Monthly Archives: May 2009

growing with twitter and social media

On 23 May 2009 by matthew With 3 Comments - social media, technology

There have been occa­sions lately when I have ques­tioned whether I was born in the wrong gen­er­a­tion. Unlike many of my peers, I am quite com­fort­able with Twit­ter, Tum­blr, Face­book, Digg, Stum­ble­Upon, Deli­cious, and many other  social media sites. Now, hav­ing time to keep up with it all is another thing. But, what I have found is that I don’t have the inher­ent dis­trust or con­cern about these sites as do some of my 40-something friends, or 60– to 70-something parents.

One thing that has actu­ally made me quite pas­sion­ate about using Twit­ter is the com­mu­nity of pho­tog­ra­phers that I have befriended. The great thing is that many of the pho­tog­ra­phers are at dif­fer­ent stages of their careers. I’ve met begin­ners, hob­by­ists, new pro­fes­sion­als and sea­soned vet­er­ans. Each has a dif­fer­ent and/or unique per­spec­tive of pho­tog­ra­phy.  I’ve come across peo­ple who pho­to­graph babies, seniors (I keep think­ing I’m going to see pic­tures of AARP mem­bers), wed­dings, food, architecture…you name it.

What’s inter­est­ing is that I have only met a cou­ple of the peo­ple I’ve “befriended or fol­low online. Most of my inter­ac­tion is done online — by way of tweets, @___ replies, direct mes­sages and pro­file posts. Back in Feb­ru­ary, Gary Vayn­er­chuk admon­ished my wife to “get in the trenches,” as it related to social media and online mar­ket­ing. Though the advice was not directed to me at the time, it has stuck with me. My goal, at this point, is less about mar­ket­ing, and more about learn­ing, grow­ing and con­nect­ing. Being at the nascent stage of my pho­tog­ra­phy career, I’m hum­ble enough to know that I’ve got a lot to learn.

I admit that I got on a Twit­ter as a lark. It was really an exten­sion of my Face­book activ­i­ties. One of the ini­tial perks of Twit­ter was that I could update my Face­book page with my sta­tus updates. Sweet, I thought. I could kill two birds with one stone. Lit­tle did I know the power of net­work­ing and com­mu­nity lurk­ing right beneath the sur­face. I am fre­quently online look­ing at the work of many pho­tog­ra­phers. I noticed that an increas­ing num­ber of pho­tog­ra­phers had a Twit­ter icon on their site. Not soon after fol­low­ing two or three pho­tog­ra­phers, I started to see tweets with links to the works of other pho­tog­ra­phers, arti­cles on pho­tog­ra­phy, events and exhibits, etc. The beauty of the 140-word updates is that you can quickly scan them, and extract use­ful information.

Just as with forums, it does take some work to be active on Twit­ter. If you have more than hand­ful of peo­ple you fol­low, it can take good amount of time to read through updates that trick in through­out the day. In fact, I’m amazed when I see some­one fol­low­ing thou­sands of peo­ple. I don’t know how it’s done. At the time of this post, I fol­low about 160 peo­ple. A good num­ber of these peo­ple do not update their sta­tus with any par­tic­u­lar fre­quency. There are some high-volume tweet­ers on my list, and I can count on see­ing their face eas­ily fill­ing up a page. As the say­ing goes, you have to sep­a­rate the wheat from the chafe. Most of the tweets I get are from peo­ple shar­ing incred­i­bly use­ful infor­ma­tion. Many of the peo­ple I fol­low have returned the favor by becom­ing a fol­lower. It’s like a lit­tle gift when I receive a response or direct mes­sage with com­ments, feed­back or links to information.

