The Process Of Re-Inventing Oneself – Updated!
(Updated since the advent of the Covid-19 Pandemic)
by William Lulow
Note: I’ve written a lot about this subject, because I’ve had to do it so often!
Picking up from one of my recent blog articles, many people seem to be angry these days about technology taking their jobs and they sometimes look to politicians to help change things. Well, as someone once said, “You can’t stop the growth of technology. And you can’t stop change.” After all, we outgrew the need for lamplighters over a hundred years ago. And, politicians from the coal-producing states had better get used to the notion that we’re going to outgrow the need for coal very shortly as well.
It’s the advancing technology that produces this type of change more than anything else and it has affected the photography industry too. But, as old-fashioned jobs are lost, there are many new ones that technology creates. With the photography industry, it’s really the photographer’s creative “eye” that doesn’t really change all that much. Even though there are new cameras, digital technology and mobile smart phones, the basic need for photographs has only increased not decreased! The problem is that many photographers have had to re-invent the way they make images. No job will remain like it used to be for very long, so we must re-think what kinds of jobs we want to do. Also, I’ve mentioned before that the world has become a very “do-it-yourself” (DIY) place. People can do all sorts of things these days that they couldn’t do before without some kind of professional help. So, rather than lament a lost job, we need to invent new ones. Or, we need to re-invent different and more modern ways of doing the old jobs.
With the advent of the Covid-10 pandemic, many people have begun to use video sharing like the kind offered by Zoom and others. As a matter of fact, Zoom’s business has taken off due to everyone being quarantined in their own homes. There were 200 million Zoom sessions in the month of March, 2020 alone. There are dozens of screen sharing programs out there, but this pandemic has really benefited Zoom’s business, so much so that it is now the number one screen sharing business out there. The increase in Zoom’s business could have been simply due to the fact that they were in the right place at the right time with the right product, but their marketing and web presence certainly had something to do with it. That’s kind of how I see the photography business these days as well. Someone like me who has been at it for a long time, has to think of ways to be more relevant in today’s marketplace. I just read an article about a well-know wine merchant who operates a tasting business from Italy, as well as a store in NYC and now uses Zoom for his tasting sessions. He would prefer to do these in person, because it’s hard to do a “tasting” virtually, but he has managed to do it.
I am currently trying to work toward doing a photo workshop using Zoom. I’m sure it’s been done before, but maybe my brand of teaching just might catch on. That’s the attitude we need. We must always try to re-invent ourselves and our business models. I have always had a problem with using plain video for lessons in photography and lighting. One of the reasons is that whenever you set up a video camera, you are choosing what you want your viewers to see. For me, at least, part of the experience of learning studio lighting is to see how it’s used in the studio as a whole. Video conferencing allows me, as a teacher, to vary the angle of view constantly, thereby providing a more thorough look at exactly how I set things up.
Photography is one of those fields that is both an art and a science at the same time. There are certain precepts that you must follow if you are going to make a successful image whether or not you use modern digital equipment or older, film cameras. You still have to use a camera of some sort and you still need to use light to make most photographs. Therefore, learning about both would increase your chances of making a good photograph. I knew this over twenty-five years ago when I began teaching at the New School For Social Research in New York City. I could see that there were people back then, who were attempting to make photographs without really understanding the properties of light! So, I thought it would be a good idea to begin teaching other people what I was doing in my studio to make the kinds of images I was making. This was certainly not a new idea, but one that was becoming more and more important.
I knew also, that I wanted to impart my love of photography to others and to help them make better portraits. I am not the only photographer who has made this transition. There are many others as well. But, I have developed, over the years, a step-by-step approach to the teaching of studio lighting for portraits which greatly simplifies the application of artificial light in a studio setting.
This “re-invention” was a fairly logical step in my case, because I am a trained teacher and know how to teach my subject. It was a change for me, however because, as I devoted more time to teaching, I became a bit less of a practitioner! I wound up creating several courses in photography from beginning camera techniques to advanced lighting applications. And, I often share what I know in these blog articles.
But, what is significant about my change and re-invention is that it can be applied to almost any industry. With more people trying to do things themselves, comes more demand for information on how, exactly to do it! So, one way to re-invent oneself in today’s employment market is to offer people a way to learn to do what it is you do and how you do it! Here is an ad for one of my courses:
I offer workshops in various techniques of photography and portrait lighting when I’m not actively involved in teaching at a school. So, here is an ad I did for a past workshop. I have done quite a few since and you can find out about new ones by signing up on the website for automatic notification of when upcoming workshops will be held.
I never worry about giving information to newcomers because photography is one of those forms of expression that varies with each practitioner. No photograph is exactly like any other unless one deliberately sets out to copy something. So, once a technique is learned, it’s up to the student to execute his or her own particular solution to an image-making problem.
Teaching photographic techniques only helps elevate everyone’s level of photography and helps them re-invent themselves as well!
