Now that the Holiday Season has been unofficially replaced by Shopping Season I’ve had a strange obsession with taking shopping cart photos. Maybe it’s like when you get a new car and then suddenly start to see twice as many just like it on the road. Once I snapped a lone shopping cart in a parking lot I began to see them everywhere. In honor of the start of shopping season here are some of my favorite recent iPhone snaps.

Had a lot of fun this past month coming up with ideas for my side project Thursday Happy Hour. October brings a change of season, shorter days, new beers, harvest, Oktoberfest and one of my favorite holidays, Halloween. Getting to come up with images to go along with the great editorial that the writers construct was just too fun. Got to break out the fog machine for the Smokejumper ale from the Great American Beer Fest then use it again for the sleepy hallow effect on the Hobgoblin English Ale. Carved pumpkins (almost) for the Oktoberfest brew and shot some grilled brats at the local festivities. My favorite though was the series made for the Corpse Reviver #2. This is a very classic drink, meticulously mixed and perfectly named for Halloween. I knew exactly what I wanted for the shot;  6″ plastic skeletons, of course.

Luckily I didn’t have to go far. The Spirit store down the road had a package of two for 2 bucks. An X-Acto, a little hot glue, a cocktail sword and I had my corpse to revive. We had too much fun posing the little guy in all sorts of ways but ultimately had to choose one. The others are above and I like the little story they tell.

If you enjoy beer, wine, cocktails and entertaining, pop into Thursday Happy Hour and drop us some love or follow us on Twitter or Facebook.

Cheers for now!

New season, new inspiration. This morning I came into my studio and it was a wreck. Admittedly it was a wreck yesterday too. And, well, last Friday also. Truth is I have been slacking on the housekeeping as projects old and new have been piling up and cluttering my creativity. Time to tear down the walls and start over. This is What’s Inspiring me Now:

1. Film! Recent contact sheets from my 35mm (Ilford Delta 3200 is SO cool)

2. Funky fashion shoots I like – flaws, blur and all. Kudos to the brave creative directors/editors.

3. “You Never Know.” Still my motto.

4. Various membership cards (MoPA, REI, etc.)

5. More great images. Coach eyewear nails it. Paul Smith: Cool guy, great threads and slick ads.

6. “OFC” (Off Camera Flash) magnet from David Hobby at Strobist.com. I met David last month at a party in Seattle. Great guy that has built an amazing photo community.

7. Urbanist city guide. Loads of great spots listed around San Diego.

8. My expired passport with some really great stamps inside (Singapore! China! Osaka! British Virgin Islands!)

9. Promo postcard and various prints of mine from the Mamiya.

10. Killer Bose headphones. Simply amazing on the plane.

11. New [old] Mamiya m645 and spare body. These are so fun and so cheap right now.

12. 120 film for the Mamiya and Holga (also pictured).

13. Box of 1,000 Thursday Happy Hour business cards for our Super-Fun side project.

What’s inspiring you? Tweet it to me or hit me up in the comments!

I’m not a licensed professional. I have a license to catch fish and to operate a vehicle in the state of California but nothing that says I’m a pro photographer. In fact, I don’t even have a degree or much real formal training to be a photographer. I operate my business as an S-Corp but it has nothing to do with my photo skills. So, where do I gain the privilege to be called a “professional?”

Reading through some of Milton Glaser’s essays recently I stumbled into the “Ten Things I have Learned,” part of a London AIGA talk he gave. Number 10 is “Tell the Truth.” While it’s assumed we all should do that, it got me thinking about how many books and seminars about ethics in design and advertising are out there. In my art director days, I was a member of the AIGA. I own an aging copy of the Graphic Artists Guild Handbook on Ethical Guidelines. I refer to the ASMP Professional Business Practices in Phototgraphy often. I’m an active member of the APA and part of the San Diego chapter board.  The main message for all of these organizations is clear: Be good to your clients and help your peers do the same.

For me professionalism is much more about how one conducts him/herself than the level of experience gained. It’s about doing what’s right at the moment it’s needed. It’s about being true to yourself and your art. Someone could probably write a book about that but I think we already know what it would contain. We just need to practice it.

