What does it take to tell a story?  A talented writer might tell you that all it requires is a pen and a piece of paper, but storytelling doesn’t come the same way to all of us.  

For me, as for many photographers, I like to have all of the elements of a story in front of me — visible, in front of my eyes.  Then I can assemble them to make the story I’m telling come to life.

I’ll give you an example of this. One day I found my father sitting at the kitchen table (one of the most creative places in any house) putting together a mood board of family photographs, carefully selected from a pile of old photos rescued from a closet. This little masterpiece, measuring 70 x 50 cm, now hangs on the kitchen wall.

When a guest visits the home, the host has all of the visual elements in front of him to tell the family’s story. The host is free to assemble, disassemble and reassemble the events and individuals pictured in whatever manner he chooses.

He might do this in a pedestrian way with no narrative thread: “This is my father Simon, and this is my grandfather Haroutyun, and this is my mother…”

Or he might, instead, introduce the images in a way that is compelling: “This is the visual story of a family that survived two genocides during the last century.”

As a photographer, you want to make and assemble your images in a way that achieves the latter.

The Importance of Preparation

You might think it would be easy, with digital cameras, to shoot all the elements you need to tell the story of an event. Certainly, overshooting has its appeal; after all, memory cards are cheap and batteries last a lot longer today.

The downside of overshooting, however, is that you have to spend a lot more time editing, trying to pick the right image out of gigabytes. And no matter how much you shoot, you can still miss something important — perhaps the crucial moment that summarizes it all, the keystone of your narrative arch.

That’s why the best storytellers plan their shoots carefully. Planning will prevent you from missing the climax: the exchange of the rings at a wedding, for example. It happens more often than you might imagine.

To prepare for an event and learn what narrative elements you will need to capture, and when and where they will happen, you should do whatever research you can on the Web in advance, as well as ask those familiar with the event and, of course, your client.

Becoming a Storyteller

When you create material for magazines, advertising campaigns or catalogues — or for your own portfolio — storytelling is vital to making compelling images. In my experience, there are five elements to creating a visual story:

1. The Message. Before you start, you must define what you wish to communicate. What does your client wish to achieve, and how do you plan to accomplish this?

2. The Plot. Now it’s time to write down your story, step by step, scene by scene. Whether in words, sketches or a storyboard, you don’t have to be Leonardo; what you write only has to be understood by you. A good story often can be told in three simple steps.

3. The Color Palette. Which colors best serve the story? Or would black and white be more appropriate?

4. The Photography. Here is where you paint with light to pull your vision together.

5. The Effectiveness. At the editing stage, sit down with your client to verify that the story is communicating the message intended. Now you have accomplished your mission.

We all live among stories. We listen to the news, read an article or a book, watch a movie. But we sometimes forget that we are storytellers, too — and that we must continually hone our ability to tell stories with images.

I’m a big fan of technology, and it’s easy to get swept up in the shiny new toys that the big camera companies roll out every year. I love the fact that I can now record video as well as stills from the same camera bodies, for example, and that the low light sensitivity of those bodies can produce amazing results without the digital noise we once had to work around.

But a few weeks ago, I read a quote that I thought applied well to photography: “It’s the archer, not the arrow.” I took that quote to heart, and decided to take a step back from my arrows and focus on the archery itself.

Shooting with a Holga

Here’s what I did: I got a cheap, plastic Holga camera and two rolls of film and conducted a fashion shoot on the rooftop of my studio.

From the moment I started photographing my model with 120 film, I felt a sense of excitement, and a bit of pressure. With each roll of film, I only had 12 shots, 12 chances to make it work, 12 frames to fill — without the ability to see through the lens.

That’s a lot different from an 8 or 16 gig compact flash card that might hold 800 raw files, and the ability to review every shot after you’ve taken it.

Feeling Giddy

I dropped off the film and had to wait overnight before I could get my negatives and proofs from the shoot; I had forgotten that sense of anticipation. As soon as my film was ready, I went back to the lab to pick everything up. I felt a little giddy waiting to see what was captured on the emulsion. In the end, I thought we created some unique-looking photos.

Film was and still is an amazing tool, but the point is that a photographer is more than the sum of his tools.

Try something for me: think about something you have been wanting or meaning to shoot. Now, go and do it — not with your go-to camera and lenses, but with an old 35mm body or a pinhole camera, something as different as you can find from what you normally use.

I guarantee this exercise will make you rethink the way you approach a shoot. At the very least, it will force you to slow down and think more about what you’re doing, versus shooting and chimping to see the results.

In a Black Star Rising post last month, Paul Melcher beseeched photojournalists to not settle for trite images of “dying Africans” and to instead seek to cover the continent in a richer, more well-rounded way. I couldn’t agree more.

And as a photographer based in South Africa, I have a suggestion for those media organizations that wish to portray Africa more accurately: hire local talent.

Parachuting In

The perfect opportunity is approaching. Next June, the world’s media will turn its attention to South Africa, host of the 2010 FIFA World Cup.

Beyond the action on the field of play, many publications will use the tournament as an occasion to examine other facets of African life. International photographers will arrive in force, and image syndication outlets and picture editors will compete to showcase the most compelling stories.

While I welcome the attention, I’ve found that foreign journalists and photographers often produce a slanted view of my homeland. Africa isn’t all about starving children, AIDS, dilapidated housing, and conflict — but all too often that is the story that the rest of the world sees.

Too often, big media organizations rely on parachuting the same big-name photographers into one part of the world and then another. This limits their capacity to offer a balanced, nuanced portrait of Africa.

Like a Local

Hiring locals to participate in the coverage — either independently or in tandem with foreign photographers and journalists — would help. No one, after all, knows a country like a local.

We know, for example, that the excitement surrounding the 2010 World Cup has been amazing. We’re seeing vast swathes of the country transformed in preparation for the event. We’re watching as colossal stadiums are constructed, jobs created, and communities benefit from new investment.

In other words, we know there are countless positive stories to be told. Foreign news organizations just have to look in the right places to find them — and that’s where local photographers can help.

One organization working to report on the World Cup from an African perspective is Twenty Ten. As its Web site states:

The Twenty Ten project is inspired by the 2010 FIFA World Cup and the media opportunities this has to offer. It will be the first time that the FIFA World Cup competition takes place on the African continent. Football plays a vibrant part in life in communities across the continent. Taking a cue from this, Twenty Ten aims to give African journalists a voice, both in Africa and worldwide, by offering them an opportunity to express their own views of African reality, as opposed to having to depend on foreign news organizations.

Another organization, African Pictures, looks to supply the media with content produced by Africans.

Telling Our Own Story

I understand the instinct of foreign media organizations to go with the tried and true in photographing major events like the World Cup. They think it’s safer because it’s the way they’ve always done things. They know “what to expect.”

But foreign photographers delivering what foreign editors expect is exactly why perceptions of Africa are so skewed, and why coverage of Africa is predictable. It’s time to let the locals participate in telling their own story to the world.

I’ve read articles by a number of photography business gurus arguing that if you want to make decent money from stock photos or prints, you need to find a niche that isn’t already saturated with images. They advise photographers to shoot model-released lifestyle photos or still lifes, for example, and to stay away from travel and nature — because everyone shoots travel and nature.

That might sound logical enough, but is it true? In four years of marketing my work, I have sold pictures through stock agencies of heavily photographed locations such as the Golden Gate Bridge, the Gateway Arch, the Mall of America, and the San Francisco skyline. And I don’t even spend a lot of time shooting iconic locations like these.

You know what I think? I think you can still make money selling the photos you want to shoot — if you know how to market yourself.

Here are five tips for selling your photos in any niche:

1. Keyword your images thoroughly.

I have looked at a lot of images on many different sites, and the one thing that amazes me is how poorly most photographers keyword their images. Take the Golden Gate Bridge, for example. If you only include the most obvious keywords — like the name of the bridge and the city — how can you expect anyone to find your images among the thousands on sites like Alamy, Corbis or Getty? I include more than 30 keywords on my Golden Gate Bridge images — including words like “iconic,” “landmark,” “sunsets,” “mountains,” “landscapes” and “coast.” That puts me ahead of the majority of photographers adding images to these sites.

2. Provide detailed caption information.

I’ve found that nature photographers often like to keep their specific locations secret, so they might label an image in general terms such as “Zeus’ Lightning Rod, Colorado Plateau.” Unfortunately, this is a good way to keep your images a secret from the public — because photo editors want details. You need to provide location specifics, as well as any relevant scientific information, if you expect to sell your work to textbooks or guide books, for example.

3. Focus on a niche within your niche.

I live in Southern California and have spent a lot of time photographing scenic locations in my area as if they were the Yosemite Valley Overlook. As a result, I have generated a healthy revenue stream from shoots that have cost me little in the way of travel costs. A recent print sale of Southern California scenic locations, for example, has netted me several thousand dollars.

My original motivation for focusing locally was pragmatic: I was out of school with not much money in the bank. I knew that photographers generally ignore the region — even though there are more than 15 million people here. That’s a nice market for prints and stock.

4. Optimize your Web site and make your archive available to search.

The Internet has opened up the photography market to new buyers around the world. People who haven’t traditionally purchased through photo agencies are now searching online for pictures — and are often buying them directly from photographers’ Web sites.

Most of the direct sales I’ve made in the past two years have involved the use of PhotoShelter at some point in the process. Usually the buyer finds my Web site, then searches through my archive. Or I’ll send a lightbox after some consultation and complete the sale off-site, negotiating via e-mail or phone. Customer service is the key to selling direct.

5. Protect your rights.

While the Internet offers new opportunities to market your work, it’s also made it easier for people to steal your images — so you have to take steps to protect them. If your photos are floating around in cyberspace without watermarking, or downloaded off some subscription plan, then you have lost the ability to manage the use of your work.

Even if you take precautions and license your photos on a rights-managed basis, however, people will sometimes use your images without permission. And in those cases, you need to stand up for yourself.

For example, the other day, I walked into a grocery store near my house and saw a large painted mural of one of my images. It had been painted to match my photo to the smallest of details. Given that I had never licensed the image, and that it shows up on the first page of Google Images for that location, I am pretty certain that this is an unauthorized commercial use of my image. I am still exploring my options on this one — but let’s just say that I plan to do something about it.

Editor’s note: Black Star Rising is pleased to introduce a new series of video blog posts, “Ask the Photo Business Coach,” featuring Beate Chelette. The high-energy entrepreneur and former Corbis executive has been profiled twice on this blog, once while with Corbis and again after leaving the company. Today, she is a successful consultant and author.

Do you have a question for “Ask the Photo Business Coach”? Please send it to beate@blackstar.com.

In the belt-tightening world of editorial photography, many media outlets now offer a photo credit, rather than monetary compensation, for the use of your photo. “It will be great advertising for your work,” they tell you, “and getting published by us will help you professionally.”

Should you buy this argument?

Here’s what I can tell you from my experience:

1. The vast majority of readers never look at photo credits. They glance at the photo and then jump over to read the story. So much for “great advertising.”

2. Editors generally don’t look at where you’ve been published, unless the publication is very prestigious. Assigning photo editors are more interested in the quality and breadth of your portfolio. They want to know if you are consistent, if you are dependable, if you can overcome obstacles to pull off a shoot. These things all mean far more than whether you have been published in a particular outlet.

Ultimately, the best way to help yourself professionally is to do what professionals do — get paid for your work.

In standard stock uses, a quarter-page photo in a small, regional publication should bring in enough for you to buy a nice, new iPod touch. And that’s worth a lot more than a photo credit.

