News – Page 11 – JWNPhoto.com

Category: News

Striking A Chord

1/30th of a sec f/8 50mm ISO 6400

What is your brand? I first heard about the concept of branding when I was working a a computer tech for a Madison Ave. advertising agency over ten years ago. They used to bring me as “insurance” and to run the Powerpoint decks during their sales pitches. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was receiving some of the greatest marketing training while clicking the right arrow button on a PowerBook. The big buzz word that always came up was branding. I was also involved in their focus group meetings when they would help a company define their brand. They had a patented process for figuring out a brand for a company and then using that data, they would transform that branding into advertising. So what is branding for a photographer?

Branding is the culmination of everything that makes an entity distinguishable from other similar entities. For a creative professional, it’s your creative style, your looks, the music you listen to, your political beliefs, your spirituality, what you ate for lunch yesterday. In other words, it’s all of the stuff that makes you you.

The easiest brands to define are the ones that have extreme positions. Lady Gaga was just another singer/songwriter as Stefani Germanotta. Once she took an extreme left turn and discovered her fashion style and changed her name to a Queen song title reference, she went from a successful yet unknown songwriter to a household name. But what if your personality isn’t truly extreme in any of your beliefs or style? That’s OK. In fact, that’s exciting. You get to discover and expand your brand!

Wait… What?

Just like a fingerprint – the elements of your brand that make you you when combined like the ingredients in a family recipe are unique. That means you can exploit those points that excite you the most and clearly define them by pushing them harder. Soul searching is something we should all do on a regular basis because you need to define yourself before you can clearly sell yourself. Even though you are unique, you share parts of your beliefs and style with a lot of other people. That’s what makes people attractive. That’s how you strike a chord with your potential fans.

1/320th of a sec f/5.3 62mm ISO 200

Try to define your current fashion style and refine it. What does it currently say about you? What would you change about it to push your intent further? Can you push it to an extreme and still keep your identity? How about your photographic style – What type of photography are you most comfortable with? If you take nature photos, how can you do something extreme and unique with it? Can you get closer or expose in a non-traditional way that pushes you into a creative place that you may have only touched on in the past?

Most importantly, when you do decide to go big and make some huge leaps in defining your brand, make sure you’ve got the chops to back it up. Lady Gaga would have just been another Milli Vanilli if she didn’t have the talent to back up her uniqueness. It would be tragic to have a brilliant marketing plan with no worthy product to market. I don’t believe in style over substance, but I do believe strongly in a style that matches the substance you have to offer. I speak of these things not as a professional photographer, because that is a realm I’m just starting to explore, but as a musician who was signed to a recording contract and toured the world and more currently as a small business owner who’s made it past the dreaded five year mark and is still expanding. Throughout all of my journeys in life so far, the most successful people and businesses that I’ve come into contact with are the ones who are clearly branded. So I ask again, what’s your brand?

What Comes First?

iPhone 4 – Edited in the Camera+ App f/2.8 1/15th sec 3.9mm ISO 800

The first week of the year is complete and my wife and I have been actively looking for an assistant to help us with our respective businesses. We have a couple of prospects in mind and will be sitting down with them next week. Hopefully we’ll find the perfect person to grow with us so that I can officially start the creative side of my business to balance out days like today when I get stuck looking at data closets such as the one above for hours on end.

I do love my technical business, but it can be a real drain on your spirits. According to the test on this site, I’m 45% left brained and 55% right brained, which means I need to balance the two sides to stay sane. If I spend too much of my time doing tech work (which is my current situation), I eventually feel torn, frayed, and drained. Making part of my living doing creative work should satisfy my slightly right-brained dominant head. I do believe that a full time career in photography would actually satisfy both sides on its own due to the gadgety nature of the business, so that is always a path I will have open to me if I feel the need to traverse it.

f/2.8 1/30th sec 50mm ISO 1600

I got one of those hokey bank loan checks in the mail last week for $6,000, which brings me to the point of this post. I was really tempted to take the loan. I mean, really tempted. I had a cart filled up at Adoroma with one camera and lens package that would max out that loan with one click. Then it got me thinking. I do like my current camera, and I’ve fired the shutter over 60,000 times which means it’s a little over halfway through its expected life. I will need to get a full frame camera next, and I’d like to have a fast zoom lens that will allow me to shoot editorial type shots using natural lighting. The shot above of the lovely Anita, who’s the amazing assistant at The Wiles Law Firm, was taken using the window light and ambient light of their office. That is me pushing my current camera’s capabilities. I’m shooting at f/2.8, which is considered a fast aperture, and my ISO is pushed to 1600 (which is the highest I let my camera shoot in most situations because it tends to get ridiculously noisy over that). At 1/30th of second, I’m not freezing motion, so if she moved, it would be blurry. With a newer full frame camera, I can easily triple the usable ISO, if not more. So that’s a pretty strong case for upgrading my actual camera and lenses soon if I plan to pursue shooting events. Not to mention that a full frame camera gives you a proper handle on your focal lengths which means I could have better control over lens distortion and bokeh.

