Big picture vs. detail-oriented and how it relates to photography

Most of the people who read this blog are around my age, so it's likely you have been job hunting on Craigslist.  When I was doing it, I was mostly looking for administrative stuff because it's where my skill-set was when I left college.  Who could really do much besides use a computer, read, write and type?  Pretty much every listing wanted someone "detail-oriented."  Because they said they wanted it, I said I was it, even though I had this strong nagging suspicion that I really wasn't even remotely detail-oriented. A few years have passed and a conversation on a photo forum recently helped me solidify to myself that I am completely not detail-oriented.  I am a "big picture visionary" type.  This makes so much sense to me.  I have a hard time discussing nitty-gritty details and normally figure all of that will work itself out in the end.  I want to talk about how something will feel, the overall idea.  I always want to talk about things from 30,000 feet up and don't have a hard time getting perspective about most stuff.  It's when we start talking RAW vs. JPEG or Sigma 50 1.4 vs. Nikon 50 1.4 or navy blue tablecloths vs. indigo tablecloths - who cares?!  Let's just do something.  My gear-loving friends flip out about this stuff and I really couldn't care less.  I have some lenses and they super work and I'm very happy with them.  I don't need or want any more.  In fact, the less stuff I have to carry around, the better.  Shock and awe from the gearheads!  But for me, it's about the big picture - can I capture this day in an authentic, candid, joyful, artistic way? This totally relates to photography and I'm getting there!  Now I'm going to show you images with mistakes.  And I'm going to tell you about the mistakes!  Why?  Because I want you to know the type of photographer I am.  All photographers make mistakes - we're people, after all.  But I like to think that my mistakes are about details, while I'm pursuing the big picture.  One of the biggest things I struggled with learning photography was how to get "clean" backgrounds.  When you're photographing someone, you have to move yourself so that they are not in front of something distracting - like a big red sign, etc.  This is something I struggled with, because I was focusing on getting the right moment.  Actually, getting the right moment is still my focus, but I've trained myself to get the other stuff right too (well, mostly, as we'll see!) This post is precipitated by an incredible sponsored post on A Practical Wedding.  I paid for it, it's advertising, but I still get all giddy when I read it - it's so me!  I love APW and if you are vibing on what I'm saying, you should check them out and you will love them too.  Meg, who owns the site and writes all the sponsored posts, linked to Megan and Pritpal's Sikh/Christian wedding.  And at the very bottom there is the ring shot I did... and one of the rings is upside-down. Whoops!  But here's the thing: I did this ring shot in - oh - 30 seconds?  Because there was lots of other good stuff going on I didn't want to miss.  Like this: It may be possible to be equally good at both, but I must admit I still sometimes skip the "details" in favor of the moment, the reaction, the emotion.  I have learned to go with my big-picture tendencies and let the details iron themselves out.  Sometimes there's an exit sign in my photos, sometimes I chop off a bit of a hand or shoe.  But if I do, it's because I'm trying to get this: Or this: Or this: Or this: That image above is one of my favorites from Aimee & Richard's wedding at Camp Puh'tok. Aimee and Richard are coming into their cocktail hour from our portrait session after their ceremony and here are some of their guests and parents oohing and aahing over them.  I'm in love with this image.  But there's something wrong with it and I know what it is.  I didn't quite get enough of Aimee in the frame (there she is on the left).  So when I show it to potential clients or blogs or whoever, they don't quite get it.  And I haven't discussed this particular image with Aimee, but I have to think she loves it as much as I do - who wouldn't?  Here's a whole bunch of their guests absolutely beaming with pride.  Yeah, so it's not a perfectly-composed image.  But if I had focused on the detail of getting enough of Aimee in the shot to cue everyone that here are the bride and groom coming into their party, I might have missed everyone's initial reaction.  Aimee and Richard know what this image is about, so who cares if outsiders don't quite see it? The image on the right I know Aimee likes because she made it her profile pic on Facebook (yes, we photographers notice these things and sometimes flip out if our clients don't use our photos for their FB profile).  But I'm cropping Aimee too tight on the right.  It's a mistake but is it a mistake anyone is going to care about?  Maybe some photo judge but I doubt my clients will care. And that brings me to my final point!  My clients and, really, any wedding photographer's clients, are normal people, not photo critics.  Some photographers are concerned about blogs, about magazines, about images that will win at judgings.  I'm not gonna lie and say I don't care about that stuff.  It's lovely to win at photo judging competitions.  But my primary concern is to get my clients images that are going to fill them with joy, images that bring them back to their wedding day.  And in my mind, they don't have to be perfect.  They just have to feel right.  Because I can't promise perfection - I'm not detail-oriented.  But I can promise to focus on what I think is important - emotions, moments, glee.  And that probably means there are going to be a few upside-down rings.  

