I’m surprised at how much I’ve done.  How often do you look back?

In the last six months:

• I have worked more as a web designer than I really want to – a trend that continues.
• I have worked on staff for an NGO doing earthquake relief, photography, and design
• I have had several very close friends die
• I have had way more conversations with my drunk dry cleaner than I wanted
• I have broken one Chinese-made bed.
• I have consistently been 4 times the size of an average Chinese dude.
• I have witnessed the most annoying sandstorms on earth – and eaten sand.
• I have frozen my butt of – more than once.  I am butt-less.
• I have eaten more noodles than…you.
• I have been married to my wife for three freak’n awesome years
• I have been to Hong Kong, China, Malaysia, Thailand, and Narnia
• I have travelled by cab, boat, plane, ferry, train, motorcycle, subway, and scooter
• I have taken two extended trips into remote Tibetan areas
• I have shot three ethnic weddings in less than a month
• I have spoken 3 languages that are no my own
• I have been above 16,000 feet
• I have discovered that Russians like to be naked at beaches in Thailand
• I have broken or bruised at least one rib and bleed more than desired
• I have been amazed at how fast nomads can learn photography
• I have taken close to 15,000 frames
• I have spent significant time in temples, mosques, and monasteries – and KFC
• I have photographed 12 individual ethnic groups and distinct cultures
• I have had serious altitude sickness
• I have tried unsuccessfully to purchase, order, or recreate a white seamless setup on the plateau
• I have had to cancel two Lumen Dei tours
• I have done a lot more than I thought

Alot can happen in six months.  Check out my last 6 months in black and white after the break

I started my work as a travel/humanitarian/cultural photographer kind of by accident but definitely with open eyes.  I hadn’t really ever planned on being this kind of photographer, but because of my wife and I’s love for cultures and desire to make a living in a socially and economically developing area and my passion for photography, here I am.  I, from the bottom of my heart, love what I do, but in my heart of hearts, I’m a studio portrait photographer -a flash geek – a strobist.

Because I didn’t come into this profession with the true and direct intent to land here, I believe I’ve been able to see a different side of this kind of photography.  Some of the conversations that suround the travel photography world really make me think about whether or not people are really counting the costs of this type of profession.  I hear people say all the time that they want, as their deepest desire, to be a travel or  humanitarian photographer.  I just have to stop and wonder if they, for a second, have taken off the rose colored glasses.

Before I start in, let me just say that I love travel, cultural, and humanitarian photography.  I just love photography.  I love that photography will eternally challenge me as an artist. I love that photography makes me feel incredibly and terrifyingly human.  Photography has the ability to not only challenge the viewer but also the photographer.  I love how it can transcend culture and how a single moment in time can be made timeless.  I love how photography can truly create change.  There’s a lot to love about it, isn’t there?

Here’s the thing though – Like every job on the planet, this one is a mixed bag.  There are lot of struggles and tough times that come with the territory.

Yesterday was one of those days that reminded me of how tough it can be.  My grandfather died yesterday, and not only could I not afford to get back home, I couldn’t have even made it intime if I had tried.  Continuing on, I’ve yet to meet a travel photographer who didn’t just feel like he had unpacked… right before he or she was packing up to go out again.  I plan my life in 6 month chunks around tour season.  Sometimes culture can really just be downright annoying rather than beautiful.  Change is difficult to come by and furthermore it’s hard when people don’t sympathize with what you are deeply passionate about.  It’s a lot like getting kicked in the gut – repeatedly.  Try being married and doing this – It’s not easy at all – the list quite honestly goes on.

This profession is hard and it can take a toll on you if you let it – heck, it’s going to take a toll on you no matter what.  A majority of the time it’s not even close to glamorous, and honestly, a lot of the time, it just sucks. It’s times like these where I really have to ask myself if it’s worth it.  I know it really is worth it on so many different levels, and it’s that long list of things that I love that get me through the hard times.

What gets you through the times when it just kinda sucks?

]]> http://www.brianhirschy.com/when-its-not-glamorous/feed/ 8 http://www.brianhirschy.com/when-it-means-more-to-you/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=when-it-means-more-to-you http://www.brianhirschy.com/when-it-means-more-to-you/#comments Wed, 23 Jun 2010 14:08:29 +0000 bhirschy http://www.brianhirschy.com/?p=983

Recently I had a friend comment on some photos I had taken from a recent trip.  He told me that there were some well composed shots that he wasn’t exactly sure why I had taken.  He went on to comment on how we as photographers inherently take pictures that mean a lot to us but often times lack the meaning for those viewing them.  That’s no surprise to anyone, is it?  Color yourself underwhelmed.  However, this conversation is what set my brain on a collision course for this somewhat nebulous post aimed at furthering my photographic self discovery.

