I see a trend in photography: more photographers seem be making their money as what I'll broadly call "Photographic Tour Guides." Some of them lead photographic safaris in Africa, and many others lead trips to other exotic locations through the world, such as Iceland, South America, the Arctic and Antarctic, and Alaska. Since it can be challenging to make a living snapping the shutter, I fully understand why leading tours is an attractive business model.

I find some things troubling about the tour guide business. The first is that the tours tend to be priced beyond the budget of most enthusiast photographers. For example, an African photography safari can easily cost US$10,000 to $12,000 for the safari alone. And that doesn't include the cost of airfare to the safari site.

A second issue that I have with this business is that they tend to turn local residents into attractions. I often see images from photo tours that include shots of indigenous peoples performing for tour groups. While going to see locals perform, and supporting the local economy is admirable, I find it a little demeaning to see local folks paraded around in traditional attire as exhibits.

And, with guided tours, the participants lose the spirit of exploration that comes with travel. While I enjoy bus tours of other countries, my favorite part of those tours is the unstructured time to explore and go off-leash into a town to really experience the culture. As an example, when I was just out of high school, a very long time ago, I went on a bus tour of a few European countries. My sense of exploration compelled me, as an 18 year old,  to drag some of my tour companions through the Paris Metro subway to the Louvre and Paris shopping districts, even though don't speak any French. If our trip hadn't included some unstructured time, I'd never have gotten that opportunity.

Another issue for me is that tours make it seem like the only way to get good images is to go on trips and see exotic locations. I believe that we can make good images where we live.

Rather than going on expensive trips,  I prefer to find good images locally. I do most of my photography within 100 miles of my house, and only sometimes do I even venture into another state. Granted, I'm fortunate enough to live in Colorado, where there are abundant wildlife refuges and state parks to find good subjects, But we can all find local gardens, events, parks, and other places to create great images. Go out and explore. You can find a lot of fun images to make by guiding yourself in the wilderness that surrounds you.

​In my last blog post, I wrote about the benefits of generalizing as a photographer. I later realized that the skills we develop as photographers can also transfer nicely into the rest of our lives. Anyone who updates their resume knows that transferable skills can make the difference between career stagnation and advancement. So, when working our photography, we also work on skills that help us in our lives and our careers.
For example, when we photograph a wedding, we begin by communicating with the bride. I don’t intend to exclude the groom here, but, let’s face it, the bride usually hires the photographer. So, in planning the wedding shoot, we need to communicate with the bride to find out the basics of the day, such as where and when the ceremony will occur. But, we also need to talk about the important shots that we can’t miss, and about the style of the shots. During a recent wedding, the venue staff demonstrated great communication by telling me when certain activities would happen, such as the cutting of the cake so that I could make sure that I got photos of the cake prior to cutting, and find the right angle to shoot the ceremonial cutting of the cake. In communicating to the bride and her guests, we learn how to communicate with anyone.
Working as an event or portrait photographer also helps us develop our managerial skills. During a wedding or a portrait session, we often direct our subjects in how, and where, to pose. Especially during a wedding, we use our managerial skills to wrangle small and large groups so that we can get a shot where everyone is smiling and not hidden behind another person.
Photography has always involved technology. From the start of photography until the early part of the 21st century, mechanical devices and chemistry constituted the technologies of the art. When digital photography became the dominant medium, electromechanical devices and software became the technologies of choice. So, as photographers, we keep our technological skills sharp by learning about the newest devices, and, more importantly, about the newest software technology. In doing so, we also hone our learning abilities.
And, finally, by looking at the world through the world through photographers’ eyes, we learn to see everything from a couple different perspectives: the practical and the artistic. When we see a building, we see the practical structure that everyone else sees, and we see the piece of art it can become from certain angles. When we see a flower, we see the beauty that anyone would see, but we also know how to isolate it in our minds, just like we isolate it in the frame, to make it more beautiful by mentally cropping out the distracting and unattractive elements around it.
So, never let anyone say photography is just a hobby. We are all bettering ourselves by learning to communicate, manage, develop our technological skills, and to see the world through different perspectives.

