This competition as well as previous Competitions are also available to see online.

I will be at the opening reception in January at USGS in Reston, Virginia.

The results will tour the country to:

• Reston: December 15, 2010 – January 28, 2011
• Denver:  March 2011
• Rolla:  May 2011
• Menlo Park:  July 2011

I look forward to seeing and judging the entries and picking the winners.

Want to know how I judge any photo contest? Read my post on this.

One of the chief issues I have seen at some camera clubs in the past is low resolution printing (that’s a bad thing). If I can see (or even count) pixels, it’s OUT. If I see jagged edges on any lines in a print, it’s OUT. Be sure that if you decide to print your photography that you go for 300 dpi (ppi) or higher…regardless of the size of the print. Bigger print does not make it a better print. The “impact” of a big and bad print makes it worse, not better.  

If the subject for a competition is trees (for example), make sure there is at least one tree in the photograph. A photograph with some grass and random shadows don’t get very far in this type of competition if I am the judge. I will say something to the effect of “There may be a tree there in the future, but I don’t one here now. OUT” If the subject is not very prominent, it better be really well composed or otherwise it’s OUT.

Good luck and keep shooting.

Hi,

I noticed the “Free NPPA Workshop For “Navigating The Downturn“

I imagine this workshop will be recorded for future posting online or offered as a live webinar, RIGHT?! This is not new technology so I don’t see any reason why it would not be recorded and posted on the NPPA website, Youtube and/or as a podcast. Or will this workshop be limited to the few people who show up? This is a national or even global issue, is it not? Might a virtual attendance be even larger, less expensive for everyone and more welcoming event to the entire membership in comparison to a 1950’s style townhall meeting with just some west coast residents. Embracing (and using) the technology of the 21st century (instead of resisting it) is one way to ‘navigate the downturn’, broaden our horizons as well as open up other income possibilities. This isn’t about shooting this versus that, but rather understanding how to run a business today which sadly most photographers don’t know how.

Please advise what this workshop will do for the rest of the membership outside of Seattle as well as other photographers in the world.

Thank you.

Henrik de Gyor

I will post the reply, once I get one.

So where do you network as a photography professional? If you are around the Washington DC area this week, you don’t have much of an excuse not to come to the Northern Short Course, network with many professionals, learn about the business and get your portfolios reviewed on 3/19/09 through 3/21/09. I will be there as a portfolio reviewer, among other professionals.

Sharing of ideas, contact information and bringing unity to this business are all good things. Hiding in your cocoon or cave will not help you nor your business regardless of the economic situation.

So what about after the Northern Short Course, what is around me that I could attend? Most photography associations hold meetings for networking and idea sharing and they often don’t require you to be a member either.

Here are a few I have attended and participated in:

APA

ASMP

ASPP

Each of these groups have local chapters which meet every month around the US. 

What if I live far away from all these? Look for local photography groups and even camera clubs.

Start networking online with their blogs, facebook, linkedin groups and twitter.

Make sure people know you exist, work in photography and are able to help them with their photography needs.

Full disclosure: I am not compensated by anyone nor any organization to attend the NSC nor write this blog. That will probably remain this way too. At the time of this posting, I am a NPPA member, but you don’t have to be a member to attend the Northern Short Course. Get out there and start networking.

• A) Leave
• B) Wait to get laid off
• C) Get fired for not doing anything about the current situation
• D) Start doing something about it now

If you are curious about option D:

What are your printing costs today?

Why are you still printing so often?

Why are you still printing rather than publishing to a broader audience worldwide online? Or do not like a broader audience?? 

Why are you still printing rather than seriously exploring e-book technology as the platform instead of print? (Downloading is cheaper than printing. Updates are easier to apply too.)

When will you learn to adapt to the trends which are rapidly changing the marketplace now?

If you picked Options A, B or C, you can always remain idle and  hope for that unpaid intern position opens up for you. You can really hope they will hand hold you through the learning process like a 2 year old. If you retire soon, hopefully we won’t see you working as a greeter at Walmart to put food on your table. If you are the rest of the ‘I will wait for the light at the end of tunnel to come to me’ crowd, maybe you should consider another career where you can continue doing the same old thing over and over again which requires no change. Common sense and an open mind is optional, but rarely used. I hear McDonalds is hiring too.  

