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I listened to an episode of Chase Jarvis live, featuring Ramit Sethi, business guru and bestselling author of I Will Make You Rich.

I acquired amazing tips in sixty minutes and took so many notes that my pen hardly left the paper. In the process, two things became clear to me.

One, the days of polarity between the commercial and fine arts have long diminished. Despite being classified separately for their difference in purpose—one for pure aesthetics, the other for selling—the two are fused.

And two, many photographers pigeonhole themselves into fine arts because of fear—of being called ingenuine, being blamed for “selling out,” or being less of an “artist,” all for accepting financial gratuity for doing what they love.

But perhaps these fears are simply excuses for some artists’ inability to sell themselves.

So the main question posed during the episode was “Why do artist’s SUCK at persuading their work to everyone despite incredible portfolios to back them up?”

Ramit, who has a background in studying human behavior, including social influence and persuasion, learning why people do the things they do, posed many reasons and solutions.

The main reasons are that many artists are introverted and they are all about their art. They are so focused on their art as a form of personal expression that they neglect figuring out ways that their work can serve others.

Also, they overfocus on the craft, forgetting that it’s easy to get comfortable doing what you know. I could, for instance, sit here all day and write really good blog posts, but doing so will not necessarily help me discover ways to cultivate a business.

The solution is that artists in this boat must be able to communicate effectively about their work, and also have knowledge about what the people in their market (art directors, agencies, photo editors, art buyers, etc.) need. Being effective at this entails being a good negotiator. You have to understand the mindset of the other.

The problem is that many people, especially artists, walk into an interview or client meeting and think, “Here’s what I can do.” Yet they have not done research on the other person in order to say exactly the things that the other person was hoping they would say.

They haven’t realized that 80 percent of the negotiation is done before they set foot in the room or make a call. They haven’t ascertained the other person’s hopes, fears and dreams.

Instead, they make at least two mistakes.

First, they toss their portfolio on the table and rely on the other person to understand the brilliance of their work, without explaining to them what went into creating the work and why it is different.

And this forces me to recall Steve Jobs. A team, including Chris Espinosa, actually engineered the computer, but Jobs had the vision behind everything. He conceived the Mac and was able to communicate it in a way that made sense to other people.

Case point: If you want to have your cake and eat it too, it’s not merely good enough to be a good technician, handling the camera and capturing images. You have to be able to communicate your ideas.

Second, they try to appeal to everyone, rather than cater their explanations to a specific person.

Sethi says that rather than act needy and desperate to please, it’s actually more persuasive to half-disqualify the other person. He recommends saying something like, “I can do an extraordinary job, not for everybody, but the few people I want to work with and who want to work with me.” This shows that you are selecting them, just as much as they are selecting you, and that you have other options and previous experience.

But these mistakes can be hard to counter. Sethi suggests good procedures for starting off.

First, close your eyes and decide whom you are trying to target. If you are a wedding photographer, it is probably the bride. Second, decide what the person who wants to hire you would actually want. Beyond a few stereotypical ideas you conceive on your own, the next step is to go out and talk to the market, find ten recently married women.

Sethi recommends using these words in an email, to which three of ten would likely reply: “I’m trying to get into this. I’m just doing a little homework. I’m not trying to sell you anything. I’m just curious about your experience, and I would really appreciate your time.”

Then, over a cup of coffee perhaps, ask questions like, “What would you have changed about your experience? If the price was not an object what would you have wanted? How did you feel when you chose your photographer? Why did you choose _________ instead of _________?”

As you start to hear words, you begin to formulate specific topics you can address with your actual client.

And then, when they pop the statement, “… but we’re just not sure about _________,” you can pull out a piece paper with four bullet points suggestions acquired from your research and hand it directly to them during the meeting.

Ramit says that it’s crucial to play an active role, rather than passively answer the other person’s questions. If you get the other person to do most of the talking, it shows that “I understand I need to solve problems for you.”

Overall, this builds trust. And Jarvis says that the goal is getting people to understand over and over that you are the solution to their creative problem.

Another way to start off, which Sethi recommends, is to work for free.

He suggests saying something like, “My normal rate is fifty dollars per hour and I don’t do discounts, but I really like your project. I think it has a lot of potential. I’m willing to work for free, but we have to agree on a couple of things: One, if I do an extraordinary job, then at the end of thirty days we’ll discuss going back to my normal rate; and two, you agree to refer me to three people you know.

Sethi says that this establishes your value, and alleviates their anxiety because you are only agreeing to those things if you do an amazing job.

In light of that, I think that it is most important to first focus on being the best photographer I can be, and then worry about making money. Thinking about serving specific markets and making a certain wage, fifty dollars per hour, or 1,000 plus dollars per project, is insignificant without honing my craft and initially testing all the markets to gauge my best fit.

Technology is zooming.

And I’m afraid recent advances deceive some contemporary photographers into thinking that the craft should be easy, when the whole point is to feel challenged.

