WordPress-photography-podcast-episode-43
The WordPress Photography Podcast
The WordPress Photography Podcast
Episode 43 - Finding Content Ideas Through Inspiration w/ Marc Silber







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Marc SilberMarc Silber is an author, photographer, filmmaker, and producer of the very popular YouTube series Advancing Your Photography, where he has interviewed scores of some of the biggest names in photography.

He started out learning darkroom skills and the basics of photography at the legendary Peninsula School in Menlo Park, CA, in the '60s and moved on to hone his skills to professional standards at the famed San Francisco Art Institute. Marc moved into teaching photography in workshops all over the country, he became renowned as an engaging and helpful speaker and coach, as his greatest joy comes from helping others.

He loves adventure, and you'll find him out backpacking surfing or snowboarding, or maybe just chilling, taking a walk through Carmel with his wife and Golden Retriever.

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Transcription:

Transcription was done by Rev.com

Scott: Welcome to episode 43. My name is Scott Wyden Kivowitz, and I'm joined by today's guest, Marc Silber. Marc, I've been interacting with you for many years on many different channels. Yeah, about different things. We had some WordPress interaction at one point, and I've been following your YouTube videos and basically a lot of ... What you've been doing just everywhere for years. So I'm really excited to have you on. Let me tell everybody who you are.

You are an author, photographer, a filmmaker, a producer of the very popular series on YouTube called Advance Your Photography, where you have interviewed scores of some of the biggest names in photography. You started out learning dark room skills and the basics of photography at the legendary Peninsula School in Menlo Park, California. You're still in California, right?

Marc: I am. I'm in Carmel, California, a couple of hours away.

Scott: Nice. You moved on to hone your skills to professional standards at the famed San Francisco Art Institute. You moved into teaching photography and workshops all over the country and became renowned as an engaging and helpful speaker and coach, and that's some of your greatest joys.

Marc: I hope I can live up to all that.

Scott: And other joys include backpacking, surfing, or snowboarding-

Marc: That's right.

Scott: ... and taking walks with your wife and your golden retriever.

Marc: (laughs) You know a lot about me. I must've given you that information.

Scott: Maybe!

Marc: I gave you some clues there.

Scott: And what's your dog's name?

Marc: Shyla.

Scott: Shyla, nice.

Marc: Shyla is very photogenic, and she appears in my book, Advancing Your Photography. She's a good model. She loves to have her pictures taken.

Scott: Yeah. You know, that's one area of photography that I kinda just never want to get into, is pet photography.

Marc: It's tricky.

Scott: It's very tricky. You really gotta have some really good expertise with animals to do that. So I totally envy the people who can do that, because you get some beautiful work with animals.

Marc: Yes, you can.

Scott: So before we dive into what's going on with you, because I know there's a lot going on with you, I want to dive into some more press photography related news. The first one is, PhotoPlus Expo is coming up at the end of October; I think it's the 25th to the 28th. It's in New York City, I will be there hanging out, talking WordPress with people. I won't have a booth, but look for me. I'll be wearing an Imagely T-shirt, so look for me. If you see that I have my camera with me, let's hop on and record some ... Maybe we can record a podcast episode. So say hi if you see me at PhotoPlus Expo.

Next is Project Gutenberg. I think I mentioned this a few times in the podcast before the hiatus. Project Gutenberg is the content block editor coming to WordPress. It's basically, if you've ever used Medium.com, it's gonna be very similar to that. There's a love/hate relationship that people have with the beta version of this editor, but it's coming to WordPress 5.0 whether we like it or not, so probably in 2018, we're gonna see this new editor. Which will confuse you if you've never seen it before, but you might find it easier to use, you might find it more difficult to use; hopefully you find it useful. And just Google or go to the show notes and I'll link to Project Gutenberg, an article about it, so you can check it out.

