photography – Page 15

Trade show transitions…

February 24, 2010 Jason1 Comment

In the most recent podcast Erik and I talked about several upcoming trade shows, including PMA, WPPI, PSW, and GPP to name just a few. Lots of acronyms though and it can leave many questions open about which ones to attend. While we tried to cover the nuts and bolts of each, one thing was not really discussed to a great degree, and I thought I would share my own thoughts on the future of trade shows here today. To do that though, there are two key news nuggets that tie into today’s post to kind of set the stage:

This year marked the first year that Apple declined to participate at Macworld…
This year Canon also decided to not have a booth at the venerable PMA Show…

This may be the tip of an iceberg or a coincidence, but my guess is that it is a hint of things to come. With technology changing more quicky than many can even keep up, the trade shows of yesterday are not going to be the trade shows of the future. I hate to sound like an old fogey, but back in the day, trade shows were the platform that vendors used to announce new products that spent years in R&D. Not anymore, as the window for R&D has dropped significantly, and tailoring your development to an annual trade show could lead you down many dangerous routes as a vendor…

Dangerous route #1 – Technology changes at a pace faster than you anticipate and when you launch that 8MP camera in a market where 18MP is the latest and greatest, all that R&D, marketing, and advertising money was pretty much burned for nothing.

Dangerous route #2 – You predict a pace of technology and make projected announcements on that prediction. Tech moves slower than anticipated and the 18MP camera you promised at next years show is only a 12MP. An equally embarrassing fiasco for the PR dept to deal with.

So why attend trade shows? I don’t think they will last much longer as venues to “pimp new products”. Sure there will always be secondary and tertiary players that introduce new gear, but I think the trade show will turn more toward a networking show where professionals can network with one another and with possible vendors. From a personal perspective, I’ve already talked to several contest sponsors from previous contests that have asked if I will be attending show X or show Y so we can talk about new sponsorships.

The face time and interaction between the working folks and the vendors is what gets deals done. Vendors get evangelists that talk up their products and pros get gear and software deals at pretty good discounts (and sometimes free). It’s a win-win situation for both, and the larger community can also put a personal spin on the gear they want and/or like. It also comes down to the 6 degrees of separation mentality that people associate themselves with. They associate with another photographer or a professional who uses a certain kind of gear, and they see the results of that, and it’s only natural to think that the gear may have something to do with it (and sometimes it does…). Here’s a few good examples of the line of thinking:

“Hey, I was at a Scott Kelby seminar and he talked up that Elinchrom light set…I should take a look at that…”

“What was that lightbox thing Jason and Erik mentioned on their last podcast?”

“Alex on the photo walk last month mentioned some book on workflow in Lightroom for photographers…gotta make a note of that…”

You get the idea…Scott Kelby is a pretty big name, and while we’re not as “well-known” as Scott, we do have an established set of followers or regulars that read our material. Photo walk leaders also carry weight in their messages too, and Alex is no exception. He is a great photographer, a super friend, and when he recommends a product, you can bet I will listen to what he has to say.!

So, I think the networking and social connection aspect of trade shows will really be the impetus for the future. It always has been to a certain degree, but not nearly so much as I think it will in the future. That’s just my two ¢ though, and you know what they say about opinions – they’re like…..haircuts (everyone has one).

Speaking of which, what are your thoughts on the next phase for trade shows? Will more big names bow out? Or is it just the economy and as soon as we’re back on solid ground they will come back into the mix? Having not attended any, I gotta say I am kind of guessing from the outside looking in, so if anyone has attended trade shows themselves, feel free to chime in here.

Which ones have you attended? What did you gain or get from the show? Positive experience or worst thing ever? Sound off in the comments. In the meantime though, there’s only a few days left in the Flickr contest for February, and the theme is Height!

What is it About Rocks?

February 23, 2010 Jason3 Comments

Hmmm….seems I have a new series theme going on here – people keep asking when the next series will be posted and are also asking me for specific series sets of photos. I am not sure I have the library of images to accommodate everything, but that just gives me motivation for subject matter whenever I go out shooting again! So, if you have a series that you’d like to see from me – suggest it in the comments or via email! For the time being, here’s another popular set from the library of yours truly:

Rocks

There’s the latest “set” for everyone’s viewing enjoyment. Feel free to leave feedback in the comments with your thoughts as we are always learning from one another! Happy shooting and we’ll see you back here again tomorrow!

