Meet Mojo, a brindle pug I had met at the Kennesaw Christmas Parade over the weekend. I literally need to show the world this cute lil boy Mojo. Also, Mojo’s instagram (with sibling Bubbles!). Worth a follow, and hopefully we can get together for a shoot in the future!
Focusing. It’s so important. And shedding the weight of trying to create art in the search of being found wasn’t working. No one wants to be force fed art, no one wants to buy art from an unknown, and most importantly, I don’t want to be a starving artist. (I really like food).
So, I dropped all the art off my Photography Instagram, revamped a single spark site, put in motion a complete website change and set off to actually do Pet Photography, my first passion, right.
And… in a couple weeks of trying and pushing after the revamp. I have booked 2 paying jobs already.
It’s a start.
A good start.
There has been a lot of introspective time lately. You’d be surprised how much of that I’ve been doing. It’s almost been, all consuming. But, it’s been so important for me to do.
You might have noticed that amount of fine art photography I’ve been doing. It felt really good, like, really good. I was giving the world my perspective on the world around me. I even had a book made of some of my favorite shots on my journeys in photography.
I love doing that type of photography, it’s a good solitary experience. A way to achieve Tabula Rasa, the proverbial clean slate. I will never stop doing that. But, I will stop pushing it on the world.
I’ve contemplated what to do, and how to maintain my art and also do something I started to forget about over time, and that is be a Pet Photographer.
Sure, everyone sees my Pug on Instagram and they know that it’s my photography. But, people don’t seem to know they can hire me to make amazing portraits of their dogs and cats and pets in general.
So, I’ve been planning, plotting, and scheming. I may begin archiving my Instagram account and start refocusing on what has brought me the most joy, pet photography. And take my artsy fartsy stuff over to my personal Instagram.
I have been slowly rebuilding my actual Photography site to be a contact and portfolio site for my Pet Photography. I even have a preliminary site up with Adobe Spark that I will bring over to my actual SNG Photography site soon.
https://spark.adobe.com/page/5B8mqy9pqcopq/
But, that will come in time. I’m putting together social media campaigns, advertising, and more.
I will be going to a lot of local businesses that I already have rapport with because of my pug Philomena. I will become a top tier Pet Photographer in Georgia.
That’s what has been going on in my life.
Expect more in the future here, talking about this endeavor and more to come on the upcoming The Professional Amateur Podcast. (Yeah last second knowledge bomb for that).
But most importantly. Pugs.
What a statement, “Don’t Be Afraid to Ask”. “Ask What?!”, You might ask. Well, that is the million dollar question. Whenever you have an obstacle in front of you, you need to stop being so stubborn and figuring it out for yourself, and stop being afraid to ask someone who has gone through it before.
This is more life advice than just photography advice. Even if it’s going to youtube, or a blog, it’s quite ok to ask for help and more importantly you don’t have to be afraid to ask for it.
I literally have asked other photographers, journalists, bloggers, and just friends and family, tons of questions on how to either get published, how to land jobs, or what should I do next.
You’d be surprised in how helpful people are. There is no competition on who can be the best artist or photographer. Any decent human wants their fellow photographers and artists to do great. To be seen. There is plenty of spotlight for everyone.
So, don’t be afraid to ask for help, to ask how to do something, or to ask how you’re doing. That ask, will go a long way.
The title kind of says it all. I have a Patreon, I used to use it for our old gaming podcast/youtube/streaming community. It was easy to handle then, it made sense and it was simple to execute.
So, I decided to start one for my blog. I was thinking to do so to offset the costs of running the blog, or maybe to help sell myself as a service. There are so many things I could do.
But I honestly don’t know how to do it.
Would people want tangible things like prints and trinkets?
Do people want someone to teach them how to do things in Photoshop? Do they want to learn how to use their cameras? Do they just want someone to come to with questions?
Maybe people just want to use it to have me on retainer (yeah I have that as a rung) to use for editing, etc.
I don’t know, Patreon is a great platform to help creators get paid for their craft. However, it seems like I just have problems putting this all together.
Consistency is key, that is what I’ve learned. That is what I fail at.
We all have our faults, we all have our little shortcomings, and we all seem to be blind to them until someone else points them out.
