“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.”
Aristotle

This morning I met with some friends of mine for coffee. My buddy Hans tossed out this quote he’d recently read in a runner’s magazine of all places. He thought it might spur some challenging conversation. We were discussing this more from a theological bent and how this effect our life, work and art.  So, in the tradition of Socratic dialogue I offer you the same.

The first part of this is really the premise and the second part the application. The premise is “We are what we repeatedly do.” A lazy man derives his title because he’s lazy. A hard-working man, the same. A painter or a photographer because that is what they do. Maybe this is the case for you, do spend more time taking photos than just about anything else or is it just a weekend hobby for you? What makes this difficult for me to hear is I spend more time writing a blog, tweeting, working with Lightroom and keywording photos than taking photos. But then, just maybe, that’s what a photographer is these days or maybe, that’s what a working photographer is (I hesitate using the word “professional”.)  How much time are you actually spending on your craft?  Most photographers I know are almost addicted to taking pictures. They can’t help but, it’s in their blood, “it’s what they do”, thus it is what they are.  I worked with a guy that used to say, “if you want to know someone’s real values, you watch how they spend their time (not listen to their opinions or posturing). Ouch!

It’s the second part of the statement but I find the most intriguing. “Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.”  I think what Aristotle is saying here, is that excellence is not an accident or a fluke. It is not a one time thing. Oh, sure, you can have an excellent photograph. But that does not make you an excellent photographer. The excellent photograph might very well be a fluke and you, on the other hand be a lousy photographer. Give a monkey a camera and eventually he’ll come up with an award-winning photograph. Quite frankly, there’s probably a lot of monkeys with cameras out there dubbing themselves excellent photographers. No, I think Aristotle is absolutely right here. Excellence is gained by habitually working at your art. Aristotle goes on to say;

“Excellence, then, is a state concerned with choice, lying in a mean, relative to us, this being determined by reason and in the way in which the man of practical wisdom would determine it.”

Now there is a lot of words! But I think he is saying, you are excellent at something when you have the means to be able to choose to do it well and to do that thing well over and over again. He doesn’t just leaving it there, the last part says “in which the man of practical wisdom would determine it.” In other words you’ve made right choices by what you know and the results are excellence. This ability to choose excellence time and time again, gives you the moniker of excellent at your craft.

So, how do you achieve excellence so that you can choose it? Aristotle answers that as well, when he says, “Excellence is an art won by training and habituation.” (interesting that he calls excellence an art.) This one is pretty straightforward. You train at being great and you make it a habit. This kind of goes back to the whole Zen aspect of things we’ve talked about before. You do something over and over again until it becomes a part of you and you can do it without thinking about it. I’ve had several e-mails lately asking about composition and how do I frame an image etc. The fact is, most of the time I don’t think about it, it just comes naturally when I put the camera to my eye. But it wasn’t always that way. I had to work at it. I used the rule of thirds to train me. I use the concept of visual weight to beat my creative eye into submission. I consciously thought about it while framing images, over and over again until now it just happens. Wax on, wax off. Take off the jacket. Drop the jacket. Hang the jacket. Are you working at becoming an excellent photographer? Don’t think it will just come easy?

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Photographers can cause ripples.

Recently I had an email from a reader who had some basic photography questions. He was dealing with some pretty common issues that most beginners deal with. He has been frustrated that his images, though taken in some very exotic locations don’t seem to grab the viewer. After I looked over some of his images and made some strong suggestions, I got the email below.  His questions are typical for where he is in his photographic journey. I figured the answers I would give might be helpful for others in the same place. So, I thought I would share them with you. I hope any beginners reading this, will find them helpful.

Beginner: Regarding composition — is there a book that you would recommend above the others?

Matt: Yes, several. But the one to start with is by Michael Freeman called “The Photographer’s Eye” from Larks Books. Michael goes into great depth covering composition and design. This book has really become a standard for beginners and advanced photographers alike, and no better place to start.

Beginner: The human side of my struggle in composition. A lot of the time I am walking around through a market etc and taking a lot of pictures on the fly.  I am not looking at the images after I take them but just trying to get the scene before people start to react to the camera.

