a difference? What about twitter and facebook?
I started blogging first, and have been doing it for a couple of years now. Yes, I do think it makes a difference. Other than the obvious benefits of SEO optimisation, I think in this world of overmarketing, spamming etc, it gives viewer the opportunity to see your authentic self. Don’t ask me about facebook and twitter. I have only just ventured onto facebook and I am just trying to wrap my head around it now. I have to come to terms with facebook before I can entertain the thought of twitter. I know, I am slow, but I am also really conscious about time, and I want to spend time with my family too.

Where or what would you most like to photograph?
Kids. I love their innocence, their sense of adventure, their silliness, their trust, their willingness, their beauty, their everything. Families, this is where my heart is.

Whats your best tip for other photographers?
Keep trying. You will take a lot of knocks, but just keep going and push through these knocks, they are really just little bleeps in your journey.

Now Robyn has just run away to France for three weeks, the lucky duck, so I hope this is a nice surprise for her when she gets back. If you missed the first links, you can visit Robyn’s blog here and her facebook page here. I especially love her maternity pictures, they are all just so fresh and lovely. Thanks heaps for agreeing to this interview and I hope you are having an awesome time jetsetting around the place!

Stay tuned next week for a fabulous photographer from Perth, who happens to be my idol at the moment – Amanda of White Tulip Photography!

When my mum was my age, she had a Canon AE-1. It looks like this.

I know this, because I’ve been using it for the last week. Tentatively, because it’s been a long time since I’ve used an SLR. I have used film – toy plastic cameras with built in flash all powered by one AA battery and with tiny, tiny apertures. These are great fun and some people can make art with them. Not me though – here is a picture I took with a cheap film camera on my birthday and got processed at Kmart. Keep in mind that when I wound on this film, I was intoxicated enough to think that hopping in a only-cold-water shower fully clothed and then dragging my boyfriend in with me was a good idea*.

I am an artiste, no? Read the rest of this entry »

It’s winter, but it hasn’t been particularly cold or rainy. Bad for the dams but good for nature based excursions. I’m reading Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv and trying to get both kids out as much as possible. Today we went whale watching after sunset! There was a Southern Right whale in the Dawesville Channel just down the road from us. I’m hoping it’s still there tomorrow morning when the sun comes up and I can take some photos. Certainly doesn’t happen every day.

These photos are of much smaller water beasties – common tadpoles in a swamp near my Dad’s house. Processed with some new actions I found from this post at Photo Tuts.

Oh and in case you were wondering, I don’t have a new camera yet. These were taken when the d70 was still working, during the school holidays. You can help me buy a new camera by pressing the ‘donate’ button in the sidebar!

*And because keeping tadpoles is apparently illegal, I’d like everyone to note that this was a strictly catch and release excursion!

Has it really been a week already? Must remember to put the bins out this week.
This week I had the pleasure of chatting with the gorgeous Vanessa Macleod, a graphic design artist from South Africa (I promise, next weeks inspirational artist will be closer to home!) and got some incredibly detailed answers to my questions. Thank you so much Vanessa, for taking the time out for my Friday Inspiration feature and thank you for providing such a wonderful and informative blog – everyone that hasn’t already should go and check it out right now!!

Who are you and where do you work?

Hi everyone, I’m Vanessa MacLeod and I’m currently based in Cape Town, South Africa. I’m a freelance graphic designer, specializing in both web and print design. Thanks to the internet, most of my clients are international, but I also do freelance design work locally as well. I work from home (yay!) but can’t work in my bunny slippers because I have to do the school run in the mornings!

How long have you been a graphic designer?

I’ve been in purely creative fields for the last four and a half years, starting out as a freelance photographer, but I started getting more and more design work, when I began giving my photographic clients their prints in ever increasingly creative ways, including supplying their photographs already as birth announcements, wedding thank you cards etc. I had wanted to study graphic design when I left school, but parental intervention saw me sent off to university to ’study something important’ instead. But when the design work started falling from the sky after my kids were born, I decided to embrace it, by enrolling in a correspondence diploma course (from Australia) and I’m currently still completing that. I still have a few photography clients that keep coming back too, and I like to keep up with what’s happening in the photography world, as many of my clients are photographers themselves.