I just read a post on the Chase Jarvis blog talking about a new type of camera, the Lytro, an unprecedented plunge into the market. The advantage is that you don’t need to focus the camera when shooting, and instead you select the desired depth of field after capturing the image.

But I think pro photographers will always have to work just as hard, because they will always have to make decisions. It doesn’t matter whether you make an adjustment in the moments before firing the shutter or afterwards, you still have to decide.

So the problem is this: though digital advances are exhilarating, they are often too quick and casual. I know more than a few capricious individuals who take millions of snapshots but lack special care throughout the process. And the end result: diddlysquat, not a single good image.

Chris Orwig, who I mentioned in an earlier post, echoes this sentiment. In his book, People Pictures, he offers a great analysis on the value of training with film. He says, “The instant feedback on the LCD screen … is like an ironman training by riding his beach cruiser around town… it allows you to see what mistakes you have made, yet it removes the sting—it’s like working out and never being sore.”

He’s right. And in my opinion the LCD screen stunts the creative mindset. Often we look at a picture on the LCD and say ewww that doesn’t look good, rather than being patient, not giving up or leaving too quickly, and shooting from a different angle or aperture. Someone once told me that a great way to relieve this tendency is to duct tape the LCD screen. Hum!

So photographers must learn more about the practice of taking photographs; they must be more present while creating them.

Because a burden of many choices is placed upon each of us as people, our culture has embraced a general fear of making decisions, especially in photography.  And since the advent of automatic features in cameras, many of us fail to make any photographic decisions of our own.

It’s like when your best friend asks, “Where do you want to eat dinner?” and you simply reflect the question. I say, don’t play that game.Toughen up.

From the welter of impressions (people, places, anything you want to shoot) with which life bombards, the truly dedicated photographer must choose those particular elements that have significant relevance to his insight.

I think that a photographer must always tell his own story, attend only to those details pertinent to his life, his emotions, rather than hodgepodge of everything and everyone else.

And yet so many photographers—if you can even call them that—do the opposite. My favorite example: Facebook. Photographs on this site allow you to live vicarious through other people and places. Rather than appreciating their own life, maintaining their own set of values, many people inhabit Facebook as a way of what Robert Cialdini calls ‘social proof’, looking to others to guide their behaviors.

The problem is that good photography requires that we not simply photograph what we see other people photographing. Yet rather than being different and experimental, many people flounder in conformity, an apprehension rooted in doubt.

Susan Sontag, in her traditional book, On Photography, says that heedless snapshooting is an attempt to appease anxiety, to leech the pain and uncertainty from everyday life.

And vacation travelers, Americans especially, respond to disorientation with an urge to document every new place they encounter. Their intrinsic, ruthless work ethic compels them to snap careless and compulsive images as a pleasant imitation of work. They are so engrained in a pattern of work that they are unable to slow down.

So a lot of people use photography to compensate for reluctance to live in the moment, to develop a unique—rather than straightforward—interpretation of a particular place, person, object, etc.

A good friend of mine says, “A photograph is an excuse to forget.” He means that a photograph excuses us from enjoying and appreciating a situation, because many of us—at national parks, for example—capture our image, and move on quickly.

But equally apt, a photograph is a means to remember, an attempt to preserve. We can relive a child’s fifth birthday before a candlelit cake more vivid through photograph than pure memory.

And still, a photograph is a desperate cling to something not present. Sontag says, “A photograph is both a pseudo-presence and a token of absence… an attempt to contact or lay claim to another reality.” Photographs substitute our lack of access to someone, something or somewhere. When we cannot access a particular reality—perhaps a distant loved-one, a faraway place, or the vanished past—we avail the photograph.

So let me reiterate. Photography is more a process than a product.

Yet it seems that we live in a world that is product oriented. There are many people, who race to the finish line, oblivious to the direction in which they run.  They don’t remember how they got there.

So I believe that the epitome of photography is the initial salt prints made by the father of the craft, Henry Fox Talbot. The process, which he dubbed “drawing with light: the pencil of nature,” was photography in its purest form because the images were ephemeral—they vanished soon after they materialized on print.

Case point: though I don’t oblige a literal tracing of photography back to its origin, nor a walkout on new technological developments in the industry, I say don’t neglect some great equipment that has been around for decades.

Lately, I use the ancient 4×5 film, view camera, which has undergone a revival in popularity and captures phenomenal images. With the view camera every image is a good image. In his instructional book, Using the View Camera, Steve Simmons says that you can say goodbye to the days of shooting round after round hoping for one good photo. That is because a view camera image appears on film just as you’ve seen it in your mind’s eye and in the camera back, save being upside down.

Sure, the thing is cumbersome, and the tripod even more so—but Ansel Adams lugged it up mountainsides, he knew the advantages outweighed the strife.

In fact, I consider the old 4×5 view camera the antithesis of the new Lytro. The junction between the two is like the moment when Darth Vader says to Luke, “I am your father.” The two cameras are extraordinary yet reversed. Both offering near unlimited flexibility with focus, the former forces you to tinker before the shutter, and the latter after.

