Michael Andrew's Blog, page 70
July 18, 2017
How Does This Benefit Me - Episode #008
Good morning everyone! Today I'm going to talk about a question, an uncomfortable question that you should make a part of your life. It is going to really greatly improve your efficiency. The question is "How does this benefit me?" This is something that you should verbally say to other people when they come asking for things. In the book, I talked about a lot of wins and loss scenarios. Somebody wants you to do something for them and the reason this question is so important to me because there was a study done I'm sure you've heard of it were nurses at care centers made a list of the top 5 things that people regretted most about not doing. One of them was not saying the right thing at the right time, the right place for the right person. Typically, when people ask me for favors, it is usually pretty clear what they want but sometimes it is not clear what I am getting in return. This may be going to sound super arrogant or greedy. Sometimes it's just a miscommunication, maybe there is a breakdown or maybe I did not understand what the benefit was. I've come to learn that when I ask this question to myself as well to another person, things become crystal clear very quickly. If somebody comes to you and asks you for your time or your knowledge or service or whatever it is without any kind of exchange, in some ways that should be viewed as they're gonna take a little bit of advantage of you. I know this is going to make people disagree with me. But there was a time when I was in Alabama many years ago, I have a pickup truck and I helped some people move in my church. Word got that I have a truck and that I help people move. After a couple of months, I started getting phone calls almost every Saturday morning from people I didn't even know asking to not only use my truck but to use me as well to help them move for free! For no pay! I eventually figured out what was going on and how this was getting out. I confronted the person to stop giving out my phone number to people to become a free moving service. Something I wish I would have done is just ask each of these individuals how would this benefit me. Because when you do that, you're kind of exposing the person to acknowledging that you may not be getting anything in return. If they say it's for experience or for charity or for service, they're basically wasting your time. But if they say they are paying for it and you get the experience or do something for in return, then you have a fair and equal exchange.
It is brutal and almost slap in the face to ask somebody that question but in some cases, you can definitely clear up miscommunication, but it can kind exposes that they are trying to use you. So occasionally, I will ask that question if I don't fully understand the offer or if I feel that they are asking for my time or money. That's a really important question you're gonna be given offers all time. You going to see these offers coming into your lap. One huge problem that I see is that there are individuals out there who can't say no. For whatever reason, they just feel it's mean or it's wrong to say no when somebody comes and asks for help. I would say get comfortable saying no. Maintain that control, maintain your schedule. If you are not sure how you are benefiting from the requests, turn it down. This is definitely a great question to ask somebody when they come to you and it's not really clear what you are getting out of it. "How will this benefit me?"
In any event, thank you guys for listening and I'll see you next time!
Quality vs Convenience - Episode #008
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Good morning everyone. Michael the Maven here. Today we are going to be talking about Quality vs. Convenience. This is another chapter that's painfully removed from "Efficiency Playbook" simply because I didn't feel it really fit into the tactics that I was giving. It's more of an observation in something I wanted my readers to be aware of but it was something definitely I wanted to do a follow up with.
The easiest example I can give you is because I'm a photographer; in the photography world over the past few years, we have seen just this huge uprising of the smartphone. The smartphones have essentially killed off the point and shoot cameras that we used to buy; those little cameras that we put in our pockets or purses, maybe the size of a wallet or something like that. They've pretty much killed those off because we have cameras built into our smartphones and we don't need to carry this little camera around anymore; that market essentially died.
The question then becomes, how is the quality of a smartphone photo? If you go and you ask a professional photographer or Michael the Maven, what would he tell you? I will tell right off the bat, the quality is nothing like a full frame camera. It's because of the sensor size. There are physical limits of a small sensor; that's not to say that the small sensor hasn't improved, it definitely has improved in quality. If you were to take that same technology and put it in the big sensor, the physical size of a large sensor plays a very important role in the creation of a digital image. Right off the bat, something you probably notice is that, if you try to use your smartphone or a cellphone to take a picture in a very dark environment, it really struggles with something we call noise. This is the grime that you see where everything is kind of pixelated and muddy. It just doesn't look very good. This is a physical limit of a small sensor. It is not absorbing as much light as something that a large full frame sensor would to the physical surface area. It runs into problems with the interpolations of colors and noise reduction. The more light that you have coming into your sensor; the higher signal to noise ratio. Therefore, right off the bat, small sensors struggle in low light and probably always will. That's the first thing.