The other major equipment expense I need is lighting. Right now, I use portable flashes. In fact, if I had taken the same type of shot above and brought out my umbrellas and flashes, I could have made an extremely clean and well lit photo. If I were to take the portrait outside during the daytime though, they would be less effective as light shaping tools because they are not powerful enough to really help me turn day into night and vice versa. I would have to be in the shade or wait until dusk for the right light to really make something that works well. If I were to invest that money into a professional strobe lighting system and modifiers, I could wait on the expensive camera because I could create the ideal lighting situation that my camera could handle. I really want to pursue creative lighting solutions because to me that is a huge part of photography and with the correct equipment, you can make the right light, not find or wait for it.

So, dear readers, what do you think is more important to start with – the pro grade camera and lenses or the pro lighting system? And to be clear, I did not cash that loan check. I don’t want to begin my photography career upside down in debt. I plan on saving for this stuff the old fashioned way, even if that means mowing some lawns!

Finding Your Composition

1/200th of a second, f/4.5 22mm ISO 200

When talking about any style of photography, a consistently important factor is composition. If the composition doesn’t connect with the viewer, the picture is overlooked and it fails. When you first become aware of that fact, the issue becomes “How do I change static elements to fit into a better composition?” The answer is usually a simple one – you don’t, you change yourself.

There are plenty of rules that you should know – the rule of thirds, the golden ratio (as featured in the photo above – 1.618), and compositional balance. There’s also the rule of odds, which tells us that three birds is better than two, and the rule of space which suggests that negative space should be used to suggest movement and/or tension. I try to break these rules on a daily basis, but I also try to use them as a reference point. I have not forgotten my own instincts on composition, and combined with the knowledge of the traditional concepts, I find that gives me the opportunity to step out of my own head to explore more possibilities. Lets look at four photos of the same exact scene composed in different ways.

Yesterday I was parked about a block away from a client and decided to do an impromptu photowalk. As I parked, I saw this scene below in my mind just as it’s composed and liked the combination of the shapes of the foreground, middle, and background as a flattened 2D image. I shot the exact scene as I envisioned it.

1/2500th of a second f/5 180mm ISO 250

After I got what I wanted, I decided to change the orientation to a landscape shot and used pretty much the same point of view. This brought in some more elements and creates a more recognizable image.

1/2500th of a second f/5 185mm ISO 200

I preferred the vertical composition and tried to re-arrange the elements. This time I moved to the left and zoomed out a bit. I was using my 55-300mm DX lens, which is an awesome and inexpensive piece of glass. I like the composition of the foreground elements (the lamp post, the light, the sign, the sidewalk, and the fence), but I don’t think the background is as powerful with the placement of the crane and the bridge.

1/2500th of a second f/4.8 116mm ISO 200

Finally, I took a break and shot some other things before I eventually came back to this scene. Sometimes it’s best to gather inspiration by shooting unrelated photos so that when you go back to the first scene, it’s like a whole new vision to behold! This time I got closer. I placed the foreground elements in an evenly spaced way at the top third of the photo and brought out the texture of the fence and train car for the bottom two thirds. The background crane gets blurred and adds a bit of dimension to the shot – this helps more clearly define and separate the foreground, middle and background elements. The gray texture of the train car replaces the sky as a source of a negative space-like element. By moving closer, I also managed to fill the fame. In my opinion, this is the most successful composition of this scene out of the four.

1/2500th of a second f/5 200mm ISO 200

It’s all the same stuff, I just moved my camera around to include, remove, and alter the view of it. The truth is that there is no correct composition of this scene – It’s all up to you and your tastes. People who view them will have their own reasons for liking different versions, just like some people buy red cars over yellow ones. The power we have as photographers is to define and show what we like in hopes that others will connect with you on it as well. Art is all about relationships. The relationship of the elements on a fundamental and tangible level as well as the relationship of style and intent on a philosophical and spiritual one.

