Friday, October 28, 2005

Musical Thoughts

I haven't written about what I've been listening to lately and since I've been listening to some very different things lately, I thought I'd provide some recommendations. And yes, I'm putting my reputation on the line by encouraging you to listen (and perhaps even buy!) this music ;)

In the "Most Spinned" category is The Bravery. I first heard about these guys on New Year's Eve last year as one of the DJs on Live105 was spinning some tracks by artists he though would break out during 2005. I loved the track he played at the time, but it took me a while to remember the name. So it was at least March or April before I even listened to it again. Well, I'm glad I found the info since I've been listening to this album at least once a week for the past 3 or 4 months. If I had the CD, I'm sure it would be all worn out by now! Thank heavens for digital music ;) So what's The Bravery like? Well, they're definitely part of the 80's throwback crowd like The Killers, but The Bravery seem to do it much better. They seem less conscious about trying to sound 80s-ish and in my opinion, just have a better sound. Their tracks are a bit more dance-y than Franz Ferdinand or The Killers and that be part of the reason I like the sound - it gets my energy going. But here's the odd thing...they also remind my of Joy Division. In fact, when the Live105 DJ was introducing the band last year, he referenced Joy Division and how The Bravery were one of the few bands who could harken back to them without sounding like rip-offs.

Anyways, the album is great from beginning to end. There's an amazing remix of "Honest Mistake" which really harkens back to 80's 12" remixes building up sounds, then breaking them down, and then back up. Great stuff all round. Give it a whirl.

Next album to throw in the cart would be M.I.A.'s Arular. I won't go into the love affair that Sepia Mutiny has with her. Not to say that she doesn't deserve it, but there's no need for me to rehash it all. Anyways, M.I.A. caught my attention first simply because there was buzz about some South Asian chick. I don't normally follow-up on this buzz since there's only a small chance of anything coming of the buzz. In this case, however, I actually liked her first single and decided to give her a chance. I've since listened to her album and have found it to be very listenable. Now, let me say that many people will not like her music simply because of the genre. I don't know if it's official or anything, but I would place M.I.A. in UK-garage. It's a genre which I like, but it's something that many people wouldn't ever want to listen to.

So anyways, it's a good listen. The buzz about her seems to be growing and it's well deserved. Some random examples about growing buzz: she's opening for Gwen Stefani on part of her concert tour and she's got "Galang" playing during a Honda Civic ad.

I may post a little more about music I've been listen to lately, but for now, you should have some fun with these two albums.

Thursday, October 27, 2005

On the Line

Ok, so I promise to cut back on the post about business and some of the things I've learned while starting up this photography thing...for the time being though, here's something I've thought a lot about:

I heard something interesting a few weeks ago at work about customer satisfaction. You can ask customers a million different questions about how satisfied they are with you, but there's a single question you can ask to really find out how you're doing: Would you refer us (to friends, family, colleagues, etc)?


Why is that such an important measure of success? Because it's asking if your customer is willing to put their reputations on the line. Why is it putting their rep on the line? Because they're essentially telling their friend, "I had a good experience with this and you should trust me on this recommendation"

If the friend does indeed have a good experience, then they'll trust future recommendations from that person even more. If they have a bad experience, then maybe future referrals will be taken with a grain of salt.

Personally, I don't want anyone to take anything I say with a grain of salt! Unless I'm just joking around, I expect people to believe what I'm saying and trust recommendations I make. If I don't have a specific recommendation, then I might tell them about someone or somewhere they can get a rec from, but I'm not going to give them a random referral because I don't want to lessen the trust that person has in me.

Soooo...bringing this back to the photo business...I want every client of our's confident enough in our work that they will provide referrals to their friends, family, and anyone that asks.

In creating a customer satisfaction survey, we may be asking several questions of our clients, but for me, the one response I'm most interested in is whether our client would refer us in the future. That answer alone tells me so much.

And we remind our clients about that. Our goal is not only to satisfy them in their experience with us, it is to give them enough confidence to tell their friends and family about us.

What's more, this whole "my reputation is on the line" thing goes both ways. Our clients ask us about referrals for other services, like mendhi, event coordinators, etc. Generally, we don't refer many people simply because we haven't found other vendors whom we can trust enough to put our own business's reputation on the line. As we spend more time in this industry, I'm sure we'll have a nice list, but at this point, we don't. And if people ask us, we tell them.

