I know that many readers of this blog and my books are aspiring professionals, so every now and then I like to present a few business-related tips that you might like to try for the rest of this year and into 2027. I haven’t written many business-oriented posts lately, mainly because these tend not to be popular with most of this blog’s readers but I’m going to try to post a few on an occasional basis. Please let me know if you find these of interest—or not.
Today’s Post by Joe Farace
Photography self assignments projects will help you develop in new ways and bring greater satisfaction–Kevin Landwer-Johan
One of Mary and my studio’s biggest single moneymakers was a shoot for a national department store chain that involved making photographs of every and I mean every display in one of their flagship Colorado stores. We both worked hard over two days and while technically challenging and financially profitable, the assignment was, nevertheless, aesthetically, unsatisfying.
You’re Your Best Client
To answer my headline question: Why can’t it be both? One of the best ways to get the kind of assignments you really want and will really challenge you both physically and photographically is to give them to yourself. That kind of self-assignment can have very different outcomes that, perhaps, you may have originally intended but regardless of what happens after the assignment was completed, the project will leave lasting memories.
One of my ongoing assignment for the past twenty plus years has been photographing barns all over Colorado, especially in properties that may be abandoned and the barns themselves have taken on additional character, much like the remains of a T-Rex found in outcrops of sedimentary rocks from the Mesozoic Era. The right kind of barn can give off the same kind of vibe. This kind self assignment plays of my interest in different kinds of landscape photography, architectural photograph and my ever present interest in film and infrared photography.
And then there is the movies…
One of my photography’s major influences is motion pictures, which extends beyond still photography to my love of films. You can see this latter interest pay out in my Joe;s Movie Club videos that you can watch on my YouTube channel, Joe Farace’s Videos.
How I Made this Photograph: Solaris was a film that was directed by Andrei Tarkovsky (1932-1986) a Soviet film director who is widely considered one of the greatest directors in cinema’s history. Solaris is a 1972 science fiction film based on Stanisław Lem’s 1961 novel that was co-written and directed by Tchaikovsky. The plot centers on a space station orbiting the fictional planet Solaris, where a scientific mission has stalled because the crew of three scientists have fallen into emotional crises. A psychologist, Kris Kelvin, travels to the station to evaluate the situation, only to encounter the same mysterious phenomena as the others. From time to time, the film cuts to the planet’s surface which consists of plants that are often in motion, hence the influence on this image, You must see this film; skip the American version.
This image was made with a Konica-Minolta DiMage X60 point-and-shoot camera that has a 6.3-18.9mm f/3.3-4.0 lens with 3x zoom for its 1/2,5-inch CCD sensor, that produces an equivalent to a 38-114mm lens for 35mm film. The image was made at the long end of that zoom range with an exposure of 1/60 sec at f/4 and ISO 100.
Along with photographer Barry Staver, I’m co-author of Better Available Light Digital Photography that’s available from Amazon for $24.50 prices with used copies starting at $17.12, as I write this,e.