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[powerpress]
Brent:  I’ve got Nicole S. Young on the other line. She’s an amazing photographer and I think she’s just moved to California, if I’m right. She writes great e-books, especially the one that I want to talk about, which is The Inspired Photographer e-book. I believe she’s also a food photographer. Nicole, are you there?

Who is Nicole S. Young?

Nicole: I’m here.

Brent:  Awesome! Nicole, tell us a little bit about yourself; your background, where you live and what you’ve done in the past when it comes to photography?

Nicole: Two weeks ago as of this interview, I moved to California, the Bay Area of California, Silicon Valley. My husband got a job at Google. We moved from Portland, Oregon down here, which is a really sad move because Portland is so beautiful. I lived in so many places in the last 10 or 15 years. Before Portland, I was in Seattle. Before that, I was in Utah for a couple years, and before that I was in California. Then I was in the military for eight years before all of those moves. I’ve lived all over the place.

In terms of my photography career, I was in the Navy. I wasn’t a professional photographer then; I was a linguist. My photography was just a hobby, just like for a lot of people. You do it when you have the time. At some point, while I was in the US military, I discovered stock photography. I really wasn’t looking to become a full-pledged photographer. Not that I would say that that’s not what I want, but it was more like it wasn’t what I was expecting.

I wanted to find a way to reignite my passion for photography, find a focus for photography, because communities of photography weren’t nearly as massive as they are today. This is in 2006, so it wasn’t that long ago. It’s also possible that I just wasn’t with the right groups of people. The online communities just didn’t exist, and places like Google+ and Twitter was really just beginning then.

I started doing stock photography and that was really the beginning of my career in photography. It started slowly and then it just grew. My photography grew and then I started getting into teaching, then I got approached to write a book and that’s why I write books now.

The things that I photograph have shifted a lot. I started out doing a lot more people and moved into food, and also do landscape photography. I do a lot of different types of images.

My photography grew and then I started getting into teaching, then I got approached to write a book and that’s why I write books now.

Brent:  Awesome. Thanks, Nicole. That’s really interesting, moving around like that and being in the Navy. I’m sure you’ve experienced a lot of different places and different cultures being in the Navy and traveling like that. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

Nicole: I actually did a couple of years of training; it takes a lot of training to become a linguist. I had about two and a half years of training, and that was all in the US: California, Texas, Pensacola. Basic training I think was in Great Lakes, up in Michigan? Sorry, I can’t remember. They just shipped me there.

That was two and a half years of doing all that. Then my first duty station was in Northern Japan, Misawa to be exact. When I was there, I’d go between Japan and Okinawa. I traveled a little bit while I was in high school, but nothing like going to and living in a completely different country.

I looked at it as a photographer and I’m just like, “Why wasn’t I the photographer I am today when I lived there?”, because there were so many amazing opportunities. I tried to get off-base as much as possible. It can be easy for people in the military if you live on base to never leave. I tried to get out and experience that. I traveled to Korea during that time.

After that duty station, I moved to Hawaii for three years, which is different definitely in terms of what the main United States culture is like. There are a lot of different subcultures within the US, and Hawaii is definitely one of them. It was a really cool experience to be there. Again, I was not the landscape photographer that I am now so I just cringe going, “Why didn’t I take those opportunities?” But I think all of us have those moments where we wish we were as good at something back then that we are now.

Brent:  For sure, and are there any other spots that you haven’t been to that you’d love to go to?

Nicole: In general, gosh, I have a whole list of places. Actually right before we started this interview, I was on Norway’s travel site just dreaming of a trip out to Norway. That’s just on my list with a few other places out in that region of the world. Antarctica is another one that I’m going to start saving up for. It’s a pretty pricey trip to go out to Antarctica.

I love to travel. The last two years I’ve been to Vietnam, Cambodia and Australia. I’ve seen a lot in a couple years’ time and I’m trying to hit one new country every year, at least one new country every year, which I think is pretty reasonable.

