A few months back I had the chance to photograph three professors at Carleton College for their alumni magazine, the Carleton College Voice. I just got my copy in the mail yesterday, so now I can show y’all some outtakes. All three were preparing for their retirement, but to say they were retiring would be completely misleading. Professor Patrick is working on two books and a speaking schedule to support one of them; Professor Klassen will continue with a small class load on campus; and Professor Fisher is helping to open a new college in Bhutan this very minute!

Carleton is my alma mater, and I love shooting for the Voice. Not only is it a beautifully designed publication, but the subjects I get to photograph are such interesting, warm people.

Professor of Religion, Anne Patrick

Julie Klassen, Professor of German

Jim Fisher, Professor of Anthropology

As we made these photos we talked about how each felt about retiring, and I asked them to occupy the memories they each had teaching in the very classrooms we were using. As someone on the early end of a career, it was amazing trying to put myself in the shoes of these accomplished people as they thought about all the students they’ve taught, interacted with, and learned from. It’s jobs like this that make me love photography.

Funny thing about embarking on a big project: you spend what feels like huge mental energy psyching yourself up to move to the ledge, you take a deep breath, you make some decision that feels like jumping. . .

Then you get in to it and realize you actually need to take about five steps back before anything that feels like progress actually happens.

That was my day today on The Project. Instead of diving in to a pile of magazines to find my dream assignment shots, I decided that I would invest in Selina Maitreya’s book, How to Succeed in Commercial Photography. I’ve now seen Selina speak once, heard an extended interview, and read a couple blogs about photographers’ experiences working with her, and so far I like how she goes about working with her clients. So I bought her book.

She starts things off with a couple exercises meant to start at the most basic level of running a business: making sure that your core life values are also the values at the core of your business. And to get at that, she recommends asking yourself what success means to you, since it can mean so many things.

Here’s what my success looks like:

• Helping to tell stories that bring about positive change in the world.
• Working on extended, multi-day assignments that allow me to tell stories that are broad and deep.
• Collaborating with smart, ambitious people
• Earning enough money to save for retirement, travel on a regular basis, and provide my family with a comfortable life.
• Working with new clients each year.
• Giving back to my local community, and to the photography community.
• Loving my portfolio on a consistent basis and making my clients ecstatic about their photos on every shoot.

Next exercise is to write your ‘Dream Bio:’ where you see yourself in five years, who you’ll be shooting for, whether you’ll have a studio and a staff or working alone from home, what your best experience will have been.

My Dream Bio, in 2014:

• I shoot organic and sustainable food and producers, green technology innovators, policy makers, and other interesting and active people working to nudge us all back a little bit from the global chasm.
• I’ve got work space outside my home, maybe a studio but at least office space.
• I’m shooting three days a week, farming out post-production, and marketing the other two days.
• My best experience: shooting a two week job on people and companies shaping green technology.

Now that I’ve done these exercises I find it interesting how rarely I think clearly about my values and how they relate to my career the way I did today; usually paying the mortgage takes precedence, and loftier goals get relegated to ‘boy, wouldn’t it be nice if I could shoot that’ status. It feels pretty good to be at the beginning of a project that reverses the assumption that values have to be subservient to profit, exploring the idea that my vision is rooted in my values, and my vision is what will get me hired.

Next post: Vision Part 2, the visuals.

First off, apologies for the blogging layoff. It’s been an action-packed couple weeks on several fronts: holiday and birthday, weddings to process, new and old clients to touch base with, house projects, the opening of a juried art show I helped organize.

I’ve also been mentally processing how the past several months have gone – the latest cycle of market, shoot, reflect. This time around I feel like my reflections have been a little weightier than usual, and now I’m ready to download the results of all that reflection to all y’all, whoever y’all might be.

All things considered, I’m feeling pretty good about how this year – and my career in general – is going. The client list has grown despite the global economy’s best efforts. I’m able to invest in some marketing, upgrade some gear, and shoot personal work on a semi-regular basis. And as happy as I am with those results, I’m not what I would call Happy. To hit Happy, in terms of my photo life, I need phone calls from the photo editors of national magazines and the art buyers of Minneapolis ad agencies and corporations. I need some multi-day projects with realistic budgets, planning, and a team of creative people working towards the goal of visually telling a really cool story in a new way. Photo subjects who teach me something during our time together. Mostly what I do right now is local and regional things, and those will always be there; what I’m talking about is breaking through to a place of prosperity, both in terms of economic security and job fulfillment.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve got some great clients right now who give me assignments that hit the spot on one or two of those criteria per job. But I feel more and more lately like I haven’t pulled everything together yet to break through to the next level where all of those Happy-making things happen on jobs that I want to be considered for.

