I’ve got a lead on a possible gig shooting for an upcoming trading card game. Has anyone worked on one of these before or knows someone who has? I’m trying to get an idea of how much they typically pay illustrators. If I can find someone who has done photography for a project like that, this would be even better.

Originally published at Amul Kumar Photography. Please leave any comments there.

While gearing up for the Wizard World Philadelphia and Origins art shows, I found some time to update my website….a whole bunch!

I’m throwing a few photos out at you in this post, but I’ve spent some time rearranging galleries to express certain conceptual relationships between photos (such as in the Emphasis Mine gallery), and added some explanatory text to nearly all of the Archetyped! photos. And that’s not counting the 6 new images.

Diogenes Searches For Love

Taina 1:34 Summoned

Originally published at Amul Kumar Photography. Please leave any comments there.

I haven’t thought about the term Satisficing since my days as a programming major at Carnegie Mellon, but the topic came up again and I realized that I lean towards a satisficing strategy most of the time.

In a nutshell: Satisficers are content to make less than optimal decisions, on the theory that most of the time any decision will be good enough, and the cost in time to produce an optimal result is higher than the risk of making an insufficient choice. Maximizers seek as much information as possible before making a decision, with the confidence that the decision will be better than it would have been otherwise.

I realize now that much of my frustration with the people who frequently give me business advice is that they are maximizers and I am a satisficer. But this doesn’t answer the more important question: is satisficing a valid business strategy for the art sales aspect of my business? In the commercial world, photographers usually need to bid on projects, and that seems to imply that maximizers will be more successful.

This tangents into the larger question of whether my career goal is really about maximizing profit. The very term suggests a preference for a strategy which is foreign to me. I can’t imagine many investors would be willing to support a company dedicated to satisficing their profit goals. On the other hand, I’m not a corporation, so does this really apply to my business?

It’s a big question, and one deserving of far more thought than I currently have time to give it.

Originally published at Amul Kumar Photography. Please leave any comments there.

I’m currently working on a piece that will be called Diogenes 2: The Search for Love. I photographed the male model today, and am now reviewing the photos from the shoot.

As a result, I spent my afternoon saying things like, “Look over there! Is that love? Yeah, look at it closely. It could be Love, but it looks kind of grimy. Sorta wilted. Forlorn. Look, it may be Love, but I wouldn’t want to stick it in my pocket, you know what I’m saying?”

Now I’m spending the evening talking to myself. “Whoa. What’s he looking at now? That doesn’t look like any Love I’ve seen. I think he’s found an Infatuation. Yeah, infatuations look like that sometimes. Hey, now! What’s that? Oh, that’s not Love. That’s….that’s….I dunno what that is….but it ain’t Love, that’s for sure!”

Originally published at Amul Kumar Photography. Please leave any comments there.

Added to the website:

Just for you blog readers:

Alas, poor Yorick! Oh, no you didn't!

Nightclub Sexy

Originally published at Amul Kumar Photography. Please leave any comments there.

I’ve noticed recently that the internet sometimes seems so big to me that it becomes almost self-defeating. When seeking pro-photo communities, for example, the number of options are overwhelming and strangely deceptive.

To start with, there are so many communities where people share images and talk photography that I could easily spend all my time reading them. Ideally, I’d like to limit myself to communities that are strictly professional for my shop talk, but contain potential art buyers for the display of my work. Or perhaps I should find a community that is multimedia, but shares my interest in subject matter. Then, too, I need somewhere that keeps me abreast of the technology and equipment news, without getting sucked into the mindset that my equipment determines what sort of photographer I am.

Even among my social and hobby-based online communities, there is a tendency to get stuck in the trivial details. One hobby-based site I am generates at least 200 messages a week arguing over terminology.

I recently attend WPPI, a pro-photography convention focusing on Wedding and Portrait photography (two areas that I spend a lot more time thinking about than involving myself in). I picked up a number of memberships in the heat of the moment, and now must evaluate exactly how much time I have to spend reading all these conversations. Several of the books that I picked up also have online communities built around them. Should I even check them out? What value could they provide to me?

I have been traditionally hesitant to join art-based communities like Deviant Art and Etsy, or participate heavily in networking sites like Model Mayhem. My dubious reasoning for this is that I would prefer people to come to MY site. Yet, all of these places provide a built-in audience much larger than I could ever hope to generate on my own.

My purpose for joining these websites, taking part in these communities, is to build what I refer to as My Army Of Dreamers. I’m seeking friendships that will encourage my own creativity, push my efforts, and support me in those moments of self-doubt which plague all creative professionals. Yet, I am often reminded of a parable from Art and Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland:

A pottery class is divided into two groups. The first group is told that their grades will be determined entirely by the quality of the single best pot they make. The second group is told that their grades will be based entirely on the quantity of pots produced, regardless of quality. The first group spent the entire semester debating the nature of The Perfect Pot, and while they had many nice theories, the work they produced failed to live up to their own beliefs about such perfection. Meanwhile, in addition to producing a large number of pots, the second group made better pots, faster and more consistently. The moral to the story is obvious: talk is cheap; doing it is what makes you good at it.

