Children & Photography

It seems like my daughter went from zero to 2 years of age in 2 weeks. They grow so fast. Their character changes as do their features and expressions.

If you love photography this is a wonderful time to take as many memorable shots of your children as possible. Unlike other photographic subjects your kids change with time and once this moment passes it can never be regained.

Also it is a wondeful opportunity to hone your photographic skills on a not so easy subject.

When they are calm (yeah, righ!!) it is a chance to use wide aperture settings and capture beautiful shallow depth of field shots.

When they are running around then fast shutter speeds are "in".

Kids are awesome when they do not know when they are being photographed. Zoom lenses and narrow aperture settings allow you to capture those candid shots that will in time become more precious than any amount of money.

Finally don't forget Auto setting! You are no less a photographer by setting your camera to Auto. In fact with children it is often the only way to get "that" shot.

Enjoy your time with your children and take the opportunity to not only practice your photography but also fill that treasure trove of memorable moments.

Stress

My parents were immigrants who came to Australia with nothing after having escaped the war in Europe.

They worked incredibly hard to buy a house and put their two sons through school. But they never lost sight of the fact that they too had lives to live. My dad always wondered about the immigrants who came to Australia, worked and worked and worked, saved and saved and saved, and then dropped dead, never having enjoyed the joys Australia had to offer.

Our generation works and works and works. Mobile phones, Blackerry's, and portable laptops mean that we do not stop working nights, weekends, even when we are on vacation.

Why?

Our health suffers. Our family suffers. Our stress levels go through the roof. So we accumualte money, get big houses, buy great stuff, and then we die.

I am not against hard work.

But I think we have blurred the line between work and play/relaxation. Our wives or husbands or significant others need us. Our kids need us. Our friends need us. We need all of them. We need ourselves (quality time for "me").

A lot of us have seen the world via the Discovery Channel or National Geographic. But we have more money than our parents!! So what is wrong with this picture?

Balance!!! Balance!!! Balance!!!

Work hard when it is time to work and earn money. Relax and enjoy your free time. When we are dead we will have plenty of time on our hands - unfortunately we won't be able to use it to increase the quality of our lives or the lives of our loved oned.

Is too much choice making us unhappy?

I am into photography. I recently decided to purchase a new dSLR. What a nightmare! Do you have any idea how many models of cameras are available for purchase?

Now I would like to digitally manipulate my images. Same horror show. I have to choose from so many digital image manipulation applications it will take me literally months of research to decide on the application that best suits me.

This "challenge" can be applied to anything - TV's, washing machines, any type of software application, etc, etc, etc.

Now I am not saying that choice is bad. It's awesome to have the ability to choose. But when is too much simply "too much"?

First of all will you ever be happy that you chose the right "thing". Did you spend enough time researching you purchase? Should you have waited for the next model? (due out later this afternoon :-)) Now that you've got it are you even sure you wanted it? Will you use it as much as you thought you would or will it end up on a shelf somewhere?

I own a farm in a small village in the Philippines and I have often sat outside and watched the kids play simple games with simple toys as the parents and i talked and drank over a meal. So simple, so pure, so satisfying, so healthy.

Choice is good. Too much choice will make you nuts. It certainly is not making us or our kids happy. Ever bought a toy for your kid that he or she absolutely needed and absolutely needed it now, only to find that it fell out of favor within weeks (or worse still, days) of purchase?

I do not know the answer to this dilemma. What i do know though is that we better start thinking about it because we can going to breed children driven to madness by their inability to choose and their lack of happiness after eventually having made their choice.

Selling your business

If you have a business you need sales. In order to get those sales you need for people to know that you have a business, what that business is all about, and what you have to offer. In other words, you need for the buying public to know that you and your business exist - not an easy task.

In the 21st century everyone is selling everything, from products to advice to religion to just plain craziness.

So what do you do?

Well, the first thing is to accept the fact that it is going to take some time to make yourself known, so factor that into your business plan.

Use the Web!!! There are some great business connection sites out there - the best of all being LinkedIn. Also spread the word on social websites such as Twitter and Facebook.

Start a blog!!!

With all of these Internet based sales/marketing techniques the trick is to keep them updated regularly. Write everyday (obviously about something different). Writing regularly retains readers and gets you up the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) ranks in Google and Yahoo. The higher up the ranks you find yourself the easier readers can find you.

Learn about SEO techniques. Tag your blogs, articles, submissions acurately and extensively so as to get picked up by the search engines.

Tell your friends and ask them to write on these sites about you and your business. This is critical. Don't just tell them what you do, ask them to mention your business in their internet submissions.

Find websites that cover areas of interest related to your business and regularly submit articles, offer opinions, get involved in discussions. This will all help in getting you known as an expert in your field.

There is no magic bullet but regular, consistent, hard work coupled with time will pay off eventually.

Happiness - Living in Saudi Arabia

Dear Readers,

This particular article doesn't at first seem to fit exactly into the main theme of my Blog but actually it is a natural fit and should have been written a long time ago.

Unless we've given up on life we all strive for some form of happiness. Unfortunately for the great majority of us happiness is staring us in the face and we do not know it is there.

