Orion Photo Group Success Story Podcast
Orion Photo Group Success Story Podcast
Embarking on a Year of Creative Evolution: Strategies for Personal Growth and Photography Mastery in 2024
Ready to turn the page on your calendar and spark a revolution in your life? This episode is the ignition you've been waiting for, as we delve into a treasure trove of personal insights and pragmatic strategies to make 2024 your year of transformation. I'll guide you through the potent shift from ephemeral resolutions to concrete goals, encouraging a reflective look back at the strides you've made and setting your sights on new horizons. Imagine carrying a camera for a week, capturing life's fleeting moments through a new lens, or finally making that bold move towards the project or connection that's been whispering your name. If you're considering a 'dry January' from the social media deluge, this is your sign to take a step back and re-engage with the world more mindfully.
As we stroll further down the creative path, we cast a spotlight on the enthralling world of photography. This isn't just about snapping pictures; it's about self-discovery and professional prowess. I'll share how experimenting with unfamiliar equipment and subjects can not only refine your photographic skills but can also open doors to unexplored passions. And let's not forget the striking power of self-portraits in unraveling the layers of your own identity. Need a nudge to update that professional headshot? Consider this your friendly push. Plus, we'll uncover how blogging can become a potent tool for personal and professional growth within the photography community. Buckle up for an episode jam-packed with creativity and actionable tips to polish your artistic expression and professional image in the year ahead.
Hey there, welcome to OPG's Tips and Tricks. Here I'm going to share some quick tips and some tricks that I think you'll find very useful. Let's get right to it, hey everyone. Happy New Year, happy 2024. Not sure when you're going to listen to this, but it should be pretty close to the new year. I don't know what your rule is for. I was watching a Larry David clip the other day. He was saying three weeks. Three weeks is as long as you can say happy new year to someone. Anything beyond three weeks is just going to be, is an annoyance to everyone. So if it's beyond the three weeks, I apologize. But welcome to another episode of Tips and Tricks, a 2024 edition.
Speaker 1:And, as you know, what do you do on your first episode for 2024? And that would be starting off with some sort of resolution list or get your year off right. I'm not going to go outside the norm here. I'm going to do exactly the same. So we're going to start this new year off right. Hopefully this will be a good list for you. It's not really. I don't really like resolution lists, but I do like taking time to go back and look at the past year and make some goals for yourself, because without goals, what are we doing here? So, as we stand in this precipice of the new year, we need to kind of get those shackles off from last year and try and beginning of the year is a great time to discover unexplored territories and, like I said, I'm not big on a resolution list, but creating goals and celebrating most important Get your victories from last year. That is super duper important. Acknowledge any growth that you made, things that you did right. Start there and then maybe just look at things that didn't work right and maybe you can tinker those and make them a little bit better. So this is a little bit of a guide to inspire you to get into the next year, plus some real solid tips to get you from get you going for the new year.
Speaker 1:So my first tip unveil the unseen. We want you, I want you, to break free from the monotony and the change of your routine, Embark on a new quest, something that you haven't done. This is why gyms are packed the first two weeks of the year, the first, the last two weeks of December and then they're empty in February. Don't do that, but it's really great to look for something new and if it's not for you. No harm, no foul right. Revive anything that you were working on that you didn't. You didn't. I mean, this is just a great time Most of us are not that busy as photographers and it's a great time to start something new.
Speaker 1:One of the things that I want to dare you to revive this year is I want you to carry a camera for a week and see how it goes. Carry a camera with you everywhere you go. Just a small. It could be anything from a small mirrorless point and shoot. I have an old M6, a Canon M6 that I like to take with me. It's got a 24mm. It's got the equivalent of a 24mm lens on a 35mm or a DSLR. It's manual focus and I just bring it with me everywhere I go. I carry it with me when I go out, and we kind of got away from doing those things when, all of a sudden, our iPhones started taking really good pictures. I think that my iPhone may have a higher megapixel resolution rate than this M6 does, but it doesn't matter. That's not what this is about. This is about taking pictures from a different angle, a different perspective. With this lens on it, it doesn't look anything like my iPhone. Let's face it, the iPhone is great for a lot of things, but it's a super wide angle lens where this is going to be something different. So I challenge you to take a lightweight camera. Our DSLRs, too, the new mirrorless cameras, are also pretty small.