The second thing is something that we refer to as bokeh. This is a background blur in our images; very small sensors have a much deeper depth of fields. If you have large sensor your relative depth of field for the same type of lens in terms of the aperture of bokeh length are going to be a lot more blurry. This is something artistic that most photographers want in their portraits and it gives a very pleasing optical blurred to the background.
What's happening now, these companies like Apple are putting software into the smartphones to create this fake blur; the digital blur to soften up the image. I don't think it looks very good, it will probably improve over time. I do think that software wise eventually it will be figured out. I think that is something that solvable. I don't think that the low light thing is very solvable as the small sensor, not anytime soon at least because of the limited physics but the software stuff; I think they're going to figure that out to make it look really pleasing.
The third thing we run into; the third problem is the lens issues. There's certain defect in lenses and there are certain problems with constructing very small lenses such as continuance that you see the size like a green pea or smaller; that is typically a wide angle lens. Anywhere from twenty-two to thirty millimeters in terms of the focal length and that is not the focal length you want to use to take a portrait.
What's happened; everybody is taking selfies. The selfie phenomenon wasn't even around seven to eight years ago. This is something that has become more and more popular. When I first heard of selfies, I thought it was kind of narcissistic arrogant kind of thing; it was like to take a picture of yourself but now it's an accepted norm. It's very normal to see people taking pictures of themselves. Society has changed in that way for the sake of selfies; it's accepted.
Photographically speaking, taking a selfie of yourself with a wide angle lens is probably one of the most unflattering focal lengths you can use because it stretches your face in ways that are not pleasing. If you take a look at the forehead and watch how it stretches and the chin is in the body or compressed it almost becomes cartoonish but because we are using smartphones so much, what's happen is, our society become conditioned into believing that smartphones selfies are high quality. A lot of this has happened on Instagram because everybody's taking pictures of themselves, posting them on Instagram or whatnot.
Society, I believe has become conditioned through social media; through the invention of the selfie, to believe that a really poor quality image is actually good. If you talked to a portrait photographer or somebody who really knows what they're doing, a lot of the top and experts; they're shooting at minimal fifty-millimeter focal length, maybe seventy. I like to shoot around a hundred and up. If I'm shooting a person, a hundred millimeters, it makes them look far more flattering. It looks like they've lost ten, twenty pounds when you shoot somebody with a hundred or two hundred millimeter lens.
I have a video on YouTube about lens perspective. I'll put it in a description here if you are listening to the podcast and you can watch that video and you can see with your own eyes what happens when you take a portrait of individuals with wide angle lenses. Something that we're starting to see now is smartphones companies. They're starting to put multiple lenses in the device. You have wide angle lens maybe like a thirty or twenty-five millimeters and then you're going to have like a normal lens; fifty millimeters. Fifty millimeter is far more flattering than a thirty millimeter because they are aware of the limits of a wide angle lens in a smartphone; the prospective gets messed up. You kind of limited.
There are some other problems with a very small lens; it depends on the manufacturer with things like a chromatic aberration, probably also cleaedn up by software, lens distortion to warping of the image when you shoot very wide. It's probably also clean up by software. Then you run into this thing called sharpness; another thing that can be fixed by software. What happens is, if you have all these software fixes, we're not looking at the optical quality of an image anymore. We are looking at something that's been processed. It's something that I thought was very interesting was I think, two years ago, it was Reuters; the news agency said they are no longer accepting raw files from a photo journalist. I thought that was fascinating. The reason why they decided to do that in my understanding is that raw files are too flexible in post processing. It wouldn't be the original image as it was captured so they were asking for jpegs. I thought that was really insightful because they are aware of what is happening with software processing on to digital images.
This is what's happening in society right now, the visual arts in terms of social media, especially, it's degrading. I believe it's gotten the worse already. I think there are some things that we can do. If we look at the very high-end artists, all of them are shooting a film on super thirty five which is about APS size sensor. The top world class portrait photographers are shooting on full frame. Some of them are shooting on medium formats. The very high-end magazine photographers are shooting on Hasselblads. We are talking about fifty thousand dollars digital cameras. You got a sporting event, by far the vast majority of them are shooting on full frame. When you look at what the professionals are doing versus the individual; everyday person, there is still a very distinct advantage in terms of quality to the professional who is aware of the gear that he's using.