Matt: This reminds me of an old joke. A guy walks into see his doctor and tells him, “Doc, it hurts when I do this.” The Doctor replies wisely, “Well, stop doing that!” The answer is stop walking through the market and stop and experience the market and it’s life. You will never get more than”snaps” if all you do is breeze through a place and take snaps. We get good images because we seek them out, we watch for them, we observe life around us. If you are there for a few minutes and raise a camera to your face, snap a picture and then move on, yes, people will react. But, the converse is true if you slow down and join in what is happening around you. Buy some fruit. Ask questions. Show them you are genuinely interested in them, once they see that, they drop their guard and you can take plenty of photos. You will find most of them will not mind you taking their image. The bonus is that many of them will go about their daily business and pay no attention to you. Now your subjects are relaxed around you, they don’t feel threatened and you get candid images that you can take your time making, frame in the camera and not feel rushed.

Beginner: In practice how do you deal with this?  How do you try to really compose the picture well while at the same time mitigate against the scene changing with the introduction of the camera. How much time do you spend framing a shot vs cropping later?

Matt: As I said above, you really need to slow down and experience the scene. At the risk of sounding rather Zen, imagine it this way. If you throw a stone into a puddle you will make quite the splash and plenty of ripples. But wait and those ripples subside and everything goes back to normal except, the stone is in the middle of the puddle. Think of yourself as that stone. When you first enter a scene you create quite a stir. The best thing you can do is calmly wait with your camera at your side. Let the ripples subside and eventually people get used to you being around and start to relax and soon you will be allowed to shoot without much changes in the scene around you. As for the second part of your question; I frame the image I want in the camera. If I have to crop in Lightroom it usually is only around 5- 10% of the image.

Beginner: For rule of thirds and off center subjects, how do you setup your cameras auto focus system for times when you are doing “quick shots” and moving fast?  Typically I set it to use the center point so that with my old camera it wouldn’t pick the wrong thing to focus on.  What do you do?  Do you let the camera decide where the best focus point is in those situations?  Are you able to just really quickly change the auto focus points on the camera?  Or do you focus lock and then frame?

Matt: It is not a good thing to ever let the camera decide things. The camera is rather stupid, it doesn’t have a very big brain. This is the very reason we don’t shoot JPEG. We don’t want the camera making decisions on how the image should look, right? So, for heavens sake, why would you let the camera decide the focal point of the image? You have two choices as you mentioned and I do both. You can scroll through your AF points and set the one point that corresponds to the composition you think you will be shooting. I only do this if you have time and good contrast. The outer focal points are not as sensitive to contrast as the center point and thus not as quick to focus. The other way, is  to keep the center AF point your active point; focus and then recompose. Using the center point will give you a better chance at nailing that focus as it is more sensitive to contrast and focuses quicker. However, be careful. The fact is if you are using a very narrow depth of field and you are close to the subject, you can in fact focus on say someones eyes, then recompose and then be out of focus. The film plan is a flat surface and if you are close to a subject, when you tilt the camera to the eyes and then recompose you change the distance of the film plane to the subjects eye. The change is very slight, but if you are working with a 1.2 lens like I often do, then you might see a difference. It really comes down to using the technique that works for you for that moment. But, do me a favor, don’t ever keep all the AF points active and thing you cover all your focal bases. If that is your method, you are in for some out of focus images.

Beginner: So far I typically snap the picture as quickly as possible (and keep moving) and then crop later.  But I am betting there is a better way.

Matt: There’s that snatch and grab thing going again. Take your time, compose in the frame, and savor the moment. Observe your surroundings. Save your pixels and compose in the camera.

Beginner: I guess in the end I see the distractions (telephone lines etc) but I am not always sure how to change the composition without changing the shot by my presence.

Matt: You just answered your own question. You have to change your presence as you put it. I would simply say change your position. When looking through a lens and composing an image, often – maybe even most of the time – distractions can be eliminated by shifting a few inches or feet. Look at the example below. The first image had all kinds of distracting elements behind the woman. But, by moving over to the right a few feet, not only did I find a cleaner background, I also (and this is a big thing!) found much better light. Remember, when you move, the quality of the light changes. The fact is, the light stays the same but the angle you view the light changes. So, beware of  the background as well as the light quality. I will change my position for either or both, as in this case.

