Lakeland Club for Models and Photographers

Last year, I joined a group on Meetup.com called Central Florida Models and Photography. It is a group of amateur and professional models, make-up artists and Photographers who get together and do some pretty cool photo shoots. It gives the Photographers a chance to work with local talent and it give local models and make-up artists lots of new shots for their portfolios. The only problems with the group are 1) most of the shoots are 1-2 hours away and 2) the group has become so popular the shoots (limited to 40) often fill up before you have a chance to be included.

I have seen several other photography groups ranging from Nature photography to Nude Photography, but most of them are either in Tampa/Clearwater or in Orlando. There just doesn't seem to be a good Polk County alternative.

After talking to Kerri and a few students, we realized we could continue waiting for someone else to give us what we wanted, or we could go ahead and created a Lakeland Photography and Models club that met our needs. So last week, we created The Lakeland Shooters. It is a club open to both professional and amateurs who have an interest in learning more and interacting with others who share their passion.

10 Books for Graphic Designers

Each year I have the privilege of evaluating close to a hundred design and software books. Many are good and several are outstanding. Here are a few of those.

	Skin: The Complete Guide to Digitally Lighting, Photographing, and Retouching Faces and Bodies
	Photoshop LAB Color: The Canyon Conundrum and Other Adventures in the Most Powerful Colorspace
	Pantone's Guide to Communicating With Color
	Robin Williams Design Workshop
	Geometry of Design: Studies in Proportion and Composition
	A Smile in the Mind
	Grid Systems: Principles of Organizing Type
	Forms, Folds and Sizes: All the Details Graphic Designers Need to Know but Can Never Find
	Talent Is Not Enough: Business Secrets For Designers
	No Plastic Sleeves: The Complete Portfolio Guide for Photographers and Designers

For tutorials - check out AGAINST THE CLOCK. I love these project-based books for getting up to speed on new software.

Advice to a College Freshman

Congratulations! You have decided to pursue a college degree. Chances are you did this a) because you want a better life, b) because you love to learn, or c) because your parents said you will have to get a job if you don’t go to college. Regardless, you’ve made the decision to attend and now you it’s up to you to decide what you get out of this part of your education. So here are a few observations I’ve made over the past ten years…

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” - Mark Twain

1) What you get out of your education is your responsibility. If you show up and only work hard enough to pass, you will get some pretty letters that make your parents proud of you but are relatively useless to any future employer or client. The real world is a very competitive place, the more you work, the more you’ll have to offer the world, and the better your prospects will be when you graduate. Students who work hard separate themselves from their peers within a few weeks and those are the ones who get the cool jobs 99% of the time. If you want to be successful, plan on spending at least as many hours a week working out of the classroom as you do in the classroom.

2) Show up to school every day and on time. Attendance and punctuality are habits that can be developed. There is a strong correlation between a student’s attendance, his or her grades, and the probability that a student will graduate. Students who miss class very seldom graduate. And by the way, potential employers ask me more about a student’s reliability than about his or her grades. For some reason employers prefer average employees who are dependable over exceptional people who aren’t.

"We first make our habits, and then our habits make us." -John Dryden

3) Leave the excuses and drama at home. We all have lives and we all have the choice as to where we place our priorities. Knowing that you had a relationship breakup isn’t going to help you or your family 15 years from now when you don’t even remember that other person’s name. Getting the most out of your education will.

4) Choose your friends wisely, you will become exactly like them. Those friends who are more concerned about a good time, being popular, or going out probably don’t really care about you or your success. Those people just don’t want you to make them accept their shortcomings and will work as hard as possible to keep you at their level instead of encouraging you to reach for your potential. Ultimately you will have to accept responsibility for the results of your efforts and blaming your "party-hearty" friends will not put more food on the table.

5) Keep your legs crossed and your fly zipped. No means of birth control is 100% effective and the chances of you graduating if you or your partner becomes pregnant are slim. Every year I have two to three students who weren’t adult enough to be smart. Then these same students quit school instead of finding a way to work and complete college. What they end up with is huge student loans due at the same time as their child, no degree, and therefore a more limited means of supporting the family they quit school to support. Funny, the children of quitters usually grow up to be quitters. You have a choice and it’s no longer just about you. Accept it and step up.

"Argue for your Limitations and they become yours." - Richard Bach

6) Nobody cares about what your past challenges may have been. If you are using them as an excuse to stay limited, accept that you are making a personal choice. If you have difficulty writing, you can change that. If you were challenged in math, now’s the time to do the work you avoided. Your excuses are yours and neither your instructors, your future employers, nor your fellow students will expect less of you just because you accept less from yourself. It may not be easy, but choosing to remain the same defeats the concepts of growth and learning.

7) Doing and learning the things that are most challenging are often the most rewarding. It amazes me that people who do not interview, listen, or speak well avoid joining Toastmasters and other clubs that will help them advance in their careers and in life. If it was easy or fun, you would have already done it. If you want to have fiscal, personal, and professional success in the future you need to do what makes you better. I promise video games may be an easy, entertaining escape but nobody is going to hire you because of your World of Warcraft skills. Get over it, grow up, and move on.

"Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results" - Albert Einstein

8) Do not ask your professors or peers to write you letters of recommendation or to give you additional assistance if don’t make the effort first. I will do anything for a student who works hard, but if a student doesn’t care enough to push him or herself, I have a standing tee time. Besides, you really don’t want me to be honest with someone else about how you preformed in class, now do you?

Michael Bierut on Clients.

When I discuss the design process, I mention to my students that the single biggest problem most designers have is that they spend too much time trying to find new projects. The reason is that after finishing a project, most designers fail to do the really hard thing: following up and developing that customer into a long-term client.

My grandfather, father, and uncle had very successful sales careers because they always were honest with their customers, genuinely concerned about their customers, and always acted in the best interest of their customers. I was successful when I developed my sales career in Latin America for the same reason and I believe I have been successful in education because this is also the attitude I try to take with my students.

So for lunch today, I took a break from grading web sites and watched Michael Bierut's talk at Creative Mornings on Clients. As designers we spend a great deal of time focusing and discussing our craft, but most of us spend far too little time on the reason we get paid to do what we love: our clients.

It is refreshing to hear a partner at one of the most successful design firms in the world, Pentagram, not talk about creativity and not talk about style, but to give an open talk on clients and to discover that clients at Pentagram are not so different than the ones I have in Martin and Polk counties.

2010/01 Michael Bierut from CreativeMornings on Vimeo.

Dealing with Negative Press

Today a former student called and was upset that her employer was bad-mouthing a former employee, the students’ close friend, to one of her clients. The students’ initial feeling was to confront her boss. Its only natural to fight back when we or our friends are attacked. She then thought about telling other people what she had witnessed, thus trying to correct the information and prove to others what a jerk she worked for. Instead, she held her breathe for 24 hours and came to the realization that her boss, through his own actions had already done more harm to his own reputation by being incredibly negative and vindictive than she could ever do. In fact, had she reacted on her first instincts, she would have either lost her job or else lowered her own reputation by being sucked into a childish game of “he-said, she-said.” Instead, she now has her job and reputation in tact, and has time to begin looking for the employer for whom she wants to work.

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Real world: We can’t control what others say about us or our clients. It’s a free country and regardless of how we feel about it, unless we can prove intentional malice or intentional misrepresentation of the facts, we have very little recourse. We each can however choose how we will react.

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We can fight back by hurling insults and false accusations at the aggressor. This will most likely lead to an escalation of insults and make us look unprofessional and petty in the public eye.

We can choose to throw a little gasoline on the fire by showing and/or telling everyone we can about how mistreated we were. Although we may garner some sympathy, we have also identified ourselves as whiners and complainers. Had we chosen not to act at all, most of the people we told would never have seen or heard the information that we now hope they don’t believe. Right or wrong, by ”protesting too loudly” we have now not only spread the insult, but have made those we told wonder if there might be some grain of truth to it.

Finally, we can accept the fact that the person may have been blowing off steam, might have a real grievance, or might just be a very negative person. (Remember the more negative a person is, the less people listen to or believe anything they say.) Instead we can choose to bury the insult with a flurry of positive, contradictory evidence thus making the negative seem more unreliable and much more difficult to locate. This is one of the strategies that is making more and more companies require regular blogging from their PR and marketing departments, as well as their top executives, and in some cases, from each of their employees.

You, or your client, may not be able to control all the information that is out there, but you certainly have the power to make sure that there is a great deal more positive information than negative information available for the world to see. By using blogs, twitter, FB, etc., you have the power to flood the information highway with whatever information you want the world to see. You may still have the occasional basher, but with a continuous outpouring of positive messages, you can relegate their disparaging rants to the 6^th page of a Google search where no one will ever see them.

You have the power to be a negative, immature child or to be a competent, positive professional. It is up to you to determine which the world will see.

Free Education

168 hours in a week.

- 25 hours of class

- 25 hours of work

- 7 hours of travel time

- 56 hours of sleep.

 

That leaves 55 hours a week of unaccounted for time.

 

If a third of that, 18 hours, is spent studying, sketching, reading, and other educational related activities that would still leave 37 hours a week for other activities.

 

A student who puts in 18 hours a week ends up getting 72 hours of  outside studying done in a one-month class. That is opposed to a student who skates by with only putting in 15-20 hours a month (3 - 4 hours a week).

 

Over a course of 12 months of classes, the dedicated student will actually have gained more than 600 hours of additional education over the unmotivated student…That is the equivalent of taking 6 more 4-hour courses in the same amount of time or having received 50% more education.

 

So if education is expensive, then why not get 50% more of it for the same price. I have never met a successful graduate who regretted spending too much time on studying or an employer who wished a potential employee was less prepared.

 

Education may be expensive, but it is cheap in comparison to ignorance. 