Why in the world would I go through that whole description to outline something called Quality versus Convenience? The truth of the matter is all of those photographers who use those high-end cameras, pretty much all of them have a smartphone. They also use their smartphone for convenient images. There are a time and a place to use it for convenience.
For example, when I go on to a disaster aid trip, I bring my iPhone. I don't bring a big camera anymore simply because it's too heavy to extra batteries, the lenses and that space and weight I could dedicate to gear. I bring an iPhone in a way to keep it charged. I might have solar panels that I can recharge my battery pack. It's very light. It's very convenient. It's a tremendous tool that both for stills, GPS positioning, the video recording. I'd do my email on it obviously and it is extremely convenient. I think the point that I'm trying to get to here is that in the "Efficiency Playbook "I'm always talking about saving time, saving time, becoming more free. You have to be aware of the distinction of what should be a quality interaction with somebody versus what should be a quick, fast, efficient interaction with somebody. Those are not the same things. It does make a difference to have quality.
Let me get more specific. When I was a kid, we will go outside and we will play with each other. We would build fords, we would play tags and we would run around. This is what we did. We didn't have computers. I was a kid when Nintendo came out, to give you some perspective of how old I am but we played outside with our friends most of the time. What I am seeing now is our kids are locked into their smartphones, in their Ipads, in their computers and this has become the new social mean of interaction. I'm not saying that kids don't play. Obviously, they do. Some parents who are aware of this and making sure that their kids are having a normal social life growing up interacting. I think if we limit or have most of the social interactions to online: Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat. This is not a real world. I also know some stories of children who had been devastated, who would post something online, they didn't get enough likes and it hurts their self-esteem. Some of them as you read in the news do terrible things to themselves. There is something that has been lost through social media in terms of quality of relationship with other individuals.
Another example that I can give you is fast-food. We are all hungry and sometimes we just want to get a quick bite to eat so if you look at something like McDonald's. McDonald's is not known for its quality of food. There are lots of activists got working against McDonald's because of the ingredients in the food. That has not stopped or slowed McDonald's down at all. They're all over the world. The funny thing is when I go overseas and I see McDonald's it seems like my favorite restaurant for some reason. As soon as I come back to the US, I don't go to McDonald's. I go when I'm overseas because it's something that I know and I can relate to and I want to taste American food.
The reason why I'm going through all this is to make you aware that there is a battle going on between convenience and quality. Right now, quality is losing when you look at the numbers. We're degrading the quality of our life for the sake of convenience. So, in the "Efficiency Playbook," there are definitely things that you should do just for the sake of efficiency, to be quick, to be fast, to be easy. I definitely do not believe that convenience is greater than quality. When I talked about this spark when I talked about speed, it is better than perfection, that is really a measure of convenience versus quality. Speed usually does beat perfection. In so many things that I can think of, It's better to have it fast turnaround than a perfect turnaround. If you are able to produce and get that content even for podcast or what not, the ability to get it out quickly is super important at the same time I don't want to put out content that is not meaningful or quality. I have a list of topics that I have to go through and it's literary hundreds of items long. I'll sit down and I'll outline exactly what I want to cover in each podcast. I don't want to skimp on quality but there's also this speed consideration. This is dynamic that you're always going to be struggling with for the sake of freedom to improve the quality of your life, not to make it faster, not to do things that are going to diminish your relationship with others, to give you more free time so you can spend it the way that you want. If you have a family and kids or close friends or a loved one, that is what is real, that is what quality is, not getting likes on Instagram or Facebook. You shouldn't be measuring especially your kids should not be measuring their self-esteem based on the number of likes they get. That is not a relationship but it happens all the time. There are some children who are not popular than others and therefore self-esteem could be damaged.
That's the thought that I want to give. Definitely be aware of the quality versus convenience.
Good morning everyone. Michael the Maven here. Today we are going to be talking about Quality vs. Convenience. This is another chapter that's painfully removed from "Efficiency Playbook" simply because I didn't feel it really fit into the tactics that I was giving. It's more of an observation in something I wanted my readers to be aware of but it was something definitely I wanted to do a follow up with.