Thanks, But No Thanks

Recently, an editor of a local magazine called asking to use my photos of a popular country music singer. I inquired as to the publication’s usage rates.

“We don’t pay for photography,” the editor said in a snotty, entitled tone.

“That’s nice,” I replied. “And I don’t give away my work for free.”

End of conversation.

Guess what? Five minutes later, the singer’s publicist called to apologize for the magazine’s rudeness. The publicist had attended the original shoot (which I’d done on assignment for another publication) and had recommended the editor contact me for use of my photos.

The publicist asked my fee and paid it, and the photos appeared in the magazine. In the end, I got a photo credit — and a check.

Stand Firm and Set Your Own Price

The lesson here is to stand firm. Don’t let publications walk all over you and use your work for nothing.

If you’re not getting paid, how are you different from the millions of hobbyists uploading their photos on Flickr and all over the Web? How do you plan to put food on the table?

Set pricing on your photos that includes usage terms — one-time, English-only, no Internet, and circulation size are good places to start. FotoQuote software is an excellent tool for pricing your photography, as is Jim Pickerell’s book, Negotiating Stock Photo Prices.

Remember: if your photos are good enough to be published, they are good enough for you to be paid for them.

If you teach, you’ve probably found yourself in this situation at one time or another: many of your students are taking your course because it is required, not because they have a burning interest in the subject matter or, for that matter, the instructor.

Here at the University of South Carolina’s School of Journalism and Mass Communications, one of the courses I teach is “Introduction to Visual Communications,” a course we require all journalism students to take. This is a survey course, with units on theory, history, design principles, typography, color, photography, publication design, advertising design, and Web design. In addition to participating in class discussions, the students are required to complete five InDesign assignments and work in a small group to complete a two-minute video highlighting one of the course topics.

Motivating the Disinterested Student

My students are drawn from across our four sequences: Advertising, Journalism, Public Relations, and Visual Communications. As a demonstration at the start of the semester on how to use a video camera, I had each of my students film one of their classmates answering this question: “Why are you taking this course?” Although a few said they wanted to learn about visual communications, most answered “Because it’s required.” Hmmm.

So here we are, nearing the end of the semester, discussing photography, my favorite topic. But how to get the students motivated? After all, they take photography for granted—pictures are easily made with a cell phone and can be placed within seconds on anyone’s Facebook page. My students, who are probably in their late teens and early 20s, can’t conceive of a time when making pictures was a difficult, skillful, and sometimes dangerous enterprise, let alone a time before photography even existed at all.

So how to convey the magic of what I consider to be the most magical of all the visual arts? Why should my students, who daily swim in a sea of visual images, have the slightest interest in learning about photographs made 10, 20, or 100 years before they were born? Or, to put the question differently, what value is there in teaching the history of photography—or any history, for that matter—to a generation that has been told since birth that it is the future that matters, that The Millennium Is the Message?

A Dose of History

I begin at the beginning, with the grainy, indistinct image on a metal plate that Nicephore Niépce captured in 1827 solely by the light of the sun acting on photosensitive chemicals. But this hardly looks like a real photograph—you might believe me if I told you it was an etching or a drawing.

Not so with the images created by Niépce’s partner, Louis Daguerre a decade or so later; these are the real thing, lifelike images of people made by light bouncing around inside a machine, with no human hand wielding a brush or stick of charcoal. Daguerreotypes prove to be an evolutionary dead-end—unique and fragile, still magic of course, but unable to be reproduced, hardly the precursor of the Kodak moment.

And then comes the Englishman William Henry Fox Talbot—inventor, observer of the heavens, mathematician, and decoder of ancient cuneiform writing from the Near East. It is Fox Talbot who creates modern photography with two brilliant breakthroughs: shortening the prohibitively long exposure times required by previous processes by means of developing the latent image; and creating the negative–positive process, whereby multiple prints could be made from a single paper original.

Photography and Travel

These are just names and processes, however. What gets me excited, and what I try to convey to my students, is this remarkable occurrence: within a few decades after the invention of photography, photographers were lugging their heavy cameras, fragile plates, and poisonous chemicals all around the world to make pictures. The churches of Rome, the pyramids of Egypt, the Taj Mahal, the Valley of the Yosemite! What on earth for? Because they were there.

It was the Age of Empire, and more often than not it was citizens of the imperial powers—usually British or French—doing the photographing. Until modern times, most people were poor, tied to the land, and didn’t stray too far from home. Travel was something for the well educated and the well-off. So although you may have read about the world beyond your town or village—perhaps you saw a painting or drawing—seeing far-off places for yourself was an elusive dream. Until photography.

Unlike other arts, the realism of photographs seemed indisputable, not prone to exaggeration, romanticism, or poetic license. So photography at its birth was intimately connected with travel, with the urge to visit far-off places and bring back visual evidence of their existence. This intimate connection between photography and travel has prevailed to this day—my students acknowledge this, and it helps provide a context for viewing travel images, both historic and modern.

Photography and War

Perhaps if photography and the wholesale slaughter we associate with modern warfare had not been born in the same century, their association would not have developed into the strong tie that binds them today.

The Crimean War, a murky mid-19th-century conflict in a remote area near the Black Sea, is perhaps best known as the setting of Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s poem “Charge of the Light Brigade”: “Half a league half a league, Half a league onward, in All in the valley of Death Rode the six hundred….” But Roger Fenton’s 360 photographs of the soldiers who fought and the landscape where they died are considered the first war photographs.

They were soon overshadowed, in both quantity and horror, by the thousands of Civil War images produced by Mathew B. Brady or those he supervised, including the great Timothy O’Sullivan, whose “A Harvest of Death” has become an iconic war image.

A few years ago I heard Harvard president Drew Gilpin Faust speak about the effect of the Civil War, which killed some 620,000 soldiers, on the American psyche. Her book This Republic of Suffering points out that, in terms of today’s population, the number of dead would be six million.

Photography created a visual record of this intense national trauma, and it continued to affect our collective consciousness as Americans began dying overseas in subsequent wars. The photographs and video footage of battles in Afghanistan my students see today trace their ancestry to what must seem to them like ancient imagery.

Photography and Social Injustice

There is debate about whether photographs of suffering spur us to action or desensitize us, but the linkage between photography and documenting social injustice is strong.

Jacob Riis, Lewis Hine, Dorothea Lange, and others showed us homegrown hardship in urban tenements and migrant labor camps. Photojournalists such as Margaret Bourke White and W. Eugene Smith spoke truth to power in far-flung corners of the globe.

The Belgian Congo provided the setting for Joseph Conrad’s 1902 novel, Heart of Darkness, which describes the horrors committed by colonialists seeking ivory and power in Africa. But Conrad’s work of fiction, based on his trip to the Congo, is eerily echoed in photographs from the same years of the very real atrocities perpetrated against the Congolese people.

We can trace a lineage from these photographs through the Great Depression, the Nazi death camps, the anticolonial struggles following World War II, the American Civil Rights movement, the environmental movement, famine and genocide in Africa, right up to today’s pictures that call our attention to hunger, illness, poverty, government ineptitude (or worse), and human misery.

There are many more links in this chain of text and context, which I will explore in a later column. Certainly photography and celebrity is one; perhaps you have others to suggest. In any event, by providing a robust contextual thread for the images I show in class, I hope my students will see these visual visitors from the past as something more than just boring old pictures.

(The following is excerpted from Winning Digital Photo Contests, a new book by Black Star Rising contributor Jeff Wignall.)

Getting your first close-up photograph of a wild animal is kind of like getting your first kiss; you’re often so flustered (not to mention grateful) at the opportunity and so satisfied by the conquest that you lose all critical perspective.

You’ve got the shot, and there’s no denying the evidence. But once the initial thrill has subsided, in order for your photography to grow you must apply a more discerning eye to your images, and find out how you can fine-tune the quality to a higher level.

Moving Beyond Shaky Hands and Sweaty Palms

The first set of criteria for masterful wildlife photos is, naturally, technical. Is the photograph perfectly sharp, or (as with that first kiss) did you get shaky hands and sweaty palms? Is the exposure dead-on? Did you have the white balance set correctly, and were you using the optimum ISO and file size?

For your photos to compete with photos from other more experienced wildlife shooters, they must be technically flawless. Anything less than a perfect execution gives a contest judge an excuse for moving on to the next image.

Just as important as technique, however, are aesthetics. Your animal photos must be beautiful. Even though your subject is probably moving, wary, far away, and just as nervous as you are, you have to find a way to slow your pulse enough to compose an interesting, if not elegant image. You must be hyper-aware of the animal’s environment and its visual surroundings so that you can quickly — almost instinctively — design an image that is not only a great natural history example but a classic, winning photograph.

Wildlife Portrait Checklist

Here is a checklist of important considerations:

• Is the background simple and unobtrusive?
• Does the animal’s pose look natural and refined?
• Have you restricted depth of field in order to isolate the subject?
• Is the animal positioned in the frame in an interesting way?
• Does it seem alert and attentive to its surroundings?

Very often, creating a beautiful wildlife portrait means patiently waiting for the perfect moment — and giving up shots even if the animal is close enough for an acceptable documentary photo.

In his notes for this superb photograph of an elk shot in Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park [above], photographer Richard Hahn lists these factors that made him shoot at this precise moment: “Bright overcast sky, calm winds, no harsh shadows, animal in perfect position, and in a good pose.” Though he shot 32 images of the animal that day, he says that only two were what he calls “special” images.

And it’s the special images that you’re after. So while it’s exciting to get close to a wild animal — especially one as beautiful as this elk — it’s vital that you bring all of your photographic skills to the table. Do that and judges will find it impossible to turn away from your photos.

Not long ago, e-mail marketing in the form of e-bulletins and HTML-based solicitations appeared to be a better choice for photographers than printed direct mail. After all, they were comparatively inexpensive to send, and they arrived right where your prospects would be sure to see them: on their computer screens.

Lost Amid the Spam

Unfortunately, too much of a good thing ends up not being so good — and unsolicited marketing e-mails now account for about 95 percent of all e-mails sent, thanks to spammers who blast out automated messages by the millions. That means that as well thought out as your e-bulletin might be, there’s a high likelihood that’s it’s getting lost amid the spam.

I’ve just gone into my computer’s junk folder, for example, and it’s full of e-bulletins from photographers and their agents. Indeed, the vast majority of unsolicited e-bulletins I receive are caught by my spam filter.

Of the e-bulletins that do make it to my inbox, none display photographic images unless I click the “Download pictures” button — which I might do, but if deadlines are looming I might also hit “delete” in my elusive quest for a tidy inbox. That would seem to be particularly concerning for photographers, whose images are their key selling point.

I’m not suggesting that photographers shouldn’t send e-bulletins. On the contrary, if you are tracking your results and they are working for you, go for it. But I suspect that this marketing tactic isn’t nearly as effective as it once was.

Back to the Future with Direct Mail

Old-fashioned direct mail, by contrast, may be making a comeback. I, at least, have noticed more of it lately.

My reaction to, and interaction with, direct mail from photographers is very different from my quick dismissal of most e-mails. At the very least, I see — and often notice — the sender’s photographs. I also may take note of the photographer’s attention to detail, choice of paper and the print quality of the mailing. It tells me a lot more about the sender than an e-mail would.

In fact, on my desk as I write this, I have four pieces of print from photographers. The first is a relatively simple card, showing three images from the photographer’s portfolio on one side. The unusual element is the card’s panoramic, 297mm x 99mm format.

The second is an invitation to an exhibition, printed in two-colors on very heavy kraft board with no photography at all.

