Bespoke Photo

The Best Filter Is The One That's With You *

2012-01-16T14:48:00.000-08:00

Sometimes you're out and about shooting and you wish you had a filter with you, but sadly all you have on you is your trusty Panasonic GF1 and your sunglasses.

Wouldn't it be nice to have something like a Polarizer or maybe a warming filter on you because the day looks sorta boring? Well it's entirely possible that you already have what you need right on you:

Just combine your camera with your glasses like the shot above, and you can turn this:

Into this:

Granted you could have done most of this in Lightroom, but if your shades happen to be Polarized, graduated, or have some other interesting optical qualities, then you have something unique that's not possible to duplicate in software. And that's were it gets interesting. Also, there's no reason you can't do the same trick by putting your glasses in front of your iPhone.

*with a tip of the hat to Chase Jarvis.

Open Letter to Camera Manufacturers

2012-01-14T09:57:00.000-08:00

Dear Camera Maker,

Due to the overwhelming number of cameras with the letter "D" in the name (used to signify Digital, but since everything is digital these days, it just stands for Duh), you have seen fit to replace it with the letter X (see list below) in the name; some have both "D" and "X" and now we are all really confused. There are many other letters in the alphabet to consider. "Q" is perfectly good for instance, so is "Y", while "U" and "K" are severely underrepresented.

GX1
G1X
X1
D4X
1DX
NEX
X-Pro1
XS1

Leica has owned "M" forever, and Canon has long used "A" for their low end P&S cameras, and although Contax is grandfathered in for the "T", they've been terminated by Kyocera. Anyway that still leaves at least 20 other letters, so please start using them. All I'm asking for is a little variety in the naming convention.

Warm Regards,

Konstantin Golovchinsky

Lightroom 4 Beta Review / First Look

2012-01-11T12:31:00.000-08:00

I've been a big Lightroom fan from the very beginning, so much so that I've virtually stopped using Photoshop CS (despite 17 years of retouching experience). IMO that's how good LR is for photographers. So just this week, Adobe Labs has released the Lightroom 4 Beta, and I thought I'd give it a whirl. The big new features are:

Changes to the Spot Adjust Brush
Blurb Books integration
GPS data integration

In fact the first to are so big, they have their own tabs in with the original 5 modules, making it a total of 7. Lets start with the Spot Adjustment. In oder to demonstrate clearly, this screenshot shows Lightroom 3 on the left, and the same module in Lightroom 4 Beta on the right.

As you can see, there are two important changes to the interface. The first being the very badly needed spot color correction which is now on top of the module; the second, below the standard controls gives you control over local Sharpness, Noise and Moiré.

Next is the Books module which allows export directly to Blurb.com or to PDF. Essentially Lightroom 4 Beta now integrates all of the functions of Blurb's Booksmart® software directly into a Lightroom module that operates very similar to the Web module. Here's a screenshot with some random files from my image library:

If you've used Lightroom 3 (or 2) to make web galleries, or are already familiar with Booksmart, you'll have no problem making your own books in this module, it's quite intuitive.

The last big change is the addition of the Map module. Basically it allows you to read GPS data from your camera and plot it on a Google Maps style interface.

For every selected photo that has a GPS marker, you'll get a small orange square on the map. Clicking on the square will give you a small preview of the photo. Generally I would say this isn't avery useful function for most photographers, especially since most cameras aren't GPS aware. For now it's a fun toy to play with. One camera I do have that does GPS tagging is my iPhone, and since I run all my iPhone photos through Lightroom anyway, I'm going to start tagging everything and see if I can make some sense/use of it in the future. In order to have your photos tagged, you need to go into Settings > Location Services, then enable Location Services and turn on Camera. Looks like this:

In addition, if you have photos that don't have GPS data, you can imbed it manually. Just find the location on the map, select the photo in the strip below, then control-click on the map, you'll get this pop-up menu:

Click on that and Bob's Your Uncle, you've got GPS coordinates added to the metadata of your file!

iPhone 4s with POPA and Olloclip

2011-12-02T16:43:00.000-08:00

I've been waiting for this week with breathless anticipation; Tuesday I became eligible for an upgrade with AT&T so I got an iPhone 4s, and today the Red Pop (akak POPA) I backed on Kickstarter finally came in the mail. I also backed the Olloclip, so now my phone/camera kit is complete.