Next is NextGEN Gallery is going through a redesign of the backend interface, so we are completely redesigning the user interface. There's a beta of NextGEN Gallery and NextGEN Pro available to everybody; NextGEN Gallery is available to anybody for free worldwide, NextGEN Pro is available to any Photo Karate Pro customers or Imagely ... Or, you know, NextGEN Pro customers can test the beta of that as well. And we're looking for feedback on that, so please test it and send in your feedback.

And then the last bit is we are adding a new thing to the show. At the end of every episode there will be a question for you, so Marc has a question prepared-

Marc: I do.

Scott: ... so when you get to the end of the show, you'll be able to see what the question is and then I'll tell you how to answer it.

Marc: Awesome.

Scott: So that's the news! So Marc, what's going on with you?

Marc: You know, I am now creating courses that go along with my book. I've authored maybe five to eight of them that will be short little videos that take you through sections of the book. But more than just shooting a video, they're also gonna be interactive, so you have to get out and do whatever it is I'm talking about. Because at the end of the day, the only way you're really gonna learn and retain something is by putting it into use.

So I've basically sifted through those things in my book that will apply to any kind of camera, especially a smartphone, which many people are using exclusively these days. When it comes down to it, you have to be able to use these set of skills, and some of them we're gonna talk about today, to produce great content.

Scott: Nice. Yeah, that's exciting, because the book goes into a lot of instruction. A lot of people, like myself, are more hands-on and visual learners, so having a course that has video content as well as actual hands-on instruction, go out and do this, it's definitely gonna be a better way to learn; for me at least, people like me, than just reading the book.

Marc: Exactly. You have to have them both. And you know, you can watch it on your smartphone, you could then go out and use your smartphone to do whatever that exercise is. Keeps it really simple.

Scott: As a side question, will you be at PhotoPlus Expo?

Marc: I'm hoping to. I actually have a proposal in with a very big ... I won't say the name, but one of the big photography blogs who actually go out and produce a number of interviews for them. So I'll follow up with that, and I hope to be there, and definitely will be on the floor, going around talking to people.

Scott: Great. So hopefully I will see you there, and we can catch up, maybe grab some coffee or tea or something.

Marc: Absolutely.

Scott: Awesome. So let's dive into today's topic, which is finding content ideas through inspiration. I've talked a lot about ways to come up with content, ways to be inspired to create content; as a content creator, even with all the advice that I've given, all the techniques and tricks that I've come up with myself and routines and things, you still get burnt out on coming up with ideas. And this is whether you're blogging, whether you're trying to find something new to photograph, whether you're creating a YouTube video. Whatever it is, it's so easy to get burnt out on ideas.

Marc: You have to feed that monster, don't you? And that monster is gonna drain you, because it is, you know ... What is my next video gonna be, what is my next blog post gonna be? And you feel sometimes like you're up against the wall.

Scott: Yeah. You know, so to give you an idea. So I was, at one point, getting a little tight on my content idea list, and I didn't know where to go next. So for my YouTube channel, which is youtube.com/ScottWyden, I partnered with Mack Worldwide Warranty, one of the largest warranty companies for cameras and electronics, and I went to their headquarters and basically went to their staff and said I need a list of five questions that your customers ask on a regular basis; what are the five most popular questions?

They have an education space there, which doubles as a conference room, and I went in there and recorded what was intended to be five questions; turned out to be eight questions. But I left having eight questions of videos, basically, so I now had almost two months of YouTube videos to be able to schedule out, which was fantastic.

Marc: That's awesome.

Scott: So it's that kinda stuff. Like for me, it came down to; I was in a tight spot, all I had to do was ask a question to somebody else to give me the ideas to create new content.

Marc: That is a great way to go about it. It really is, because one of the key things is just getting out of your own head, you know? You have to look out and see what are people interested in and what can I provide for them. That's really good advice.

Scott: So tell me, from your perspective, and I know in your book you go over this and you've done a recent video on content inspiration, so let's talk about that. Tell me your thoughts on this.