Speaker 1:I challenge you, take one of those with a 50mm lens and go out and just take different pictures. You're sitting, you're out for a walk. Bring the camera with you. You go to the supermarket, throw it on your neck. You're going on a trip someplace, put the camera on your neck. It doesn't count as a personal carry-on. At least the last time I traveled, it wasn't One tip. This and this is an important for a important thing you gotta take those shackles off for your self doubt and think about those things that you feel uncomfortable about and go after them. Is there a client that you wanted to work with or is there a kind of job that you wanted? Really? Try and figure out how to do that and challenge yourself. Pick one thing that you just didn't do last year and give it a shot. Just call it up again, write it on a piece of paper, put it on your desk so that it's sitting there and challenging me every single morning, all right.
Speaker 1:Next one, and this one is a really hard one for me every year Step away from social media. Think of it as your dry January. It's your dry social media year. Challenge yourself. I'm not saying step away from social media entirely. I think that's kind of silly. Our jobs do rely on our social media quite a bit and I don't think it's a great idea to just completely step away. But what I challenge you to do is maybe clean up your friends list, maybe stop following some things on Instagram that are just a waste of time and doesn't really make a lot of sense. Maybe they're just silly things that you don't need to be following. And maybe when you sit down to make a post about something that you wanna complain about or something like that, just don't and I try and cut my social media time down by a couple of hours this time of year because we do have extra time and instead go pick up a book, maybe watch a TV show that you haven't watched in a long time, but stay away from the social media. Think of it as your dry social media January or February or whatever month that you choose.
Speaker 1:All right, getting back to photography, here's one thing that I suggest this time of year when you have some extra time. How about renting something that you might wanna buy this year? I somebody made a suggestion to me many years ago that if there's a car that you wanna buy, go out and rent it first and drive it for a week and see how you like that car, if you can get it available in rentals and these days you pretty much can get anything that you want as a rental, for any car for that matter. Same goes for camera rental stores. Lensrentalscom is a great one, doesn't matter what it is. Maybe you have a friend who has the camera. Maybe you can ask him to borrow it from you and give it a shot and see if you like it. Maybe it's a different camera brand. I'm a Canon guy.
Speaker 1:Maybe go rent a Nikon, see if you like the Nikon and spend some time looking at the camera menus and getting used to it. And at best case scenario, maybe you're out shooting a job with a friend and he hands you a Nikon or she hands you a Nikon and you at least know how to navigate the menus. But try before you buy. Maybe go just buy something that you would never purchase, like a 400 millimeter lens and go shoot your kid's practice. Or go shoot some birds, or something that you've never done before. Go shoot some landscapes when most of us that are probably listening, shoot a lot of people. And maybe you just go out and shoot some barns or some covered bridges in Vermont, or something like that but and go out and rent some gear. I used to do that all the time. It was really great. I used to do them with film cameras a lot like a Hossie X-Pan or something like that was something that I enjoyed working with. Or maybe you go out and find a film camera and go shoot some film and you don't need to process it yourself. Send it out to Millers or H&H or one of the big photo labs. They all process film. Now, all right, all right.
Speaker 1:Next one this is a tough one. I want you to start Doing some self-portraits of yourself. I know this sounds silly. My brother one year took a self-portrait of himself before he got up every morning and he was doing out on a point and shoot. But now you can do it with your cell phone. I'm not suggesting that, but he did it for a year and then he put together a slideshow of all of his images from a year of Him waking up in bed. It was, it was interesting. Not the most flattering photos of himself, but it was definitely a Exploration Into himself and he's the fine artist in our family and it was a. It was. It was an interesting, it was interesting thing.
Speaker 1:But I suggest maybe putting a camera on a tripod and doing self-portrait of yourself once a month, once every other month, maybe once a week. I think it's a really great thing that you could do To explore different angles of yourself, different sides of yourself, always the last time you saw, like the back of your head or the haircut that you have, being in front of the camera. We're artists and this, the exploration of ourselves, is a really important one. So I challenge you this year, consider taking a self-portrait of yourself, anything from a simple selfie to I really, really suggest an elaborate setup, whether it be using some off-camera lighting or Going out into the woods someplace and taking a backlight, a front light, a Soft shadow day. See what those different, see what those different lighting examples will do for yourself, and I think you'll enjoy the, the experiment and the exploration of that. It's a really important thing and for those of you who are older, like myself. It gets even harder when you get older, and I think it's really important that you continue to explore yourself, even as an older person, and you keep doing those things. So Go out there and take some selfies, some self-portraits. I think it's a good. It's a good, it's a good investment of time.