This is pretty much how I envisioned it back in June when I backed both projects:

And the end-user view:

I have to say, the Red Pop was well worth the wait, I really love the way this makes the iPhone feel like a real camera. Really good in the hand, makes it feel solid, not like the phone is about to drop from your hand like normal.

Another thing I like is that there is very little lag time, press the button and it snaps. I have a feeling it's because the iPhone uses Focus Priority while POPA uses Shutter Release Priority (meaning it will shoot whether it's in focus or not while the iPhone won't). The app is tasty too, no silly business, just the bare minimal controls needed to make everything work. I do wish it would automatically sync all the taken pics to the Camera Roll without having to transfer them one by one, but it's great that you can send the pics right to Twitter or Facebook from their app (iPhone's native app still lacks Facebook integration).

Moving on to the Olloclip, I love the dual lenses and overall optical quality. The macro gets you in about twice as close as normal. Here the first photo is with Olloclip at minimum focus:

And the same shot with Olloclip removed:

This side-by-side comparison also shows the wider angle and the massive barrel distortion, along with chromatic aberration some vignetting. Overall the flaws aren't that bad, and you can correct for some of them in Lightroom, or if you're shooting non-linear forms, it's not an issue:

Flipped over to the fish-eye side, the Olloclip also performs well, but is a circular fish-eye with black around the edges. My friend and drift photography legend Tram Tran is about 3 feet away across the table, the Olloclip takes in most of the restaurant (I did correct for chromatic aberration in LR):

Overall it's two thumbs up, one each for Olloclip and Red Pop.

Fuji x100 disappointment, Part 2

2011-11-30T12:06:00.000-08:00

Apparently I hit a nerve with my previous post scathing the Fujifilm x100. It seems there are many fans who have taken it as a personal insult that I am not happy with their choice of camera. It was even pointed out that the very famous Zack Arias is in love with the x100. I went to his blog to read about about it. Turns out he has encountered many of the same issues that I have; these are direct quotes from his review:

"Fuji x100 can be a complete pain in the ass to use"
"You have to get used to it’s quirks (menus, focusing, paralax, start up time, lock ups, etc.)"
"The x100 can be a complete pain in the ass of a camera."
"Another massively annoying “feature” of this camera is focusing at close range"
"The x100 has a manual focusing ring on the lens and let me state for the record that with the first firmware it was the worst manual focusing of any camera ever made in all of the world."

The biggest difference is that he loves the image quality so much that working with a difficult to use camera is worth it, while for me it is not. Although I am nowhere near as accomplished of a photographer as Zach, I have been shooting semi-professionally for over 20 years. In short, I didn't fall off the photography wagon yesterday and start making wild claims today, and my first camera wasn't digital.

What it boils down to for me is the old design adage that form follows function. I think that Fuji engineers spent too much time working on the form, and not enough time talking to photographers. Frankly I would much rather have an ugly camera that's easy to use. Maybe that's why I like the Panasonic GF-1 so much, and why I'm eagerly looking forward to seeing the GX-1 when it comes out. There's obviously a difference, but the Four Thirds chip isn't that much smaller than APS-C.

Below are samples from the GF-1

Panoramas are easy enough to do on the GF1, just take a bunch of shots and seam them up in Photoshop, this is 4 horizontal frames stitched together:

Fujifilm x100 is a major disappointment

2011-11-25T21:00:00.000-08:00

I've had the Fujifilm x100 for about 6 months now and frankly I seldom use it, to the point where my photography is suffering. The problem I'm having is not the brilliant and huge sensor, because that is the only things I actually like about the camera.