The third is a small A5-sized booklet of photographs housed in a paper slipcase.

The final one is a small A5 photographic print on wonderfully heavy paper, signed and numbered on the front with the contact details on the reverse.

Marketing That Worked — on Me

I liked each of these contrasting mailings for different reasons. All have remained on my desk because I noticed them and they made an impact on me.

And most importantly for the photographers who sent them, they worked. I’ve already commissioned a couple of the photographers for assignments.

So if your e-mail campaign isn’t working for you, consider direct mail as an alternative. And if your e-mail campaign is working for you, consider it as an addition to the mix.

(The following is excerpted from Winning Digital Photo Contests, a new book by Black Star Rising contributor Jeff Wignall.)

When visiting a country where religion is a visible part of daily life, you’ll find that pictures of religious activities reveal cultural insights better than photographs of landmarks and landscapes. Rituals, festivals, and people dressed in religious garb personalize faiths otherwise unfamiliar to us.

In terms of photo contests, pictures like this are uncommon and always interesting, so they are well worth pursuing.

Be Tactful and Show Respect

You must be tactful when photographing religious events; exercise discretion and always show respect. Even at large public events, like the colorful shot of the Chhath Festival photographed by Indranil Sengupta beside the Taj Mahal in India [below], you have to use diplomacy and always defer to the spiritual nature of the subjects or activities.

Ask someone at your hotel if it’s acceptable to photograph the event, and even then, follow the lead of others around you. If you see your subjects taking pictures of one another or if other tourists are shooting, the odds are that photography is accepted.

Although language may be a barrier, by offering a warm smile and pointing to your camera, you’re likely to get permission to take someone’s photo — or it may get you waved off and then at least you’ll know.

Ask Permission — and Smile!

The worst thing to do in a situation like this is to try to be surreptitious. As you can probably imagine, strangers with cameras at religious events or at holy sites could easily be viewed with mistrust or suspicion, and at the very least, if you shoot at the wrong moment or against someone’s wishes, you might be viewed just as another ugly tourist.

If you want to photograph inside a church or mosque and you aren’t sure about the rules for picture taking, it helps to have a local guide secure permission for you — although most houses of worship post rules about photography in multiple languages. Or you might just ask a friend (or a concierge) to write you a simple note that asks permission in the local language.

Taking these extra steps can gain you access to photographic subjects that your competition will assume to be forbidden. In this way you will differentiate your photos from the masses, and the judges will reward your dedication to (and interest in) the subject.

Also, if you are working from a distance or with a long lens, as photographer Dilip Kumar Ganguly was in his shot of two young lamas [above], it’s best to be very obvious with your camera. It’s not likely that those two happy faces would object to being photographed, but being up front will make you feel more confident and your smile might even help start a conversation or get you invited to areas that might otherwise be off limits.

Photographers often ask me which camera or lens I think is best. “Would past masters have used Photoshop and digital cameras?” they wonder. “Should ‘real’ photographers choose Leica, Canon or Nikon?”

I’ve learned in my career that those aren’t the right questions to ask. It’s not about the brand of camera, or the method of making a print. It’s about the journey — the many doors into people’s lives that photography can open for you.

Defining My Job

Over the years, I have worked with many different cameras from all the main manufacturers. I have worked in wet trays developing both color and black-and-white film and prints. I have planted myself in front of computer screens editing digital images. All of that is well and good — but none of it defines my job.

What defines my job are the people I meet, and the places my camera has taken me.

I have had the opportunity to peer into the lives of people ranging from rich to poor, famous to anonymous, powerful to impotent. My interactions with all of them — talking and sharing on assignment — are what have made my career a rewarding experience.

Even after all these years, I still get butterflies and a feeling of excitement before every shoot. This feeling comes from wondering where the day will lead — what new discoveries I’ll find. In what other career can you go from covering Paul McCartney one day to the manufacturing process of a car’s steering strut the next?

Enjoying the Unexpected

Photography opens magical, and unexpected, doors if you are open to walking through them. I’ve learned that going into a shoot with preconceptions is a sure way to miss great images.

Yes, you should think through the shoot and discuss what’s needed with the assigning editor or art director. However, that should never limit your vision. I always talk with my subjects and try to understand where they’re coming from. I never view them as human props — a means to a photographic end — but as people to befriend and portray in a realistic light.

By taking this approach, I’ve found that assignments that might have seemed boring at the outset turned into some of my most engaging and memorable.

Photography has sent me on hikes through the Linville Gorge, walking around the top of the Georgia Dome before the roof was installed, shooting from the sidelines of the World Series and Super Bowl. It also has sent me to small towns across the South, into people’s homes and small local businesses.

Never once while on these adventures did I stop and think, “I wish I had a Leica (or Nikon or Canon) camera.”

So stop worrying about which brand is best — and start using your camera to find out what life is like on the other side of the shutter.

I’ve spent some time over the past couple of weeks looking at photographers’ portfolios in search of new talent for upcoming projects. I started my search online; then, once I had a short list of photographers whose work I liked, I arranged individual meetings to discuss their work in more detail and review their print portfolios.

Through this process, I was struck by a basic difference between print and online portfolios. Print portfolios, on the whole, are similar in format and presentation. Usually, the portfolio is either book-style with some elegant Helvetica on the cover indicating the photographer’s name, or the print-box-style contained within an outer case. Both styles include prints that vary in technique and size, as one would expect from individual tastes and preferences — but overall, a consistent approach.

The same can’t be said for online portfolios. And this can present challenges in fairly judging the talent and experience of different photographers.

Getting to the Point

I am not suggesting that there should be a single template for photographers’ Web sites, or that they should simply mimic the functionality of a print portfolio. On the contrary, Web sites enable photographers to communicate in a much fuller way with their audiences — showing not only their work, but also something about themselves as individuals. This is invaluable to anyone considering commissioning the photographer.

However, if the Web site makes viewing a portfolio difficult — and a surprising percentage of the sites I looked at did — then the photographer is missing the forest for the trees.

Yes, your Web site’s design says something about you as a creative professional. But ultimately, I’m not hiring a Web designer; I’m hiring a photographer. So more than anything else, your site needs to be coherently organized and easily navigated.

Value in Consistency

Guess what? I don’t have time to chase a small, spherical, lime-green object around the screen with my cursor to access your next photograph. I’m sure your designer told you it was cool and edgy — but it just cost you a potential client. And you can bet I’m not the only one.

First and foremost, commissioners want to review your work — quickly and efficiently. Some of the better sites I saw used inexpensive, off-the-peg templates such as Apple’s iWeb, which allowed me to easily view the photographer’s images.

If you choose a custom-built site, I’d encourage you to consider your site’s design in relationship to the other marketing materials you produce, including your print portfolio. Having a clean, consistent look that communicates your brand is far more effective than throwing in the kitchen sink simply because you can.

As media organizations continue to trim staff positions, they are hiring contractors to do more of their photography work. For laid-off staff photographers, this presents an opportunity — if you know how much to charge for your services.

So, how should former staffers determine their value as contractors? Here are four simple steps to calculating an appropriate rate:

1. Start with your hourly pay rate at your last staff position. Most ex-staffers are looking to be compensated for contract work at a rate that equates to their former salary level — which is fine. Let’s say your former salary was $50,000 per year. Take 52 weeks, multiply it by five days a week, and you arrive at 260 days. Divide the $50,000 by 260 and you’re at $192 a day, or a rate of $24 per hour.

2. Bump up the rate to factor in paid days off. Think about it: did you actually work 260 days per year as a salaried employee? Probably not — because when you were on staff, you received vacation days, sick days, holidays, even training days. These might have added up to, say, nine weeks where you were paid, but didn’t actually work. So let’s take those 45 days and subtract them from the 260 days in Step 1 to arrive at the actual number of days you worked annually for your last employer — in this case, 215 days. Divide the $50,000 by 215 and your asking price has increased to $233 a day, or $29 per hour.

3. Add in health insurance and other non-monetary compensation. Since you are self-employed now, your former company is no longer paying for your health, disability and life insurance. They are no longer contributing a 401(k) match. They are no longer providing training and the equipment that you use in your job. What are these benefits worth? The Contract Employee’s Handbook offers a ballpark figure of $35,000 a year. Take that $35,000 in compensation, divide it by 215, and you’re at $163, or a rate of $20 per hour. Add that to the $29 per hour in Step 2 and you’ve arrived at a contract rate of $49 per hour.

4. Include a risk premium. When you are a contractor, you are not guaranteed the next day’s work like you were when you were an employee. You are taking on this risk to provide the company that contracts you with financial flexibility — which has value to them. So add a premium of 10-12 percent to your rate for this. For the contractor who had earned $50,000 as a staffer, this would increase your equivalent hourly rate to $55 per hour.

And that’s your final rate.

As you probably surmised, there’s a quicker way to arrive at this calculation. Here it is:

(Previous Salary + Non-Monetary Compensation)
/(Actual Work Hours Per Year)
+ 10-12% Risk Premium
= Hourly Contract Rate

I did the calculation the way I did, however, to make an important point.

You would be amazed how many photographers, who made $50,000 per year in their staff positions, are charging $24 per hour (or something like it) and don’t realize that they’ve cut their pay rate by more than half!

All because they’re not doing the math.

When people started blogging a few years ago, it was mostly because they loved doing it. Now, in many cases, it’s a box to check off on your online marketing plan. Even many photographers who enjoy blogging wonder if the effort is worth it with all the other demands on our time.

With this in mind, I’ve compiled seven tips for ensuring your blog is worth the effort that a good blog requires — helping you build your personal brand and grow your photography business.

1. Write posts to encourage discussion. I wrote a post sometime back about the most influential nature photographers of all time. After writing the post, I started a discussion thread on a popular nature photography forum. This led to other photographers starting discussions on other forums. Ultimately, my post was referenced on Outdoor Photographer magazine’s Web site and a number of other sites. This wasn’t because I wrote the greatest blog post ever; it was because my post began a discussion.

2. Network on other photography blogs. Have you ever been at a party where you didn’t know anyone — so you stood in a corner by yourself for an hour? That was a waste of an hour, and the time you spend on your blog is also wasted if you don’t network on its behalf. That means you have to get out there and participate in other blogs — leaving comments, linking back, and so forth. This will encourage the people you interact with to check out your blog in return. And guess what? You’ll have a good time and learn a few things, too. Just remember to be yourself.

3. Integrate your blog with social networks. Getting involved in sites like Twitter, Facebook and Digg, as well as niche forums, is a great way to seed links and draw eyeballs back to your blog. Install relevant widgets and badges on your blog, too — Twitter feeds, Yelp (especially for travel photographers), Amazon book lists, and so forth. You want to meet your audience where they are, and engage them on as many levels as possible.

4. Tie your online and offline marketing efforts. One reason that photographers like Chase Jarvis, David Hobby and David Alan Harvey have huge blog followings is that they are visible personalities offline, too. For example, they speak before actual, in-person audiences of real people! For your blog to be worth the effort, it can’t operate in a vacuum. You have to tie it to what you’re doing when you’re not on the computer.

5. Don’t shy away from posting video. Vincent Laforet became a household name almost overnight when he posted his “Reverie” video prior to the release of the Canon 5D Mark II. The chances of the rest of us receiving that sort of visibility may be relatively low, but video can certainly be a great way to get your name out there. Be sure to watermark or brand your videos so that when people embed them on their sites, people know how to find you.

6. Apply your creativity to the medium. You became a photographer to express your visual creativity. If you can get past seeing blogging as an item on your marketing checklist, you have an opportunity to really express yourself in this medium. Some of the best photography blogs have been created by individuals who have no interest in selling their photography. They do it because they have a passion for it.

