Articles by: Hanna Brooks Olsen

[caption id="attachment_7821" align="alignnone" width="620"] Photo: Sophie Asia via Flickr[/caption] Anyone who's tried to make the leap from hobbyist to professional photographer knows that the business side of things can be murky and hard to navigate. Even one of the most basic, seemingly obvious elements -- which, in other industries, is standardized and pretty easy to research -- of your business plan is strangely shrouded in mystery and even controversy.

In the last, oh, hundred years, education has both changed a ton and also not changed much at all. At least, that's the lesson we're learning from these vintage school photos from the Flickr Commons.

DIY lunch bags aren't exactly an invention of the crafting set; since kids have been trucking off to school, resourceful parents have been wrapping their snacks in pieces of cloth and old paper. But since Jil Sanders had the audacity to slap a $630 price tag on what appeared to be a pretty pedestrian lunch sack a few years ago, crafty moms have been coming up with more and more cute ways to send their little ones to class with handmade style.

[caption id="attachment_7787" align="alignnone" width="620"] Image: Robert S. Donovan via Flickr[/caption]   For all the griping about the end of summer and then dread of a new classroom and a new teacher, back-to-school is also a time of excitement for a lot of kids (and even adults).

Wedding photographers are used to shooting in all kinds of locations, from rustic barns to less-forgiving community halls and event spaces. But sometimes, they get lucky, and they get to shoot a storied old building with gorgeous light, amazing architecture -- and civic workers milling about.

Despite a distinct lack of inclusion by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in their monthly figures, the numbers we do have available don't lie: More workers, both in the U. S.

In your professional life, you probably want to be known as smart, successful, and competent. But to even get to those adjectives, you have to make it over one huge hurdle: You have to actually be known and remembered.

[caption id="attachment_7702" align="alignnone" width="620"] Image via Flickr[/caption] Adding further proof to the pile of studies that laud the positive impact of taking time away from work, a study from the University of Zurich has found that employees who are allowed to take plenty of time to recover during work shifts are more productive -- and that those who work later and have less time between work don't get as much done. The study, which asked participants about how rested they felt after various amounts of time between work, found that taking time away from work helped workers get into a "flow", which helped them produce more, and more quality, work.

[caption id="attachment_7660" align="alignnone" width="620"] Image via Flickr[/caption] Not everyone — ok, almost no one — can pull a Thoreau and go running into the woods in the pursuit of a deliberate life. But in the summer time, many of us can take a few blissful days off to retreat into the great outdoors and refresh our minds.