Until the Lytro, the view camera was unrivaled; it had a knack for creating images that were impossible with a nonadjustable camera. Because the camera’s front (the lens board) and back (the film plane) can be adjusted independently of each other, the photographer has unconventional control over image shape, distortion, and depth of field.

The camera has a reputation for demanding self-discipline, and it is a slow, methodical process that requires careful attention and dedication to detail. Recently, I persuaded a few friends to stand in the cold outside at night, while I fussed with film holders and adjustments beneath the dark cloth. Eventually, this self-discipline ripens into a real love for the craft involved in creating large-format images. Time and effort is the key.

I just attended a lecture given by Sebastian Bremer. View his work at www.sebastiaanbremer.com. It’s a great website. The format is clean and concise, and the images load quickly.

Bremer is a Dutch artist, whose work has exhibited worldwide. His career began with meticulous reproductions of photographs in paint; it has taken a course of gradual reemphasis on his connection to photography.

What’s fascinating about his work is this: most of his pictures began as photos, yet they have been drawn and painted upon.

Bremer said, “I developed a new way of working—feeling my way as I go.” And there certainly is a sense of spontaneous decision making in his work.

 A consistent technique he employs is the application of large and small dots—sometimes splotches—that retrace the subjects, add new characteristics, or overall dramatize the scene.

And the photographs are not his. He found them.

When I realized this, questions about authorship immediately arose. How could an artist acquire a photograph, one that is not his own, and claim it as his own work?

So I reasoned that authorship must demand a certain percent of manipulation.

It brought back memories of the iconic “Hope” poster during the Barack Obama campaign. The poster, designed by artist Shepard Fairey, is a stylized stencil of Obama in solid red, beige and pastel blue, appropriated from an Associated Press photograph by Mannie Garcia. In an ultimately settled legal procedure, regarding copyright and “fair use,” the poster became a controversial example of the fine lines of authorship.

Yet Bremer’s work certainly has a postmodern influence, a sense of parody on the whole idea of authorship and mixed media, through the use of deliberate appropriation.

One example of this attitude, during the early years of photography, was Walker Evans’ photographing of billboards, posters, road signs, and other images.

But artists have taken this influence to the extreme. Sherrie Levine, in her 1979 work “Untitled (After Edward Weston),” made a copy print from a reproduction of Weston’s 1926 image “Torso of Neil” and asserted full authorship of it.

Andy Grundberg, in Crisis of the Real, says that this kind of appropriation “implies the exhaustion of the image universe: it suggests that a photographer can find more than enough images already existing in the world without the bother of making new ones.”

So perhaps Bremer neglects to create images from the raw material world, content instead to draw his material from photographic representations.

He said that there is sometimes a sense of transgression in his work. He felt he once overstepped the boundaries of photographic ethic after displaying an image of an image shot using his iphone in a “proper” gallery.

But perhaps there is irony in claiming authorship over anything at all.

According to Grundberg, “Artists using others’ images believe that it is dishonest to pretend that untapped visual resources are still out there in the woods, waiting to be found by artists who can then claim to be original. For them, imagery is now overdetermined—that is, the world already has been glutted with pictures taken in the woods.”

And he continues in saying, “Even if this weren’t the case, however, no one ever comes upon the woods culture-free. In fact, these artists believe, we enter the woods as prisoners of our preconceived image of the woods, and what we bring back on film merely confirms our preconceptions.

So I agree that as artists we tend to lose authority over our work. And Bremer claims that his work is about a “weird juxtaposition,” of both time and mediums, which demonstrates that “we’re not in charge anymore,” that images assume lives of their own.

There seems to be a cyclical nature to all photography in which each new photograph somehow references one that came before.

Bremer said that the idea of time travel pervades his work. He said that by drawing or painting upon a photograph, he is able to reenter the past.

He spoke extensively of one series, prints made from his father’s old negatives, scenes captured of his family in the Alps when he was just a boy. Bremer manipulated the images with parti-colored dots that, in his words, “tried to bring the joy back and add something more.”

But I think that these images are more than simply an enhanced flashback. The images are self-referential. They, according to Grundberg, “double us back and bring us into awareness of the act of photographing and the two-dimensional, cropped-from-a-larger-context condition of the photograph as a picture.”

Much like the self-portraits of Lee Friedlander, photographing his reflections in windows and mirrors and his shadows on the ground and walls, Bremer manifests his self-conscious awareness of being in a camera-based culture.

And so Bremer’s images, which refer to his experience, are an utter contradiction. While they serve to recount the past, they also acknowledge the impossibility of an objective experience; they demonstrate that personal interpretation and subjectivity imbue any experience at all.

Much like Friedlander’s photo of tourists at Mt. Rushmore, Bremer’s images demonstrate repetition and the impossibility of genius or originality in any endeavor.

And, especially in his series of pictures of the Alps, Bremer uses clichéd images, essentially tourist shots, as a platform for commentary. His application of cheery colorful dots essentially spotlights the timeworn nature of any photograph that has been overrepresented.