Which one do you like? Why?

Happy New Year 2011!

50mm 1 second at f/1.8 ISO 200

This is going to be a spectacular year – I can already feel it. Unlike most years in recent history, there’s a collective sense of greatness for 2011. I hope all of the best for you and your loved ones. Happy new year!

What’s In A Name?

Taken at Joe’s Crabshack in Myrtle Beach, SC. 35mm, 1/10 of a sec, f/1.8, ISO 200

As I go about my research and plans to formulate my photography career (which, by the way, I’m including y’all each step of the way because I don’t know if something like this has been done before and I think it would be cool to follow someone like myself on this journey), I’m reading a book by photog/writer Dane Sanders called, “Fast Track Photographer“. The book is full of self exploration exorcises to try and determine the type of photography business you should run. This is the hardest part about getting started when you decide to go professional. As Dane states, it’s not a good idea to be an all-around generic photographer in today’s market of saturated photographers because anybody (and seemingly everybody) can get a nice camera and take decent photos. The idea is to find a niche that captures your essence and creates value by doing something that is unique to you. You need to be something that nobody else can be and nobody can be you. It boils down to determining what it is that you are good at, what you love, what makes you you, and marrying those ideas into a brand that you can market yourself as.

Some of this I had already started doing before I even began reading this book. In this article I defined what I’m currently a fan of doing in photography. It is important because given my background as a professional musician who was signed to a recording contract and toured the world years ago, I do have a rather unique insight into the performance world. I also have an obsession with reaching the creative zone and would love to capture people in that zone. To me that would be the decisive moment I’m after in these types of shots. It’s not just music either – I want to capture the moment when people are acting on pure instinct. It could be anything from a guy working on a telephone pole to a dancer practicing alone in a studio. We all have things we do and we do them so well that we get lost in them. That’s the zone I’m interested in. Now that I’ve gotten off on a tangent, let’s get back to the point I wanted to make at the start of this.

My grandparents from back in the day – photographer unkown

One of the things that Mr. Sanders brushes on in his tips for branding your photography business is your name. He uses the beautiful Jasmine Star as an example. She uses her middle name instead of her last name because it just works perfectly for her. When I was deciding on what to call my website a few months ago, I made a very conscious decision to avoid my own last name because “Nienstedt” is just a pain in the ass to explain how to spell to people. I also toyed with the idea of using my own middle name which is Walter, named from my beloved grandfather who raised me. I would be Joseph Walter – photographer of [insert type of photography here]. The more I thought of how nice it would be to drop my Germanic last name, the more I realized that I shouldn’t do it.

Why continue to suffer with a complicated name to spell and pronounce when I have the opportunity to make my life easier? It’s who I am. I came into this world as Joseph Walter Nienstedt and I should be able to succeed regardless of my currently un-marketable name. In fact, in an effort to define my uniqueness, what better way to start than using my real name? So I would like to thank Dane Sanders for the suggestion, but I think his overall theme of defining yourself works in spite of doing what is conventionally accepted or expected by the marketeers of the world. I’d love to know what you think of my decision and the general practice of making your name easier for the general public to consume. Let it be known that I do like nicknames because I find those endearing since we rarely choose them ourselves, they are (hopefully) given to us by loved ones.

Merry Christmas 2010

Charleston Holiday Festival of Lights 2010

I’d like to say a hearty Merry Christmas to all of you who are reading this on the blog, through Facebook, or Twitter. We’ll be busy watching the 24 hours of “Christmas Story” on TBS, eating Raclette cheese, and sipping eggnog.

The shot above was taken at the Charleston Holiday Festival of Lights.

Happy Birthday Kegan!

Just a quick post to say an official happy seventh birthday to my son Kegan. Here he is playing with a “Paper Jamz” guitar he got from his Nanny.

Shot with a 35mm f/1.8 prime lens and lit with a SB-400 speedlight bounced off the wall to camera left.

I Fought The Law…

Well, not really a fight at all, but I did win. Today was a strange one indeed. I was tied up with a client and had to break out to take some real estate photos for this wonderful listing in Goose Creek, SC. I was in quite the pissy mood because it’s difficult to keep appointments on time when you work in the service business. You are constantly being asked to do “one more thing”, which usually means that everyone else has to wait. Sure, I could do what the big name service companies do and charge them an arm and a leg for deviating from the scheduled service, but that’s exactly why I don’t work for them. That’s a whole other can of worms that don’t need to be covered here, the point I’m getting to is that I was stressed out and the world must have known it.

