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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Colin’s Photos

Posted on March 26th, 2008 by HuthPhoto.
Categories: Apple, Personal, Skills, Equipment, Photo, Teaching, PhotoJava, Family, Famous People.

Photo credit: Colin A. Huth

I love how kids don’t mind ‘breaking the rules’ and come up with some really cool shots. The iPhone also helps, because Colin can always grab it when we’re running around and take shots. I went to a talk on Digital Photography Future with Alexis Gerard at the George Eastman House, and the access to cell phone cameras is one topic of how digital photography is changing.

I had even mentioned this idea in an article on the future of photography for Element K Journals a few years back … when you always have a camera with you, and it doesn’t cost anything to take images, we take so many interesting images… and think differently about taking pictures.

Doesn’t Colin has a good eye and a fun sense for photos. He’s 12 and we homeschool the kids.

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And the Answer is… the World’s First Digital Camera!

Posted on November 10th, 2007 by HuthPhoto.
Categories: Shoots, Equipment, Photo, Teaching, PhotoJava, Rochester NY, Famous People, Events.

Yes, the presentation I’ve been hinting at in earlier posts was on the first digital camera as developed by Kodak in 1976… it was an awesome presentation and a real peek at history.

This is the mission statement of the ‘Camera of the Future’ project.

TV Output

Kodak Digital Milestones

It recorded to cassette tape.

As you saw in the earlier posts, I wasn’t the only one geeking out on seeing the camera… what’s so cool about being the photog for GEH is being able to go up on stage and get the cool angles, and to meet the people involved… what a great event. It was all part of a Leica symposium held at GEH.

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Two Good Hints

Posted on October 13th, 2007 by HuthPhoto.
Categories: Shoots, Skills, Equipment, Teaching, PhotoJava, Rochester NY, Famous People, Events.

It was an event at the International Museum of Photography at the George Eastman House and Kodak was involved.

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The Magic Box

Posted on October 12th, 2007 by HuthPhoto.
Categories: Photo, Teaching, PhotoJava, Rochester NY, Famous People, Events.

What is this box that garnered such attention…

Come back for a hint tomorrow.

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Les is More

Posted on October 12th, 2007 by HuthPhoto.
Categories: Shoots, Personal, Photo, Teaching, Rochester NY, Colleges, Famous People, Events.

I love seeing my old professor Les Stroebel (left in the photo) at the RIT Reunion each year.

Les was one of my profs for ‘Materials & Processes of Photography’ (known as M&P, it was every science rolled into one class… we learned photography down to the atomic level!)
So Les and John Compton did a great job making a tough class interesting and useful and when we had our final class, we created a ‘Les is More’ banner that hung in the class and we all wore similar buttons.

One lesson I have today from that class is that the real, solid basics will never go out of fashion. The same histograms we learned (and honestly thought we’d never use, are part of my everyday life in Photoshop and in-camera, judging exposure… the histogram is the hills and valleys plot of how bright/dark a photo is).

This year Les beat me to the punch, he said:
‘Hi Ken, You looked surprised when I beat you to the punch and took this picture.’

and sent me this photo:

and here’s my photo of him at the same time… OK, Les won…

I’ll get him next year 

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