The easiest example I can give you is because I'm a photographer; in the photography world over the past few years, we have seen just this huge uprising of the smartphone. The smartphones have essentially killed off the point and shoot cameras that we used to buy; those little cameras that we put in our pockets or purses, maybe the size of a wallet or something like that. They've pretty much killed those off because we have cameras built into our smartphones and we don't need to carry this little camera around anymore; that market essentially died.
The question then becomes, how is the quality of a smartphone photo? If you go and you ask a professional photographer or Michael the Maven, what would he tell you? I will tell right off the bat, the quality is nothing like a full frame camera. It's because of the sensor size. There are physical limits of a small sensor; that's not to say that the small sensor hasn't improved, it definitely has improved in quality. If you were to take that same technology and put it in the big sensor, the physical size of a large sensor plays a very important role in the creation of a digital image. Right off the bat, something you probably notice is that, if you try to use your smartphone or a cellphone to take a picture in a very dark environment, it really struggles with something we call noise. This is the grime that you see where everything is kind of pixelated and muddy. It just doesn't look very good. This is a physical limit of a small sensor. It is not absorbing as much light as something that a large full frame sensor would to the physical surface area. It runs into problems with the interpolations of colors and noise reduction. The more light that you have coming into your sensor; the higher signal to noise ratio. Therefore, right off the bat, small sensors struggle in low light and probably always will. That's the first thing.
The second thing is something that we refer to as bokeh. This is a background blur in our images; very small sensors have a much deeper depth of fields. If you have large sensor your relative depth of field for the same type of lens in terms of the aperture of bokeh length are going to be a lot more blurry. This is something artistic that most photographers want in their portraits and it gives a very pleasing optical blurred to the background.
What's happening now, these companies like Apple are putting software into the smartphones to create this fake blur; the digital blur to soften up the image. I don't think it looks very good, it will probably improve over time. I do think that software wise eventually it will be figured out. I think that is something that solvable. I don't think that the low light thing is very solvable as the small sensor, not anytime soon at least because of the limited physics but the software stuff; I think they're going to figure that out to make it look really pleasing.
The third thing we run into; the third problem is the lens issues. There's certain defect in lenses and there are certain problems with constructing very small lenses such as continuance that you see the size like a green pea or smaller; that is typically a wide angle lens. Anywhere from twenty-two to thirty millimeters in terms of the focal length and that is not the focal length you want to use to take a portrait.
What's happened; everybody is taking selfies. The selfie phenomenon wasn't even around seven to eight years ago. This is something that has become more and more popular. When I first heard of selfies, I thought it was kind of narcissistic arrogant kind of thing; it was like to take a picture of yourself but now it's an accepted norm. It's very normal to see people taking pictures of themselves. Society has changed in that way for the sake of selfies; it's accepted.
Photographically speaking, taking a selfie of yourself with a wide angle lens is probably one of the most unflattering focal lengths you can use because it stretches your face in ways that are not pleasing. If you take a look at the forehead and watch how it stretches and the chin is in the body or compressed it almost becomes cartoonish but because we are using smartphones so much, what's happen is, our society become conditioned into believing that smartphones selfies are high quality. A lot of this has happened on Instagram because everybody's taking pictures of themselves, posting them on Instagram or whatnot.
Society, I believe has become conditioned through social media; through the invention of the selfie, to believe that a really poor quality image is actually good. If you talked to a portrait photographer or somebody who really knows what they're doing, a lot of the top and experts; they're shooting at minimal fifty-millimeter focal length, maybe seventy. I like to shoot around a hundred and up. If I'm shooting a person, a hundred millimeters, it makes them look far more flattering. It looks like they've lost ten, twenty pounds when you shoot somebody with a hundred or two hundred millimeter lens.
I have a video on YouTube about lens perspective. I'll put it in a description here if you are listening to the podcast and you can watch that video and you can see with your own eyes what happens when you take a portrait of individuals with wide angle lenses. Something that we're starting to see now is smartphones companies. They're starting to put multiple lenses in the device. You have wide angle lens maybe like a thirty or twenty-five millimeters and then you're going to have like a normal lens; fifty millimeters. Fifty millimeter is far more flattering than a thirty millimeter because they are aware of the limits of a wide angle lens in a smartphone; the prospective gets messed up. You kind of limited.