(Tangent: Whenever I quote that book, I have to include my other favorite anecdote. A frustrated young piano student complains to his mentor, “It just never sounds as good as it does in my head!” The mentor sagely replies, “What makes you think that is ever going to change?”)

This, then, is the dilemma: I want a community to support my endeavors, but I worry that I’d be better off spending all that time just taking some darn photos.

Originally published at Amul Kumar Photography. Please leave any comments there.

Due to the delicate details, I have activated the See Full Size icon for this image, located above the photo.

Originally published at Amul Kumar Photography. Please leave any comments there.

Greetings from Continuous Labs, Mother’s premiere Mesh-to-Internet (M2I) translation specialists. We want to offer a special welcome to our new subscribers who have joined since we published our free fiction preview in honor of Tellurian New Years.

* Continuous Coast fiction preview!

For those of you who still have not seen it, visit:
http://www.continuouscoast.com/
where we have stories from Reesa Brown, Kit O’Connell, and Steven Brust, three of our fictioneers.

* Mediators Log

The Rabbit Roamers, a team of mediators from Port Outreach, continue to share their E-band communications with the people of Tellus using the Twitter service. You can follow them on their duties at:
http://twitter.com/mediators/

* Recent Voices from Port Outreach

Voices from Port Outreach is a group blog created by the nagara of Port Outreach. In addition to reposting daily logs of the Twitter feed, Voices features regular original content such as the following:

o Who is leaving stencil art around Port Outreach?
http://portoutreach.com/voices/2008/12/ … the-canal/
http://portoutreach.com/voices/2008/12/ … -outreach/
http://portoutreach.com/voices/2008/12/ … -probably/

o An interview with JH Mediator, dispatch for the Rabbit Roamers:
http://portoutreach.com/voices/2008/12/ … ranscript/

o Folk tales, Gurge Riding, and Dolphins with Fali Rider:
http://portoutreach.com/voices/2008/12/ … folk-tale/
http://portoutreach.com/voices/2008/12/ … -and-mods/
http://portoutreach.com/voices/2008/12/ … -dolphins/
http://portoutreach.com/voices/2008/12/ … every-day/

o An update on some city politics:
http://portoutreach.com/voices/2008/11/ … the-point/

* The Future

Continuous Labs is actively developing the project for the enjoyment of Zayzans and Telurians alike! The future includes an expanded Port Outreach Tourism website, a wiki where Tellurians can learn about Mother, and exciting artifacts imported from Mother.

Thank you for supporting the cause of cross-world understanding in the multiverse!

–
Continuous Labs are Mother’s premiere Mesh-to-Internet (M2I) consultants. We proudly offer the highest quality, most reliable communications between the world known as Continuous Coast and the people of Tellus, Saeresh and Vikkir.

Originally published at Amul Kumar Photography. Please leave any comments there.

The Dream Cafe folks, with whom I’ve been collaborating on an exploration of the effect of new technologies on storytelling, have a blog series on 21st Century Business Models for Artists that is quite edifying to read.

These essays form the bulk of what has been keeping me too busy to produce my own blog material, and as those guys are writers and I’m focused on visual art these days, the articles are much more coherent than any attempt I could make to explain the same things.

Originally published at Amul Kumar Photography. Please leave any comments there.

For the last several months I’ve been working with Continuous Labs on their not-exactly-secret CC project. I’m working as a consulting artist and translator on the Mediator twitter project. I’ve really enjoyed working with the M2I guys (that’s Mesh 2 Internet, a translation protocol) and look forward to sharing more of our work as it goes live here on Tellus. Er, Earth.

It’s still sort of odd to make that distinction.

If you’re a twitter person, you can check out the twitterfeed for the Port Outreach Mediators. It’s sort of typical of Continuous Labs, and most of their clients from what I’ve seen, for somebody like the Mediators to bubble up to the top of the project list. It’s the guys who care right f’ing now that get their stuff done. I bet there’s a lesson in that.

Thankfully, the M2I wordpress plugin isn’t my baby at all, since I heard they just came discovered a basic paradigm barrier. But you can check out the Port Outreach Tourism site in the meantime.

Originally published at Amul Kumar Photography. Please leave any comments there.

If you are a musician, member of a band, or good friends with a band, please give me their contact info.

Specifically, I am looking for bands/musicians who:
- maintain a mailing list of over 50 people
- have released at least one album
- regularly* record music
- regularly* perform live shows

Please reply even if you think I already know how to reach them. Either use my business email address (the one connected to my website) or my Site contact form

*regularly = whatever your personal definition of regular is. Currently active bands, is my point.

Originally published at Amul Kumar Photography. Please leave any comments there.

New times for the events that I’ll be running or involved in during Dragon Con (when not running my art booth):

Photographic Truth, Myth Of - Not “How To Photoshop,” but Why to do so. This workshop begins with a method to critique images, then uses this to explore common photographic cliches. Using principles of color theory and composition, we will seek alternatives to these overused methods. Amul Kumar - Friday 7:00 PM - Hanover G

ART005: Photography in Fantasy Art - Join the Art Institute of Atlanta and several fantasy photographers in a discussion about fantastical photography and it’s place in fandom and art shows. Help us create guidelines for entering photography into the Dragon*Con Art Show.. Art Institute of Atlanta, Amul Kumar, Dave King, Tracy Cornett, John Parise, Fox Gradin - Saturday 10:00 AM - Hanover F

Originally published at Amul Kumar Photography. Please leave any comments there.