I just finished this image for Thursday Happy Hour and I’m happy to report that it’s pretty close to what I envisioned. We wanted the look of bright moonlight with flares of directional incandescent light to resemble patio lighting. The catch was that it was 9:00 this sunny morning.

Without getting all boring with the details I went all Joe McNally on this thing and bashed the heck out the sunlight with full power strobes gelled to the desired color temp. Whatdaya think? Kinda moonlighty?

I’ve been putting a lot of thought into marketing recently. Maybe it’s because I’ve been speaking to other photographers about their strategies, victories or failures with their own marketing efforts. One thing that seems to be a common topic is the use of social marketing tools. Just about everyone is using some version but when it comes to using social media in an effective way, I’d wager that more than a few are not getting it right – myself included.

Case and point: Seth Godin’s recent post regarding tactics vs. strategy. There are plenty of tactics to help you market yourself or product – more than enough in fact. But the real effectiveness comes when those tactics (social media in this case) are applied to a bigger picture or strategy. Otherwise your talking just to hear your own voice.

Know who it is you want to connect to. Take the time to find out the best way to engage them and how your message can be conveyed to help tell the story of your brand. Some photographers like to speak to their own. That’s great and helpful and I fully appreciate it but it probably won’t attract photo editors or art buyers. Other photographers use blogs, Facebook, Twitter etc., to help put a face to their name and share a little more personality. This is group I hope to fall into.

Tonight I’ll be moderating the APA | SD Social Media Roundtable and I hope to gain some insight to what others are doing to add to their strategy.

Have any thoughts on this? Tweet it to me @gee_allard

Just a quick blurb about the latest APA|SD Focus event coming up this week. I’ve been working on the board of directors at the San Diego chapter and we’ve put together some great little cheap – and in this case – free events. APA|SD Focus is an informal gathering of photography industry pros chatting about things like marketing, finding new clients, Website SEO, estimating and negotiating, whatever hot topics are on your mind. The setting is casual and all are welcome, current member or not.

If you’ve ever wanted to sit down with pros (newbies and veterans alike) to share ideas, come to this event. We’re trying to make them a regular thing so keep in touch with the APA|SD events page or follow them on Twitter.

Join us at Air Conditioned Lounge in North Park, 6:30 this Wednesday night, Aug. 5th.

Next week: APA|SD Social Media Roundtable (featuring me!), Aug. 12. Details to come!

Yet another trip out into the [sort-of] wild coming up very soon. Man, how I love being outside. This time since I will not be shooting any manner of commercial work, I am challenging myself to take a very pared down kit. Sometimes it’s good to leave the fancy stuff behind and focus on making images that speak to you and not the gear in your bag. So it’s one body, 2 lenses and that’s about it.

Of course I’ll be packing my trusty Holga as well. But that goes without saying.

Being self employed means it’s very easy to get caught up in self promotion, marketing efforts, blog posts and the like. I’m on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, and I also belong to a handful of photo industry groups and forums. With all that info flying around at the touch of an iPhone, it’s sometimes difficult to put it down and just take pictures. Any pictures. Pictures on the street, pictures in the woods, my backyard, whatever. Seeing things through the frame of a camera – all things – is like therapy to me.

Last week I spent several days in the Yosemite area. We got up 9000′ + on a few hikes and saw some truly breath-taking scenery. Bears, deer, marmot, jaw-droppingly beautiful summits and valleys. Did I snap a lot of photos? Heck yeah. Will they make it into my portfolio? Nope. Sometimes a picture is just a picture. Like the shot above taken at Dog Lake near Tuolumne Meadows. It’s a pristine alpine lake located at 9,200′ that’s only accessible about 3 months a year. That in itself is pretty special. And to me, that is what this photo represents, not commercial value or self promotion.

Marketing and self-promotion are necessary evils in this business but sacrificing the very thing you’re promoting by, well, promoting it 24/7 is not good math.

Inspiration comes at strange times. Sometimes while you’re barely awake. Last week I shot some really nice images of some open-water swimmers at La Jolla cove. These athletes are here every Friday morning and swimming by 6:00 a.m. I’m generally not up at that hour but I’m happy I was for this. Not only was it inspiring to see the dedication these swimmers have, I got some terrific shots for their project. My favorites are now on my site in Book One.