The silly little things that come back to bite you in the …

The image above is from a spread of my photos in the “Gallery” section of “Digital Photo” magazine. The issue should be out in the UK in a week or two.

That’s great and all, but here’s a short story with an important point.

The pay for being featured in this particular section of the magazine, is not significant, it’s better than what most magazines will give for something similar, but it’s insignificant nevertheless. My main motivation for sending images in was not the money, but the exposure. “Digital Photo” is one of the most widely read photography magazines in the UK and probably Australia. It’s a great platform for spreading the word about what I do to thousands of people.

Ideally this is what I would want to happen – readers see my images, they like them, they go to my website and see what else I do. Hopefully someone wants to buy a print, someone else might be interested in a workshop and a few others may want to buy the ebook tutorial. Good idea. Well, not so fast. Why? Because the website URL is not there! Why is it not there? Good question.

When submitting images to “Digital Photo” you have to provide all your contact details, as well as a website URL, if you have one. All that info goes to someone, though I am not exactly sure to whom. I thought that since I had provided the URL of my website it would automatically be included, along with my images. Incorrect!

My initial reaction was a good amount of cursing, out loud. That’s my reaction to many things that frustrate me or make me angry, but once I get that out of my system, I take a deep breath, relax and analyze – what went wrong? The answer is simple – I assumed without actually communicating what was important to me, without verifying anything. I assumed wrong. Good opportunity wasted, lesson learned.

Editors have a lot of stuff on their hands and including my website info into a publication is likely not on their “to do list”, especially not if they haven’t been requested and reminded. Even when they are requested and reminded, things can and will go wrong and in that case the editor in question should have a good kick up the butt. Not the case here, instead, what I thought was common sense, a silly, little insignificant thing, came to bite me in the place where the uncooperative editor should be kicked.

The lesson is one that applies to anything in life – if something is important to you, go after it, let the relevant people know, remind them and remind them again. Sure you there’s a chance that you may come across as annoying, but I’d rather come across as annoying and have an opportunity to maximize the return from my efforts than be a nice, complacent fellow who gets almost nothing for his hard work. Simple as that. Don’t do what I did.

Some words to aspiring travel photographers

It may be borderline pretentious of me to be offering words to “aspiring” travel photographers, since until pretty recently I was only “aspiring” to do this thing myself. The reason for the post is a question, which I have received numerous times over the past couple of week, in various forms:

How does one become a travel photographer and go on to make enough money in this profession?

At first the question makes me laugh. Who the hell am I to be giving people advice on anything career-related? I’ve never had much of a plan and I always considered that a lot of my success was a result of pure luck. Regardless of whether I’ve changed from an “aspiring travel photographer” to whatever else, I have realized that I am now doing something that many dream of -  I travel, take photos and mange to “survive” off the income generated by these photos. On second look I think that there may be reason to my “madness” and perhaps my own story can be useful to other young people starting out. Here it goes.

To “become a travel photographer” I worked all sorts of shitty jobs, occasionally committed intellectual and creative suicide by shooting what I consider trash, I used every opportunity in sight to get on the road. There’s an interesting concept I heard somewhere on the net (probably Brooks Jensen’s podcast) – you need to dedicate 10,000 hours to something in order to become proficient at it. Sounds like a fair assumption. That’s basically what I did without realizing. I never quite thought of it as a 10,000 hour thing, but I did know that to be decent at shooting particular themes I needed to shoot them for an extended period of time and so I totally immersed myself in doing just that, while I went off on trips that ranged from six weeks to seven months.

After my third India/Nepal trip (the seven month one) I felt that I really had an idea of what I was doing and incidentally that’s when other things started to click. I began to get published in magazines, had an exhibition and made print sales (though more from magazines then from the exhibition). As much as everyone today says that print media is on its last legs, I’ll say that it’s pretty important to get your work in published. There’s just a certain type of validity that comes with having your work in print. It means that someone at least thought enough of it to spend their money on the required paper and ink.

With the publications, I saw that my work had some value and I asked myself this question: How can I generate a more regular income from my photos? I looked at image/stock agencies. Got a contract with Lonely Planet Images (on my second attempt), but terminated it before long – this isn’t the place to go into the details, Lonely Planet make great guidebooks… and let’s leave it at that.

