Business Life
2 Lies Photographers Tell Themselves
It was a hot day in Tunisia when it happened. I had flown to North Africa to study Arabic for a summer, but I admit I was perhaps less diligent in studying than I was in photo-blogging the whole adventure. I wandered the streets photographing old mosques, kids playing pick-up soccer in empty lots, the…
Read MoreThe #1 Cause of Angry Emails and Client-Photographer Frustration
We all dread it. Casually opening our inbox one sunshiny day expecting to find a few blog comments and maybe an Amazon ad, but instead there’s a client email with a storm cloud hanging over it. They’re hopping mad. They’re upset that you put their photo in an ad you ran in the local school…
Read MoreTip Jars & Copycatting
So you walk into your favorite coffee shop early one morning and see a new tip jar on the counter. You know the kind, the plastic jug with a slot cut in the top and a handwritten note thanking you in advance for tips. You see a few $1 bills and even a $5 bill…
Read MoreThe Non-Procrastinating Guide To Taking Productive Breaks
Tell me if this sounds familiar: You decide that once and for all, you’re going to finish that thing you’ve been putting off. And darnit, you’re not going to leave that chair until it’s done. You open Photoshop/Lightroom/Word/Email, and after staring blankly at the screen for a moment, you start. For about twenty minutes, everything…
Read MoreCompetition, Pricing, and The Sony “Mistake”
Can we, as an industry, pause a moment and take a deep breath? Ahhhhh. Okay. Straight talk coming your way today, fair warning. I submit that as a profession, we: 1) Spend far too much time thinking about how our competition is pricing their work, 2) Misunderstand who our competition actually is, and 3) Waste…
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