I believe the remaining 7,600 newspapers (keep counting down each week) in the US have less than 5 years to live. Those who do survive by then might still print once a week or once a month. Why would they still print? Just to be read by those who don’t know how to use a computer nor own one. Even dinosaurs want to read some outdated information in print form while they await for the next asteroid to hit near by. So what should newspapers publish the rest of the time? How will newspapers disseminate their information? Remember that little thing called ‘internet’ with websites, blogs, RSS feeds, etc. Why? You can publish current, up-to-date information using the internet. You can do this even on most cell phones today. Newspapers print outdated (and rarely updated) information which is at least one day or one week old. And you pay money for that? You expect other people to pay money for that too? Have they had their wallets and heads examined for gaping holes?

Ditto for magazines. Why? Do you like to pay more money for even more outdated information which is at least one week or one month old?

Maybe these organizations will learn. Maybe not. But there will be a significant reduction in those who do not learn to adapt and evolve with the times (not their competitor who is also swirling around the toilet bowl) in the next 5 years. Call it a ‘weeding process’. Pull the weeds out or letting them die off. New or old, neither are immune. Either way, most will go bye-bye soon. Fresh thinking outside the bleek, blank page (and blank mind) is desperately needed in print publishing so they stop tripping over themselves and yield real progress, not regress back to the stone ages. I have heard so much mindless dribble over wanting to charge for online content and thinking that is their saving grace. Charging for content someone can get elsewhere for free will only alienate the organization even more and significantly reduce eyes hitting their content as well as ad revenue to follow. Hopefully, some of this will sink in soon or we’ll watch more of them just sink. We will watch more of these Titantics downsize to the Minnow-size and then hit their own ‘desert isle’.   

So does this mean the material and content will get better?  No. Volume may become king. Quality will go down as quantity goes up. Quick content will appear organized by what you want to read. Factual with little or no analysis. Maybe people might even learn to think for themselves after reading this information by then, but I am probably hoping for too much already.

Okay, back to reality. 

What about creativity? How do you spell that again? We’ll need to look that word up again in a few years. The scarcity of true creativity in most of publishing will make it a commodity again. Because it will become new to us…again. Slowly, it is possible again (when done right) not just for the sake of sprinkling it in. Simplicity will become king.

It is your choice if you want to hold your breath until this just goes away. Those intern positions are filling up quickly these days.

If you were to visit Bill Gates’ house in Seattle, he does not have printed art on his walls. He has large monitors which alternate digital images of art on his walls. You and I can buy a digital picture frame which does this on a smaller scale.

Printing work is passe. Consider this: You shoot something with your digital camera today. Now you want to share the photographs.

Will you print everything, spend a fortune because you are printing everything and not know what do with all those prints?

Or will you download it all on your computer and post it on a website to share the photographs with everyone or a select few where they can view everything and request to get a copy of just what they want? Then they get a digital copy of what they want or just a print of what they want to have?

Now consider what happens to all those prints.

What are they doing right now aside collecting dust and space. They will be rarely referred to again. If they are referred to again (without the photographer or subject) few will remember what the context of the printed photographs which defeats the purpose.

Compare this with digital photographs which may have metadata associated to them or at the very least a date when it was taken.

Sure, printing is cheaper when you send it out. You can send the files to a store and pick them up or even have them delivered to you. While this is less expensive, if you print it all, what are you going to with all those prints? Are you going to charge for them all? Will someone buy them? Or are you wasting your time and money? You are counting all the time it took you to get all those prints, right? Not just the $0.07 per 4×6. You are still making a profit when you print your work, right?

Don’t believe it costs a fortune to print photographs at home? Epson, HP and Lexmark make most of their profits from the sale of ink cartridges alone, not the printers. From this $23 billion market, how many prints do you get per ink cartridge when you print at home? That includes all the practice and test prints too, right? How much did you pay for that paper and ink and the printer? Now how many printer are you getting out of it. The reason why the printer might have been so cheap is because vendor knows you will be back for paper and ink by the box load. If you paid a premium for the printer and it does not yield a volume of prints, they really got you good.

So if you goal is to drain your wallet for no reason, keep printing at home. If you want your prints to take up space because you have too much of it at home or in your office, keep printing everything at the store or via website. If you want start embracing the 21st century instead of resisting it, stop printing. If you need something printed, spend your money more wisely and outsource it to a website which specializes in printing services. After all, it does matter how mad you get about the cost of printing if you keep paying the same price.

So, what make the printed photograph better than a digital copy? Nostalgia of a past era. Start living in the present and move on.