7. Promote yourself (just not shamelessly). Many bloggers these days are doing it, at least in part, because of the marketing benefits. But your efforts to build your blog through online networking will backfire if you promote yourself too transparently. The same goes for search-engine optimization (SEO). Yes, you can help more people find your site through Google if you use keywords — e.g., “Southern California nature photographer” — on your site. But if you use so many keywords to promote your business that you forget to provide content that reads naturally and enjoyably, you’re just wasting your time.

No one should expect privacy if they are out and about in a public place. That means that everyone is fair game to be photographed on a public street and in open areas like a public park.

But defining “public” can sometimes be tricky. And even if you technically have the right to take someone’s photo, this doesn’t necessarily protect you from, say, a punch in the nose.

So here are seven tips for taking photos in public places legally and safely:

1. Don’t look or act like a stalker.

Take a look at yourself in the mirror. Could you be mistaken for a stalker? Do you tend to frighten small children? If so, you might want to put on a nice pair of slacks and run a comb through your hair before venturing out with your camera.

Always carry yourself like a professional. And never conceal yourself to take pictures. Be quiet and unobtrusive, but stand out in the open. If someone makes eye contact with you or asks what you’re doing, tell them.

Carry business cards and hand them out when you’re questioned. This will put your subjects at ease about your intentions.

2. Ask for the subject’s name and/or a model release — after taking the picture.

If my subjects are doing something animated and fun but not embarrassing, I will always take the picture first. I love capturing spontaneous expressions, and asking permission first usually ruins the moment. My subjects will be self-conscious after I interrupt.

I do typically ask for permission after taking the photo, however. Legally, this is not required — but practically speaking, you can avoid some hassles.

Newspapers require their photographers to get the names of the people they photograph. This serves as implicit consent for the newspaper to run the picture — even if no such consent is required. It’s like when a reporter asks, “Can I quote you on that?”

It’s also a good idea to ask your subject to sign a model release (perhaps in exchange for an 8 x 10 print). A model release is not required unless you intend to use the photo for commercial purposes, such as in an advertisement, but it’s always a good idea to get one to cover yourself.

I photographed this elderly gentleman at a public park in Kowloon, Hong Kong. I smiled at him, gestured that I wanted to take his picture, and he obliged.

3. Ask a parent’s permission before photographing children.

Seeing a stranger taking pictures of their children freaks parents out. If you aren’t sensitive to their fears, you could end up having a nice chat with a police officer.

Before I photograph a child, I look around to see if I can figure out who the mother or father is. I approach the parent and explain why I want to take their child’s picture. Then I hand them a business card.

If it will allay their fears and put them at ease, I will even suggest they grab a picture of me with their cellphone.

Why not? If I want to take a picture of their child, the least I can do is allow them to take a picture of me.

4. Don’t make assumptions about couples.

Couples are often easy subjects to photograph in public. Affectionate couples who are “in love” can be so into each other that they don’t notice you, so you can capture their spontaneous displays of emotion.

Intimate images of couples holding hands or kissing, for example, can make for romantic silhouettes. And silhouettes are safe to shoot because you don’t need to show any faces.

But whether you plan to include the subjects’ faces or not, be warned: Things are not always what they seem, and you need to be careful.

Just because both parties are wearing wedding bands, that doesn’t mean they are married to each other. This can make Romeo a little sensitive — even violent — if he spies a photographer out of the corner of his eye.

I can tell you from my years of hunting for newspaper feature photos in public parks, this scenario is not as uncommon as you might think. More than a few times, I’ve had to sheepishly walk away after thinking I scored a wholesome image of a loving couple enjoying a beautiful day outdoors.

By the way, if a couple is sitting in a parked car, don’t even attempt to sneak a picture of them. They aren’t in the open, and it’s debatable whether they are in public.

I captured these ladies laughing out loud as they waited to cross a street in Medina, Ohio.

5. Remember, not every place where people congregate is public.

Many people think of malls as public places, but they are privately owned — even if they are open-air malls or shopping centers. When I worked as a newspaper photographer, I used to carry a little point-and-shoot camera that I would use if there was breaking news inside a mall. It allowed me to be low-key and stay under the radar of mall security.

But unless you specifically need to take pictures at a mall for your project, I’d avoid them, along with other privately owned venues.

6. Long lenses can take the “public” out of public places.

A public place like a sidewalk becomes a little less public when you pull out a long lens. If you use the lens to look into a yard or over a high fence, for example, you could be running afoul of the law.

Paparazzi get away with what they do partly because they are tracking celebrities; don’t try their approach with non-public figures. And even laws protecting celebrities against the paparazzi are tightening.

7. Do take no for an answer.

If your subjects are obviously agitated by your presence and tell you to get lost, move on. It’s not worth being hauled away in handcuffs for a picture.

Police officers aren’t lawyers. They might be more inclined to arrest you than to listen to your lecture on the First Amendment.

I do not want to see another photo essay, multimedia presentation, or visual of any kind on the subject of dying Africans. Never, ever again. Enough.

I understand that these images can be compelling. I understand that the photographers seem to care. But at this point, the harm done by such photos outweighs the good.

Blood, Despair and War

In no small part because of the documentary photography we see from Africa, Americans have developed a distorted perception of this wonderful continent. Not every country in Africa is at war. Nor is every African an orphan dying of AIDS or malnutrition. Nor do all Africans live in broken-down shacks, wearing nothing more than ripped jeans.

Unfortunately, too many in our industry believe that “serious” photojournalism should focus on blood, decay, despair and war. This belief is perpetuated by photo festivals like Visa pour l’Image and others. This year’s event at Perpignan celebrated photographs featuring more violence and gore than a Tarantino movie.

And for this kind of photojournalism, Africa has proven a convenient feeding ground.

Although most of these images do not lie, together they do not tell the truth. They do not present a complete picture of Africa, or anything close to it. Their effect is the equivalent of putting a loupe on a beautiful dress to highlight its one tear, ad infinitum.

The NGO Influence

Beyond the biases about what “serious” photojournalism is or should be, there is a business explanation for what’s going on here. More and more of the documentary photography we see these days comes from NGOs, rather than the editorial press.

Rich people give money to NGOs, which then hire photographers to document their work. And because these organizations operate in the poor, war- and disease-stricken areas of Africa, that is what we see from NGOs. As international photojournalism from the editorial press continues to dwindle, NGO photojournalism may soon be all we see of Africa.

Just imagine what your perception of the United States would be if all you saw were images of 9/11, Katrina, crime-plagued ghettos and nothing else. Would you ever consider coming here for a vacation?

A Perverse Playground

Africa, or at least its despair, has become a perverse playground for too many photojournalists. It’s become a place to earn your merit badge as a documentary photographer. And so we get the same photo essays and multimedia presentations repeated over and over again, to the saturation point.

Interestingly, however, most of these merit-badge projects can only be found online today. Magazines won’t publish them even if they are technically brilliant; the editors, like their readers, are fed up — bored.

By settling for tired cliches rather than searching for richer realities, photojournalists are not only distorting audience perceptions; they are ultimately chasing away the audience.

So please, no more images of half-naked, dying soldiers covered with flies under an imponderable sun.

No more pictures of critically malnourished 3-year-olds staring mournfully into the camera.

No more photos of Kalashnikov-toting tweens walking barefoot on dirt pathways amid the empty savanna.

At this point, all a photojournalist does by taking such photos is to make Americans yawn and turn the other way.

Instead, make us hope. Make us see the diversity of Africa’s humanity. Make us empathize and connect. Make us want to get involved.

In my previous “Eye on Image-Making Column,” I began a series about business planning by writing about the importance of having a mission statement for your business. A mission statement is typically the first part of any business plan — it tells the reader what products or services you offer, who your target clients are, and who is doing similar work, i.e., your competition.

The next part of a business plan consists of a marketing strategy and a resume. Your marketing strategy answers the following question, in the words of Seattle-based travel photographer Cliff Hollenbeck: how are you going to get your images, your ideas, and yourself in front of the people who buy the kind of work you do? Your resume provides concise documentation of your professional career to date.

Marketing Strategy

Before deciding on an appropriate marketing strategy for your business, you should revisit your list of target clients. Notice the word “people” in Hollenbeck’s question. If you are a freelance photojournalist who wants to get assignments from Time and National Geographic, you need to discover the names and contact information for the individuals within these organizations who are responsible for hiring freelancers. The same is true if you are a corporate photographer hoping to shoot for Apple and Intel.

This discovery process may take many long hours of going through magazines, surfing the Internet, and dialing for dollars, i.e., telephoning businesses and corporations. However, once you go through this process of qualifying your list of target clients — i.e., making sure the people on your list are actual buyers of the types of images you create — you have a gold-mine’s worth of information from a marketing standpoint. Now it’s time to begin extracting the wealth.

There are many possible ways to reach your target clients — to present them with your images, your ideas, and (hopefully) yourself. Marketing makes heavy demands on both your time and your money, so you don’t want to throw either away.

The best way to decide on an appropriate marketing strategy is to engage in a bit of brainstorming: get lots of ideas on paper and then rank them in terms of feasibility and effectiveness. You want your marketing strategy to be both feasible and effective. In other words, the strategy needs to be something you are able to do — in terms of time and money. And once you carry out your strategy, the result should be more assignments for your business.

Tailor-Made Strategy

So how will you be able to rank your marketing strategy in terms of feasibility and effectiveness? It’s important to realize that, when it comes to marketing, no single approach is best — your strategy needs to be tailor-made. In other words, what works for me won’t necessarily work for you, and what gets you assignments from one type of client won’t necessarily get you assignments from a different type of client.

In trying to determine the feasibility and effectiveness of your marketing strategy, here are some questions to consider:

• What media do your target clients routinely use?
• Which trade and professional organizations do they belong to?
• Does your marketing strategy include opportunities for informal person-to-person contact, i.e., networking?
• How do your target clients find all the other vendors and suppliers they buy from?
• If your clients rely primarily on referrals and word-of-mouth to find vendors and suppliers, what can you do to get on their “A” list?
• Why does your chosen marketing strategy seem right for your target clients?
• Will your marketing strategy help get your images, your ideas, and yourself in front of your target clients?

Be as specific as possible. For example, if you plan to use the Web for marketing your business, how will you drive your target clients to your site, and what will they see when they get there? What will entice them to contact you for an assignment?

If you plan to buy print advertising space, what publications will you advertise in and why? How will you assess the results, given that print advertising is expensive and may take repeated insertions over a long time period to succeed. If you plan to use direct mail, what can you do to avoid having your mailers end up in the “round file” with the junk mail?

Your Resume

Obviously, as an image-maker, your primary sales tool will be your portfolio. However, a resume is an essential part of your business plan for two reasons. First, it gives the reader of your plan, such as a banker or potential investor, a concise snapshot of your professional career. Second, it lets you see at a glance what you have accomplished over the years.

But a resume doesn’t have to be merely a listing of work history, education, awards, and so forth. In fact, some experts recommend replacing this traditional type of resume with one centered around your business skills and achievements. For example, instead of “Owner, Sally Smith Photography, 1990–present,” you might instead list your photographic skills and achievements thus:

Skills
• Ability to direct large productions involving models and crew to create stunning still and video images for advertising and corporate use.
• Expertise in all aspects of pre- and post-production, including location scouting, casting, set design and construction, digital editing, and Photoshop retouching.