I’m not nearly smart enough to dissect culture, upbringing, religion, world view, past experience, preference, etc – all those things that unconsciously and undoubtedly play out in our photography.  I’m really asking the question what happens when we present these photos expecting the viewer to automatically understand the personal meaning behind those images?  Is the story complete?  Does the story necessarily need to be complete?

The picture above is a great example of this point.  When I sat down and thought about it, there were 5 different, specific, and influenced reasons that I took this picture.  This photo actually means a lot to me, but to the viewer without appropriate background, it’s honestly just a f1.8 shot of a row of water faucets.  It’s a bunch of water faucets nailed to a wall for crying out loud.  However, I can’t look at this scene without my mind going into overdrive.

A picture without context is a lot like a joke where you have to explain the punchline.  I agree with this statement and at the same time I violently disagree with it.  Sure, some of the most influential photographs I’ve seen were layered with explicit context  - but at the same time an image without certain contexts can send a potent message in and of itself.  Neither is wrong until you consider what you might be trying to communicate.

Take a look at the image above again – isolated, this image fails to communicate that a) this is a mosque and b) that this is an extremely important location in a mosque for Muslims.  I’d have to surround it by other images – or outright verbally explain it to the viewer.  Simply put.  If you intentions where to communicate all these things to you – I failed. If I were on assignment to present Wudu - I failed. Honestly, If I had presented this to friends that are familiar with the context – I still failed. If it was for me to artistically and effectively remember something that meant a lot to me – I win.

Like I said, I hardly have any great bits of wisdom on this point and even if I did, it would be a load of crap because it’s different for everyone.  All I can do is pay attention to some continued personal resolutions:

• Why do I shoot what I shoot and why do I shoot it the way I do?
• I shoot because I love photography.  You don’t have to get it all the time – it’s largely for myself.
• Lack of context won’t get me struck by the photography gods.
• Some of the best images I’ve seen come with a story that explains context rather than explicitly showing me the context.
• What am I doing?  Is it for me or am I truly trying to communicate something.  If so, did I contextually do the photo justice.

So how do you bridge the contextual gap?

Wordpress plugins for photobloggers – that’s what today’s Tech Tuesday is all about.

We are talking about some nuts-and-bolts type plugins that are helpful for photographers using Wordpress and are geared towards making your life easier – and hopefully allow you to spend less time updating your blog and more time behind the camera.

If you are not familiar with WordPress, you maybe literally been living under a rock -not much I can do about that other than to say give it a try, you won’t regret it.  I’ve made my living the last 4 years off of Wordpress customization and custom plugins – not to get too “preachy” but its an amazing platform and it’s ability to use plugins has made it all the better.  We as photographers should utilize such things, right?!

Here we go.  More after the jump…

1.  Akismet - (get it here)

You can tell I’m not going in any sort of order when Akismet shows up first on the list.

Akismet is an amazing API that, if used correctly, pretty much eliminates spam on your site.  As far as I know, Akismet was designed by angels, or at least some higher-power that knows how much I hate deleting spam comments.  Akismet kicks spam in the face…repeatedly.  If you think you don’t need this plugin, just wait two weeks.  A blog without Akismet is close to the textbook definition of a tragedy.

2.  Contact Form 7 – (get it here)

Another Contact form plugin for Wordpress – simple and flexible.

Here’s the deal, in the last 5 years I’ve gone through about 20+ contact form plugins, heck, I even wrote my own once.  This one is the best one that I have found so far – and it works.  This is a great plugin for those of you who want to quickly add functionality to your contact page.  I’ve always found that the less steps I require my users to take to get in touch with me, the more likely they are to do just that.  Do everyone a favor, and make it easy as possible.

3. SEO Friendly Images – (get it here)

SEO Friendly Images is a Wordpress optimization plugin which automatically updates all images with proper ALT and TITLE attributes. If your images do not have ALT and TITLE already set, this plugin will add them according the options you set. Additionally this makes the post W3C/xHTML valid as well.  Can’t get much better than that, right?

