Articles written by Christopher Malcolm

I’ve written extensively about it before, but, like most business lessons, the message bears repeating. In a marketplace simply inundated with competition from around the globe, it has never been more important for photographers to find their specific niche in the marketplace.

I hold these truths to be self-evident. One, things don’t always go the way we’d like them to. And two, how we respond to failure is equally, if not more important than how we deal with success.

Sometimes it pays to try and identify the key virtues I have found in others that help them build their career, their life, and make their dreams a reality. Today’s hidden skillset? Taking advantage of opportunities.

In a world where flipping our images between color and black and white is as simple as the click of the mouse, photographers and cinematographers today aren’t often tasked with knowing the complexity of how those vibrant colors actually come into existence. But in the early days of cinema, when competing processes for color reproduction took turns as the next best innovation, one name reigned supreme: Technicolor.

In this series, I attempt to identify the key professional virtues I have found to be the most important in building my own career, as well as identifying traits of other successful photographers that are most key to their success. Today's Word of The Week? Standards.

“Never say never.” That’s what they always say. But, as hard as I try to adhere to that message, there are a few things I swore I would never do again. Yet last week I found myself doing just one of those things. Even worse, it was my idea. And to my surprise, it was a good one.

You don’t need me to tell you the importance of social media. Many of you under a certain age likely can’t picture your life without it. Judging by the number of selfie sticks and Facebook screens annoyingly lighting up dark movie theaters, social media had apparently become as important as breathing. Even those who came of age before the dawn of the smartphone are not immune to its charms. And in an increasingly connected world, our devices are not only a social diversion, but can also become a business necessity. This week, I had an experience that drove home just how necessary it can be.

What is the one part of your photography business that you enjoy the least? The one aspect that, while necessary, bores the living daylights out of you. Now, what if instead of trying to avoid that thing, you instead chose to lean in to the activity and make it your own?

I’ve written before about the genius of Buster Keaton. Agent Zero on the landscape of cinematic laughter, his influences stretch far and wide. Even nearly 100 years after the high point of his career, you can still see references to “The Great Stone Face” in everything from the films of Wes Anderson to the action comedy of Jackie Chan. In a world without dialogue, Keaton embodied the still-true mantra of motion pictures: show don’t tell. Without the ability, or in his case, desire to draw laughs through witty dialogue, he instead used action, composition, and creativity to tickle our funny bones. The lessons that can be gleaned from watching the master at work are essential learning for any visual storyteller, and this video from Every Frame A Painting helps detail Keaton's approach.