Beginner: Last question –  I have lightroom, but I don’t have the full version of Photoshop do I need it?

Matt: No. In fact 95 to 98% of my work never leaves Lightroom anymore. Lightroom is so incredably powerful you only really need Photoshop to do a few things like cloning  or perhaps some difficult spot removal. I will say this, that the new Photoshop CS5 has Content aware delete and cloning that is remarkable. I have never seen anything like it. But, in short, no. You really can get by on Lightroom alone. Do your self a big favor and make sure you have Lightroom 3. There are some really great books that can be of some great help. Scott Kelby’s, “Lightroom 3 book for digital photographers” and Martin Evening’s “The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 Book, The Complete Guide for Photographers” Both look like real winners. I just got both of these yesterday from my buddies at PeachPit. Then of course, I can’t mention Lightroom 3 with out talking about David duChemin’s new book hot off the press, “Vision & Voice: Refining Your Vision in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom“. I don’t have it yet. But David gave me a sneak peak sometime back and, like all David’s books, it promises to be the one you keep returning to. More than a “how-to” book on Lightroom. This book promises to help you use Lightroom to express your vision that you had when you took the image to begin with.

I hope this has been helpful. If nothing more than a gentle reminder that you can’t stand with your feet nailed to the floor and expect to get great images. You have to work the scene and the light. Spend time with your subjects and learn to see the image in the camera when you take it.

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Photo by Ramy Salem

I talk to myself.
There – I’ve said it. I know, you think I’m nuts. That’s not new news–but that’s a whole other topic.
The fact is, I talk to myself. Whenever I put the camera to my face, I talk to myself. Sometimes audibly, all the time in my head. I ask myself what am I shooting? Where is the picture? Where’s the story? What’s the story? Is this the best angle? And so many other questions. Maybe some photographers look at a scene and can view it through the lens of their mind. I can’t. I need to have the camera to my face. I need to look through the camera and view it through the lens that’s on it. I can get a guesstimate without putting it to my face. In fact, that’s how I choose what lens to put on the camera, by experience. I know pretty close what it will look like with a 17 mm lens or 200 mm lens. I know the amount of distortion an object will have with a 17 mm and I know from experience if that’s what I want or not to help tell the story. I know the compression I get with the 200 mm lens and whether or not that will help tell the story. But there are so many other questions left unanswered. So I raise the camera and lens to my face and I talk to myself while I frame the subject.

Do you talk to yourself? Is that something that you do to help you take your photos? If it’s not, it probably should be. You should be asking yourself all kinds of questions when you look through the lens of your camera. Not just about what you see, but what you don’t see. Is this the best angle? Is there anything distracting behind the subject? Maybe I should move three steps to the left. Is that bit of sky going to be too bright behind my subject? Is there a pole running through someone’s head? Is there a horizon line or horizontal line of any kind going through my subject head? These are all important things to be asking. You don’t find the answers without asking the questions.

We’re talking about being observant with purpose. Asking yourself specific questions to help develop your eye. Get into the habit and I promise you’ll have better images and you’ll tell a better story.

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There are several things taking my time up lately and most of them are rather mundane. I’m spending a lot of time keywording photographs. For some of you, this is not very important, all you need to do is keyword an image so you can find it quickly in your library. However, for many of us, this task, however painful and boring is critical. It ensures that others who are looking for a photograph can find what they are looking for. So someone who’s looking for a story, a concept or even a thought that needs to be illustrated with an image, will be able to type  into a search engine a word that hopefully illustrates that point and presto, an image fitting their need pops up!

Here is how it might work. Lets say an in-flight magazine for an airlines like Egypt Air or Gulf Air is writing an article about an Egyptian destination, and they’re looking for photographs to illustrate it, they may have specific things in mind. Lets put ourselves in the shoes of an editor for a minute. We need a few photographs that  illustrates traditional Egyptian culture. So we go to a stock house like PhotoShelter and type in some keywords that we think might link us to some images that will illustrate our article. In this case, we type in Egypt and galabeya (the long traditional Egyptian cloak worn by the men). What do we get? Well, several picture from Marco Ryan and hopefully the photo up above and a few more.  The point is, you need to second-guess what terms people will be using to search. Actually, for the photo above the keywords are;

carpet, Egypt, galabeya, headdress, headgear, Islam, Male, Man, Muslim, Nile, Nubian, oriental rug, persian rug, robe, rug, sand, sunset, traditional, village, white

