Tuesday, May 08, 2012

Photography: What’s real, what’s not and does it matter?

Matt Brandon | 05/08- 07:38 PM

Is there such a thing as integrity in a photograph?

I got some flack on Facebook about a past post on my blog . I received a comment from a reader or two stating they felt that what they saw in the produced images was not real. Meaning, after running through my workflow in Lightroom the images no longer represented reality. I have gotten this kind of feedback many times in the past. I think people are rather shocked at seeing a photo “undressed”. It’s a bit like seeing a high-fashion model on the streets without any makeup, it can be scary.

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Videos and photos from radio controlled helicopters

Sara Frances | 04/18- 06:36 AM

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? It’s hexacopter!

Piloting and camera operating a radio controlled helicopter video/photo platform are new, lucrative niche jobs in an expanding market. With many types of imaging services experiencing lower profits, here’s one that is gaining serious momentum. Aerial filming. Sure, traditional film and even stills from the air was a really cushy job, hard to break into. Real helicopters, real small planes and old school film cameras at insane hourly rates to rent, with serious technical requirements.

Friday, April 13, 2012

Back again! Free Canvas Wrap Contest from The Giclee Factory

Sara Frances | 04/13- 06:45 AM

New Black and White canvas printing - contest info at end.

The newest buzz in inkjet printing is all about black and white. All inkjet printers will offer black and white printing, however very few will make the effort to deliver real monochrome inkjet.

Friday, April 13, 2012

How to make money with really big portraits

Sara Frances | 04/13- 05:39 AM

You’ve got another chance at learning Profit Secrets from family portraiture.

Would how to pre-select, serve and provide the right products for our clients in this cost-cutter, amateur wanna-be, do-it-yourself world help your business model for now and ten years from now as well? Family portraiture used to be big business all around. We all know how prices have sunk very low, but there are contemporary answers of how to make a profit. Even in a depressed market, Master Photographer Ken Whitmire details how to succeed - during one of the best (and cheapest) week-long workshops I know. I’ve been at this workshop to hear how Ken details every step toward making good money with boutique specialty portrait photography.

Sunday, April 08, 2012

3-part Secret to Perfect Family Portraits

Sara Frances | 04/08- 11:10 AM

Is this disaster how some of your groups turn out! Great for comedic relief, but generally people want to see traditional smiling faces.

Whether you’re going for just a quick holiday card picture or an extraordinary 4x6 foot wall portrait, you can’t afford to spend huge amounts of time in postproduction. That’s where everybody loses their profit.

Saturday, March 17, 2012

Restoring Portraits from “Cookies”

Sara Frances | 03/17- 08:19 AM

I was stunned when my client presented me with little encapsulated tintype portraits that looked all the world like Oreo cookies.

These portraits, she recounted, were exchanged between bride and groom sometime near the turn of the 20th century. I’ve never seen this framing shown in any photo history book. But I do know that because tintypes were made with very thin plates, they were creatively cut to fit the covers of albums, or inset into lockets, broches or fans. The “cookie” part looks like plastic, but is actually a precursor to plastic called Bakelite, (pronounced Bay Ka Lite) a material just invented about the time these portraits were made.

Saturday, February 04, 2012

Keyword editing made easier

Sara Frances | 02/04- 11:54 AM

Composition 101 trick simplifies keyword selection and organization

Effective keywording is one of the three most important ways to get your site or post found on the internet - along with title and description. But I’ve always found keywording a disorganized chore. Here’s a way to make the job simpler, quicker and more logical.

Remember how in composition 101 class you had to make an outline of topics, content, facts etc.? We used to do this on index cards, one card for each separate fact or topic. We wrote these in no particular order, just as they came to mind or emerged from research. Then we rearranged the stack of cards to create the logical skeleton of the essay. Done this way it was easy to see if there were any gaps in the content or if further rearrangement were needed.

I’ve found this analog approach works well for proposing, editing and sequencing keywords.

Once you’ve done your research, possibly on Google Adwords, to propose keywords, then you’ll also try to think inside the head of your audience to imagine what they might search on. I always make a big list of potential keywords, even if some seem a bit far out or not fully on target. For something as important as your website, you can never have too many keywords to start the edit process. Don’t forget keywords that speak to business products or services you may not do right now, but are targeted in your business plan.

Here’s my system to edit and organize your search keywords. My example is done on a blank file folder, easily preserved for future reference or for colleague comment.