When I first arrived in the neighborhood, I pulled up to the wrong house. Luckily I didn’t get out of my car, so no harm was done, but another few minutes was wasted while I tried to figure out where I was supposed to be. It really does seem like the world likes to spit back what you put out there. When you’re not in the best of spirits, it likes to rain down on you hard – every little mistake feels like a giant life-altering deal. I figured out the correct location of the house and pulled up across the street as I normally do when shooting a home (nobody wants to see my car in the shots – especially the sellers). I started shooting immediately because the sun was positioned just behind the tip of the roof and if I waited any longer it might move into a spot that would make it difficult to work with.

After I shot a few frames, a police cruiser pulled up. The officer asked what I was doing and then asked for my ID. I really thought this was strange. I had a quick choice to make. Either I could cry out in my mind and curse the world for taking a giant stinky dump on me two days before Christmas, or I could laugh it off. Well, I chose the latter and smiled for the police man when he was done checking up on me. I even ended up giving him a business card for which he smiled and thanked me for. He apologized for keeping me up and then drove off. I went inside and had to explain what happened to the baffled home owner who was weirded out by meeting me just after I was interrogated by the cops. Once again I laughed about it and went on to take my photographs of her home.

The moral of the story is that when you’re having a crappy day and you start letting life take control of you while it kicks you when you’re down, you always have a choice to turn it all around. It starts with a smile. You recognize that the shit’s going down and you smile about it. The next thing you know, you start to feel better and you’re able to grab the steering wheel and get back on the road. It’s easier said than done, but if you find yourself in that red zone state of mind, try it. Some things can’t be controlled, but your outlook always can be.

Festival of Lights 2010

It took two attempts to get in, but we made it to the Charleston Holiday Festival of Lights at James Island County Park this evening. As usual, we listened to classic holiday music while driving though the park checking out the grand light displays. Nothing has changed about it in the six Christmases I’ve spent here in Charleston, but it’s always a fun time with the kids and it really makes the season feel complete.

Here’s a piece of the giant sand sculpture for this year, which was an underwater theme.

The line to get in earlier this evening was so long that we left and went to my brother-in-law’s home and hung out for an hour or so to wait out the crowd. The second time was a charm and we got to enjoy hot chocolate and roasted marshmallows.

The picture up top was just hand-held with no flash. I have a similar shot here that utilized a wireless flash being held by my daughter, but I lost the whole background with it (and I had it dialed down to 1/100th power). Sometimes the blurry shot captures the feel much better anyway. The second and third shots were taken with the camera held out of the sunroof in our mini-van. The sand sculpture was shot using the railing around the sculpture to steady the camera. The last shot of my son chowing down on a marshmallow was made with a wireless flash held in my left hand pretty much right over the fire pit – I had to be quick on that one!

Turn Up The Volume

As we approach the coming Christmas holiday, we rapidly run right into the new year almost as an afterthought. It usually feels like the wrap-up party of the holiday season. I’m taking this time between now and the day the ball drops as a time to focus on reinventing myself. I have nothing scheduled as of yet for 2011, but I plan on doing just that as soon as possible. If I’m going to keep myself sane I need to obey the voices that are not only in my head, but also coming from the people who really know and are close to me.

So, the biggest thing early on will be to increase my volume of artistic photographic work. I will begin with defined personal projects. I will also invite and include anyone who wants to join or help me on these as they will be huge learning experiences. I want to network myself to find good contacts who are photographers, make-up artists, models, designers, agents – anybody in the business that is working for the love of the art.

In order to facilitate that, I will need to hire people for my other business to lighten my own personal load as well as grow it and support its growing customer base. It’s no longer a passing thought that I will get to at some point – it is a need that must be fulfilled in 2011. I don’t need to talk about the details of that here because it isn’t within the scope of this blog, but it’s something that will help my artistic work in the long run, so it must be addressed.

Finally, I am determined to open my own creative doors to photographic assignments by the year’s end. What I mean is I want to get hired to do something really cool. I want my personal projects to be a foundation for other work – work that an art director will sit down and say, “We want to achieve this and you’re the person who can deliver it”. Once that starts to happen, I can use all of the skills I’ve acquired through my diverse lifetime of creativity and technical skill and do work that is meaningful to me (and hopefully to others as well).

That’s it in a nutshell. Now I’ve got a business plan to revise and another one to create. 2011 is going to be the best year ever!

« First ‹ Prev 8 9 101112 13 14 Next ›Last »