All of my fellow self employed friends will get a kick out of this little cartoon.  After you’re finished watching it, make sure you get your stuff done!

Are you this guy?  We all need breaks in the day, but it’s funny how quickly one thing and lead to another, and before you know it your entire workday is shot.  Where did it go?  I dunno.  I’m still trying to figure out what happened to the month of August.

Photoshop Tutorial – Getting Rid of Wrinkles from Todd on Vimeo.

A quick and painless demonstration of wrinkle removal using some tools in Photoshop. I apologize for the fact that it sounds like the mic was inside of my mouth…

Do you ever feel like your work is never good enough?  Do you get praise from others about your creations, but deep down inside you don’t feel the same way?  Maybe you feel like you just served up a pile of trash.  To be honest, I feel this way about my own work a lot.  I recently did a few photoshoots and nothing I shot really wow-ed me.  This type of thing happens other creatives I have spoken to, as well.

I Am My Own Worst Critic
I’m definitely my own worst enemy when it comes to criticism. I see the flaws in my work.  Even if they are minor, almost untraceable to others, I still manage to find them.  Am I just being over critical?  Am I bored with what I’m doing?  Is it just because I’m being overly anal?  What’s wrong with me?  I want to be happy with what I’m doing.  I am definitely enjoying it, but I don’t think I’ll ever be 100% proud of where I’m at creatively.  I think we all want to have our own “style” but this is easier said than done.  I’m still trying to figure out what it is, and probably will continue to do so for a very long time. 

Transform
Last year Atlanta Georgia based editorial photographer Zack Arias made a video like no other.  It described a personal struggle that a creative has and lives through.  I don’t care if you’re a graphic designer, a hairdresser, a chef, a contractor, a sculptor, or even a basket weaver… if you create on a daily basis, watch this video.  It’s a must see, and I am pretty sure you will be able to highly relate to it.  Any creative professional should see this.

Getting In and Out of Creative Rutts
We all get in the same creative patterns sometimes, and many times we might not even notice it.  As a designer I would find myself using a lot of the same typefaces, or laying thing out with the same compositions all the time.  In photography, I might find myself framing a lot of headshots in the same way.  Or, I might continue shooting the same themes and subjects with different models.  What do you do when you realize you’re in a rutt?  You do whatever you can to get the heck out of it.  Don’t wait around for someone else to tell you what to do.  Mess around and get crazy the next time you get to work.  Change things up surprisingly.  Look elsewhere for inspiration, if you need some.  Try something new (maybe a different subject, theme, or style) that you might have passed up before.  I personally find that when I get out of my comfort zone and try something new, I get a lot more satisfaction out of my successes.  You will also realize whether or not your new experiments are for you or not, and just might step back into your comfort zone.  Even still, you’re going to be a lot more well rounded of a creative than before.

It’s Okay…
Being your own worst creative enemy is not necessarily a bad thing… be worried when the opposite is true.  Then, you might have a problem.  Heck, maybe it’s healthy.  It’s nice to have a constant semi-dissatisfaction with your work, in a way, so that you can use that to drive you onward to the next level.  I talked to my mom about this topic recently (she’s a hairdresser that’s been in the business for over 30 years).  We agreed that sometimes you just have to keep doing what you know you have to to please your clients and pay the bills.  Feeling completely satisfied with where you are as an artist or craftsman might be a lifelong quest… just try not to beat yourself up so much along the way.

Here is a recent photo edit I did on a photo of my dog, using the clone stamp and patch tools in Adobe Photoshop. This video illustrates a pretty simple yet effective way of removing some unwanted elements from the image – all in under 4 minutes.  These are the types of edits I do on a daily basis to each and every one of my photos, when it comes to removing logos, flaws, zits, etc.  Once you master these tools there’s very little you can’t fix. Be sure to click full screen and watch the video in HD.

Here Bob “The Miz” Mizerek shows us how we can create vignettes in two different styles using Adobe Photoshop.  Vignetting is an effect that is also very easy to add to your images using Adobe Lightroom.

Here Bob “The Miz” Mizerek shows us how we can simulate shallow depth of field in Photoshop.

We made it to the park to bring the dogs for a walk on a beautiful Sunday afternoon.  The daffodils were out in full bloom.  There are tons of them over at Hubbard Park in Meriden, Connecticut right now.  What a great location for Spring Photoshoots, especially for those “shorter subjects” (kids and pets).  Just thought I’d share a few of our snapshots.  Here is the before and after of our Yorkie Beagle mix – we didn’t like how the leash looked, so a little bit of Photoshop took care of that.

You have to love the clone and patch tools… they are a life saver.  Click here for a video tutorial on how I did it.

Ever take a nice outdoor photo or landscape and wonder, “Gee what happened to that nice blue sky there was on that day?”  Well, a lot of time depending on the direction of the light and your exposure, the sky will become blown out.  You might lose a lot of cloud detail, and a lot of the deep blue color you remembered from that day.  Check out this quick and easy Photoshop technique using simple selections and an addition sky images, for “digital Photoshoptic surgery”.

Blown out skies ruin a lot of good photos – don’t worry, they’re very easy to fix in Photoshop in under 5 minutes.

The dodge tool set to “highlights” is mind blowingly helpful when it comes to shooting white seamless, or objects over white.  It’s always better to get it right in the camera or in the studio, but sometimes that doesn’t always happen. Here is an older Photoshop tutorial I thought I’d resurrect from the dead today.  It shows you how you can quickly and easily clean up your photos shot over white or light gray by using the dodge tool in Adobe Photoshop. This allows you to avoid having to tweak levels, make an actual selection or use masking.

Here the Miz shows us how to conduct “Photoshoptic Surgery” on an image of a tractor with some dull/flat colors. Here we learn how to use curves and the photo filter option to really bring out the colors and saturation in Photoshop.