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Gratis Photography. The ultimate list of curated free photo sites to make your creative ideas pop.

ThefrugImages

By Brad Beckstrom

Images are the language of a generation. Regardless of our race, language, our education, our views on the world, we can all be moved by a great photograph. If you’re creating a blog, presentation, new website, or just want a fresh look on your boring computer desktop, a great image can communicate a lot. Most modern websites feature a single image or video across the entire top third of the page.

Just one image

The best presenters use one large image per slide and just a few words to communicate their ideas. Watch any Ted talk and you’ll see very few people presenting slides full of words, charts, and bullet points. Less is more. Some of the best blogs have a consistent look and feel using images to accentuate quality content. Even tweets and Facebook posts with images get far more attention than a string of text with a link.

If you work for a large company, you may have access to a stock photo account or archive. I’ve found that even some of the largest stock photo sites lack some of that creative edge I’m looking for. I can often spot traditional stock photos instantly. You’ve seen them, people with coffee and laptops usually perfectly dressed for a business meeting in 1996, pointing at things and smiling, maybe even a high five.

Know the rules

Testing big ideas, finding your muse, and doing the work you were born to do.

03/16 by The Frug 1 Comment

By Brad Beckstrom

Do you have it? Have you found it? We all have one. Some long dormant or untested skill just waiting to be discovered. Sometimes we find it at a young age, then the real world, school, work, family become the priorities. As we get older, the skill lies dormant, often gets rusty like an old toy long forgotten.

Schools and family, meaning well, often steer us in a certain direction toward something that fits in a curriculum or is a “viable” skill in the working world. My parents did it, and I find myself doing it with my sons. I guess you can count yourself lucky if you have someone who cares, but all that advice is just a small piece of the puzzle.

It’s on us

It’s still on us, finding “it.”” Things you pick up on in school, your hobbies, books, or websites you find yourself going back to, these are all clues, part of your personal archeology. Ok, so I collected beer cans and read car magazines in middle school. What does that say about me? Well, looking back now, I had an early interest in design. I loved all the different labels, the uniqueness of certain can designs. I was also fascinated with cars, but not for the horsepower or mechanicals. I was interested in the design of early Mustangs, Camaros, and Chargers. Could I combine the best features of each and design my own muscle car? I certainly thought so. I was told “you’ll need a lot of math for that.” I didn’t have a lot of math. How about architecture? “Yep, need a lot of math for that too.”

I kept searching. Over the years, I learned that my passions are visual. I picked up photography in my early teens, and again, felt I had found my calling. I was told “that’s a wonderful hobby but you’ll need to study business in college.” My parents called a business degree a “safety net.” That turned out to be good advice as back then a business degree actually was a safety net. It allowed me to apply my creative talents in a 30 year career in marketing and advertising. Little did I know that my search was far from over. [Read more…] about Testing big ideas, finding your muse, and doing the work you were born to do.

The 5 Minute Body Scan.

03/16 by The Frug Leave a Comment

How a free app and 5 minute exercise for the brain is like a reboot for your day.

By Brad Beckstrom

For years I’ve been reading about professional athletes, coaches, CEOs, artists, writers and others I admired, who meditated daily. I’d read about meditation and written about my experiments with it in the past. I wanted in on the benefits of meditation and mindfulness and I’ve been trying to make it a daily habit.

The Problem

To be honest, I struggled with it. The longest streak of daily meditation I’ve had was five days, five minutes per day. Surely I could spare 5 minutes a day for this life changing habit? I was really having trouble silencing my ADD tendencies enough to get started and stick with it.

My problem was trying to meditate in silence. I learned quickly that the way my mind works is trying to fill any silence with thoughts. I’ve tried to train myself to silence these thoughts and banish them as they appeared. My meditation experiment included interesting tricks like envisioning these random thoughts as Post-it notes floating through the air and then being crumbled and tossed as I tried to clear my mind and focus on my breath. So, that’s what my meditation looked like, breathing sounds and Post-it notes full of thoughts and to-dos. I learned that’s how meditation often begins, helping you understand how your mind works so you can silence stress and negative thoughts. I was still having trouble with it as my stream of thoughts just became more visual as I sat in silence with my eyes closed.

How I Fixed It

Please Go Ahead.

