New England based Visual Storyteller

Tag: strategy

Cafe Coffee Day vs Starbucks (advice to Howard Schultz)

People who know me are aware that I don’t drink alcohol, be it wine, beer or hard liquor. I do love my coffee though. In fact, am something of a “specialty coffee” junky (as the marketing types call it.) Starbucks will soon be opening locations across India, expanding into a country and culture that I know relatively well. I am rooting for Starbucks to change the India specialty coffee market, but not for the reasons you might expect. Read More

Day to day India, part two

I am continuing my time in India, most recently hosting some old friends from Brazil as well as my daughter (and her friend.) As we have been taking them around, I have been again paying attention to the advice, warnings and cultural highlights I have shared with them. I recently blogged about some of those same things and this blog entry is ANOTHER collection of advice to anyone considering visiting India, including people in my future workshops in India. Read More

Day to day India

I am about half way through a six month adventure in South Asia. I am going to be leading more photography workshops to India in the future, including ones in February and December of 2013. Both of these realities prompted me to pay attention to the day to day routines I encounter (and practice) in India, in order to share them with readers of this blog and future workshop attendees coming to India. Read More

Words of advice for a soon-to-be graduate (part two)

In last week’s blog entry I parsed an e-mail from a “soon-to-be graduate” The two questions that he raised were: “…what are your favorite aspects of your work” and “…how someone could break into a field like this.” I suggested the real question to ask and answer was “…what are your least favorite aspects of your work.” I answered that question last week so now I can turn to the “…how someone could break into a field like this.” Read More

Words of advice for a soon-to-be graduate (part one.)

With a subject line like the title above, how could I not reply to the e-mail that recently came in from a “soon-to-be graduate” and how could I not turn my reply it into a blog? I have been sitting on this for awhile trying to figure out how to answer without turning into some cranky old man talking about the ”good old days.” Read More

Safety tips for working in less developed countries

I work a lot in the developing world, partly because my wife is from India. Before we met, I was also working a lot in the nether-reaches of the globe because personal projects and paying work took me there. A friend just asked me if I had any tips he could incorporate into his working process as he heads off to Mexico. The challenge for me in writing this blog was not coming up with advice but rather with figuring out how to explain those things that I do almost automatically when I am photographing in places like India, Guatemala, Vietnam or Turkey. Read More

Google Plus Hangout with Jay Kinghorn

I recently chatted with fellow Olympus Visionary photographer Jay Kinghorn for a Google + hangout where we discussed our experiences with the new Olympus OMD EM-5 camera as well as the challenges of transitioning from still to multimedia photography. We also discussed the gear we use, where we find inspiration for our work and where we are going next with our multimedia work.  It was a great conversation which I hope you will find as interesting as I found it.

Keeping my momentum

As a self-employed editorial photographer, I tend to work in isolation. As a self-directed stock photographer with less and less assignment work, I need to keep motivated so I can move my work and career forward. One of the real joys of blogging and workshop teaching is that both of those do an excellent job of counterbalancing that isolation and keeping me motivated. I never really thought about this situation in those terms (or really much at all,) until someone wrote me with a question about isolation and momentum. Read More

Books, ideas, frameworks

My recent road trip left me with a lot of time for thinking about, among other things, books. In the “old” days, which were not that long ago, such a trip would mean buying / reading a few books over the six weeks I was on the road. It also meant planning how to get the books while traveling, how to carry them and where to leave them (or who to give them to) when I was finished, This trip, that whole routine was gone. Read More