Speaker 1:The next one, along the same lines when was the last time you did your headshots? When was the last time you hired somebody to go out? You picked a day, you got a haircut, you picked an outfit, you went and stood in front of somebody and got a professional headshot. Folks, we need to do this every couple of years. It is not a good look when you're an older person and you haven't had a headshot in 10 years. We need somebody looks at your LinkedIn profile, because your clients will look at your LinkedIn or your Facebook and they see somebody that was 15 years ago and then they come and they show up at your studio or they look at your website and they, they show up and they're like who? I don't know who this person is, that's not you. And listen, we get old, it's okay, but there's no reason why we can't look good, and that's why I challenge you to hire somebody to do it, because you're gonna take the time to go get your hair cut. You're gonna get your hair, you're gonna get your makeup done If you're a guy, maybe you're gonna do a facial the night before, or you're gonna concentrate on On drinking lots of water before so your skin looks nice and fresh, and you're just gonna take the time To do that, to do that, and then you're gonna come out with a great shot. Pay for it, pay your friend to do it, or find someone to do it. Go hire Peter Hurley to do your headshot. Take a trip to New York City and and get Peter to do your headshot and I promise you you will. You will like the Experience and you'll come away with a great shot and you'll be proud of to put that on your Facebook page and your website and all of that stuff too, and it will be a representation of who you are now, which is who they're going to be hiring.
Speaker 1:Again, more exploration how about blogging? I know it sounds like a crazy thing to do, but blogging is not dead. How about getting that started again? And there's two things that I suggest you do here. One, it's your professional blog, and the one thing that I find about journaling or blogging is the practice of doing it is really really helpful, because once you do it, it gets easier to do it and a lot of people will get stuck on. Well, what do I do? What am I gonna blog about? It could be anything from revisiting old weddings that you shot, reprocessing images and posting them again. All of this stuff is really good for your SEO. And you could do the same thing by creating social media posts. Maybe it's some new TikToks. If you've never done TikTok, maybe it's time to get into that.
Speaker 1:But I suggest blogging because it's the easiest thing and journaling is the same thing. And also, if you just say, jason, I'm not gonna blog, it's not something that's interesting to me. How about just a handwritten journal? Go out and buy a journal, something nice and start journaling daily things that are important to you. The practice of doing it and the self-exploration of that is really important. I do it every morning. I get up and I talk about what I wanna do today, and then I also will sometimes write in the evening about different things. Sometimes it's just a list of things that I wanna get done, not a shopping list, but darn close sometimes. And then I've talked about this a million times at this point in a lot of these blogs and our tips and tricks Go get some education this year.
Speaker 1:Go to WPPI, go to ImagingUSA. Find a small chapter meeting to go to. If you're in Missouri, where I am, go to the Missouri PPA meetings Every chapter has a national conference or their annual conference and go out and get some education. Don't be willy-nilly about it. Really choose something. And if you're listening to this, you're welcome to always reach out to me and ask me where you should go. I will be happy to come up with some suggestions for you. Maybe there's a new kind of photography you wanna do. Maybe it's high school seniors, maybe it's a portrait photography, maybe it's headshots and you've never done them before. Go get some new education on that. If you're a wedding photographer, maybe take Cliff Mountner's class in Philadelphia. He does a wonderful one, and there's other ones out there that I could certainly suggest as well. Parker Fischer does really great landscape workshops. I'd be happy to send you his information as well.
Speaker 1:And then, finally, my last one is again going back and looking at old images. I know post-processing changes over the years and new tools come out Generative AI and Photoshop. Maybe there's something you wanna remove in an image that you really loved, and now you can do it in seconds. Maybe it's something like using a program like Evoto to clean up some skin tones or try something different. Go back and how about trying some new post-processing styles? I highly recommend doing that. And maybe that's what you use to reblog something or repost something on TikTok. Or maybe you just show a video of you taking an old image and reprocessing it. People love to watch stuff like that and how to's and things like that. So that would be my last suggestion.
Speaker 1:So let's kick off 2024. I know I'm exhausted just thinking about all those suggestions. It's not an easy thing to do. Maybe just pick one this year and ease back into it, but I wanna wish all of you a really wonderful 2024. And as our economy continues to grow, there's lots of work out there. Go find it. Hey, do you have a tip or trick you wanna share with us? Happy shooting weddings this year. Please leave on me jgrouporignphotogroupcom. I would love to hear your tips or tricks and we'll even send you a nice little award. We'll talk to you soon on the next episode. Until then, thank you. Thank you everyone.