I still wanted to have my photos represented by an agency, those who are seriously working with the big name agencies know how important they can be and so, I went on a search. A bit of luck, weeks of waiting, empty phone calls and emails, weeks more of being bounced around and I finally managed to get in with Getty Images – everyone’s “favorite” stock selling (not so gentle) giant.

This brings me to How do you make enough money? part of the question. Well, it all depends on what you want enough for. A comfy life in inner-city Sydney? There’s a very slim chance that your travel photography will generate enough income for that in the first years. But having your images make you enough to travel and live around the cheaper parts of the world? Very possible, that’s what I do.

After a couple of years of very intense photographing and relatively recent, almost equally intense attempts at finding ways to make money from it, I have to say that I’m still very very far from striking it rich. Every month Getty sells some of my work and probably makes me enough to get by in most of Asia. I am still submitting to magazines and looking for alternative incomes from my photos, I’m even still willing to sell my soul, to shoot what I don’t love every now and then. However, importantly I no longer have to do what I don’t like, my images are finally “working” for me. Even more importantly I don’t have to work in retail, restaurants or wherever else just to save enough for the next journey.

But still, in all honesty, the way that me and Tanya (my wife) live is not for everyone. Certain comforts must be forgotten, while you’re on the road with a limited income, you simply can’t afford them.

Of course much of the beautiful, amazing things associated with travel are completely free, but if you ever compare your experiences with those of a friend, who may have traveled the same route as you during his four-week annual holiday, you realize that the pleasure you get out of traveling is very different to his. Your pleasure has a perverted twist. While he enjoys sipping cocktails on a luxury boat-cruise, you jump on a ferry packed with goats, chickens, furniture and dry fish, with lovely fellow passengers who chain-smoke and continuously spit on the floor. The journey exhausts and frustrates,  and  by the end you reek of that damn dry fish and your own sweat. But you’ve made new friends, learned words in a foreign language and have one heck of a story to tell when you get home. The pleasure comes from the experience and from the fact that you survived it. Your friend didn’t “suffer” on the luxury boat, but nor did he experience the ‘realness’ of actually being in another country, among regular people from a different culture.

If your cup of tea is the ferry ride and you’re really into your photography, then perhaps things don’t need to be very complicated.

I’ll borrow words from Chase Jarvis. He’s not a travel photographer, but unlike me, he really knows what he’s talking about.

There are two things you need to succeed: to be undeniably awesome at what you do, and to persevere.

Applies to everything, even travel photography.

(The confused character with ski-goggles above is none other than me. I used to wear the ski-goggles when riding the motorcycle. In this image I’m riding in the back of a bullock cart during an early morning in Rajasthan’s, Bundi District. Didn’t get a good picture, but the ride was kinda interesting.

Looking ahead.

I turned 28 the other day. For me every birthday since my 21st has brought mixed feelings. I rarely celebrate ‘getting older’ these days. It’s exciting to become an ‘adult’, but once you are one, well, the excitement pretty quickly wears off. Every birthday becomes a reminder that the clock is ticking, time isn’t standing still and your days on earth are limited. As if I wasn’t conscious of it all already, the death of that rather famous pop-icon was yet another reminder that we are all indeed mortal.

That sure is a morbid way of looking at things, especially for a young person, many of you will think. Hey, just stating a simple fact that no one can escape. I figure that since I realize this, I can at least try to make the most of what time I do have.

The life I’m currently living is the life I chose after finishing university. It’s the life I wanted. A 9-5 job just never appealed to me. I have done it (though not for long) hated it; and what’s the point of doing something we hate most of our lives?

I am very curious and I always feel the urge to express myself creatively, so, to put it simply, I chose to travel around the world, explore it, experience its different cultures and people and photograph some of what I see along the way.

It’s not a life for everyone and it’s not even entirely perfect for me, there’s the constant financial uncertainty that’s attached to this lifestyle and as I work on it, I have to compensate for months of fun with months of pretty full-on work in front of the computer, sorting out through images, emailing publications and agencies (something I don’t like so much) all that in hopes of getting rid of the financial uncertainty completely, some time in the not too distant future.