Achievements

• Created more than 100 print advertisements for clients such as Apple, Intel, Wells Fargo, and United Airlines.
• Produced more than a dozen corporate videos for use in trade shows, sales presentations, and employee training.
• Directed the development of an online archive of stock photography and video clips easily accessed by clients worldwide.

See how that puts the most important information up front? Below these headings you can then include your work history, education, awards, etc.

Note the use of “action verbs” such as “created,” “produced,” and “directed,” in the achievements section — these verbs convey a sense of vigor and keep your resume from sounding like “I did this, and then I did that.” Other useful action verbs include “designed,” “organized,” “prepared,” and “planned.”

This type of resume is well suited to creative professionals, because it emphasizes what you can do and what you have done, not merely where you’ve worked and what schools you’ve attended. For more resume tips, check out How To Write a Resume.net and JobStar.

Future columns in this series will deal with sales techniques and financial planning. As always, I welcome your input. Stay tuned!

The following is excerpted from Winning Digital Photo Contests, a new book by Black Star Rising contributor Jeff Wignall.

A contest is a contest is a contest, right? Well, yes and no. Yes, they are all about judging photographs based on creativity, technical merit, and relevance to the contest themes. But different types of contests have different technical standards and different submission methods. It’s important that you match your images to the type of contest you’re entering.

With magazine contests, for example, your images will have to meet much higher reproduction standards — typically high-resolution image files of 300 ppi at the printed dimensions with minimal post-processing enhancements. Online contests have much lower reproduction standards and can handle more extreme enhancements (like excessive color saturation).

Also, by their very nature, some contests offer a lot more chances to win. Online picture-of-the-day contests, for instance, pick at least 365 winners a year; an annual magazine competition might only choose a handful of prize-winning photos.

Online Picture of the Day (POTD)

These contests are the simplest to enter, generally not too technically demanding (at least in terms of reproduction quality), and they offer the highest odds of winning. Entering them is very simple: typically you just upload a screen-resolution (72 ppi) image through a very basic interface, and you’re entered. Virtually all POTD contests are free, though some may require membership, either free or paid, in the host site.

Often POTD-winning photos are subsequently advanced to a higher level of competition — a picture-of-the-week or picture-of-the-month. In fact, some contests randomly choose the daily pictures out of all the submissions that day; only then are they reviewed for weekly and monthly prizes by human eyes.

Don’t let the thought that a computer is picking your winning POTD photo discourage you from entering, though, because a win is a win is a win in terms of getting your photo recognized; and it still has to compete to move up through the ranks.

With some POTD contests, it’s not at all clear how the daily images are chosen, so it’s worth reading site forums or FAQs to find out more.

Peer-Review & Voting Contests

Several websites base awards on the votes of fellow site members. Entries rise in the standings as they gather more votes; when the voting period ends, those with the highest number win.

Some competitions have rather complex voting mechanisms where votes from individual photographers are weighted by their particular standing on the site — usually based on how many contests they’ve won themselves. A good example of this type is DailyAwards.com, where all winning images are decided by member voting. The judging is a somewhat complicated procedure at first glance, so it takes a few reads to get the rules down.

One gentle warning about these voting sites is that, as a result of the cold, impersonal nature of the online world, the voting can range from warm and fluffy, to cool and distant, to downright sadistic. These sites tend to attract photographers with strong opinions, little shyness about expressing themselves, and thick skins. On the other hand, sites like these also tend to attract photographers of very high skill levels. (You’d better be pretty good yourself if you’re going to do any trash talking, right?)

If you like to have your photos critiqued by others, then voting sites might be for you. The best of these contests will inevitably make you a better photographer. In truth, because many of the contests do weight the voting in favor of photographers who have proved their photographic worth, both criticism and praise is usually genuinely and generously guided.

Basically, while your grandmother (and your cat) may love your pictures, regardless of their genuine creative quality, you can count on other photographers to point out your failings—and your successes — without inhibition or reservation. So be brave, dive in, and you may find yourself being praised for your improvements on a regular basis.

State Tourism Contests

Tourism contests exist in both the online and print world. They can be seasonal, annual, or ongoing. The great thing about travel contests is that they help you focus and narrow down your pool of potential photos. Instead of poring over the thousands of nice images in your collection, you have to restrict yourself to your Maine vacation photos, for example.

I love tourism contests because they provide a bit of mental and creative stimulus for me when I’m planning a new trip, even if I have no intent to actually enter the contests. Knowing that the state of Maine, for example, has a seasonal online competition is something I keep in mind when I’m photographing a lighthouse after a dusting of fresh snow.

How would other photographers approach this? How would my photos stand up to photographers who actually live in Maine? It’s a good mental nudge.

The important thing about taking photos for regional contests is to keep good notes on where you shot the photos (your camera’s metadata will keep track of when, in case it happens to be a seasonal contest).

It’s really helpful, for example, if you photograph a moose in a river in Maine, to be able to narrow down the location to “Moose in bog in Rangeley, Maine.” (And trust me, if you hang out in Rangeley, you will find yourself some good moose photo-ops.)

Magazine Contests

These contests, especially from legendary journals like Smithsonian and National Geographic, are at the zenith of photo competition. Often the main allure is the prize of publication in the magazine itself. And while getting published is an exciting (and sometimes life-changing) reward, most magazines contests also offer the best material prizes.

The competition, as you can well imagine, is brutal in such contests. Let’s face it; if you’re competing for publication in National Geographic and a trip to an exotic destination, you’re going to be butting elbows with some fiercely talented competitors.

From a creative perspective, that’s a good thing, because it forces you to improve your own game. And that, ultimately, is what entering contests should be about: not just showing your best work, but being pushed to a whole new level.

Here, more than in any other type of contest, it’s imperative that you follow the rules closely, review previous years’ winners, and enter images of superb technical quality. In particular, it’s important to review and meet the magazine’s print publication standards in terms of sharpness and resolution.

If you are entering a low-resolution image online but are required to submit a high-resolution image for publication, be sure that you have an exact match at 300 ppi (standard offset print resolution). And protect that image with your life; back it up at least once, preferably multiple times.

Local Contests

Local newspapers and community organizations are another great place to find contests. To promote community spirit, local contests often culminate in an exhibit of winning pictures.

Since most of these contests are run by local volunteers (or the editors of the local paper), you may have to submit your entries as prints, as opposed to digital files. That means your ability to make high-quality prints is important.

Some local contests are created to publicize a local park or historic site, and if you happen to live in that area, you have the advantage of being able to visit at different times of year, in lots of different weather and lighting conditions.

If you’re an aspiring professional photographer, entering local contests is a good career move since you’ll be showing off your best work to your community’s editors, business owners, and civic leaders.

I got a lot of my early photo assignments based on having my winning photos published in local newspapers — and 30 years later, some of those people are still my clients.

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”

– Thomas Edison

I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that the media industry is having a difficult time at present, even without the global recession. The digital revolution, while opening up exciting new channels of communication, is also rendering some of our pre-existing business models obsolete and forcing the redefinition of others.

Working in the business, it’s easy to get despondent about all this — because change is hard. But once you move beyond denial to acceptance, it can also be energizing. We are entering an era in which the photographer and art director can explore many more creative opportunities and visual solutions, no longer limited to just print or television.

Not all of our explorations will end in success. Like Edison, we may fail 10,000 times for every victory. But there is a thrill in the challenge.

The Video Opportunity

As an art director, I can certainly envision photographers utilizing their skills across a number of emerging sectors to broaden their commercial base and fill the voids left by declines elsewhere.

For example, it was predicted at the recent Online News Association conference in San Francisco that by 2012, 95 percent of all online content will be video. Even if that figure proves optimistic, that is certainly the direction we are heading. And that presents opportunities for photographers.

A photographer assigned to produce a portrait for a magazine, for example, could easily produce a short sound-bite video of the portrait subject to accompany the story online. Using a camera like the video-enabled Canon 5D, there would be no need to bring additional equipment.

Taking advantage of this access gives the photographer an inside track as the market for online video continues to grow.

Annotated Portraits — and Other Ideas

But the opportunities go beyond video. Consider a recent portrait by photographer Jonathan Worth of science fiction writer and Boing Boing co-editor Cory Doctorow.

Jonathan’s portrait was annotated by Doctorow to allow the viewer to explore the writer’s study — combining the image with words to identify the books on Doctorow’s shelves and the personal objects on his desk.

When Jonathan showed this portrait to me, I began to wonder how this approach might be integrated into one of my company’s online magazines. I am continuing to explore this possibility through discussions with editors.

That conversation may lead nowhere, but it is the dialogue itself that will ensure the media’s long-term survival — and the success of photojournalists and others.

Find those 10,000 ways that don’t work, and we’ll ultimately find the ones that do.

A few weeks ago, I got a phone call from Playboy. It was Friday at 4:30 p.m. — and they wanted to see four nude images by Monday.

I don’t normally shoot nudes. I had been a photojournalist for more than 20 years and most of my subjects preferred to keep their clothes on. But I figured, “Why not?” So I began searching for a model.

The first Web site I thought to try — albeit with some hesitancy — was a popular Internet modeling site. It was a site with which I had become familiar.

Googling for Models

Sometime back I had a project for which I needed a model. I typed the word “model” into a search engine and got a zillion hits. One of these was a modeling site that seemed to be loaded with talent.

You could search for models by gender, state, height, eye color and much more. It was full of pretty girls who were short, tall, thin, not-so-thin, tattooed, pierced, smart, clear-skinned, opinionated. (There were men, too.)

I became a member. I have since discovered some great photographers on the site, and learned a few new tricks in the forums. I have met some quality models, too.

But I also have learned that, like the moon, the site has a dark side.

I’ve found a lot of models who want to get paid for their time, but few willing to pay the photographer for shooting their portfolios. The photographers often end up paying the models and giving them the pictures. P.T. Barnum’s words regarding the birthrate of suckers come to mind.

Gurus and Charlatans

And while I have found some knowledgeable folks in the site’s forums, the gurus are often outshouted by the charlatans.

For example, I recently read the wisdom of one 25-year-old expert offering to critique models’ “ports and profiles.” A line around the cyberblock formed, and after a quick review one model was given a grade of A-. Apparently, this was not because of the out-of-focus image with the light stand and cord in it, but because she was not smiling enough in her pictures. (My wife pointed out that “models” who do not smile often have crooked teeth.)

Over time, I realized that this modeling site was populated by people who would rather take easy advice from strangers than learn the hard facts about issues such as copyright. The forums are full of misinformation that people routinely follow. Discussions often devolve into personal quarrels, until a moderator is forced to intervene and put everyone in timeout.

The quarrels can be truly absurd. God help you, for example, if you don’t like Alien Bees lighting equipment. If they could, some of this site’s members would take a swing at you for making a critical comment about Alien Bees. I’ve seen forums locked because someone asked advice about lighting and all hell broke loose.

Booking an Internet Model

Now, as for the quality of the models on the site, I can only speak from my experience in shooting a few of them. I offer the following two pieces of advice when booking Internet models from this or any other site:

1. Weed out the “models” who just want to play dress up before you shoot, or you will have more on your hands than you bargained for.

2. Check the model for a valid ID to confirm who she is and have her sign a model release. In fact, photograph her with the ID and the signed release. Then photograph the release itself, so that it stays with the images on your hard drive.

To further enlighten you, let me share a couple of anecdotes.

One day a photographer asked me if I wanted to assist him on an out-of-town shoot. He told me to find an Internet model and shoot, too. We all agreed to meet at 5 a.m. and ride in his jeep to the location.