So it's nice to know if we're easy to do business with, or that our style of photography is lovely, or we're really professional, but if I don't hear that our client is willing to refer us, then we've failed in our goal of satisfying our customer.

Nuff said.

Tuesday, October 25, 2005

It's the Quality Stupid!

Starting this photography business has been quite an experience so far. It's been less than a year since we started and we've signed up many more clients than we could have hoped for. Let's leave the reasons for that for another posting, but I'd just like to focus on one part of our running our business: Quality.

From the start my partner and I have always said that we want to be proud of the work that we do and we want our clients to feel the same way. Generically, this should probably be true of any work that a person does, but the reality is that quality can sometimes be forgotten when time is short.

So it's nice how things have worked out between my partner and me. We tend to focus on different aspects of quality, although we don't necessarily focus on just that area. I tend to be most concerned about the technical quality of our work. So that includes the camera bodies, lenses, data workflows, archiving, etc. My partner tends to remind me about the creative quality of our work. And in this business, that is so much more important than what I'm used to in my day job. I would say the quality of relationships with our clients is just as important, but I'm just going talk about the creative aspect right now.

Creative quality isn't just a matter of "being creative", it's a matter of having guidelines for ourselves around what we want to do, what we'll do to satisfy clients, and what we'll decline because it's outside of the realm of things we want to focus on. It includes ensuring our "style" is evident in all of our work. Style is obviously a vague thing, but it's one of those "I know it when I see it" things, and even more striking, it's one of those "I know it when it's not there" things. So it's very important to keep mindful of.

To be honest, we talk about our style and how we love to take certain types of photos, but we're really growing into it and understanding it better as we go along. And that's probably true of any person. Because it's such a vague thing, I don't think someone can define style in advance and fulfill the definition at each step. We can set up guidelines for ourselves about what is and isn't our style, but those guidelines take better shape as we get more experienced.

And that's what keeps this stuff so interesting. If one of us tries something out (either while taking the photos or while editing them) and we both like it, we'll try it out more often, and eventually it may become one of our hallmark things - a calling card if you will.

So back to my original point: keeping an eye of the quality of what we do is something I'm so much more mindful of than I've ever been. And I didn't expect to think about it so often a year ago. Sure I've aimed to do quality stuff at my day job, but if I slack now and again, it's not really a huge deal. But with our business, it's very difficult to get away with anything but the best. Each client of our's has so much riding on our work that it would be a huge letdown for them if we didn't put our all into. Afterall, they're not just paying us to take photos, they're paying us for something very specific. And that's our quality.

Monday, October 24, 2005

Overheard...

I know you're all looking for a great way to waste away your day. Let me afflict you with the most time-wasting activity known to humankind: Websurfing.

Here's the latest time waster: Overheard. There are two sisters sites, one for comments overheard in the office and the other for comments overheard in the New York. The idea is that people say the oddest things, and they sound even more odd when taken out of the context of the larger conversation. Of course, that's what makes the comments so fun to read. Mind you, these comments aren't for the faint of heart.

Here's an example of one of the tamer comments from Overheard In The Office:
Co-worker #1: So, do you get Columbus Day off from school?
Co-worker #2: No, we only get holidays for black people and Jesus.


The two sites can be found here:
OverheardInNewYork
OverheardInTheOffice

Also, while these two sites are great, I must give major props to the originator: In Passing. Eve, the site's owner, started posting comments she heard in passing in Berkeley while she was a student there. She has since graduated and gotten very busy with her chosen career. Even so, it's great to read the archives for a great idea of the insanity (and inanity) that is Berkeley.

Car Rental blahs...

I haven't been travelling much lately so I haven't had to deal with a rental cars in quite a while. I've never really had big issues with rental car companies and have never had anything remotely similar to what is shown on rental car company TV commercials.

The only reason I had to rent a car was because my Audi was in the body shop getting repairs to the front fender. I'm not going to talk about the process of renting and returning the car, because it was pretty straight forward. I just want to mention a few things about the car I drove for a week: the Chevy Equinox

I didn't really care which car I ended up with, but since they gave me a choice, I picked a car which I hadn't driven in the past. So how was the car? Well, there was nothing really wrong with it. But then again, there was nothing really right with it either. My comment to the rental car guy when returning it was "Too big on the outside, too small on the inside."

