Are We Listening?

Are we listening? For most of my adult life, I’ve been a marketer. Yes, I’ve also been a photographer but the titles I held that paid most of the bills were marketing titles: Director of Advertising, Director of Marketing, Director of Account Services, VP of Marketing Services, etc. And the one thing I used to practice as well as preach was the importance of listening to the marketplace.

When we were launching new products – and for a period of time, new businesses – it was essential that we listen to what the marketplace was telling us. Would they buy that product? Would they do business with that company? What would they pay for those new services? How would they benefit from what we had to offer them?

When we listened to what the market was telling us, we were successful. When we arrogantly pushed what we had to sell and ignored what the marketplace was saying, we were not. Sometimes we were able to adjust and garner a modicum of success once we started to listen. Sometimes we were not.

So, now that I’m exclusively a photographer and have to rely on that profession to generate enough income to sustain my lifestyle, I’m starting to wonder if I’m listening to what the marketplace is saying to me. Or am I just pushing my products, services and pricing at a marketplace that is telling me it’s looking for something else?

Specifically, in dog event photography, is the $30 8X10 win photo passé? Is the $50/file charge for one Herding image beyond the expectations of most of that market? If amateur photographers can gain significant traction in these market by selling ring candids and entire CDs of Herding photos at the price we charge for one image, are we wasting our time whining about it and asking for event exclusivity when we could be figuring out how to compete effectively and still make a reasonable living? Are we listening? And do we hear what the market is saying?

This morning, Linda was wrapping up some stories for The Rottweiler Magazine and she yelled to me in the studio "I need some shots of Moxie being bad!" Well, there is no question that Moxie can be bad -- in fact, very, very bad. But when that happens, I'm more interested in stopping the behavior than getting pics of it. So, we discussed a few possibilities and then I set up the studio for a quick photo and took about 10 frames of Moxie being a "bad" dog. Here are three. Let me know which you prefer.







BTW, this is truth in advertising: that cord is actually a remnant of one of her chewing frenzies .

Here in Florida, the change in seasons tends to be a bit more subtle than in the rest of the country and while Fall Foliage is thought of as a burst of color before a time where Mother Nature takes a rest, in Florida, it is a time of renewal, rebirth and regeneration. Mother Nature may vacation here but she never rests . So, while I was walking the Nature Trail yesterday on a magnificent low-80's Fall day, I tried to capture the essence of Fall in Florida. Having spend most of my life in New England, I can appreciate all that color. But I can also appreciate the differences we find here.

We have a wide variety of Fall flowers.



Including tiny ones hiding in a field of Goldenrod.





Scenes of renewal with flowers draped across the charred trunks of pine trees burned from the last lightning strike.



And being visited by moths to carry their seeds throughout the wetland.



White seedpods in the midst of a sea of gold and green.



And a spider's lair in the middle of the swamp.



We have our change of season here. But it whispers it's changes instead of shouting. You have to look closely but what you find is worth the effort.

A Box Full Of Memories

Linda and I have been cleaning out the garage for the past few weeks and in doing so, I came across some old boxes of negatives and slides that I haven't seen in almost 15 years. Today, I started going through them, sorting out the stuff I wasn't ruthless enough to toss 15 years ago. As I sorted, I found some priceless photos of my/our dogs. I'd like to share some of them with you.

First up is Bernadette the St. Bernard.



Bernadette was my first dog -- I never had one as a child. She came into a Rescue Facility where I was volunteering at about a year of age and once I saw her, I fell in love. She loved and respected our cat, Sandford. She was 185 lbs. of sweet and gentle. She lived to be 13 years old, remarkable for a Saint. And I'm sure that today, she is a Saint.

When Linda and I first moved down to Orlando from Hamden, Connecticut in 1989, we brought with us out two Golden Retrievers, Harvey and Molly, the yuppie puppies. In 1996, when these pictures were taken, Harvey was 12 years old and Molly was 11. Here's Harvey Garvie:



And his sister, Molly:



A week after these pictures were taken, Molly passed away from hemangiocarcoma. She was one of the sweetest girls I've ever known. And after she left us, Harvey was just devastated. Here's a shot I took of him a few weeks later and in it, he's really showing his age.



That's when we decided that he -- and we -- needed another puppy and that puppy was our first Rottie, Annie Fay.

Here's a picture of Annie the first day she arrived in Orlando from Buffalo, NY.



Somewhere I have pictures of Harvey wearing Annie like a cape when she first came into the house. He became like a puppy again and for Annie, he was her true Alpha male. Harvey lived to be 15 years old and, when he left us, his coat had turned pure white. But during those years with Annie, he helped her deliver and nurse two litters of puppies and became the model of behavior for Rowdy. Harvey was my first puppy and the dog that taught me all about aging with dignity and grace. I miss him -- and the others -- every day.