Good keywording helps sell your images.  The trick to all this is consistency and quite frankly tenacity.  Consistency is really another  term for a controlled vocabulary. By maintaining a controlled vocabulary it makes searching easier.  An example given by the folks over at controlledvocabulary.com (yes there really is a website by that name) is the Yellow Pages. Most everyone has used Yellow Pages in a phone book. When you look up “Car Dealers” you fine a notation to “see Automobile Dealers.” In a simple way this is what were talking about. Now, I’m not going to go into details on how controlled vocabulary works for two reasons:  first, I don’t fully understand it myself, and second, the people at controlledvocabulary.com already understand it and have a whole website explaining it.  By tenacity I mean, tenacity–sticking to it. It’s boring and tedious work to keyword photographs. But if you want to sell your images you need to have good keywording. Quite frankly, almost any keywords are better than no keywords.

I see keywording a little bit like backing up your hard drive. It’s a mundane task that is essential. There is some great software out there that makes backing up the hard drive easy and painless. I wish there was some software that would do the same with keywording a photograph. But, I think we are a long way from a photo being read by a computer and having the objects in it being identified and listed as keywords. Even if it could (and that would be a great start), there are still concepts within the photo that could never be read by computer like; loneliness, anger, joy etc… Maybe someday.

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(Click on the image to view it larger.)

Here is a lesson; hold on to ideas and concepts your shooting lightly and let things happen naturally. Go with the flow.

One of the hardest things to photograph is an icon. Something that everyone knows and everyone has photographed. So how to you do it? Honestly… it is hard. One way is to look at all the many shots of it, and then shoot the same image. Counter intuitive? Well, sort of, but don’t stop there. Shoot what has been shot and then work it like you might in any other shoot. So you in effect start where others left off.

Marco Ryan, Ramy Salem, Alou, Jessie and I decided to shoot the pyramids at sunrise. We hired a camel driver and two camels. We set out at 4am to catch the sunrise at 5:30am. We gave ourselves plenty of wiggle room. When working with local people like camel drivers, somethings can get delayed. Remember, in the West, we tend to be time oriented but in the East people are generally event oriented. This means when we say, “Be there at 5:30am.” they think early morning. Early morning might be 6:30am after the sun has been up for an hour. This is not a character fault, this is culture and something you should plan for.

Anyway, all went well, the sun came up and we got some nice images of the pyramids at sunrise. But, for me they seemed less dramatic than what I had hoped for, I wanted more. Then, what so often happens, the unexpected met me and gave me a break. As the camel was being brought back around to walk through the shot again, it passed down a hill in from of Cairo, kicked up some dust and game me the shot I had hoped for. Not the one I planned for, but the one I wanted. The one with drama. I will take a drama in a photo over most anything.

OK, so I didn’t quite get the out-of-the-box iconic shot I had hope for, but I got something that I think I like a lot better.

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We travel in 52c (125º) heat, across the Nile and reached an isolated Nubian village visited by few foreigners. It was like nothing I have ever seen. The walls of the home where bright blue, deep red and mustered yellow. The people, the most friendly we have met in Egypt and the light was perfect; the wind had made the air dusty and thus the whole sky was our soft box. This is was our continued research for a proposed Nile Workshop. If you want to read more about this Nile Cruise Workshop, check out Marco Ryan’s recent post on it HERE.

But, today it’s photos and very little words. So, I’ll shup up and let these images speak of Nubia. (click on the image to view it larger)

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An Egyptian man smoking his shisha (water pipe) at the camel market.

Most of my time here has been split between looking at possible sites for a Nile workshop and family vacation. The family vacation images are on my Facebook page. There is huge potential for a photo workshop on the Nile. The villages we have been looking at are outside the normal tourist routes and are filled with friendly people that are easy to photograph. Egypt, particularly Upper Egypt is full of interesting visuals, like 800 year old mosques, thousands of years old tombs, colorful Nubian villages and wonderfully textured bazaars. All this accessed by a luxury cruise down the Nile. Sounds too good to be true. But it is not, and it is coming your way. Details are still being worked out but it looks very promising. Alou and I looked at the dahabiya (the large sailboat used to cruise the Nile yesterday, it was so nice I could hardly get her off the boat.