In fact, the Equinox is a pretty small SUV, but it seemed to take way too much space in the garage. I always had to squeeze out of the car whether in the garage or in a parking spot. And what did I get for all that space taken up? Well, not too much. I'm not talking about luxury & creature comforts. Since it's a rental car, I don't really epxect that. But in terms of conviences that should be included as part of the car, it just didn't feel as useful as our Honda Pilot. From simple things like sturdy cup holders (there were enough cup holders, but they were all rather flimsy and I had to keep glancing at my cup to make sure my coffee wasn't spilling out. I never feel like I need to do that with the Pilot or my A4. Shopping bag hooks in the cargo area are so useful and obvious in our Pilot that I was surprised when there weren't any built into the sidewalls of the Equinox. Overall, things seemed a bit flimsy on the inside. I'm not referring to the level of luxury, I'm just referring to the sturdiness of what is included. The biggest issue I had with the thing was the turning radius. I had trouble pulling into every parking spot I tried, no mater how much space I had. I ended up taking 3 and 4 point turns just to get the thing into a spot. I never have to do that with the Pilot and the A4.

So my take on this is that the Equinox isn't designed for the main thing people do with it: Drive it around town.

This is an issue with most SUVs. Clearly most people who buy SUVs aren't going to be driving down dirt roads any time soon, if ever. So I still don't get why car companies don't design their SUVs to perform better in the situations where they're used most often. SUV ads now claim they're great for city driving, but I think that's just marketing spin without any real changes to how the SUVs have been designed.

I feel like our Pilot is quite a bit better designed for city driving: great turning radius, lots of obvious conveniences inside, and generally drives likes it's much smaller. It could, however, certainly be improved.

Anyways, net-net on the Equinox: Don't bother. If you like Chevy's just go for the Tahoe since it's better designed. If you want something small for suburban life, there's much better out there from Toyota, Honda, and the like.

I'm much happier to have my A4 back and much prefer driving the Pilot when I need something bigger.

Wednesday, October 19, 2005

Appreciative

Ok...for the people that read my blog frequently, you're going to be tired of this since I occassionaly go off on this....but can I just say I'm appreciative of the life I've been given?


For once I won't mention my wife, dog, and friends in this context. I'll mention the people I work with. While there are many folks who say the right things (and don't neccessarily add much more), I rarely reflect upon a colleague and think that I'm better simply for having the person on my team. On the way home from a work dinner tonight, I reflected upon some people like that this evening. And no, it wasn't the wine talking. I've already thought highly of said people. It's just that this evening, I've had the chance to step aside from the work situations and really appreciate what these people bring.

Ok, go ahead and tell me how tired you are of hearing about the good things in my life. Now go back to reading about the latest iPod. It's much cooler than I could ever be anyways :P

Tuesday, October 18, 2005

Relationship Building

I'm not one to meet and talk to new people all the time. However, I definitely recognize the utility of building relationships with an ever expanding group of people. Not just to serve some end goal of mine, but simply to know these people....

Tonight was one of those nights where I was reminded of the importance of getting to know people. We had a happy hour with colleagues after an all day meeting. The idea was for folks from San Jose and folks from other offices to get together after a long day of presentations and business speak. It turned out that most of the folks from San Jose didn't come to the happy hour since they plan on coming to dinner on Wednesday evening.

I actually ended up spending a lot of time at the happy hour. I sort of feel bad for this since my wife was at home while I was out having drinks. But this situation helped put into perspective why I came to the happy hour in the first place. It wasn't to get a few free drinks (afterall, what's $10 in the scheme of things?). It wasn't to get to know more about the issues my colleagues were facing in their jobs. That's what the daytime meetings were for. It was really to build relationships with them. These relationships may help me in my day job and they may not, but I wasn't so concerned about that over a pint of beer.

To be honest, I could care less about our day jobs since I really have no desire to stay in my current job in the long run. But at the end of the night I found a lot of value in simply knowing my colleagues apart from their jobs. It's nice to know that one of my co-workers moved from Ireland to Brussels and hopes to never move back to the place he grew up in. It's nice to know that another of my co-workers had to convince her parents to live near her home after their retirement.

Will this knowledge ever help me in my day job? Probably. Do I care if it doesn't? No.

And that's the point. I rarely make an effort to meet new people. But when I do, I find such great fulfillment in knowing more about those around me. It makes me wonder why I don't do such things more often. I guess I have to be satisfied in simply being thrown into positions where I don't have to make much effort. In such cases, I go full bore and take advantage of the situation. Unfortunately my wife had to sit alone at home in this case, but did I find something to gain out of it? Yes.