Marc: Yeah, I mean, this is the key to the whole thing, because without some sort of inspiration, it doesn't pan out, whether it's producing a video or blog post or a photograph. And so in my book, I break it down into really two stages. It comes under the heading of what we call visualization; visualization means to see in your own mind before you press the shutter. Or before you write a blog post. I mean, it's equally true for any creative activity. Because without that, it's sort of like trying to go into your kitchen and say I want to make a great meal; I'm just gonna pull things out of the refrigerator and throw them into a hot pan and hope that it all comes together. Now maybe a great chef can pull that off, but mortals like you and I probably are gonna end up with a mess, and it just doesn't work.

So it's far better to step back from it and go what do I want to make? What am I hungry for? Well, I want Mexican food; okay, let's make fajitas. You kinda visualize it, and then you follow your own recipe or a recipe out of a book. So the first step in content creation is to get that vision.

Now that leads to the next question; so what happens if I don't have anything? I'm drilling a hole in the ground, I'm coming up with a dry hole, and I can't think of anything that I want to ... I just am lacking inspiration and visualization. Okay, here's the well that you can go to and that ... Scott, it's interesting, because I've done over a thousand hours of interviews with some really great photographers; Joe McNally, Bambi Cantrell, Chase Jarvis, Annie Leibovitz; the offspring of two of the biggest photographers in our last century. I recently did a series with Edward Weston's grandson, and I've done a whole series with Ansel Adams' son.

Scott: I think some of my first videos I watched of yours were those, was Ansel Adams' son video.

Marc: And you know, those guys were up against that same problem. It wasn't like they magically had inspiration every morning. They had to come up with their own ideas. So my best recommendation is this: Look at others' work. And I actually build out a whole section in my chapter about this. George Lois, who isn't a photographer but he's an incredible designer, he produced something like 97 covers of Esquire magazine. I mean, really iconic covers. George Lois wrote a book called Damn Good Advice; it's a really great little book for any creative to get you inspired. And his recommendation, which is my recommendation, is go to museums a lot. Go look at the original art.

You know, one of the things we have to do is get off of our computers. Computers take art and they kinda flatten it. You're not gonna see the real depth of that image, whether it's a painting, or a photographer, or a sculpture, or whatever, unless you see it live. So one thing a creative can do, and he goes every week; every week he goes to the Met in New York; and just his image on that is you have to keep feeding your own creativity, and if you don't feed it, you're not gonna come up with your own inspiration.

Scott: It's interesting that you said go to an art gallery or a museum. So I was ... When was this? This was a few months ago. I was in Chicago for the Out of Chicago photography conference, and one of the workshops that I helped lead was actually to an area of Chicago known for their unique graffiti. And I never thought ... I'm not big on graffiti, but I never thought I'd be inspired by graffiti. And then we happened upon the side of one of the train tracks and, you know, Chicago trains are usually elevated, they're above ground. There's tons of layers of cement that are basically making walls, and there's tunnels, foot tunnels and cart tunnels, go under them.

On one of these walls of cement, with the train above it, was this giant rat.

Marc: Oh, that's a characteristic trademark, yeah.

Scott: So at first I'm thinking, is this Banksy? Right, because Banksy used rats.

Marc: It wasn't Banksy?

Scott: It wasn't Banksy, it was somebody else. But what I found was really interesting was, you're walking, and you're like okay, it's a big rat. It's a big rat; it's not in Banksy's style, maybe it's Banksy. When you finally get to it, it says who it was, but I can't off the top of my head. I can't remember it.

But you get closer to like the middle of the rat and all of a sudden, there's a separation in the cement. So let's say this hand's in front, so you're starting here. Once you get to where my fingertip is, if you're not watching this video, sorry if you're only listening to the audio, you won't be able to see this. But basically, in between my two hands, which one is in front of the other, is another wall connecting the two. In there is the guts of the rat.

Marc: So you can kinda look inside it?

Scott: So you can't see it until you get to that point.

Marc: Oh, that's pretty clever.

Scott: Right? So that got me thinking, like how can I incorporate this into my photography. Such a simple thing, of seeing some new art out on the street gets your brain going.