Brent:  Have you ever been to Africa?

Nicole: I have not, no. Morocco is one that I’ve looked at South Africa. I’m a huge fan of sharks. I really want to go out and see the Great Whites. There’s a huge list. It’s like, “Am I going to be able to fit it all in my lifetime? I don’t know.”

Brent:  For sure. I don’t know if you know, but I grew up in South Africa.

Nicole: Great. We can chat when I’m ready to travel out there.

Brent:  For sure. I went last year with the kids. I took them because we live in Australia now. We did live in the US for seven years also. I took the kids and my family last year for the first time, because they’ve never been there. It was just amazing.

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Photography Education and Training

Brent: Nicole, tell me a little bit about your take on education and learning. How did you learn photography and what’s your advice for people that are just getting into it? What’s the easiest way to get a grasp of photography and really enjoy the learning process?

Nicole: I have very little formal education in terms of photography. I got interested in high school. It just happened. I had to take an art class, and so I chose photography. Then it ended up being the best thing that ever happened to me.

After that, I just took a few semesters in high school. I joined the military about a year after or so. I didn’t go to college. I just went to school in the military. When I got out of the military, I took a few community college classes. I had the GI Bill with the military, so I was able to take a few classes for free. I just wanted to get some different takes on photography and hone some of my skills.

Other than that, everything I’ve learned has been through learning things online or just by doing them and figuring them out and developing my processing style.  It’s not entirely unique because there’s only so much you can do that’s unique, but I didn’t learn it from anyone so it’s a little unique in that sense. I picked up bits and pieces here and there.

Everyone has their own way that’s going to be the best way for them to learn something. I think most people are going to thrive in a hands-on environment such as formal training or workshops that you would actually be with the instructor, but it’s not always feasible and those types of things are pretty expensive. It’s about finding … for me, if I’m going to learn, let’s say I wanted to learn a brand new piece of software that I’ve never used before like InDesign, I know InDesign but let’s say I’ve never used InDesign before and I really want to learn it.

I’m going to go to a site like Lynda.com. I’m going to watch a video and I’m going to have someone show me the video. I learned Premier Pro by watching an entire course on Lynda.com. I don’t know the entirety of that software, but that’s how I learned how to use it. It’s Adobe. I know Adobe and know Photoshop extremely well, so i’m taking some of those pieces.

For me, learning from the very bottom to actually get my brain wrapped around something, I learn really well by video. In terms of, if I need reference or I know something but I want to add it, books are really helpful for that for me whether it’s an e-book.

E-books are great, especially for reference books. Because if you need to learn, if you’re looking up something that has to do with Photoshop, let’s say, you can just type in the search in the PDF and find it. That’s one thing I really like about e-books but hands-on books are always nice. You could flip through pages and bookmark little things that are in there. It’s really just for everyone, it’s just about finding the style that works for them.

I do a lot of teaching. I don’t do it much in person teaching. I do more online and e-books. I’m going to be doing some video training classes here shortly. On my blog, I have a little series called Two-Minute Tips. Just short little Photoshop tips that will last two to four minutes. They’re not always two minutes. They’re really short because people can digest that information so much easier if it’s really, really short and to the point.

There’s my long rant about education.

I learn really well by video. In terms of, if I need reference or I know something but I want to add it, books are really helpful for that for me whether it’s an e-book.

Brent:  No, that’s great. I’ll second that the short videos, I’ve found that three to 12 minutes is about the attention span that anyone can handle when they’re watching a video and they’re learning something.

It’s great to have an e-book that accompanies a video. You can quickly jump to pages or look at a chart or something, where in a video it might be a little tough to jump ahead or jump back and find that spot again. I don’t know if you ever watched a DVD and you had to go away and you had to come back and you’re trying to find the same place where you left off, it’s a little difficult.