Professional photographers often advise us to specialize in one type of photography. The logic they use revolves around mastery; if you don’t specialize, you won’t master any type of image-making, and therefore won’t ever become the best, or one of the best, in that field. I would beg to differ. Generalization will do more for our photography than specialization.
If we generalize, we learn skills in one type of photography that transfer to another. For example, I did mostly natural light photography for many years, never really mastering flash photography. My occasional portrait sessions suffered for my lack of flash skill. Then, when out in a small Colorado town capturing a large, one-room museum with a group of photographer friends, I mentioned my difficulty in filling the room with my flash to a wiser photographer. Voila, in a few minutes, my friend taught me the correct settings to get really good flash results. In the couple years since then, I’ve used those settings successfully for portraits and weddings.
Another case in transferable skills came through non-photographer friends. A married couple who I’ve known for many years (several decades, actually) belong to the local Porsche club. They participate in the club’s track days several times a year at a private course in out in the rural plains east of Denver. More experienced club members teach less experienced members racing skills. My friends have invited me out to the track days to photograph the cars in motion. From these sessions, I’ve improved my panning skills, enabling me get the cars in sharp focus while blurring the background. Since the more experienced drivers often exceed 100 MPH, I’ve learned to anticipate the motion of the cars, and follow them with my lens before snapping any shots. Learning this skill in a controlled, yet challenging, environment provides me with the skills to do sports and wildlife photography better. What better way to capture a sprinter in a race, or an eagle in flight, than to know how to pan while anticipating the motion of the subject?
I also enjoy taking photos of vintage cars, such as a ’67 Mustang that a friend was customizing. We picked the exterior of an abandoned factory as a backdrop. At the time of the photo session, the car was in a transitional state, with some of the custom body work done, and a lot of primered sections, and some bare metal. The rough exterior of the factory worked well with the rough state of the car. The skills I used to capture the car corresponded to the skills I use for flower photography. How? First, I needed to understand the angles at which the subject looked its best. Second, I needed to understand the importance of the background to the success of the image. Third, I used HDR for the car images, which I often use for flowers; HDR photography with flowers is actually more challenging than cars, since the slightest breeze will move a flower significantly, and requires a great deal of patience to wait for that perfectly still moment or two when several exposures can be made. By comparison, car photography is simple, and I can do it quickly and easily because I’ve learned the technique on a harder subject.
So, generalizing in photography will make us better photographers when  we happen on a specialized situation that we’ve never encountered before.

We commonly think of creativity as something inspired or magical; creative people just get ideas, and act on them. Another way – I think the correct way – to think about creativity is as something that we develop through work. Most creative folks actually spend years developing their skills, and then get ideas based on what they’ve learned.
A simple example would be a potter. It takes time to learn how to work with the clay to get it to the right consistency for a ceramic piece, and time to learn how to work with the potter’s wheel. Then there’s the glazing and firing. A potter must master these skills first; then she can work towards creativity. With the basic mastered, new possibilities in ceramics might reveal themselves.
Even novelists must master their craft before becoming successful. My favorite novelist when I was young, Kurt Vonnegut, spent years in other professions while working to become a full-time novelist, doing publicity for GE, writing advertising copy, teaching school, and even selling Saabs. All that time, he wrote novels and short stories, honing his craft through the 1950s. By the late ‘60s, he found success, but that success came more than a decade into his writing career. He drew much of his creativity, even for his science fiction based novels, from his life experience, both in the army, and in his corporate career.
As photographers, we must also do work before we can become creative. We need to master the basics of photography: ISO, shutter speed, aperture, composition. Then, we need to work on the more advanced skills and techniques: Photoshop, Lightroom, HDR, multiple exposures, and even the basic computer skills like file organization. Then, we can truly understand how to combine – to synthesize – that knowledge into new images. And, we need to understand our own sense of beauty; in order to make a beautiful or compelling image, we need to know what we find beautiful or compelling, and then develop an individual way of translating that into an image. I’ve worked with photographers who find patterns visually compelling, so they translate those patterns into compelling photos. I’m drawn to color, and to well-isolated subjects, so those become the basis for my photos.
Creativity is not a trait inherent in certain people. It’s something we all can develop, with work and time. In short, creativity is a job.