What is it about Windows?

February 18, 2010 Jason12 Comments

No, I am not talking about Operating Systems, rather I am talking about a follow-up to yesterday’s photo post with the theme of “Water”. You see, another recurring theme for me is windows of buildings. Taken from various angles and in various lighting conditions, and all over the place, ranging from South Carolina, to Colorado, Mexico, and various points in between, here’s a random sampling of windows I’ve captured in camera:

There you have it – just a random sampling of “Windows” as I’ve seen them over the last 5 years. Got your own archives of thematic images? Anything that has captured your fancy consistently over time? Share your own themes and photos in the comments (remember, you can upload to the comments now)! Happy shooting, and don’t forget about the February contest going on in the Flickr thread – a 16×20 print canvas is at stake. Get your photos in while there’s still time!

What is it about Water?

February 17, 2010 Jason3 Comments

Something about water really draws us as photographers – whether it’s the sunrise on a lake or ocean, the beads of dew on a morning flower, the tears or sweat as they roll down a cheek, or even the implied motion of water drops bouncing in the air – water somehow draws us all. Could it be that humans are made up of a majority of water? We do need it to survive – water is one staple we cannot live without. Those two atoms of Hydrogen and one of Oxygen have so much meaning for us, we somehow are compelled to capture water in all its various forms of…dare I say beauty? Who knows what drives us to capture it in camera, but I for one enjoy it! Do you?

The idea for this post came from a tweet where someone referenced their entire archive saying they had photos of this and that, and were prepared for most situations when clients would come to them and ask “Do you have a photo of…?” so they could say yes! It prompted me to go through my own archives, and I found several recurring themes – one of which was…can you guess? WATER!

Go through your own archives and see if you can find recurring patterns – I asked some fellow photogs and water was a common one, which got me to thinking about this post in particular. “What is the deal with water?” Do you see a lot of water in your work? What other themes arise from your archives? Sound off in the comments, as I’d love to hear what inspires others (even if it is water too!)

Don’t forget, the LDP Flickr contest continues and the “Heights” contest deadline is about a week away. Get your photos in soon to be in the running! Happy shooting all and we’ll see you back here again tomorrow!

Composition and the Angle of View

February 10, 2010 Jason1 Comment

We’ve talked a lot about various rules of composition – what they are (Rule of Thirds, Golden Mean, etc) and when to adhere versus eschew them to create dramatic effect. One thing we’ve not talked much about is the idea of changing your angle of view. We have mentioned the concept in the past, suggesting that to get a good perspective to look up, look down, look behind you, and in new directions to get a unique view on things. While this is always a good practice to remind yourself that there are other perspectives, it’s never really been discussed or illustrated in depth.

So, what I did was take a pretty ordinary object – my coffee mug – and take ten different pictures of it. I challenged myself to look at one thing in ten unique ways – at different angles, and to try and find one that showed me something different than what I would usually expect to see. I did get ten different angles, so technically I accomplished the objective. Since some were very close to one another though, I am sharing here six different angles of view to help illustrate the purpose behind the exercise:

I used my 70-200 f4 and a tripod. The white background you see in some pictures is just a piece of foam packing that was used to ship prints to me a while back. I had my flash on the hot shoe, pointing up and to the rear most of the time. Camera settings were 1/250th, at f4, and an ISO of 400.

It was pretty fun actually because I drink coffee every day! So, taking this regular object that I usually don’t even think twice about (although I am a coffee hound so I do have quite a collection of mugs to choose from…), I took 6 distinctly different angles of view. Some are more boring than others, sure! But some are actually kinda cool – in particular I am fond of the one with the mug handle sticking in the air! To keep it in place I simply stuck my lenscap behind the mug as a prop! It’s a fun exercise, and can make you see regular objects and scenes in new ways. This is just one way to force yourself to think creatively.

So now, it’s reader assignment time – go find something regular, anything! Whether it’s a coffee mug, a screwdriver, a telephone or a clock radio…pick something then force yourself to take ten different shots of it. Zoom in close, go super wide. Drop your aperture way open for more blur and selective focus. Use a totally different lens than you normally would. Going with the 70-200 I forced myself to back up. I could have swapped to the 10-22mm and gotten something totally different…and the same goes for the 70mm macro. Whether you live in an apartment, a house, or……an airstream (do you really know anyone that would live in an airstream?), there are tons of ways to think creatively that surround you! Seek them out, and you will find a piece of yourself – share it with the world!