Here's a list of my greivances:

The focus is molasses slow; when it does finally lock on, a good half of the time it's locked on to the wrong spot.
Who thought it was a good idea to limit the shutter speed to 1/4 second?
Exposure is almost 2 stops under from a normal looking image on the screen.
Any time you need to access something in a menu, it usually 4-5 button presses.
Did I mention that the focus is slow? An EOS-1 from 1996 focuses an order of magnitude faster.
Activating Macro focus takes 3 buton pushes, and focusing even slower than regular focusing.
Forget about focusing in low light.
Lens is either too short or too long, never just right, but that's just my taste for focal lengths.
Not very sharp wide open, needs to be at least at 2.8 or 4 to be sharp.

In short it's pretty to look at and impresses others when they see you with it, but other than that it's generally useless. I made a big mistake selling my Panasonic GF-1 and buying this bimbo of a camera. I am going to sell it while it still has some value and buy the new Panasonic GX1. Hopefully that will inspire me to go shooting again, mostly I leave the x100 at home because it frustrates me to no end.

Good things come to those who wait

2011-08-04T16:12:00.000-07:00

Last year I contacted Irina Bjorklund to see if she would pose (with her saw) for my musician portfolio. I wanted something fun and quirky and the musical saw was perfect. Anyway, we had two great shoots on the beach, Irina was easy to work with, had good ideas for shots, so it was a good collaboration experience.

In any case, I just got got an email with some good news, one of my photos is on the cover of Irina's new album, and I hear there are more inside.

Sigma 30mm F1.4 EX DC HSM Review

2011-05-17T17:58:00.000-07:00

I love my Panasonic L10but what I miss is shooting with a shallow depth of field, pretty bokay lens. The Panasonic 14-50mm f2.8-3.5 that's my standard lens is a great overall lens, but it always seems that everything is in focus. I just can't seem to separate the subject from the background. It's wonderful for eye-candy shots like this,

but not so good for portraits, close-ups, etc. What I really want is super fast, sharp lens, but between what I want, and what I can afford, is a great divide. In this case I really want a Panasonic 25mm f1.4 that is way out of my budget, and what I can afford is the Sigma 30mm f1.4 EX DC HSM, which is about $800 cheaper.

My first impression of the lens is that it's well built, slightly heavy, but not unwieldy. The focus is quick, locks in easily. Maybe not as quick and quiet as a Canon prime, but very good nevertheless. I loved shooting it wide open to get shots like this:

Fully wide open, its very soft, but stopped down a bit to f2.0, it produces a nice crisp shot of the subject while still keeping it shallow enough to soften the background.

It's a little better at longer distances than close-up, this shot is at f1.4, focused on the far right just past the AC unit on the wall.

Overall, I am really happy with the purchase, it seems like a solid lens that offers very good performance and at a good price point. I have a shoot on Friday and will be testing it further then. In the mean time, more cloud eye candy:

Lightroom Gradient Tool

2011-05-14T14:50:00.000-07:00

I place in another Vermont Photo Place Gallery contest this week, with an image I shot with a Panasonic GF-1 in Paris last year atop Centre Pompidou. The theme for the contest was Stormy Weather; I sent in 5 cloudy shots from that day, and this is the one they picked:

The RAW image looks like this:

The final image was achieve mainly through the use of the Lightroom 3 Gradient tool. Now one of the best things about the Gradient tool, is that you can stack them; add gradient on top of gradient on end. For example, the top image contains 4 gradients, but the same image below contains 7 gradients:

Once I lay down a new gradient, I adjust the lightness/darkness, and contrast. Then I grab for a new gradient and keep tweaking. Some gradients are long and smooth, others short and break rapidly. Others yet run diagonally to darken corners like you would with a vignette, but more adjustable and asymmetrical. Sometimes I also add Clarity in a gradient to improve local sharpness.

