Ken’s Shoot Notes Blog

RIT’s Creative Entrepreneur Talk

Posted on March 28th, 2008 by HuthPhoto.
Categories: Skills, Teaching, Rochester NY, Colleges, Currently Reading, Famous People.

I had such a great time at this RIT event… Had a yummy meal and the best part was an interesting talk from Lauren Dixon of Dixon Schwabl here in Rochester. I know it must be a fun place to work, since all of the DS people I’ve interacted with on clients’ shoots have been terrific. Even bringing their kids on shoots. After telling Colin a few things about Lauren’s company, he said it sounded like the kind of place he’d like to work… so loose and creative.

Our panel had a really great range of experience and it always reminds me of how little my business is compared to everyone else! But I hope some of my experience after 21 years still helps the folks starting out.

Here’s a recap of what I said (…and sorry to keep butting in Elizabeth

• Read much and broadly. You can teach yourself anything just by grabbing a book, and amazing creative things happen when you learn about different areas. Read Wired.
• Learn good business. Simple stuff like being on time, billing accurately, dressing for the event. Read business guru’s. For me it was Tom Peters. Today Getting Things Done or the Long Tail
• Stay Findable… good things happen when people can find you a year or two later. Work on your Google rank, ‘K
• Be a Triple Threat: Wriging Skills, Web Skills, Graphic Design Skills as well as Photography. You never know what you’ll be called on to do or have an informed opinion on. Once when money was tight, I did really well writing on digital photography for a tech journal. I design my own web site. Don’t blow off chances to improve these skills.
• My friend Ron Cronk reminded me of this… there’s a lot more than just shooting skills. I said there was a ’strata’ you move through… Everyone should have the bedrock of good technical skills, or else don’t even show up. BUT people ignore the rest of the layers… Being ‘nice’ and having people skills is key: Do you make clients lives more or less stressful?? Equal to that is being competent in business skills (as noted above) and finally those three things should allow you to grow over time to the top of the heap and really develop refined, masterful skills that really set you apart.
• You must jump in at some point. It’s great to ease into the freelance game while working a job, but at some point you have to go full time. Until you do, people just don’t see you the same, and you miss many business chances for clients to totally rely on your availability

Some things I didn’t get to say:

• Find a good niche you love. Doing a bit of everything can give you experience, but go deep in one area you can be known for.
• Be passionate. You’ll still pull all-nighters if you’re self-employed. You’ve got to love it.
• Work for great, growing clients and clients you can learn and grow with. I’m really bummed I didn’t touch on this one! I’ve been blessed with clients that were on the grow and so the amount of work just kept growing too. You can love and serve the clients that are flat, but if you notice a client is really rockin’, jump on board and give them everything you can.
• Raving Fans . Read it or download the audiobook. iTunes doesn’t seem to have it.
• Learn on the job. When you know you’ve got the basics a client needs covered, push yourself to do more and learn right then, not at some workshop. I’ve always had an area I wanted to improve (Lighting, portraits, web, etc) and so I’d study where I was weak in books and on shoots get the ’safe’ shot the client asked for, but also work on the new skill. Warning: Don’t suck while you do this…you still have to produce 110% of what the client wants and not waste anyone’s time.

Michael (yes, this was shot right during the panel!)

Elizabeth & Rich (sorry for the bad moment, Rich…)

So thanks t o RIT for inviting me and to Rich Getsloff, Elizabeth Lyons and Michael Lomb my co-panelists for their good ideas I’ll now steal

Me waxing pundit-y

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Currently Reading

Posted on September 14th, 2007 by HuthPhoto.
Categories: Personal, Blogroll, Funny, Family, Currently Reading.

Keep an eye on the ‘Blogroll’ to the right where I post my current books (if you are interested in that sort of stuff). It’s usually a pretty fun, eclectic collection!
I’m reading the book above with Colin. It’s full of short, odd, stories from history (like about the first subway in NYC being a hidden pneumatic tube… or ‘Mike the Headless Chicken’)

Lisa and I read Cold Comfort Farm when we are making cinnamon rolls on Friday eves… hey, and that’s tonight! We saw the movie first and loved it. I always describe it as Monty Python dropped into the middle of Wuthering Heights… you aren’t sure at first how to take the dry humor and then it just sweeps you away.

Lydia and I continue in the prequils to the Little House books…. This is about LE Wilder’s Grandmother growing up in Boston. We’ve been working our way back, so it’s fun to see one girl’s life with her adult Mom, then go back a generation and see when Mom was a little girl. They do a nice job weaving it all together. We are reading ‘On Tide Mill Lane‘ now.

So if you are looking for something fun to read, or just want to topic of conversation the next time you see us… check out the Blogroll for what we’re reading!

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Currently Reading

Posted on March 6th, 2007 by HuthPhoto.
Categories: Personal, Currently Reading.

Lydia and I just finished The Hobbit. We have my old copy from the 70’s, so it’s fun. I think I enjoyed it the most this time. When I read it with Colin, he was very young and I spent time explaining things and trimming it a bit. With Lydia, I also feel I know the book so well that I can really get into the reading aloud.

Colin and I loved My Side of the Mountain and are reading the 3rd sequel (which was written years after the other two). Parts of it read wonderfully like the original, about living off the land and all… then crammed in are very heavy-handed speaches about falcons getting zapped by the man on electric poles because ‘they are being discrimitaed against’…hurm….

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