by successfulbob | Marketing Monday, photography education, photography marketing
The Tougher the Challenges the Better Your Skill Set Will Become
Marketing Monday by Skip Cohen
Smooth seas do not make skillful sailors.
Racers sailing photo by Bob Coates Photography
It’s an old African proverb, but the more I read it, the more I’m in awe of how much these seven words say. They sure seem to fit everything we learned over the last few years about business.
Think about it. From a challenging economy to keeping up with technology, to social media and increased competition, you’re working harder than you’ve probably ever worked in your life.
What’s exciting to me is the new energy focused on marketing. Years ago we used to laugh because Don Blair would get a thousand people in a posing and lighting program with a few cute models and I’d get ten people in a marketing workshop and five of them were relatives! Today, every marketing, business, and workflow program is packed, and people are taking notes.
One thing I have noticed is those photographers who tell me they’re having a good year. They always add a comment of, “But I’ve never worked so hard in my life.” Further discussion always brings out new things they’re doing regarding diversity in their business, skill set, and the products/services offered.
Scuba diving is a major passion of mine, and I remember a dive when I first started, in horrible water. We had 6-foot swells, and we were in a small boat – I was diving with my buddy, Bob Nunn. The captain looked at us and said, “If you guys can dive in this you can dive in anything!” I came off the boat green, and Bob left breakfast a half mile off the Florida coast, but it did make us better divers. It also gave us something to laugh about.
Well, as an industry we’ve survived a roller coaster of challenges over the years, but the keyword is survived. The proverb says so much that to keep talking about it becomes trite. The point is we’ve all learned to sail in rough water, and as a result, we’re better sailors!
Give yourself a pat on the back – your passion for photography is alive and well, and you’ve got more tools to make this last quarter pretty remarkable. The goal is for you to THRIVE, not just survive!
Skip Cohen has been involved in the photographic industry his entire career and previously served as President of Rangefinder/WPPI and earlier, Hasselblad USA. He founded SkipCohenUniversity.com in 2013. Skip is a co-host for “Mind Your Own Business” and “Beyond Technique,” webcasts through Photofocus.com, writes for several publications including Shutter Magazine and is actively involved in several advisory boards for non-profit organizations.
by successfulbob | photography software
Excire Search – Lightroom AI software
My friend, Skip Cohen who you may know from Marketing Monday here on Successful-Photographer, is working with a new software company that uses artificial intelligence to help you find your images in Adobe’s Lightroom. I don’t use LR, so I’m going to share a video with Suzette Allen who shows a demo of how this software works. It’s pretty freaking amazing. Remember in Suzette’s video she has never keyworded her catalog!!
Suzette Allen’s Video on her first look at Excire software
Excire Search Pro is an AI-based plug-in for Lightroom that identifies image content without the need for keywording. If you are interested in checking out Excire, please visit the website, www.excire.com read the system requirements and download the trial. Please note that the product is currently available for Lightroom Classic CC, and not the cloud-based Lightroom CC.
Excire features banner
The Excire Search Lightroom plugin is a high-performance search engine that runs locally on your computer and does not require any cloud services. After installing the plugin and initializing your Lightroom catalog, you are ready to perform some useful search tasks.
To search by example, you select one or more reference images, and Excire Search will then automatically and quickly generate a Lightroom collection with images similar to the selected reference images.
Search by keyword you select a keyword, such as “beach,” and Excire Search will then automatically and quickly generate a Lightroom collection with images of beaches. Excire Search provides 125 well-structured keywords that will help you sort your photos.
Search for faces; you start the intuitive face-analysis interface. Here you may choose between various options such as one, two, or more faces. You can then refine the choices by choosing an age group (Baby/Toddler, Child, Teenager, Adult, Elderly) and gender (Female, Male). You can further constrain the search to find only faces of people who smile.
The above search functions can also be used in combination to narrow the search down to the desired photos quickly. Besides providing efficient search results, Excire Search will let you better interact with your images and have fun: many customers have reported the joy of finding photos they thought had been lost in the complexity of their Lightroom catalog.
There’s also a pro version with even more features.
Happy searching!
Yours in Creative Photography, Bob
PS – FYI I am not an affiliate for Excire, so I’m sharing this ’cause I think it will be a big help to LR users in finding images in their catalog.
by successfulbob | inspiration, Marketing Monday
Five Favorite Quotes – Marketing Monday by Skip Cohen
This is the perfect post to kick off a new week, and while I can take almost no credit for the material, that doesn’t change how much I enjoy sharing quotes that are relevant to so many different aspects of our lives.