I have a technical background in computers and got my MCSE (Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer) and have been building websites for myself, friends and family since Yahoo Geocities was popular (back in 1998), but now that my work is 90% design work and 10% web development I’ve switched to Mac and well once you go Mac you never look back.

What do you think is the most important part of your business and why?

For me, it’s the fact that I am a classic hand holder. Many of my clients are new to running their own business, and have never been in a position where they’ve needed to source graphic design for whatever reason. As a work at home mom myself, many moms who are starting their own business, find that they can easily express what they’re looking for with me, since we immediately have common ground during discussions. The fact that I offer web hosting and domain registration as well, means that my clients are able to come to me for all of their design and web related needs, and I am able to explain the ins and outs of the technical side in a way that makes sense. As a real person, it’s a lot easier dealing with someone like me, rather than a large faceless and frightening corporation.

Also hugely important in my business? My iMac. We’re like *this* (wraps index and middle finger together). Without my awesome, amazing, ever faithful iMac I would not be as successful as I have been lucky enough to be. The last year before I went Mac, I think I fried three PC’s because they just couldn’t handle the heavy graphics burden that graphic design places on a computers hardware.

What do you enjoy most about being in the graphic design industry?

There is always something new to look at, and as with every other creative industry out there, there are always new trends to follow. Designers are an eclectic bunch, and it doesn’t matter whether you’re a freelance designer like me, or sitting in a plush corporate office in NYC, the love of design unites us all. Plus, what I love about graphic design is that I find it toe-curlingly pleasurable going to work. How many people can say that they reach for the sky and shout “YAY!” when it’s time for work?

What is your favourite image (yours or someone elses)?

Wow. That’s a tough question. There are many designers out there whose work I enjoy and just as many whose work makes me cringe. It’s too difficult to pin it down to just one image. I think, I have to say that I enjoy a genuinely good logo design. One that isn’t riddled with gradients, drop shadows and all bevelled. A proper logo should be flat, scaleable, memorable and usually no more than 2-3 colours at most. When a designer gets that right, it’s an absolute pleasure to behold.

How did you find your style? Do you find it’s constantly evolving or have you always had a certain style?

I think that my style evolves with each project that I take on. Since I take the clients likes heavily into the equation when working on a project, the final design is often not purely all my style as such, but rather a collaboration of a) what I think is best and b) the clients personal taste. The ebb and flow of information from the client constantly pushes the boundaries of ‘my style’, but I definitely think that I do tend to favour one type of design i.e. clean, modern vs crazy, noisy

What is the hardest part about running a graphic design business? What parts of your business do you not handle yourself?

It’s finding time as a WAHM for everything. As the ‘person who works from home’, it’s also down to me to do the school runs, grocery shopping, cooking etc and that is a huge amount of added pressure. The same goes for when one of the children is sick, automatically it’s assumed that since I’m home, I’ll be the one looking after them. Naturally as a mom, my kids are my priority, but it can be tough to meet deadlines when your kids need you. But like I mentioned before, as many of my clients are moms themselves, it’s widely understood at the outset, that I work as much as I can, when I can, and since I’m available pretty much all the time on my Blackberry and via email and Facebook etc, it’s easy to keep in touch with folks around the world.

As for part of the business that I don’t handle myself, I do all my own admin thanks to an awesome Mac software product called “Billings” but the only part of the workflow process I don’t do is my own coding (splicing web designs into code). I will still take this on, and develop my skills in this area, but for now, it’s easier to outsource it, and I have a great relationship with a coder who does brilliant work and always gets the work out on time.

What would you suggest is the first step on the road to being a graphic designer?

If you’re in a position to study, then go ahead and do that. Look for a great program and go for it. Don’t limit yourself to just your course aims though, often university programs can be quite narrow in their focus and it’s tempting to become frustrated at the lack of real life computer work. You can always upskill by taking an Adobe Certified Class in Photoshop, Illustrator or InDesign etc.