Reaching Happy is the ‘new project’ from this post’s title, a project that I’m guessing is going to take me easily through 2010. This post is my way of throwing that intention out in to the world to make it a little more real.

So where is this coming from? I knew you’d ask, so I’ve got references. Basically, you can’t walk in to a meeting of the American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP, of which I’m an enthusiastic member), or read a photo blog, or pick up any kind of literature about the business of photography these days without being bombarded with the fundamental importance of projecting a succinct, well-articulated visual style to clients with your print portfolio and website. The business of photography has changed over the past 20 years to valuing well-defined personal vision over the ability to shoot any and all assignments one or two big clients can throw at you.

A cohesive portfolio has always been my goal, of course. But looking back, at this point in my process I’m feeling like I’ve been somewhat passive about its formation; I’ll do personal projects that are fun at the time, but don’t specifically help me get the jobs I truly want.

Then in the ASMP Strictly Business blog I read a post about the importance of assembling a freelance team around you. Revelation: I’m only one person, I can ask other professionals for help with things that are outside my areas of expertise, or things that I’m too close to, like evaluating my own work.

Next, a post on Photoshelter’s blog (my client gallery hosts) written by a photographer who hired a consultant to help him tear apart his portfolio and rebuild it from scratch over the course of a year. He called it the best use of his money since his first computer in the ’80s. Great post, and I could really relate to his position pre-consultant.

Related to the Photoshelter post, a pretty substantial interview with the same consultant on the Lighting Essentials for Photographers blog.

Of course it’s more complicated than the sum of all these sources, but I feel like the message being beaten in to my head is that top flight photographers have portfolios that are solid personal vision from top to bottom. I aspire to being a top flight photographer, and I plan on enlisting some help to get there.

So that’s where I find myself: sold on the idea of sinking some significant time and money in to working with a consultant to raise my game. I’m super excited. My plan is to blog about each step in The Project, letting y’all know what I’ve accomplished and what my next action steps are. I’d love your comments and suggestions as I go.

Today’s Action Steps:

• Find the vision. As suggested in multiple venues by consultant Selina Maitreya, I’m going to go through magazines and websites and find five images that visually represent the work I would kill to do.
• Think about some qualities that are important to me when looking for a consultant.

One last blog to share: HeatherMortonArt buyer. She’s got this great idea – find an emerging photographer, follow him/her for a year and blog about all the behind-the-scenes stuff that he/she does to try to break in to the commercial photo world. I’m a fan of Heather’s blog, and I nominated myself, but I’m not holding my breath. I decided to go indie. Maybe we can team up someday.

I’m not a big hard candy guy. When I was a kid visiting my grandparents’ place I would definitely eat me a butterscotch or two out of their candy jar, but these days, hardly ever.

Brian, on the other hand, if our photo shoot time is any indication, is a prodigious consumer of tootsie roll pops. Sure, as I got set up he mentioned that it was “a little early” to be hitting the pops (10:30). Then he proceeded to take down four or five in a little over an hour. And unlike earlier snack series participants Alex or Carrie, there didn’t seem to be any ill effects. In fact I’m pretty sure he went straight to #6 as soon as I walked out the door.

But what can you expect? He’s a software engineer; those guys resort to some drastic measures to keep the focus going.

I was a little sad, but not exactly surprised to learn from Brian that you can’t – and never could – collect a certain number of wrappers with the Native American shooting the star and turn them in for free stuff. Apparently that was an urban legend. But Brian does remember bringing one of the special wrappers to the store when he was little and getting a free replacement pop. Man, those were the days.

When I started the latest photo shoot for the Sample Circuit, I figured I had a pretty good idea what I was in for: hang out with chef Craig Johnson and shoot some portraits, showcase their new restaurant space in a way that highlighted its deck and general Mediterranean-ness, shoot some food. Then they said they wanted a shot of owner Tony Nicklow with one of their signature dishes, saganaki. Turns out saganaki is an Asiago-like Greek cheese that is doused in brandy tableside then lit on fire. Flames erupt, everyone yells “OPA!” the flames recede, and the tray is set in front of the happy diners.

Now that’s a subject! First of all, you’ve got to know that I love cheese. Second, beautiful as the new Santorini is, it’s not actually the Mediterranean. It’s a very nice restaurant in an Eden Prairie strip mall. Tough to muster maximum excitement for that kind of setting. But you throw in some flaming imported dairy, held by a guy who’s been serving this dish for over 30 years? My attention had been piqued.

But first, chef Craig Johnson. Great guy, fun photo subject in part because he actually did the non-standard things I asked him to. Case in point.

Then it was time for Tony and saganaki. A testament to his true professionalism: no eyebrows were harmed in the making of this image.