Each Gradient is represented in your file as a small round dot which can only be seen once you click on the Gradient tool (or use the keyboard shortcut "M"). Because everything is proxy based, you can always re-edit a gradient later by clicking on any of the dots and changing the settings. Here are the above 7 in a screen capture, I've colored red them so they're easier to see:

Infrared at Huntington Library

2011-05-06T20:01:00.000-07:00

I had some business early this morning at the Huntington Library and when I was done, they let me roam the gardens before it was open to the public. Fortunately I had my infrared converted Panosonic L10 with me, so I shot these pics:

There I was, all alone; the birds, squirrels, koi (a few gardeners) and me. Chance of a lifetime. And then my battery died. Lesson learned, and spare battery with car charger ordered this afternoon.

Pushing the boundaries of Infrared

2011-04-29T15:22:00.000-07:00

I was out today location scouting for a shoot I have this weekend and naturally I too the infrared camera. The location will be fine for my needs, but I did get some good looks from the processing afterward. This first one reminds me of how Mars might look (if it had wildflowers):

Probably not so good for fashion, which is what I'm doing on Sunday, but it a good point of departure for experimenting with landscapes. What I also like about it is that it has a completely different look from what most people are doing with infrared.

The next look reminds me of a Stephen King book cover, it did take a little bit of Photoshop to get here, but not much. Mainly it was to reset the sliders so I could push the Clarity and Recovery sliders beyond 100%.

And last but not least is a preset I made to use with the B+W 489 filter, but I applied it to a shot without using the filter. I really like the airiness of it, will probably concentrate on this look for processing the shoot.

Full Spectrum Infrared with Red Filter

2011-04-28T17:31:00.000-07:00

Went to check the mail this afternoon, and found a 72mm Nikon R60 red filter in the mailbox. Time to do some more tests with the full spectrum infrared converted Panasonic L10. With the price of gas being what it is, I just walked around the apartment complex to see what I could catch:

I'm really happy with the way this looks with my standard Lightroom IR preset (which basically just sets a new white point in the scene). It really has the classic IR film look, but with splashes of color that I think work. Here's the same shot processed in B&W, with the contrast bumped a little:

With some subtle(-ish) gradients, i was able to get this next shot in open shade at 1/20 sec f3.5 @ISO100. Overall I think you need full sun for the best effect, but you can squeeze something out with enough post processing.

I also tried my solarize preset to see what that would look like, and the effect still works with the red filter in place.

Lastly, I wanted to see the R60 in full sun against a blue sky, and that's the most dramatic effect yet. Its not much of a photograph, but it demonstrates what is possible.

If you compare this to the shots I too in the same spot on my first day with the converted camera, I think it becomes clear. I'm going to continue figuring out how wrap my head around this whole infrared thing and use it effectively. The preview on the camera really tells you nothing about how its going to look, you have to keep that in your head, which will come easier after a few thousand photos.

Full Spectrum Infrared samples

2011-04-27T12:56:00.000-07:00

So after a week of playing with making Lightroom presets, here's what I've come up with:

I'm sure I'll be able to generate more presets later as the need arises, but at least I have a starting point. The blue/yellow look is the preset I apply upon import to all the images, then I experiment with each particular image until it tells me what's right for it. Still no Photoshop here.

Working out the Infrared kinks

2011-04-22T12:07:00.000-07:00

Any time you get a new camera there's going to be a learning curve. The more complicated the camera the steeper the hill you have to climb, it's pretty obvious. My new Full Spectrum Panosonic L10 is no exception, but mostly the learning curve is in the post processing. There is one thing that should have been obvious, but its worth mentioning.

When you remove the hot filter from a camera, the light meter isn't going to read right anymore. The green filter eats up a bunch of light, and when its removed, all the sudden you're overexposing everything. In my camera, a -1 stop exposure compensation seems to be adequate for a normal shot.

So on to the post processing. I had a couple hours of daylight to kill yesterday, so I went out to knock out the cobwebs. Here's what a shot looks like straight from the camera, it's pretty boring:

But with a judicious application of Lightroom, the same shot can turn it into something a bit more interesting like this:

At this point the most critical thing you can do is save this look as a Preset so you don't have to reinvent the wheel next time you have a scene with similar values. Here's another look at the same basic scene with a different Preset:

The best thing about this is that you can get it with the click of a button, sync it to as many images as you want, and you don't have to monkey about swapping channels in Photoshop to get it. This last one is a shot I'm actually proud of, something I would fee no hesitation framing or entering in a contest.

