2013 – My Year In Photographs – Part IV: Food
Over the last few years as I’ve become a better gardener I’ve also become a better cook. And a healthier eater too. Here’s some of the great stuff I got to eat and drink over the last year.
I’m a big breakfast guy. Chicken for breakfast, yes sir!
My dad is a big time fishermen. So, lucky for me, I get a lot of fish during the year, yummy!
My grandfather goes elk hunting every year… so I scored on that front too!
I started hanging out with a new group of cool kids that make some killer drinks. Cards night is awesome!
Reading, beer, and tea! Yes, please!
This year I did some fermenting. I make Kimchi for the first time. Yay! For winter foods.
One of many rounds of veggies from the garden. Growing your own food is like printing your own money!
A fall day at the North East Farmers Market.
Breakfast and meat from the farmers market.
Another day, another breakfast!
Homemade tomato sauce from canned tomatoes from the garden. Really helps with a winter cold.
Duck eggs. Goat cheese. Mushrooms. From the Mill City Farmers Market.
Farmers market eggs.
A special birthday dinner!
I drank a lot of this stuff this year!
Grilled cheese and Morel mushrooms yum!
Kadin in front of our bounty of mushrooms this year.
Quail egg breakfast sandwich.
And of course I had a few beers during the year. This is my buddy Jules wall of flavors. This guy knows his beer.
2013 – My Year In Photographs – Part III: Welding Work
In 2013 I did a lot of welding. Here are some snap shots from various projects I created during the past year.
I rock and old school riveted helmet. Vintage.
At the shop with the doors open.
Here’s a steel planter box I made for the restaurant Brasa in St. Paul. This is before it’s acid treated to have a rusty look.
Here’s the same planter box after it’s been acid treated.
Here’s a 3 level indoor herb garden table I made in the spring. It has a chopping block top that my dad made with all rare woods.
Part of what became a large steel planter box.
The inside of a large 3 level steel retaining wall.
Flower beds.
Multi-level steel walls and garden boxes.
A 22 foot long steel garden bed for vegetables and herbs.
Steel staircase boxes.
I bought some made in the USA work clothes to do it right!
Steel work is dirty…
And of course I needed a vintage 1954 International Pick-up truck to haul around all my welding gear this summer! Love my new ride!!
2013 – My Year In Photographs – Part II: I Heart The Plants In My Life.
Helping clear out a spot for a ‘guerilla garden’ in NE.
My baby tomato plants! Getting ready for a late season.
Graden prep 2013.
Garden planted 2013.
Gardening booming! 2013.
The little frogs came back!
Herbs on my back deck.
The Phillip’s crew trenching in the spring snow.
A hole I helped dig. It’s big.
More Phillip’s crew doing Spring clean-up.
Plants have arrived!
Flowers at the Mill City Farmers market.
2013 – My Year In Photographs – Part I: I Heart The Humans In My Life.
My papa and I crushin’ it ice fishing.
Nick K. Snow Shoe Master.
Peachy stylin’ and free-stylin’.
Nick, Peach, Nick. Don’t try this at home kiddos.
Osama photo bros for life!
Sam and I accidentally met in the internets. Then we accidentally met in real life. Rad! Sam is an awesome entrepreneur check out his super rad photo moblie app. here!
I took some photos for Susie’s business website this year. She is an awesome massage and bodyworks artist! Check her amazing skills here!
Elle Anna yogi master.
Flower hat? Sure, why not.
Elle – queen of the bees.
Hellz yeah!!
Carla – shut the front door! So fucking cute it hurts.
Kira and Clark – serious pizza farm business meeting. Planning our future farm and children together. No marriage though. That shitz serious.
Kadin the mushroom hunting king!
Kadin showing daddy Lawrence how it’s done.
I volunteered at the MN Garlic Festival to help kids make kites. How could I not?!
Little lady power! No limits.
Claire and Luci. Nature power.
The 44 Videos That Inspired Me Most In 2013 – Part I
Every year I watch a LOT of films, videos, and other content on-line. I carefully keep track of what I connected with most. Here in no particular order are my 44 favorite on-line films that I saw in 2013. Enjoy them and share!
N E W Y E A R from Chris Arnold.
Fog from Caleb & Shawn
Everything is a Remix Part 4 from Kirby Ferguson
the Scared is scared from Bianca Giaever
Danny & Annie from StoryCorps
TOWERS OF THE ENNEDI from Camp 4 Collective
Shelley and Bill: A love story from Brad Horn
THE MIRRORING MIND – by @JasonSilva from Jason Silva
Easy – Mat Zo & Porter Robinson (Official Video) from The Line
The Secret of Trees | Albert Maysles from Focus Forward Films
Sally Silverstone & Linda Leigh – Biosphere 2 from The Avant/Garde Diaries
Carrotmob Makes It Rain from carrotmob
A Letter From Fred from Green Shoe Studio
SAMSARA food sequence from Baraka & Samsara
Outside Magazine TV- Dispatch from David Anthony Alvarado
American Value: Herb Dishman: China, TX from Nomadique
Basement Jaxx – What A Difference Your Love Makes from Love Commercial Production Co.
