Creative Chat: REVEALING my Plans - Future of the Channel
Added 2019-03-04 19:03:09 +0000 UTCLet's talk about my life, the channel and you. I feel like this is the moment in time where our community is just big enough to reach out and connect to you. I want this to be a creative family on eye-level. So I'm sharing with you my life, my plans for my tutorials and how you can be part of it all.
BTW.: This is NOT going to replace "Behind the Scenes". It's designed to connect with the Audience on a personal Level, so the topics will be Audience related, rather than a "Behind the Scenes" look.
Looking forward to your feedback and suggestions :)
Comments
Wow, Greg, that sounds really cool. I'm surprised you did went into some area of the creative industries. Maybe design or advertisement or something like that. But i think it's also cool to keep is as a hobby, because then you can do what ever you want with it, with no pressure. Online courses are great there is so much to learn these days and almost all of it is interesting. I think, through all the great courses and how they change the structure of lectures, learning has become a form of entertainment, where we just learn for the sake of wanting to know it.
Olivio Sarikas
2019-03-10 12:49:46 +0000 UTCI have just the one screen so there's a lot of stopping and starting, repeating segments, whilst (call me 'old fashioned' ;) ) I take notes for it to sink in. These things take me so much longer than they used to, and I do have to return to some of them if I'm not using the technique often (aaah.... those sweet departing grey cells - so underpopulated to begin with!).
Pete Gunnell
2019-03-09 09:53:42 +0000 UTCYes, an interesting life it is. I only trade our own money but have been involved with others doing the same for a decade and a half. It does take strategy, consistency and patience to beat the market. No, I never have been attracted into the crypto currencies. That is a wonderfully interesting perspective on 500px and a good alternative goal. Finding someone to model after, whose work really appeals to me, is a good idea and is consistent to the number one rule in trading. I know you have shared some names but are there other sources we might consider as Photo Artists sources? Those are good considerations on Youtube. One thing on Youtube for me personally is that when the content is deep with many steps to accomplish the outcome, I may well spend near an hour or more playing the 10 plus minutes as I work thru duplicating your steps and understanding what you did. With my two screens, on one I play the tutorial and one I do the steps until I get behind. Then I go back and play it again until I am satisfied I have learned. I am going faster as time passes. I wonder if this is true for others? It reminds me of my webinars where I talk for an hour on what took me five minutes to do. Thanks again my friend – Bob D
Bob Domine
2019-03-09 04:01:22 +0000 UTCI started out as a child...I was born at a very early age...Ok, enough levity. I remember getting to use my father’s 35mm camera to take pictures in high school (1964) which landed me on the school newspaper. In college I studied Biology and also worked on the newspaper and yearbook taking pictures. One of my jobs, to pay for school, was salesman in a camera shop. Through this, I bought a used Linhof 4”x 5” (film size) studio view camera which lead me to the world of large format photography and several paid photography jobs (I did a product catalogue for a manufacturing company). I learned a lot about photography by studying the Masters like Adams, Weston, Penn, etc. and trying to emulate their style. While working as a research scientist for a pharmaceutical company, I spent my free time working for a commercial photographer in New York, as an unpaid assistant (and learned I never wanted to work as a professional photographer - what a high pressure life!). Over the years I did less and less photography but I taught myself Photoshop and used it to do retouching jobs for people at work. After 30 years as a scientist, I retired to where I am now, living in a small home in the Connecticut woods. I’ve moved my whole computer life to an iPad Pro and spend my days: reading, searching the Internet for news, learning to use software like Affinity Photo and Designer, and taking whatever courses in art and science I can find. I spend hours restoring damaged photographs I find on the net , just for myself. My time is full, so here I am.
Greg Hartwick
2019-03-07 22:41:16 +0000 UTCThat sounds like a interesting life. Do you trade equities with your own money or for customers? I hear it's really hard to beat the market. Did you invest in Bitcoin too? 500px is a bit of a candy land. So don't feel pressured by their aesthetic. I would rather suggest you search for some interesting Photo Artist you admire and try to get close to their quality. I'm sure 500px has great stuff too, but they feature a ton of overly Aesthetic works. Of course if that's your thing, that's good too. I love beautiful things too. That sounds like a good idea, although in that case i would reduce my views on youtube. And, even though i do not consider youtube my lead generator, that exposure is important to build all other income sources over time. The more people watch me, the bigger i am as a brand, the easier it is to sell something and have this become my main job. That said, with the views i have and the very positive responses i get i should already earn a lot more. So i certainly have to improve on that. Udemy and Skillshare are steps in that direction that are also something i can justify as not just a money move. Because there simply is no way to make a 4 hour tutorial series, consisting of 40 videos on youtube. especially since random people would pop into every video, not knowing what is going on. So that's a product that is worth the money and can't be done any other way.