If you’re not in a position to study full time, then take a correspondence course, an evening class. I didn’t think that I would ever be able to study again, since finding the extra money when you have little kids isn’t easy. But I managed to pay for my course completely through blogging! So if you really want to become a designer, then don’t take no for an answer. Or you can even just look at great design, get some books off Amazon, and LOOK. The more you look, the more you see, and design is more about developing your own eye’s ability to see, than just creative drawing skills.

How long have you been blogging in association with your business? Do you think it’s made a difference? What about Twitter and Facebook?

I’ve had my business domain for 5 years now, and I’ve redeveloped the site so many times, so even though I’ve had content on there for at least the last 4 years, I recently backed up the whole lot, and did a complete re-install, and now I’m slowly focusing on only adding quality content that will promote the business and help people. Yes, I have found a lot of business through my blog. Twitter and Facebook are awesome tools that should not be underestimated. I probably use Twitter more to keep in touch with other designers, and Facebook, I use my Fan Page to show case some of my latest work, and keep in touch with clients. I have gotten a *lot* of referral work through my fan page on facebook, so don’t underestimate its usefulness!

Where or what would you most like to design?

Well, I’d like to be able to consult on projects that deal with really large brands. At least once or twice. I think the dynamic of dealing with well established brands must be very different to dealing with startups – and I’d like to experience both ends of the spectrum. As for where? I’d love to be able to travel while freelancing, but right now it’s not really possible with two small kids, but one day!

What’s your best tip for other designers?

Don’t be a diva, keep your clients happy, and it will keep your bank account happy too.

See – isn’t she fabulous? If you want to know more and you missed the above links – or were just too engaged to click away – you can find Vanessa’s blog here or visit her facebook and twitter pages.

Next week we have the fabulous Robyn Geering, a gorgeous photographer (with the most infectious smile ever!) from Canberra. Have a look at her blog here and stay tuned for the interview, live on Friday Inspiration.

xx

I still don’t have a new camera. I’m working on wheedling money out of my parents – after all, I paid Dad back for the tyres he got me and it only took me like like 2 months. I’m so lucky I have parents who provide emergency funding without too many complaints If you want to help out – and every cent would help at this stage – click the paypal donate button in the sidebar and prepare yourself for cookie and love bombardment!

Instead of new pictures, I thought I’d share what I’ve been looking at this week. So here is a list of other people’s pretty things!

This post by Katie of Heartstory Photography is just divine – perfect locations (just look at that lake! Bliss) and such a happy family expecting their new bundle. It’s all fabulous and you should check it out!

I want a Leica m9. I’ve never really been interested in Leica or Hasselblad or Phase One cameras until I read a few magazines this week (life without a camera is REALLY boring – I’ve spent so much time indoors moaning and groaning) and saw some images of icebergs. Especially these ones, from a book called Melt: Portrait of an iceberg which I am buying myself for Christmas.
Anyway, one day I’ll be buying myself this for Christmas. Or as soon as I win Lotto. Isn’t she purdy?

Image from www.leica.com

Just for something different, Jodie Otte took her new D3 to the aquarium and got some stunning images – I love the catfish photograph, where you can see the scratched on the glass and the reflection of Jodie and her camera. And then she went and took some absolutely amazing photos of pelicans – be sure to check out the very last one!

Fiona Anderson has been in Fiji – check out her beautiful shots and make sure you look out for the sleepy boy being carried (adorable) and the exquisite henna tattoos on the bride!

While we’re talking about travel, Amanda from White Tulip Photography in Perth spent some time in Florence – here’s the second of her photo posts, which will both inspire you and make you horrendously jealous!

And because I can’t get enough of babies, here is a gorgeous maternity and newborn post from Fiona Colvin.

And while my internet was being slow, a new Anna Rose Photography blog appeared! Is absolutely wonderful, so and check it out. There are so many uber talented Perth photographers – it’s fantastic to be inspired by people who live close enough to stalk.. er, I mean meet one day.

Finally, a little awwwww post from Jasmine Star, who is sweet and funny and talented and I wish she lived close enough for me to stalk. She’s also doing a creative live wedding photography broadcast soon – I’m happily going to get up at 2am to watch it and you can sign up here.

What lovely things have you been looking at (or wishing for) this week?? Write to me in the comments so I can perve too!

