Today's Guest: Andy Armstrong of Andy Armstrong Photography in Knoxville, Tennessee
Today's Host: John Bentley
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Andy Armstrong Expert PageANNOUNCER: Welcome to No BS Photo Success Digital Photography Shop Talk brought to you by NO BS Photo Success Photography Forum. Dedicated to the portrait and wedding photographer who has the passion and desire to grow. Now here's your host, John Bentley.
JOHN: Today on the No BS Photo Success Digital Photography Shop Talk, we have Knoxville, Tennessee, photographer and artist, Andy Armstrong, of Andy Armstrong Photography joining via the telephone. Welcome to the program, Andy.
ANDY: Hey, how's it going?
JOHN: Hey, not to bad. Glad you could join us this morning.
ANDY: Not a problem at all.
JOHN: Now you're a unique photographer in a couple of ways. Certainly you combine your art background with photography so you have a really nice, polished, artistic approach to your photography, and you also are involved in the No BS Photo Success as well as marketing your own Adobe Photoshop schools. Looks like you're a pretty busy guy.
ANDY: Absolutely a busy guy. I am moderator for their forums over there at No BS Photo Success, and I've been with the guys since before they launched into the really big deal, and also now a preferred vendor with my design house software.
JOHN: Let's just first touch on your photography itself. What is kind of your main focus as a photographer?
ANDY: I consider myself a portrait photographer. My background is completely in art. I decided in fourth grade that I wanted to be an artist. Told my parents I wanted a career and they laughed because they said, you got a career as a fourth grader, but I got into that. I studied art in college, and I wanted to be photograph cartoonist, and then about 4 years ago, I saw that digital cameras were the real big thing, and I bought myself a Sony X717, and I instantly fell in love. And reason I fell in love as an artist...you're only able to show people what's in your head by the talent that is in your fingertips and your hands. So if you're paining or your drawing, if you're not quite talented to get all of that information from your head onto the paper, people can't see it. But with a camera, I found that I could show people exactly what I wanted them to see, and I just absolutely fell in love with it. You know, six months after buying that first X717, I bought my first Canon body...a 10B and it's been no holds barred since then.
JOHN: Now for an artist it's not that big of a jump to go from what you had been doing into the camera like that. There had to be quite a bit of learning that had to go into that short process. What kind of education did you get on the camera itself?
ANDY: I'll tell you two great places to look for education on a camera. Number one was No BS. I found a lot of good people that could tell me a lot about my camera and learn that way. I threw that camera into manual mode, grabbed the Canon manual, started going through it, and I just practiced, practiced, practiced, and when I did something I posted it on No BS, and say, hey guys what am I doing wrong? What am I doing right? How is this supposed to work, and I know that aperture does this, and I know that my shutter speed should be this if I'm trying to drag it, what should I do? But it was a matter of literally just jumping both feet in manual mode and learning everything I could about the camera. I knew the lighting, I knew the composition. I knew what I liked to see, and that all came from my art background, but what I didn't know was the technical side of the camera. Once I had a pretty decent grasp on that, it all kind of just fell together.
JOHN: Let's talk about some of the types of photography that you do. This time of year, I would imagine you're getting a lot of weddings?
ANDY: Actually, I do some weddings. I try to limit the amount of weddings that I do, because I truthfully do not want to be a wedding photographer. It does help pay the bills. I do, at this time of year, is big for me...I am a huge fashion, glamour shooter. So at this time of year, you've got the gals who want to try to be models who are donning the bikinis and heading out to the lake and wanting their portfolios shot. So I do a lot of that.
JOHN: I see that you've been shooting a lot of celebrities too. I have had the opportunity to shoot quite a few celebrities through journalism and working for a smaller paper here. Being close as we are to Nashville, Tennessee, and country music, we have a lot of bleed over of country artists who come into Knoxville, and so those opportunities have arisen, and I have always pursued that. I didn't wait for a paper to find me. I went and found a paper that would credential me and get me into the concerts to shoot the pictures.
JOHN: Sounds like a plan. What about commercial photography? Is that something that you do a lot of?
ANDY: I've done a bit. I've worked for some magazines and I guess the most recent thing that I did was a Charleston, South Carolina magazine wanted me to cover a doctor who is now head of our sleep center here in Knoxville, one of the bigger hospitals, and we went into his offices and shot for the magazine, and that ended up to be a nice spread. Commercial work, I have worked for radio stations, and I've been the sole photographer for two major calendars that put out about 20 to 25,000 calendars each year for one of the biggest radio stations here in the City and boy that's been fantastic advertising to be able to put your creative stamp and also your name onto that. And then they distribute it for free for you, and boy you get a lot of work out of that.
