Finding the U in your photography

Today’s we’re talking about finding the U in your photography. How can you do that? And why is it important? It’s something that every photographer struggles with when they are starting out. Truth be told, many continue to struggle with finding themselves in their photography years or even decades down the road.
 
In Godox and MoLight news, learn more about the new Godox TL120 RGB tube lights as well several exciting new modifiers in the MoLight lineup.

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Transcript

female announcer: 0:03

Live from MoLight Studios in the heartland of America, it's your Monday morning jolt of hot photography tips with a frothy topping of the latest product news from Godox MoLight. And more. Welcome to the Monday morning cup of Mo with your host, the man who put the MO in MoLight Michael Mowbray.

Michael Mowbray: 0:26

Happy Monday or whatever day of the week it is for you. I guess I can't assume you're listening to this on a Monday when it comes out. Although that's what all the cool kids do. Welcome to the Monday morning cup of Moe, I am your host, Michael Mowbray. Each week I pour a cup of coffee and explore a single topic related to professional photography. Thanks for joining me no matter what day it is. Today we're talking about finding the you in your photography. How can you do that? Why is it important? It's something that every photographer struggles with when they're starting out. Truth be told, many continue to struggle with this and finding themselves in their photography years or even decades down the road. We all start off with emulation, which is a nice way of saying copying someone else's work or style, it's natural. You see a photograph you'll like it. And you'll try to recreate it on your own. On social media, you ask what the settings were or what lens was used? Or what did you place your lights. And assuming that if you copy all those things that you too, can create the same image. So you copy everything. And the image you create isn't quite what you thought it would be. And it's disappointing. What went wrong? Why doesn't it have the same impact or magic? It's missing the you in it. You replicated someone else's work, kind of like paint by numbers, but it doesn't have your soul in it. It's a facade of something that was created by somebody else. Now don't get me wrong. Emulation is perfectly fine. And it's a technique that's a valid way of learning. But it doesn't bloom with creativity and self satisfaction until has a bit or a lot of you in it. It's a path I've followed and it's a path I've seen many other photographers follow. You chase the latest trend or the latest hot photographer. What did sue Brice do? How do I copy that? How did Ben shirk do that? Maybe I should buy his templates. Ooh, look at that photo from Joel Grimes. Maybe if I buy the same lights, I can do that. What photoshop actions did you use to create that? Where did you buy them? And so on? Is this wrong? No, not really not on the surface at least. But you need to use these things, the techniques, the lights, the actions, the templates, etc. to meld with your own creative spirit in order to create something new, something different, something unique. When I titled this episode, I use a capital U instead of the word Yun on purpose. It's not just to be cool. But because the you and your photography stands for unique. Why are you attracted to the work that you're trying to copy? Because that photographer created something unique, something that reach out and touch you. They have their own distinct or distinctive unique look or style. Whether it's a Ben shirk or Josh Hannah, or my friends from my other podcast, Dan Frievalt, and Carl Caylor. They have all worked to create their own easily recognized style and look. And that is what helps separate them from their competition and their individual marketplaces. This distinctive style is what attracts your clientele, and what allows them to charge more as well. Let's face it when your work looks like the work of a dozen other photographers around you, how do you stand out from the crowd? For example, if you and a dozen other photographers around, you are all using a light and airy style shooting in the same locations using the same Photoshop and Lightroom actions. Why would anyone pay extra for your work versus the work of someone just like you get what I'm saying? If it all looks the same to the customer, and you have to understand that much of it does because most regular people cannot discern the micro differences between very similar styles. When it all looks the same. What do they base their decisions on price availability? And who do they like? So they don't make their purchasing decision based on the actual work. If it all looks the same, they use other criteria. We call that being a commodity and it's a death sentence for a photography business. It's Like being gas? How do you choose where you buy your gas? Price and convenience, right? Is the gas from BP or shell or Kwik Trip completely different from the gas at a mobile station? Ooh, gas is two cents cheaper a BP, I'm going to go there, or the Shell station is on the same side of the street as I'm on, I'm going to go there because it's convenient. Don't get stuck being a commodity. Stop making your work look like everyone else around you create something that is unique to you. Something that will separate you from everyone else. And it doesn't necessarily have to be a super dramatic difference. It just needs to be a discernible difference. Something your clientele can see and recognize and value. So what are some examples? I'll use a personal one. One thing that really helped me grow my wedding photography business in the early and mid 2000s was the use of off camera flash outside. That's why I chuckle a little bit when people are, quote unquote, discovering off camera flash here and 2022. It's been around for a while. And yes, it existed before I discovered it as well. It's been around for a long, long time. But I digress. I saw it as a solution to the problem that every wedding photographer faced in my city, which is Madison, Wisconsin. Every bride wanted photos by one of our two lovely lakes, we have two gorgeous lakes and an F myth running between them. I can't say it any other way. For some reason. Or by the Capitol building, we have a lovely Capitol building, it looks just like the Capitol in Washington, in the middle of the afternoon is when all these photos happen, right. And they remember the beautiful deep blue of the water, and the beautiful deep blue of the sky on their wedding day. Yet, when they