Good things always happen when you get a load of creative minds in the same room, or a in the case of last night, a Chicago Trolly, three photogs and a bunch of ASMP members. With a name like The Magical Mystery Tour who wouldn’t attend? This being my vert first ASMP event that I have attended I was not sure what to expect, but I was sure that it would be mind opening as well as there would be some great exchanges of dialog and as always, business cards.

The evening started at Helix Photography and Video with the destination unknown to us all. All that we were told ahead of time was:

Here’s an opportunity to get up close, personal, and behind the shoot of three very prominent Chicago photographers. On this rare occasion these photogs will open the doors to their studios and give you a first hand vantage point to how they shoot and how they outfit their studios. You’ll have the chance to ask questions, pick their brains, and gain some insight into how they’ve built successful photography businesses.

The three studios that were welcomely open for our visiting were:
Steve Grubman
Sean Williams
Tom Maday
Below are a few pictures that I took with my terrible camera phone.

Steve Grubman

Sean Williams

Tom Maday

These guys were VERY informative in this casual, basic question-and-answer tour. All and all good times were had and lots of mentoring went on. This being one my first ASMP event, I was entirely pleased, and instantly knew that I would be attending all of the events that my schedule allows. Thanks again Ron for setting this up and if you are in the Chicago/Midwest regoin, I highly encourage you to check out the Event Calender and get involved.

And now back to your regular scheduled self-promotion material…

You do schedule time to self-promote right?

Well, if a normal web user or a potential client stumbles or directly goes to my website, www.michaelwiesman.com they will see that I do not have anything posted as far as a web site is concerned. Most of this is my fault with a huge part of the blame put on the artist in me. I have had this new site under construction for over six months now and still struggling with the design and layout. I think one of the hardest things in to design something for yourself.

A web site today is more than a just a web site. It’s something that clients, peers, onlookers, and every visitor will judge you by. It’s basically an extension of yourself. There is a certain disconnection that is left out there with the artist web site and actual artist. A visitor to your site is likely to leave in a matter of seconds of what they see in the first 10 seconds doesn’t appeal to them. No phone call, no mailings, no nothing. Just a quick view of the site and that’s it, you only have those few crucial first seconds to gain their interest in hopes that they will click on the ‘portfolio’ link to view more of your work. (This also goes for future employers that are there to look at a students online portfolio. There is not any time to be wasted in this ‘instant gratification’ world).

I first struggled with the layout and design of my site, then I struggled with the content. After many hours of reading blogs, magazines and talking with other professionals I think that I have the content issues sorted out, but am still pondering the design aspect.

I really like the connivence of site like livebooks, clickbooq, and aphotofolio. But being that I am only a one-man business I feel that the initial cost is a lot. I have the skills to program my own site, but it’s very time consuming and don’t feel that I can produce it in a timely manor to be efficient. Which is why the above sites are soooo tempting. I love the way that the Chase Jarvis site looks, along with the great blog template that matches seamlessly, and that is a LiveBooks site.

I would love to get some comments and feedback about anything that I am missing or not taking into consideration.

Many of the sports shooters that I know have love the time saving editing that they all can do on their new 3inch dSLR screens. As time saving that this is, I have refused to do it, unless the rare occasion that I am running short on storage.

“But with this huge screen I can edit all my shots between plays and in between races.”

That’s a waste of time, you are missing out on many of the shots that count. Not just action shots sell. and how many photos have you saw in newspapers and magazines that aren’t “picture prefect”? Granted the vast majority are tack-sharp, but there is always that one unique shot that makes it double-truck, or on the cover.When editing on the fly in the field or on location there is this urge to rush-edit and make impulse deletions in a millisecond’s amount of time.

Not me, I have done away with on camera editing. I some of my best shots are ones that I was reviewing in the field and thought nothing of it, but it was not until I had of opened on my 24″ screen that I saw the power that one particular photograph had. Above is a good example. I had two bodies with me on this shoot one with a 300mm f2.8 and another with a 24-70mm f2.8. I had just finished rapping off a few closeups on the pack of runners coming towards me and grabbed the camera around my neck with the wide angle on it. Little did I know that I didn’t change my exposure setting from my last shot, (I was in a hurry, the pack was already in front of me and not slowing down). rapped off about a dozen shots listening to the shutter at an extremely slow speed then what I mind was expecting. I just kept clicking hoping for something. Above in the resulting image.

My point being, 3 inches isn’t enough to be doing photo editing on. Storage is cheep, buy lots of it so that you are never running short and save your editing for the post-shoot.

So far what I have gathered is that you should, if you have not already have a common theme for your portfolio. Your portfolio should view like a well written book is read. Your theme could be something as simple as one word, such as love, hate, grunge, urban or red, to a certain technique that you use in making your work. Such as, all wide-angle shots, all black and white shots or all shots taken at 1/15 sec. @ f3.5. Whichever it is that you choose for your theme, one thing is standard, you should have a theme.

While reading an archived post at ChaseJarvis.com today I came across an issue that I feel is of great importance. Net Neutrality. Whit technology changing and improving by the hour, I feel that the importance of Net Neutrality is only getting more important to the public. Currently it is limited enough in the area that I live by the ISP’s, currently I only have one digital connection to choose from, and three DSL carriers. What a joke internet service is in Wisconsin. I do not even want to start to image how slow the internet would be if the bigger ‘contract’ sites were given priority over the bandwidth on the web.