That is when it cuts like a knife.
But, sometimes, it’s ok to get cut like that. It opens your eyes to the issues you have and gives you an opportunity to correct them.
I’ve noticed that my fault is not being consistent at everything I do. That seems like a broad generalization of my shortcoming, but it isn’t. I am literally inconsistent at everything.
I love to cook and I love to experiment in cooking. I might come up with some great dish that tastes amazing and looks pretty good. This could be a dinner entree, a dessert, or even just some pancakes. I never write down what I do, I just wing it on what might taste good together, and it works. Then I try to make it again, and I might have forgotten a step or an ingredient, or use too much of one or too little of another. Making the result rather disappointing.
Even this blog has become prey to my inconsistencies. It’s been a struggle really, I know it only takes me 20 or 30 minutes to put together a quick post with tags, photos, and other pieces of information that make a post at least appealing to look at. But some days I just neglect it…
Correction
Some weeks I neglect it.
I know there are a ton of other things that I do with my time that if I just cut an hour a day out, I could literally write about anything.
This blog isn’t just about how to become a professional amateur, this is a blog about how I became and what I’m doing to stay a professional amateur.
That means I can literally write for 30 minutes every day on what I did or what I’m planning or what I dream of doing in photography, and it could be a post.
I know that Consistency is Key.
It’s time to get consistent.
For Jasmine, because she demanded Part 2. But it’s not complete at all, there will be a Part 3. However, look for the overview here in Part 1
So, now, ONTO THE FLASH!
We’re going to use the example of a Speedlite, or Speedlight, or Speed Light, depending on what brand of camera you have and who manufactured the light itself, it’s all the same.
We are going after a few different Modes that you may or may not have.
TTL stands for Through The Lens. Generally your camera and light are going to work together and give you proper exposure. This is a great way for beginners who are doing a lot of shooting in different environments and are just wanting to wing it and get light. If you aren’t shooting your camera in Manual mode while you light is in TTL, you might have some issues. Any automatic or Aperture/Shutter Priority modes can cause some odd over/under exposure in photos because the both are going to fight with each other to correct one another.
Manual is exactly like it sounds, you’re doing all the calculating yourself. This is where you have freedom and more importantly, this is where you have all the control. This is where you will spend a lot of your time.
SS/HSS is Speed Sync or High Speed Sync. This is more of a setting for getting dialed into doing some fun portraits outdoors, but it’s like it sounds, it allows you to shoot above the general range of most lights that sync up to 1/250 shutter speed. We’ll get more in depth with this later on.
They key is experimentation with all the settings to fit your needs or your preferences, we live in a digital age, taking test shots is ok, they don’t cost you anything.
Ok we got all that out of the way, so have fun!
Wait, we didn’t actually talk about using the flash!
So, now you have been playing with these settings, let’s do what we came here for: How to use that flash!
We will go over a few different ways to use your flash, now the type of flash you have will be different, but this will generally cover about every speedlite type flash there is.
Ok, the reason why you have this light is to not use the stupid straight on flash that you have on the camera already. It’s kind of pointless to point the speedlight toward your subject, that’s how you get the, “Family portrait at disney in 1997 with a disposable flash camera” look.
What you need to do is look at the surrounding area and figure out what you can use to “bounce” the light off of. Does your flash head rotate all the way around, point it away from the subject and let TTL do it’s work. This will give a warm and shadowkilling shot that will look professional.
That’s a taste of the rest of the information to come, for now this is all I had time to get to. In part 3 we’ll talk about diffusing light, working with second light sources, gels??!?!, and other fun tricks to work with. Until then, leave a message or hatemail for not finishing the rest of the bullet points.
Sorry, writing takes time, and I just wish I had more time a day. (For those wondering why I don’t have time, I’ll write about that too eventually… when time permits)
By now, you probably have noticed that I’m more of a nature, candid, real world photographer, getting texture and natural objects in frame for shots. However, sometimes you want a seamless solid color background, without texture (blech) for a portrait, product, or pet shot.
So, I started on a journey to find a great way to do this, cheaply, and without getting screwed over by the thousands of manufacturers across the world who sell “Seamless Solid Color Backgrounds” in a multitude of colors, materials and sizes.