JOHN: Yeah, you sure do. I mean your name is up there on somebody's wall for 30 days anyways.
ANDY: For the whole year, because it's a 12 month calendar and the name shows up on every single picture.
JOHN: Sweet. Sweet. Now you also dabble in a little bit of sports photography also?
ANDY: I shot minor league hockey from the bench for 2 1/2 seasons, and then I just didn't have time to do it anymore because you're talking about two to three games a week, but exciting fun stuff to shoot hockey right from the bench.
JOHN: And now do you actually have a studio there in Knoxville?
ANDY: I shoot out of my home. I have a home studio, and I do a lot of location work.
JOHN: And do you prefer the location work, or...
ANDY: I honestly prefer the studio work. I think my lighting is a lot better when I control it and, you know, the man upstairs doesn't get to control it. So I can actually set the lights where I want them to be rather than waiting for the light to be where I want it, and so that works out a little better for me, but I do do a lot of location work as well.
JOHN: And you've been involved in photography for how long now?
ANDY: Just barely under four years.
JOHN: And yet your background in art and design has been since...
ANDY: Since fourth grade, and I really had my first job as an artist at 15 or 16 years old.
JOHN: Fifteen or sixteen that's wonderful. Now you serve as a moderator on the No BS Photo Success site. What exactly does that entail?
ANDY: I moderate the portrait section...the portrait sub forum that is inside of their forum, and really that's helping people out with whatever they need as far as portraits go. So we're talking families, glamour, dogs, cats, any kind of pet portraits are there, but really it's managing threads and managing posts, and helping things along within a sub forum of No BS Photo Success.
JOHN: Now Andy, we're going to take a little break here, and we'll talk a little bit more about the No BS Photo Success portrait section, but before we go, why don't you give us your website address for your photography business.
ANDY: My photography address is www.andyarmstrongphoto.com.
JOHN: Excellent. We are speaking with Andy Armstrong, of Andy Armstrong Photography out of Knoxville, Tennessee, and you are listening to the No BS Photo Success Digital Photography Shop Talk. We'll be right back after these important messages.
ANNOUNCER: This program is sponsored by NO BS Photo Success Photography Forum. Visit them on the web at www.nobsphotosuccess.com. NO BS Photo Success dedicated to the portrait and wedding photographer who has the passion and desire to grow.
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ANNOUNCER: www.morephotos.com helps professional photographers manage their digital images online in over 20 countries. They can help you with domain names, websites, shopping carts, and online proofing solutions. Please visit them at www.morephotos.com. www.morephotos.com the online sales solution for professional photographers worldwide. We now return you to the NO BS Photo Success Digital Photography Shop Talk show with your host, John Bentley.
JOHN: We are back with Andy Armstrong. He is a photographer out of the Knoxville, Tennessee, area, and his business is Andy Armstrong Photography, and you are listening to No BS Photo Success Digital Photography Shop Talk. Wecome back to the program, Andy.
ANDY: Thank you.
JOHN: Now we've been talking a little bit about your service on the No BS Photo Success site. You are a moderator for their portrait section. Let's throw something at you here. What kind of experience do you need as a photographer to post on your moderated site?
ANDY: I think that that's probably the best part about No BS Photo Success, because it's a mix of people who have little to know experience, who are just getting started and people who have been their for 25 - 30 years in the grind doing everything that they can to be professional photographers. So you don't have to have experience to post your portrait and you're going to get comments from folks who have been doing this for a very, very long time. So it's a nice, rich learning environment right there in that portrait section.
JOHN: Do people have to have a studio in order to be a good portrait photographer?
ANDY: No. You know, it's interesting that you say that, because some of the greatest photographers that I've seen have been working out of their home or never had any studio space whatsoever. I don't believe that photography is something that you have to have, you know, thousands upon thousands of dollars invested in to be good at. Photography is an art. It's one of those things that if you are a talented artist, and you have a vision, and you can show people that vision, then it doesn't matter whether you have a studio or not.
JOHN: Let's talk about Design House. Now Design House is a service that you offer to photographers to help them with the after picture taking, correct?