There are some other problems with a very small lens; it depends on the manufacturer with things like a chromatic aberration, probably also cleaedn up by software, lens distortion to warping of the image when you shoot very wide. It's probably also clean up by software. Then you run into this thing called sharpness; another thing that can be fixed by software. What happens is, if you have all these software fixes, we're not looking at the optical quality of an image anymore. We are looking at something that's been processed. It's something that I thought was very interesting was I think, two years ago, it was Reuters; the news agency said they are no longer accepting raw files from a photo journalist. I thought that was fascinating. The reason why they decided to do that in my understanding is that raw files are too flexible in post processing. It wouldn't be the original image as it was captured so they were asking for jpegs. I thought that was really insightful because they are aware of what is happening with software processing on to digital images.
This is what's happening in society right now, the visual arts in terms of social media, especially, it's degrading. I believe it's gotten the worse already. I think there are some things that we can do. If we look at the very high-end artists, all of them are shooting a film on super thirty five which is about APS size sensor. The top world class portrait photographers are shooting on full frame. Some of them are shooting on medium formats. The very high-end magazine photographers are shooting on Hasselblads. We are talking about fifty thousand dollars digital cameras. You got a sporting event, by far the vast majority of them are shooting on full frame. When you look at what the professionals are doing versus the individual; everyday person, there is still a very distinct advantage in terms of quality to the professional who is aware of the gear that he's using.
Why in the world would I go through that whole description to outline something called Quality versus Convenience? The truth of the matter is all of those photographers who use those high-end cameras, pretty much all of them have a smartphone. They also use their smartphone for convenient images. There are a time and a place to use it for convenience.
For example, when I go on to a disaster aid trip, I bring my iPhone. I don't bring a big camera anymore simply because it's too heavy to extra batteries, the lenses and that space and weight I could dedicate to gear. I bring an iPhone in a way to keep it charged. I might have solar panels that I can recharge my battery pack. It's very light. It's very convenient. It's a tremendous tool that both for stills, GPS positioning, the video recording. I'd do my email on it obviously and it is extremely convenient. I think the point that I'm trying to get to here is that in the "Efficiency Playbook "I'm always talking about saving time, saving time, becoming more free. You have to be aware of the distinction of what should be a quality interaction with somebody versus what should be a quick, fast, efficient interaction with somebody. Those are not the same things. It does make a difference to have quality.
Let me get more specific. When I was a kid, we will go outside and we will play with each other. We would build fords, we would play tags and we would run around. This is what we did. We didn't have computers. I was a kid when Nintendo came out, to give you some perspective of how old I am but we played outside with our friends most of the time. What I am seeing now is our kids are locked into their smartphones, in their Ipads, in their computers and this has become the new social mean of interaction. I'm not saying that kids don't play. Obviously, they do. Some parents who are aware of this and making sure that their kids are having a normal social life growing up interacting. I think if we limit or have most of the social interactions to online: Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat. This is not a real world. I also know some stories of children who had been devastated, who would post something online, they didn't get enough likes and it hurts their self-esteem. Some of them as you read in the news do terrible things to themselves. There is something that has been lost through social media in terms of quality of relationship with other individuals.
Another example that I can give you is fast-food. We are all hungry and sometimes we just want to get a quick bite to eat so if you look at something like McDonald's. McDonald's is not known for its quality of food. There are lots of activists got working against McDonald's because of the ingredients in the food. That has not stopped or slowed McDonald's down at all. They're all over the world. The funny thing is when I go overseas and I see McDonald's it seems like my favorite restaurant for some reason. As soon as I come back to the US, I don't go to McDonald's. I go when I'm overseas because it's something that I know and I can relate to and I want to taste American food.