And now, I have a headache and need a stiff drink.
This has been a test of patience.
You can search up and down the internet to find seamless backdrops, but good luck in finding what you actually want for a decent price.
I thought Vinyl was going to be the path that would bring the cheapest backdrops, that will in turn get you what you need.
That’s the wrong path. Unless you know the manufacturer is going to be cutting and rolling up the backdrop before they ship it to you, you’re going to get a 5’x7′ Vinyl backdrop that will be folded up into an almost pocket sized square and have so many deep creases that you won’t be able to do anything about them. Complete waste of money, even if they are only 8 to 15 bucks a piece.
Some outlets have Muslin, if I were shooting people and not a dog for these, that could be a good choice, they are cheap, durable, and if they do get ruined paying 15 – 25 per 5’x7′ isn’t so bad.
Then Paper… it seems to be the only real way to go, but it’s soooooo expensive. I’m still contemplating this one, I will have to report on what happens when I order them.
I honestly don’t know what the purpose of this was. I think I just needed to get this frustration off my chest.
Ok, first, get a lengthy trench coat, wear nothing underneath and then when someone is least expecting it, jump out from a bush or from around the corner and expose yourself! (DON’T EVER DO THIS).
So, you want to learn how to use your Flash. First we need to get a handle on some basics about your camera and how light works with it.
Shutter Speed
Aperture Size
ISO (kind of)
Without going deep into details of individual walkthroughs for all the nuances of a camera (those are to come), we are going to focus on the factor of light with both of these:
Shutter Speed is how long your camera’s shutter stays open when you press the button. So in the short and sweet, the longer your shutter is open, the more light hits your sensor to take the photo!
The slower the speed, the more light, the faster the speed, the less light.
Pretty simple.
This will bring us to the next item:
Aperture Size!
“But I don’t have anything on my camera that says Aperture Size!”, you exclaim.
I understand, this is the magical F/*insertnumberhere* setting. They are also known as F Stops.
Kind of like you eyeballs, think of Aperture or F/Stops as your pupil. When there is a lot of light, your eye constricts the pupil to a pin drop and lets as little light in as possible to get the full image of life around you. When it’s dark, your pupil expands to let in as much light as possible to get the image you need to see.
That’s just what F/Stops are. The lower the number the more light comes in, the higher the number the less light comes in. There are a few other fun things that happen with wide open apertures that we will go over as well.
And ISO, I say this is kind of important, because it can be used to brighten your photos, but too much ISO, you end up getting Noise. Any of you that have watched my live streams, you always hear me complaining about noise on some of my older photos. Noise is annoying.
Ok, so that was a quick overview of 3 components on your camera to get ready to use flash photography.
Well? Now what?
ONTO THE FLASH!
No, wait, ONTO WHY YOU MIGHT WANT TO USE A FLASH!
Before we dive right into the flash and what the numbers do on the flash, let’s go over why you want to use it. Some people go crazy and say flashes ruin photos because it takes out all the natural soft light or creates weird shadows or makes things look to sharp.
I say this, “You’re doing it wrong”.
There are tons of reasons why you might want to use a flash, either your typical hotshoe speedlight (that can be used remotely off camera if needed with a few accessories) to your big bulky studio mono Strobe lights and everything in between.
So, some reasons you might want to use the flash in the first place:
Stay checked in for the next part where we go over The Flash itself.
This is a new ground for me, I will be trying to get more together in terms of examples with photos, diagrams, etc. But for now, just some easy text to go over. There is a lot to do, and thank you for coming with me on this journey.
I’ve researched everything from Shopify, to Etsy, to weird things like ArtPal and of course free-ish things like WooCommerce. I have a Pixieset Gallery, I want to have a more fire and forget idea for my art. I think I figured it out.
I think it’s time to burn it all down.
For the longest time http://www.sng-photography.com has just been sitting there doing nothing. People seem to go to the site (I have the analytics showing so) and look at some of my older shots.
We need to go deeper.
I think it’s time to burn it all down.
That is my theme for the re-branding and re-tooling of
www.sng-photography.com because I need to start back at square one and keep it simple.
I want to sell my work. I want to book new jobs. I want to almost automate it.
