How many of you lay awake at night with visions of operating at optimum efficiency? How many times have you lost sleep because you can’t remember where you put an important number or those tickets to a rock concert. Let’s be simple and realistic – how many of you can’t even find your keys in the morning?
As many of you know I am a very organized and detailed person – ok, ok, so I have a type A personality! But there are still days where there is so much going on and so many clients to take care of that even I worry that I have forgotten something - anything. I am reminded by the humorous approach my parents had of blaming it on age and the onset of senility – well I’m too young for that.
We have always had great systems for things but as time goes on and the business grows we are continuously improving systems – even systems that already work. To accommodate continued business growth it has been my mission to achieve more focus by creating balance and increased productivity within the studio. That’s when I met Sherry Borsheim, professional organizer extraordinaire!
Sherry and I met at a networking breakfast where I was introduced to her and her book “Conquer your Chaos – fast forward to office efficiency”. I get excited about anything related to organization so I was elated to snap up a copy of her book and start putting her principles into action. Our office operates at optimum efficiency now and thanks to Sherry’s workbook I can go to bed at night experiencing a new piece of mind.
After reading and implementing Sherry’s principles of organization one question comes to mind: How many of you have thousands of family photographs and old negatives scattered around the house? Sherry can help you out with all of your organizing needs – even those unorganized photographs!
Whether it be in your professional or personal life I challenge you all to achieve more focus. To get a copy of Sherry’s book visit her website at www.simplyproductive.com .
June 5th, 2006
I really like those illusion tricks that mess with your mind. I even like those Magic Eye posters 
Here’s a good one I stumbled across today: Cool Illusion
Quick, follow the link before continuing….. I’ll wait…..
The message with this illusion is that the mind can be ‘tricked’ into not seeing something that is really there. By staring at the small plus-sign long enough, the purple dots disappear.
This illusion helps demonstrate something that all photographer’s have to learn to overcome. The brain is fantastic at filtering out extraneous information, allowing you to focus on what is important. In fact, your ability to filter out all the background noise going on around you is an important survival mechanism - by ignoring the superfluous, you can be attentive to the important (and to our homo erectus ancestors, important usually meant dangerous).
So again, what does this have to do with photography? Well, to take better photos, you have to learn to train your brain to stop ignoring all the stuff going on around whatever it is you are focusing on. It means when you are looking through the viewfinder (or at the LCD these days), don’t just focus on the foreground, but also pay attention to the background. Even though the LCD is 2-D, your brain is still seeing it in 3-D.
A common mistake when taking a portrait picture is to focus on the person (or people) without ’seeing’ their relation to the background of the image.
Here are a few tips for improving your photos - by noticing what’s going on in the background:
1) Watch out for trees and branches coming out of the top of heads. Move left or right to put the tree past their shoulder or between heads.
2) Do not place heads at the ‘horizon’ line (i.e. where sky meets land). Bend down a little, shoot up, and this will move the horizon line down.
3) If your camera allows it, set it to a low aperature (e.g. f2.8). The lower the f-stop, the more ‘blurred’ the background will be. This has the advantage of isolating the person from the background, making them stand out even more in the image.
4) Watch for people moving in your background. Often people way in the background can provide context or setting to your image, but you don’t want the guy in the bright red jacket back there - especially if the rest of the background is a green grass and trees. The red blob of a guy will definitely be distracting. Trust me!! Wait a few seconds until they walk out of the frame, or move left or right if they are stationary.
5) Try unfocusing your eyes a little while looking through the viewfinder and see what draws your attention. If you catch anything that draws you away from the primary subjects, try recomposing your shot.
6) Try to avoid dark clothes on dark background (or light clothes on a light background). You want the contrast between light and dark. Again, move either your subject or yourself to provide greater variation between the foreground and background elements.
Remember, you need to train your brain to stop ignoring the background - to turn your ‘pictures’ into ‘photographs’.
Jeff
November 17th, 2005