Post your creativity exercise shots up on Flickr in the LDP pool – show that creative side and happy shooting! Until tomorrow, keep them shutters clicking, and watch out for a new Audioboo about the new Canon T2 Rebel – gonna be a fun clip on what Canon has been up to! 🙂

5 Tips to Better Landscapes

January 28, 2010 Jason7 Comments

The most common questions I get here on the blog center around the idea of how to take better pictures. Whether those “better pictures” are better landscapes, or portraits, wildlife or events, everyone wants suggestions on how to approach the practice of taking pictures better. Esoteric and creative considerations aside, there are some fundamental “tricks of the trade” that, by and large, will almost always improve your craft in pretty much any genre. So, today, I thought I would take a moment to share 5 “tricks” I’ve learned that always lead to better landscapes: Continue reading “5 Tips to Better Landscapes” →

Against my better judgement…

January 27, 2010 Jason2 Comments

For those of you that have been following the blog for a long time (and let me know who you are, because I want to ask why!), you may recall that I used to put out video tutorials on how to do various things inside of Photoshop. After plodding around with that for a while, I came across the gurus of NAPP and realized that several were already doing it, and doing it much better than I ever could. So, rather than re-inventing the wheel, I abandoned the video tutorials in favor of just sharing my “wisdom” in the form of the written word (blog posts and articles) and audio tips (which are now part of the Learning Digital Photography podcast).

Well, when I recently twittered with excitement over the newly released calendar of some of my favorite images for 2010, someone asked me about the template I used to create those images. I honestly answered that I didn’t really use a template as the website www.lulu.com just let me upload the images and they handled the rest. On realizing that they were talking about the images on my Photography Website, I recalled that a template was used for those images. I could have done a written post about this, but those take a lot of time to put together (lots of screen grabs, lots of writing, and lots of uploading), so I instead decided to put together a new video on how to create a template for your photos inside of Photoshop. The video may take some time to load, so please be patient as this is a self-hosted video production! 🙂

[display_podcast]

Keep in mind – this is just one way – in Photoshop there are always many ways to reach similar results, and as the old adage says, there’s more than one way to skin a cat! Anyway, this is for you @mitz! Enjoy, happy shooting, and we’ll see you back here tomorrow! Oh, and lest we forget, there are very few days left in the January giveaway! For your chance to win a free copy of Photomatix Pro from the folks at HDR Soft, get your Circle-themed photos in the Flickr Contest Thread by midnight on Friday (Mountain Time – GMT-7).

P.S. For those that like my videos and want to see the archives, check out the Learning Resource Page from the sidebar for more materials. And as an additional side note, this is post #600. No fuss, no muss, no fanfare, but yet somehow I landed back on video tutorials – which is kind of how it all started! Somehow, ,ind of poetic, eh? 🙂

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Portrait or Landscape

January 22, 2010 Jason3 Comments

One of the more common questions when it comes to composing images is whether to shoot with the camera oriented in the landscape or the portrait position (horizontal or vertical). As always, the answer is usually along the lines of “it depends…”

There are some instances though when a portrait orientation is more conducive and others where a landscape is equally superior. For instance – if you want to have your images published in magazines, portrait mode might work better primarily because that is how magazines are typically laid out. Calendars, on the other hand, because of the opposing orientation, are more inclined toward landscape setups. Your subject matter can also dictate preferred setups too…portrait mode is called portrait mode for a reason – it is particularly well suited to photos of people. Likewise, landscape mode is also named that way because scenes and vistas (landscapes) typically extend from left to right and not top to bottom.

Sure, there are exceptions to the rule, when a landscape orientation may work for a particular portrait, or a vertical orientation make work for a group setting of people. So, which one should you shoot? My easy answer is to shoot both for any particular scene. Often what I will do is if I find a subject that I want to capture to make a picture, I will shoot it four ways:

Portrait
Landscape
Zoomed in
Zoomed out

The latter two is a subject for another post some day, but for today, I thought it’d a be a fun way to cue up the weekend by reminding everyone to try shooting more ways than one – the results may surprise you!

A final reminder for the week too – there are only seven days left in the January circles themed Flickr Giveaway. The winner will enjoy a free copy of Photomatix Pro from the folks at HDR Soft. Is your picture in? Don’t delay, submit today! 🙂 Happy shooting all and we’ll see you here next week!