Because of sites like Twit­ter and Face­book, the par­a­digm is shift­ing. Now don’t get me wrong. I am the same per­son who, sev­eral threads back, talked about the ret­i­cence to use post-processing soft­ware. I also stated that I am not a full-fledged Lud­dite. It’s selec­tive. I am incred­i­bly excited about the prospect of hav­ing my pho­tog­ra­phy career blos­som with the assis­tance of Twit­ter and Face­book. Clearly, my suc­cess or fail­ure will be defined on the qual­ity of my work and the recep­tiv­ity of peo­ple to that work. The net­work­ing through Twit­ter (and other sites) is already pay­ing div­i­dends by expand­ing my com­mu­nity of friends and col­leagues. I’d like to think that I am approach­ing Twit­ter with the right spirit. Meet, join and become active in a larger com­mu­nity.  That’s what it’s all about—to me. If I had to guess, those who are on Twit­ter with rather trans­par­ent mar­ket­ing goals, will wear on peo­ple and are really miss­ing the point and power of Twit­ter and the exponentially-growing com­mu­nity of Twits.

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water, water everywhere

On 15 May 2009 by matthew With 4 Comments - photography

It’s been rain­ing all evening here in DC. I love rain, and dis­cov­ered that I really like to cap­ture water at var­i­ous speeds. Here are a few shots I took of a foun­tain near the Smith­son­ian Cas­tle last year.

fountain001

fountain002

fountain003

fountain004

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windows, why do you try me so?

On 13 May 2009 by matthew With 2 Comments - technology, windows

My very close friend, Dotch, has been an Apple/Mac afi­cionado since col­lege. I still get a hearty chuckle reflect­ing on him clear­ing space and pol­ish­ing the cor­ner of the dorm desk for his first Mac. Over the years, he’s stayed true to the brand, and I’ve never once heard him curs­ing at his computer.

Fast for­ward to the last few weeks with my (knock on wood) trusty Toshiba 17″ wide screen Satel­lite lap­top. The machine itself has been hum­ming along for nearly two years. What’s been giv­ing me increas­ingly giv­ing me fits, though, is the buggy Win­dows archi­tec­ture. (I’m run­ning on Win­dows Vista Home Pre­mium.) It begin with an occa­sional hic­cup here and there with pro­gram com­pat­i­bil­ity. I bought a few Win­dows Vista mag­a­zines and the tips pro­vide in them seemed to tweak out the goofy stuff. Recently, though, I’ve been nag­ging lit­tle problems. I could see if this was a one off thing. Maybe some­thing hap­pened that my sys­tem didn’t like.  How­ever, the sys­tem alerts has been show­ing up with some fre­quency. It seems like nearly every time I point my cur­sor down to my sys­tem tray, I get the hour glass. A cou­ple dou­ble clicks later…this stu­pid alert. 

Windows Explorer Not Resonding

What the…? COME ON!!!!! 

Notwith­stand­ing Dotch’s tes­ti­mo­ni­als for the last 20 years about Apple prod­ucts, I’ve been rel­a­tively neu­tral on the plat­form issue. I’m not really one for peer pres­sure or so eas­ily enam­ored with Apple prod­ucts. Sure, they’re pretty, but, hereto­fore, had not dis­cerned a dif­fer­ence in util­ity between the two plat­forms . So when I’ve receive a dis­tinct, almost incred­u­lous, “WHAT? You don’t have a Mac?” from fol­low pho­tog­ra­phers, I brushed it off. I enjoyed a quiet chor­tle, observ­ing that all these Mac own­ers are run­ning programs–Photoshop or Lightroom–that run on PCs in lieu of Apple’s Aper­ture. What’s the big deal?

At the sake of being redun­dant, this…

Windows Explorer Not Resonding

…is becom­ing a BIG deal!

Start­ing out in this busi­ness is costly enough with the expense of “pho­tog­ra­phy equip­ment.” How­ever, as I acknowl­edged in a pre­vi­ous post, in the age of dig­i­tal pho­tog­ra­phy, a com­puter is just as much pho­tog­ra­phy equip­ment as are the cam­era bod­ies, lenses, lights and fil­ters.  I’m a very patient per­son, but I have a low thresh­old for equip­ment that doesn’t per­form as designed. I can’t blame Toshiba, really. It’s the unsta­ble Win­dows OS that I’m learn­ing deserves all the crit­i­cism heaped upon it by Apple and count­less num­bers of tech­nol­ogy writ­ers. After all these years, I think I’ve reached the end of my rope with PCs. A Mac­Book Pro just may find a home on my lap in the near future.