I have to run, we are going to go explore an ancient Nubian village by river boat.

A beautiful Nubian woman from a Nile village in Upper Egypt

A small market between along the Nile.

A camel fair outside of Aswan, Egypt.

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I’m going to go down a bit of a rat hole. I’m even going to give it a name: value.

You’ll already be wondering why a post that begins “I’m going down a bit of a rat hole” might have anything to do with Focus for Humanity – a newly launched foundation aimed at giving grants to aspiring photographers and to help under-funded NGOs afford world class photographers  – but stay with me for a couple of paragraphs and hopefully you’ll see why.

I’ve never quite understood why photographers struggle to sell the value that they bring to organizations. Well perhaps it would be more accurate to say I have never really understood why organizations won’t pay for the value that photographers can bring to their organizations.

That’s value with a capital “V” by the way – the intrinsic benefit that we recognize that great images can bring to a brand – and also value with a small “v” – because I think most photographers are undervalued and charge too little for what they do.

Why is it that an organization will pay an IT technician $70 an hour or a lawyer $200 an hour but not pay a photographer $100 an hour?

Perhaps it is because there is an association between complexity or certain required qualifications or proven experience and a market price.

Or perhaps it is that, for a profession such as a photographer, the need for creative vision, emotional intelligence and expressive story telling often outweighs the need for bachelor, graduate or professional qualifications. Yet because those qualifications are optional it becomes – especially for the uninformed buyer – more difficult to arrive at that market price or critically, to measure the value delivered.

It is of course further complicated by the proliferation and pervasiveness of digital cameras that mean many organizations don’t even to begin to create a business case for an assignment because its just too hard, right? Instead that same organization will thrust a Canon Ixus into the hands of the nearest intern and say, “get on with it”. (though I’ve nothing against Interns or Canon Ixus’!)

Now let’s add a layer of complexity. Let’s go further down that rat hole.

Imagine now that you are a business that is underfunded or does not make a profit, like an NGO. How do they afford someone like Matt Brandon or Gavin Gough? Or what happens if you are a talented semi-pro photographer looking for your first proper client and someone approaches you. How much do you charge without losing that first job or undermining that all-too-difficult-to-judge market price?

Many of the larger more established NGOs have multi-million pound marketing budgets and regularly use the likes of Karl Grobl, Matt Brandon, David duChemin or Ami Vitale on highly structured and well funded assignments. And long may that continue.

But the issue is more with the new, fledgling or underfunded NGO and also with that individual semi-pro photographer who is wanting to make the leap to full time – both of whose activities are more localized or more specific to a particular campaign.

Often, that new NGO’s need is greater, but their budget is smaller, resulting in a prioritization of funds away from hiring that top photographer. In the case of the semi-pro, they opt for doing pro bono work in the hope that it will strengthen their portfolio, but all that happens is that it undermines their value with the client going forward.

The first stage of resolving this is that the NGO needs some form of Damascan road experience to help understand how to budget and monetize the value of the photographer’s work and the semi-pro photographer needs the courage to value their own work and stand firm on their price so as not to undermine the market.

So how do we break this vicious circle? How do we climb out of this rat hole?

Well, one answer it to try and remove the barriers that are stopping each of them. In the NGO’s case that barrier is usually a lack of funds. In the semi-pro photographer’s case it is often a mix of lack of confidence, lack of knowledge in how best to price or a lack of experience with customers.

And this is where an organization such as Focus for Humanity (FFH for short) starts to make a difference. We see our role as bridging these two communities who have shared needs and common goals but perhaps different perspectives.

So as to not leave you hanging, here is a brief summary of how we tried to create a solution to help everyone climb out of that rathole!

Focus for Humanity created assignment grants to allow underfunded NGOs to win the services of established photographers such Matt Brandon, David duChemin, Gavin Gough, Karl Grobl, Jeffrey Chapman or Edoardo Agresti. For free. The NGO gets a full assignment undertaken by a world-class photographer with no strings attached. Well, actually a couple of very minor strings, like agreeing to budget for the following years for similar services; being willing to take some mentoring from FFH on digital marketing and acting as a reference for future NGO applicants. The established photographer gets a new client and is paid the right market rate for his work.