The reason why I'm going through all this is to make you aware that there is a battle going on between convenience and quality. Right now, quality is losing when you look at the numbers. We're degrading the quality of our life for the sake of convenience. So, in the "Efficiency Playbook," there are definitely things that you should do just for the sake of efficiency, to be quick, to be fast, to be easy. I definitely do not believe that convenience is greater than quality. When I talked about this spark when I talked about speed, it is better than perfection, that is really a measure of convenience versus quality. Speed usually does beat perfection. In so many things that I can think of, It's better to have it fast turnaround than a perfect turnaround. If you are able to produce and get that content even for podcast or what not, the ability to get it out quickly is super important at the same time I don't want to put out content that is not meaningful or quality. I have a list of topics that I have to go through and it's literary hundreds of items long. I'll sit down and I'll outline exactly what I want to cover in each podcast. I don't want to skimp on quality but there's also this speed consideration. This is dynamic that you're always going to be struggling with for the sake of freedom to improve the quality of your life, not to make it faster, not to do things that are going to diminish your relationship with others, to give you more free time so you can spend it the way that you want. If you have a family and kids or close friends or a loved one, that is what is real, that is what quality is, not getting likes on Instagram or Facebook. You shouldn't be measuring especially your kids should not be measuring their self-esteem based on the number of likes they get. That is not a relationship but it happens all the time. There are some children who are not popular than others and therefore self-esteem could be damaged.
That's the thought that I want to give. Definitely be aware of the quality versus convenience.
July 17, 2017
The Maven Nation - Now Live on iTunes!
Im happy to announce that The Maven Nation podcast is now available for subscription through iTunes. I believe this is the best way to follow, and currently iTunes is the only one publishing it. We expect to hear back from other services shortly. Here is the link:
The Maven Nation on iTunes
Im undecided on whether or not we will still post these in the blog, but seems that many visitors are playing and reading the transcripts here so, we will keep it for now.
Any constructive feedback is welcome!
July 16, 2017
Bait-and-Switch - Episode #007
Good morning everyone! Michael the Maven here! Today we are going to talk about another class of people that I do not like. I think we've all been guilty of it at some point. I probably have done it myself. When I see this in a formal business setting, a huge red flag goes up and I say to myself "I'm not gonna deal with this person anymore." This is the bait and switcher. If somebody promises something upfront and then, later on, reneges because it was verbally given. I can't go on to details of this specific situation. At one point, I would definitely tell you guys about this.
There are people out there who know that a spoken word is very difficult to deal with. If somebody says something, it is very difficult to prove that later if there are no witnesses especially in film production, there are a lot of people who talk. They're talkers and they are not doers. There is a very obvious distinction. Everybody has a film they are working on but certain individuals never actually create a film. They are always talking about it. There is a website service I was trying to sign up for last week. It is all in one service.. all in one... one fee. That sounds amazing and so I go in there and sign up. There were some ad ons that you would spend some extra money for in order to get all the services. That is a bait and switch! It's when you make a promise, it turns out, guess what, that wasn't a promise. I realized that if this is happening during a honeymoon phase when I'm signing up for this product, they are kinda like deceiving me a little bit during the honeymoon phase, they are definitely going to deceive me later on. I decided not to use the service. That one thing alone, in the upsell, wasn't even that much money. It was the principle of it that they would bring you in under one guise and then they switch it to something else the examples that are really sticking out in my mind that I can;t really talk about was those individuals who make incredible promises to a number of people, but because those people did not sign contract, there was no way to prove it.
If you're giving somebody money, with the idea that they are going to pay you back, you absolutely need to have it written down on a piece of paper. This sounds very pity but it forms a legal record that will allow you to recover your money. Another thing that it will is to teach that person that you are not easy to take advantage of, not easy to get money from because there are legal documents.
That is one of the biggest mistakes I've seen in the business world if there are partnership or an agreement or relationship, there is no written contract. That's a huge mistake! That's how you defeat bait-and-switchers... get it recorded on paper with other witnesses there who are willing to testify if needed. Keep that as a red flag, if you see something or business or somebody offering you something and then they switch it, that is a form of deception. It is I believe unethical. I think your word is your bond. If you make a promise to somebody, you should keep it even verbally, even by a handshake. Even still, I prefer written contracts. Your memory sometimes changes. You may be accused of being a bait-and-switcher just simply because your memory change. But when you have a written contract, the words are on paper and there is no misunderstanding. That solves the problem. So definitely write it down.
