After being in a self-imposed quarantine for almost two weeks due to the flu, I’ve been outside today. Making sure I held my distance to people, I got some sun on my face and saw some people. And it seemed to me that the people of Oslo take the Corona virus seriously. They’re outside, but they keep their distance. They’re outside, playing with their children and getting some fresh air and sun.

As the hours passed, the number of people dwindled. The atmosphere was almost like a Sunday afternoon, even though it was a Monday. The city was quiet, some shops were open, but most were closed. Those who were in fact open had few or no patrons visiting, as you can see from some of the images.

This will pass – the question is just how long it will take. This was the first weekday of this situation. Let’s hope it will not last long. Until then, stay safe!

Here are some images from my walk through the city.

British celebrity and portrait photographer Terry O’Neill passed away Saturday November 15th 2019 at the age of 81.

I was lucky enough to meet this gentleman in Oslo some years ago. He even let me take his portrait. Then almost 80, he stood in front of his Naomi Campbell portrait - making sure I got her eyes in the frame. I wrote about the experience in this post.

Mr. O’Neill has photographed celebrities over several decades, amongst them David Bowie, Elvis Presley, Amy Winehouse and all the James Bond actors. A truly remarkable and gentle human being that I’m happy to have met.

Rest in peace.

This November, I had the privilege of shooting all of the speakers at a local TEDx event here in Norway.

I set up a large (2x3 meter) scrim and had 3 Flexkit lights behind it. I also used a flexkit light as a hair light. The background is a Peter Hurley Matte Black Proboard.

During the sessions, I tried to create a safe space for the speakers. Going on stage in front of 700 people can be intimidating, and the photo session was a way to wind down after the performance. Each meeting was unique and I enjoyed using my headshot experience to try and create a calm, focused environment with the subjects. All in all, a very pleasant experience.

Another nice point was the fact that the photo sessions were a gift to each speaker. This took away the monetary element, and let us focus only on creating a good portrait together.

I got a lot of new contacts doing this job, as well as a number of new portraits for my portfolio.

After a headshot session yesterday, I had some time to test out a few setups. This is one of them, including the result. I think the light is pretty soft as it wraps around the face. As far as I know, this is one of the techniques Joel Grimes uses.

Sometimes we get lost in the technical side of things. My advice to beginners in the field of portrait photography is to keep it simple. Focus on coaching the subject. That is the main thing that sets the work of a professional apart from the rest.

On the technical side of things, there are several approaches.

You can spend a lot of time experimenting with the light setup until you find the ideal placement of the lights, the background light and the subject in relation to the lights. As soon as you have nailed the setup, take notes so you can replicate the setup in an instant. Now, when you get the subject in front of your camera, you don't need to worry much about the technical side.

You can also keep it really simple and use natural light (like Peter started with). That also eliminates the need to worry about technical things like how to set up lights and light stands and the background light and so on.

Do you get my drift? Keep it simple. Focus your attention on the subject. Click. Repeat.

[The attached image was shot today using one light source. Guess which one.]

Some years ago, I started a blog about Joomla, an Open Source Content Management System (CMS). I worked a lot on it for several years, and at the peak, I had around 50-60000 pageviews per month.

I started the blog because I loved to use Joomla. I still do, even if I don't blog as much these days. After a while, though, I needed the blog to generate some revenue. I couldn't defend spending that much time on a blog without getting some money in return.

Ads

The most obvious way to make money off of a blog is to put ads on it. I have done that - and the blog still features ads. The revenue from this is not amounting to very much - even if it covers at least some of the actual costs involved with running the blog (server, domain etc).

Product creation

The other way of creating some revenue is to create a product. I spent a long time writing the book "Blogging with Joomla" and self-published it. It did OK, but I must admit I spent a lot more time on it than I was paid for. It still sells a few copies now and then, though.

Networking value

One effect of creating a blog with such a high amount of visitors, is that you get in touch with a lot of people. The contacts I made through the blog have been invaluable for me as a web developer. Whenever I need a product, customization of some kind for a project, quick response support or whatever else, I know who to contact. Many times, I've received really rapid help, as well as free stuff, subscriptions and so on because of my role as a blogger in the Joomla community. I've also benn able to talk directly to the developers of various software to report bugs, get custom solutions built and more. This gives me a competetive advantage in my marketplace. My ability to serve customers increases because of my blogging.

Still, none of the above elements are what produce income from the blog today.

