Adidas Campaign, New Work

If you can believe it, I shot this Adidas "All In" campaign with Virat Kohli the day after I finished a 3000 km cross India rickshaw rally. I was literally going over the shoot briefs and doing conference calls in the back of a rickshaw somewhere in the dusty desert of Rajasthan.

This was my first shoot with the TBWA team and thanks to my producer Mithika we were able to organize it and pull it off without a hitch.

I basically shot him in a studio in Delhi with a beauty dish, a fill and a rim light. He was jumping around a bit so off course its a tricky thing freezing the action.

The main campaign image was all over the place, huge billboards all over the city so the shoot had had major visibility and traction, which is a good thing.

Thanks to Cocktail art for the great post work.

Why you will fail at your career

Excuses.

you hear them everywhere, though mostly they're in your mind:

too old
too young
in a relationship
have kids
not smart enough
no time
didn't go to the right school
dont have a good enough camera
the market is saturated
no one wants to pay for my skills
too much competition
not creative enough

with a little wisdom, some insight and a bit of self appreciation you'll start to see excuses as symptoms of your inner patterning. We all have an inner dialogue that essentially defines who we are and what we become.

Thoughts become words become action becomes character becomes destiny. Its as simple as that and you've heard it before.

People ask what it takes to become great, not necessarily at photography but anything. My advice would always be to watch your mind, forget about anything else...just learn to watch your mind.

That alone right there will define your success or your failure. Guaranteed. 100%

Once you become aware of your negative thinking and your tendency to make excuses, you'll begin to witness your deeper feelings and hidden opinions.

It takes a lot of work at first but you can change it. Just be aware. It doesn't have to be this epic monumental undertaking (though the results most certainly will be), just simply tell yourself that you no longer believe your excuses. You start to invalidate them.

Your mind will scream at you at first and call you a fraud and how dare you hold a new opinion of yourself...but after some time the new thinking will take hold and new grooves will be etched. The mind is fluid so when you cease dragging the needle down that path it'll fill back up as if it were water.

Next time you tell yourself that you didn't go to the right college or you live in the wrong town or you've got the wrong whatever just know that you only need to do one thing...

...change your mind. It's everything.

New Website is up and Workshops!!

I'm really quite happy to have finally launched my new site: www.martinprihoda.com
Designed by Design Stack here in Mumbai, the site is precisely what I wanted: fast, slick, easy to use, big pictures.

I launched with the following photos from my trip to Pushkar in November

My next piece of news awesomeness is that our next BLFA workshop in Sydney, Australia sold out in 3 days and we've added a second workshop!! after that I'm off to Dubai for Gulf Photo Plus in March and then a personal project which will take me into Oman.

so needless to say its a packed next few months, not too mention all the ad and editorial stuff i'm doing in Mumbai.

anyway, there's a little update for you and their will be lots more in the next few weeks ;-)

The Importance of knowing you suck

Catchy title, huh?

Its not to say you suck at everything but you certainly suck at something. I know I do. I suck at lots of stuff.

Lets start off with a story: Not too long ago a female friend of mine was enamored with a beautiful man. He was one of the top models in town, oozed sex appeal and seemed to vibe a heightened knowledge of the female psyche. He was charming, witty and arrogantly hard to get. He was the type of guy that when he entered the room all heads turned, male AND female. You know the guy i'm talking about right?

Anyway, when she triangulated some basic information and found out he was not gay, she made her move. Now, my friend is quite an attractive woman herself, but whats more she's self assured, graceful and intelligent. So its not such a stretch that she would be able to land the hottest guy in town.

Well...she did.

Back at her apartment things started getting steamy...thats when she noticed something was not right. He seemed fidgety, nervous, anxious. His heart rate seemed accelerated above average and he was having a hard time, or maybe, well, not hard enough.

Since this is primarily a photography blog, I'll simply cut to the chase: Their session was 'over' about 20 minutes into foreplay and this guy just picked up his stuff, red faced and left. The door shut and my friend just sat there for about 30 minutes contemplating the worst sexual experience she's ever had. This 40 year old handsome man, dripping sexual appeal from his every pore, turns out to be the worst lover she's ever been with.

It brings up an interesting question: How can someone who's convinced us they're so good, actually be so bad?

My theory is that human beings will do almost anything in their power to hide the fact they suck and arrogance, in my humble opinion, is one of the biggest indicators that someone's definitely hiding their Suck.

Bringing this post back to point. The sooner we actually acknowledge that we suck at whatever we suck at, the sooner we can transform the suck into not sucking.

There's a few main things to think about:

1: Realizing we suck at something requires us to face our Ego head on. This is painful. Our Ego is the part of ourselves that decides what it is we want the world we 'think' we are. Its the false sense of self that always seems to be at war with what's really going on inside us. When we let down our guard and realize that we're all just a bundle of twisted up, conflicting sets of patterns and conditionings that have been forming haphazardly since we first learned to speak, we can begin the process of facing our shadow selves with courage, honesty and wisdom.