But the life I have is great, no complaints for most part . There’s nothing better than the feeling of being alive, of being so present in the moment that you don’t need to reflect on the past or the future, just see/feel what’s in front and around you right now. That’s how it is most of the time, while I’m on the road. What’s even better is the fact that I share all my experiences with the one person that really matters – my wife Tanya.

What’s the point of all this? Why am I posting these thoughts on the blog? Well, I simply want to share a bit of my philosophy, it’s relevant to any people not doing what they want with their lives and it seems like there are a lot of you out there. We often say to ourselves – “Tomorrow”, but one day tomorrow becomes yesterday and you missed your chance.

Whether it’s a dream photography project you’ve been putting off for years or whatever else, the window of opportunity eventually closes. We have to seize the chance or regret things for eternity.

I’m going to seize my own chance, a chance to see some of my family members on the other side of the world this August. I haven’t seen my grandparents for far too long and they won’t be around forever, one grandfather has already gone and neither me nor my father had a chance to say good-bye . I wouldn’t really be going to Eastern Europe at this stage of my life and my career, if it wasn’t for my desire to spend time with them, but I will make the most of this time photographically. Hopefully I can scrape enough cash for a used car (reason I’m not getting a 5D MKII yet) and explore Belarus, Ukraine and perhaps Poland and Moldova, and of course photograph a few things along the way.

Though my mind wants to go to Africa, South America, some place new or at least back to the warmth and familiarity of Asia, my heart is telling me to go see my family and to take Tanya to see her family (they live in the same country). I guess sometimes, and this will sound very cheesy, you gotta follow your heart. I feel like spewing after using such clichéd phrases, but that’s the truth and there isn’t any better or simpler way of saying it.

Above is an image of a mother and daughter from the Palesie region of Belarus. The the mother was 93, the daughter 73 at the time the photo was taken. The region is quite famous for ‘producing’ people who live long and productive lives. Both, the daughter and the mother were still working in the garden, planting things and doing house chores. Palesie is one region which I want to revisit and explore in depth during this trip.

Social Media Madness!

First of all, I want to thank all the people who bought my ebook tutorial over the past few days and thank you everyone who spread the word about it. While I am not ready to head off on a cruise to the Caribbean just yet the great response has certainly made the time I put into this little project worthwhile, heck I may even make another one on a different topic in the future. For those who haven’t yet got it, it will always be available through my WEBSITE and this blog (side-bar on the right).

I want to thank one person in particular – David duChemin / Pixelated Image. I met David a few years back on the ‘Travel Photographers Network’, since then we’ve corresponded over the internet and while I have never met him in person, I feel like I can really call him a friend.

If you’ve never heard of this duChemin fellow, well then I really can’t imagine where you’ve been. Over the past few months David duChemin has become one of the hottest names in photography. It seems as if on any given day he could be giving an interview on a popular photography podcast, meeting up with top photographers like Chase Jarvis or Joe McNally, or launching his BOOK at B&H, New York (probably the largest photography store in the world). The fact that amidst this busy schedule David managed to find the time to spread the word about that little ebook of mine just shows what sort of person he is. The dude is about as genuine, friendly and helpful as they get. Add those qualities to his success and you have one of the most inspirational photographers out there. So, thanks a lot David mate – for helping out and for being a continuous source of inspiration for God knows how many photographers now.

Now to the social media business, well it was also David duChemin who gave me the final kick up the butt to start ‘twittering’, ‘tweeting’ whatever the heck you call it.  It’s not like I wasn’t aware of Twitter, I was, just as I’m also aware that it’s become much less cool, since all the ‘stars’ started using it.

I couldn’t care less about the ‘coolness’ factor. What I do see is that Twitter has turned into a really valuable tool for businesses and I can certainly see the incredible potential in it from a photographer’s perspective. David wrote a great blog post about social media stuff and photographers a while ago – “You 2.0 – Photographers and Twitter” and if you want to delve deeper into what the whole Web 2.0 thing can do for photographers it’s worth checking out Jack Holligsworth’s Site. From what Jack is promising, it will be a valuable source of information.