So this redesign will have an auto fulfillment, a way to buy directly from me, and a way to book me for jobs. I can’t go overboard with this, I don’t need a million fancy things, I just need a simple place to get the message out and get paid more for doing what I love, beyond the retouching and stock photos from time to time.
So…
I think it’s time to burn it all down.
And rebuild from those ashes a new and better SNG Photography.
More to come.
The post To sell your own photos, you have to sell yourself. appeared first on Stefan Glazer - The Professional Amateur.
Here is a small Poll, I want your input on what to do next in this Tutorial endeavor. Not seeing something on the poll that you want to see laid out for you? Go ahead and leave a comment below!
The post What do you want to learn today? appeared first on Stefan Glazer - The Professional Amateur.
Photography is a weird profession. Sure, there are a million facets of this one activity. You can be a wedding photographer, a portrait photographer, a sports photographer, and a million other niches that you could fall into.
So when you find your niche, you get excited about what you can do.
What do I want to do? I want to sell prints of my macro art and sell digital files of how-to’s and presets and actions.
That seems easy, but it’s not.
This is a frustration I didn’t know existed. All I wanted to do is set up my site http://www.sng-photography.com as a gallery where you can purchase said prints, digital files, etc. What I’ve run into is this;
I don’t know what to do right now to be honest. The suggestions from all the internet jockeys out there, all the self help books I’ve read and listened to, all the blogs I have browsed about getting a side hustle off the ground like this. All of them say to just do it.
So I am trying to.
I guess I will try to use a third party service. I don’t want to use Etsy right now, I want to use something that I can have locally on my server/domain. I want to drive traffic to it, I want to not rely on someone else’s basket to put some of my eggs in.
So, what does that leave me?
WooCommerce is an option, or is it?
Shopify?
Esty (I SAID NO ETSY)?
There are too many things out there. I’ll report back with more in depth later.
For now, the hunt of compiling data continues.
The post The Undertaking of Revamping Yourself appeared first on Stefan Glazer - The Professional Amateur.
There was really nothing to report. I didn’t do anything for me today, I only did for us. So there wasn’t any movement on going forward with the photography stuff, however, there was a lot more movement on our side project on Etsy that is my wife’s brainchild.
Overall though, I’m not going to let that get me down.
I have so many things I want to do, but not enough time.
That is the conundrum.
That is the struggle we all have.
But I’ll get there, even if it takes a little more than 90 days.
I’m sure I’ll get there in 90 though.
Until tomorrow.
Side note, it’s my birthday weekend. The one weekend of the year I’m allowed to be “lazy”, by that I mean, not letting things stress me out. Including not doing the 90 day stuff in it’s fullest (granted I woke up this morning having forgot to post this last night and have already done some research for the weekend, so I guess It’s not completely lazy.)
Updates to come, as I have some stuff planned this weekend anyway.
The post 90 Days to a Goal. Day 5. appeared first on Stefan Glazer - The Professional Amateur.
Some people have pets. Some, have superstars.
If you went back in time, to the year 2000, with me going off to college for Graphic Design and told me, “You will be a professional photographer, who takes photos of your pug for 10s of thousands of people to enjoy every day on Instagram!” I would have laughed at you. Then I would has asked, “What the hell is Instagram?”
We fast forward to today, where Philomena is a central part of our life, not just because of her Sassy Pug antics, but, her social media presence is continually growing. And whether it was the plan or not in my life, pet photography is the core of what I do.
I really love doing the fun setups for her. And here is what I have learned being a pet photographer:
So, while I feel like it wasn’t what I could have even fathomed of doing 20 years ago. It’s what I do now. And I love it.
Bonus, your Model friends decide to imitate your pug like @AtomBombBody has:
The post Pet Photography – A Pug’s Life appeared first on Stefan Glazer - The Professional Amateur.
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Power Pug Puffs
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• • • • • • • • • • #pug #pugpuppy #blackpug #cute #sassy #puglife #pugslife #pugsnotdrugs #puppy #puppylove #baby #love #pugpuppy #bubbles #dogsofinsta #dogsofinstagram #pugs #puppiesofinsta #puppiesofinstagram #pup #pupper #sweet #sassypug #pugsofinsta #pugsofinstagram #dogs