Accept and Own your 'Suck'.

2: Surround yourself with people who are better than you, or at least suck less. We all have strengths and weaknesses, it doesn't help to look upon life as a competition; thats the old model of being. Sure, resources are limited and we all need to struggle to achieve, but I'm sure it can be done in a way that doesn't tear us up inside.

3: Introspect. If you're making the same mistakes over and over again and everyone sees it except you, it means you're caught in a pattern thats so comfortable in its discomfort that you might not even know that its happening. Spending some amount of time in silence will help you with this. Silence is like a wedge that drives into your conditioning and creates the space you need to make sane decisions about your life.

4: Always remember, there's always someone out there, even its just one person, who doesn't think you suck at all. Perspective is key.

Being one with your Suck means to accept your humanity and that's a beautiful thing. Focus on your strengths, know and accept your weaknesses and cut out all negative self talk.

So embrace your suck; just like the line between pain and pleasure, with a little attention that in you which sucks could very well turn out to be your greatest strength.

-M

There is no tomorrow...

I had a major epiphany a few months back and its something I shared with my last workshop class. I thought I'd write about it here as well.

I remember, years back now, when I began this journey into photography thinking to myself:

"I know nothing about this, I don't know how they light these images, I don't know how to build a good portfolio, I don't know where to find models or how to go about setting up meetings with agency art directors. I had no idea how I would begin to build a portfolio good enough to even get me in the door."

The beginning was full of I don't know's, I don't know's, I don't know's.

But somewhere in there, deep down and a quite was another voice, urging and pushing: "I will."

Somehow I will do it. Somehow I will make it. Its been these words that have pushed me through financial hardship, disappointment and an immensely energy consuming but amazing move to India. The successes along the way serve as beacons and reminders that I was indeed on the right path.

I had this notion of 'making it' in my head. I wanted to 'make it,' to 'get there,' and 'to arrive.' As I sat at my desk all those years back I noticed a Vanity Fair magazine to the right of my computer. I decided then and there that shooting the cover to a major magazine like Vanity Fair or GQ was my idea of 'making it' and that when that moment arrived, I would find my success, my peace and my happiness.

Flash forward some years.

I'm sitting at my computer in Bombay a few months ago and on my desk is a GQ magazine but this time its MY cover. I shot it.

and thats when it hits me. I remember all those years back, that promise I made to myself and here it is, the moment has arrived!

But interestingly, there was no feeling of 'making it' to be found, no angels of success trumpeting down on me heralding my arrival. No, there was only silence...and a small cursor blinking at the top of an open excel file entitled 'overdue Invoice for job EH2011-5,'

Thats when it hit me.

There is no tomorrow. There is no "I'll be successful when I reach here, or there or I'll be happy as soon as X happens.

There is only right now. Its a crazy thing but so many of us live in the future. I know this because I have like-minded, goal orientated friends like myself. Friends who say: "As soon as my book is published..." or "I need to be making at least 6 figures..." Those are all valid goals but they have nothing to do with success or happiness.

What I realized is that putting your visions of success and happiness into the future tense really is a negation of your success and happiness right here and now. We are unhappy with how things are so we fantasize about the future and how happy we'll be when we have our new car, house, salary, job, relationship.

But its all bullshit. You're lying to yourself. If you can't feel your success right here in the present moment, then you never will. It will never ever come.

I sat that looking at my cover and I thought to myself, that's a huge accomplishment, why don't I feel elated, or successful about it?? The truth is that I also suffer from the 'right now isn't good enough, tomorrow will be better' disease.

I made a conscious decision at that moment. I decided that from that moment forward I would visualize and feel my success in each and every moment. I would continue to set goals and work towards them, but would no longer look to them for validation or happiness. I would do that now, right here and now.

Its all habitual. The mind wants to wander to the future and wallow in the past. Anything but here and now. It takes practice and meditation.

I said to my class: "How many of you have goals about the future, visions of the future where you feel happy and full of joy and freedom." almost all hands went up. The I asked: "How many of you feel that about your lives right now?":

Noticeably fewer hands.

The truth was that they were successful, right now. They paid good money to hear me speak, they gave their time. It was a commitment to their craft, to their love of what they were doing. THAT is hugely successful. Most people just dream...they were here, sitting, listening, learning. I asked them to honor that.

There is no tomorrow. Visualize yourself as a success in your field, financially free, respected. Feel what it would be like to drive your dream car, live in your dream house. Visualize that and now bring it into the present. Live with the feeling that you are already that which you desire to become.

You remember that old story of Michelangelo and his carving of David from marble? Someone asks him how he could possibly have created something so beautiful and Michelangelo replies simply: "The statue was already in the rock, I just removed the excess pieces."

That's us, our success is already within...we just need to uncover it. Here. Now.