Man with a Camera

Viewing Images Online

2012-02-26T18:46:00.000-06:00

As a professional photographer, I make sure that all of my tools are calibrated. This includes my monitor. I use the X-rite profiler to keep my monitor calibrated so that I am seeing the correct colors, brightness, contrast and saturation.
I am always nervous about people viewing my images online because most people do not calibrate their monitors. Even worse, some programs do not show images very well. I recently tried using Windows Photo Viewer and the images looked terrible! They were dark and a little too red. After checking around I found out that it was because of a problem between Windows and my calibration software.
I am glad that people can view my images online, but I still worry that they are not seeing them the way they actually look.

Natural Lighting

2012-01-17T12:34:00.001-06:00

You may hear from some photographers that they are "Natural Light" photographers. There are some photographers that are very good natural light photographers, however many amateur photographers make this claim only because they do not know how to use studio lights or flashes.
In many outdoor situations a flash is needed to brighten the eyes or to soften the shadows. A professional photographer should be skilled in using artificial lighting to make a beautiful portrait.
If a photographer claims to be a natural light photographer, check their portfolio to see what their lighting looks like. A good natural light photographer will have good even lighting and skin tones. If they have a lot of black and white photos, make sure you look carefully. Some photographers try to cover up bad lighting by using black and white processing.

So Why Hire a Professional Photographer?

2011-10-18T16:10:00.000-05:00

First let me define professional. I don't just mean a photographer that works for money. I mean a photographer that treats photography as a profession by acting in an ethical businesslike manner using contracts, having insurance, a digital management plan, participates in the appropriate professional organizations and participate in regular continuing education to maintain their skill and knowledge.

A professional photographer isn't just someone who likes to take pictures and wants to make money at it. A professional photographer likes to take pictures, likes to make money and works at it. I am a member of several professional organizations, I attend seminars at least monthly to keep up with the industry, I have a network of other professionals to stay up to date and who I can call on if I need help.

I can also offer my clients the comfort of knowing that I have a digital asset management system where I back up all my pictures in at least 3 ways. This way if my computer should have a catastrophic crash I don't lose all their images, I just go to one of my backups and keep working.

Retouching and Digitizing Images

2011-09-22T21:45:00.000-05:00

We recently had wildfires in the area and hundreds of people lost their homes and many of their possessions. One of the prized possessions I heard many people talk about was losing the family photo albums and other personal photos.

One way to protect yourself is to digitize your images. You can do it yourself or have it done for you. Put the images on several DVDs or CDs and put at least 2 in a fireproof box or safe deposit box. The reason for having 2 or more copies in a safe place is just in case one gets accidentally damages and CDs and DVDs are very cheap to buy.

One side benefit to this is that once the images are digitized, you can share them with the whole family instead of arranging for prints to be made of only the ones they are interested in. As a family historian I can tell you that what does not seem important at the time will be a huge help to your descendants.

A Note on Hair and Makeup

2011-08-29T18:33:00.002-05:00

People often want to look their best for their portrait and will get a haircut or style before the session so that they look their best. This is perfectly natural, however you should schedule your hair appointment for at least 3 days prior to the photo session. If their are any problems with your hair, you should be able to postpone the photo session if you need to without any problems. Most photographers are happy to reschedule without penalty. However if you wait until the day of the shoot, many photographers will keep your deposit since they will not be able to fill your spot on such short notice.
With makeup, if your brand has a high mineral content, you may get unsightly reflections from the flash such as Nicole Kidman got in this picture http://bit.ly/pAwoCc.
Another thing about makeup is, if you have a blemish on your face, ask your photographer before trying to cover it up. One of the most common and simplest retouches to do is for a minor blemish in you portrait. Simply make sure the photographer is aware of it and usually the photographer is willing to make an almost invisible correction to the blemish without your having to fret over it.

Dressing for a Portrait

2011-08-15T15:33:00.001-05:00

Clothes are an important consideration in having a formal portrait done. If you are having your portrait done, you should avoid bright colors including white. The focus of the portrait should be you face and any bright colors you wear will vie for the viewers attention. You should also avoid distracting patterns in your clothing. The exception to this is if your clothing is very important to your portrait. For example, If Mary Kay Ash (the founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics) were having a portrait done then I would expect her to wear bright pink clothing since it is her signature color. If you are planning on wearing a bright color for your portrait, let your photographer know in advance. They may be able to adjust your background and surroundings to help your portrait look its very best.

Shooting on Location

2011-07-31T01:41:00.001-05:00

There are many places that you can have your portrait done. You can go to a photography studio or you can choose a location of your own. Usually the location is somewhere where it looks nice, but don't choose a place where there are too many distractions unless the distractions are important to you.

One of the mistakes sometimes made by photographer is assuming that a public area is free for them to work in. Try setting up a tripod and a light in a mall and security will be there very quickly to shut you down. While a mall or shopping center is a public place for people who are shopping (and they probably won't mind a shot or 2 with a cell phone camera or a point and shoot camera), if you are there to photograph someone for a fee, then you need to get the property owners' permission. This may even include a public park. In my area there are a couple of cities that require a small fee and a permit to do commercial photography in the public park.

