In Horoma's Head 07
Hi everyone,
This past month has been quite intense, to the point of me missing my 31st of the month mark, but I guess doing it the day after is still fine. So, onto this new installment of In Horoma's Head!
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The Youtube channel monthly report 🎵🔈🧠
For this month, as usual, 3 new videos were posted.
First, Horoma critique of the month was dealing with a competition we won a year ago for an extension of an administrative quarter in Strasbourg. Project was nice and in this video I sort of explain some artistic direction and how to sort of choose point of views that make sense in regards of what you want to show from your project https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efIjyGSwovc&t=1s
I also finally released a video about why the rule of thirds sucks. Question this rule that everybody knows and uses was actually at the foundation of the course I built up on composition. Understanding its limitations and detrimental consequences it infuses in artists workflow is I think of paramount importance. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njX86JeC30c
And as a short tutorial video, I uploaded last Friday a video on How to create fog in photoshop to boost your composition, which explains a bit how fog works in terms of composition and what it can bring to your image. Then I explain a litlte how I create it in photoshop, which is a pretty straightforward process (at least in theory). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-0bSHr0yLs
The world of work 💶💼⏰
So last month has been a nice month because all my contracts fitted nicely into a 31 day-window with no overlap over my scheduled holidays. Saying no to contract because you have too much work is a thing, saying no to contract because you kind of scheduled your holidays a bit too early or too late is another.
Either way, out of the 5 competitions I had to work with this month, 4 of them went really well and lead to pretty cool images I'm very happy with. One of them though kind of broke a promise I made to myself a year ago which was to not work again with a past client.
While the images produced were okeyish, the main issue with this contract was that it was with a client that had the history of being extremely disorganized, unresponsive, always late, etc. The good thing is that he always remains very polite, but you can tell in terms of process that the stress that accumulates over his shoulders when dealing with short deadlines usually lead him to take bad decisions or freak out for no reason.
As I mentioned many times here or in my videos, not working according to your own process in most probably the worst experience and can very quickly become draining and stressful.
So the first thing I did once I was done with the contract was sending the invoice, and then write down properly a list of reasons why I will not work with that person again and who I can direct him too. Because even though I knew schedule would be hectic and I tried to anticipate it better due to the stronger experience I know have in dealing with sometimes tough schedules and disorganized clients, you can't force people to send you stuff you ask for if they just don't have it.
All in all, one thing I thing that is important is to always try to do your best to accomodate even if your client is a mess (especially when they look like they are suffering too), but to never sacrifice your principles you've set yourself to follow. Despite having very short deadlines towards the end, I still was stopping working quite early and definitely not putting all-nighters. I also wouldn't do massive changes towards the end because I know they are usually bad ideas. All in all the key here was also to be transparent and explain how I would be working to accomodate the different issues we had, how my schedule wouldn't change much, etc.
The world of Composition From The Ground Up 🖼📷📼
I've been rewatching all the content of my course these past few weeks, trying to see how I can repackage it in a better and more convincing way, how I can edit the videos to make them even better to watch, etc. Basically working on what we could call the "V2".
There's still a lot of work involved, but the revision part is almost over and I'll be able to get back to recording and finetuning the content when I get back from holidays.
Needless to say I'm super excited about all this and can't wait to deliver the new version!
The good thing is that once this fundamentals are laid out properly and easily accessible to all the attendees, I'll be able to focus on delivering the new content that I have in mind that will be more advanced and tailored around specific workshops in the hope of really merging properly all the work I've done on building an easy to grasp theory and an efficient practice.
Wait & see 😁
The world of preparing your holidays well 🚙🎬💶
Holidays are just around the corner and this year is pretty nice because for the first time (ever I think) I have a very clear view of what's the plan for when I get back. I think this is something that completely lifts off the potential stress that I would have had in the past before going on holidays. The anxiousness of potentially not having work when you get back.
For the first time I'm mostly booked for the following 8 weeks that follow my coming back at the end of August.
So the idea would be, if you can't get contracts in advance to reassure you for when you get back, to at least organize properly the first few weeks of when you get back so that you have a clear idea of what you'll do when you're back at the (home) office. It can be self development stuff, preparing your asset library, learning new software ,etc. The idea is to just take off the issue of figuring out what to do when you get back and having this feeling of blur. It's pretty similar to just preparing your day the day before so that when you wake up you have a clear view of what are the things you want/need to do that day.
Having contracts is of course the best to get in this zone, but properly scheduling personal projects when you get back is also pretty powerful, so don't skip that step before going on holidays!
I think that'll be all for this short newsletter. I'll be off in North-West of Spain, between Bilbao and Santiago de Compostella for the next 3 weeks or so. If you have any suggestions of things to visit on the way, I'm always after suggestions 😉
In the meantime I wish you a restful summer break!
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Thank you
All the best for the upcoming month!
Cheers
Simon