02/16 by The Frug Leave a Comment

How using these 3 words daily, will change your life for the better.

For the last few months, I’ve been involved in a social experiment. It’s one of the simplest and most effective things I’ve ever tried. I dabbled with this in the past but wasn’t always the best at sticking with it. The experiment involved using three words “please go ahead.”

I decided that regardless of where I was, airports, hotels, restaurants, in my car (especially in my car) I would utter three words “please go ahead” whenever someone maneuvered in front of me, around me, or even needed to just butt in line or nudge me out of the way. I decided I would stick with this regardless of the situation. Someone would literally have to throw an elbow into my gut for me to skip it.

It was the perfect time to try this 3 word experiment. I’d be traveling to several US and foreign cities large and small, along with all of the flight and hotel check-ins that go along with that. I’d be busy as usual around home as well. If you’re a person who sometimes runs late or considers yourself an “excellent driver” who has no time for the other “non-drivers” on the road than this may be a bit difficult to stick with. However, it’s the folks with type A personalities that will benefit the most. So stick with it.

Once you find yourself involved in this experiment, you automatically become more observant of the people around you since you’re letting them go ahead of you. [Read more…] about Please Go Ahead.

How the ordinary can become extraordinary.

02/16 by The Frug Leave a Comment

What can you create that people will be talking about in 100 years?

By Brad Beckstrom

If you were asked to create a time capsule that would be opened in 100 years what would you put in? I recently spent some time with my sister and cousin Dave looking through some old family photos and letters that were found in my grandmother’s attic. A few of the photos were tintypes most likely created in the 1870s or 1880s. Many more were from the 1920s – 1960s.

Looking through several hundred of these, I learned quite a bit about my family. Like the furniture company in Baltimore that my great great grandfather owned in the 1880s. My grandfather’s brothers and family who were lost or left behind after wars or immigration. The search my grandfather made for some of his brothers who were living as far away as Texas and California in the 30s and 40s. Or his mother, sister and youngest brother who stayed behind in Finland when their father and older sons emigrated to the United States. When they caught up again, so many years had passed that my grandfather and his brother who were left behind no longer spoke the same language and the letters needed to be translated on both sides. I had a great uncle in Finland named Thor. No doubt descended from Vikings!

Time seeds

The letters were helpful in putting dates and addresses on things, but so many of the photos didn’t have names, dates, or places. The cars, the clothing, even the type of photograph were like time seeds helpful in piecing some things together. After looking through a lot of these, I realized a lot of the old photos I’ve taken don’t include dates, names, or places either.

100 Years from now.

I thought about how it’s important to leave some kind of record. [Read more…] about How the ordinary can become extraordinary.

The Power of Slow. 8 things I started doing to slow the hell down.

01/16 by The Frug Leave a Comment

By Brad Beckstrom.

“You are too close to the TV, back up, your going to ruin your eyes!” my mom would say. If I were still a kid today she’d be shouting “You’re too close to your phone, put that thing away.” It would be good to hear, as I sit here, flicking, clicking, responding, on my phone then picking up my iPad.

Like many, the problem for me isn’t the iPhone or iPad, it’s the massive flow of information, it’s the screen time. The sensation of being 4 inches from this screen or group of screens that bring this massive data dump into our lives. We often hop from one screen to the next from the laptop to the phone to the tablet to the TV.

I wanted to slow this down, significantly. I wanted to reboot, shut stuff down and spend more time stepping back and looking around. I wanted to go on a low information diet. I wanted to slow down to improve.

Here’s how I discovered the power of slow.

It’s your time, not theirs.

I stopped looking at notifications on my phone. I turned them off on lots of apps like Twitter and Facebook, many others. These apps were also sending me email notifications. I also shut those off. Twitter and Facebook and other apps will still be there, and I’ll still use them but it will be on my time versus the steady stream of interruptions many of these apps were creating. You can do this in settings on your phone or go to your settings page, example facebook/settings. If you still want some background notifications, just shut off email and change your notification settings to silent. With a little fiddling, you can even turn off the little red notification badges that pop up and attach themselves to the app icon. Then you can use social media on your schedule, and slow that stream of notifications to a trickle.

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[Read more…] about The Power of Slow. 8 things I started doing to slow the hell down.