Revenue comes from unexpected sources

After blogging for a while I came in contact with a person that wanted me in on an online project as a partner. I joined up with him and the project has grown steadily since. It now gives me more revenue than I could dream of getting from ads, product sales or anything mentioned above. The income isn't related to the blog at all - the blog facilitated the contact and opened the door to a fruitful relationship.

Build trust

The person in question trusted me from reading my blog over time. He believed in what I was writing and used my tips to improve his web sites. This, in turn, made him approach me for a collaboration. People do business with people they trust, simple as that.

Keep your eyes open

The point of my story is that blogging can lead to some pretty powerful contacts, leads and opportunities that you won't even imagine when you start out with that first post. Don't focus too much on trying to force your blog to make money. Make sure you build relationships with your audience. Simply put, build a network of people that trust you and that become your fans.

Opportunities will follow - make sure to catch them!

Having run a small business from 2001, I have developed some productivity routines to manage tedious, repeating tasks. Some of them save me time, others make sure things are done and followed up without my manual interaction.

Currently, my business contains 3 parts:

• Web development
• A webshop selling coffee capsules
• The photography business (headshots and other portrait assignments)

As you can imagine, these 3 parts all claim their time in my schedule, and they all need attention.

In this post, I’ll outline some of the routines I’ve developed to manage my business.
I hope this will be helpful to some of you out there.

Táve for client follow-up

As a business, responding rapidly to client is crucial. It should be quick and efficient, and the client should get all the info they need to proceed with buying your services.

In my photography business, I have build a website with info about headshots. In this page, there is information about the service, pricing and examples of my work. There is also a contact form that feeds directly into the studio management software Táve.

When a person submits this form, I get an email from Táve, and the person is added as a lead in the system. I then go through the submission, check or available times in my studio and set up a quote and a contract. The response is sent through Táve’s mail templates, which populates the email with information about the quote and the client. The process takes just a few minutes. Using templates, I make sure that I don’t miss any information that the client needs.

When the client accepts the quote, an email is sent automatically from Táve to confirm the booking. This email contains info about the session date and time, studio address, link to more info about the session and my phone number in case they don’t find the studio easily (it’s in a big industrial area).

48 hours before the session, Táve sends another email with a reminder about the upcoming session.

Having this system in place makes sure I follow up with the clients in due time, and that nothing slips through the cracks. Because the Táve calendar is connected to my Google Calendar, the booked sessions appear in my calendars everywhere (Mac, iPhone, Watch etc).

I also have the system set up a series of todo items for me automatically. BTW, todos can trigger emails automatically when completed, which can make the system even more powerful.

I have the same type of workflow for wedding photography, with customized responses, contracts, quotes and product packages.

If you don’t use Táve or another CRM or studio manager, you can use things like canned responses in Gmail in combination with filters and rules to create similar routines.

Here’s a link to get 60 days of trial on Táve (normally 30 days): https://tave.com/join/iseeas

Hootsuite for social media

Hootsuite makes it easy to monitor several social media accounts in one place. I can post to several accounts simultaneously. For instance, I can send the same message to my Facebook and LinkedIn pages and to Twitter at the same time. They recently launched support for Instagram, too, but I haven't yet tested that.

I can also schedule the messages to go out at a specific time, or have Hootsuite auto schedule them. You can specify what days and times (from/to) you want to auto schedule to work with, and how many messages should be scheduled per day. This is a good way to spread out your messages over time, or to make sure a blog post gets noticed in the days or weeks after publication.

http://www.hootsuite.com/

Stripe for payments

Táve integrates with Stripe, so I can set up the quote to include a deposit or a full payment and the client can pay immediately after accepting the quote.

http://www.stripe.com/

Zapier for automation

Zapier is an online automation tool that connects hundreds of services with so-called zaps. These are small scripts that you set up in an easy-to-use interface.

Using zaps, you can do things like search for emails with certain labels in Gmail and save attachments to Dropbox.

I use this to save invoices from various vendors in my Dropbox. Makes things a lot easier when it’s time to do my accounting. Before, I needed to dig through my email a lot, or make sure I always remembered to save the attachment when it arrived. Now, it all works automatically.

I also use Zapier to post new Facebook posts on Twitter, to save Stripe transactions in a Google Spreadsheet and more.

http://www.zapier.com/

Glip - Team communications and tasks

Glip is the newest addition to my online toolbox. Glip is a tool for team collaboration and communications. It’s based on a chat interface, with the possibility to set up different teams (streams) to keep conversations clean. You can add people from your own company, or add as many guests as you want. Glip has recently been chosen as the collaboration tool for the Joomla project, so that’s where I heard about it.