Now I'll just have to spend a little more time at home :)

Monday, October 17, 2005

Mac and Me

No, I'm not talking about the 80's movie. I'm talking about my foray into the world of macintosh computers. With the new photography business we had to buy new desktop machines and we decided to go with Macs since we'd have to do video and other more multimedia oriented tasks.

It's been about 4 months since I started using the Mac so I guess I should give an opinion on it...

I should start out by saying that I'm a fan of Apple, but I'm not a fanatic. I don't own an iPod and I don't plan on getting one any time soon (although my wife loves her pink iPod Mini).

I've always heard about the advantages of OS X and the iLife apps, but wasn't sure if I'd actually use any of them without the excuse of the business.

So first things first...Apple is very concerned about the experience of owning a Mac right from when you bring the box home. Upon opening the huge box which our PowerMacs came in I found one sheet of paper with 5 steps on it to get started, two cables, a keyboard, and mouse. For some reason, this seemed really easy to me. Especially after I opened up the HP printer box and there was a ridiculous instruction sheet just to set up the printer.

Second, the look of the OS X desktop is mesmerizing. Maybe it's the calming blue of the default desktop or maybe just the idea of owning a "cool" computer. Either way, the screen still sort of hypnotizes me and helps me shut out other distractions and get down to work.

My first dislike about the Mac came pretty quickly and that's with the mouse. I don't so much mind the single-button, but for some reason, the mouse just doesn't seem sensitive enough. I mis-click and over shoot my target often enough that it's annoying. And this isn't just about getting used to a new mouse, I've since switched to a multi-button microsoft mouse similar to what I have at work and I still have problems. What's the deal with that? At this point, it's not just annoying, it's really frustrating especially when using Photoshop (which I use a lot) since the palettes line up right next to the dock (which I have along the right side). I feel like trying out a few different mice just to see if there's any way around this issue. Maybe I'll try fiddling with the mouse sensitivity settings again...

My first love about the Mac came with iDVD. It's funny because I don't use iDVD as much as iMovie or iTunes (I never use Garageband). I'm used to iTunes from Windows and I think it's really powerful and the fact that every competitor is copying the organization method is a sign of how well designed iTunes is. iMovie is great, but I'm used to Windows Movie Maker (which is truly a rip-off of iMovie). So using iMovie is really satisfying but I didn't drop my jaw. I did, however, drop my jaw an inch when I first used iDVD. First of all, it's well integrated with iMovie so you can create a DVD menu and burn it very simply after you're done in iMovie. This can't be said about Windows Movie Maker since there is no MS app which will create DVD menus and render discs for you. 3rd party DVD software on Windows has always underwhelmed me so just the fact that I can click a single button in iMovie and have iDVD open with a ready-made menu with all of my movie chapters ready to roll is reason enough to smile. But let's talk about the menu templates which iDVD comes with. Actually, I'm a bit speechless. To say the least, they're very slick. Very slick. I feel bad taking credit for a nice DVD experience (which our clients always compliment us on) since it's really iDVD which makes the experience so nice from the moment you pop in the DVD. Apple done good with iLife, integration across apps (iTunes and iPhoto are well integrated with iMovie too), and iDVD especially.

Speaking of iPhoto, I'm greatly disappointed by it. Picasa is much better for general photo management. iPhoto does have the ability create photo books and the integration with iMovie is useful, but Picasa has so many more useful features that the two can't compare. When a pro photographer recommends Picasa to anyone who'll listen (which I any time I'm asked for a rec), take that as a good sign. For the average person, Picasa can replace Photoshop without problems. iPhoto is just a hindrance for us in many ways. If I could, I'd switch it out with Picasa on moment's notive (Google are you listening?!)

Dashboard is one of the new elements of OS X Tiger and it's pretty useful. I like the implementation better than Konfabulator (Apple should really acknowledge that they ripped off Konfabulator like a mutha) since I don't like how Konfabulator defaults to showing widgets on top of everything. That's just a personal choice though since I can see how having certain widgets on top of all windows would be useful. The fact that Dashboard widgets are only visible when you bring up the whole Dashboard is kind of lame and Apple should add the ability to see widgets without having to bring up the whole dashboard. In any case, I don't use Dashboard too much, but when I need it, it's nice to have for a quick calculation, map look-up, or date check, etc. If you don't have a Mac, I highly recommend checking out Konfabulator. Since Yahoo! bought them, it's a free download now and definitely worth trying out.