Photography eBooks

Brent: I noticed that you’ve got a lot of your books on Amazon, too. You write an e-book and then do you design it so that people can actually order the printed version, the physical version too as well as the e-book?

Nicole: Half of my books that I have out there are actually print published books. I have four books published through Peachpit, and the main one is print for them. We write the books and we publish them to be printed, but they also have the e-book and the EPUB and the MOBI and all those versions as well. I have a few other books. Craft & Vision is an online e-book publisher, and I have two books out with them. That’s just complete PDFs, just PDFs.

My most recent book, it’s not print. It’s just an e-book but I have it on Amazon. I don’t create my e-books. My most recent one, The Inspired Photographer, that is only an e-book. I don’t have that. That won’t be a print book. There’s a lot of work that goes into the print process, and I want to focus on the e-book experience.

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Inspiration and Mindset

Brent:  Yeah, for sure. That’s awesome. That leads us to the next topic, Nicole: Inspiration and Mindset. How do you stay inspired and where do you get your inspiration from? Also from there, tell me a little bit about what inspired you to write The Inspired Photographer. Obviously there had to be some pain in the background or maybe you lacked inspiration at one time, and that’s what got you into writing this book. Tell me a little bit about that.

Nicole: One thing about inspiration from a general perspective is that it really can come from anywhere. It’s like they say, those in the shower moments where you’re taking a shower and you’re like, “Oh my gosh, I have a great idea.” You don’t know where it comes from necessarily. Sometimes it’s obvious where things come from.

I’m a food photographer, and I create and I cook and style all my own food photographs for my stock portfolio. I get a lot of inspiration by either reading food magazines, that’s actually where I get a lot of my inspiration from. It’s maybe seeing a recipe or maybe just seeing food that makes me go, “Oh my gosh, that is so beautiful. I’m going to cook that. I want to create my own version of that and photograph it.” Or it could just be … I collect dishes for styling and props and things, so I can get inspired just by a certain bowl or a color. You never know where it’s going to come from.

When it comes to photography, because I’m always trying to be inspired to create beautiful photographs, that’s always what everything is filtered towards for me. Usually I find inspiration by stepping away from photography. It’s so easy to get tunnel vision when you’re just holding your camera all the time. I really like to get out and go on walks. I take my dog out on walks. I try to find more beautiful places to walk in instead of just through the neighborhood, which isn’t to say that you can’t get inspired that way at all.

I do that. I also like to train and take classes that don’t have to do with computers or anything digital or photography. A few years back I took some pottery classes and I’m looking into doing that again here. I’m also looking into going to culinary school, which would also help my food photography career but it would also give me something other than photography to do.

Those are some of the main things that I do, magazines and getting away from photography, which is kind of ironic. Just being around people, new people, different people that don’t think like you is a really good way to also be inspired.

Usually I find inspiration by stepping away from photography. It’s so easy to get tunnel vision when you’re just holding your camera all the time.

Brent:  Sorry to butt in there, Nicole. Your dog’s got quite an interesting name.

Nicole: My dog’s name is Kodak. I have a cat and his name is Fuji. My dog is just a puppy. He’s just about eight months. 

Brent: You’re definitely a great photographer when you start naming your animals after brands. Tell me a little bit about the book that you wrote, The Inspired Photographer.

 

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The Inspired Photographer

Nicole: It’s hard to say how I actually got inspired to write this specific book. Ironic, isn’t it? Because it’s a book about inspiration. It was me wanting to really reinforce the things to myself that inspire me, like a reminder to myself, then realizing this is something that could probably also be useful for other people, why not package this all together and make it into something.

This is also my first self-published e-book that I’m actually selling myself. That was a motivation for me to write it, was to go through the process and see if it works. It did, and it was successful. This is not going to be a one-time thing for me. I’m going to continue to write e-books for myself. I’ll still write books for Peachpit and Craft & Vision and the other sites. I see this book as it’s not just an e-book. It’s not just a book. The whole entire thing is a work of art to me.