Job interviews are different because you are reviewing both the work (the portfolio) and the person for a position.

I believe a portfolio should not be printed because this is the 21st century and printing anything today is a waste of time and money. Photo portfolios should be digital and displayed in some kind of digital format. Some photographers add their portfolio to their iPod too and at the spur of the moment can display it to a potential client.

Portfolios evolve as does a photographer who tries to do better. As a photographer, you are only as good as the last photographs you shot. Not simply what you shot in 1969. If you have not updated your portfolio since then, there is something very wrong and it will show you are trying to live off your reputation (kind of like Kodak did for years), but you can not  produce anything of value today. It does not matter what equipment you use, how long it took to create what you are showing nor what your name is. It is the end result that counts. You are judged on what you present and how you present it.

Photographers should tailor their portfolio to whom they will be showing it and what they are trying to do with it. You should not have one portfolio unless you only shoot one thing and one kind of photography. If you photograph door knobs as your hobby, build a portfolio of it. If you photograph weddings, build portfolio from several weddings. If you shoot photojournalism, you include a photo story, general news, feature, portraits, sports and spot news (if they are all really good). Don’t throw door knobs in the wedding portfolio. Get rid of the cliche photographs. Sunsets, flags, etc. 

Do not  include “filler”.

The number of photographs in the portfolio does not have to be a round number.

It is not quantity, but rather quality that matters.  I would rather see very few good photographs, then some good, some ok and some bad. Get rid of the filler photos. Include only your best. 

Many of the same rules apply to a portfolio review as it does to a photography contest.

In case you are interested, I will be reviewing portfolios at the Northern Short Course again this year.

• The worst communicators: verbally and sometimes even visually (yes, I speaking about photographers here)
• Not documenting their work beyond the use of a camera
• Focused on having the latest toys rather than the needed tools of the trade
• Bad business people
• Undercutting themselves to point that their market is worsening every year because them, not the economy
• Working often at a loss compared to their life style
• Working terrible hours for little pay
• Terrible negotiators
• Often supported by family members, rather than supporting them financially
• Suffering one of the highest undocumented divorce rates known (about 90%)
• Saying “yes” when it is NOT to their advantage
• Not considering their actual expenses
• Not estimating what a shoot will cost them
• Just focused on taking pictures they want to take, rather than ones the client needs
• Unable to say “NO” in any manner that matters
• Unable to support a family, let alone themselves
• Unable to use forethought beyond photography itself 
• Known to be ‘weak’ by most of their clients and referred as ‘cheap’
• Not charging the latest IRS rate for every mile driven for work
• Not charging for digital captures, but still wanting the latest camera
• Not using written contracts, believing verbal is good enough
• Not learning new skills
• Signing anything they see for work without thoroughly reading it
• Not blacking out lines of a contract that are not suitable terms of agreement before signing it
• Not rewriting the terms of a contract when needed
• Not thinking about usage rights
• Not thinking how the client will use their images at all
• Happy when they can afford to eat and accepting this as reality
• Not thinking what happens to their photography after they put their camera down
• Not monetizing their legacy photography
• Not exploring other outlets for their work
• Not keeping up with the daily news even if they are photojournalists
• Accepting pennies for their photographs, believing that is good enough
• Living in present with ideals of the past
• Too afraid/shy to speak up and be heard
• Mad, but unable to verbalize their thoughts in a professional manner
• Not planning ahead
• Not budgeting
• Not mentoring others, believing they are “competition” 
• Not adapting to change
• Not evolving with, rather than against
• Not promoting themselves nor their work
• Not backing up their own work
• Believing “if I shoot it, someone will buy it”
• Believing since they have a website, the world knows they exist and they’ll contact them soon
• Believing there is plenty of work out there for them
• Believing they can supplement their photography addiction with bartending or waiting tables
• Believing it is us vs. them
• Not sharing knowledge
• Undercutting the wedding photographers by charging a few hundred dollars per wedding and delivering very little for it
• Still printing their work as if someone will pay for it and hang it on their wall
• Too lazy to enter photo contests
• Too lazy to apply metadata with tools they already have
• Falling behind
• Accepting all this as the way it is and the way it should be

This is meant to be a wake-up call if this hits a nerve. They know who they are, but what are they doing about their own situation on any of these points today?

They have a good line up of lectures, informative workshops, contest and portfolio reviews.

