Firstly, but kinda the secondary point of this post, I wanted to share this - my work and the vintage themed shoot with Kathy was featured on 'A Thought is the Blossom' in the sponsor spotlight section. You can't even imagine how excited I was when I saw it! Unfortunately the images aren't credited but the blog currently has nearly 2000 followers (and these are just the people with google accounts) but it just goes to show the awesome power of blogs (more on this later).
In addition, if you're somehow involved in the world of photography, you can't fail to have missed the internet sensation that was Jasmine Star on creativeLive. I wasn't able to watch the live version so instead I paid and downloaded it and have been slowly working my way through, watching an hour a night in bed on my iPhone.
So far the course has been fantastic, and given me massive food for thought, although I'm maybe only three hours into it. What makes Jasmine so special isn't that she's a great photographer (she is, but that's besides the point) but that she's so open, honest and willing to give back the the photographic community. Her encouraging, passionate manner, evidenced both here and on her blog where she regularly talks about anything and everything is in stark contrast to the sometimes elitist and machismo world of pro photography.
Whilst the course hasn't taught me anything that in some way I don't already know, it helps to know that one of the US' most successful photographers started out as a college drop out with a dream. As Jasmine says ' if you have a camera, if you have some money' then you're streets ahead of where she started. I think I knew I wanted to be a wedding photographer from the very moment I switched over to a DSLR - I'd immersed myself fully in the beautiful imagery created by my favourite contemporary wedding photographers, I'd become addicted to their blogs, reading their stories, wanting their lifestyles and I knew I wanted to be one of them. I'm at the very start of that journey - not everything I do yet is good enough, but practice makes perfect and I'm putting myself out there.
Jasmine also focuses on the power of the blog and the power of personality. She says she was drawn to her wedding photographer because his personality was written into everything he did. His blog was his shopfront for this, and she could buy into who he was. The number one tip is be yourself.
The next key message was about being open and engaging in the photographic community and using it to build trust and respect. How can you expect comments on your blog, on your tweets, when you're not engaging yourself
Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly is not to be jealous. Others have earnt what they have, and overnight success is extremely rare, if it exists at all. I need to be thankful for what I have, and for what I've built in a relatively short space of time. True, not everything is quite as good as I'd like - I always hate that I didn't think to get my subject in a particular pose, or think there's not enough variety in the locations, or find something to worry about. I need to relax and not worry - I might be shooting with my D90, I might not have a 70-200mm lens (but I can certainly hire one if I need to!) but it's all good and I just need to go with the flow.
Now where did i put my iPhone, ready for the next installment.
I also haven't proofread this, quite on purpose so I do apologise if it's a little bit of a brain dump.
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