As far as my opinion – in short, I think Twitter is very useful for photographers marketing their work and services. It can also be an important tool, along with a blog when it comes to building your brand. But even if you aren’t into brand-building or marketing your photography, you can get a lot out of Twitter. If you ‘follow’ the right people, Twitter can be a tremendous source for learning things you never even knew were extremely useful for you – latest tech news, industry trends, free resources on the internet. If something has value, there’s a good chance that you’ll come across it on Twitter.

So yeah, I’m on it now, as some may have noticed from the ‘My Twitter’ update thingy on the side bar. You can all FOLLOW me if you like, I’m ‘mitchellkphotos’. I promise that I won’t tweet whenever I take a crap or eat something, only useful information for photographers, travelers or simply like minded folks.

Now to a somewhat different topic. As if I didn’t lust for the 5D Mk II enough already, not long ago I discovered this blog – Planet 5D.

Look around for 5 minutes and you’ll come across some amazing videos created with the camera. Some of you may be photography purists and don’t want to even touch that video button, but me, well I started off making films, so this bloody camera is making me drool. The price-tag, which is still a little ridiculous in Australia and the fact that for the same amount of money I can probably live and travel in Asia for half a year have prevented me from getting one, but man, could I do some great things with that video function .

If anyone important from Canon ever reads this – please send me a free 5D Mk II, the stuff I’ll shoot with it will be a very worthy return for your ‘investment’.

Understanding Post-Processing – The Tutorial

Well, it’s finally here. I’ve spent the last couple of days finishing off the tutorial that I promised what seems like a long while ago now.

The preview PDF (1.5mb) is HERE.

You can buy it HERE.

The idea behind the tutorial was born from countless e-mails where people would ask me what I do to my images in Photoshop/Lightroom. Although how I post-process images is no rocket science, it is not necessarily something that can be described briefly in an email.

And so I have come up with a fairly comprehensive e-book, which goes right to the heart of what I do to my images in post. The instructions are detailed and should enable even a beginner with some basic knowledge to achieve the same results as I, with some practice.

I think that the content of this e-book may change the workflow for many photographers. The techniques are simple enough, yet they enable you to achieve dramatic results without spending too much time on each image. To me that’s important, as much as I enjoy the post-processing, I love shooting much more. Less post-processing equals more shooting.

I mentioned some time ago how much I loved Capture One and I still do, but I have found myself using Camera RAW in Photoshop CS4 and achieving great results much, much quicker than before. Apart from some interface differences, Lightroom is identical to Camera RAW in what it does. As a result I ended up writing this e-book tutorial for Lightroom and Photoshop users. The instructions for working with the RAW files are for Lightroom (I do provide screen-grabs from Photoshop, for parts where the interface is a little different). The instructions for work that can’t be done in Lightroom and additional touch up work are for Photoshop (CS3 and after).

The e-book is priced at $US12, but I feel that it will give infinitely more value to those who use it.

If you like the e-book or know photographers who may find it useful – spread the word. Any income from this will be used for good – i.e. photography and more travel, which will also result in more photography and more viewing pleasure for the readers of this blog.

Everything you need to buy the e-book is HERE.

Digital SLR Photography Magazine

A real quick post. As you can see above, my image is on this month’s cover of UK’s Digital SLR Photography Magazine (well actually it’s next month’s issue, but it’s out now, go figure). It seems that ‘cover people’ like to flip my images, this is the second time my photo was flipped to accommodate the text. Oh well, the pleasant feeling of seeing your work on the cover of a publication you really like, far outweighs any frustration.

In the same issue there’s a 12 page feature on my work and some text about my photographic adventures around India. I guess it’s fitting that they put it in the “Photo Adventures” section.

You can obviously buy the magazine in UK and I have also seen it at a few News Agents in Sydney (it will probably get here in a few weeks though).

Some quick news

I have finally rebuilt my website (click image above to see it), some things might still be tweaked/added, but for most part this is it.

I wanted it to be simple, elegant and easy to navigate. I limited the amount of images on there – just enough to provide a taste of my work. You can get to the images quickly, in two clicks, which I feel is important.

You can also find workshop information now, under ‘Learn’, more on that in a future post soon.