Photography Is No Longer Photography. It Is A Socially-Shared Digital River Of Imagery. Part I. – A Closer Look At The Numbers Behind Professional Photography
1 in every 2,000 people in the United States is now a professional photographer.
For the last couple years I’ve written down lots of notes with bits of information and thoughts I have about how the medium, process, and product, of “photography” is no longer what it use to be. That’s obvious of course to anyone involved in the medium for more than a couple years. But, I think very few people understand the scope of the change. Sort of like most of us don’t understand the scope of wealth in-equality in the United States.
According to the US Buearu of Labor Statistics there are a projected 144,750 professional photographers working in the United States in 2013 (based off of tax filings from 2010). For argument sake lets say that half of those ‘professional photographers’ are wedding, portrait, family, etc. localized photographers – so, 72,375. If you divide that by 50 states that = 1,450 localized (non-commercial/advertising, editorial, or fine arts) photographers in each state. Obviously some states like New York will have many more shooters than say Wyoming. Either way, that adds up to a lot of wedding shooters out there.
Now lets say that 25% of the total professional photographers out there are fine arts photographers (the MFA set) and the remaining 25% of shooters are commercial/advertising/editorial photographers. That = 36,188 for each category. Since my work over the last 7 years was commercially focused I’ll break that down further. If you divide that number by our 50 states you get – 724 commercial/advertising photographers per state. That might not sound like a lot, but when you consider the types and volume of jobs available to the commercial marketplace that number seems fairly high to me. Using my home state of MN as an example that number would mean that 1 in every 7,000 people in MN is a commercial advertising photographer.
Ok, great, but how does that play out in terms of jobs? Good question.
Again, using my home state of MN as a foundation for answering that questions here’s some more numbers to think about. For a number of reasons longer than I care to go into here – the Minneapolis/St. Paul commercial marketplace is the 4th largest advertising market in the US. In other words, we’re a huge economic and advertising market.
There are about 10 ‘big’ (in terms of revenue) advertising agencies based in Minneapolis. About 20 more big-ish agencies behind them, and we’ll say another 30 small-ish shops in town. Without boring you with a huge flood of numbers I’ll break down the available ‘jobs’ to commercial shooters in a less formalized way.
From my personal experience and relationships with art buyers at these agencies based in MSP each of the ‘big’ agencies calls in bids for anywhere from 20-60 good photo assignment ‘jobs’ per year. The mid-sized agencies maybe half that. And the little shops, for our purposes here we’ll say do 10 good shoots a year. So, lets add that all up.
On the high-side, our 10 ‘big’ agencies assign: 60 (jobs) x 10 (agencies) = 600 good commercial level ‘jobs’ per year.
Our mid-sized creative agencies assign: 30 (jobs) x 20 (agencies) = 600 good commercial level ‘jobs’ per year.
Our small creative agencies assign: 10 (jobs) x 30 (agencies) = 300 good commercial level ‘jobs’ per year.
So, our grand total of ‘good commercial level jobs’ at all creative agencies in MN (the 4th largest creative market in the US) = 1,500 – bam! Sounds great right? 1,500 big commercial jobs sounds great to me. However, we need to circle back to our number of commercial shooters based in MN, which = 724.
That means of the 724 commercial shooters based in MN (this number might seem high, but I’m personally aware of around 100 ‘commercial photographers’ based in MSP) there are 1,500 available ‘jobs’. (And this number is for sure high because I definitely over estimated the available jobs and these jobs aren’t just going to shooters based in our market, in fact, likely most of them are not going to shooters in our market.)
So, if the 1,500 commercial assignments available in our state were divided by the 724 commercial shooters based here each photographer would get 2 jobs per year. And again, we are the 4th largest advertising marketplace in the country. Getting 2 good jobs per year doesn’t sound like a very good business model to me.
Now to make matters worse lets apply those numbers to the 80/20 rule, which governs how the work is really spread out in our industry. What does that mean? It means that 20% of the shooters get 80% of the work, while 80% get the remaining 20% of the work. In MN 145 commercial shooters would then get 80% of the available work or 1,200 jobs. Which in converse would then also mean that 580 commercial photographers in MN get the remaining 300 jobs. Or 0.6 jobs… a half a job. Or in other words, no ‘good jobs’.
The conclusion is this:
In the state of Minnesota (the 4th largest advertising marketplace in the country) the top 20% or 145 commercial shooters based here each get and average of 8.2 high-level good paying commercial assignments per year. While the rest of the bottom 80% or 580 commercial shooters get an average of 0.6 high-level good paying commercial assignments per year. Or essentially nothing. So even if you’re a top shooter based here in MN you still get less than one good job per month. Which I can tell you via my personal relationships with many of the ‘top’ commercial shooters I know here is entirely accurate. In fact, the reality is much more so that a only a few dozen localized commercial shooters get most of the real work. And if you take Target out of the mix I can only think of less than 10 local commercial photographers who would survive as a business.