Olivio Sarikas
2019-03-07 20:36:35 +0000 UTCHi Olivio,This is very good! In reading Kevin’s response, I thought that is nearly my story as well! Thirty years as a mechanical engineering with the last 7 as an interface between engineering and IT folks. Then for another 17 years managing a small business. And yes, that makes me older than Kevin and maybe Pete. Now I trade equities and derivatives along with hosting a weekly webinar in that venue. On the art side of me, I enjoyed it much in my teen age years as I did some pencil drawing and considered a career path to be a cartoonist before that changed to engineering. As an aside, I am related to the painter, Grandma Moses who was first cousin to my grandmother. I’m not sure that helps. I started on your channel along with a few other channels I have since dropped to become proficient at photo editing and to become adept at Affinity. Your tutorials have attracted me toward my artistic side with recent attraction to transforming photos into paintings, thus my interest in a drawing tablet. Thanks for your counsel on that. My Wacom arrived yesterday. The expansion to reach more people with a broader and more capable platform than Youtube is great but I will credit greatly the excellent tutorials you have shared so far. They have been extremely helpful to me. One of my goals is to have something respectable to present on 500Px. I would like to see a few tutorials on review of the 500px submitted photos on what you find artistically attractive as well as this that could be improved from that perspective. This would be helpful in other photographic – artwork venues. One idea I have as a business person to draw the participants over to Patreon from Youtube is to only move half of your tutorials over from Patreon and encourage those who follow you on Youtube to take the step to get the other half. It is hard for many to take extra steps to pay for something that they perceive they are getting for free. Thanks again for what you are doing! We all appreciate it. Bob D
Bob Domine
2019-03-07 04:01:20 +0000 UTCThat sounds very interesting. I have no background in Art, no education (formal or informal) - indeed my ignorance in it knows no bounds! This channel is the very first time Ive attempted anything like it. I can empathise with Kevin, having been in Engineering, Law, and Management. But, although I retired many years ago now, its only been since declining health has also meant worsening physical abilities (ok, and mental, and finances) that limit what I can do. So, I have only the vaguest of ideas about art (i.e. limits of available materials, fashion, cultural acceptability) but none about what makes it 'appeal'. For example, your references (in previous videos) to somebody looking into/out of an image. And I guess I can appreciate what some find to be beautiful (and others might not) - for example, I love the flowing rounded shapes of an old Jaguar car - to my eye, much better than..... well, I won't go there. :) And I find fascinating, snippets about architectural proportions (but would have to admit that some of it seems to go overboard) and how such things can have relevance more generally in paintings that aren't about architecture. However, they are just that - snippets - and can be overcooked (i.e. rule of thirds might not always work?). So, I shall be interested to see where you take this and, as ever, wish you all the best of luck with it! :))
Pete Gunnell
2019-03-05 14:40:13 +0000 UTCHi Kevin, thank you for that feedback. Don't worry, there is always room to play with creative ideas, and the good thing is that they all start with simple questions. How deep you want to dive into them, is total up to you. But a live long scholar and a hobbyist can both start with a simple question like "what is beauty". Trying to pinpoint the moment where beauty ends, as an example, and something else starts, can be a very simple, yet rewarding exercise, that doesn't need any preparation or longtime involvement. The eyelash of a beautiful women, suddenly becomes repulsive if we find it in our soup. The cold coffee from this morning suddenly becomes attractive when we add some crushed ice to it and call it iced coffee.
Olivio Sarikas
2019-03-05 12:09:30 +0000 UTCHi Olivio, your ideas sound exciting. As a person with a background in engineering, I have an interest is photography (as many engineers do). My approach to it has more or less always been 'technical' to achieve a fine image using all the settings on the camera etc. I enjoy delving into the details of the camera and will experiment with them so that I can put them to use 'one day'. The up-shot of that is that the images tend to be 'record' shots and my editing tries to enhance them in some small way (colour balance, sharpness etc). I rarely, if ever, have creativity in mind at this stage. And this is where your channel is beginning to open my eyes. Creativity worries me as a logical thinker as there is no 'right' answer or you know when you have solved the 'problem' and can feel satisfied when a job is done. I tell you this from my point of view just so that you can appreciate what a low base (in creativity terms) I am starting from. Having said this I am prepared to learn and have a go at things, although being over 60 , I might learn a bit slower! I know there are others on this channel with far more artistic experience than me and I wouldn't want to hold them (or you) back in the pace or depth that you might go. Just to add that photography (and editing) is a hobby and I don't have an outlet for my creations (and at this stage, I'm not sure I want one). Maybe that will change one day! I hope that helps to describe where one of your students is starting from.
Kevin Phillips
2019-03-05 10:26:01 +0000 UTC