The bigger functionality improvement in OS X Tiger is probably Spotlight, which lets you search for anything and find results quickly. I find Spotlight very useful. Rather than create shortcuts for everything, I can just type in something quickly and get simple, organized results quickly. I tend to use spotlight more often than dashboard.

One quirk about OS X I still can't get my arms around: when you click the red X button in the top left of application windows, some apps actually quit while others just close the window even tho the app is still running in the background. I actually like the latter since it's nice to have certain apps running all the time but not have them waste space. But the problem is that some apps don't follow this rule. I thought Apple were sticklers for how applications should interact with the user and certain actions should always have the same effect? So what's up with this?

Same goes for switching between windows within the same application. In OS X you can click "Apple-`" to cycle between windows within the same application, like multiple browser windows, etc (just like "Apple-tab" switched between apps). This is quite useful, but the problem is that it doesn't work in all apps. ESPECIALLY Photoshop! Photoshop is where I need this functionality the most! Alas, I must click through the various windows to get to the photo I need.

There are quite a few other interesting things in OS X, but I'll leave it be. This post is getting rather long.

Oh, one last item...the keyboard commands for home, end, jump one word at a time, and jumping to the beginning/end of a line are all different in OS X. Since I'm used to Windows for such keyboard navigation, I find this really frustrating. I've tried to remember to use the appropriate Mac keystrokes, but the Windows versions are totally motor memory for me, so it's been tough. Oh well.

And can I say that the Mac keyboard looks cool, but it gets dirty as hell? White may look nice, but it doesnt stay clean at all!

Monday, October 10, 2005

Hitting the Sweet Spot

Sorry for not posting. I really did mean to post more often since I found the urge a few weeks ago (man, has it been that long?!). To give you an idea of how busy I've been and how tired I've become.....we went to watch the Wallace and Gromit movie yesterday and about 2/3 of the way through I actually dozed off! During a Wallace & Gromit film! Since I've loved every short film of their's, it's a real surprise to find myself so tired that I can't stay awake. In any case, it's a good movie, you should go see it. I'm also going to try and stay awake :)

So anyways, to the topic at hand...

I mentioned the photography business in an earlier post and one of the things we wanted to do is target the Indian market with something unique and (we hope) much needed. We have a photo-journalist type of approach to our work and we think it shows in our samples. We've received comment to that effect from friends, clients, and some others who've seen our work in detail.

However, yesterday was the first day that we got tons of comments from person after person. We attended a bridal fair yesterday targeting the Indian market and we seemed to be one of the few vendors meshing two worlds and hitting that sweet spot.

What's the sweet spot you ask? Well, in this case, it's something which is really unique and high quality for the people you're interested in. The photojournalist approach which we have is actually not at all unique in the world of wedding photography, but it's very new to the Indian community (at least on the West Coast). We've had that feeling all along, but that was really validated yesterday by many former brides and even more brides-to-be.

So for us, it's nice to know that we've got many potential customers who've seen our work and want to talk to us. More importantly, for them, they've now got a resource where they can have the style of photography which can make their events all the more special. And just important is that they can get that style without having to explain every last detail about Indian ceremonies and traditions. Many of the prospective brides mentioned that they it would be wonderful if they didn't have to worry whether their photographer knew about the important moments during their wedding ceremonies or worry about explaining how a garba works, etc. Granted, most good photographers can figure such things out pretty quickly, but sometimes, in the time it takes to figure things out, the special moments have already passed.

So for us, I feel like we're hitting a sweet spot where our clients really want what we have to offer not just from a quality perspective, but from an overall experience perspective.

That being said, what I was even happier to see yesterday was that there were other vendors at this fair who seemed to be taking the same approach as we are. I'll call out one vendor specifically: a wedding coordinator. Now the idea of a wedding coordinator is obviously nothing new, but it's an idea which is still catching on amongst Indians on the West Coast. We talked to this woman who was just getting started in her business targetting the Indian market along with her sister. In speaking to her, I really realized how the trend in Indian marketing is shifting focus onto a new generation of clientele. Makes sense since there's a huge number of 2nd generation Desis coming of age now.

I feel like we're on the leading edge of this trend here in the Bay Area Indian community. And that's the sweet spot. If we changed our location to New York, we'd be middle of the pack since the trend has been moving in that direction for years. If we changed our market to the general wedding community, we'd again, be middlers since wedding photojournalists have been around few years and years.

But we're focusing on the Indian market in California. And we'll stick to this market until we own it...then we'll move onto the rest of the world :)