Earlier last year, I photographed short track speedskater Katherine Reutter for her agent and sponsors.  Just yesterday I heard on NPR a 5 minute story about her and her confidence.  As I’ve mentioned before, confidence is everything and I find it fascinating to hear about confidence in elite level athletes like Katherine.

Here’s the link.

CBS Sunday Morning (which is a great show, but makes me feel old by watching it) had a nice piece on songwriter Johnny Mercer last weekend.    I honestly hadn’t heard of Johnny Mercer until my wife, singer/songwriter and author, Mary Beth Maziarz went to a workshop presented by the Johnny Mercer Foundation a few years ago at Sundance.  Everyone knows his work, so here are some lyrics to start the new year by:

You’ve got to accentuate the positive
Eliminate the negative
And latch on to the affirmative
Don’t mess with Mister In-Between

You’ve got to spread joy up to the maximum
Bring gloom down to the minimum
Have faith or pandemonium’s
Liable to walk upon the scene

It seems as if our world is changing exponentially.  For the first 15 years of my career as a photographer, I was able to figure out a way to operate my business and that method worked well for 15 years.  Then I had to adapt to a new way of running my business, and that time it lasted about 3 years.  Then I realized I was modifing my business plan every 6 months or so.  It’s hard for a person to keep up.

Kevin Kelly’s blog post is brilliant.  Give yourself some time to get through the blog post, the links in the post and his 2 updates at the end.  It’s one of the best business models for independent artists that I’ve ever read.

On a recent trip to San Diego, my wife bought me this book: “101 Things I Learned in Architecture School” by Matthew Frederick, and I love it.

It’s a quick and fun read.  Many of the things Matthew learned are applicable to other fields as well. Here are some of my favorite entries:

#28  “A good designer isn’t afraid to throw away a good idea.”  This is an idea I’d like to learn to use more often in photography.  As I’m coming up with ideas for a shoot, I suddenly get married to one and don’t want to let it go.  But I’m getting better at putting these ideas in my quiver of concepts to use down the road.

#98 “The Chinese symbol for crisis is comprised of two characters: one indicating ‘danger,’ the other, ‘opportunity.’”

#100 “Give it a name.”  Matthew goes on to write about how giving ideas a name will help you explain them to yourself, and I imagine to others eventually.

Get it from Amazon here.

Dick started as a combat photographer in Vietnam, worked as an advertising photographer, then transistioned to being a golf course photographer, partly, it seems, because he loved golf.

I like to take notes whenever I hear a photographer give a presentation, and I thought I’d share with you my two highlights of Dick’s speech:

1) “Creativity without craftsmanship is like a million times zero.”

I’ve often said that successful photography, like other creative fields, is really a complex blend of using both halves of your brain, and this quote from Dick says it more simply and better than I could.

An earlier post has a TED video of  Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor describing her experience (as a brain scientist) of having a stroke.  It’s an interesting insight in the the left & right sides of your brain and how they work together.

2) “People like to help people–call and ask for favors.”

I’m not sure if it’s my Scorpio tendencies, or some deep psychological issues, but I’m not a big fan of asking for favors.  But Dick’s sentiment will hopefully get me past this problem.  So maybe my first favor will be to ask you to add something to my Inspiration Deli blog.  Please go to my “about” page (upper right corner) and email me.  I’ll give you account privileges and you can start sharing your creative inspiration ideas.

He has some good video excerpts of his speeches here.