Thank goodness I have a really good and close friend who kept the pressure on me in a certain business transaction. Bait-and-switching is a very real, very underhanded tactic that some people will use.. will offer you something, will offer you the world and then once you give them that they want, they just say. "Well, that wasn't the agreement. That wasn't what I said This is mine, not yours." Better believe it. Be careful about those individuals who are offering you something. Get it on paper if the value is over $50.
Thank you guys so much for listening. I hope you have a wonderful day today. And I will see you next time!
July 15, 2017
Sure had a fun time at the track tonight for a...
Sure had a fun time at the track tonight for a real world shoot between the #canon1dxii #nikonD5 and #sonya9 - thank you @tifftshiff for coming to help and taking this picture- I'm learning so much about each of these cameras and getting an idea of each of their strengths and weaknesses. #epicshootout
July 14, 2017
In a sport shooting match up between the 1Dxii, A9...
In a sport shooting match up between the 1Dxii, A9 and D5, each with their manufacturers best 70-200 2.8 lens, which of the three would you think absolutely annihilated the other two? (Hint: it basically happened this am, and it wasn't the one I thought would) I think this #epicshootout will be finished in about 10 days. #squadgoals #a9 #nikonphotography #canonphotography #canon1dxii #sony #d5 #sonya9
War for The Planet of the Apes
Mixed feelings on this:
Liked: World class CGI, great emotional investment connection with the characters (one of the most important things for any movie). To me the film was asking the question: What defines humanity?
Disliked: Political undertones. Im not a fan of overt political propaganda in entertainment I pay for.It never pays off well for me. There were some editing issues, the mid to late part dragged out. The payoff at the end didn't fit right for me either, it sort of felt like it wasn't so much about the planet of the apes at all.
Recommendation: Very good, an absolute yes no rental, 50-50 on seeing it in theaters. It isn't for every one, but many of you will enjoy it.
July 13, 2017
6 Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make - Episode #006
Good morning everyone! Today we are going to be talking about the top 6 mistakes a new entrepreneur makes. This is just my opinion, not based on study or anything in that nature. This is what I've seen in the real world, from my friends, and from my photography students. These 6 things that tend to mess up the most when you're starting new. This is in no particular order. Some of these are more important than others but I just want to give you my list.
- They are risk inverse. They are afraid to take chances. I talked about this a little bit in the book. I talked about tearing up a hundred dollar bill. The number one problem that new entrepreneurs have is they are fearful of failure. The truth of the matter is if you are an aggressive entrepreneur, you will look at failure as an opportunity to learn. You want to make a mistake quickly so you attack because you want to fail. And then learn those lessons and make the adjustments and move on. But time and again, this is preventing people from becoming business owners, is because they are afraid. There are a lot of fantastic ideas out there for businesses that I've seen from countless associates. But they do not have the courage or the willpower to bring it too far. That is far more important than a spectacular idea for the business. If you look at more common things such as selling pineapples on the side of the road or cleaning swimming pools, that's something my dad does or any kind of lawn care services, it's not really a sexy idea but because they are willing to roll the dice as entrepreneurs, they are able to have that business. That is a critical barrier to entry. In my mind, to become an entrepreneur, you have to be brave and courageous to deal with risks. Live with it and not hesitate because of the chance to fail. The best entrepreneur is looking at failure as a classroom. They have full speed.
- There is no competitive advantage to the business. When I say that, what I mean is if you are going to have a business and is going to be spectacularly successful, and you do not have a competitive advantage, somebody is going to come and attempt to steal it from you. This is not really a place to go on what a competitive advantage is. Think of it as a barrier that prevents people from doing what you're doing. This could be a trademark, or a formula, a brand name, a personality.. things that are not replicable. When somebody comes to me and say. " Hey, Michael. I have a business idea and this is what I want to do." I will say. "That's a great idea but the problem is you can't protect it from somebody else steals it." It's very common to see that. No competitive advantage.