Online & Digital Print Sales

January 21, 2010 Jason4 Comments

So many people have talked about the business of selling your photographs, and the various options and pitfalls in doing so. There are so many discussion points varying from whether to sell online or on consignment, print your own or use an online printer, and much more. The ideas of printing, fulfillment, delivery, and such are all vexing subjects for sure, and it’s a sea of information out there to wade through.

Rather than spend time wading through that sea, I thought everyone might be interested in one option – that of the digital download. Various outfits like Mpix, Smugmug, Shutterfly, and others offer a range of services for printing and fulfillment where digital prints are selected online, then printed and mailed to the purchaser, or even just downloaded to the buyer directly for them to print on their own. This last option of letting the client download their own pictures is something that more people are turning to, and even here there are many options.

One that I’ve been testing the waters with is a WordPress plugin called WP eStore. It’s got some pretty handy features, and if you are okay with touching just a pinch of the coding, it can actually work pretty well. I can see how this could easily translate to sales of digital downloads of pictures, as well as e-books (which is the type I am going to start selling). It’s got a pretty intuitive interface, but does have a little bit of code to it within the plugin itself. With both free and paid versions there are also various levels of support, and the guy that developed this is very helpful with any questions I’ve had.

The left sidebar of WordPress has an entire widget dedicated to the configuration and I’ve shared a screen shot of the interface here:

I’d go into more details with screen captures but since the eStore is active and there is certain information that you have to include (like source file paths and such), that would be a little too transparent for here. But as you can see from the widget, there are many options available to you for digital downloads including adding discounts, organizing into categories, and even maintaining customer lists if you want to send promotional emails. All in all, it’s a very cool little plugin, and as I get more work done on various e-Books this utility will no doubt come in handy for both the blog and for the reader.

Speaking of the reader experience, that end is pretty easy too – all you have to do is click the shopping cart button to add an item to your cart, and you can check out with Paypal. Once checked out, the buyer gets a dedicated private link to download the item in question. No fuss, no muss – instant download, which I think is a super nice feature. The same would hold true for anyone interested in offering photo downloads too. You can see the eStore plugin in action right here on my Store link from the navigation menu at the top of the page. For more detailed information, or to download either the free or paid version for your own use, check out Amin’s work on his site here: .

Anyway, there’s my thoughts on the option of digital sales for photography products and services – the eStore plugin for WordPress. Easy enough to install, great support, and pretty much hands-free once everything is set up and configured.

As always, mileage may vary, and different options are out there for different needs. If anyone knows of other products, services, or options for online print sales, feel free to share them here as it’s always fun to learn about new things from one another! Happy shooting, and we’ll see you back here again tomorrow to wrap up the week!

P.S. Don’t forget, only one week left in the January Circles-themed Flickr Giveaway. get your photos in soon for a chance to win a copy of Photomatix Pro from the folks over at HDR Soft!

Photoshop Teaser…

January 19, 2010 JasonLeave a comment

The Denver Area Lightroom Users Group (DALPUG) had their bi-monthly meeting tonight, and it was a lot of fun. Brian Reyman (the leader) gave some great insights on digital asset management and some really cool Lightroom and Photoshop tips and tricks. He reminded me that it’s been a while since I’ve played in Photoshop, or done tutorials here on the blog for that matter.

So, in the interests of putting some sort of creative graphic design effect together, I started playing around in Photoshop when I got home with a few different tools, effects, and all that fun stuff. When all was said and done, the effect of all of this playing produced something that I thought would be worthy of a Photoshop tutorial. However, I did run out of time to put all the screen shots and steps together for a blog post, so here is a teaser of what you might be seeing later this week!

The End Result

The ones that got me there…

The final result is a little surreal, but using the various effects were fun. It also took some rather plain photos and turned them into…well, something not so plain! 🙂 When’s the last time you played in Photoshop? Can you identify the effects used here? Share your own pictures in the comments (remember, we have image upload now!), as well as any thoughts and or feedback.

Special thanks and shout outs to Brian for hosting the DALPUG meetings and for encouraging our creativity- he puts a lot of time and effort into these and it shows!

Only a couple blog notes for today, first that the Monthly Giveaway only has a limited amount of time left for submissions, so make sure you submit your Circles themed photos to the Flickr thread before the deadline! Happy shooting and we’ll see you back here again tomorrow for more creative encouragement!