Education

Every eligible person in the kingdom hoped to be picked by Prince Charming. No one knew what Prince Charming’s selection criteria were as he went from door to door. The criterion was arbitrary – shoe size. And, somehow, Prince Charming managed to skip all those hundreds of houses where he could have found several perfectly […]

Exclusivity: The bravery to choose to speak to the sensibilities of only a few instead of all. We live in the world of niche. There is a magazine dedicated to water! A blog dedicated to growing succulents! A magazine on raising… emus! And one about miniature donkeys. Something exclusive is not exclusionary. It is razor-sharp […]

Even if your business is not a white-glove type of brand, you still need to define what “Luxury” means to you. In fact even more so. Because when you remove the simplicity of exchanging a product with a large lump of money, then you have to exchange a product with a good story.

In 1948 John Cage conceived a composition that consisted of nothing else but 4’ and 33” of silence, or more precisely, the absence of intended sounds, and only ambient sound.  Execution-wise, it could have been performed by untrained musicians. Innovation-wise, silence is hardly new. There is silence before every concert – all that Cage did […]

Industry means depersonalising and replacing human agency with processes, policies, efficiency and replication. This is the definition of industry.  The wedding “industry” occasionally focuses more on the industry part, not the wedding part. I have been lucky this year to have worked only with creatives who focus on the wedding part. This is the people […]

Would you tip the same if the tip-jar was hidden from anyone’s view?Maybe you would. But most people wouldn’t. Because, like walkathons, bikeathons, or fun runs, tipping is not just about the money, but about how it makes us feel. It is about the story we tell ourselves about ourselves. And it all comes down […]

The answer has little to do with whether people are paying you for what you do. I think the most appreciable distinction between a true professional and an amateur is this:A professional is presenting a self (consistently and deliberately), while an amateur is revealing the self they feel like being in the moment. Imagine the […]

Who is to blame? Your value system? Your time-management skills? The system (“I am in wrong field/ country/ team”)? You will never know the answer with certainty. You can guess, but the true answer will always remain outside anyone’s conceptual structure. The easiest thing to do would be to blame the system. Once you go […]

Tragedy is not the same as hell. Tragedy is in the core of life itself (by design of the cycle of life). Hell, though, is misunderstanding this very reality of life as the world being against us. Self-imposed misery is what hell is. The world is not against us. The world is chaos. Let’s accept […]

Being “safe” (in business, art, life) is an illusion. One cannot possibly expect to be safe. The only thing one can expect from oneselves is to be metasafe. Metasafe: to be able to cope with danger/ failure/ death/ _________ (all the nasty stuff the world will inevitably throw).  Once metasafe, it no longer makes sense […]

– Copy someone you admire.– But won’t this make me inauthentic? Before you can compose/draw/photograph a masterpiece, something that is beyond any previous memory, you have to first instil skill. Skill comes from grinding repetition and copying (or, better, imitation of) the masters until your brain forms new pathways. Why can’t we accept that Life, […]

From bandaids to what to bring for detail-shots, these checklists are essential tools when planning a wedding. Couples, please feel free to use for your own wedding; photographers, please feel free to customise for your own couples.