Now, this plugin isn’t going to rocket you to the top of your already competitive keywords on Google.  It just won’t do that and no plugin will single-handedly “do” SEO for you.  You have to continue to post good stuff regularly and work your butt off with your actual photography ( go figure?!?). The best SEO is to do what you do, rinse, and repeat.  However, once all that work is done, you won’t have Google mad at your blog.

4. Faster Image Insert – (get it here)

This plugin is  extremely valuable to photobloggers.  We are always posting tons of pictures and if you are familiar with how WordPress handles inserting images, you know it can be a pain in the butt to have to insert one at a time (WordPress has the ability to multi-upload as well).  This plugin completely does away with that and allows you to insert as many images as you want into a single post at the same time.  When I found this plugin, it almost brought tears to my eyes with the time it saved me.

5. Flickr Photo Album -(get it here)

Yet another beautiful plugin for creating killer photo albums.  This one is for all of you who user your Flickr account regularly and really don’t want to duplicate that process.  I use this plugin for pieces of my portfolio in the About section of this website.

“This Flickr plugin for WordPress will allow you to pull in your Flickr photosets and display them as albums on your WordPress site. There is a pretty simple template provided, but you can customize the templates 100% to match the look and feel of your own site. And if you want, you could also hook it up with Lightbox or any other number of display libraries.”

6. WP Super cache -(get it here)

WP Super Cache’s value can be measured in actual money.  The point of this plugin is to make your site as fast as possible by caching as much of your blog as it can.  Because photographers throw 5x as many images on their blogs as other people, this comes in extremely handy.

How do you measure it’s value in money?  Simple.  Most photobloggers are on shared hosting (BlueHost, Godaddy, etc) and these companies don’t like one website taking up all of their bandwidth and server processing power.  If you don’t want your website to be shut off (literally) and you don’t want to drop some serious coin on a more robust hosting package, this is an excellent little plugin to have in the toolbox.  Money saved.

Another added benefit of WP Super Cache is it’s ability to significantly speed up the load time on your site.  The best way to lose viewership is to make your viewers wait – this plugin solves this problem.  I can’t recommend this plugin enough.

7. Twitter Tools- (get it here)

It almost feels patronizing to have this plugin in this list since most people know about it and use it.  This being said, this plugin has some powerful tools for the photoblogger.  Twitter tools effectively links your blog with your Twitter account.  You can have your WordPress blog updated via Twitter or you can have Twitter updated when you post a blog.  This is an incredibly effective way to save yourself some time and jump headfirst into the social media game.  This is honestly the go-to plugin for anything that has to do with Twitter.

8.  Advanced Category Excluder – (get it here)

ACE is a plugin that allows you to effectively categorize your WordPress blog.  I know, I know – WordPress already has a categories functionality out of the box, however, Advanced Category Excluder adds significantly to your ability to break up content the way you want it, exclude content from a certain page, and much more effectively organize your content on your blog – important for photobloggers who might be using their blog as a portfolio or for those people trying not to confuse their readers.

A word on plugins: Plugins are amazing and can make your photoblogging life so much easier, however, don’t get carried away.  Plugins have the capacity to objectively ruin your blog by making it slower, breaking core functionality, and annoying your visitors.  A good rule of thumb is generally to use as few plugins as possible and only the ones that are useful to your core functionality.  I know, I know, that dancing banana plugin that you just love so much is worth it, right?  The point being, some plugins are so pervasive that the photoblogger has to ask themselves what they are trying to accomplish with said plugin.  Just because you can use cool plugins doesn’t give you a great reason to do so.  Be picky.

Honorable Mention: I stuck to plugins that are directly useful for photobloggers, nonetheless, here is a full list of plugins that I find useful:

What plugins do you find helpful/useful?

Welcome back  to our  ”I’m a Photographer: Discussions on the life of a Photographer“ series today (three weeks late).  I apologize for the delay in these, however I had a very good reason. (also see here).  If you aren’t sure what these interviews are all about, check this out.  This is our 3rd of 6 interviews and the last three will be posted in the next week and will include guys like David E. Jackson.

Our next interview comes from my good friend, Stephen Hunton.   He is full time professional photographer and as of last month started his own Advertising firm – another busy guy.  Stephen is one of the nicest guys I’ve ever known and his dedication for his art and furthermore for his family shines through – even while being busier than ever.  Stephen lives in Atlanta and is one of the only photographers I know that truly practices what he preaches – get your butt out there and hustle!

Take a look at what he’s up to. Be sure to check out his work here, here, and here with some shot’s at the end of the interview.  Also be sure and follow Stephen on Twitter!