You don’t have to be a professional photographer to register for this conference, but there will be a lot of photojournalists present since this is a conference geared towards photojournalism.

There will be an expo with major manufacturers and vendors with the latest photography tools of the trade to look at, use and buy.

I will be reviewing portfolios in the evening.  It is worth attending for the nominal fee and is a great networking event for photographers.

Want a running list of who has layoffs and who is closing their doors? Magazine Death Pool and Papercuts are two sites which list the losses in the magazine and newspaper industries respectively. You don’t even want to know how many freelance photographers can’t find work right now. The wedding photography business is full of both professional wedding photographers and photojournalists that brides could have them bid against each other for a lower rate. Sad, but true for working photographers today.

It is truly a buyer’s market and it will only get better for buyers in 2009. If you are a photo editor, you are probably getting great deals from outside photo vendors eating each other up. Just look at what happened to Jupiterimages which was the #3  photography vendor (soon to be owned by Getty Images still running in the #1 position). This is a business and it is not personal. Treat it that way and reap the rewards.

If you are a photographer working for newspapers or magazines, what are you doing about this situation right now? Well, you can’t do much to save the paper printing dinosaurs which publish outdated information each day, week or even a month after the fact. They will either become an online publication with very little printing in the future OR they will probably just die off with the rest of them. Amazingly, these publications will not be missed by the current online generation for very long. This is a matter of adapting to change, not resisting change. After all, advertisers are realizing this fact and giving print publications much less money.  Readers as well as advertisers want to be able to access more for less money and quicker. When is the last time you saw a print publication do that? Remind me, why do we need to print something today? Do we really need to hold a printed product in our hands in order to read it? Well, the same applies to printed photographs. This is the 21st century and we need to not only start living in it, but thriving in it. If you don’t keep up the times and technology, you risk being left with the outdated information…in the recycling bin.

If you get laid off, you could do nothing. Feel sorry for yourself. Fall into depression. Wonder “why me?” or “Why now?”. Drink your worries away each day. None of these are recommended.

What I do recommend is the following either before a layoff or after a layoff

• Realize that layoffs have nothing to do with you personally.  Focus on job searching and work on the following:

• Website. Do you have one? Does it have your current work and contact information displayed? Does anyone know about your website aside from your family and friends?
• Learn about new technologies, not just about the latest digital camera. The newest digital camera is just more outgoing money. No one will be hiring you based on the camera you have, but rather on the quality of your work.  There will be new professional camera every 18 months and new consumer camera every 6 months.  Learn about what is used after you photograph something instead. There will be another new of version Adobe Creative Suite every 18 months too. Do you really need the new features or is it just a new toy?
• Improve your workflow. It should take you less time to process your work after a photo shoot now that you are digital unless you don’t have the tools or don’t know how to use the tools you already have.
• Treat your photography like a business. If you sell your work or services as a photographer, this is a must if you plan to stay in business. Read the book by John Harrington
• Learn more about your trade such as lighting, posing for portraits and dealing with people as subjects and/or clients.
• Join an association or society which hold regular events you can attend. Go to the events and meet people you don’t know yet. Be social. If you aren’t social (beyond the bar), start now.
• Network. Have you networked with others photographers recently? How about people who need photographers aside from your employer, if you shoot for them?
• Promote yourself. What are your photographs doing right now? Are your photographs working for you or just sitting there collecting dust. What are you doing right now? When was the last time you entered a photo contest? Does anyone know about you as a photographer who could give you work? Are they in touch with you? Are you in touch with them?
• Show off your work. Get feedback. Meet people with similar interests or that need your help. It may mean getting work. You could be the ‘greatest photographer who ever lived’, but you will starve as photographer if you don’t show your work to anyone and promote yourself.
• Social Networking. Do know what this is? It’s another opportunity to promote yourself. Use social networking like Facebook, Linkedin groups, Twitter, Flickr and many others. These are all free!
• Share the knowledge. Be known as a resource to others.
• Refer others. Instead of trying to be a master of all trades, refer others who are much better at it than you are. They may return the favor. You could even ask for a referral fee, if the gig monetizes itself. They may buy you dinner too.
• Start a blog. Write about what you are passionate about and contribute to the blog regularly. If it is of interest to others, you may get sponsors.
• Don’t let grass grow under your feet. There is no job security in the 21st century. Believe it. Where will you be going to work if you lose your job tomorrow? Keep all your options open.