Ok, so what?
My point is this – (commercial) photography has become a bad business for simple economic reasons. There are now within the United States way too many available and capable high-level commercial photographers in relationship to the available number of corresponding commercial assignments. How this plays out in reality is that a few ‘named’ or essentially famous photographers get a majority of the work well the rest of everyone else fights it out for a job or few a year. Now that idea might seem sort of obvious. However, the underlying idea behind these numbers leads me to my second point. Which is, where this profession, business, medium, and art form has been headed for the last 10 years and where it’s going to keep heading…. (info. coming my next few posts).
Bottom line:
It’s supply and demand. There is a epic over supply of photographers for the returning demand of available work. It is really that simple.
Plan For The New Year — Start With Purpose.
The end of the year is a great time to reflect on your year gone by and to plan for the new year ahead. This is something I’ve done for many years in one form or another, but in the past I have struggled with actually accomplishing many of my goals. This last year I did a better job because I approached my plan in a different way.
I started my planning for the new year by fist sitting down and writing a purpose for my year. This is something that requires a good deal of thinking. It’s a deep question. It’s basically asking yourself, “Why should I be alive this year?” It takes me a long time to answer that question, but once I feel good about what I’ve written it becomes my foundation for moving forward with everything I do. It becomes the one thing I can always come back to when I find myself at a crossroads in the future.
Here was my purpose for 2012:
Purpose: In 2012 I will direct my best and most positive energy towards the people, places, and things I want, enjoy, and care for most in my life — while being joyful, humble, and appreciative of whatever outcomes unfold from my efforts. I will be present and happy in my daily life no matter how the details of my future year unfold. I will focus on my creative work in photography and writing. I will also focus on my organization, balance, health, slow growth, and contentment.
After I’ve laid the foundation of my year out by creating my purpose statement I then state a theme for myself. My theme becomes the things I want to focus my energy on and towards as I move forward. This was my theme for 2012:
Theme: 2012 is the year of organization, balance, and recommitment to my creative life and endeavors. This time next year, I will be content, happy, and satisfied with how my year unfolded.
Once my theme is mapped out I state some basic actions that will help me move towards my purpose and my theme. These were my basic actions for 2012:
Actions: 1. Create a daily ‘Things to do’ or tasks list. 2. Work on the 2 things I want to do the least first each day.
After my purpose, theme, and actions are defined I then write down what I’d like my outcomes to be. This is what I wrote for 2012:
Outcomes: At the end of 2012, I will be further along in my creative career and in a better position for long-term stability.
When you first read my purpose, theme, actions, and outcomes they might all seem a bit too broad or too general, but that is by design. The more specific elements of what I wish for my year moving forward are found in my specific goals. Goals are the most specific aspect of planning. There are also usually the place where most people start. The reason why starting with a purpose is so important is because sometimes our goals aren’t actually in-line with the greater things we want or need in our lives and it’s very easy to get lost in the specifics of our daily lives.
Goals: My 2012 goals were personal enough and long enough that I won’t share them here. However, there are a few very important things I’ve learned about goals over the many years I’ve tried to write them down and reach them.
1.) Only set goals for things you can control. For many years I set goals without fully understanding that I was trying to reach goals I could never control. For example, you can’t set goals for making more money. Yes, we would all like to make more money, but is that something we have direct control over? No. But, you can control things like, what you eat, when you get up, how you exercise, how you save the money you already have made, etc. So again, only set goals for things you can directly control.
2.) Once you set a goal create a timeline and action plan for completing that goal. Writing down a goal is great, but unless you have a plan of how you’re going to reach it you’ll likely never get it done. That’s the main reason why so many people have great new year’s resolutions, but then never actually get their goals accomplished. You need to make a plan for how you’re going to reach your goal.
3.) Keep coming back to your whole plan. Check in often with your purpose, theme, actions, outcomes, and goals. Print them off and stick them up on the wall in your room, office, or bathroom. Hold yourself accountable to the the changes you want to see or make in your life moving forward. You are the only person responsible for the life you want to live.
Start your new year off right – with a purpose!
An Overview Perspective & The Power Of Meditation – Two Inspiring Films
OVERVIEW from Planetary Collective.
Throughout much of the last few years and especially as we enter into 2013 I am thinking and feeling more in alignment with this type of perspective. We are all one species, on one living plant, in a very small piece of the universe. Now more than ever we have the responsibility to take care of ourselves and our plant in a sustainable way.
Unusual Choices: Ani Chudrun from Planetary Collective.
This was also a very powerful film for me. It reminds me that I cannot control the thoughts or actions of others and that no matter how I feel is the best way moving forward I can’t change anyone else. But, I can change myself and I can become better and that is in fact the best thing I can do for myself and for everyone else.
Two Talks For Your 2013
Both these TED talks really connected with me at the end of my 2012. I hope to maintain these points of view into this coming year.
The Power Of Vulnerability.
Nature. Beauty. Gratitude.