I used Slack for a while, which is also a great tool. When I discovered Glip, I realized that what I was missing in Slack: Tasks. The addition of tasks into the workflow in Glip has been really liberating. I use Glip with developers and designers that I work with. Having tasks in the same interface as the communication is very handy, and Glip makes it incredibly easy to add tasks from within conversations.

Basecamp - project management

I’ve used Basecamp for years now. It’s a project management tool that works very well for both smaller and larger teams. I’ve recently downgraded to a smaller account with them, as Glip has taken over some of the projects I used to have in Basecamp. There are some projects that fit the Basecamp workflow better, so I keep it around for now. I particularly like the project templates in Basecamp. For instance, I’m working on a small publication for an organization which is published four times a year. We are 6–7 people working on the publication, and there are recurring tasks each time. I’ve set up a template for this project. When it’s time for a new edition, I set up a new project with only a few clicks, complete with tasks, templates for texts, milestones and more.

Recently, I started using Basecamp 3, the latest iteration in the Basecamp family. It's somewhat different than the previous version, but has some useful additions and changes that I like.

Gmail for work

I’ve used Gmail for years for my private email. A little over a year ago, I migrated all of my business accounts over to Gmail for Business. Now, everything is in one interface. This has been a huge time-saver. Using filters and labels, I’m able to integrate with Zapier (see above) to automate a lot of tasks that took too much time before. Spam has become almost a non-issue, something that was a huge pain before. If you haven’t already, switch to Gmail.

Harvest - time tracking

Harvest is a time tracking app that also features invoicing. I only use the time tracking part of it, as I already use another online tool for invoicing (a Norwegian tool). I used Tick before, but I really like the Harvest interface. The reports are great and have saved a lot of time for me when it comes to invoicing my hours. Harvest also integrates well with Glip, so I can actually track time directly from tasks in Glip.

Harvest has a few different billing plans, and for me, it turned out at about half price of what I paid for Tick. In addition, the Harvest iPhone app is great - I use it to track time, but also to track expenses when I'm out of the office. It's very handy that you can also take a picture of receipts and attach them to the expense record.

Apple Watch

Recently, I bought an Apple Watch Sport. By adjusting the notification settings on the watch and coupling this with my other routines, I now get important notifications (like new leads) directly on the wrist. This is really handy when you’re busy in a shoot or otherwise, and don’t have your phone nearby. It’s also a lot less intrusive than checking your phone all the time.

Cyfe - dashboards

Cyfe is an all-in-one business dashboard app that helps you easily monitor all your business data from one place. I’ve set up several dashboards, one for each area of my business. I can monitor data from Google Analytics like traffic, conversions, Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, Stripe transactions, and even search directly in my MySQL databases to pull data into tables and graphs. I’ve done this for a Joomla site where I monitor the amount of new articles in a graph. I have also set up a connection to Harvest, so I can see my logged hours easily in a graph. There are a lot of pre-built widgets that let you set up monitoring easily. There are several examples on the Cyfe blog on how to do this, as well as on how to build more complex setups. I had some trouble setting up the MySQL dashboard, and the Cyfe guys helped me every step of the way by responding really quickly by email. Great customer service! Using a dashboard like Cyfe is great if you want to avoid logging into several different tools to check the status of your business.

http://www.cyfe.com/

Getting these routines in place, I save a lot of time each month. Time that I can spend more wisely.

A couple of days ago, I was fortunate enough to experience an exhibition by Terry O'Neill in Oslo. Mr. O'Neill is perhaps the most well-known celebrity photographer around.

He started out in the 1960s and can now look back on a 50 year long career as a photographer. He was the first person to photograph The Beatles and the first one to photograph The Rolling Stones. He has also photographed every James Bond, and a lot of Bond girls.

As part of the exhibition opening, he gave an artist talk with his friend Robin R. Morgan. They told anecdotes from the incredible career that Terry O'Neill has enjoyed. Terry himself is down-to-earth. He claims he has been lucky all along. He now looks back at what he has experienced and almost can't believe it himself. His portfolio reads like a who's who of stars from the movies and music industry. He's photographed David Bowie, Elton John, Elvis, Frank Sinatra and Brigitte Bardot. He has captured Luciano Pavarotti, Steve McQueen, Clint Eastwood, Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell. And these are but a few of his subjects.

