ABS: in my book is Always Be Shooting(Not, Anti-lock Brake System). I think this is highly important in any creative business, especially photography. Honing your craft takes time, as it is a process and a journey. The more you shoot, the more you develop your skills. I think it's a good idea to always be shooting your own work. My theory in this relativity is that if you are always shooting for yourself you will always be progressing. I learn new things every time I shoot. I'm not talking about shooting just for the sake of shooting, but if you are always pushing yourself, pushing your boundaries, creativity, lighting techniques, etc., you are growing, and that is what this business is all about. All in All, if you're shooting for yourself, every time you click the button you are expanding your eye, and photographic instincts. By shooting more, you also begin to discover what it is you really love to shoot, along with developing more of a Vision and Style. Vision and Style are the most important elements, and if you're always shooting, you're always refining those them. Photography is all about your "Eye" and what you see.

Shooting for yourself can be whatever you want it to be, and that's the beauty of this business. I feel like this career is a bit of a choose your own adventure book. In reality, you're going to get hired for what you show in your portfolio in both style and content. If you want to shoot a certain type of work you need to show that you can do that, but better yet how can you do it differently than everyone else? The best way to go about it is to shoot it for yourself and put it in your book. The idea is to focus on what you love to shoot and build a business around that.

For me, it took me a few years to really figure out what aspect of photography I loved, and I'm still discovering new things, but I've focused my passions within photography to travel, lifestyle, a bit of lifestyle fashion, and a bit of a new endeavor: editorial/celebrity portraiture. Over the last couple years, I've really began to push my capabilities within each category by testing. "Testing" is what we call setting up and shooting for your portfolio. They can be simple, and they can be involved. Depend on what you shoot/want to shoot. Over the last year, my tests have become more production elaborate, involving Hair, Makeup, Styling, Models, Locations, etc. (More to come on testing) Creating higher production value images is what is needed in the realm of Advertising and Editorial photography. Now my tests are less frequent, but more involved, but I'm always planning the next one.

The goal is to always be shooting whether you're doing paid jobs or not. Developing your eye, and capabilities only comes from doing it constantly. On top of that, it fills that creative desire that you may not always get by shooting the paid jobs. Eventually the two will converge if you market what you love to shoot and people hire you for that.

I was just asked by a reader about branding and whether I think it's worth spending the money, and I say 100% yes. Branding is such a subconscious yet, important thing to consider if you want to have a business and make money. I spent 5 years as a graphic designer branding and creating identities for companies, and is actually what I went to school for. If you think about your business as any other business, then branding is huge. Think of Coke vs the generic cola brand at a store. Most people want a brand they can trust, and will pay more for that. That's why most people make the subconscious decision to purchase a can of Coke over genera. We buy into brands a lot of because of the visuals that they portray, with the extension of how the brand lives up to those visuals. That's why advertising is such a huge deal these days. Most people without a design or advertising background aren't trained to see visuals and breakdown, so it becomes subconscious to the untrained eye. I wrote a post on Lovemarks.com a little while back. A great website by Saatchi on how we rate certain brands and why we love them. Most small businesses (especially photographers) make the mistake of trying to do these things themselves with no formal training.

Perception is Reality.

Branding yourself is creating they other people perceive you, which becomes their reality. All you have to do is live up to that perception to make your brand successful. Deliver a product that in line with your brand. It's especially crucial in Commercial & Advertising photography since our clients are the ones creating those brands visually.

In consumer driven businesses like Wedding photography, it's extremely important as well. Us consumers choose brands that we love, that portray the things we want, personality, product, service, and a visual brand that tells us that's what we are going to get.

That said, the process of hiring the right designer/agency is very similar to the way an agency hires a photographer. Here are a few tips:

1. Make sure you're ready. Have you come to grasp with your visual style, what you like to shoot, how you like to shoot, what you WANT to shoo? Have you developed a plan to get there? This all plays into your brand.
2. Prepare yourself to spend enough money. Good designers/agencies from $3K-$10K for an identity design. It's a process, and good agencies will take you through the process asking you questions to find out who you are and how they can play those elements into your brand.
3. Do your research. Look at different designers/agencies that suit you. That will give you the style you want to represent your brand. Just like hiring a photographer, their portfolio says what they can do. You can see the quality of work from their portfolio.

I love the smell of fresh printed ink. It's such a good feeling, and an even better feeling now that it's for my own work. When I was a graphic designer, it was always great to see your work coming off the press, but now it's even closer to me since it's for my own photography work. It was a big reason I got into photography in the first place was creating great images to implement into my design work.

That said, I just got the first run of my direct mail campaign for next year. Shot a few images of it coming off the press at Westcott Press.

A reader asked if I always shoot my 1Ds MKIII at the 21.7mp all the time, and the answer for me is YES, I do. A the very rare time that I'm shooting something that will never have the possibility of getting blown up to a billboard.

I shoot mostly assignment work, but a lot of random side stuff I end up shooting can be submitted for stock . Stock agencies always need the largest file possible, and with all the new cameras coming out these days the standard keeps getting raised and raised. Every snap I take has that possibility, so I shoot at the highest res possible. I try to think as forward as possible when I'm shooting. The space gets eaten up quite a bit, but the possibility of making money with images makes that thought very minimal especially with how cheap storage is becoming. I'm in the process of building a new DAM(Digital Asset Management) system with internal hard drives and a multiple bay enclosure. 500gb internal hard drives are only $85 now.

The 1Ds MKIII does have a small RAW file that spits out files that are about 6×9@300dpi, which for most wedding and portrait uses is a great size that you can upres for regular prints. The image quality of the files is pretty amazing actually. You always have that option if you're concerned about saving disk space.

That said, whether you choose to shoot at that resolution depends on what you shoot. If you're shooting weddings and portraits, it may not be worth it to spend $9K on a camera. If you're shooting images that have the possibility of being used in POP or Billboard then it's a definite necessity.

Yet more Santi stopmotions happening on the homefront. This is one of my favorites. Santi and his girl Maribel. Check it out!

Santi & Maribel Stop Motion from nickonken on Vimeo.

Hopefully by now you've seen the push for Nike's Human Race, that went down yesterday the 31st of August in 25 cities around the world. It was a 10K race in each city that happened all on the same day. Mexico City's race sold out at 25,000 runners. Nike Mexico hired me to create their stylized imagery for the race.

The media catapulting that went was pretty intense. I soon realized that I had to shoot the race and have images uploaded for them to blog an hour and a half after the race, as well as for their next day ad that came out today. The same thing happened with the video footage from every city. We received footage from the other races around the world (Melbourne, Shanghai, and Mt Fuji) to play on the big screens during the race in Mexico City so the runners could see everyone around the world running with them.

We set up a media center at a nearby hotel, that we could all run to after, start downloading, editing, and processing the images for upload.

Check out the full story here: http://www.nickonken.com/Stories/HumanRaceNikeMexico/