And for the semi-pro looking for that final leap to full time photographer?

We have an annual scholarship that provides the funding to allow them to work with their first client – probably an NGO – and to be mentored into how to approach and further educate clients in the value of images. In addition the grants cover travel, upgrading their equipment and some project expenses.

And for those of you still a few years away from being ready to apply for this scholarship there will be a series of mentoring and workshop grants that will help you to work on your craft and vision.

We fund the Foundation solely through donations, and we run the organization as a virtual online foundation to minimize the costs. Our current target is to allocate 93% of funds into grants each year.

But we can do with your help in three ways:

Firstly tell everyone one about it. Add a blog badge to your site HERE, follow us on twitter HERE, join us on Facebook HERE but, most importantly, become our advocates within your own network and get others to sign–up or donate.

Secondly we need your pledges and donations and those of your friends. It can be a one-off donation of $10 or a monthly recurring donation of any amount you like. But if, for example, we got a thousand of you to give, say, $50 each we would then be able to meet all our commitments for this year. So if you want to help, then help us to reach more than a thousand people willing to give just that little bit.

Thirdly, If you work for a company in the photographic industry then you can help with sponsorship too – although we prefer to use the term partnering as we believe that this is a two way relationship and we need to give those partners equal benefit in return for their support. Every lens, body, bag, filter, tripod, plane ticket or item that we don’t have to buy for our grant winners, is money that we can re-allocate into another grant. We’ve got great ideas on what else we want to add to our grants in the coming months and years, and sponsorship or partnering is one way of making that happen.

“Be the change you want to see in the world”, said Mahatma Ghandi. Perhaps you can help us make real change in how NGOs and other organizations value the work of photographers to help humanitarian causes.

Our thanks to Matt for allowing us the platform of his blog to reach out and share with you all about Focus For Humanity. Thank you for reading this far and for showing an interest in what we are trying to do. You can read more detail about Focus for Humanity, our grants, how to apply and how to help by checking out our website, http://www.focusforhumanity.org.

Marco Ryan was born in the UK, but now lives in Cairo, Egypt with his wife and young family. His professional career as an eCommerce Strategist, Digital Marketing expert and speaker is covered on his work blog, www.marcoryan.com, but it ensures endless travel but sadly insufficient time for one of the more creative forces in his life – photography. Contact him through this blog for commissions or prints.

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Yuhanif Bin Hashum with his lovley new bride Wijdan Binti Zakaria

I don’t do weddings. I don’t like the pressure. I don’t like being bossed around by mother-in-laws. I just don’t like weddings – that is, photographing them. But when Brian Hirschy decided to visit this last weekend and at the same time my buddy Hariman invited me to help him photograph a Malay wedding, I bit my lip and decided to take Brian and go for it. Fortunately, Hariman was the main photographer and not me. So the pressure was on him so Brian and I could just play. Brian had brought a couple of SB flashes and umbrella or two and so we had some fun. Below are the results of my playtime. Be gentle with me and remember, I don’t do weddings.

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His passion is for travel and reportage photography, especially recording the more humanitarian aspects of life. Being based in Cairo has allowed an unparalleled and privileged view into the lives or ordinary Egyptians. This led Marco to follow the work of many humanitarian photographers like, yours truly, David duChemin, Gavin Gough and others. Once hooked by the humanitarian side of photography, Marco quickly saw the problems. He saw very talented photographers unable to express their vision. Not being called on by NGOs, that actually needed these photographer’s images. He wanted to both help the photographer as well as help the NGO. So, Marco along with his friend, Loren Roberts, decided to go out on a limb and start a grant organization that would provide photographers with the needed funds to provide a leg-up in the field of humanitarian photography. This was the beginnings of Focus For Humanity. You will be hearing more on this in the interview below, as well as in next Fridays blog post. I know you will find this interview as interesting and challenging as all the Depth of Fields. In this interview Marco not only speaks about Focus For Humanity, he also give us a free seminar on marketing and SEO for the photographer. This is a valuable listen.

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