For years, I pretty much stopped reading for pleasure or my own personal growth. I was so wrapped up in what I do every day that reading just seemed to be an extension of work. My wife Sheila helped me snap out of that and I read a lot more than I used to and doing my best to make it authors and topics outside of photography. It sounds so stupid to suggest the obvious, that reading can create inspiration, but so often it’s just a simple one-liner that hits home.
So, I thought it would be fun to share a few of my favorites here on Successful-Photographer. I don’t care how good a year you might be having or how positive a person you are, everybody has had to deal with their fair share of challenges.
- From Mary Kay Ash: We must have a theme, a goal, a purpose in our lives. If you don’t know where you’re aiming, you don’t have a goal. My goal is to live my life in such a way that when I die, someone can say, she cared.
- From Mark Twain: Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.
- From Ingvar Kamprad, the founder of IKEA: Only those who are asleep make no mistakes.
- From motivational author, Wayne Dyer: When you dance, your purpose is not to get to a certain place on the floor. It’s to enjoy each step along the way.
- And one of my favorites from Gandhi: Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.
No matter how tough a year you’ve had or what challenges in life have been thrown at you, you’ve got to make the time to focus on a little inspiration every day. Most of us take a daily vitamin – well, think of it as a vitamin for your soul. I’m hoping one of these five quotes might just get you thinking differently about some aspect of your business and your goals.
Skip Cohen has been involved in the photographic industry his entire career and previously served as President of Rangefinder/WPPI and earlier, Hasselblad USA. He founded SkipCohenUniversity.com in 2013. Skip is a co-host for “Mind Your Own Business” and “Beyond Technique,” webcasts through Photofocus.com, writes for several publications including Shutter Magazine and is actively involved in several advisory boards for non-profit organizations.
by successfulbob | fine art portrait, painting study, photography education
Phoenix Art Museum – Study
Madame Koch & Her Children
Oil on canvas Madame Koch & Her Children – by Julius Rolshoven
For the last several years I have been spending quite a bit of time at museums studying the art of painting. This includes color theory, composition, techniques for creating reality and more. I do this to try to make my photography art stronger. For those that don’t know I am pushing into the art market with my work. I now consider myself a ‘Lens Based Artist.’ I’ll be exploring different paintings and ideas in future posts.
‘Lens Based Artist?’ You might ask, “What the heck is that, Bob?” All of my source imagery comes through the lens of a camera. But then there is a divergence from photography as I mix, match and manipulate the files. More on this in future blog posts.
Back to the study of art.
I have viewed this image numerous times, and perhaps you can help me a bit. No matter where I stand all eyes in the painting follow me around the room. I have a feeling there is a name for this phenomenon but I haven’t been able to find out what that is. If you know, please chime in.
Painting of Madame Koch and her Children at Phoenix Museum of Art
Child – The Older
Child the Younger
Madame Koch herself
I thought that it was the position of the eye within the eye socket that was the cause of the effect of following you around the room. As you can see from the close crops that the eyes are all in different positions. I find this perplexing. This is quite a large painting, and I’m not sure if that has anything to do with this effect.
If you have any ideas on this, please let me know!
Yours in Creative Photography, Bob
by successfulbob | imaging competition, photography competition
International Photographic Competition – 2018
I have been just outside Atlanta with the Professional Photographers of America (PPA) helping to judge the International Photographic Competition (IPC). Since Sunday afternoon I have been working with some of the best photographers in the industry scoring entries for PPA members to learn and earn.
PPA International Photographic Competition
I am honored that I can be part of this system. Lots of work! Lots of rewards! The work is sitting at attention from Sunday afternoon through Wednesday at midday. The bonus is being in the presence of, and studying, incredible photographic images and then sharing thoughts and ideas with incredible photographers on how an image should score and why. Having to formulate the words to share with fellow jurors, and listening to, and processing their ideas, and coming to a consensus on the final score an image receives is an education in itself for the people participating.
The process itself is education. Prepping images for competition, getting feedback through the challenges that occur during the competition and the critiques that follow all make for a growing experience for photographers that participate. I feel that imaging competition has helped me immensely in becoming the photographer I am today.
I encourage PPA photographers to ‘get in the game’ and don’t stand on the sideline thinking that, ‘I’m not good enough, I’ll wait until I’m better to enter.” You enter the competition to become a stronger image creator and awards, Merits and degrees will follow.
Just as an FYI. I still participate in the competition to continue my growth even after twenty years of entering.
Here are my results from this year’s competition.
If you would like to see larger sizes f these images, you can check these two links.
https://successful-photographer.com/ppa-district-competition-artist
https://successful-photographer.com/ppa-district-competition-bonus
Yours in Creative Photography, Bob
PS – if you have any questions about the process give me a shout!