So, did I mention the lemonade incident? Goodness knows I’ve been lamenting it IRL to anyone who will listen and some who don’t. Got a new camera battery yesterday because the lady at the camera shop assured me that it was the battery that was faulty and forking out $89 for a new one would solve my problems and world hunger*. I bought a new battery and came home, gave it a good overnight charge and put it into my camera this morning and…

Nothing.

It’s dead.

My poor little battered D70. You served me so well, despite being ridiculously noisy at ISO above 200, despite mysteriously turning on at night time and draining the battery, despite not having the faculties to take repeated timer shots without resetting. I took some nice images with you and I’ll always remember that for an 8 year old $400 camera you were amazing.

In the meantime, I’m meant to have a product shoot this afternoon. For a job that could take me around the state. And in a week? I have a maternity shoot for a lady whose already been hospitalised coz they are scared she’ll go into early labour. She’s got about 4 weeks to go. And on the 31st? I have a friend from when I was 13’s engagement party to shoot. All of these are such essential portfolio and experience building shoots. I’ll have to see if I can hire something from camera house if I can’t rustle up the $1840 needed for the new d300s.

But all is not lost. If you, gentle readers, would like to help with my predicament, you can always press the paypal donate button that has appeared in my sidebar. All donations will be reciprocated with love and cookies and possibly sexual favours, if you are that way inclined. Give what you can – every tiny cent will mean less I have to beg from my parents, my boyfriend** or the bank.

For old times sake, here is one of the very first photos I took with the D70, In Oct of last year. It’s a Bengal Cat at Peel Zoo.

*Ok, maybe I’m kidding about the world hunger thing, but that would be nice, too.
** Hi honey, have I mentioned lately how much I adore you?

It has come to my attention, thanks to the oh so lovely Holly, that since my url changed, everyone reader subscriptions are probably going a little haywire. The address to subscribe to the Some Pretty Things feed is http://www.someprettythings.com/feed/rss2. Please change it, if you haven’t already updated – I would hate for people to miss out!

No new work this weekend as I was busy attending a friend’s birthday party which involved dressing up in drag and playing Singstar. I have very little voice left today, but it was a tonne of fun. Also on Friday, while my car was out of action*, we biked to the shop and Kaidin managed to spill a 1.25L bottle of lemonade over my camera. I managed not to cry, took it apart as much as I dared and cleaned it with alcohol wipes, re-charged the battery and prayed. It works, but if I use the flash, it continuously bursts after the camera has been turned off and the dlash pressed down. Good excuse to not use the crappy in-camera flash! I’m guessing lemonade short circuited something electrical, because the CF card warning light flashes the whole time the battery is in. It’s definitely time to upgrade.

While I’ve always said I will stick with Nikon, lately I’ve been looking at gorgeous and totally out of my budget cameras, like the almighty Hasselblad V system, the Phase One P65+ and the Leica S2. But I’ve had a good hard look at the Leica M9 Digital** and I think out of everything, I would like this the best. It’s more low profile than the big medium format cameras which makes it ideal for documentary photography, but it also has the image quality to blow the Nikon D300s that I have my sights set on out of the water. And did I mention it’s a rangefinder? Sigh. One powerball, huh?

In the meantime, I’m going to get the d300s. It’s a good camera, with wonderful noise reduction at high ISO – if I ever need it. I’m aiming at 3 lenses: Nikon AF 50mm 1.4, Nikon AF-S DX Nikkor 10-24mm f3.5-4.5G ED and Nikon AF-S VR Zoom-Nikkor 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6G IF-ED. I would much rather these didn’t have letters and things. I hate autofocus (another big draw card for the Leica M9) and I don’t need image stabilisation or any other weird and wonderful and mostly unnecessary*** features. And I’ll get two flashes, but i have no idea what these will be because I am most definitely not a strobist. Hopefully TAFE can teach me something about lighting, coz no one else has been able to do it!

Also, while I’ll have insurance, if the d300s has a bath in lemonade, I won’t be devastated. If it was the Leica on the other hand..