I was involved in 100% of the process, except for I had an editor. She actually edited, did the edits on my book like a standard, like any book would have. I had somebody else take care of the conversions over to the e-pub format, but that’s about it. All the design, the layout, of course photography and writing, it’s all mine. It was a creation effort. It wasn’t just pushing information into a PDF. It was a whole big process.

This is also my first self-published e-book that I’m actually selling myself.

Brent:  It’s a beautiful book and it is a true work of art. I love it. Tell us a little bit more, Nicole, because you’ve got quite a few different chapters and they’ve all got different points on how to get inspiration and little tips on what to do. I’m just running through it right now. There was a chapter here that I really wanted to talk about, and I’ll get to that in a second.  What are your favorite tips or your favorite chapters when it comes to this book?

Nicole: It’s hard to say because it’s my book. When I’m looking at it I would say things like “forget photography,” which is actually one of the chapters in my book. Limiting yourself is a really good way to stretch your creativity and it helps you see differently. Just saying, “Okay, I’m going to go out. I’ll go for a walk. I’ll just walk around with my camera but I’m only going to bring this one lens or I’m going to try a unique lens like a Lensbaby or a tilt-shift lens,” or something that you’re not necessarily going to always take out of your bag and put on your camera, something that’s different.

You might not get the standard cliché shot with those lenses but you’re probably going to find something different. Differentiating yourself from that standard is going to help you take that next step in photography, when you’re shooting in a different way and seeing differently.

Brent:  That’s the point actually I wanted to talk about because I was away a couple of weeks ago with the family. It’s midwinter here in Australia, and we went up the coast to Zulu cottage week, and have a fire going and everything. When I was packing my camera bag I was thinking about your book and I thought, “You know what, I’m going to take one lens, a different lens to what I normally take.” I’ll normally take a wide-angle lens to shoot landscapes, but I took my 135/f2 lens, which is a portrait lens. I thought, “I’m going to go shoot landscapes with this one lens and challenge myself.”

While I was doing this, I was actually thinking about your book about limiting yourself to one lens, to something that you don’t normally do. I went to the beach and I was photographing seaweed and birds and the foam coming at the beach, the waves and everything. It was a lot of fun and quite challenging shooting with a very shallow depth of field when you’re photographing landscapes where you’re normally shooting with a large depth of field where you want everything in focus. That’s a great point.

 The other one that I really like is your meditation at the end. For me, getting out and shooting landscapes is my form of meditation. It looks like for you, too.  Getting out in nature is a way of getting inspired and getting your energy back, your creative energy back.

I’m going to go shoot landscapes with this one lens and challenge myself

Nicole: It’s funny the first time that I remember noticing that landscape photography is peaceful. It was really before I was interested in landscape photography. I say that, and it just sounds so awful that I was never interested in landscape photography before the last couple of years.

I was in Mount Rainier and I was actually assisting on a workshop for Scott Bourne and Rock Sammon and Juan Ponce. They had a workshop out there for some other people. It was really early in the morning. We were just standing out there and I look around and I was like, “Wow, I can see why you guys really enjoy this. It’s so peaceful out here.” It was just absolutely beautiful.

I’ve had so many of those moments since then where you’re just sitting there. Sometimes I’ll just sit there and stop shooting and just enjoy my surroundings and breathe in the fresh air and then get back to shooting of course, because you don’t want to miss out on something.

Brent:  Have you spoken to any other photographers who have got into a bit of a slump and are lacking inspiration? I know I’ve been there before where all you’re doing is you’re shooting for clients, you’re basically shooting for money and to live off, then you actually forget to shoot for the pure pleasure of shooting just for yourself.

Nicole: I think everyone gets on that. I’m lucky in the fact that my profession in terms of how I make money for my actual photographs is all my choosing. I get to decide what I shoot. I don’t work with clients in the traditional sense. I create stock photographs. I have to create photos that I anticipate people will like.