Some people might be tempted to just go in and act dumb, but a professional will have checked on permissions first and made arrangements so that if a park ranger or police officer ask if they have permission, the photographer will be able to show the papers and continue the shoot. Having your client watch you argue with the people in charge and reschedule or relocate your shoot will not make them very happy with your service.

On backgrounds

2011-06-23T22:40:00.001-05:00

Remember when you are selecting a background that in most portrait situations, you will only see about 20 feet by 20 feet in focus at the most. If it is any larger than that, the background had better be an important part of the picture.

Don't do like so many have done and stand directly in front of a huge backdrop. In order to get the entire backdrop in the photographer will need to set up the camera a good distance away or use a very wide angle lens. If the photographer is far away and you are directly in front of the background object, you will be tiny. If the photographer uses a very wide angle lens then there will likely be distortion that needs to be fixed.

The best bet is to have the photographer get some distance from the background, but you stand some where closer to the photographer. Generally, if you divide the distance into thirds, you should stand in the third closest to the photographer.

Some things to look for in a photographer - websites

2011-05-25T14:27:00.000-05:00

Here are just a few things to look for when looking at a photographer;s website.

Do they have a good variety of images?
Some photographers will try to pad their site by putting up a lot of pictures of 1 or 2 people or families.
There is nothing wrong with this but if they only have a couple of sessions to display, then they probably do not have much experience.

Do they have a lot of effects on their pictures?
Again, there may be nothing wrong with this. Photo effects can be used though to cover up bad photography. You may like whatever effects they use, but be aware of how it is being used.

Ethnicity. I know it seems like a powderkeg to mention, but different skin types have to be photographed differently. If the website shows all dark skinned people and you are very fair, the photographer may not do a good job for you.

William Coupon

2011-05-20T18:00:00.000-05:00

I found out about William Coupon from one of my instructors at Austin Community College. I checked out his stuff and was immediately impressed.
It is easy to get caught up with all the equipment and coming up with a great idea that takes time, money and people. But Mr. Coupon has a whole catalog of work that is made up mostly of 1 light and a piece of canvas tacked to the wall.
You may not have heard of him, but he has a large body of work including 15 Time magazine covers.
Check his website at www.williamcoupon.com

Why get a portrait made?

2011-04-25T22:29:00.001-05:00

Why would you want to get a formal or informal portrait made of yourself or your family? I mean after all, what with camera phones and digital cameras all over the place you can get your picture taken wherever and whenever you want. You don't even have to get prints made, you can just post it or email it wherever you like.

A portrait is different from a picture. A photographic portrait is a moment in time. An image that will be treasured by you and your family for years to come.

I have been spending some time looking at some portraits taken of family members from years ago. I don't just glance at them, I study them. I see a picture of my Grandmother when she was a young woman and think about how she changed over the years and who in my family resembles her now. I look at old portraits of myself and reminisce on what was happening in my life when the photo was taken.

I am looking at those portraits on high quality paper too. I could scan them into my computer, but sitting at my computer or looking at an image on a phone is just not the same experience. Probably because I associate my computer and phone as work tools. There is a different feeling looking at a picture on the wall or in a photo album.

More on this topic later.

Learning about photography

2010-04-28T01:36:00.000-05:00

I have been going to ACC for about 18 months. I have learned a lot and met a lot of great new photographers. The program is very interesting and allows for the use of a lot of equipment that I could only dream of using day to day on my own.
Getting feedback from my instructors and peers is great, but I am finding that I need more information. One place that I am getting information is from the many great blogs on the internet.
Early on I got caught up too much in the posturing and tech stuff (Strobes vs speedlites, Canon vs Nikon, outdoor vs studio). Now I realize that a lot of it can be boiled down to creativity and light. If you can come up with a great idea and figure out a way to put light where you want it the way you want it, then magic happens. the hard part is coming up with the ideas and managing the light.

Some blog I like:
http://lovelifephoto.blogspot.com/
http://blog.chasejarvis.com/blog/
http://photoblog.statesman.com/
http://visualsciencelab.blogspot.com/

February 2010 Photography Happenings in Central Texas

2010-01-31T17:01:00.000-06:00

As always, if you have any happenings to add, please let me know.

1st Creative Community Coop Intro Meeting 7-9 p.m

Locations: Cool River (see Facebook for update on locations)

8th Creative Community Coop Start-up Meeting: 7-9 p.m.

8-27th Fifth Annual For The Love of Art Juried Show

13th Kirk Tuck's Lighting Workshop $225

14th Austin Photography Group 7pm Book People 6th and Lamar 3rd floor

Presentation by photographer David Johndrow, whose work has been shown in numerous publications including Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly, and GQ Magazine. In 2007, Johndrow's work took the cover of B&W Magazine along with the feature article for the issue.