Finally, Infrared photos

2011-04-20T16:21:00.000-07:00

Well I finally received my Panasonic L10 back from Pro Camera Repair after 5 weeks from the time I first sent it in. I really haven't had time to experiment with it but, I did go out back and snap a couple frames in the parking lot, just to make sure the focus and everything else works.

What I'm going to try to do in the coming weeks is to nail down proper exposure and build a Lightroom preset to convert my images. Here's the first shot with a very basic blue/yellow conversion:

The other thing I read about and ordered while my camera was away is a B+W 489 filter (mine was 72mm). Here's a shot with the filter, it doesn't have perfect color, but it's close and just about all I had to do was set a white point.

Below is the same shot, same exposure, white point set in the same place but without the filter.

I think if you're going to use your camera as a dual pupose tool, Regular and IR, this seems like a pretty good investment. I haven't compared it to similar filters from other manufacturers, but I have a gut feeling that I'll be getting a lot of filters in the near future.

Technical acumen is not enough

2011-04-18T10:33:00.000-07:00

I've seen at a lot of art lately. In addition to finding all kinds of art online in my daily research, I've been going to real art auctions and swap meets (aka flea markets) on a weekly if not daily basis. I've also been selling art and collectibles at swap meets to make ends meet between the rare occasions of photography and retouching gigs.

And so in the past three months I've wouldn't be exaggerating to say I've seen 100,000 pieces of artwork in the full spectrum of mediums (as well as quality). I'm talking about stuff from old masters to Andy Warhol, plus tons of work by 19th century, early 20th century as well as contemporary photographers. Yesterday, driving home from yet another swap meet, all these images coalesced into a simple tenet.

As we have learned from the above image, anything can be art, but what separates just art from good art? Technical acumen is not enough, your art has to have soul. Simply enough, to be great, your work has to transcend the mechanical devices you used to create it, not just be the sum of its parts, but to become greater than the sum of its parts.

You don't have to reinvent the wheel, all you need is a good idea. Andy Warhol didn't invent Campbell's Soup or the silk screen, and David Hockney wasn't the first person to use Polaroids as art, so how did these two become great? Because they came up with an idea how the world works from a slightly different angle, and figured out how to translate that idea into art. Once you have that idea, it doesn't really matter what kind of paint brush you use.

I was wrong

2011-04-08T11:08:00.000-07:00

While I'm waiting for my Panasonic L10 to come back from a botched Infrared Conversion at Pro Camera Repair in San Diego, I realized I just can't live without a DSLR. While I love my Panasonic GF-1 and everything it does for travel photography, there just something about looking through an optical viewfinder that is ingrained in me. Live View is good and fine, but still, IMO nothing beats looking, composing and focusing through a pentaprism.

So while I am waiting (it's been nearly a month now), I decided to pick up an interim DSLR and went on Craigslist to see what I could find. For a couple hundred I picked this up:

It's an Olympus E-300 with a 14-45mm and a 40-150mm. Its no Canon, but you know what, for the money its not a bad little camera. I know I'm a little late for a E-300 review :) but the reason I'm writing about this now is that I was wrong. I used to dismiss people who shot with low end cameras because there aren't enough Megapixels (this one is only 8mp), and the optical quality isn't as good, but now I think differently.

While I'm probably not going to do any commercial work with this camera, I think its perfectly fine for most every day shooting. Especially if everything you're doing goes online instead of print. What important is that you're shooting, not what you're shooting.

More delays in Infrared Conversion

2011-04-05T14:43:00.000-07:00

After waiting for another week with no feedback from Pro Camera Repair in San Diego, I was frustrated enough to send them an email on Friday asking what the delay is. A few minutes ago I received this reply:

"Focus adjustments are very delicate and very time consuming. In addition to the focus adjustments we are replacing the filter which is on order. Please let me know if you have any questions."