10 Ways to Improve your test-taking ability and your grades

One of the interesting things about Fridays is sitting under the smoking canopy and watching the students come out from their exams all stressed and bleary-eyed. They mumble about the teachers. They complain about the questions that were different from what they had studied. But mostly, the students sit around kicking themselves in the rear for all the questions they knew but somehow forgot when the test was in front of them. I know. I do understand. I was once a poor test-taker too. And, like most students, the harder I studied and the more I wanted to do well, the more frustrated I usually was with my performance.

So having been through this a few times, here are a few little things that I have found to help relieve that performance anxiety and actually improve test-taking skills between 10% and 20%.

1) Read the whole test before trying to answer any of the questions. An athlete needs to stretch and warm-up before competing on the field, you need to do the same with your mind. By reading the entire test, without worrying whether or not you know the answers, you will often see words, phrases, and hints that serve as triggers to other answers. As a teacher, I find it difficult to write a thorough examination that does not include a question that serves as an answer to other questions.

2) Answer the questions you know first and then go back and either figure out or guess at the rest. Part of what causes stress and frustration is a lack of confidence. If an instructor puts the easy questions first, the class will score significantly better than if the teacher places the difficult questions first. When you let doubt enter into your mind, even the easiest questions can become difficult because you start to doubt your own knowledge and preparation. Answer the ones you know first and you will get the easy ones right and will be in a better mental state to tackle the challenging ones.

3) Once the test starts you cannot change what you know and you cannot change what is on the test. Relax, do your best, and don’t worry about the results. When you worry, your body produces more adrenaline. Adrenaline causes your blood vessels to contract, which restricts the flow of blood to parts of your body, including your brain. Blood delivers the Oxygen that your brain needs to properly function. So when you stress about the test you actually deprive your body of the Oxygen it needs to perform well. This is what causes those lovely “mental farts” we all experience from time to time.

One thing that I found that helped me let go of my stress was that whenever I was faced with a test, I would close my eyes, grasp the cross I always wear around my neck and say the following prayer: “God help me remember what I know, and help me guess really well at the rest of this stuff.” Whether it was divine intervention or shifting responsibility for the results to someone else, it caused my average test score to increase by 15%.

4) If you are a smoker, consider chewing a piece of Nicorette. There are studies that show that nicotine dependant people have better memory recall when they are given access to Nicotine. Chances are that when you were studying you allowed yourself to smoke. To pull that information back out effectively you need to try and place your body in a similar condition to what is was like when you were studying. (BTW- stick with the 2mg version because the 4 mg version will probably make you anxious and jumpy.)

5) While on the mental conditioning thing, place a few drops of the essential oils of Rosemary and Peppermint in your room as you study. Rosemary helps with memory and recall while Peppermint helps with mental alertness. As few drops in a diffuser is all it takes. To enhance the effects and trigger your recently acquired knowledge, make a small sachet with Peppermint and Rosemary essential oils. A slight exposure to the aroma will help trigger your memory. The human body and mind react to smells at a level 400 times below the level of being conscious of those smells. It doesn’t take much and no one else will probably notice the slight fragrance.

6) Drink half a beer before you take the test. This is again based upon the relaxation principles above. Half a beer should be enough to help you relax so you can access the information easier while not being enough to significantly impair your ability to function. More beer does not help!

7) Accept the fact that everything you’ve everything you’ve ever read, seen, heard, or thought has been recorded by your brain. In fact information is recorded by your brain at a rate equivalent to about 3 times the recording speed of your camcorder (approx. 80 -90 frames per second). Once you know the information is somewhere in your brain, it is only a matter of recalling it instead of worrying if you can actually remember it. Confidence leads to better performance in almost every area of our lives.

8) Do not change your answers. If your brain knows the answers, quit letting fear and doubt make you second-guess it. I have tracked students for 10 years and 80% of changed answers are changed from right answers to wrong answers. Trust your mind and trust your instincts. That is how the brain communicates to us.

9) Bring your teacher Oatmeal-raisin cookies! Subjective tests, especially where partial credit may be awarded is based upon the teacher’s mood much more than most of us would like to admit. I remember grading papers about 8 years ago and being frustrated at the answers some of my students were giving me. As I placed a big, red X by an answer, I thought that perhaps I had given a similar answer by another student partial credit. I stopped what I was doing, double-checked and discovered that I had in fact done so. I now always grade subjective tests at least twice to make sure my mood does not influence my ability to be consistent and impartial in my grading. So, although cookies will not influence how I grade your paper, they may help keep me in a good mood.

10)Your test score only shows how well you were at taking a particular test. It has nothing to do with how intelligent or capable you are, nor does it affect your value as a human being. I know your teachers, parents, and peers may have used your test-taking abilities as means of judging and condemning you, but if that’s what they want to do, they will always find some way to do so. Your test score only represents how well you did at a particular time in your life on a particular test. Don’t let a bad past experience condemn your efforts now. Grades are merely numbers; your true intelligence and education will be revealed in your ability to apply the knowledge you’ve obtained in creative, useful, and practical ways. Education is about growth not about grades, so take a deep breathe and remember, in the words of John Belushi,  that in the long-run, “It just doesn’t matter! It just doesn’t matter!”.