Marc: Well that's the thing, you know. The great artists, there's a really fantastic photo documentary of Pablo Picasso by David Douglas Duncan, who was a World War II photographer, and he spent, it looked like many different time periods, with Picasso. And just followed him around and took pictures of him. One of the scenes was him being inspired ... He's eating some kind of white fish and he pulls out the skeleton, the spine, and he holds it up, and then the next sequence you see him in his studio making filets out of clay and pressing in the spine. He basically made a plate that resembled what he had just ate. But it was art. He was being inspired by life.

Another sequence is he goes to the bullfights, and he's very animated and engaged in the bullfight. Then he comes home, and he does a whole series of lithographs of the bullfight. So you could see how he was just constantly taking life in and turning that into his own inspiration. Whether he actually said what Steve Jobs attributed to him, which was "Good artists create, great artists, steal," I think that's how the quote ... It's sort of questionable whether Picasso actually said that or not, but Steve Jobs used to quote him.

Whether we call is stealing or really just burrowing, that's how all great art comes about, you know? Somebody comes up with ... I mean, a new movement, like hip-hop; you can trace that back to Bob Dylan. His Subterranean Homesick Blues, where he basically read a poem and hip-hoppers, rappers, came along later and sort of turned that into a whole genre.

But whatever we do, it's really important to not just go I like that, or I don't like that. It's one of the kinda curses of our social media; it's like great, thumbs up, or a like or whatever. You have to dig deeper. So if you're inspired by a piece of art, look at it closely. And actually in the book, I give you a little checklist, so when you're looking at it, you should observe these things.

And by the way, you mentioned in your video that it's good to write these things down. I like to actually keep a paper notebook, you know get off the computer and just analog and put a paper notebook there. So while you're looking at something, you're going through a museum and you come across something that really inspires you, whether it's a museum or out on the street like you just described, I give a whole little sequence of questions that you should ask yourself. Write these things down in your notebook. So how is the subject composed within the frame? I mean, the most basic thing about a photograph is framing it, which basically means how you put whatever it is that you're looking at out there inside your rectangle; how did you frame it? How is it lit? Where is the light coming from? How did it strike the subject? What was your impression emotionally when you saw it?

So if you go through this little checklist that I give in here, you can actually break it down and try to see; what are those ingredients that I could utilize in my own work, and take that back with you for your next project. Or a whole list of them.

Scott: Yeah, and that step with analyzing the light, that's a skill in itself.

Marc: It is.

Scott: You're gonna train yourself to be a better photographer, to work with light in a much better way, by analyzing the light in both other photographs and in painting.

Marc: And in painting. Vermeer is a classic example, and I give that here. Right now I am lit per Vermeer; I have a north-facing window here that's letting in light, and that's the only light in the room. So this side of my face obviously is better lit than this side, and that's all he did, is he had one window. And his subject, he just was a master at composing the subject within that frame using that one light source. But you're absolutely right; stop and look at how that particular photographer or painting was lit, and then you'll have that in your own little visual library. Next time you go out, you can utilize that.

Scott: I always used to expose so that everything was on the brighter side, and as I started getting into street photography more and more, which I don't do that professionally, I just do it for fun whenever traveling mostly, but I was admiring people who would always do street photographers that were in the darker side. Where it was mostly in the shadows and then you see very little that was actually properly exposed. And then I just kept admiring it, admiring it, and liking it digitally, and saving it. And then eventually I'm like, you know what? Screw this. Next time I'm out doing whatever on the streets in New York, and Chicago, Philly, wherever I am, I am going to start exposing dark.

When you start actually thinking, how can I learn from all these images that I had been admiring for so long and actually put into effect, your whole view on that genre of photographer just ... Doesn't necessarily change, but there's a shift, and you just like ... Your skill level goes from here to here, like goes up a whole notch. Because you're putting all this into effect and you're learning from your mistakes as you're trying these new things. Something as simple as just underexposing ... It's not just a matter of underexposing; it's okay, now I need to find the light that'll work well with underexposing.