ANDY: Yeah, Design House is actually a piece of software, but that's almost a misnomer. It's more of a collection. It's a collection of Adobe Photoshop brushes, custom shapes, a set of actions. It's also just jammed packed with textures and wallpapers and backgrounds. See the modern photographer, right now used to in the old days, well you'd hand off a roll of film, and somebody else would do all the work. Well that's not the way it works anymore. Your modern photographer has to go into Photoshop and process their own film and have to other things and customers are more savvy today. They want more. Your senior portrait customers, they're going to want these snazzy, funky cross-processed colors, textured backgrounds. They're going to want announcement cards and things like that. Well that falls right into my niche of art and design that I've been in for professionally for ten to fifteen years now and what I was finding was that photographers out there are having trouble. They are having trouble doing the things that just came natural to me. So I said, you know what, let's put together a complete package that allows people to quickly and easily do these new things, and that's how Design House was born.
JOHN: Now, ok, so when you're talking about actions, what exactly do you mean by actions.
ANDY: Ok, Photoshop allows you to run an action on an image. An action is a set of processes or processees that affect the photograph in some way. My action, probably the most popular set of my actions are the punch and work flow actions. I have actions that pop your color, they bring up your contrast and they sort of automatically, and then I have the set of actions that are cross-processed actions that are called monkeys, and those monkeys have become popular among lots and lots of folks out there right now, but if you've ever seen the movie Fight Club, if you've ever seen any of those interesting gritty movies, that's what cross-processing is. The movie, Dominoes, another one to look at. The color is a little odd. The processing is very strange and mixed. It's very popular right now and those Design House monkeys do that to your photos, and the best part about it is that they don't affect your original image. All my actions are built in layers on top of your original image, and they're completely adjustable, and all you have to do is throw them in the trash can, and you're back to your original image totally unharmed.
JOHN: That's good because sometimes you can kind of overdo it with all the different things you can do in Photoshop afterwards, can't you?
ANDY: We certainly can, and I find that a lot with people who are just starting out.
JOHN: Yeah, sure. Now this sounds like a very useful tool to photographers. Where do they find this product?
ANDY: You can go online and you can find it at www.getdesignhouse.com.
JOHN: How do you market your product?
ANDY: I'm actually preferred vendor with No BS. We launched about a month ago, and we've been very successful with the launch so far and the next step is to get out there into the different venues like Rangerfinder magazine that WPPI sponsors. But this first round has been marketed all by word of mouth and by the good folks at No BS.
JOHN: That's going pretty good so far, huh?
ANDY: Yeah, it's going fantastic right now.
JOHN: Now do you plan on doing anything like photography conventions or anything like that with this kind of a product?
ANDY: That's so interesting that you say that. I'm actually one of the guest speakers at the No BS Inferno in Nashville in November and through demand from wanting to learn this product and learn how I shoot glamour. I've actually booked two workshops...one on each end. Sorry to say they are sold out right now, but we're going to do the grind which is going to be an all day session the day before Inferno and the remix and all day session right after the Inferno, and then I will be doing four hours at the Inferno workshop which is for members only at No BS.
JOHN: Wow, what a nice opportunity for the No BS photo crowd to sit in and see exactly what you're doing there, huh.
ANDY: Yeah, I can't wait to participate in the rest of it myself.
JOHN: I'm sure. Now photography is such a fun and artistic product. It's great people can actually take something that they love like this and make a career out of it. Not everybody decided to do this at such a young age like you have. A lot of us are really just getting into their photography aspect and all the fun of it. Certainly with digital age, it makes it easy to get into it, but it takes just as much to be good at it as anything else. Isn't that the case?
ANDY: Yes, it takes a lot of work. I think that anybody who says they know everything about photography or art, I would just hang up the phone and don't listen to them. Turn off the computer and don't listen to them. It is a learning process that continues and continues and continues.
JOHN: Now with No BS Photo Success photographers can come to this site, and they can hear the voices of many photographers and many people with these great skills instead of just hearing the voice of one person who thinks they know it all, huh?
ANDY: That's right. That's absolutely right.
JOHN: Well you have a great product here to offer to the photographer at Design House. You said that was www.getdesignhouse.com and we certainly wish you the best of luck with this product and look forward to listening in on your moderated portrait section of the No BS Photo Success.
ANDY: Thanks a lot, John.
JOHN: We appreciate you joining us today on the Digital Photography Shoptalk. We've been speaking with Andy Armstrong of Andy Armstrong Photography. Andy is out of Knoxville, Tennessee, area. He is also a moderated for No BS Photo Success as well as the creator of a great product called Design House at www.getdesignhouse.com . Thanks for tuning in everyone to the No BS Photo Success Digital Photography Shop Talk. I'm your host, John Bentley. Have a great afternoon.
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