Jim

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Jim Garvie
www.jagphoto.biz

Panoramas

Panoramas are combinations of images stitched together to create a single image that is much wider or taller than any single shot. Panoramas are usually horizontal images that cover a much wider angle of view than could be achieved with a single lens. For example, this is a panorama I created of the Cliff House dwellings in Mesa Verde, Colorado.


The image consists of 5 vertical images stitched together to create a final image that, at full resolution, is 30 inches wide by 14 inches tall at 310 dpi. The images were created using a Canon 7D DSLR and were shot with a Canon 200 mm F2.8L lens from over a half-mile away on the other side of the canyon. Usually, photographers will use a tripod to maintain the image plane while swiveling from one side to the other. In this particular case, it was so windy, I couldn't use my tripod so I anchored myself to the fence that protects people from falling off the overview and basically used that to steady the lens while being buffeted by 20 knot winds. At full size, you can count the individual bricks in each of the dwellings.

Panoramas allow us to create photographs that define the scope of what we are seeing with our eyes. A scope that is often much broader and larger than can be captured in a single 8X12 print.

Today, I finally got some time off from business and Christmas activities and decided to take Sundance for a walk along the Shingle Creek Trail. This is the Trail where I used to take Rowdy and Crash because I could let them off-lead and still know they were under control. Since the boys left us, I hadn't taken any of the other dogs on this particular walk -- for a variety of reasons including some emotional ones. But today, I felt it was Sundance's turn.

I walked Sundance on a Flexi just to make sure that if we met people, they wouldn't be afraid. We walked along the Creek and Sundance got to smell things he'd never smelled before. He was in snorfing heaven! Midway up the Trail, we spotted an Egret along the other side of the stream and I took a few shots.



Then, we followed the Trail along the power lines where there are a lot of swampy areas. We stopped near one lagoon and just quietly watched the water and the shore to see if there were any other birds feeding there. Then, I heard a splash and looked up to see a River Otter cruising toward us.



Now, there are a lot of River Otters along Shingle Creek, but they are stealthy little guys and while I've seen them in the distance, I've never been able to get close enough to actually get any decent shots usually because I was with a dog and didn't have the right lens. So to see this guy no more than 50 feet from us was really special. Sundance didn't move a muscle and the two of us watched him come closer using that huge tail to cruise along.



When he got pretty close to us, he heard the noise of my camera and stopped to see what it was.



And then, with one swish of his tail, he dove for cover. We stood there for a few more minutes and Sundance wandered closer to the edge of the water and then I noticed the foliage on the surface of the water moving slightly. The big guy came back for one more camouflaged look and then dove away again.



It was a great find and now that I know where this guy hangs out, I can go back at dawn or dusk and see if I can get some more shots of him and his friends. All in all, it was a great walk and Sundance got to enjoy a place that used to be special for his grandfather, Rowdy.

Jim

Portrait Lenses

One question I get asked a lot is: "What's the best lens for taking classical portraits -- head and shoulders?" My typical answer is: "it depends." Usually, when you take a head & shoulders portrait, you want to throw the background out of focus so the attention is on the subject and not on the overall image. However, the quality of the out-of-focus areas -- the bokeh as photographers refer to it -- is important. Smooth, buttery out-of-focus highlights will make your portrait itself smoother and more professional. For the shot of our puppy, Moxie, I used my Canon 200mm F2.8L lens and shot her at F5.0. You'll notice that she is in focus from the tip of her nose to the top of her head but everything beyond that is softly diffused.


The picture of the Cavalier, Chesney, on the right was taken with my Canon 50mm F1.4 shot at F2.2. My objective was to highlight Chesney's beautiful headpiece while letting the background go blurry. The shot was taken in a hurry in front of our house in an area that is actually not all the pretty in focus but looks wonderful when you use a lens with lovely bokeh and let it go diffused. This image was used in a stud dog package and got Chesney some action the very first time it was sent out. Naturally, I'm taking full credit :)

The wedding portrait to the left, a candid taken during the reception, was intended to show Jennifer and Ray in a special moment during an otherwise chaotic day. Here they are dancing in a room full of people but they might as well be completely alone. They were so totally into each other and so very much in love. For this shot, I used my Canon 85mm F1.8 at F2.2 and ISO 3,200. There wasn't much light in the room but I didn't think that using flash would capture the mood. Plus I wanted to shoot at a wide aperture to set them off against a creamy background. I think this shot captures the mood and the moment and using the 85 instead of the 50 allowed me to be far enough away from them to not intrude on their emotions.

Three situations; three different lenses; three similar results. I prefer to use lenses that are "normal" to telephoto in terms of focal length because wide-angle lenses can distort facial features and make subjects look wider than they really are. In fact, I tell everyone that my self-portraits were all taken with a very wide-angle lens :). The way these portrait lenses compress the features and diffuse the backgrounds makes them my lenses of choice for portrait work both in the field and in the studio.