Marc: Exactly. Yeah, that's really good advice. And just testing those things out and trying it out. We all go through that when we're learning some new skill or testing out a new genre or whatever; you have to put it into use.

Scott: And I think we should definitely emphasize the importance of getting out and seeing things non-digitally, which you already mentioned. So my friend Brian Matiash and Sharky James, who's from PetaPixel, started a new podcast called the No Name Photo Show; because they couldn't think of a name, so they just called it No Name Photo Show. I will link to that in the show notes. And their second episode, I believe, they talked about how they used to go to 500px and Flickr for inspiration and that started getting sort of like a flat line of inspirational quality, so they started looking at Instagram only; just looking at the feed of Instagram. And even there, now they're starting to flat line getting uninspiring images. Not bad images, just nothing to inspire them to do more.

So I think a takeaway that I wish that they said, which I don't think they did, was actually get out and see real images printed, or paintings printed. So I think that it's so important to emphasize how effective that could actually be.

Marc: You know Scott, that's one of the things that I think has been the downside of our digital age, is we've kinda forgotten that the roots of photography are a print. When you put a print on the wall, and it's something obviously you're proud of, you can draw your own inspiration from your own work, because also, you have something there that you can show to other people, and you can see what resonates with them. What do they see when they look at it? What is it about it that really intrigues them? That gives you ... That kinda goes back to that point you mentioned about asking questions. Let your viewer see it; you can stand right next to them and hear what they're saying.

But I think it's one of the most important things that a photographer should strive for, is creating your own gallery. Create your own image, put them on the wall, frame them beautifully. One piece of advice from Chase Jarvis about creating your own portfolio is take your 10 best images and make that your portfolio. And as you progress, that 10 images can shift, but only ... Like eliminate one and put a new one in. Don't make it 12, 14, 80, whatever. That's really gonna show your range as an artist as well. But it's a great challenge for you to compile those 10 best images and you're showing those to other people, to kinda represent your work.

Scott: Now for the photographers that do multiple genres of photography, so let's say a wedding photographer who also does engagements, would you recommend doing ten total or 10 wedding and then ten engagement?

Marc: I would probably say you could split it up. If it's like portraiture, engagement, wedding, let's say, those fit together pretty well, you could do 10 of each, or you could break it into maybe 4 or 5 of each. I think the important thing is you don't have so many that you overwhelm your viewer.

Scott: And if they want to see more, they can go to the blog and see some recent weddings you've done or recent engagements you've done, and stuff like that. And blogs are really where people want to see recent work anyway, so it's a good way to give people a taste with the portfolio and send them to recent work elsewhere.

Marc: Exactly. And less is more in this case. You don't have to blast your whole portfolio; all the different countries you visited. I've seen that, and to me, I start to lose interest pretty fast, if I see like 80 photographs, or you know, different compartments. I'd rather just see those best images and then, if I want to dig deeper, I can.

Scott: Nice. So how do you take this ... Everything that you teach about inspiration for photography and how do you use it for creating new blog content or creating a new YouTube video? How do you incorporate it into that? How do you incorporate it into coming up with ideas for something that's more on the educational side of what you do?

Marc: Okay, great question. Well here's a good recent example, is my visit to Edward Weston's house. So Edward Weston, a lot of people don't know who he is. He was a contemporary with Ansel Adams, he never achieved the household recognition, household name status that Ansel Adams had, but he was a phenomenal artist. Very, very different than Ansel. He basically photographed two areas of a subject; one was nudes, beautiful nudes, and the other is everyday objects, that he showed you the beautiful of these objects. And you can Google Pepper No. 30, which is his most famous photographer. It's a photograph of a green bell pepper; you know, the kind that you cut up and put in your salad. And he actually ended up doing 38 different exposures until he got the right one.

So I've always admired his work, and I'm in a fortunate position where, if I admire a photographer's work, often I can go meet with them and find out more about them. And in this case, he passed on in 1956 or so, so I ended up meeting with his grandson, who's also a photographer. Going to his house, shooting an episode in the house itself, and then shooting another episode in the dark room.

