I finally got around to ordering my first portfolio this past week so I wanted to take a couple minutes and share it with everyone. I ordered a hard-cover lay-flat press book from Black River Imaging, a local imaging lab here in Springfield, Missouri. It’s 8.5×11 and 40 pages and it cost me $110.00. Not too bad for my first portfolio. Ideally I’d like to get something fancier with interchangeable pages, but since my work is fairly specific at this point I figured I could get by with this press book for now. Once I get some jobs and more work I can work on getting a more permanent portfolio but this one should be good for now. Just got to start getting it in front of people now…

Special thanks to Josi for being my page-turner in the video and my friend Mike’s old band for providing the background music. The video was shot with my Nikon D90 and Nikon 50mm f/1.8 lens and a daylight CFL for lighting. It’s not the best quality, but you get the idea. The pictures look really good in person. If you’d like to see it in person, shoot me an email at photo AT mattdewitt DOT com or give me a call at 417-379-9500.

Let me know what you think!

Well, another year has come and gone and it’s time to dive head first into 2010. I did a lot last year to further myself as a photographer and I think I’ve come a long way, but it’s time to “kick it up a notch” as Emiril would say. So for 2010 I’m setting some goals for myself as a photographer:

1. Figure out exactly where I want to take Matt DeWitt Photography by writing a business plan and getting everything together to start an official business.
2. Formally create Matt DeWitt Photography as a business entity with all of the formal incorporation, tax, and business paperwork that goes along with being a real business.
3. Set up and maintain solid bookkeeping for all of shoots, equipment purchases, expenses, etc.
4. Develop a marketing plan for senior photos and get it out there in order to attract new senior clients for the 2010-2011 school year.
5. Continue to refine and define my brand, image, and style.
6. Work on transitioning into more of a commercial mindset and begin developing a marketing plan for gaining commercial and editorial clients.
7. Get over my “gear lust” and learn to do the best with the equipment I have. Sometimes constraints breed creativity, so I need to embrace that.
8. Keep shooting and editing. Shoot for myself and shoot for others. They only way to get better is to practice, practice, practice.

Eight things to do throughout 2010 – shouldn’t be too bad. I have to stop putting these things off and just do it. There is never a “right” time, so now is just as good of a time as any, so 2010 is going to be the year that I try to make a living with this along side my current day job and if things go well, hopefully transition into doing photography full time within the next few years.

It won’t be easy, but if I never try, then I’ll never know. I’ve been reading lots of books lately to give me the information I need and if you’re in the same boat as me, then I highly encourage you to check them out:

1. Best Business Practices for Photographers by John Harrington
2. VisionMongers by David duChemin
3. Ignore Everybody and 39 Other Keys to Creativity by Hugh MacLeod
4. The Photographer’s Survival Guide by Amanda Sosa Stone and Suzanne Sease

Lots of good information in them so far and I still have a lot more to go. I guess that’s a pre-goal to everything else – finish reading these books so I can make the best and most informed decisions about my photographer business.

I’ll try to post more on my blog as well, but I’m not making it an official goal…yet. But I’ll keep up with it as best as I can.

Here’s to 2010!

These, and many, many more, are questions that are racing through my head constantly, and have been for the past two years.  I picked up my first DSLR around two and a half years ago, a basic little Canon Digital Rebel XTi with the 18-55mm kit lens, because I’ve always had an interest in photography and wanted to try and pick it up as a hobby.  Things just haven’t been the same since then.

Something about photography is constantly burning inside of me – the desire to improve, the desire to take the next step. And I couldn’t explain what that was, what about photography kept sucking me in deeper, until a couple of days ago.

I’ve been reading David duChemin‘s book “Within The Frame” for a little while now (I’m a slow reader, so it takes time for me to read, especially a book as good as this one) and once I read a few paragraphs of Chapter 3, titled The Artist and the Geek, it hit me.  Here’s a quote from the book that really hit it home for me:

It’s as though photographers are afflicted with a chronic split personality.  One personality is the Artist, the other the Geek.  One is Vision, the other Craft, or Technique, and in the middle where they meet is the art of photography – the expression of our unique vision through practiced technique.  Great photography happens where craft and vision meet.

Now, this doesn’t make a whole lot of sense unless you know me personally, so let me give you a little back story.

I’ve always been a geek.  For as long as I or my parents can remember I was the little geek/nerd/whatever you want to call it.  From sticking screw drivers into every hole I could find just because I could, to taking apart an old radio and filling it up with water when it’s plugged in just to see what would happen, to taking the most random gadgets to school and finding interesting ways to use them earning me the nickname “Gadget Boy,” to writing code just for fun, I have always been a geek.  Good at math and science.  Hell, I got a degree in Computer Information Systems and I’m currently a software developer – nothing says geek more than that does.

But, it wasn’t enough.  There has always been something else, something more, deep inside me that wanted to be let out.  Creativity.  My “left-brain” was satisfied but my “right-brain” was laying dormant, waiting to be unleashed.

It’s not like I never had an outlet for my creativity.  I was in band in high school and college – I played five different instruments throughout that time.  I also learned some guitar along the way.  I used to draw.  I made my own music videos and experimented with video editing in general for a while.  I’m a doodler.  Look at any of my notebooks at work and you’ll find all kinds of random doodles and drawings.  Part of my job as a software engineer has me creating lots of web pages which allows a small outlet for my creativity as well.

But they were always separate.  Geek and artist. Thinking and creating.  Left brain and right brain.  Until I found photography.

Photography lets me blend what I’m good at – being a geek – with that fire burning inside – being creative.  There are many technical aspects of photography to master: f-stops, shutter speeds, apertures, ISO, lighting, the inverse square law, mega-pixels, formats, etc.  I could go on and on about the technical aspects of photography.  It’s this side of photography that appeals to the geek in me.  I love reading about new lenses, new camera technologies, flashes, lighting techniques, you name it.  But this is only half the battle.  The geeky, technical stuff is just the means to an end, with the end being creativity.

Armed with this technical knowledge I can then go out and create.  Create images that appeal things deep inside myself, images that appeal to other people, and even images that no one really likes but if they were never created then I wouldn’t have learned anything.  I can use the techniques I’ve learned to create the image I see in my head.  Photography is not only about having an idea, its about being able to visualize that idea and execute it.

It’s this combination of technical and creative that keeps bringing me back, keeps driving me to learn more, shoot more – to take my photography to the next level.  It’s the perfect blend of geek and artist – both of which run strong through my veins.

I recently read an interview with Daron Shade over at Lighting Essentials that had another quote it in that reinforces everything I’ve been thinking and writing about – this balance between artist and geek:

I love the mix of art and science, measurement and judgment, artist and technician.

I couldn’t have said it better myself.  In fact, that’s pretty much what I’ve been trying to say this entire post.  I love both aspects of it – the art and the science – and seamlessly blending those two together to create something that is more than just 1′s and 0′s, more than just photons blasting through the air, more than just a person standing in the rain.  Creating photographs that mean something to me, to you, to whoever finds meaning in them, or even those who just think it’s a nice picture. That’s why photography is right for me.

Please let me know what you think!