I should have been on the phone continuing to make calls to prospective clients.  I should have been working on the two book projects I have in front of me.  I should have been swimming or running.  But instead I was writing a piece about a $499 camera that will be obsolete in a few months and lost to nearly everyone’s memory in a year.

via The Visual Science Lab / Kirk Tuck.

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9 Comments

  1. We live in a time when opportunities to spread oneself thin are unparalleled, particularly for the multi-talented. While you never know where that side track will take you and the journey’s rewards are difficult in not impossible to quantify, it’s never a worthless trek. Good luck Kirk.

  2. And here lies the issue of how we spend our time ‘socially’
    I really recommend contacting a college intern with a focus on writing to write your important thoughts in more detail then proof and edit after you get off the phone with your client. Stay positive!

  3. It’s too bad too, because his blog was/is a great read. Though I did wonder how he managed 5-8 posts/week.

  4. I have to appreciate what he said in the full article.
    We have become a society of searching out the free, tips, knowledge of how to, and more. If the content is in a Blog rather than a magazine or book we go there. I’m guilty of it myself. When you go back to the 70’s and 80’s if you wanted the information and it wasn’t available in a book or magazine at the library, you went out and bought it. I would think that if he had a paywall for access to specific sections of his blog the decision might be different. Maybe not. So creating articles about what is perceived to be important can be a black hole consuming massive amounts of time.

    I think he is right when he say get up off the couch and go shoot. Photographers need to spend an equal amount of editing and making photographs. yeah I want to be known, but what I’ve done is used more words, reducing the opportunity to make an award winning photograph.

    I will still read several blogs for part of my creative process but what I put out on my own will remain like it has been in the past, posts that are important to me for what I want to say, not to be popular. Great post Rob! Bye!

  5. I completely understand. I hope that new opportunities arise for him, and that great things come to him. I too have a blog, but had the same sentiment about time allocation. I have had a long break in blogging, when I started to work on a documentary project, which took an extreme amount of time and focus, and my other works. Cash flow is important to being an artist. You can’t survive without it.

    I’m not sure if he intended to sell advertising and make blogging a career. We all blog for different reasons. I began blogging strictly to keep tabs on all the competitions I was entering years ago. I had a set up the page I could refer back to and follow up on when the competition announcements were coming up, rather depending on a papertrail/files. ie., I’d enter the competitions in October, but the announcements do not come until May. I had been entering so many, I felt the need to have a storage space for the links. Then it occurred to me, other photographers may want to enter into the same call for entries, or go to an exhibit I found top notch. Then it became so time consuming, I had forgotten the original intent. Instead of focusing on my entries, and work, I was blogging about it so much, my work time declined. I intend on picking up on mine again, at some point. I hope he doesn’t give up completely, but morphs it into something that is more fulfilling personally, and less demanding. GOOD LUCK!

  6. It’s too bad, but burn out is inevitable at that pace. It’s easy to feel obligated to your readers. When I started my blog in 2008, I thought I would do tutorials and then spin it into a book project. Then I realized that I wasn’t really interested in doing that kind of book, and the blog felt like a time consuming machine that I had to feed. Solution: less frequent posts, fewer tutorials, more of whatever I want. But then, I only get 1,000 or so hits a day. I imagine that the gravitational pull of Kirk’s readership must feel like more of a black hole. If he can no longer find the value in blogging, then it’s a good decision to quit. I agree with Debra that his best solution might be to rethink the whole thing and come back with something more fulfilling.

  7. I think what he really meant is, he’s done sharing content with others for free. I’m sure he’ll continue to create it, to one extent or another, for himself for free–we all do that. Sounds like it was little prison of his own making, but glad he’s able to set himself free for other things.

  8. OK ,

    I have just had a look around Kirk’s blog for the first time. I can see he is informed, articulate and intelligent but; he has made I think one huge mistake. Kirk did not work out who his target audience was at the start of his blog-business life and wrote about what interests him. This is not unusual in the world of blogging at all.

    I think that as a working photographer if Kirk had decided on writing a blog directed at possibly future clients the whole tenor of his posting would have been completely different from the start.

    Firstly he would have controlled the nature of what he was writing about and directed the content of the information he was ‘giving away’ as more ‘client useful’ not competitor useful. Or to put it bluntly; sell the sizzle of your steak not how you can cook one for yourself!

    I don’t mean to go into a critique, my intention is to simply add something to this story; but as a photographer who began two blogs over three years ago, I can honestly say that if you target your audience and write for them you WILL get the response you want. And possibly more as well.

    One of my blogs is about my photography, fashion and people; it is not a photography primer for wannabes; its purposely written to prospective clients. That blog has delivered clients.

    The other started as a place to show my interest (and pictures) in art and style around Sydney; that Sydney style blog now gets me a lot of event invites from the top PR’s in town to top fashion launches and functions as a GUEST. Though I confess its taken me a little while to learn how to network properly from that unexpected bonus!

    Blogging can be an important part of your marketing tool kit. Kirk clearly has plenty of traction online which is a big (hard won) bonus; I think redirecting the energy of the blog to areas that work for him directly would be be a super smart option especially with all the work he has already done. And you don’t need to blog so intensively to do that. Just what you need to say, when you need to say it.

    My two blogs by way of qualifying my comment, not self promotion.
    http://streetfashionsydney.blogspot.com/
    http://fashionkwj.kentjohnsonphotography.com.au/

  9. Kirk’s post and subsequent comments here have been the most eye-opening and enlightening information I have read about blog strategy. Kent’s comments are spot-on and his examples really drive his point home. Thanks very much to both of you.


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