• Write down each proposed keyword “candidate” on a separate sticky note. I use the smallest size sticky notes and cut them in thirds to save space.
• Arrange the stickies on your desk or a white board to get a good look at the total field.
• Re-arrange them, grouping categories like Photo services, Photoshop, Album design, etc. (or whatever is your business)
• Select the 2-5 most important keywords, then second tier from ones to be discarded.
• Re-arrange again in a logical, customer-friendly sequence.
• Generally choose no more than 25 keywords for your main core list (federal governments site limit). This is hard for us because we do so many things related to video, stills and productions.
• Rearrange as many times as needed, because individual pages or blog posts will need different, specific keywords than those for the site in general
• Keep a dated record of your final edit, and don’t throw away the de-selects, because they will eventually find a use - no need to rethink totally from the ground up

Tuesday, November 01, 2011

Designing a Photo Website in WordPress #11

Sara Frances | 11/01- 07:23 AM

How to rework keywords and titles for best search engine visibility

After launching a website, what’s your next step? Reworking it of course! Your objective? Matching, tuning and tweaking page titles, descriptions and keywords.

Saturday, October 15, 2011

Designing a Photo Website in WordPress #10

Sara Frances | 10/15- 11:50 PM

Everybody’s a critic; that’s good and bad.

Here’s the challenge: post your comment listing your own site if you’re proud of it, or any site you love and admire for appearance, navigation and info. Let’s get a discussion going that will provide good comments for how creatives can demonstrate that they really are, well, creative!

Thursday, October 13, 2011

Video Tutorial: Photo Mechanic - Ingesting, Variables and Code Replacement

Dan Carr | 10/13- 05:35 PM

Speed up your sports and event photography workflow

Photo Mechanic is a program designed to speed up the process of ingesting photos from memory cards, captioning them with IPTC data then rating and sorting them.  A longtime Lightroom user myself, I was curious why so many sports photographer swear by this software and why some wire services insist on it’s use.  After using it on my first sporting event I’ve been impressed with a number of features and the best way to describe them is with this tutorial video that walks through a sample card ingest and shows you some of the tricks that PM has up it’s sleeve.

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Is Fear Your Art Director?

Matt Brandon | 10/11- 09:59 PM

Don’t let your fears call the shots in your photography.

Portico of worship.

This will be a short post. It’s really just a reminder to take advantage of the moment. This morning I went to Georgetown (Penang, Malaysia) scouting out some locations for an upcoming photo walk. As I was walking through Little India, I stopped and went inside a Hindu temple. These temples have always been inviting and friendly and I thought I might take some photos. I was quickly told by the very stern and very grumpy temple curator, I could not take photos in his temple. 

Thursday, October 06, 2011

Designing a Photo Website in WordPress #9

Sara Frances | 10/06- 11:45 AM

Creative websites should feel like treasure hunts.

A fun experience on the web is equivalent to the pleasurable entertainment factor of an exciting brick and mortar store.

Wednesday, October 05, 2011

The Object

Chris Meyer | 10/05- 08:29 AM

One of most recent works was the cause of serious soul-searching over the nature of my art.

Ever have one of those pieces that you put in a drawer for a couple of years, pulling it out periodically only to shove it back in because your head wasn’t in the right space yet to deal with it? That’s the underlying story behind this piece, The Object. In this case, it wasn’t just the image I was having trouble with - it was also the text I decided to attach to the image to give it a story. But sometimes, you just have to challenge yourself.

In this article, I want to share both the technical details of how this piece came together, as well as my internal conversation over the nature of abstract art and how it relates to photography.

Sunday, October 02, 2011

Designing a Photo Website in WordPress #8

Sara Frances | 10/02- 11:26 AM

Matters of type and text are the realm of the “Mad Men” of advertising.

WordPress do it yourselfers need to get smart fast about what words to say and how the words appear in type. Here are 15 tips for easy enhancements.

Friday, September 23, 2011

Calibrating Your Lenses With Spyder LensCal From Datacolor

Dan Carr | 09/23- 06:03 AM

AF micro adjust to improve image sharpness

Not all cameras and lenses equal.  To get the absolute best performance out of your combination requires some fine tuning with the lens micro adjust feature that can be found on higher end DSLRs.  The Spyder LensCal from Datacolor is one way to simplify this process.

Monday, September 19, 2011

Skier Magazine Cover Shoot - Behind The Scenes

Dan Carr | 09/19- 07:39 AM

Sunny shooting in Switzerland

Back in March I was in Switzerland shooting for an outerwear company called Orage and also for an editorial article in Skier Magazine.  They ended up running one of the images on the cover so I produced a short behind the scenes video so you guys can see how it was done.

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