It hasn’t gotten to that point, and mostly in the past when I was photographing more people, less food and less landscapes, I didn’t feel I was shooting for myself even though I kind of was. I still got to choose, but I was still creating photos to hope to make money from them.

That’s actually where my landscape photography has freed me from that because I don’t really make any money from my landscape photographs. I use them, obviously I use them in my projects and my books, so indirectly I kind of do, but I think a lot of people get that way. I actually talk about that. With one of the chapters, I talked about creating a personal project. You have to find something that is just for fun, that’s you’re not going to make any money off of it or maybe you will, but that’s not the point.

I think everyone gets into that. I haven’t really, to be honest, done any serious photography in the last maybe three or four weeks because I’ve been traveling. I mean not traveling, I’ve been moving. Anyone who’s moved knows how hard of a process it can be. It’s taxing.

My studio/office, which is just in my home is still a mess. Mostly, I got the house put together, so now I’m , “I need to tackle my studio so I can clean it up and get back to shooting.” I’ve been in a slump. It’s helpful for me to reread this book because it reminds myself.

Brent:  Maybe you should reread your book. I know how stress can suck the creative energy out of any artist. Yesterday I went to a talk locally and a professional photographer from Sydney gave a talk. It was really interesting because he actually went through depression and it was work-related depression. He created a photography studio, he created a monster that pushed him over the edge. He was purely shooting for money and he couldn’t remember the last time he actually picked up the camera and photographed just for himself and for the pure enjoyment of it.

I’m sure there are a lot of professional photographers who are in that situation that they’re out there and all they’re doing is they’re like, “Okay, how do I monetize what I’m doing right now? How I can get the most out of my time and some money in the bank?” The way you think like that is a way of killing your creativity.

This book is great for me because it pulled up a couple of points or you brought up a couple of points which are really valid. Getting out of the cluttering and creating a personal project, getting out into nature, things that get the inspiration back. This point about inspiration and mindset is a point that’s very dear to me because I’ve gone through the ups and downs in photography while making a fulltime living out of photography and still trying to enjoy what you’re doing. Thank you, Nicole, for writing this book. It’s been a pleasure reading it and becoming inspired again.

Thank you, Nicole, for writing this book. It’s been a pleasure reading it and becoming inspired again.

Nicole: Thank you. Just to kind of touched on the point that you made. There’s nothing wrong with making money with photography obviously. I wouldn’t be able to do what I do if I didn’t make money from my photography. Before I really took photography seriously and did this, I was afraid.

When I was in high school I still remember thinking, “I don’t want to be a professional photographer because I don’t want it to be my job. I want to enjoy it.” I remember thinking that. There is a way to find a balance with that. Things have changed a lot since then, too. It was mostly film back then, but everything’s digital these days for the most part. There are more opportunities to monetize from it, but then there are also more opportunities to just do it for fun. It’s about finding that balance.

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Personal Projects

Brent:  Definitely. Let’s jump on to the next subject here, Nicole. Can you tell us a couple of projects you’re working on, a couple of personal projects or other e-books that you’re currently working on?

Nicole: I have one e-book that I’m in the process of writing. It’s actually for Peachpit, so I’m not sure how much I could talk about it. It’s not like a secret or anything but I don’t want to step on anything. It’s just another e-book. It will be a shorter e-book, tips on things about traveling and travel photography.

I’m also planning a post processing-type e-book. I have a series of e-books that I’m going to start working on for my self-published e-books, similar to the book we just talked about. It’s going to be a behind-the-scenes post-processing type thing.

It’s not going to be out the next month or anything like that, it’s going to be an evolutionary thing I’m going to be working on over the next several months. I hope to have one or two self-published e-books published toward the end of the year, spread out before the end of the year.

