Entries from June 2008 ↓

Today’s Friday Five is brought to you by your credit card company… Kidding. Here are few photography products I think are cool:

• Lon over at FlashZebra.com has some pretty cool products. I just recently received an umbrella adaptor from him and it’s well built! I can’t believe he’s only selling it for $14. Check out some of the other stuff he carries also.
• VisibleDust has come out with a new sensor cleaning brush with a built in light so you can see what the heck you’re doing. I’ve had one of their products (sans light) for a while and they work great!
• I found Fstopgear.com a little while ago when I was searching for a ski touring photo backpack. They seem to know exactly what an active photgrapher needs.
• Calibrate, calibrate, calibrate! As photographers we all know how important calibration is. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could buy just one product to calibrate your monitor and your printer? Wait! You can! Check out the Colormunki photo.
• Anyone who has never used a graphics tablet to work on their images, should give it a try. Now you can buy an affordable Cintiq LCD graphics tablet for under a $1000… Wow!

I’m doing something a little bit different with this weeks “Friday Five”. A few days ago I got an e-mail from Photoshelter that just blew me away. It was an introduction to their “School of Stock” section. I have dabbled in stock photography in the past with no real success. I’m used to clients telling me what they want shot and going out and shooting it. After reading a few of the articles I have a much better idea what stock buyers are looking for and where to concentrate my shooting efforts if I want to have a better chance of success.

If you are considering shooting any type of stock photography, you must read the articles there. Even if you just learn one thing, it will be worth it.

Here is my list of, more than five, articles from “The School of Stock”

• The Production Values article is listed as “required reading” and I agree. They even go as far as to show poor examples along with good examples of what they mean.
• If you are completely new to stock photography, the “What is Stock Photography” article is a great place to get a basic understanding.
• The “Lighting: Lifestyle” article is worth a read for basic lighting techniques and tips.
• “Lighting: Silo” is worth a read for shooting with flash on a white background.
• Figuring out what type of shots are needed and when is covered in “Editorial Calendar/Cyclical Needs“.
• Lifestyle: Overview gives you a general idea about lifestyle photography and what is needed.
• Model and property releases are covered very well, and there are even examples showing when you need a release and when you don’t.
• And finally, “keywording & Captioning” are covered in detail to help get your images to appear in appropriate searches.

There is so much information on the School of Stock section you really need to spend some time reading through it all to truly understand how much of a resource it is. The best part is, it looks like there are many sections and areas that will be added in the future. Whatever you do, don’t forget to bookmark that page, or better yet subscribe to the RSS feed.

Sometimes, people need inspiration.

Today, I was reading in the Strobist Flickr group what inspires some of the photographers there. I found the answers fascinating. Everything from other photographers, to music, to movies, to art , to books and even family. That got me thinking, “What inspires me?” The answer… Anything that move me. I know, that’s pretty vague, but let me try to explain. I don’t usually go looking for inspiration, I let it find me. Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn’t. I don’t let it freak me out if I don’t get inspired. It’s like insomnia, the more you think about not sleeping the more likely you’re not going to fall asleep.

But when inspiration does hit me. It hits me like a ton of bricks. Again, it could come from anything that moves me. And sometimes from things I would never expect. I currently have a list of at least a couple of dozen shot ideas that came to me from different sources of inspiration. The secret to being inspired is to write it down so you don’t forget. You might not always be able to get the shot right away. Or it requires extensive planning. Write down everything, in as much detail as possible, so when you do get around to shooting, that feeling you had when you first got inspired comes back to you.

Here is a source of inspiration that I came across today. It got my creative juices flowing and now I have a couple more shot ideas to add to my list.

Tell me what inspires you.

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This weeks Friday Five.

• The Man - Yousuf Karsh (1908-2002). I had the honor and pleasure of meeting the man in the late 80’s. Truly an inspiration. Check out the website and especially the video clips.
• The Workshops - David Tejada is now offering lighting workshops. This guy knows his stuff and I wish him luck with the workshops.
• The Book - Or should I say your book. Have you ever thought about writing your own photography book? If you have, check out www.photographybooknow.com for a chance to win $25k.
• The Review - Bert Stephani has posted a review of the Strobist’s Lighting DVD on his site.
• The Search - Idée Inc. has come up with with a new way to search images. This has huge potential!!!

I have another love other than photography. Cooking.

This is my latest toy… I’m going to call it Hector

OK, lets get right to it!

• AUPN (Aperture Users Professional Network) is starting a series called “Aperture 101″ the first installment is called “The Interface“
• Nikon’s Capture NX2 is out and it has a 60 day trial period!
• “ICEBERG! Dead ahead!” popphoto.com has an article on  James Balog’s iceberg shoot.
• The 39th Annual Nikon Photo Contest International.
• Flickr portfolio of *Cinnamon.

By now, you know that I switched from Canon to a Nikon D300 and my reasoning behind the switch.

Here is a quick rundown of my first impression of the D300.

• The camera feels very solid and well built.
• It fits nicely in my hand. A very natural feel to the grip.
• Excellent view finder, nice and bright. Even with my glasses on I can see everything in view finder.
• LCD display in fantastic. It’s actually useful to check sharpness with.
• The colors are very accurate. This could be a combination of the D300 and using Aperture 2 as my RAW converter. What ever it is the results are superb.
• 6 fps. Holy Cow! It almost scared me the first time I tried it. Afterwards I had the biggest grin on my face. I can’t wait to get the vertical grip and shoot 8 fps.
• The manual is huge! 400+ pages. Be prepared to do some readin’.
• Button and dial layout good. Except for the front sub-command dial. I keep switching the camera off by accident. Maybe I just need to get use to the dials location. I’ll keep you informed.
• The menu system and layout is definitely different than Canon’s. Not that it’s and better or worse, just takes some getting use to.

I hope to shoot something worthy of posting here in the next few weeks. In the mean time I’ll be reading the manual and playing with the settings.

Any comments or advice regarding the D300 or this post?