I wish I’d been familiar with this artist before I stopped working on the Cold Tea Blues series.

“People often ask me why I paint so many women. The answer is that these are not simply paintings of women. They are paintings of emotions. Men are taught to not show their feelings, to project a certain preconceived idea of masculinity. Women express a far more subtle range of intimacy and vulnerability.” - Steve Hanks

Originally published at Amul Kumar Photography. Please leave any comments there.

An attendee from GenCon, where I set up a last-minute booth to sell my photos, suggested that I check out Worth 1000, a daily photography contest website. They also have daily contests for 3D rendering (for some reason labeled “Photoshop”), Illustration, graphic design, and writing.

Unfortunately, the site doesn’t allow image merging or collaging, so it doesn’t have a strong appeal to me right now. While the advanced photo contests allow for a wide range of image manipulation skills, and their copyright usage rules seem reasonable, the entries I’ve seen for the non-photo contests seem fairly slipshod. Many of the photos are very impressive, but are almost wholly tabletop photography, given the nature of the contests. Still, for those who need that extra push to practice their art-making skills.

Certainly, I’m now thinking about buying some cheap tabletop lighting equipment suggested to me by Daniel Aubry and taking a crack at these, just for the sake of motivation and tabletop work.

Originally published at Amul Kumar Photography. Please leave any comments there.

I’ve just heard that there may be some booths left in the Dealer’s Room for Gen Con this weekend. I missed the art show deadline, but so did several friends of mine, and they’ve suggested that I bring my store down with me and see if I can grab a space.

The only problem is: I don’t have any gridwall to hang photos from, and since I’ve never done this show before, I don’t even know if I’d need some. I don’t suppose anyone has any hanging walls which they can bring to GenCon for me?

Originally published at Amul Kumar Photography. Please leave any comments there.

Spent a little time today working on the workshop I’ll be giving at DragonCon, entitled “Photographic Truth, Myth of.”

There are many thoughts that I’m trying to see if I can work into the conversation. While I was talking to Liz Galindorf about this, we got into a heated discussion about the validity of digital manipulation. Liz suggested that while digital manipulation is a useful skill to know, it is not generally needed. I, on the other hand, argue that the very act of photography is already a manipulation, and so you have a duty to finish manipulating it until it achieves your intention.

I hadn’t thought initially to include an argument for performing manipulations in the first place, but it seems like a good thing to include.

It seems to me that the first question we should ask is, “Why are you taking a photograph?” Why not draw it in pencil? Or paint it? Or record it as video? When the daguerreotype was first invented, it’s appeal was the degree of realism which it rendered. As additional technologies were developed which rendered a photographic image, the one which allowed for the greatest ease of reproducibility has consistently been the technology which became primary over other techniques. From the daguerrotype to the platinum print to the palladium print to the salt print, and all the way to the digital image. Another choice which has driven photographic methods has been portability. The civil war was photographed with cameras as large as a man which took ten minutes to set up. The most popular modern camera is so small it fits inside a device that has absolutely no relationship to visual imaging.

Are you taking photographs because you want to create images which are the easiest to share with others? Because it’s more portable than an easel, canvas and paintbrush? Because it is easier? Faster?

While there are many possible answers to that question, I think I could safely suggest that regardless of your “default” answer, that reason changes with each image you create. If that’s the case, then it stands to reason that there are times when “precisely recreating the scene as it was laid out” is not high on your agenda.

In those images whose purpose is other than attempting to reveal a “photographic truth” (a term I still think presumes far too much), why would we limit ourselves by what was laid out before us? It is a restraint we lay upon ourselves because we have a false belief in the inherent inviolability of the tool we have chosen to use.

This dovetails nicely into my original starting point, which is that when you make the effort of taking a photograph, you have limited your audience’s perception of the scene to only what is in the picture. The viewer assumes that you intended to make this image, and therefore supposes that every element of the image was intentional.

This, I think, is a strong argument for performing digital image manipulation.

Originally published at Amul Kumar Photography. Please leave any comments there.

A blog article by Kevin Kelly discusses an alternative model to the naive “Rock Star or Bust” business model which most professional artists work towards. Kelly’s model is referred to as “1000 True Fans” or the micro-patronage system.

The basic argument goes like this: if you can find 1000 fans who are willing to spend $100 per year on your work, then you’ll earn $100,000 gross income that year. Seeking that goal will actually generate more income, because for every True Fan (eg, who spends $100), you’ll have found other fans willing to pay less per year.

In seeking this goal, as opposed to the mass-media goals of pre-modern technological paradigms, a different set of marketing, development, and production technologies can be used quite efficiently.

This leads me back to my constant question of whether to pursue fine art or commercial photography. It seems like it is far easier for me to find fine art business models which I think I could effectively employ.

Originally published at Amul Kumar Photography. Please leave any comments there.