- New entrepreneurs often do not understand what marketing is. I have seen this so many times from very talented and creative individuals who make a product, start a business and they're unable to get it in front of those who are their target market... The people who would buy it. There is one example I am thinking of. In this person's mind, marketing is posting a picture on Facebook or Instagram. They believe that is marketing. Well, that is only soliciting to their circle of friends. The truth of the matter is Facebook and Instagram limit how many people see that. If you guys remember business pages on Facebook when it first started, when you post something, pretty much everybody saw it. What a powerful tool. All the people following your business would see and then they changed it. Now, it's only 1% of your business followers would actually see something that you put on Facebook. The idea is that Facebook wants you to pay and it's worth for them. Yes, you have to pay to get your promotion in front of your followers. That's kind of messed up. Marketing is getting your products and services in front of the people who really want it. This means strangers. People who are not in your pool of customers already. Finding new customers. Finding where they are. It's sort of like fishing, you have to understand what kind of fishing going after, where they exist, how to bait the hook, how to get it in front of them. That is a totally different discussion. Marketing is a very common problem. If you are not able to get your product in front of the people who want it, you're gonna have problems.
- Trying to create a business instead of trying to capture a demand for their products and services. For example, an entrepreneur wants to start consignment clothing store. She focused on finding the place, finding the building, talking about rent, figuring out how to set up the storefront instead of figuring out where are the customers that would come to the store in doing some demographic research. Location in retail is huge. Just because you have a storefront does not mean people are going to come. It has to be in the right place. Let's say somebody wants to start a business who needs a web programmer to make the website. They go out and hire one. Spend a couple of thousand dollars and get the website all set up and is ready to go and they do not understand why they are not selling anything. It is because a storefront or a website is not a business. Demand for services is a business. When you have people throwing money at you for something that you have.. now you have a business. That is a business!
Additionally, if you cannot give a product away for free, chances are, you are not going to be able to sell it. if you a new gadget or widget go to your friends and say " Hey, I have ten of these, who wants them." If I am not able to give away all ten of those, I will not invest a lot of money into trying to create a product. That's how the Maven Adapter was born. I had this 3D printer, and I was putting up these adapters that would allow us to connect cameras to window pulling poles and I spent a lot of time developing that. I didn' know what the demand for the product was so I gave it away. I gave them away for a test, not for marketing. I sold out 40 or 50 of them. Just among my friends, I knew there was demand. What I wouldn't do is continue to sell Maven adapter to my friends on Facebook. Once we made the product, I went to the company called Photo Wow, a newsletter for hundreds of thousands of photographers. We had a deal with them and sent them specials offers. That is good marketing because it was a product directly in front of the customers who want to buy it. So if you cannot give it away, you will not gonna be able to sell it.
- They do not focus on their business. What I mean is if you start a company and after a year or two they're having success and they start to say. "Well, I'm good at this. Let me try to do that." Some other business that is completely unrelated to what they are doing now. That is like creating a brand new business. In a world of entrepreneurialism, the chances of starting a new business venture, if you want to do 10 of them in a row, you will be lucky if 1 or 2 of them pan out. The best entrepreneurs are really good at reading out opportunities because they know that there is gonna be a high chance of failure. There have to be certain things in that business in order for it to work out.
When an individual is an expert in something and they're having success, then they try to go out and start a new business in something else where they don't have the specified knowledge or the skills set to thrive, they merely believe that because they're successful at one thing, they're going to be successful in another. Look at Michael Jordan, a spectacular, number one basketball player of all time. He tried baseball, and he went and played baseball for a little bit and he was good at it but not like he was on a basketball court. So you want to play to your strengths in a business world. You don't want to find the thing that you're terrible at just because you're interested in it. That is not enough to start a business. You got to have specialized knowledge in my opinion.
- They pick business ideas that they are not passionate about. In the long run, this is not sustainable. If you pick a business or some kind of work that you don't really enjoy, At some point, you will get tired of it and that is a huge problem because then it becomes work. If you are doing something that you truly love and you're getting paid for it, What a blessing that is! So make sure that you pick something that you really enjoyed doing.
So let's summarize: people are so risk inverse, there's no competitive advantage, they do not understand what marketing is, they try to create a business front instead of focusing on demand, they do not focus on what they are good at, and they pick something that they are not passionate about.
In any event, thank you guys for listening! And I'll see you next time!
How to Read MTF Charts for Beginners
Been getting so many questions about the lenses I use in my Epic Shootouts, that I thought we would go back to the basics and review MTF charts. I hope this clarifies how to read them, as well as tell the difference between (micro) contrast and resolution.
Enjoy!
Enjoy!