My “model” was 40 minutes late and 30 pounds heavier than she had stated on her profile. This might be OK for a driver’s license photo, but it was going to make my job difficult. There is a difference between a model who is plus-size and one who is simply overweight.

To make matters worse, she insisted on stopping for breakfast and inhaling two breakfast burritos and some sausage on the way.

During the shoot, despite proclaiming that she did not do nude work, she tossed off her top without prompting. Two days later, she demanded her pictures from me.

On another occasion, I was in Phoenix, shooting down the street from the Mormon temple and across the street from the mayor’s office. It had taken two days to get a photo permit.

My wife and I had to plead with the “model” I had booked to keep her clothes on. She thought it would be fun to get naked right there in front of God and country.

On yet another occasion, I was shooting three models in a downtown alley when they started getting a little too sexy with one another. Taking pictures is not a crime, but soon the cops were there and wanted to know why a middle-aged fat guy was hanging out in this alley with these amorous young women.

They did not buy my “painting with light” story, and the next thing I knew they were frisking me and checking for warrants. They asked how I knew these girls, and I said I had met them on the Internet. You can imagine how that went over.

At that point, I decided to cut back on booking Internet models. It’s kind of like walking barefoot in a yard where a big dog lives. You need to watch where you step.

My Playboy Shoot

All of this should help explain my hesitancy in turning to an Internet modeling site to find my model for Playboy.

Then again, it was Friday afternoon and I figured you can’t throw a rock on one of these sites without hitting a woman who wants to pose for Playboy. So, with the clock ticking, I decided to start throwing rocks.

I put out a casting call and almost immediately landed a makeup artist. She offered to lend a hand in finding a model. But the Internet modeling site came up empty; the only candidate who applied quickly enough looked like she had never seen an issue of Playboy — or the inside of a gym.

I ultimately booked a model who was a fitness instructor and had always wanted to pose for Playboy. She worked hard and posed naturally. She was a joy to work with.

And where did I find her?

Facebook.

(Second of two parts.)

In part one of this article, I wrote about the creative process, how it applies to photographers, and how a better understanding of it can help us to avoid or escape photographer’s block. In this part, I offer five recommendations for getting the creative juices flowing again — specific steps that have worked for me, my students, and others.

1. Just shoot. A friend of mine who is a musician and visual artist says that thought is the enemy of action, and in a way, he’s right. When I do street photography, or even when I’m working on assignment, I sometimes get “trigger shy.” I don’t see anything new or anything that particularly interests me. Sometimes the first and best step is to just start shooting the same old same old.

The goal is not to take great photographs, but rather, to engage “photographic gears” of the mind, the eye, and the heart so that better work can follow. It’s a bit like starting a car on a cold winter morning and waiting for it to warm up. You may not be getting anywhere, but unless you turn the key — or for our purposes, press the shutter button — you’re going to be sitting still for a long time.

Shoot what you see and don’t think about it, even if it’s just a few frames. For me, anyway, better things inevitably follow, sometimes within minutes.

2. Venture into new stylistic territory. If you’re primarily a portrait photographer, get out and do some landscapes. If your normal workspace is a studio, head downtown, get some fresh air, and do some old-fashioned street photography. If you do a lot of documentary work, put that aside for a day or a week and shoot bowls of fruit.

I’m not suggesting permanent changes. The idea is that working in unfamiliar territory often provides insights into the work we’re already doing and offers us new ideas and challenges. Again, this gets the brain working, solving problems, and can lead to new approaches when you return to your “everyday” subject matter and style.

For example, I normally shoot a lot of candid or lightly posed portraits. Recently, I’ve been doing more still life and landscape work, which has forced me to look at photographic composition in ways that I hadn’t before. I’ve brought that newfound knowledge back into my portrait work, which has improved because of what I’ve learned working in other areas.

3. Put yourself through boot-camp-style photo drills. Go to the local botanical garden or park and shoot 50 digital photos or a roll of film in 30 minutes. Don’t shoot the same thing twice and don’t delete the weaker photographs if you’re working with a digital camera. It’s the equivalent of free writing and the goal is to work without over-analyzing what you’re doing.

Try to take good pictures, but don’t expect any masterpieces; that’s not what you’re worried about. If you practice like this enough, pressing the shutter button becomes as automatic as walking or breathing.

Or, take the same number of photographs of the same thing, an old, photography-school homework assignment. Find a tree, a model, a car or anything else that attracts your attention and explore it with your camera and eyes.

Try to find as many different ways to shoot that subject as possible. Over and underexpose. Shoot in focus and out of focus. The idea is to remember that there are a million ways to look at even the most mundane object. When you go back to the things you really love shooting, you’re likely to do so with a more open mind and fresher eyes.

What about minimizing the gear you carry? Work for a week with nothing but a cheap, compact digital. Or when you have a free day, leave the big guns on the shelf and do everything with a film SLR and a 50mm lens. Force yourself to approach photography in new ways and you will learn new things about your particular vision, and more about photography in general.

4. Study the masters. Forget about Ansel Adams and Henri Cartier-Bresson for a while, as wonderful as their work may be. Most photographers know their work up and down.

Do some research on photographers whose work you haven’t seen. Study but don’t imitate. Use it as a source of inspiration, not a blueprint.

You learn something every time you see an image. Eat, drink and sleep master photographs, from Civil War-era icon Matthew Brady and the Parisian Eugene Atget, to contemporary legends such as Miguel Rio Branco, from Brazil, and Roger Ballen, an American who works in South Africa.

Don’t stop with photography, either. Learn about painting, printmaking and other two-dimensional forms of expression, from 20,000-year-old drawings on the walls of caves, to the Renaissance, the Baroque, Impressionism, Abstract Expressionism, Color Field Painting, Conceptualism and everything else. The idea is to increase your visual vocabulary, and as a result, improve your work.

5. Change what you’re doing. Entirely. At least for a little while. If you’ve never shot large-format film using a view camera, take a shot at it. It will force you to really think about what you’re doing.

If you’re one of the few resisting the digital revolution, give in. You’ll tend to shoot a lot more and learn from every picture.

Play with toy cameras like Holgas, make your own pinhole cameras, or max out your credit card on the newest DSLR of your dreams. While it’s true that it’s photographers — not cameras — that make pictures, a new toy, or new time spent with an old one, can get you moving again, thinking about photographs in new ways, and making new kinds of images.

For over two years now, I have been trying to photograph a coal mine in China to show the conditions of the miners. The coal mining industry in China has been called the world’s most dangerous; it is reported to claim the lives of over 5,000 workers each year. And it’s not only the miners who are suffering. In the mining areas of Yunnan, more than 60 percent of the children under the age of 14 are affected by lead poisoning.

Not surprisingly, the Chinese government does not allow local or international photographers anywhere near the mines or miners. I knew if I wanted this story I would have to be patient — and persistent.

A Contact Pays Off

So whenever I was in China on a different project and had the opportunity, I asked officials and others I met if they could help me get to a mine. The requests were always refused, but over time I built up a reasonable stable of contacts in the Yunnan mining region.

Then, one day, one of these contacts called me. He said he knew someone who knew someone who might be able to get me close to the mines.

I followed up on the contact’s lead and ended up driving around China for several days, meeting with one person after another, until finally I found myself standing in the middle of a coal mining village in Yunnan.

Portrait of a coal miner in Yunnan, China.

Shooting the Village

Coal miners passed by pushing carts laden with mining equipment, so I quickly shot a picture with the main street as a backdrop. There were children playing on the streets, and I photographed them as well.

I was then taken to an upstairs room, where I had wait to see if the management would allow me into the mining area. Fortunately for me, the room had a view over the village — so I was able to get pictures showing it covered in coal dust.

The mining officials eventually led me to the entrance of the mine, where I waited for the workers to emerge.

A worker relaxes after emerging from the mine.

Following the Miners

A tall man wearing a tin helmet with a lamp and a pick over his shoulder stepped out of the shadows and slowly made his way up the steps. I’m sure he was bewildered to find himself the subject of such photographic attention.

More miners followed, stepping up into bright sunlight. They were covered in coal dust; it was ingrained in their clothes, hands and faces. There were tiny pieces of coal embedded in their lips. Obviously, the cotton masks that hung around their necks were not enough to stop the coal dust getting into their mouths.

I followed the miners up to their changing rooms and then into the public baths, photographing them as they shed their mining gear and soaked away the grime in the steamy bathhouse.

Miners wash in the public baths.

Never Give Up

For two years, everyone I asked about this story discouraged me from pursuing it. They said I would never get the access I needed. Now I had it.

I plan to use the images in my upcoming book Hearing the Grass Grow, about villages disappearing around the world.

The lesson here should be obvious, but it’s one that can’t be stated often enough: Don’t give up on the stories you believe in. With patience and persistence, you can make them happen.

All photos © Michael Coyne.

The following is excerpted from Winning Digital Photo Contests, a new book by Black Star Rising contributor Jeff Wignall.

Jim Richardson has a career that most photographers can’t help but envy.

As a freelance photographer for National Geographic magazine for more than 25 years, he has traveled the world extensively and become one of the Geographic’s most prolific shooters. Since his first essay appeared in 1984, he has photographed more than 20 essays on everything from sustainable agriculture to volcanoes of the Great Plains.

Richardson, who has a particular passion for environmental issues, comes from a newspaper journalism background and has also done extensive documentary work. One of his most ambitious projects was a 30-year photographic study of life in the small town of Cuba, Kansas (population 230). It’s no surprise that the lure of the small town would appeal to him since he grew up on a dairy farm in Kansas — which is where he first discovered cameras and photography.

“I was a kid on the farm with a lot of hobbies,” he recalls. “One of those hobbies was photography, and I did lots of experiments including photographing through a microscope and taking pictures through a pair of binoculars held in front of a twin-lens reflex camera.”

Still actively shooting assignments, Jim lives in Lindsborg, Kansas and operates Small World: A Gallery of Arts and Ideas, on the town’s Main Street. He also teaches photography at workshops around the world and has judged more than 100 photo contests. Most recently he judged the Energizer Ultimate Photo Contest, a major competition sponsored by Energizer and National Geographic.

Is judging contests an enjoyable process?

It is, because I get to see the range of photography that’s out there — the really great stuff and the not-so-great. You get to
look at photos that you just wouldn’t see otherwise, pictures that are totally unexpected. It’s great fun just to be able to
root through those photos and see where people are going with photography.

Do you think that digital photography has helped people to be more creative?

Yes, it certainly has; the creative floodgates have opened. Photographers are able to express what they’re after more easily because they’re not so encumbered by the trappings of the camera. But also, being able to review images on the LCD is just wonderful. You are able to learn on-the-fly what you’re doing right and what you’re doing wrong, what’s working and what isn’t.

Also, with digital photography, each new picture is not costing you more; it’s actually spreading the initial cost out over an ever-greater number of pictures. So you feel the freedom to be experimental, to try new things that you might never have tried before.

Do you think that’s true for professionals too?

Yes, absolutely. Even at National Geographic, if you were to ask [director of photography] David Griffin, he’d tell you that we’re better photographers today then we were five years ago. We’re more experimental and we’ll take chances and go places we never dreamed we could go before.

Jim Richardson has been a freelance photographer for National Geographic for more than 25 years.

What is it that makes a particular photo stand out during judging?

First, I always try to do a scan and go through all of the photos pretty quickly to see if there are things that really just pop out — photos that give you a rush of recognition the instant you see them. Those pictures, whatever their technical qualities, whatever their shortcomings, you give weight. If you have a reaction to the picture, something visceral and emotional, then you have to think that there’s something going on there, even if it breaks all the rules. That’s what a picture is supposed to do, to cause a reaction, to get to us.