got their wedding photos, the sky and the water are white, and blown out. They don't understand why a photographer or why you had to expose for their faces, and don't care about the dynamic range of digital sensors or film. They just know what color the sky was. That's all we should expect them to know. So back then I sought a solution and the only one I could find was to incorporate off camera flash. That way I could expose for the sky in the water and use off camera flash to fill in the shadow on the faces. I worked on becoming a master of using multiple speed lights off camera and began to create rich, vivid dramatic photos full of color. The skies were blue, the water was blue. It was the way the bride and the groom and their family remembered that day. So I was giving them what their memory told them. We had not blown out skies, and Whitewater. When potential brides visited my website, they immediately saw a difference with my work. And I began to get more and more inquiries, I was able to raise my prices to the top of the market because of the demand was my work better. I don't know. It's always subjective, but in some ways it was. But most importantly, I had crafted a style that was unique for my marketplace. One that was attractive to my clientele, and one that allowed me to charge a premium for my work. And around the same time I started to enter print competitions and was able to win the Best of Show for wedding portraits. In quite a few years in a row here in Wisconsin. It was great being recognized by my peers and a never sucks to win awards. Despite what anybody tells you never sucks to win an award. It helped make me feel more creatively fulfilled, which is important. It also pushed me to keep upping my game because there's an expectation that was out there now that I would be putting out award winning work. I also use the awards as a marketing tool, and as a point of difference for marketing to potential brides. Now that's just an example of what I did to separate myself from everyone else. But that's old news. Let's talk about you. What can you do to separate yourself from your competitors? What is something that does or can make you feel more creatively fulfilled with your work? Maybe it's expressing yourself through painting your photographs like my friends Sandra Pierce and Kimberly Smith do or using the rhythm of light and composition like my friend Carl Caylor does, or creating composites like Ben shirk and Josh Hanna do. Hannah do it sounds like a type of melon anyway. Oh, how about hell no. Do Thank you, or whatever it is. Do it like you would do it. It's okay to take inspiration from others, but make it your own. It will be uniquely you, you'll get more creative satisfaction, and most likely, you can separate yourself from your competition. Here's the latest news from Godox and MoLight. The long awaited shipment of SNAP soft boxes is finally arriving this week. MoLight will have all sizes of the snap soft box back in stock from the one by three strip boxes up to the 60 inch snap Octa box. And we bought a ton of these so they should last a while with all the shipping issues out there and production issues. Didn't want to mess around bottom a lot. Also coming in the same shipping as a brand new line of soft boxes that I will be sharing on the website. And on social media soon. It's called the XL as an exoskeleton. It's a line of true deep parabolic softbox is the feature the ribs on the outside of the box not on the inside on the outside. So it creates a very clean interior no ribs, no caging no mechanism to impede with the light. This premium softbox will be for lighting purists. But it will also be priced at a level that is attractive for everyone. The echo soft boxes can also be combined with a focusing rod to allow you maximum control over your light. As a matter of fact, I think I'm only going to sell them initially with the focusing rod. There is a Bowens mount on it so you can use it with the Bowens mount softbox or you'll be able to use it with the focusing rod. I think we're just going to pair those together. I'll be doing a fashion shoot this week with the XL and I'm pairing it with the incredible ad 1200 pro 1200 watt second flash, pretty excited about this. And I'll be sharing the finished images on the MoLight page as well as on all of my personal social media. So if you want to see how this looks, and what kind of stuff I was able to create that will be coming soon, so stay tuned for that. Also arriving this week as a brand new curved reflector called the MO lighter is ideal for headshots and beauty portraits. It's great for clamshell lighting that comes with silver and white fabrics. So if you want a lot of kick silver, if you want a little kick white, but also on the flip side has got a silver gold zebra reflector fabric that will warm things up a little bit. And also you can use black if you want subtractive lighting Now why would you use subtractive lighting and a curved reflector, you've got somebody that has multiple chins, and you want to add a little bit more shadow underneath the chin subtractive lighting. There you go. You can see more details in the MoLight Webstar store. It's up there right now. It just we don't show any in stock. So you can't buy it right this moment. But you can see this online in the web in the MoLight webstore. So you'll be able to order this very soon should be arriving this week. Godox just announced a new LED Tubelight called the TL 120 It's 120 millimeters long. Well technically it's 117 millimeters, but hey, let's call it the TL 120 And that makes it twice as long as the existing tl 60 It's math people 120 60 Twice 60 is 120 There you go. License like the rest of the TLS series The TL 120 has full RGB color as well as standard daylight and tungsten. It can be remote controlled using the RCR nine controller like the one that you can use with the LC 500 our LED wand and the SSE 150 are full size Topstyle RGB LED lots of stuff in there. You can control it with a DMX controller which is great for video folks, or the Bluetooth Godox lighting app which is actually my favorite tool to use when I'm working with RGB LEDs because it makes it a lot quicker to dial in a precise RGB color. Retail price is set at $299 and this should be available later this winter. Thank you again for joining me for Monday morning cup of Mo please subscribe and follow. I will be posting more information on the podcast Facebook page. So follow that and join the Monday morning couple of Mo podcast group where you can ask questions, suggest topics and join the rest of the community as we grow this together. Talk to you next week.