Well, I’m going to drag myself off The Luminous Lanscape website and into bed with the latest copy of Better Photography. But no blog post is complete with images and so, in total hypocrisy, here are some flash photos of Avalon and Kaidin enjoying the petting zoo set up in the local mall for the school holidays****. Ever seen a cat ride a llama? These are also experiments in shooting RAW and converting to JPG in lightzone. I haven’t actually edited these at all, because I don’t know how to use Lightzone yet, but i’m sure I’ll get there at some point. Massive outlay on CF cards, here I come!

*Oh, it’s been a fun week..
** Here’s an awesome review I found – there are quite a few reviews for the m9 if you look around the site. And M9 in Paris @ The Luminous Landscape
**For me, anyway. I don’t mean to offend anyone who takes full advantage of these extras, but I always want to strip my digital camera back to the same basic features my ancient Ricoh has: ISO set, shutter speed set, aperture built into the lens, with timer function and maybe a manual set white balance and auto-bracketing system added. And I would totally take off the stupid in camera flash if I could – it’s completely useless on my D70 and I can’t imagine the D300s flash is any better.
****School goes back on Tuesday. Not a MINUTE too soon!

Look, a new segment! I am quite a voyeur when it comes to other photographers or any creative people and I like nothing better than asking dozens of questions about how other people do things. Not only does this give me a heap of information on how other photographers operate, it also gives me an idea of what is already being done. And because we never stop learning, I thought I’d pass on what people tell me in the form of mini interviews in a section called Friday Inspiration.
It is an idea I first had while reading David DuChemin’s ‘Visionmongers’ book (which I’m still reading, it’s that detailed and challenging!) and I saw a similar segment on Roger Overall’s blog. So it’s only fitting that the first person I interview for my Friday Inspiration section is Roger himself. I’ve been following his blog religiously since I found it three months ago. His documentary style photography is gorgeous and so real – no posed doll wedding shots here! Roger blogs new pictures regularly and is also present on Facebook and Twitter, so I recommend you go, say hello to him and his lovely wife and have him at the top of your list for wedding shoots in the UK!

Copyright 2010 Roger Overall

Who are you and where do you work?
I’m Roger Overall and I shoot documentary assignments for corporate clients and private individuals. Most of my work is in Ireland, though I do have regular clients in the UK and I’ve photographed commissions around the world. The most exciting of which was in Suriname and Guyana for a company that ships bauxite from the mines in the jungles.

How long have you been photographing? How long have you been a vocation photographer?
I’ve been taking photographs since I was about 10. I’ve been a professional photographer since 2003, when I moved to Ireland. Before that I was taking photographs as a journalist and editor to go with articles I was writing.

What do you think is the most important part of your business and why?
I think there are two key parts to the business: my wife and the computer system. Sounds odd, I know. I’ll explain.

Firstly, my wife.
She is a rock of a lady. Without her, I’d have lost the faith long ago. Being a professional photographer is challenging at the best of times, and you get knocked down a lot. Anne is always there to pick me up.
She is vital to the business in other ways too. She she runs a big chunk of the marketing. I do my share, but I couldn’t do it all. Everything she does is stuff that I don’t have time for. For instance, she is building and maintaining our online wedding community, largely through FaceBook. She monitors trends and keeps an eye on our brand online (what people are saying, that sort of thing). She also produces our corporate and wedding newsletters. These are big jobs that are important to the success of the business.

Secondly the computer system. So much of what we do as photographers today is done on a computer. I spend most of my time in front of a screen. Therefore the computer has to be right. About two years ago, I switched platforms and invested a lot of money in Macs. I’d been having terrible trouble with PCs, which was losing me time and money, and costing me my health due to the stress of having to deal with crashes and so on. Having a computer system that is stable and reliable is important.

It’s also important that the system is as powerful as it needs to be. I’ve had the Macs two years and they desperately need a RAM upgrade to cope with the increased demands of still file sizes and video files.
So a reliable and powerful computer system is a must.

What do you enjoy most about being in the photography industry?
On the wedding side, I get a huge kick out of knowing that 100 years from now, someone whose parents haven’t even been born yet will look at my work and know so much about their ancestors. I also love getting thank you cards from my couples. I have tons of them in the office. That kind of gratitude is humbling and very motivating.