His images are now managed by Iconic Images. The archive counts over a million negatives! During the artist talk, they told us that they constantly go through the images and find previously undiscovered gems. Not long ago, they found some images of David Bowie that had never seen the light of day.

Jovial and gentle

I was lucky enough to get him to sign an invitation for me, something he did with pleasure. He also asked me what I liked the best. I told him I liked the simple, clean portraits best. His eyes lit up and he said "Good lad – me, too!" in his characteristic Cockney accent. A gentle and humble man, for sure.

They day after the opening, I went back to the exhibition and heard the artist talk again. During the first talk there were so many people there that it was hard hearing anything. Now I got closer and could enjoy the wonderful stories behind the iconic images on the walls.

The shots

After the talk, I asked him if I might take his portrait. I had already noticed that he had posed for several iPhone shots. I wanted to do a real portrait, though. He said yes immediately, and brought me over to the large image of Naomi Campbell on the wall. He leaned against it, got into a horse stance (!) and lowered himself so he was just below her face.

– Do you get the eyes?, he asked.
– I do!

I did three shots, and that was it. I had photographed a legend – but he directed it. I was happy and even more so when I looked at the image on the screen. This is going to be an image I will cherish for a long time.

Thank you, Mr. O'Neill, for your inspiration. And thank you for how you connect with everyone who came to see your pictures.

Geek notes:
The last image was shot using a Canon 1Dx and a Canon 50mm 1.4.
The light was just the existing light in the exhibition hall.
Settings: ISO 160, 1/200 s, f/1.8.

After almost 2,5 years of work, I was finally approved as a Headshot Crew Associate by Peter Hurley. This happened during a CrewCast (live video chat) with the crew on Tuesday December 18th 2015.

I'm happy and honored that Peter has accepted me into this exclusive group. There are currently 67 photographers worldwide who may call themselves Peter Hurley's Associates.

Time will tell what this will mean for my business as a photographer.

Some of the headshots that were approved by Peter during the review. See the full headshot portfolio.

An incredible learning experience!

To those who are in doubt if it's worth it to become an associate, I'd say that it's worth it in so many ways. One thing is the fact that I'm now associated with the best headshot photographer in the world. That in itself is fun, great for business and inspirational.

For me, the actual process of getting here is invaluable. The result is one thing, the path to get there is even more important. Getting hammered by "the man" in reviews. Going back to adjust and improve. Shooting some more, testing and failing, reviewing again and on and on.

This has been an amazing experience – and I'm just getting started!

I'm a big fan of retouching. No, not that fake kind of retouching that makes people look like porcelain dolls. Not the kind that removes 10 pounds from people or makes them look like they never eat. What I do like, is the retouching that evens out skin, removes blemishes and adjusts skin tone to make people look their best.

The image in this post is an example of what I'm talking about. It's an image I shot at the Bahamas earlier this year. The model is Tomii Culmer. I think the retouching is quite subtle, and this is the direction I like to take things. You still see skin texture, you still see she's a human being.

The things I like to do are:

• Remove blemishes
• Even out harsh shadows and highlights
• Reduce bags under the eyes
• Adjust skin color and other colors to match the style I'm after
• Burn (darked) some areas of the image to emphasize others (typically I'll add a slight vignette)
• Sharpen and brighten eyes slightly

In this image, the hair is artifical. It's actually made of plastic. That means it doesn't reflect light like normal hair does and it gets a blueish tone to it. It's also not even, as the left sie of the image is more blue than the right side. Adding some warmth to the hair also balanced the image better, in my opinion.

As I mentioned in the post about Peter Hurley's Headshot Intensive, we did quite a few different lighting setups. Peter's been shooting more natural lights lately, and he was encouraging us to do some of that as well.

However, inside the studio, we also did some alternative lighting setups. After all, we had a Profoto representative with us the whole weekend :)

The images in this post were done with another setup:

As you can see, I did different types of post production on the shots.\n\nHere's the lighting diagram for these shots:

The first image has been worked with quite a bit in terms of color, the second one is mostly just warmed up and given a slight vignette.

As mentioned in a previous post, I was finally able to attend a workshop with headshot photographer Peter Hurley. I've been on the fence with this for at least two years. Returning home after two intense days with Peter and a great group of photographers, I realize how much value this course has. It has already changed the way I look at people and how I work with them to get the best expression I can from them.

