Can I offer services in photography, Web design without formal training

Photo by Colin M. Lenton. See more of his work at ColinMLenton.com.
Photo by Colin M. Lenton. See more of his work at ColinMLenton.com.

There are many things in this world I cannot do.

One of those I am reminded of regularly is photography. I have the pleasure and curse of being surrounded by a host of genuinely talented young photogs.

But I have had some limited experience and even less training, so when compiling a collection of freelance services I could offer, as announced earlier this week, I listed photography.

At least one of my friends, among the more talented photographers of my talented contemporaries, took issue with this. For freelancers out there, it’s important to understand what and why you can and should offer potential clients.

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My Lifestream: Everything I do online in one place, here

My FriendFeed has made it to this site.

This will interest a very small portion of my very small readership, but it’s Sunday, so I’m OK with that.

In my About section, I have added a Lifestream, via my FriendFeed. For those who understandably don’t know what the Hell that means, well, just about everything I could ever do online is automatically generated in one place. That way you can follow me in multiple platforms. …For both legitimate and illegitimate purposes.

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Jason Martin: Which byline is my brand?

Jason L. Martin
Jason L. Martin

There are, I’m willing to bet, a lot of Jason Martins.

One particular Jason Martin is an online marketing manager in Cincinnati, Ohio.

He left a worthwhile comment on yesterday’s post about branidng your byline.

It prompts a conversation I’ve had here and read elsewhere, but it’s always worth returning to. With a common name how do you break through a crowded field of Web-search competition?

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Marketing yourself online: your byline is your brand

Last week I announced my intentions to give one of the hardest professional roads a try. I’m trying to be a freelance journalist – in Philadelphia, a city in a persistent media hiring freeze.

So if it’s always important to brand yourself, now is a particularly important juncture for this underemployed writer. For more than a year now though, leading up to and continuing beyond my college graduation, I have employed and developed a growing online community of methods to take control over my Web presence.

I am obsessively trying to find ways to market myself online like more and more multimedia journalists of all ages and experiences. So, what are you doing to promote your name?

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Notes on seeing Europe from a train

On the train destined for Stockholm, Sweden
On the train destined for Stockholm, Sweden on Nov. 1, 2008.

By Christopher Wink | Oct 23, 2008 | WeDontSpeaktheLanguage.com

You take trains from big cities to other big cities. Lands, untold by tour books and unseen by sloppy tourists like yourself, unfold beneath your high carriage of jet setting: two months, 10 cities 3,000 miles wide and two or three days deep.

You are riding great dividers of place and time, laughing at great empires of history. Slicing corridors of culture. Other trains pass with silent screams at 70 miles per hour. You mull issues of personal importance and navigate narrow bathrooms.

There’s the old story of the boy who took a train and came back a man. No great story of accomplishment or adventure, but stalking late-night cars and toeing empty rail yards. Sleeping with a bag in his lap until he wanted someone to know him again. Until he learned who is chasing whom.

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WDSTL travel essays posted

On the train destined for Stockholm, Sweden
On the train destined for Stockholm, Sweden on Nov. 1, 2008.

On the Creative page of this site, I have posted a handful of travel essays I wrote for WeDontSpeaktheLanguage.com, while podcasting and blogging in Europe.

They are not professional clips, but if you didn’t get a chance to read them this fall on WDSTL, see them here. Direct links below.

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Web presences, social networking that can be put on hold

google-reader

Google Reader I am back.

Last month I returned from five weeks backpacking Europe and moved into a new home in Frankford, a neighborhood in lower Northeast Philadelphia.

Somehow, even though I was travel blogging and video podcasting at WeDontSpeaktheLanguage.com, my month-plus European tour was an Internet vacation (IV) for me.

It was a chance to look at what social networking devices are easiest to put on hold.

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Help me understand the credit crisis

With some business reporting background, I really should have a better, more fuller grasp on the complexities of what caused today’s growing financial meltdown. But lots of smart people are having trouble understanding.

For the Philadelphia Business Journal in April, I put together an interesting Q&A on the mortgage crisis with E. Robert Levy, the executive director of the Mortgage Bankers Association of New Jersey.

If only we knew then that that was just the beginning. Now those failing mortgages have collapsed other parts of the global economy, and everywhere – perhaps outside of North Dakota – is feeling the pinch.

A friend forwarded me a good video from American Public Media discussing collaterized debt obligations – the financial products that brought last spring’s mortgage foreclosure surge to the world.

It helps, seriously. See it below.

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My Services: Freelancing for money in a variety of ways

While I do have a few outstanding applications out for gigs in Philadelphia, I am halting my aggressive hawking of myself: this professional writer is going from “unemployed journalist” to “freelance journalist.”

The only difference is an occasional paycheck and less sympathy from family and friends.

Though I like the idea of the stability and requisite health insurance that comes with permanent work, I am resigning myself to trying to find regular work on my own in a region currently unfriendly to young media aspirants, amid tonight’s announcement that more layoffs are coming at the city’s two largest daily newspapers, part of this country’s continued newspaper bubble burst.

To prove I am taking this seriously, I went and added a fresh new page on ChristopherWink.com, Web self-promotion.

Here’s to introducing Chris Wink’s Services.

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