I would say my personal project that I’ve been doing, it’s not really photography but I have a store that I sell things on, presets and things like that. It’s funny because I see it as a creation, a process of creation to make that. It’s actually really relaxing to sit down and, I’m going to make some presets or textures,” or whatever I’m going to do. Those are the things I’ve been working on.

Brent:  I love your store. You’ve got some great things in there, the presets and the e-books. Tell me a little bit more about the process of creating an e-book now. I’ve created one that goes with my essential skills, my basic SLR photography training. The way you’ve created them, it just looks so beautiful. Do you do it all in InDesign or do you write it in Microsoft Office and then convert it to InDesign? How did you do this last one, The Inspired Photographer?

Nicole: I do all of my actual writing inside of Microsoft Word. I don’t add the photos to that. It’s my place to write the words down, and then I reference where the photos are going to go. I have a little bit of experience with traditional publishing, so I use a lot of that knowledge in terms of the Word files, which is really when writing a book through a publisher you don’t really deal with the design process this much. You have input but you don’t actually do the layout or anything like that.

I did all the writing in Microsoft Word, and that’s to keep things clean and work well. To combine with InDesign, you have to add styles to your paragraphs and character styles and all these things. That’s really important to understand if anyone out there is planning on writing e-books or if you want to make it easy on yourself, I should say.

Then I did all of my layout and design in InDesign. Actually it’s a process because I had to learn how to use InDesign in order to create the e-book. I’ve played around with it before but this is pretty serious stuff doing all this to make sure everything works properly.

Brent:  Awesome. You write it all in Microsoft Word, the whole thing from start to finish just to see how it all works together, the different chapters, whether you got enough writing in each chapter, enough words. You can edit that and put it together quite quickly. I suppose it’s not too taxing on your laptop or your computer that you’re working on, because I know that sometimes InDesign can be quite taxing and quite resource hungry especially when you got images in the actual file.

Then what you do is you take with the Word document. You probably copy and paste for the InDesign in a certain format. You’ve got a lot of large images on the pages. You’ve got different styles where you’ve got maybe two columns to a page. One side is writing and the other side is images.

Nicole: That’s all InDesign there. For the specifics, I did things for what made sense for me; all of my chapters were split up into separate InDesign documents. Of course, I went through the editing process. I had my editor and we went back and forth with it a few times. When I got a polished Word document, I split it up into individual chapters. Then I pulled the text in from that and it keeps all the styles. I defined the style in InDesign. It was such a learning process. I didn’t really have any trouble with the processing. I did everything on my Mac Pro then. Now I have an iMac. I have a pretty solid setup at home. I don’t use a laptop for my serious work.

Brent:  Was it a long process creating this book from start to finish?

Nicole: It was a lot longer than I was expecting it to be. I can’t recall if it was just because I had so many other things going on at the time. I split it up. There was a lot more to it than I expected. I had all the layout pretty much ready to go. 

Brent:  Was it days, weeks or months from when you conceptualized the book to and it was available for people to buy?

Nicole: It was months. I don’t recall how many. 

Brent:  No, that’s fine.

Nicole: It was months. Writing actually probably takes the longest. The layout might just be because I’m kind of new to the whole InDesign process. That took me a little bit longer. There are so many little things. I had people being to test the book for me and help me find little bits that I missed or my editor missed and design fault and things like that. It’s a long process. You really appreciate having a publisher when you have to do it all yourself.

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Photography Style

Brent:  For sure. It really is polished. The book is beautiful. Nicole, we ran into the end of our time here. The last two little two points that I’d love to hear from you is can you describe your photography style and also what light is ideal for your photography?

Nicole: Talking about photography styles; it’s difficult in some ways to talk about your own because other people see a person’s style before we see our own style. When I look at my photos, I see very colorful images and natural but bright colors. I have a very clean processing style. I can thank stock photography editing for that because I learned how do to it for stock. I do style my photos sometimes, just happy and colorful. It reflects a lot of who I am because I’m usually pretty happy person.

