Last Thursday my business participated with the national company Groupon to offer my services to customers at a massive discount. Like, over 90% in fact. Being that the offer is now complete, I thought I would share my initial reflections on the experience as a person and a businessman.

The images on the left are full size screen grabs of the offer and the comments section of the Groupon website.

It is too soon to really reflect much on my actual experience delivering such a bangin’ offer since I still have yet to actually go out and shoot any of these portrait sessions. But I have already interacted with many of my future portrait subjects who bought into the offer and I can say I’m very excited to see how this offer pans out for the future of my business.

For the offer, I worked with the Groupon representative/salesperson/somethingorother Emily. She was great. Always responding to emails and phone calls quickly. She even offered to answer questions on the comments page for me if I got too busy. I hope she got a healthy commission because she deserves it! (If you ever run a Groupon offer for your business, you should try and get her!)

Being fairly new in the world of business and marketing and having never leased much control over my customer relations to another company, I was anxious about how things would go. But Groupon made it easy and fun. Emily especially did a great job of making me feel comfortable with the whole ordeal. I’ve already recommended it to a number of business minded friends.

On the day of the offer I spent pretty much all day next to my computer answering questions via email, answering the phone and responding to comments on the Groupon website. It was busy, but exciting.

So far, the customers have been great. Four of the hundred and ninety-five portrait sessions have already been booked. One at Great Falls, two in Washington, DC and one hasn’t selected a location just yet. But I’m really excited to start shooting them. I’ve been working on building a (very) small team of photographers behind the scenes. I’m really looking foreword to using all these portrait sessions to deploy our collective talent.

The exposure, also, was invaluable. Thanks to Groupon’s model, I’ve already made a number of good contacts and potentially future wedding clients. And, my website spiked to nearly four thousand hits which has produced a pretty steady stream of phone calls from new and potential customers.

All-in-all, I highly recommend Groupon for businesses. So far, it’s a great experience. I have every intention of trying to run another offer next year. It’s also great for the customer. They get a great deal and an awesome opportunity to sample products and services that otherwise might cost them a lot of money.

Try it out!

I took a self evaluation test today to help develop some observations about my professional habits as a photographer. Here is a short excerpt from the feedback it provided:

“Stay conscious about your attitude. Ask yourself often (even now) what is ruling your heart. Is your good or bad day being determined by things outside of you or by your own decisions? This is a question you need to place at the forefront of your mind until it becomes your default habit.”

Of course, this is talking about my career. But it’s eerily applicable to my day in day out walk with the Lord.

And it does need to be placed ‘at the forefront’ of my mind everyday.

A couple days ago I started reading a book by photographer Dane Sanders called Fast Track Photographer. The book attempts to help photographers better grasp the current climate of the photography industry.

While discussing education, especially as it applies to photography, he had this to say:

“In the era that’s quickly vanishing in our rear-view mirror, most of us defined professionalism based largely on time—how much time you spent paying your dues (historical time) and how much time you currently spend working [as a professional] (present time). Time was the defining element, and time used to be a reasonable measuring stick. But it isn’t anymore. Again, learning curves have flattened, due to new [technology] new software and new learning opportunities, among other things. It doesn’t take as long to go pro as it used to.”

Of course, Sanders is talking about going from amateur to professional photographer. As he describes, what it takes to become a professional is not what it used to be. Not necessarily less, just different.

But photography is based heavily on technology. It becomes an industry right on the edge of change. Among industries that change dramatically with technology, photography is high on that list. But as history has shown us, there is virtually no industry that is untouched by the technological advances of the last 30-40 years.

This has all gotten me thinking about the state of education and employment in general.

Photography, an industry that remains close to the cutting edge, has already almost completed an important shift: a photography degree doesn’t do too much for you as a pro. Many pros have no formal education at all. Learning mostly from the wealth of information on the internet, and their own hands-on experience.

The shift is starting to happen in other industries also. Hollywood has more “untrained” people than ever before. It’s also more more common for people to get hired as computer techs with no degree than it ever was before. Marketing, politics, sales, even religion, have an uncanny number of folk-professionals working in them.

It makes me wonder if the same shift that has happened in the photographic industry will happen in most other industries. In order to be hired, will mechanics need to go to trade school, or simply demonstrate the competency they gained from private learning? And, if things do pan out that way, what will that mean for our higher learning institutions? After all, with discipline and hard work, there’s virtually nothing to learn in a university that can’t be learned from lots of intuitive Google searches.

We live in an exciting time. It seems plausible to me that if technology keeps moving as fast as it has, there might be some folks with some very expensive, yet ultimately useless, degrees.