I’ve had my hands full with all this work that doesn’t necessarily pay off right away – doing the website, the PBase site, more photo sorting, photo article proposals to magazines etc. But I did set a few goals for myself, which I would encourage anyone in the early years of their career to do, same probably goes for the experienced photographers, the goals, of course would be different, but the idea is the same – making sure that things done.

Having at least five months at home, in front of a good internet connection and a fast computer I felt that I really needed to make the most of this time. It’s one thing to shoot photos and it’s another thing to sell them, get them in front of people. Some of that is done by Getty Images, but not as much as I’d like at this stage.

Sending your work to magazine editors is exciting, nerve-wrecking and frustrating all at once. I haven’t been spoon-fed any ‘connections’ nor have I been told what the right and wrong ways to approach magazine editors are. In some ways maybe that’s good, as I don’t want to be limited by previous failures of others. I keep it simple, maybe even a little naive and I have managed to get myself into a few publications which I like (more on that soon) so I guess my approach has worked, at least to an extent.

In theory you’d think that if you’ve ‘got the goods’ you can just cold-call/email, get your photos in front of the right people and ‘voila’ you have a feature on your work or of a story you shot. In reality that’s not always the case, at times you don’t even know whether your email was read or not (that’s the frustrating part) and a week later you may find out that some magazine does actually want to feature your images (that’s the exciting part). Then, when you have to give them what they need before their deadline, the nerve-wrecking part comes.

That’s about it for now. The tutorial, which I promised what seems like a long time ago now is in the making, it will be available before June 10th.

PBase – a poor photographer’s website that’s awesome

I’ve been working on my website for way too long. Making websites is not something that excites me very much, at least not for more than an hour or two. It’d be great to have the whole thing done for you with a magical press of a button.

Well PBase is almost, kinda like having it done with a press of a button. I’ve been using it for about three years now and have to say that it’s one of the most useful, best value-for-money products out there for photographers.

PBase is not perfect, but for $23 a year (for the basic account) it, in my opinion trumps everything else out there. For those who don’t know; what exactly is PBase? It’s something between Flickr and SmugMug. But I prefer it over the two for seriously presenting my photos. Flickr’s interface is not an ideal platform for making your images look their best, yeah there are ways to do it, but who really cares enough to go to the effort? It’s also got this air of amateurism about it. All those little badges and group invitations seem so much like a thing for teenagers. SmugMug’s interface is a little better but that crap that pops up on the images is very annoying and seriously; what’s with the name?

PBase’s interface is as simple as it gets and with some basic knowledge of CSS you can customize the look of your galleries beyond that in the preset templates. You are of course rather limited to what you can do, but there’s enough for a simple, elegant presentation of images, without adds, badges or pop-up icons.

I would not feel right sending an editor from a serious magazine/organisation to my Flickr account (which I do have). If I get annoyed navigating through it, an editor may not even bother. As far as PBase goes, I send my editor at Getty Images there all the time, to make selections from my submissions. He doesn’t have to navigate through all the nonsense to get to the photos and the whole experience is pretty convenient. Same goes for magazine editors. I create a gallery, upload a submission and email the editor.

PBase is also a community. Not anywhere nearly as large as Flickr’s but a community nevertheless. For professionals in the early stages of their career an important point of being part of a community is to get your name out there, perhaps even sell an image or two. I’ve had some success with that on PBase, none with Flickr. Sure I’ve had countless badges and hundreds of people adding certain images to their favourites list, but in the real world; who gives a shit? There are also many people sending me Flickrmail and asking for freebies, it just seems that Flickr can be as annoying as it can be useful.

I’ve sorta revamped my PBase galleries to work as an extension of my website. With the help of my IT genius father I customised the look a bit (but it’s nothing hard really). I also got rid of all the older stuff, put some of the more relevant work on there and sorted it in groups. I’m still working on the whole thing, but you’re all welcome to HAVE A LOOK.

So the verdict is – PBase is awesome. If I didn’t have a website, I may have opted for Photoshelter’s offerings, you get some great options, but the price of those is in the hundreds. If you’re looking for an easy, cheap way to get your images online, look no further. If you’re looking for a place to which you can quickly upload images from anywhere in the world to show them to clients, editors in a simple professional manner – PBase is great.

Well, they’re not paying me to advertise them and you all get the point.