Of Course You Do

A few weeks ago I was plugging away on a few house keeping items with one of the sites, and as I often do, I had started wandering around other photographers web sites. It’s a great way of meeting new contacts, getting ideas, and all around just keeping up with things.

I came across a site where the photographer proudly proclaimed with a flashing message “We Don’t Do Sunsets” “We Do People.”

Now I understand what they are getting at, a sort of round about way of pronouncing their specialty. I agree with specializing and obviously agree with marketing as a specialist, I just think that statement is kind of silly. Of course they do sunsets, and wildlife, and architecture, and even snapshots they have just chosen to make their business in photographing people, I have done the same. When Debbie and I owned our own masonry company years back, the idea was the same, and we learned it the hard way back then. While the blanket title of masonry covered a lot of services, that didn’t mean we had to offer all of them, or accept jobs from all of them, but in the beginning we did. A few hard lessons back then gave us the experience and confidence to refer customers to more qualified companies while we concentrated and practiced in a more focused area of the trade. However, there was still value in having familiarity with the other aspects of the trade, and being able to discuss or perform them when appropriate.

With photography I look at the other areas of the craft a little differently than I did with masonry but the basic point is the same. As a photographer the main reason I explore and venture beyond what we specialize in is that it allows me to maintain my “hobbiests” passion, and that translates into freshness on the business side. Education, understanding, and experimentation in different photography practices provides continued interest and keeps me coming back for more.

So below is a great example, only it’s a sunrise and not a sunset. The image below was taken from the back of our house this morning. Yesterday had given us snow flurries all day add that to the beautiful color bleeding off the horizon and it’s almost irresistable. Now add that I have been reading a new blog from Trey Radcliffe and listened to a podcast interviewing him on TWiP and I am compelled to experiment and learn. I’ve tried HDR photography before but with very little effort, most of the reason is that I missed the boat, and it has become one of those overused and overly critized techniques. I have been re-inspired to play around with it after see the amazing images of Trey Radcliffe and others who have really “next leveled” the definition of what an HDR image is.