Photography Self Assignment: Staying Ahead of the Competition

Photography Self Assignment: Staying Ahead of the Competition

As I ended out 2014 I was thinking about my business and also my artistic goals for the coming year. So I produced this image that allowed me to do a a few things.

The first was shoot for a story/theme: Staying ahead of the competition. So the way I shot this (yes these are self portraits) and composited it was was to show how a business needs to stay ahead of its competition even though they may look and act like your business. Regardless of how similar we are there always differences and finding what makes you unique and marketing what makes you unique is the key to separating yourself in a competitive business market.

Number two was to try some different lighting techniques. For the base shots I used a three point lighting technique with two strip boxes behind and to the sides of the subject to provide rim/side lighting and a high front light and a low reflector to provide a fill on the front. This is a lighting technique I want to experiment with more in 2015. The goal was to produce an edgy lighting set-up and further enhance that edgy contrasty look in both Lightroom and Photoshop.

And the third goal was to practice making selections and producing a simple composite of blended and scaled the images in Photoshop. I put each image on its own layer and scaled them according to position with the transform tool and added an increasing amount of blur to the images that appear further away to simulate a realistic depth of field.

Competition by Robert Greatrix

If you enjoy my photography please visit my website for more www.fulcrumimaging.com .

If you want to participate in producing some fun and unique images please contact me I am always looking for interesting self assignments in addition to paid work.


All my blog images are copyright and cannot be used without permission.

What's in a Name

Embarking Into Business:

As I begin my transition from part time into full time photographer and more importantly full time business person I have given a lot of thought to a name for my business. Actually I have thought about it for years now but the importance wasn't clear in the beginning. After taking a short business of photography course at George Brown College in Toronto I got thinking more about branding and presenting myself to potential clients. Now a few months later I am in a small business workshop, looking to complete a business plan and the importance of mission statements, value statements and positioning statements has come up. So I looked for a name that signified the way I wanted to do business, and I found fulcrum worked for me. In my photography business it signifies a point that balances my creativity, my technical skill and the clients needs (budget included) and allows those individual areas to work together for maximum results. A fulcrum describes that point of balance where force applied and results are harmonious. Fortunately not only was the name a good fit but, the domain Fulcrum Imaging was available and the business name was able to be registered and so ended my search for my business identity.

My business name much like this piece of fitness equipment signifies balance.

 Fulcrum Imaging is Toronto Photographer Robert Greatrix who is available for corporate and commercial photography as well as time lapse video creation. To see more please visit www.fulcrumimaging.com. Please let us provide you a quote for your photography needs by emailing a request to info@fulcrumimaging.com.