Jan 25th I started the teaching part of the year with a creative evening in Budapest. It was a new format for me, we had 12 participants (11 showed up), each sent me some questions and several pictures for portfolio review.

My general impressions:

  • Two hours creative evening is a very light and pleasant format, it was also nice to have the event right in my hotel (we had a cute conference room)
  • Even though the hotel was among the best in the city, somehow there were no cable for a big screen and the announcement wasn't up in time, so it's a miracle everyone found their way
  • Participants were very respecting and I got a lot of praise for coming to Budapest to share my success story
  • Questions in general were less practical than what I normally cover, but it was kind of fun
  • Which also makes me think that this format wold work with general public, not only photographers
  • People were much more shy about public portfolio review than they are in the US
  • All in all, the city, the event, the questions and the people were all very pleasant! I wish I would have 3 hours in stead of 2 :)

Now for the questions, some of them I already covered (some even a few times) here on the blog, others it was quite fun to think about ("How do you know you see the work of a master" for example). Anyway, my answers are here:

How to find inspiration and keep inspired?

this one is answered in details here:

How To Remain Inspired
For me there are three types of inspiring material. First is staying inside photography world and staying current:
Aliona Kuznetsova PhotographyAliona Kuznetsova

Working with a model and professional team

This is one of the themes that I love coaching about, in fact there are only 3 transitions I help people make:

  • Start working with semi-pro and pro models
  • Start working with a full team
  • (And my favorite) Get published

Two tutorials on the team right here:

We also listed some best recourses to find a good team

  • modelmayhem.com - but meet in person first
  • notjustalable.com - great curated portal
  • FB groups
  • IG tags
  • IG Model Calls - if you have a good community and right followers

And talked about finding models through agencies, this will be in part 3.

Post production and color correction trends

Here I gave a link to two of my favorite post-production YouTube Channels:

As well as workflow cheat-sheets (that I only share with my students). For me building the workflow is important because you can learn a lot of tricks online, but without the system of how and when to use them, you will still be lost.

As for the trends, I always refer people to 500px website as well as their newsletter - they do great job keeping you informed about latest developments.

At the same time remember, your own signature style is more important because it gives you returning clients and referrals (but to know how to do this latest cool thingy is relevant to your clients too)

How to submit photos to magazines?

Submitting my work to magazines is actually my favorite topic when coaching young photographers, so many or you are ready or one step from ready to be published, but just need someone to lead the way.

https://alionakuznetsova.com/submitting-your-work-to-magazines/

https://alionakuznetsova.com/how-to-get-published--short-guide-for-aspiring-fashion-photographers--part-1/

Just to show off a bit, my list of publications: https://alionakuznetsova.com/about/