I moved to Saudi Arabia 5 years ago. For nearly 3 years I moaned and groaned about what a lousy place it was - I mean there was nothing to do, nowhere to go, and you always ran the risk of being shot by a terrorist, right?

How stupid I was!!! I wasted 3 years of my life!

I was finally prompted to write this article because to this day I still have close friends of mine who think I have crossed over to the "dark side" because I tell them I like living here.

The people are warm, generous, understanding, gracious, and incredibly hospitable.

The food is excellent. It is an amazingly safe place to live. Except for 3 months in summer the weather is great. The schools are very good. The quality of health care is better than I have experienced anywhere in the world. And finally the cost of living is very low. Oh, and we pay no taxes:-)

So there I was, staring happiness in the face for 3 years and I did not know it was there to be savored and enjoyed - all I had to do was open up my heart and mind and look.

The challenge for all of us in this century is that whilst there is no lack of choice available to us we continue to want for peace and contentment. We do not lack for choice unfortunately, we lack for vision.

The therapy of blogging

No-one who knows me would ever put their hand up and swear I was the person they knew who always wanted to be a writer. In fact i never thought about being a writer because my writing style is simply not anywhere near up to par.

So why do I have a blog then?

Well, all my life I have struggled with anxiety and panic attacks. I work hard, obsess about being a failure, and generally stress myself into a state of being very unwell.

So 54 years, plus a lot of alcohol and antidepressants later, i realized I was simply addressing, and not that well either, the symptoms.

I was never into yoga. Chanting never did it for me. Imagery, I must admit, did help. My music teachers eventually considered suicide.

But, the real shocker came when I realized that i was jealous of creative people. What was even more amazing was that these feelings of jealousy were stronger than my desires to earn more and more money and climb the corporate ladder.

So, with no other options available to me, I thought I'd give blogging a shot. Now, here's the kicker. I don't care how bad my writing is or whether or not people approve of it or not. It feels great to write. It de-stresses me. I am under no pressure to do it, I do it because I love to do it, and it makes me feel creative.

So what, you ask? Well I think that most of us are under so much pressure from so many sources that we no longer know how to be happy.

And sometimes the answer is right in front of us.

Do something you've always wanted to do. Don't do it for anyone except yourself. You might just like it. It might just make you feel happy again. There is certainly no downside to trying is there?

Selling your images for profit (for newbie photographers)

If you are anything like me (hopefully not!) then as a newbie photoghrapher you are spending heaps of time on the Internet exploring all the wondeful ways to go about selling your images (if not for money then certainly for the ego boost).

However, i have come to the disturbing realization that I am spending more time exploring how and where to sell my images than i am actually taking the photos in the first place!!

The reason I am writing about this crazy dilemma is that the Internet has opened up the most wonderful environment by which we can learn every minute of every day.

But eventually selling your images can only happen if you have images for sale.

So, for what it is worth, may I suggest that all us budding, newbie photographers spend most of our time taking as many shots as possible until we have a regular stream of orders for images coming in. Taking saleable images means knowing your camera inside out and practice, practice, and practice.

Eventually when we have a significantly large portfolio then we ought to spend significant time on the very important goal of actually selling our images.

Technology nowadays allows lots of people to take relatively good images with their digital cameras. But like any craft, practice does make perfect. If we think our photos look good now then imagine how good they would look if we took 500 shots a day under all sorts of lighting conditions.

The more shots we take the greater the chance of taking that "one" great one that will sell. When we have enough to sell then lets do just that. In the meantime we continue to take the 500 or more shots a day.

More photos means more "great" images. More "great" images translates to money in the bank. Yes, we need to market our "great" shots, but we have to have "great" shots to market.

Happiness and the need for compromise

My wife and I have been bickering, arguing, generally not getting along for the last 2 weeks.

Embarassement prevents from admitting who, but one of us (ok, not me) decided enough was enough, apologized (not because she was wrong but because she was wise enough to understand the pride counts for very little) and explained that 14 days of pain had passed, 14 days we would never get to live again, 14 days we could have been happy and that perhaps the pain of compromise was far easier to accept and cope with than the pain of trying to see who could win.

As individuals we are proud. We want to be right. We want to be uncompromising. Why should we? I mean, aren't we important and others should dance to our tune.

Well, to put it bluntly, NO. As individuals we are not that important. Our problems, issues, concerns, in the scheme of things, are also not that important. Tomorrow a new day will start regardless of whether we are winning the war with our spouses or not or whether we feel hard done by or not.

Do not get me wrong, compromise is very difficult. We want the other person to bow to our demands (even if we do not know what they are).

But compromise is easy compared to maintaining combativeness. There is no such thing as "winning" a fight with your spouse or loved one. Words not only cause damage but, worse still, they cannot be taken back. Their damage and impact is permanent.

Life is short. Days fly by. It is simply criminal to waste them and not make every effort possible to be happy and to contribute to the happiness of those whom we love.

It does feel great to be happy. It feels even better to make others happy.

I realized that if I had put as much effort into making my wife happy during these past 2 weeks as I had into trying to show her she was wrong and I deserved an apology 2 "once in a lifetime" valuable weeks would not have been wasted.

The songwriter who penned "don't worry, be happy" was wiser than I ever gave him credit for.