Friday meetup

On Friday evening, a bunch of us met up at Medis bar in Stockholm to have some beers and get to know each other. Peter brought his family along as well, so we were quite a large group. It was nice to meet everyone (most, at least) before the workshop started.

Intense session on theory!

The one thing I definitely knew about the Headshot Intensive, was that it would be intense ;) And it sure was! We started on Saturday at 10 am. This first day was dedicated to Peter's incredibly comprehensive system on how to direct people. In short, it is a huge amount of information on how he creates rapport with the client, direct them and then use techniques to get natural reactions out of them. This, in turn, makes for headshots that have what he calls "lookability". Images you want to look at, that are interesting and makes you wonder about something.

Shooting

This theory session went from 10:00 in the morning until 7:30 in the evening, with an hour of lunch thrown in there. After this session, we went out to dinner at a local restaurant. At 9 pm, we went back to the studio - now it was time for shooting! It was time to get serious and to practice what we had learned during the day.
We had two stations set up. One was on a white seamless that gave Peter's signature look. The  other setup was on a more rustic, metal background. We took turns photographing eachother. I managed to photograph two of my collegues that evening, and I'm pretty happy with the result.
What I realized very rapidly, was that the theory is one thing, and practicing the techniques is something else entirely. I noticed how naturally and effortlessly he does what he does, and it became apparent that this the result of shooting thousands of people. We have access to the same theory that he has - the difference is experience. The main thing I need to develop is the stuff you say to the client to get expressions out of them. This is something I need to work on continuously, and make my own. Internalize it. It was very easy to get stuck and not know what to say to the person.
Here is one of the shots I did that evening of Vincent, a talented photographer from Stockholm:

Profoto gear galore

We were very lucky to be in Stockholm, where the main offices of Profoto are located. Peter L. from their office was there the whole weekend, and he brought a whole lot of Profoto gear with him. We had D1 and B1 strobes, as well as a large number of softboxes, umbrellas and reflectors. Peter was also a regular attendee of the Intensive, so he was going through the same things that we were. It was a great help to have him and his knowledge about lighting there.
Peter (Hurley, that is) was shooting with a medium format PhaseOne camera, which is an awesome piece of equipment. It produces uncompressed RAW images of around 54Mb - and the amount of detail is just astounding! I got the RAW files of my own headshots from Peter and they look great!

Field trip

When we met up on Sunday morning, we had another short session with theory. Peter went through the details of some of his concepts, to finish up what we had talked about on Saturday. This took all of the info to a new and deeper level.
After the theory, it was time for some shooting. For the first session, Peter wanted to go on a small field trip in the neighbourhood. We went around in the Södermalm area of Stockholm and ended up at a great spot for taking headshots with Stockholm as a background.

Here's one of the images Peter shot of me there:

After a couple of hours outside, we went back to the studio to do some more shooting.

Peter shot everyone

A great part of the workshop was when each and every one of us went in front of Peter's camera to have our headshot taken. It was really a great experience. I did this twice - once outside on the field trip and another time in the studio on a white backdrop. It was incredibly interesting to be on that end of the communication and to see how Peter's system and methodology works when applied on you.

Great group

The attendees at this workshop were photographers from Sweden, Norway, Germany, England and  Poland. I really enjoyed being part of this group of interesting and dedicated photographers for the weekend. Some were hobbyists, some part-time and others full-time photographers. That didn't matter much, though. This was Peter's first workshop were there were no female attendees, so we had to get some women in there from outside to photograph ;)
The following images of Peter (the Profoto guy) and Peter's daughter were done with natural light inside the studio space.

Lots of learning

One of my greatest realizations during the weekend is how comprehensive Peter's system is. He has developed this over the course of about 12 years, and he's continually improving on it and adding new stuff. After all, he is working as a headshot photographer and need to develop his own method all the time.
Headshots look simple enough, but they involve an incredible amount of elements that the photographer uses to get a true expression.

What I took away from the workshop

The main things I learned / got from the workshop:

• A framework on how to direct people
• Detailed knowledge about what makes a great headshot
• A huge increase in confidence as a photographer
• How to get natural expressions out of people
• More control over lighting
• A great group of new friends :)
  and so much more!
  The whole weekend was geared towards headshots, but the knowledge can be applied towards any type of photography that involves people.
  Here's a shot I did of Andy, another one of the talented photographers working in Stockholm:
  

Now, it's time to get people in front of my camera and practice what I've learned. Headshots FTW!
Want to attend a workshop with Peter Hurley?
Visit his Workshop page.