So here's the point of this blog post, and something that has been bugging me recently. Never fall into the trap of assuming that the person you're speaking to (or in front of), knows less than you about a subject. This also applies to assuming other people don't speak a second or third language based on how they look.

In short, a simple mistake can ruin your chances of making a good first impression and landing a client. In my case, I could have been been writing glowing reviews and telling all my friends to get their cameras converted by Pro Camera Repair, but instead, I feel I'm being lied to, which is not a good way to bolster ones reputation.

Here's what I think happened: They had never done a IR conversion on a Panasonic L10 before and figured it would be like any other camera, just pull the IR/UV filter and reassemble. But something went wrong, I think the camera won't focus properly without a piece of glass in front of the sensor. That's why when it came back to me it wouldn't focus and now they have parts on order. The "delicate and time consuming" is just a stall tactic to buy them more time.

Litepanels MiniPlus IR + iPhone

2011-03-28T11:51:00.000-07:00

In anticipation of my Panasonic L10 being converted for infrared, I picked up a Litepanels MiniPlus IR light, and although I still don't have my camera, I started messing around with the light and my iPhone today. My Panasonic GF-1 isn't very IR light sensitive, but it turns out the iPhone 4 is.

Here's how the light looks through the iPhone:

The really cool thing about this light is that when its on you can't see it with the naked eye. For comparison here's a shot of the iPhone from the GF-1:

You can clearly see how brilliant it is to the iPhone and invisible to the GF-1; its also how it looks to the eye. A full spectrum conversion should be much more sensitive, the IR light only reaches about 1 foot for the iPhone. Here's a nice iPhone-monster-light-infrared-self-portrait, that's the light in the foreground:

The great Infrared Experiment (part 2)

2011-03-24T15:37:00.000-07:00

Well I received my camera today, as promised, but there's a snag. It focuses fine in the viewfinder, but everything is out of focus in the shot. And I do mean everything:

Sent an email to the shop that did the conversion, waiting to hear back.

The great Infrared Experiment

2011-03-22T14:08:00.001-07:00

I'm sitting here with the front door open, waiting for UPS to deliver my camera from being converted to Full Spectrum Infrared. It feels like Christmas.

In truth I don't really know what to expect because although I've seen samples online, I'm not going to be shooting landscapes, and I'm going to try to figure out my own way of processing them in Lightroom.

What it's really all about for me is developing a truly unique look. Start with a camera that sees beyond the human eye's capability, then take the RAW files and create a series of Lightroom Presets that will give me a completely original palette.

In addition, I've ordered a Litepanels Miniplus IR that I'm going to experiment with. Because there's nothing like adversity to breed creativity. In this case, I've bought a light that I can't actually see, so that will be a new experience for me.

I heard recently that goes "It's a steep learning curve, it's a quick learning curve and then it levels off, and then there's a lot of hard work that occurs in the last 5% that gets you to the next level." There's no quicker way to get off a plateau than to throw yourself off.

UPDATE: No camera today. Despite being finished with the conversion early yesterday, Pro Camera Repair wasn't able to ship yesterday. Or today. They promised to ship tomorrow for Thursday delivery. Christmas is being delayed.

Wait, what happened to my Canon?

2011-03-15T19:19:00.000-07:00

When I out started in photography, I was in High School. The beginning class (101A) was filled up, so I lied to the teacher and told him that I had taken photographer before, and I got in to 101B. After the first semester I received a D, but I was hooked, I loved it. I had borrowed my Dad's Olympus OM-1n for that class, and it seemed like a great camera, so when I returned the following semester, I had my own OM system.

Within a year, I had the opportunity to buy a Nikon F3, which I did without hesitation and dumped my OM. To this day, I think the F3 is the finest manual focus SLR ever made; despite its shortcomings, I would take one over a Canon F1, Pentax LX, or any Leica R.

When Autofocus matured and I saw the Canon EOS-1n in action (1994), it was a paradigm shift in camera technology. Once again I dumped my existing system (2 F3's and half a dozen lenses), and jumped on board with a new brand. As good as the F3 was for MF, the EOS was twice as good at AF.

