Do you worry about crap?

"Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it." - Charles R. Swindoll

I work in a very large and grey-walled office amongst a sea of cubicles. People email me, call me and occasionally visit me in person to give me crap to do.

Sometimes, this pile of crap gets really big. It happened the other day, and I got stressed. It sucked. Instead of simply focusing on my work, I became angry at my situation. My ears turned red, my eyes itched and I couldn't think about anything but the fact that I had a lot of crap to do.

Then, I remembered something.

As long as I would just do what I had to do, I would be fine. I didn't really know what I was worrying about. I get paid to deal with crap, so I dealt with it, and everything turned out fine.

Humans are interesting creatures. Not only because we live around habits, but we constantly measure ourselves and our lives and then we worry about those measurements. We judge things (even when our religion tells us not to), we see things and react to them.

So, when there's a pile of work to do in front of us, we tend to fret about it before doing it. In the face of challenges, we worry that we won't measure up, we worry about what other people will think of us if we fail.

When I first heard "Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it." - I didn't agree with it, but that was when my life revolved around measuring myself to others' standards. Today, most of my friends would probably tell you that I'm a generally laid-back person. I don't appear to be excited when I actually am (which can be a bad thing), and I don't worry about a lot of the things that people measure themselves with. I relax a lot. The truth is, I'm not a normal person, but who is?

So, what do I believe about worrying? I think it's the only way that most people can confront their challenges in life, but I believe worrying blows things out of proportion and causes unneeded stress. Worrying skews our perception of our challenges. I don't need to worry to get stuff done, but I still do it because I'm human.

As a photographer, I'm familiar with people and how they see things. When I'm behind the camera, I get to see a lot of expressions and reactions. I notice little things, little quirks, and I learn from them. Sometimes, when I'm photographing nervous, despairing subjects, I help them relax by simply talking to them to get their minds off of themselves, to get them to stop measuring themselves for a moment. I've discovered that the reason people don't like being photographed is because they think that the camera is measuring them. They worry about being too pasty or too chubby. If you're one of these people, you need to understand that people will appreciate a photo of you just as much as they appreciate seeing you in person. Trust your photographer to bring out the best in you. The memories and feelings that people get when they see the photo are what really matters (this is another future blog post topic).

I'm definitely not an over-achiever by any means, but I do know that the only thing between where you are now and where you want to be is in yourself. Getting stuff done can be difficult, but only because we preconceive that it is going to be difficult. If you expect something to suck, it's gonna suck. But if you expect something to get done, you have to stop, recognize what's in front of you, relax and do it.

Thanks for reading.

-John

The Martin Schoeller close-up portrait

In the last few months, I've found several pieces of literature, ads, magazine articles/covers and even books with these interesting close-up facial portraits in them. I picked up an edition of Esquire the other day at Hy-Vee (home of the greatest Chinese food in SD) and found an interesting article containing more of these close-up, slightly creepy yet not-quite-a-mugshot facial portraits. The photos are the work of a professional photographer named Martin Schoeller.

Mr. Schoeller has photographed thousands of celebrities using this same technique with two strobe lights and a shallow depth of field.

So, after closely studying a few of Shoeller's famous faces, I decided to take a crack at the method. I talked my roommates into letting me get uncomfortably close to their mugs with my 50mm. The main challenge of making this style of portrait is to create an interesting facial closeup without letting it look like a mugshot in a poorly-lit hallway. After about 10 minutes of shooting, and a few minor touch-ups in PhotoShop, I came up with these two portraits (click for full-size view):










































I photographed Matthew (top) first and Brett second. You might notice that the white balance has been slightly adjusted in each photo. Although they are identical in composition, they each have a unique feel because of the difference in white balance. I used a wider aperture in the first photo, which gave it a shallower depth of field and a slightly overexposed look. You can spot this difference by looking at the blurriness of their ears. The second challenge was to get the strobes in just the right position. Too far outside and I had too much shadow, too close to center and they would blow out the facial definition. I also wanted to get the circular catch-lights on each side of their pupils.

Overall, I had a lot of fun trying out my new studio equipment with my roommates. It was nice to try something new. Please leave a comment and let me know what you think.

Links:

Martin Schoeller on Wikipedia
Martin Shoeller on/in Esquire
www.martinshoeller.com (a very cool website)

Twitter is my friend.

About a month ago, a sudden impulse compelled me to start using my previously-neglected Twitter account. Maybe it was my friends talking about it, maybe it was all the media attention, whatever. I started, and now I cant stop.

I think many people avoid Twitter because they don't understand it. Besides gambling, people only buy into things when they know what to expect in return. Twitter and the concept behind it can be overwhelming, but the difficult part of the learning curve is surprisingly short.

After about a month of tweeting, I've realized that the two most exciting things about Twitter, for me, are it's inherent functionality and it's casual concept.

I'm growing up. Work currently confines me to gray-walled cubicles for 40+ hours per week. I don't make the daily journey to campus anymore. I don't see nearly as many people in one day as I did when I was a student. It's not that I purposefully isolate myself - I'm just physically separated from my old environment. Anyway, my friends are still my friends, and Twitter helps me stay connected with them.

I currently follow 51 peeps, and they're all different. They all have taken at least slightly different approaches to the "Big T." Some describe what they are eating, some post useful links, some post funny links, some complain about their hangovers, some promote themselves or their business. My point here is that I love the variety, and I hope the Tweets on my homepage stay as diverse as they are today.

My current Twitter research involves its role in my photo business. I'm not sure how I'm going to pull it off, but like any small business owner/capitalist pig, I want to take advantage of Twitter to market and sell my photography service.

My advice for people who are where I was about a month ago: the only way you're going to understand Twitter is to sign up and start using it. Dive in.

Follow me: @johnnelson1

Thanks for reading!
John

John's Photography = Authentic

My parents blessed me with an extremely normal name - Johnathon Roger Nelson. It makes eyes glaze over and induces yawns.

Lucky for me, the name doesn't make the person.

When I started John's Photography, I wasn't worried about what I would name it. Nor was I concerned with making myself into someone I'm not.

I created John's Photography because I was meant to do so. It is my path.

When I sat down to fill out my tax license application, my heart skipped when I read "Doing business as:" I strolled through several unique and fun names in my head. These names might have worked. I have several talented and passionate photographer friends who started successful businesses with very interesting and fitting names.

I, however, chose my own mundane moniker.

Why? Because I want to prove that the name doesn't matter. The name doesn't press the shutter button or Photoshop zits off of faces. The name doesn't earn $1000 just to turn around and spend it on a new lens. The name doesn't trudge through a blizzard to take photos of the Campanile. The name doesn't read textbooks about wedding photography in it's free time. The name doesn't make things work. The name is a name, but I can make it more than that. I want to make my name signify authenticity and noteriety. I want to be my own brand.