“Personality-based marketing”, kick-ass clients and why high school was so miserable

So I've just come back from a sumptuous cheese feast with some clients (hi guys!), where I really couldn't mesh better with a couple.  These people get me and I'm pretty sure I get them.  And I thought maybe it was time to muse a bit on "personality-based marketing" and how it's so great not just for my business but for me as a regular old person who sometimes feels brash or awkward or unappreciated. I'll start in high school.  I went to a really big high school in the (way way far out) suburbs of San Francisco.  There were 700 people in my graduating class and something like 4,000 in the school - it was ginormous.  But I always felt sorta alone.  I had a few close friends but I wasn't invited to the parties where all the cool kids were getting drunk and hooking up and all that.  I didn't have a boyfriend until senior year (and only then because I didn't have anyone to take me to prom - he was my prom date before he was my boyfriend).  I just didn't feel that anyone understood, much less appreciated, my particular brand of weird.  It makes sense to me now, but at the time it was obviously pretty disturbing.  I more or less hated high school. And in college, things got better.  There were more nerds and being smart was actually seen as a good thing.  It was easier to find my people.  Though there were still a lot of folks around who I didn't jive with, it was relatively easy to find someone who got my sense of humor, appreciated my honesty, didn't care that I don't own a stick of makeup. In the real world here, it's sort of back to high school.  The world is full of people who don't get me and who I don't really get along with that great.  I don't have social issues or anything (I don't think so!), it's just that the world isn't full of best friends.  Lots of nice people, I just don't click with most folks. I have to hunt them out. And that's where "personality-based marketing" comes in.  Like about a million other wedding photographers out there, I have been heavily influenced by Jasmine Star, who does the photo thing and all but really excels at the business side.  (Yeah, don't even bother, she costs like $15k or something.)  Jasmine Star is all about attracting the right clients and repelling the wrong clients.  So, for instance, because we're talking weddings here, a lot of people might be tempted to use really generic romantic language like this: "On your special day, I will capture the beautiful emotions between you and your partner as you commit to each other forever."  Barf!  Here's how I would say it: "I'll photograph the shit out of whatever happens on your wedding day." Plenty of people - tons of people, are going to read that sentence and click right off my website.  I said shit, I was irreverent about the "most important day of their lives", etc.  But some tiny portion of people looking for a wedding photographer are going to read that and think "yeah, that's exactly what I want my wedding photographer to do."  And right there, in that teeny fraction of people looking for a wedding photographer, I find my couples.  And it's how "personality-based marketing" (that is, marketing on which I make a point of telling people who and how I am, rather than trying to appeal to the masses) draws in the incredibly awesome people who hire me. Because here's how it goes.  I've got this website.  And I talk a lot of shit up in here.  And that turns off tons of people and they go away because they hate me.  But a handful of people actually dig me.  And then they write me.  And then I meet them and they give me money and I photograph their wedding.  Because there are only so many weekends in a year and only so many weddings I can photograph without losing it physically and mentally, I don't need thousands of clients - just a couple dozen or so each year.  Therefore I don't have to attract the masses - I can appeal to the sliver of people that are going to think I'm funny (y'all think I'm funny, right?). And all my clients are AWESOME because of this process.  Which brings me to my very last point, after a very long post. What does this have to do with high school?  Well, in high school I was miserable because I felt alone.  Having a business based on my own personality (and, you know, some photos and stuff) draws in people who are like me or at the very least think I'm pretty ok.  This means that almost every single person that writes me is going to be the kind of person I would want as a friend.  I really can't emphasize how validating this is, personally.  I put myself out there on the web, and people write me almost daily to tell me they like my vibe and want to meet me.  It's given me so much confidence about who I am. So in sum, I want to publicly thank all my amazing, kick-ass couples.  You know who I am and you still want to hang out with me on your freakin' wedding day.  That's pretty great.