I’ve been wondering lately about the value of entering photography contests. Like most photographers, professional and amateur alike, I’ve entered a few contests. And, when the results get announced, I see two things amongst the winners: some stunning photos, and some photos that make me wonder what the judges were thinking. So, I started weighing the pros and cons of entering contests. I’ll start with the cons.
The first con is that judging photography, as with any art, is inherently subjective. Granted, some photographers will enter mediocre photos, and their work will get eliminated. But, some amazing photos will get eliminated simply on the basis of the judges’ tastes. Maybe they don’t like the subject matter. Or, they don’t understand the perspective the photographer conveyed in the image. Some will dislike images that are too conventional, or too unconventional for that matter. Just as one might look at a Picasso and a Van Gogh, and prefer one over the other based on purely subjective value, knowing the greatness of both painters, a photography judge will look at two equally good photos, and prefer one over the other based simply on personal stylistic preferences.
The second con is inherent bias, which interrelates with subjectivity. Any judge, or contest, has a bias built into its judging. The organization that runs a contest might not realize the bias exists, but, in almost every case, the bias colors the results. For example, I’ve entered an annual contest run by the local chapter of a well-known conservation group. The judges pick 250 “Highly Commended” images. Of those 250 images, ten are awarded cash prizes – one Grand Prize, four First Place, and five Second Place winners. Not placing in the top 250 in either year, even though I entered several photos each year which I selected as my best wildlife photos of the previous year, I began to analyze the common denominator in the winning photos and the commended photos. I found a bias towards exotic subjects, specifically those not found in the continental United States. I don’t know how many photos got entered into the contest, or the breakdown of subjects. But, I could look at the winners. For the last two years, seven out of the top ten came from outside the U.S. And, for the most recent year, a little over 41% of the top 250 came from abroad, and over 7% came from Alaska (which I consider a semi-exotic location for most of us). So, the contest appears to be biased towards those with the resources to take photo safari trips to foreign lands. Without a little data analysis, I wouldn’t have found the bias in contest.
The third con is expense. Contests require entry fees in order to fund the prizes. But, organizations also use contests to raise funds for their own work. This means that most entrants will put money into the contest, and get none out, similar to a lottery. A few photographers and the organization running the contest benefit at the expense of most of the entrants.
The first pro of photography contest is that it gets us out photographing the world. And, as with anything else, the more we do something, the better we get at it.
Secondly in the pro column is that contests make us better self-editors. One of the biggest challenges in photography is culling the best of our own work from the good and mediocre images that we create. In order to enter contests, we need to develop the skill of really examining our own work, and getting an eye for what works best in our images.
Ultimately, we must all decide for ourselves whether contests are worth entering, based on how much experience we gain from entering them.

Sometimes, just sometimes, I come up with a photograph that I want to love, that I need to love, but I can’t. Usually, it’s because something went wrong technically with the photo. For instance, I recently captured a Bighorn ram staring straight into the camera with a menacing look. The composition was just what I wanted; the exposure was perfect. But, the depth of field was too shallow; the eyes were in focus, but the rest of the head and body were just a little out of focus, just enough to bother me. My question to myself was what to do with an almost acceptable image.
The initial image looked like this:

An idea came to me when I read my photo club’s monthly newsletter. The club does a monthly theme for their meetings, and the upcoming theme was “Wildlife Abstracts.” I haven’t done a lot with the various artistic filters in Photoshop, but this seemed like the perfect opportunity to do so. After a few tries with different filters, I settled on the Crystallize filter, resulting in this image:

While our first inclination is to make our images as realistic as possible, let’s keep in mind that we can create art based on photos that isn’t photorealistic. Try new things. Try new ways of processing images. See if something new can become part of your stylistic repertoire.