That process of doing a scan helps me to find some of the best pictures and eliminate others — pictures that are simply “me too” pictures. Those pictures may be done well and have perfect exposure, but you realize you’ve been seeing the same shots for 15 years. I don’t care how perfectly it’s executed; if I’m jaded to the very approach and the very presentation, it doesn’t get nearly the mark up that more inventive photos get.

I had an English composition teacher in high school that used to say that the greatest tool that a writer had was a unique viewpoint. That is so often the case in pictures. There are other pictures that take time to appreciate and their gifts aren’t delivered instantaneously, so you don’t want to use that barometer all of the time on all pictures. But as you’re sitting there doing the initial scan of images, if they can’t grab your attention in a second or too, then they probably aren’t going to grab your attention at all.

What mistakes do people make with photos they’re entering in contests?

One of the greatest sins that you see in photo contests is the overuse of things like the saturation slider. You see that over and over again, people turning up the volume too high. And it doesn’t have to be just saturation, either. It can be sharpness, or extreme focal lengths, all kinds of things. They assume that if some saturation is good then more is better, if a wide-angle lens is interesting then a fisheye lens would be even more interesting.

They make the mistake of assuming that it’s about technique rather than vision. There’s an analogy here to the ballet. Yes, all the dancers have to be technically perfect, but the perfection of the dance won’t get to your heart. It may get to your appreciation of perfection, but it won’t stir your heart like the agony of Romeo and Juliet.

Do you think that trying to win a contest is a good motivator for taking better pictures?

If that motivates people to go out and take pictures, then good. But on the other hand, if having better pictures of their family motivates them, then that’s also good. One of the good things about entering a contest is that it gets your pictures out of the hard drive and in front of someone. Getting pictures in front of other people is a good thing because no matter how good your pictures are, a picture that doesn’t get seen is essentially mute.

One of the best things you can do to improve your photography is to get your pictures in front of other people where you can see their reaction. I give a lot of talks and lectures where I show my pictures and I always try to watch the reactions when they flash on the screen. There are times when I show pictures that I think are the most wonderful photographs in the world and the people just sit there. But then a certain picture comes along and you see the eyes widen and the people sit up straight. Those are the reactions that you want to see and believe.

That’s why sites like Flickr are good, because you have strangers giving you comments and reactions to your photographs. I also think that you have to absolutely discount the opinions of relatives and friends and the people who like you. They’re just not objective enough.

Do you have any tips for helping people decide which pictures are right for entering a contest?

One thing that people can do is go through National Geographic or some other magazine, cut out a lot of pictures, and spread them out on the floor with some of their own photos in the mix. Then have someone come in and tell you which pictures don’t belong — and tell them to be brutally honest.

You have to find a way to replicate what’s going to happen when someone like me, a contest judge, is looking through all of these photos. You can’t explain your photos to the judge or point them out. The picture has to do the work.

Years ago I judged a KINSA (Kodak International Snapshot Awards) contest and someone had sent in a picture of a tree. The picture was of the entire tree, but there was an arrow drawn on the photograph pointing to one leaf in the middle. The tag at the end of the arrow said “Hummingbird.” It was a pretty humorous photo but I don’t think the photographer meant it that way.

Are a lot of contest pictures too predictable?

Yes, I think so. When it comes to photographing the Grand Canyon, for instance, most people go to the south rim and stand at exactly the same place and get the same picture. It’s going to be tough for you to get one of those pictures to stand out. But if you were on the north rim at 6 a.m. after it snowed, that picture is much more unusual and judges haven’t seen it so much, so it will get attention.

This is exactly the same thing that I go through when I’m showing pictures to picture editors at National Geographic. These are people who have been looking at thousands of pictures every day for the last two or three decades. You can’t go in there, show them something they’ve seen before, and expect them to pat you on the back.

What kind of photos make you yawn?

The same old pictures. You can see the photographers who are simply following the rules of what makes a good picture. They’ve used the rule of thirds, the lighting is perfect, and they’ve sharpened it exactly. If you’re talking about photographing in a pub in Ireland, for instance, you can take a picture of a pint of Guinness sitting on an old wooden bar, and I don’t care how sharp it is or how perfectly exposed it is. If it makes me wish I was in that pub having a pint of Guinness, then that’s a winning picture.

Travel is a common category in contests. What makes a great travel photo?

Fundamentally travel photography has changed. It used to show us places that we were never going to see in person ourselves. We kind of assumed back in the 1950’s that very few people were going to actually get to Paris and see the Eiffel Tower. Now everyone travels and travel photography is about being there, what’s it like to be there? Your pictures have to provide that visceral sense of what it’s like to be in the middle of a place.

My eyes glaze over when I start to see yet another picture of a Tibetan monk in the saffron robes. I’ve seen enough of that. But if you bring me a picture that makes me feel like I can plop myself down in the middle of a place and get the feeling of what it’s really like to be there, that’s a winning photo. That’s what travel photography is all about.

Do you have any advice to photographers that want to win a contest?

I think that trying to make a picture specifically to win a contest is difficult. Almost invariably you’re going to end up with a picture that looks like a contest picture and doesn’t have at its heart something that offers real communication that would get to another human being. And it’s that “getting to me” as a person, as the judge sitting there, that’s essential.

Pictures can’t be just about pictures; pictures have to be about life. If they are really and truly about life and beauty and understanding and our souls, then they have a pretty good chance in a contest. If they are simply about photography and about the contest, then they’re probably be going to be pretty shallow and transparent. Take pictures of your passions, pursue your love of photography, and the contest prizes will soon follow.

And what is the one thing that photography does best?

It connects us. Good photographs are quantum packets of understanding; they allow ideas to leap from one person to another, almost magically. That is the connection and the link that photography creates as almost no other medium does.

In this part of our video series on Google Analytics, I show you how to set up reports on your site’s performance that are compiled and e-mailed regularly to you. (You can find the previous posts in this series here.)

(First of two parts.)

All artists, including photographers, go through dry spells. In my case, the symptoms of being creatively blocked are obvious: ideas for new images or projects stop flowing; I take pictures of things that don’t really interest me; I find myself photographing the same people, places and things, in the same “old” ways.

Understanding what psychologists believe happens in the brain during the creative process — the subject of this post — can help photographers get the creative juices flowing again. In the second part of this article, running next week, I’ll share specific steps that have helped me get out of creative — or rather, non-creative — ruts.

Five Phases of the Creative Process

One of the first models of the creative process was introduced by psychologist Graham Wallas in 1926. It has survived pretty much intact, with a few additions, deletions and reinterpretations over the years. Wallas thought there were five phases involved: preparation, incubation, intimation, illumination, and verification.

Those are big words for what are actually simple concepts. I’ll go through each of them and explain them in photographic terms.

1. Preparation. In this case, preparation doesn’t mean reformatting your memory cards, recharging your AAs, or packing up your lenses. It’s defined as the moment when a “problem” is first recognized, or a goal is first set. I usually formulate these objectives as questions. It might be a very general idea, such as, “How can I take newer, fresher landscapes?” On the other hand, it might be highly specific, for example, “What must I do to take a truly distinct photograph of the Statue of Liberty?”

It’s important that we spend some of our non-photographic time thinking about what our goals are, whether they are purely commercial, purely artistic, or somewhere in between.

2. Incubation. Incubation, according to psychologists, is one of the most interesting phases. It’s largely a time of subconscious reflection on how to get that Statue of Liberty photograph, or those fresh, new landscapes. You may not even be aware that your brain is working on the problem, and sometimes, it’s easy to confuse incubation with creative block. The important thing is to recognize that real inspiration does not come without serious consideration of the issue at hand, and to be prepared to give yourself time.

It’s also important to “feed” your brain during this phase. Look at landscape photographs or paintings. Read about how other photographers have worked. Look at existing photographs of the Statue of Liberty. Arm your brain with as much information as possible so that it can come to the best, most informed solution. Because a solution is coming — though you may not realize it.

3. Intimation. The idea of intimation is pretty simple, even though it’s a big word. You might get the feeling that the solution is “coming to you,” because, in fact, it is.

4. Illumination. Illumination is usually called the “eureka” moment. It’s the breakthrough, the instant when you have a clear idea in your head of how you want your landscapes to look, or how exactly you’re going to take a unique photograph of the Statue of Liberty for a client. It may come when you least expect it, while you’re in the shower or commuting to work, but it’s the result of a lot of work on the part of your faithful old brain.

5. Verification. The final phase is where the idea is verified and then applied. Because moments of inspiration come and go, and are quickly forgotten, I always keep a small notebook with me to write things down. Examples might be, “Shoot Statue of Liberty with toy Holga camera and black-and-white film,” or, “Photograph roadside landscapes with slow shutter speeds from a fast moving vehicle.” Those may seem like radical ideas, but they’re also the kinds of things that pop out of your head when you’ve spent a lot of time trying to resolve a problem.

The important thing to remember is that creativity, like photography itself, is a process, with its own theoretical laws. Understanding that the brain, similarly to a computer, sometimes needs time to find a way out of the creative doldrums is an important step in avoiding those moments altogether. It’s also helpful to remember that creative block, for any artist, is not permanent, much less fatal.

If you’re not careful, you can spend a lot of time and money scouting locations for photography shoots — driving around aimlessly in your gas guzzler, seeking that inspiring spot. But if you work smart, you can find the locations you want without spinning your wheels.

Here are six tips for cost-conscious, time-sensitive and environmentally friendly location scouting:

1. Start building a location log on your computer. Whenever you’re driving somewhere and not doing photography, keep an eye out for locations. When you find a good one, grab a few shots of the scene with your phone. E-mail the images to your computer or upload them later to start a log of possible locations for future shoots.

2. Use your cell phone for note-taking chores. Your image’s EXIF info will have the time and date the picture was taken; this will give you an idea of the light at that time of day and also the month/season. Grab a shot of a street sign to show the intersection and a nearby landmark, capturing the street address. If applicable, take a picture of the location’s hours of operation. Upload these to your log, too.

3. Organize your location data. As your log grows, you can organize your prospective locations — by seasons, for example. Over time, you’ll have a list of places you can use no matter the time of year.

4. Do your research online. If you’re shooting an assignment on location, you can do a lot of your research online in advance. For example, if you’re planning to shoot for a business with multiple locations, see what kind of office pictures they have on their Web site; it may save you the trouble of driving all over town finding the best venue.

5. Use Google Maps. Street View is a fabulous (if somewhat freaky) tool for location scouting. Panning around in 360º lets you get a sense of a location’s lighting, among other things. From the virtual reality images, you can assess where the sun will be, since the directions of the compass are included.

6. Keep a notebook. Carrying a notebook around is still a good idea, as you may want to jot down some quick thoughts, save a news clipping you come across, or record other things in “analog” rather than digital. (Make sure it’s a small notebook and write on both sides of the page and it’s still pretty environmentally friendly, too.)

We’ve all heard the expression “blind as a bat” — but bats aren’t blind, they just “see” differently from us. Bats supplement their small eyes and poor visual acuity with echolocation, a radar-like quality that enables them to ping their environment, gather data and use this information to locate prey, fly in the dark, and so forth.

Google’s Web crawlers are popularly known as “spiders,” but they might be more accurately described as bats — particularly when it comes to Google Image Search’s attempts to identify and sort photographs in search results.

Web crawlers are visually impaired when it comes to determining the content of online photos; they can’t “look” at the images they come upon. Instead, like bats, they rely heavily on “pinging the environment” to ascertain the content, relevance and relative importance of the photos they encounter.

