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©EDMONSON Photographers

We have a wedding site, an Indian wedding site, a site for David, a site for me, and an associate site for weddings. Then we have a commercial site, a portrait site, a catering site for my brother-in-law who is a chef, an Italian event site for two of my sisters who are living in Rome, and a couple others. We use our sites and the blog to be able to cross link and drive traffic to each other. We also invested in the liveBooks SEO service and now about a third of our business comes from people who are just searching for us on the internet. Another third of our business comes from vendor referrals — people in the industry who we work with. A perfect example of that is the photographer Robert Evans. He shot Brad Pitt’s wedding simply because he had given images back to a florist he worked with. No one had done that for that florist before, so he stood out and they recommended him for the wedding. So if you can find ways to give back to your vendors, it always pays off because they’ll send you some business. The other third of our business comes from word-of-mouth bridal referrals and people who endorse us in the community.

We advertise on a few exclusive websites and we’re part of organizations that help us create buzz, like WPJA, WPPI, and PPA. We also advertise in publications in our local markets, but the best way to get publicity in magazines is to just send them images from real weddings. That’s a great way doing editorial work, and it also helps the magazines out. My basic analogy about your business is, it’s like you have a container that you want to put a bunch of water in. Some of the cups that you’re using are big cups, and some are Dixie cups. But the more you’re pouring in, the better off you’re going to be. So whether it’s SEO or word of mouth, every little bit helps.

Then when potential clients come to us or to our websites, we found that for all our clients, when they initially have contact with us, they want see content that is very targeted towards exactly what they’re asking us about. If they ask about baby photos, they want to go to a site that looks like nothing but babies; if they want us to do a wedding, they want to go to a site that is nothing but weddings.

©EDMONSON Photographers

Most websites I see have portfolios divided up into four or five different types of photography. Then they have their blog link there, and their pricing. And they blend together after a while, because all the sites are the same. Everybody is showing that they do a variety of stuff. We just found that, for us, to connect with our clients, especially a higher-end clientele, they like things that are rare and unique, or specialized. They want to go to someone that is considered an expert in their field. So if you present yourself as a jack-of-all-trades, you may come off as a master of none. Versus if you have different websites, you’re able to show these different clients that you invest yourself into this particular niche, whatever it is. All of a sudden they’re building this trust with you. And you’re giving them a reason to want to use you because they think this is what you eat, dream, and sleep about, is taking baby photos, or taking commercial photos, or taking wedding photos. And it doesn’t actually have to be that way. It’s just the way that you’re presenting it to them.

And then, when they’re looking at our work, we don’t come up to them and necessarily start telling them all the other different kinds of stuff we do. We just show it. It’s like when we meet with wedding clients, we still have a few of our commercial products up and available, because it builds our trust. We’ve shot a number of recording artists and we have their gold records up. And they’ll start to think, if this band I know trusts them to do their photography, why can’t I? Typically, people when they come to meet us, they already know that they like our work. The only reason why they come to meet us is to find out our personalities, because they’ve seen the work online or someone else has put in a good word for us. So we don’t have to do a lot of selling then, at the point that they’re coming to meet us.

Then over time, once they get to know you, they like you, and they love your work, you can introduce them to some of the different types of photography that you do if you have different sites. All of a sudden they start to be your ambassador looking for ways to help you promote your business. And when you’re talking about today’s economic times, we all know that it’s not a good idea to put all your eggs in one basket, because all of a sudden if that hype, for whatever reason, start to slow down, you’re dead in the water.

One of Ed's images from his recent trip to India to teach a workshop. ©Ed Kashi

After wrapping up a National Geographic Photo Camp in January, teaching young Indian students to use cameras for the first time, I returned to India in March to teach a workshop for American and European adults who want to become better photographers — some to make it a profession, and others, who are already professionals, to gain a new perspective that refreshes their work and attitude. The workshop students ranged in age and background: an American in her 60s who is a retired doctor and environmentalist but has been using photography for 40 years; an Italian professional photographer in her 40s who mostly does commercial work and wants to break into photojournalism; a young American just starting out as a photographer; an Italian photography lover in his 40s who is an Alitalia pilot; a German psychotherapist in his 50s who also loves photography; a British journalist in her late 20s who wants to improve her photography to be a double threat.

