This week is all about GRIT!
Grit is the ability to eat the crap sandwich.
This means that when you make art, when you are passionate if you are pushing your creative boundaries it is inevitable that you will come up against hard stuff - "the Crap sandwich"
I would like you to understand the following things. Creativity is never a straight line. When it is hard...you are in the dip. Own it and break down what you are doing into much simpler bitesize pieces but don't take your eyes off of your bigger vision. The key is not to eat the pizza in one whole bite. But to slice it and savour it. One bite at a time.
I went looking for a solution to help with breaking things down and found the Tiny Habits program. It was developed by a very clever Stanford researcher named BJ Fogg and it is based on neuroscience and cool stuff but it is really simple.
All you do is figure out what you want to achieve. What habit you want to develop that will assist you with your big goal and break it down.
And the cool thing is that Tiny Habits works well for photography but can also work for getting healthier, studying, building better relationships...any behaviour you want to tweek...it can help. So learn the principals with photography and then we can help apply them to other areas of your life.
So what is tiny habits?
Lets build a Tiny Photography Habit that will help us to become a world-class photographer.
First cut up 20 pieces of paper to be about the size of a business card.
Now challenge yourself to write down 20 behaviours you might need to become an accomplished photographer on those cards.
Such as -
- Develop a habit of keeping charged batteries always at the ready
- Develop a habit of keeping my files organized
- Develop a habit of taking at least one photograph a day
Next draw this graph on a piece of paper.
So the trick is to make a habit super easy so even if you have a crap day you can still do your thing no stress.
The trick is the baseline habit should never take more than 30 seconds and should be anchored to something you already do each day.
Find your anchor.
Here is a link to a recipe card you can print out and use.
So take your golden habits (in the upper right-hand corner after your sorted your cards) and pick at least one and create a new recipe.
Keep track of how often you do it this week. and change the anchor or tweak it if you need to. Don't forget to celebrate after each time you do it. If you are forgetting try doing a "practice" session where you do it 8 times in a row as you have written it and change up the celebration each time. Making it funnier and funnier.
Post Production:
Can be used for good or for evil.
My rules with photoshop in our studio. We soften skin because people request it but we never remove something that is permanent unless they ask, such as a scar or a birthmark. I am not a fan at ALL of slimming because I feel it is not authentic. Do what you can with posing but I personally feel that it is important to embrace your lusciousness as it is without the need to fit societies mould.
Every day we see between 400-600 photoshopped images. These are usually of a genetic 1-5% of body types. This gives us a VERY distorted vision of what we should look like. This is orchestrated by a trillion-dollar diet beauty industry that only thrives if we doubt our unique beauty. Currently 80% of girls reach adulthood not happy in their own skin. Think of all the creative power lost worrying about lumpy bits that could be spent creating more awesome stuff in the world. Own your unique body and scrap the opinions of people who profit from your self-doubt.
Facetune dishonours your uniqueness and many uses of photoshop do as well.
So as a HeArtivist, please only use photoshops power for good and not body shaming your greatest treasure.
Craig put together a page that explains the level of post production we do at our studio:
https://alamojostudio.com/what-is-post-production/
So the short answer is be ethical. Don't change someone that didn't ask to be changed and if they do let them know what beauty you see in them and question why they prefer a distorted version of reality to the gift that is their body. Don't get me started I can go for years on this topic...and I have...made a freaking movie about it!.
Right however photoshop can be used for good as well: It is a skill that you will need to master as a photographer because it is a bit like darkroom skills for photographers of the past.
The industry standard is Photoshop and Lightroom (this is all we use in the studio).
But there are other free versions like Gimp out there. You will have to find your own support for those but I can answer most questions you throw at me about photoshop or can find the answers if I don't know off the cuff.
Here is a large collection of tutorials I found in my searches. I haven't vetted each one included here so let me know if there is anything that doesn't work well but otherwise thee will be lots to play with here.
35 Helpful Photoshop Post-Processing and Photo Editing Tutorials (Part 2)
Homeplay
- A daily photo challenge. Create a daily habit.
- After I ___________________________________ I will take one photo, then I will celebrate by _____________________________.
- Celebrate!
- Pick your favourite shot of the week to show us.
- The colour is Yellow / Gold.
- Bonus points if you use a new post-production technique that you have never tried before.