Photographers, like any other business people, have one asset that surpasses all others: our reputation. Yes, we have our gear, we have our skills, and we have our sparkling personalities. But, ultimately, reputation trumps everything else.
This came to mind recently because of a phone call I received. A local bagel/sandwich shop keeps a bulletin board for business cards. I, of course, posted a few of mine next to the plumbers’ and realtors’ cards. I generally get little return for this sort of advertising, but it doesn’t cost much to leave a few cards around. One person who found my card there called me, not to use my photographic services, but rather to pitch me on a Multi-Level Marketing business.
The caller, Mrs. X, started asking me whether I did party photography. I told her that I certainly do parties; I thought inquiries into price and availability would be the next questions. Instead, Mrs. X began asking about what other type of photography I do. I told her about my wedding and portrait work, as well as my personal nature and wildlife photography. Mrs. X didn’t seem to be getting to the direct questions that I’ve come to expect from a potential customer, so I asked if she had an event in mind.
That’s when the conversation took a turn that would affect my reputation. Mrs. X told me that she and her husband were starting a business venture, and were looking for three or four key partners to join them. They wanted to meet with me for an hour or so at my convenience to discuss the proposition. She wouldn’t, however, tell me about the nature of the business over the phone. This sounded just like the phone calls I used to receive in late 80s and early 90s when friends wanted to pitch Amway to me. I have nothing against Amway as a company, but my friends all wanted to build their down-stream networks, and didn’t have any interest in the hard work of selling soap. Needless to say, none of my friends made money, or stayed with Amway.
I gathered from Mrs. X’s cryptic comments that she wanted me to use party or wedding guests as potential customers for her business, even though she wouldn’t directly come out and tell me that it was a Multi-Level Marketing operation. It would devastate my photography business if I were to sell Amway, or any other MLM product, during a photography job. My clients pay me to take, and deliver, images, not to spend time during their events selling soap to their friends. When working an event, I have two interrelated jobs: create images, and interact with my subjects. Better interaction begets better images. Selling an MLM while taking photos would create tension with my subjects, and would detrimentally affect the number and quality of the images I could capture.
This holds true for any professional. Just imagine sitting in your lawyer’s office, discussing changes to your will. If she tried to sell you on the dog-washing business she did on weekends, you’d quickly gather up your documents, and promptly sign up for an online legal service instead.
Our various business lines must complement – not compete – with each other in order to preserve our reputations. That’s why so many photographers have interrelated businesses, such as doing photography classes or trips along with capturing images. I fully understand that many photographers do, however, hold down day jobs unrelated to their image work. But, we generally keep those compartmentalized; we do our day job, and then when we do our photography, we commit fully to that work. Let’s make sure that we always sell ourselves, not soap.

What differentiates an average, or even mediocre, photo from a great image? A great camera? A high megapixel sensor? The fame or notoriety of the photographer?
No. None of those things. The two most important aspects of a great image are a well-defined subject, and viewer engagement. That assumes the photographer has a decent grasp of the technical basics. A poorly focused image will lose its impact, regardless of the subject and engagement value.
An image creator can use several techniques to define the subject, such as depth of field, contrast, and, to a lesser extent, vignetting. Using a shallow depth of field is effective because an in-focus subject against an out-of-focus background will automatically stand out.
Contrast can mean either physical contrast, such as color contrast, such as a person in blue clothes against a red wall, or a brightly colored flower or plant growing out of a crack in gray concrete. Or it can mean metaphorical contrast, such as a lone woman standing amongst a crowd of men.
Vignetting can be effective, but it tends to be overused. Simply put, a vignette is a post-processing technique in which the outer edges of a photo are darkened, leaving the subject in a brighter oval in the middle of the photo. Without an image, it would look like this:

With an image, it looks like this:

The images that work best with vignetting are portraits, wedding photos, and photos simulating an old-time feel, such as those emulating photos of the Old West. Otherwise, if the subject is well-handled, vignetting comes across as a little heavy handed.
Viewer engagement can be a little trickier. The subject itself can be of more interest to some viewers than others. And, considering that the media inundates us with images, good and bad, all day, some viewers might not take the time to really look at a good photo. But, a good photographer can make any subject more interesting; an image of a common coin or a brick can be interesting if handled well.
The best starting point for engaging viewers is to pay close attention to the rules of composition, such as the rule of thirds, the golden mean, the rule of odds, etc. And, I use “rule” here loosely. I consider these rules as good starting points, almost as if they were “strong suggestions,” rather than “rules.”
Another aspect of engagement is angle of view. If the subject is an animal, or human, try to go for an eye-level shot, if possible. As viewers, we get drawn into the eyes of the creature, regardless of the species. So, if your subject is a child, take the shots from the ground, or a seated position – whatever it takes to get your camera at the level of the child’s eyes. If you’re taking pictures of ducks on a pond, get dirty, and get down on the ground to get to the duck’s level.
If the subject is small, such as flower, get close. Fill as much of the frame as possible with that flower. Leave no question in the mind of your viewer that the rose, or iris, or petunia is the subject of your image.
A well-defined subject and viewer engagement are interrelated concepts. You can’t have one without the other. And, when you have both, you have a good, or even great, image.

As photographers, we need to compete strongly. But, not as one might think, against other professional photographers, but with the guests at the events our clients pay us to shoot. And, that competition is fierce.
Since the dawn of easily loadable, portable cameras, professional photographers have had to understand that guests will bring their cameras, and some will take exceptionally good shots. In the film days, the guests might have brought anything from a 110mm instamatic, to a high-end SLR. Now, every guest has the equivalent of an instamatic in their pocket or purse in the form of a smart phone. Some will even bring a dedicated camera, like a micro four-thirds, or a DSLR. Any of these cameras is capable of capturing a good shot in the hands of a skilled user. And the users, skilled or not, can be in more places than us, and post to social media more quickly. In order to give the most value to our clients, we need to provide exceptional service.

This last summer, I attended a wedding as a guest. Naturally, I brought one of my DSLRs with me. Another guest, a relative by marriage, “Kay,” also brought her DSLR. Kay is a talented photographer in her own right; she and I spent a good portion of the reception shooting the event together. Much of the reception action took place in a large, open-sided tent. Some of the other guests were putting on an impromptu hip-hop performance; the paid photographer was nowhere to be seen. Kay and I even got shots of the first dance before the paid photographer and his assistant got to the dance floor in that tent. We were, however, respectful, and keeping out of the way of the official photographer and his assistant.
My wife, observing some of our photography, related to me later that the paid pro was giving Kay and me dirty looks as we took photos from the sidelines. So, instead of just stepping up his game and getting better shots by virtue of being the lead shooter, this pro appeared to harbor animosity towards us guests who were having fun with our cameras. I speculate, but cannot prove, that we threatened his sense of his own value. We were clearly getting good shots, and being attentive to our subjects, who were even hamming up and responding to us. And, we would be able to post our shots quickly – maybe not that night, but certainly within a day or so – probably quicker than the pro and his staff.
So, what can we do about the guests shoot at events? First of all we shouldn’t get threatened by them. We can do a few positive things:
·         Observe where the guests are taking shots. They can lead us to the most interesting action. Either go there, or send the second shooter
·         Be responsive. Post a few shots on social media quickly. Our clients know that there’s no magic in processing images that keep us from providing, or posting, images within a day or so of the event
·         Get as much of the prepared shot list completed before the wedding. That’ll free you and your assistant to shoot the improvised and candid shots during the reception
Remember, we are at an event to get shots, not to worry about what shots others are getting. Let’s shoot even better images than the guests.