Occasionally during these workshops, it can feel uninspiring and frustrating when leading a clutch of prosumers, many of whom you know will not become photographers. But I cherish the NG Photo Camps and most of them won’t become photographers either. In the end, anything that allows me to teach, to impart my experience and passions, is satisfying and ultimately useful to my students. If one truly loves photography both as a craft and a profession, whether you want to change the world or just want to learn how to better enjoy your creative process, then it’s all good in my eyes.

As with any workshop, this recent one had a distinct arc: the beginning, always rocky, with people jet lagged, not sure of who is who, what they should be doing and maybe nervous about exposing their work to strangers. Then, just like with the kids in Udaipur, the experiences, breakthroughs, and imagemaking gives them strength, confidence, and joy that reaffirms their desire to be photographers. Both groups of students also come to the initial classes with varying degrees of confidence and creativity — most with timidity and all with the need for guidance, the fear of getting close to subjects and the desire to learn and improve that marks all beginners or intermediate photographers.

Often the teens have never picked up a camera before, so the camp is new, exciting, and overwhelming. For them, becoming a photographer is not a goal, or even a possibility, while the adult students are already photographers who may want to make it their profession. The outcome of their extra experience may come as a surprise, though: The adults bring more neuroses, habits, and fears, along with their more developed talent and purpose. They are hampered, in a way, by their photographic baggage, their professional dreams, or their desire to emulate or outdo other people’s photographs.

For these reasons my adult students are as much in need of guidance as the kids, but in certain ways they also present a greater opportunity for growth. One major challenge for the adults specifically is not being Indian. Photographing in a foreign culture reveals to them the difficulty of getting beyond the surface, and it requires the foreign adults to achieve a different level of inspiration and discovery than the teens from India. I also can be more candid in my critiques with the adult students than the teens and center my comments on their photography. If I know an adult photo student wants to make photography their profession, then I’ll take a more critical approach to their images as well as their approach, behavior, even dress sometimes (especially with females), and I try to get them to express their intentions so they become clearer and stronger about why they want to do this.

The amateur who just wants to improve their photography requires a different approach. To me it’s important to help them grow while also preserving their love and joy for the craft. We all know people who are wonderful in some art form yet drop it because they lose the joy when they realize they’re “not good enough” to “make it” professionally. In fact, many very talented people just don’t have the stomach to handle the pressures, rejection, and bullshit involved with being a professional in something that is so personal and subjective.

The teen, who is being asked to use photography by outsiders to tell their stories, requires a yet another approach. In these cases, I am not trying to cradle or soften my approach for the teens, but what I don’t want to do is snuff out their enthusiasm or courage. And given these NG Photo Camps are not designed to make the students into photographers, my role is one of support and encouragement, to help them tell their stories and open their minds to the possibilities of photography, writing, self expression, and life!

So what do I get out of these workshops? Exposure to other photographer’s concerns, ambitions, ideas, and inspirations. An income stream to make up for a loss of work for serious documentary photography. I can’t deny it also soothes my ego to be, for a short time, among photographers who respectfully listen and appreciate what I have to say. In this subjective profession, we often flourish or fail according to others’ whims and the uncontrollable fortunes of fate (others might call that luck!); the break from that provided by teaching is refreshing and rejuvenating. I also love sharing my work with others and, especially, the chance to help shape photography’s future, teaching human values and creativity by sharing my passion for the craft and my commitment visual storytelling.

Afghan women clad in burqa on a windy day in Kabul, Afghanistan. Photo by Farzana Wahidy

In 1983, I was a photographer for TIME and LIFE magazines. At the time, Afghanistan was occupied by the Russian army and was closed to the media. There were all these refugees, and the terrain was so difficult. My first assignment was in Kabul, and it took me three weeks just to get there on foot, which is only 150 miles from the border. Then I realized immediately how important that story was, and how little the foreign correspondents could  do to cover it. The country is huge — if you have to go on foot, it would take three months to reach the other part of the country. I also realized there would be no media that would accept a correspondent being there for six months on foot to do the story. TIME, CBS, and other media were giving a couple days to a couple weeks maximum.

When I came back from  Afghanistan, I thought to myself, the only way to cover the whole thing would be for Afghans to do it themselves. I thought, so let’s train some photographers. I went to refugee camps, explained my idea, and started training people and giving them cameras. This was all on my own. The following years I went to South Africa, under apartheid. Again, I realized how hard it was for foreign correspondents to cover, because the government was blocking entrance to journalists. So I thought the best way would be to train younger people living in the townships. I began training them, and the whole time I was also covering the story from the inside. It gave me a totally different perspective. Because usually when I went somewhere to cover a story, I was finding myself with the same group of photographers in the same hotels. The local people would be better storytellers.