That means Google’s bats — I mean, spiders — require you to create an environment around your images that enables them to be “seen.”

Here are eight ways to accomplish this:

1. Give your image file a descriptive name. Image456.jpg doesn’t help Google figure out what your photograph is about. But big-red-car-in-london.jpg does.

2. Create a meaningful image path. The path /photos/cars/ford/mustang/big-red-car-in-london.jpg is much better than the generic /image/big-red-car-in-london.jpg.

3. Fill in your alt tags. The alt tag is where you can insert alternative text to display in place of an image, such as for text-only or audio-based browsing. Tagging your image “alt=big red car in London” is a whole lot better than leaving the alt tag blank, which is what many people do. Just don’t overload your tags with keywords; Google might consider that “keyword spamming,” which would hurt your search positioning.

4. Add a descriptive caption and place the photo amid relevant body copy, headlines, etc. Google looks at your image caption and other nearby content to determine what the image is about. So always caption your photos.

5. Don’t forget your header information. Your Web page title and meta description, located in the header of your site’s source code, can provide further clues about your image’s content.

6. Publish the image as a JPEG. My research shows that Google ranks .jpg images highest — and, in fact, almost completely ignores PNG and GIF images. (A good way to take advantage of this is to give photos you do not want spidered a generic name and a .png file type. This will focus Google’s spiders on the images you want to be noticed.)

7. Go larger rather than smaller. A quick look at Google Image Search results shows that Google rewards larger images with better search visibility.

8. Host the image on your own site. I have no hard evidence of this, but I believe that photos hosted on your own domain are given greater weight than those hosted elsewhere — such as on a hosted storage domain. Photo sharing sites like Flickr seem to provide the least search engine juice.

Of course, while it’s important to help Google “see” your images, you should never forget that your site, first and foremost, is for human eyeballs. Make sure your image optimization doesn’t detract from your visitors’ experience.

In my previous “Notes from the VisCom Classroom,” I wrote about crafting course assignments and making sure they furthered both school-wide and course-specific learning outcomes. In this column, I’ll discuss how I go about evaluating those assignments once the students turn in their work.

I believe setting learning outcomes and evaluating student work are among the most important things I do as a teacher. When I craft an assignment, I try to make it as clear as possible what I want the student to accomplish and how I will evaluate their work.

To help me do this, I use a grading matrix, which lists all the assignment’s learning outcomes. The actual assignment the students receive contains general information about the assignment along with the learning outcomes.

What’s the Assignment?

For example, the first assignment in my Advanced Photovisual Communications course here at the University of South Carolina’s School of Journalism and Mass Communications is to have my students make a natural-light portrait. Because I have a professional-photography background, I craft the assignments for this course as if they came from an editor or an art director.

Here’s what I wrote for the first assignment:

There are many ways professional photographers light their photographs of people. Among the most common are natural light (daylight), tungsten light (household light bulbs, flood lamps, hot lights), and flash. This assignment is designed to give you experience in lighting people using natural light. Please read the assignment carefully so you will know what you need to do.

You have been hired to help illustrate a chapter in a new photography book, Photographing People: The Professionals’ Approach. Your chapter is called “Finding the Right Light.” Your assignment is to provide a photograph for the section on using natural light to photograph people. Your editor (that would be me) wants a beautiful, creative, dramatic, provocative, compelling, absorbing image for the book. In other words, no snapshots, no mug shots, no driver’s-license photos. And above all, absolutely no photographs outside on a sunny day between the hours of 8 a.m. and 5 p.m.!

I then reminded them which chapters to read in our textbook (Ken Kobré’s Photojournalism: The Professionals’ Approach), advised them to match the type of lighting to their subject, and urged them to use a variety of camera angles, focal lengths, compositions, and exposures to make sure they have enough good shots to choose from.

Evaluate the Assignment

So how did I go about evaluating this assignment? My grading matrix has eight rows that represent the learning outcomes for this assignment; the matrix also has four columns, numbered 4, 3, 2, and 1. Here’s an example of the first learning outcome:

Obviously, it is crucial that the students read and understand the assignment in all its details before attempting to make their photographs. That is why I always go over the assignment in class and ask for any questions.

Sometimes tunnel-vision takes hold, and in their rush to complete the assignment a few students overlook a key element. You need to spell out everything and clear up all uncertainties — just as you would if you were an editor or art director assigning a project to a professional photographer.

In addition to understanding the assignment requirements, here are the other seven learning outcomes:

• Understand the effect of lighting on the subject matter of photographs and their visual impact.
• Understand the importance of putting subjects at ease and picking appropriate settings, background, props, and wardrobe.
• Understand the effect of composition on the subject matter of photographs and their visual impact.
• Understand the importance of making an emotional impact on the viewer — what my colleague Dr. Keith Kenney calls “the wow factor.”
• Understand Photoshop controls for brightness, contrast, color balance, and cropping.
• Understand technical flaws, such as poor focus, camera shake, exposure problems, etc.
• Understand resolution, file size, file naming, and file formats.

Because this is a lighting assignment, I obviously place great weight on the learning outcome involving lighting — the assignment tells students to “strive for lighting that greatly enhances the subject matter of your photographs and their visual impact.” In fact, when I create the grading matrix, I highlight this row, which represents the assignment theme.

So when it comes time to evaluate my students’ work, it’s no surprise that photographs that show the most creative and appropriate lighting will achieve the highest marks in this category. I also place significant weight on whether the subject looks comfortable or ill at ease, and whether the photographer has paid sufficient attention to important details such as background, props, etc.

The same is true for composition and emotional impact — deficiencies in either of these areas can cause a viewer to skip your image and move on to one of the many other visuals vying for attention in our visually saturated world.

Assign a Grade

Finally, it’s time to assign a grade for the assignment. For all the courses I teach, I use numerical, rather than letter, grades for assignments. The only time students receive a letter grade from me is for their final course grade. I find the numerical system has three advantages:

• It helps me be more objective in my grading.
• It helps students respond to grades more objectively, in part by removing the stigma associated with letter grades other than A — for example, a C in our school represents average work, but many students view a C as equivalent to an F.
• It helps eliminate confusion — you don’t have to define a numerical value for each letter grade if you are calculating grades mathematically.

For photography assignments, I use a 10-point scale with half-point steps. In my syllabus, I explain that a 10 represents flawless work, a 9.5 is excellent, a 9 is very good, an 8.5 is good, etc.

After I have filled out a grading matrix for each photograph, it becomes a relatively simple task to assign a numerical grade for the assignment. If a student has received the highest mark (4) in all categories, they get a 10 for the assignment. If they get mostly 4s and only one or two 3s, they get a 9.5. A few more 3s and their grade is a 9. A solid column of 3s translates into an 8.5 and so forth.

Finally, I try to make sure the students understand that I am grading the work they submitted — I am not grading them personally, and I am not making a judgment about their photographic or artistic abilities. My goal is to help them improve their photography to become better visual communicators, and also to enable them to create portfolio-worthy images that will stand them in good stead when they enter the work-a-day world.

As group design director for a large U.K.-based publishing company, I’ve found that understanding the photographers I work with is an integral part of my creative process.

What motivates a photographer to take the photographs they do? How do they like to work? What are their influences and interests? These are all questions I ask myself before commissioning a photographer for a specific project.

Do You Know Your Art Director?

But I wonder how many photographers really understand their art director in the same way? I’m not talking here about understanding the brief — I’m talking about understanding the person and what motivates them.

For me, the photographer/art director relationship is a collaboration; the photographer and I discuss our ideas and thoughts. I’m not one of those art directors who creates a sketch and presents it to the photographer for execution. I want to have a dialogue through which we explore the brief. In some cases this might entail a brief telephone conversation, but in others it might require a number of face-to-face conversations over a period of time.

Nothing is better than face-to-face communication for building a relationship. Having said that, I can also learn a lot about the photographers I work with — or am considering working with — online. And photographers should be using the Web to learn about their art directors, too.

Today, when photographers call to make an appointment to show their books, I will generally look at their Web sites to gain a certain understanding of them, so that when we do meet we are able to discuss their work and approach in a little more depth.

Social media tools like Twitter enable photographers and art directors to learn even more about one another, and to build upon their relationships. For example, I used Twitter to ask photographers what I should write about in this blog post — and I plan to continue using Twitter to get your feedback and questions that may form the basis of future posts.

Understanding Passions and Influences

So what if you are interested in learning more about an art director that you work with, or would like to work with? Well, in my case, if you follow my Tweets or my Posterous postings, you will quickly pick up information about my influences and passions.

In terms of magazine design, these influences include Russian émigré Alexey Brodovitch, who art directed Harper’s Bazaar from 1938 to 1958; the German title Twen, art directed by Willy Fleckhaus; the British magazine About Town in the 1960s, art directed by Tom Wolsely; and the art direction of Swiss magazine Du by Roland Schenk, who would later become design director at Haymarket Publishing — a position I now hold.

Of course, many other magazines and art directors have inspired me and continue to excite me, but these four art directors are constants and have one passion in common — photography. As photography is a passion of mine as well, I am an avid collector of photography books and regularly attend photography festivals. I also interview and write about photographers from time to time. And I post about all of these loves on Twitter and Posterous.

I also post about things I don’t like — which can be equally valuable to a photographer who would like to work with me.

And the same is true for many art directors today. It’s easier than ever for you as a photographer to get relevant background information before you ever pick up that phone to ask to show your book.

Understanding your art director can help you to earn assignments, build relationships and, ultimately, do better work. The best photographer/art director relationships are stimulating, exciting, fresh, even symbiotic — all of which ends up being reflected on the printed page.

In a day and age when anyone with an iPhone or a Flickr account can call themselves a photographer, it can be a little difficult to figure out when you’ve separated yourself from the pack to become a real photographer. After all, beauty — in photographs as in all things — is in the eye of the beholder.

But here are 21 clues that you’ve crossed the threshold from pretender to contender:

1. Your friends have begun to hand you their cameras at social gatherings when they want a good picture taken.

2. You don’t run out of battery power because you are chimping less.

3. Your kids have stopped fussing about being photographed because you work faster.

4. The salesman at your favorite camera store lets you handle the merchandise usually kept locked in the shiny glass display cases.

5. You understand the difference between bokeh and a flower arrangement.

6. A gorgeous woman with a digital SLR brushes by you — and you only notice her camera and what kind of lens she has.

7. You concentrate on the lighting instead of the undergarment when you photograph backlit subjects.

8. You snicker at the folks in the back row at the concert shooting with an iPhone or a point-and-shoot.

9. Photo lab workers ask you to complete paperwork to verify that you own the copyright to the pictures you bring in.

10. Your in-law who’s a pro shares fewer and fewer tips with you.

11. Other photographers follow you to see where you’re shooting from.

12. Other photographers ask your opinion about gear when they see you at camera stores.

13. You realize how inaccurately Hollywood portrays the photographer’s job in the movies.

14. More and more engaged women want to be your friend.

15. You stop asking what aperture and shutter speed was used to take a picture.

16. Fewer people make fun of your torn, tattered but ubiquitous photo vest.

17. The subjects in your group pictures no longer resemble the hapless victims of a firing squad (everyone against the wall).

18. You are unashamed to carry a point-and-shoot — even at events crawling with other photographers.

19. Before you allow yourself to be impressed by that long telephoto, you want to know its widest aperture and whether it has image stabilization.

20. Your spouse stops asking what FedEx or UPS delivered.

21. You realize overexposure has to do with how you meter instead of how many Twitter followers you have.