So your question is, so how did I come up that concept? Well that's just my own desire to know more about this artist, so I figure if I'm intrigued by this guy, and I have questions, and I go ask those questions ... I try to ask the questions that not only I think of, but also I think my audience might have. Simple questions, like Pepper No. 30; how did he expose that? Well it turns out, this is really interesting and you'll see it in the video, he used an 8x10 camera. That's what we call large format. And in order to get the depth of field that he wanted, he had to create his own stop, and a stop is basically a piece of metal inserted into the lens with a hole in it.

That's why we call them F-stops, by the way; I define that in the book because most people don't really know. "Why do you call it F-stop? Why not F-circle or F-opening? Why the word stop?" Well, stop is a piece of metal that's inserted into something, and in this case, they used to use different sized openings for different F-stops.

Anyway, the F-stop that he created was F-240. Basically a pinhole.

Scott: Yeah, that's intense.

Marc: And in order to get the exposure, he exposed it for four to six hours. Now there's a guy who was dedicated to his craft, and I think it's an interesting exercise. Sometimes, you know, we can go kinda scatter our attention all over the place and take photographs of many, many different things. Great, that's obvious when you're traveling, or you're doing a wedding, or whatever, obviously, you're gonna take many, many different photographs. But what if, as an exercise, you just took one thing, one person, or one object, and photographer them many, many different ways until you found the one that really just bam, that's it? And that's what he did.

That I find really inspiring, because that's something I've never done. I've never taken a tree, or a piece of sculpture, or whatever and just photographer it every day for maybe two months until I found the one that really resonated for me. I've done that with some objects, like in Yosemite; Half Dome, for instance. You know I've taken a lot of different photographs of Half Dome, different times, different locations, at sunset and sunrise, and then I came up with one that I thought really kinda captured everything I was looking for. But I hope that answers your question.

For my video production, I basically get an idea of the story I want to tell, and then I go out and record it. For me, often that story doesn't really come together until I'm editing it, because while I am capturing it, I'm mainly just trying to get enough information so that when I go to edit it, the story's gonna be there.

Scott: Yeah. And then you're just sort of fine-tuning, taking all those clips and fine-tuning it to make it into the one, coherent story.

Marc: Exactly. And most of it consists of throwing stuff away. That's an interesting thing about editing your own work; you fall in love with something and you have to be able to throw it away, whether it's writing ... We've all done that. You write a long post and you look at it and you go, well you know, this section here really doesn't need to be there. It's something I want to say, but I don't really think it's helping the viewer or my reader understand this, so I'm gonna ... You have to be willing to throw those things away.

Scott: Yeah, yeah. And having an editor to look at that, whether it's video, photo, or text, is very useful to help you determine what needs to be thrown away.

Marc: You know Scott, one of my greatest videos that I never made was meeting up with Annie Leibovitz and touring an exhibit that she had in San Francisco. The video that I shot was with maybe 80 to 100 other press, where they're ... She and I went to the same art school, the San Francisco Art Institute that you mentioned at the beginning, and at the end of the show, everybody disappeared, including my video team, her handlers, and it was just her and I walking through her exhibit together. And I had that video in my head, but I had no camera.

But one of the things that we discussed and I thought this was really, really good advice, she said you have to have somebody edit your work for you. Meaning her photographic work. Because if you don't have that other person, you're gonna either miss photographs that should be included, or maybe include something that doesn't need to be there. So you're absolutely right, you should in writing, video production, or whatever, have somebody else that can help you edit it, and that'll help your inspiration as well.

Scott: It's pretty easy to come by photo editors, video editors, and text content editors. It's so easy to come by. So yeah.

Marc: Somebody you trust, for sure.

Scott: Yeah, yeah. Have you ever thought about meeting up with Annie Leibovitz again and sort of recreating that conversation and making like a hey, a few years ago, this is what we talked about; let's talk about it now.