Photo by Fardin Waezi, another AINA student.

The second thing, which was much deeper, came to my mind later, when I was in refugee camps especially. I realized there are two different destructions in wars. One is material destruction: buildings and bodies. That’s what we photograph. The houses that are destroyed and the people who are suffering the loss of part of their bodies. But the reality of wars and conflicts is that there is another trauma — the destruction of the human soul, of culture, and of human connection. One day, I was reading in a newspaper that there was a shooting in a school in the United States. And what really took my attention was that all the police went to the school immediately, and then the ambulances. Then a group of psychologists was sent because people had been traumatized by this shooting. And that was just one shooting. What are we doing in conflict zones? We are only helping to rebuild the material destruction. But we don’t care about the psychologists that are needed.

In humanitarian efforts, 99 percent are just for buildings. The United Nations and NGO’s help to build schools, roads, wells, and to make the artificial legs. But where is that group of psychologists for countries that have been in conflict for years and years. Where are the psychologists and who can they be? I realized, you can’t send American or French psychologists to talk to Afghans or Cambodians. It has to be from inside. But you also can’t send psychologists to talk to people one-on-one. So I thought maybe the best tools were media and communication tools. If they were used collectively, maybe they could replace these psychologists.

At that moment, I also saw there was no opportunity in these countries for a group of people, journalists or artists, to express themselves. We need to help them to express themselves. We need to train them and give them the tools, which are all the tools we use in the West: cameras, video cameras, and computers. They don’t have access to these. This was one main thing that brought me to Aina.

A frame grab from photographer Martin Sundberg's first video project. ©Martin Sundberg

MJ: You mentioned that you found yourself making the same “Martin Sundberg” images with the video camera that you would have with a still camera. What do those look like and how do you recognize them as your signature look?

MS: This first foray into video felt like a seamless transition from shooting photography, and a lot of that can be attributed to the Canon 5D Mark II. It was amazing to use the tools I’ve always used, in terms of the feel and function of a still camera, and do this entirely different thing with it. For me, this really facilitated a consistency in my vision. In my still photography, I try to use the elements of the moment, exploiting light and weather whenever possible, to add to the photograph. I also am often trying to capture motion and distill that feeling into a photograph.

When it came time to post some teaser videos on my blog, I went to pull some frame grabs to situate next to the videos, and that was when I realized I had shot the video footage in the same way. This is an intriguing revelation, and I’m excited by the idea of moving between the two mediums for a client, creating both stills and video for a campaign. This also reminded me that the creative process is really a series of choices. Planning sometimes precedes these choices, but very often it’s a matter of simply reacting to what’s in front of the camera at that moment.

I now understand photography and video as having a more synergistic relationship. When I bring elements together that I’m passionate about — light, water, inspiring people, and evocative environments — I tend to act in a way that defines and supports the style that I’ve developed through many, many experiences with the camera at my eye. Being facile with both mediums is just another way to keep exercising, challenging, and honing the process of seeing and creating images.

MJ: What did you learn from this shoot and what advice would you give to photographers going out on their first video shoot?

MS: When the project concluded and we all went back to our respective parts of the country, I realized how much I love the still image. I continue to be excited about the outcome of this project, but I was honestly shocked to discover that I didn’t have a body of still images after all of that effort. Of course, I knew I logically hadn’t been making still pictures, but I did feel a pang of regret for not having a second body of still work. No prints, no stock, no licensing usage for my clients.

A week after the shoot, I was fielding calls from magazines specifically interested in the triathlete project and I have almost nothing to offer them. Typically, after a personal shoot like this, I would be able to field those requests. With that in mind, I’ll definitely try and schedule a couple of days for still photography on my next personal video assignment. And in the meantime, I’ll begin exploring the portals that exist for distributing video pieces in similar ways.

I would advise anyone moving into video to assemble a good team. For me, I like to have the flexibility to be quick and nimble with my team, so for this type of project, I’d make sure to include an assistant, a stylist, a sound person, an editor, and the models. That would be a bare-bones assembly. You don’t need an army, just a few enthusiastic and interested people. I love the collaborative process because when you get a few good people together, each with his or her own expertise, it can be like igniting a haystack of ideas.