In terms of light, I currently use a lot of natural light, window light, sunlight. Of course with my landscape photographs, I use a lot of natural light with that. My food photographs, I use diffused window light for my food images. I have lights I use, I used to use a lot of studio lights in my early days of doing stock photography when I photographed people.

Now it’s just because I have a really great setup, I have a really beautiful window light. It slows me down too with food, because I can’t hand-hold my camera when I’m using window light like that without boosting up my ISO,  which I don’t like to do with food because it’s very clean and there’s no reason to have a high ISO with food. Just soft, beautiful window light, I use really simple reflectors and I use white foam board to just bring some nice soft light back into the images.

When I look at my photos, I see very colorful images and natural but bright colors. I have a very clean processing style.

Brent:  I’m just looking at some of your food photography. Do you cook it all yourself?

Nicole: I do. There are maybe a few exceptions in there where I either worked with someone or maybe I bought something. I would say 99% of the stuff that I have in my portfolio is all my creations.

Brent:  That’s awesome. When I come to California we need to get together and you can make me a couple of these.

Nicole: That’s why I’m hoping to go to culinary school to even enhance that. I’m such a geek and a technically minded person that I want to learn the geeky side of food.

Brent:  Awesome. Thank you, Nicole. I’ll just run through what you spoke about and it’s really, really interesting. We ran through how you moved around when you were in the Navy and all the different places you’ve seen. The different ways you’ve got into photography, with stock photography and shooting people and landscapes and food photography. A quick little question for you while we’re running through that: If someone wanted to get into stock photography, what website or what agency would you recommend they go to now?

Nicole: There are so many out there. I work with iStock Photo. I have the most experience with iStock. I would say that for someone who wants to take it seriously you want to look into all of your options. iStock has an exclusivity program where you really can only license your photos through them and their partners, which happens automatically, which in turn you end up making more money.

You are somewhat limited by certain things. I don’t think I’d ever do it any other way. There’s a lot of behind the scenes conflict. There’s some people who aren’t happy with iStock right now. I won’t get into it. I don’t really have any quarrel with them. I keep making money. I’m happy with that.

If you go to regular route where you just apply to a lot of several different Microsoft sites, it can be a lot of work. I can’t even imagine going through all of that work. It’s an option. There’s a new out there called Stocksy, which is high-end, really trendy; it’s a really good site for the contributor, too, because they have a much higher commission rate than the standard.

Brent:  We ran through the learning and education part, how you learned through videos and e-books where you can actually flip to certain chapters and use them as reference. Then we went through your new book, The Inspired Photographer, which is just a beautiful book. It’s really polished. It’s really clean. It’s well written and it really resonated with me because I’ve been through losing inspiration and getting inspired again after reading your book and trying some of the different tips you’ve got in the book. For instance, limiting yourself to one lens and getting out into nature and having a personal project and those type of things.

We’ve also gone through what inspires you, like collecting dishes or your food magazines you look at, and stepping away from photography and walking your dog or cat, Kodak and Fuji.  

Nicole: I don’t think I walk my cat.

Brent:  The cat stays inside, yeah (laughs). Your current projects you’re working on, the super-secret e-book that you’ve got coming out which you can’t talk about, then some of the presets and things that you’ve got in your store, the great downloadable e-books and other great stuff you’ve got in there. We also touched on how you go through writing your book, from using Microsoft Word to the InDesign and actually creating the book and the difficulty. I guess it’s quite a process to create a book like yours. Is there anything else you wanted to tell my audience, anyone listening to this, Nicole?

Nicole: No. I just want to thank you for having me on and interviewing me. I appreciate it.

Brent:  How can people can get hold of you if they want more information?

Nicole: If you go to nicolesy.com, that will direct you to my website, my blog. It links everything else such as social media like Google+ and Facebook and my online store. They’re all accessible from that.

Brent:  Awesome. Thank you, Nicole, and thanks for coming in my show. 

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