On the corporate side, I like the variety and the independence. I get to meet a lot of really interesting people who are doing a lot of really interesting things. In the past months I’ve photographed for supermarket chains, coffee roasters, a five-star hotel, a bakery, a law firm, a marine insurer. And if I want to shoot something in particular, I have the freedom to put together a plan and approach a company with a proposal.

What is your favourite image (yours or someone else’s)?
Wow, that’s a hard one. I love Elliott Erwitt’s work. He’d be my favourite photographer, so one of his. One that comes to mind was taken at a museum in Madrid and shows two paintings of a lady. In one painting, she is clothed. In the other she is nude. In front of the clothed one stands a solitary lady. In front of the nude a half dozen or so men. I love the humour in many of his photographs.

One of my all time favourites of my own work is a wedding photograph I took last year (see below). I like it because it says so much about the bride at that moment in her life. I also like the light, which is dramatic and separates the couple from the congregation. They are in their own world of joy.

Copyright 2010 Roger Overall

How did you find your style? Do you find it’s constantly evolving or have you always had a certain style?
I switched to a purely documentary/ambient light approach in 2007. I do enjoy lighting with strobes and am a closet Strobist fan. Nonetheless, documentary is part of me and resonates deeply with me. One of the key drivers was the death of my sister in September 2007. It made me realize that documentary photography can capture the real love and emotion that exists between people, making those photographs so valuable later in life. Pretty much overnight, my wedding work became heavily documentary. I realized that wedding photographers were taking over a couple’s day and stage managing it. There was very little of the couple in the pictures. It was all the photographer’s stage vision. For me, a couples memories of their wedding day should be of getting married, not of having their photograph taken. A wedding day is not a private photo shoot for a photographer. It is a monumental day in the lives of a couple and it should be left that way. From that realization, everything popped into place. I now have a coherent philosophy of photography that I can apply to both wedding and commercial work.

That said, my style is evolving all the time. You can’t sit still. So I spend time developing b/w conversion routines, or trying to include more colour in my work.

What is the hardest part about running a photography business? What parts of your business do you not handle yourself?
I’m a shocking business person, so I find any hard business activities difficult. I don’t enjoy them at all. I farm out our accounting function to a great accountant who comes in every two months and makes sure we’re up to date on our books and VAT returns. It’s an expensive way of doing it, but it saves me time and I know it’s being done properly.

What would you suggest is the first step on the road to being a vocational photographer?
The first step is the hardest, so just taking it is an achievement in its own right.

The most important thing I can pass on is this: Do Not Do What Everyone Else Is Doing. You need to have your own voice, your own style – and they have to come from deep within you. It takes time to find out what that might be, but avoid copying others. That won’t make you unique, and you won’t stand out in a crowded marketplace.

For instance, too many photographers shoot the same kind of stuff and put it into exactly the same sort of album as everyone else. I’ve done it myself, and it’s a mistake. Be different and you’ll have a better chance of succeeding.

Also, read Doug Menuez’ wonderful article here: http://dougmenuez.com/on-chaos-fear-survival-luck/

How long have you been blogging in association with your business? Do you think it’s made a difference? What about twitter and facebook?
I’ve been blogging for about two years, though www.rogeroverall.net/blog only came into being last year when I amalgamated all my blogs into one.

Blogging has definitely made a difference. It has raised my profile and helped me connect with other photographers (who are a great source of referral business).

I tweet too, for the same reasons. I’m not as coherent and active as I should be on Twitter, but I’m getting there.

My wife runs our FaceBook community.

All of these are vital to your business today.

Where or what would you most like to photograph?
My absolute dream assignment would be to document a vineyard for a year, ideally in Italy or France, but I’m not fussy. I’m working on that.

Whats your best tip for other photographers?
Be you in everything you do.

Copyright 2010 Roger Overall
Thanks so much to Roger for jumping in first for my segment. Lets hope brides in Ireland don’t lose you to a Mediterranean vineyard too soon! If you missed the links in his answers, you can visit Roger’s main website by clicking here, or jump to his blog, twitter or facebook.

Stay tuned (or better yet, subscribe with your rss feeder) for next weeks interview!

Kaidin has been bugging me for ages to make a clone photo of him. And now that I have a new tripod (still shiny) I have run out of excuses.