Marc: Yes, I would love to do that. I just have to find the right time and place to make that happen.

Scott: Have your people call her people.

Marc: Exactly. In her case, it is about- [crosstalk 00:34:40]

Scott: People.

Marc: You have to get through a few gatekeepers to get there.

Scott: Yeah, I'm sure, I'm sure.

Okay, so let's get into this new part of the show where we want you to ask a question to the listeners where, whoever's watching the video, and ... So you're gonna ask a question and the way that I want you, listening or watching, to answer this question, is to go to the show notes, imagely.com/podcast/43 and you're gonna just comment with the answer to the question. Or, if you're actually on YouTube and watching the YouTube video, just answer the question in the comment to the YouTube video. It's as easy as that. Either the show notes or the YouTube video.

So with that, Marc, what would you like to ask the listeners?

Marc: Can I preface the question first with ...

Scott: Sure.

Marc: So it kinda makes sense. So when I wrote this book, Advancing Your Photography, my desire with this book was to create a handbook that you can carry around with you that would really cover all stages of photography.

Scott: Literally in your pocket.

Marc: Literally yeah, in your camera bag or in your pocket. And I wrote with the idea that you might not want to sit there and read a whole chapter, so at the end of each chapter, I put what was called a crash course summary, which basically took what's in the chapter and summarized it into a page or a page and a half. And it really covered the whole spectrum of photography. So I'm prefacing that. This is a good book, by the way, I recommend it. It wasn't just out of my own experience, it was also ... Remember the result of those thousand hours of interviews with some really talented people.

Okay, here's my question. I'm gonna write my next book and I want to really know ... I think I know, but I would love to know from you out there, what is it, what's the single most important thing that if you learned about photography, you think would really be a game changer for you? What's that one area? Is it composition, is it lighting? I'm gonna guess that it's not a purely technical thing, because there's already so much information out there. If you want to know anything about your camera, it's gonna be there already.

But what would be the one single thing that you would love to know and have clearly defined? And that, I would love to hear from you.

Scott: I have a question for you, Marc.

Marc: Sure.

Scott: Would you want to give away the book to your favorite answer to that question?

Marc: I would. That's a great idea. Because I really want to know and I'd love to have that answer confirmed. I think I know what it is, and I'm not gonna say what it is, but-

Scott: So I'm guessing that if somebody answers with that exact answer that you're looking for, that's the person who's gonna win the book.

Marc: Maybe, but I also want to keep my mind open, you know. I don't want to just go with what I think the answer is. I'm more interested in what the majority think, but out of all of those, I would be happy to select one answer that I think really hits the nail on the head, and yes I will happily send you a copy of my book.

Scott: Nice. Okay, so to answer Marc's question, go to imagely.com/podcast/43 and just comment with your answer to the question. Or go to the YouTube video, if you're watching the YouTube video, and just comment there.

Again, his question is: What is the single most important thing that you would to learn, as a photographer, that would be a game changer for you? Right? I got that, sort of.

Marc: You got it. The game changer is the important thing. Not just like oh yeah, that would be cool, but would really flip the switch for you.

Scott: Awesome. So we're gonna link to all of Marc's ... His site, his YouTube channel, his book if you want to pick up his book, and all these different places. I'm gonna link to the Edward Weston video, the Pepper No. 30 photo, the Michael Adams video, and everything else in the show notes.

So thank you, Marc, for joining us today.

Marc: My pleasure, Scott.

Scott: You can find the show notes from today's episode and where to find Marc and his book and everything at imagely.com/podcast/43. And again, that's where you could answer from this episode. So until next time.

This Post Has One Comment

  1. Hey Scott / Marc, just finished the listening of this podcast, a nice bunch of useful words as usual, now going to the last question, a game changer for me would be definitely: Possing, as a Portrait / Mode / boudoir photographer i find getting the pose to my models / costumers the hardest portion of the whole job. that’s it. you got my reply. i am just suscribing to your YT channel and following up your advices.

    Cheers from Argentina!

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