Naturally when it came time to switch from film to digital, I stayed with Canon. I got a 20D, then a 1D MkII, and my latest Canon was a 1DsMkII. If you asked me then, I would have said I couldn't see switching from Canon unless there is another paradigm shift in technology.

But last September rather than drag my 1DS MkII on the trip to Paris with me, I picked up a Panasonic GF-1 with the 14-45mm and 20mm f1.7. It was great for the trip, shot nice videos, was great for eBay and was a great knockabout camera. Last month I sold my Canon, it was truly the end of an era, I had been shooting Canon for 17 years.

Just last week I purchased a used Panasonic L10 DSLR with a 14-50mm f2.8-3.5 Leica Vario-Elmarit. I barely shot 20 frames before sending it out to have it converted to Full Spectrum Infrared (if you're into IR, there's going to be a bunch of blogs devoted to that soon).

So due to a random twist of fate, sans the fanfare of technological breakthroughs I was expecting, this week I somehow became a Panasonic shooter. I'm still not sure how this happened, how happy I'm going to be with the Pano, and whether I'll go back to Canon at some point, but for the immediate future it's Canon = 0, Panasonic = 2.

Oh yeah, and for the important stuff, its still Hasselblad = 1.

I'm still a photographer

2011-03-14T12:45:00.000-07:00

Aaaaand I'm back.

I took about a month off from blogging because my life was a bit chaotic and I couldn't focus (no pun intended). I ended up selling my Canon 1Ds Mark II kit so I could pay January's bills, which didn't feel good and contributed to my slump. It also ate up a lot of energy dealing with ~~potential buyers~~ craigslist tire-kickers always wanting to chisel the price down but then not showing up to actually buy.

Even when things looked dark, I never gave up. I knew that I still had the Message in a Bottle project that needed to be done, and that it will likely take a few more years to complete. So quietly in the midst of my self induced storm (I mean really, I could go out and get a regular job, right?), I called up friends, made appointments and snapped away.

You WILL figure it out

Don't go to art school

Don't let the ones who treated you badly determine your self worth

The one thing that helps keeps me going in times like this is the awareness that whether I'm shooting or not, working or not, happy or not, I'm still a photographer.

Never work for free

2011-02-18T10:28:00.000-08:00

Let me go on record that I am categorically opposed to doing free work. If you're a pro, aspiring pro, up and coming, whatever, and someone asks you to take pictures for them (especially if its a commercial client), you should be compensated in some way. I prefer cash.

There are times though that its ok to take other forms of payment, barter is one way. I think its fine to take product in exchange for photography services, it all depends on what it is; some new clothes would be good, but 50 pounds of soap not so much. Travel is another way; a friend of mine was asked to shoot a wedding, the bride was a co-worker, and while she couldn't afford much, she did fly him down to Mexico for three days and pay for a hotel room for him. How about some airline miles?

A little further down the food chain is shoot in exchange for experience. Now you're entering a gray area. Everyone needs to build their portfolio, and having work from legit clients certainly helps beef up your client list, but you really need to make sure the client isn't taking advantage of you. Promising you more work later on does NOT count. Most of the time clients like that will never call you back because they'll be making the same promise to a different photographer next time they need photos. They don't care about quality, they just don't want to pay. Pay attention, because this is a near universal tenet: you don't value what you don't pay for.

The last point I'd like to make is that no matter how much you've agreed to do the job for, you still need to give it 100%. If you're not committed to doing your best (because you're not getting much money), you're doing yourself a disservice, and here's why. You're only as good as your portfolio, and if you do sub-par work and show it, it will only get you more sub-par work.

How to take photos through a Microscope (part 2)

2011-02-09T10:33:00.000-08:00

Now that I've had a few weeks to experiment with my Leica Microscope, here are the pics I've come up with. Most are bottom lit with the microscope's fluorescent light source, but the last one is lit with two Maglite X100 flashlights. Have fun figuring out what the items are.