Quickly describe your situation/life/craziness as a photographer.

Full-time photographer, hustler, marketer, people meeter & greeter

Real quickly tell us what you shoot, your style and what the perfect day of photography would look like.

Right now I shoot a little of everything, from corporate to music to weddings.  My sweet spot is music/editorial and I hope to grow that into commercial.  My perfect day of shooting is really a bunch of days before and after the shoot.  I love to concept a shoot, plan, prepare and then execute that vision on set and in post production.

Where did the photographic bug come from?  Why do you suspect it hasn’t faded away?

In high school I took a photo 101 class.  We used film cameras and got to play around in the darkroom.  I LOVED IT. But, I guess the real bug came in ‘06.  My first son was about to be born and my parents hooked me up with a D80.  I was terrible with a DSLR but because I’m a bit uber-competitive, I just shot everything under the sun until I started to figure things out.

I guess it hasn’t faded away because it’s the best way for me to exercise my creative side and I love the emotion that comes from the images.  It’s also just cool how this photographic community has grown online/offline and I think that keeps you drawn in, when other photogs are sharing/caring/encouraging each other.

Why do you think it’s so hard to transition from a person working a full time non-photographic job to a full time photographer?

It takes a completely different mindset.  You go from knowing that you have a new check in the mail every 15 days to wondering when the next gig will be.  There are these huge roller coasters of ups and downs.  I’ve always been a people person, but once I hit the ground as a full-time photographer I became an instant hustler.  Nobody knows me unless I somehow figure out how to share my work with them.

What’s the most frustrating thing about being a “Recently full time” photographer?

Not knowing all the right moves.  In my old job, I could do pretty much any project easily because I’d done it before.  Shooting a TV campaign for $1 Million wasn’t difficult because I’d done it before and there was an amazing team of people around us to make sure everything alwasy got done.  Now it’s JUST me and there are days of feeling like things just are not progressing and days where validation pushes me back to center again.

What’s a bad day look like for someone in your position?  What’s a good day look like? What are the frustrations and successes?

A bad day…. no leads, no meetings, no emails.  It’s rare to not have any emails come through, but back in December I got my first taste of a freelance Christmas… nobody’s working. nobody’s responding.

A good day is shooting a fun project that is more than just showing up and clicking the shutter.  I prefer shooting when it’s involved creative input and some vision.  I also love days where I’m getting to network and meet new people to either share my work or hear about what they’re doing.

If you had to give an educated guess, why do you think most people in your position struggle to make it?

It takes really thick skin to do this and you have to be willing to fail often.  Some of the most talented people I’ve known in life, whether creatives or athletes or musicians, have struggled the most because they just felt that it should be given to them.  Just being a good photographer isn’t enough, you have to also have a hunger to grow your business.  I honestly probably use my camera 5-10% of the time.  The rest is business growth, whether it’s meetings, emails, introductions, phone calls, blogging, tweeting, lunching… you get the drill.

What’s a recent or next “big step” or decision in you photographic career?

A next step in my career is figuring out how to merge photography with my advertising career.  I’ve had some opportunities to do branding consulting/development and have realized that I do love that business as well. I think diversifying my business will help me to bring more value to corporate/commercial clients and hopefully allow me to be more selective in the types of photo jobs I go after.

I started a consulting/branding company called Rocket Shine recently and am spending a lot of time figure out its brand and how we’ll move beyond the first Client we won (before we had a business name) and find a balance between growing the photography side of my life with the growth of this business.

What keeps you going?  What motivates you to keep doing this?

Passion.  Family.

I’m passionate about creating images and growing as a photographer.  I know I’ve got so far to go in this journey and it’s my family that really motivates me to push hard and stay a “hustler”.  We’ve been at this for 10 months, and “the lights are still on” (the phrase I use when people ask how it’s going), so we’re blessed to have come this far.

What advice would you give to someone in a similar situation as you?

Get hungry.  If you’re not hungry, don’t come to the table because there are plenty of other photogs out there that are WAY better than you.  But, there are plenty that are nowhere near as good as you.  To recall my Senior Quote from highschool (and the mantra I lived by when working my butt off to get a college scholarship to play D1 Tennis) “Hard Work ALWAYS Beats Talent, if Talent Doesn’t Always Work Hard.”  We all fall somewhere into that quote, but if you work hard you’ll find yourself getting more opportunities to prove yourself and grow your business.