I photograph a lot of weddings and these are by far my favorite.

Not because the message is really insightful (it’s usually not), and not because I like acoustic hymns (I do). It’s because there’s generally a different spirit about the reception.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I enjoy my job. I enjoy it a lot. And just about every wedding has it’s challenges and it’s fun parts. But for my personal preference, weddings between truly practicing Christians tend to be the most exciting for me.

I think the reason why is that genuine Christian community tends to operate a lot differently than ordinary groups. In most weddings, when the dance floor opens up, people have a couple drinks and start to cut loose. It’s fun. They’re having a good time and who can blame them?But when community of Christians get on the dance floor, it really feels like a community effort; Like everyone is dancing with everyone.

In addition to that, it seems like Christian communities seem to get the celebration aspect of things. Like it’s not only a great chance to dance and have a good time, but the good time and the dancing is really part of the excitement and celebration of the new union.

So, for me, I really enjoy when I get the chance to photograph weddings in the midst of Christian communities. And for Marty and Chelsea who were just married tonight, I wish you happiness and satisfaction in the Lord.

It’s now 4:24am—technically Friday morning. Which is why I’m writing this now with no shame.

Today (you know, from yesterday around 10am until now) has been a crazy day of planning and execution all at once. If you read this blog regularly, you probably already know about the Cut-Offs project that’s currently in the works. But in case you don’t I’ll explain.

The Cut-Offs project is a social photography experiment in which I am attempting to capture at least 100 different individuals wearing cut off jean shorts. Then, together we’ll sport our pictures on whatever social network we belong to—namely, Facebook.

Well, to kick off this project, I’m hosting a bit of a house party (My parent’s were gracious enough to lend their home, which should offer enough space for such an event). Well as it usually is arranged, the house doesn’t lend itself well to being a studio as well as hoppin’ party spot. So, I’ve just about had to dismantle the whole inside of the house to get things ready to go.

In addition to that, I will be feeding my guests with my own personal brand of pizza (Something else you will know I have a passion for, if you read this regularly). So, in addition to taking apart the house and transforming it into a model of photographic efficiency, I also spent a good portion of the day making an outrageous amount of pizza dough and pizza sauce.

So, to commemorate the completion of the day, I thought I’d share a couple photos of the madness. Enjoy.

I shot a wedding this afternoon. It went very well and I had a great time especially since the wedding hosting quite a few people I know—including an old roommate I don’t get to see very often.

But things didn’t start out that way. A series of hardware malfunctions resulted in some unexpected twists to the day and to my usual routine. What suffered the most was my routine and my working methods. But because of all the freak hardware occurrences, I quickly became convinced that the product was suffering badly. I only had a little 3 inch preview to go by and I quickly became distraught.

My assistant and second photographer encouraged me to stay positive through the ordeal, but I’d already made some internal commitments to preemptive frustrations. Convinced that I wasn’t getting my shots, it’s like I began to enter my frustration before even necessarily having any confirmation that it was justified.

Of course, when I got home it didn’t take very long at all to realize that the were no only unjustified, but down right silly. The photographs are some of my favorites yet.

I would be lying if I said that this wasn’t a regular attitude for me. I tend to fear the worst, even when having no reason to. When it comes to photography, I’m learning, for morals sake, that it’s crucial to live only in the current moment. Exist only with the picture that’s asking to be taken right now.

But it’s also made me realize that I live much of my life in exactly this way. I will often forfeit positive emotions, long before I have good reason to, simply in anticipation of their loss.

I would like to refine my attitude both behind the lens of my camera, and the lens of my life. I think it will bring mark improvements to both.

If you keep up with this blog at all, you might have read this post from a few weeks ago. It was after I’d gotten home from shooting a wedding ont he Eastern Shore at which I had had a close encounter with a huge water snake of some kind.

Well, today, I was asked last minute to come and photograph a baby shower at a residence in Davidsonville. What I found when I was there was nothing short of alarming.

It would appear that the snake from the wedding on the Eastern Shore must have been one of influence and power. You see, when I arrived at the baby shower, the carcass of what can only be a scout was waiting for me at the bottom of the driveway. The snakes must have sent this one ahead to scope things out.

Obviously this one was waiting for me so that it could go and report back to some bigger even scarier snakes. Who knows what kind of catastrophe they’re planning!  Lucky for me, this one suffered the tire tread of a comparatively huge hunk of metal before it could complete its mission.

Then again, there’s no doubt, when they find out what’s happened to the scout, they’ll blame me for it.