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a question of focus

On 13 May 2009 by matthew With 3 Comments - career, culture

At times, I find that pur­su­ing the road to mak­ing pho­tog­ra­phy my “day job” is akin to being a con­tes­tant on the CBS real­ity show Amaz­ing Race. Con­tes­tants expend con­sid­er­able energy–physical, emo­tional, intellectual–performing chal­lenges and piec­ing clues together so they may reach a given des­ti­na­tion; only to dis­cover that the reward for all that effort is an enve­lope reveal­ing the next chal­lenge. I am con­vinced that I am on the right path, because not once have I been dis­cour­aged by the chal­lenges pre­sented. I have a ten­dency to become bored, par­tic­u­larly once I’ve solved the chal­lenge. Pur­su­ing a career as a pho­tog­ra­pher, espe­cially in the dig­i­tal age, is any­thing but bor­ing because the chal­lenges are new and numerous.

One of the legs on this jour­ney has proven to be quite befud­dling. That issue is a ques­tion of focus. I don’t mean focus, as in the abil­ity to con­cen­trate. My dilemma is deter­min­ing or defin­ing the focus of my photography. 

 
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I look at many pho­tog­ra­phers with some mea­sure of envy because they are so clearly focused. Whether their focus is wed­dings, por­trai­ture, nature, food, etc., I play this “Man, they’ve got it all fig­ured out” tape in my head. If only I could find one theme, sub­ject mat­ter, or genre to con­cen­trate my pho­to­graphic energy on, per­haps my path for­ward would be more clear. 

This tug over whether to have a nar­row or wide focus is what has, effec­tively, ground my web­site to a stand­still. I am pretty set­tled on the lay­out, color scheme, and divi­sion of pages on the site. Where I can’t seem to get the site in gear is the gal­leries. What I’ve come to real­ize is that my sub­ject mat­ter is all over the place. As I move from one image folder to the next, look­ing to build gal­leries, I become increas­ingly frus­trated. Just what is my focus? How do I win­now all these images down into cogent, dis­cernible gal­leries? How do I cap­ture the atten­tion, and make sense of my images to those vis­it­ing my site for the first time? I do sus­pect that my pho­to­graphic style would become appar­ent, irre­spec­tive of the sub­ject mat­ter, but is that enough to bind the images into a cohe­sive, palat­able galleries? 

Beyond, and more impor­tant than, my con­cern about the con­tent of my web gal­leries is the thought of attract­ing clients. I envi­sion most peo­ple hav­ing an idea of the type of sub­ject that want in image, and/or will tend to grav­i­tate toward pho­tog­ra­phers, or other artists, that clearly present work that fits what’s in their mind’s eye. It’s prob­a­bly an age-old ques­tion. Do you adapt your art to fit the appetite of the buyer, or does the buyer adapt to the artist’s work? I would like to think it’s the lat­ter. (Or at least that’s my hope.)

As with many things, I’m inspired by Carla. In this instance, I think about Carla fre­quently being asked about her cater­ing com­pany. Peo­ple often ask her, “What’s your culi­nary spe­cialty?” Her answer, some what tongue-in-cheek, is “Good food.” Her point is that she doesn’t have a sin­gu­lar focus, per se. She adapts and tai­lors each menu to the clients needs. Carla’s focus and tal­ent is her breadth.

Clearly there’s a place and a role for spe­cial­ists. Just as there are exec­u­tive chefs, bak­ers, pas­try chefs, sauciers, garde mangers, etc.…there are pho­to­graphic spe­cial­ists.  I have to believe there is also a place, or space, for a pho­tog­ra­pher who cov­ers many fronts. The key for a gen­er­al­ist, if you will, is to be incred­i­bly com­pe­tent in many dif­fer­ent areas, so as to deliver the desire prod­uct to a diverse clien­tele. Of course, this is the mus­ing of a pho­tog­ra­pher at the nascent stage of his career. The beauty of jour­nal­ing these thoughts will be that I can revisit them years from now to see where I’ve been and what path trav­eled.  It’s my hope that a focus will be revealed, or, in the alter­na­tive, I dis­play the apti­tude and gain accep­tance for doing many things well.

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