15th Austin Professional Photographers Association meeting Dave and Buster's

19th Peoples Art Exhibit 5:30PM-7:30PM

20th Gathering of Photographers Spring Group Show at Alpha and Omega Gallery

21st Art and Copy Alamo Ritz 4 PM

ART & COPY is a powerful new film about advertising and inspiration. Directed by Doug Pray (SURFWISE, SCRATCH, HYPE!)

January 2010 Photography Happenings

2010-01-02T14:50:00.000-06:00

Please let me know if there are any that I have missed or that you would like to include here.

9th- Embracing Our Differences competition deadline

Embracing Our Differences invites artists, photographers, professionals, amateurs, teachers and students to participate in its 7th annual visual art exhibit celebrating diversity. 45 artists will be selected for the exhibit. A total of $3,000.00 in awards will be presented.

10th- The Austin Photography Meetup group
At this month's meeting we're honored to have Trey Ratcliff present to us his work and technique in HDR photography, some of which can be seen at his extremely popular travel blog, Stuck In Customs.

11th- Julia Dean New Documentarian Award for a Long Term Project entry deadline

The New Documentarian Award refers to a new approach to showing, sharing, and promoting documentary photography. $1000 cash prize to continue the documentary project.

12th- Alexia Foundation Photography Grant Competition deadline
The Alexia Foundation offers the professional grant to enable a photographer to have the financial ability to produce a substantial picture story that furthers the Foundation's goals of promoting world peace and cultural understanding.

16th- Texas Photo Forum Film Crawl III - Navisota, TX
Saturday Janurary 16 (23rd alt.) will be our 3rd Film Crawl. We will be crawling thru Navisota and Washington on the Brazos state park.
The plan is to show up in and around Navisota for shooting in the AM. Meet up at noon for lunch. Then proceed to Washington and the Brazos state park for shooting throughout the afternoon.
When you RSVP please provide suggestions for places for lunch and places you would like to shoot in Navisota. Posting locations in and around Navisota will allow us to gather in one or more groups for the morning.

20th- Renaissance Photography Competition deadline
The Renaissance photography competition (the Competition) has been organized by the organizing committee (the Committee) to raise money for the Lavender Trust at Breast Cancer Care (the Lavender Trust).

24th- Jacob Riis Award deadline
It will focus in portfolios (minimum of 8 and maximum of 12 images) inviting photographers working in all mediums, styles and schools of thought. Traditional, contemporary, avant-garde, creative and experimental works that include old and new processes, mixed techniques, and challenging personal, emotional or political statements will be welcome.

27th- Center deadline for 4 different competitions
Center, formerly known as the Santa Fe Center for Photography, was founded in 1994. Center is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization that supports, promotes, and provides opportunity for gifted and committed photographers.

31st- Lange-Taylor Prize entry deadline
The year 2010 marks the twentieth anniversary of the Dorothea
Lange–Paul Taylor documentary prize, a $20,000 award given annually by the Center for Documentary Studies.

31st- Px3 Photography Competition entry deadline
The "Prix de la Photographie, Paris" (Px3) strives to promote the appreciation of photography, to discover emerging talent, and to introduce photographers from around the world to the artistic community of Paris.

November Photo Happenings

2009-10-29T12:06:00.000-05:00

November

1st-30th- Heads and Holgas (Austin Art Garage)

1st-8th- Mini Heart Gallery of Central Texas (Hill Country Bible Church Pflugerville)

3rd- Robert Shults Exhibition opens (L. Nowlin Gallery)

5th- Gathering of Photographers (Alpha-Omega Gallery) See the Fall Group Show!

8th- Austin Museum of Art - Chuck Close show closing
8th- Austin Photography Group meeting (Book People)

14th-22nd- East Austin Studio Tour

16th- ASMP Austin Happy Hour (Central Market Cafe)

19th- ASMP Converging Media Seminar Coming to Austin - (Gail Mooney)

20th- The Icons of Photography #4 Lecture - Lauren Greenfield

21st- The Slideluck Potshow Austin (Shangri-La)

Please let me know of any events that I have not included.

Photography Happenings October-November

2009-10-17T11:19:00.000-05:00

October

20th- ASMP Austin Happy Hour (Central Market Cafe)

23rd- Massive Art Attack ($5 at the Scoot Inn)

25th- Complete Lighting Seminar with Photoshop (Kirk Tuck)

26th- Austin Center for Photography (Submissions for Slideluck Potshow Austin II close at midnight.)
26th- Entries for Texas Photographic Society International Student Competition juried by Lucian Perkins, due in San Antonio.

28th- Screening at Dolph Briscoe Center for American History (An Unlikely Weapon: The Eddie Adams Story)
30th- Submissions to A-B(o)MB II: The Fallout due

November
1st-30th- Heads and Holgas (Austin Art Garage)
1st-8th- Mini Heart Gallery of Central Texas (Hill Country Bible Church Pflugerville)

3rd- Robert Shults Exhibition opens (L. Nowlin Gallery)

5th- Gathering of Photographers (Alpha-Omega Gallery) See the Fall Group Show!

8th- Austin Photography Group meeting (Book People)

14th-22nd- East Austin Studio Tour
16th- ASMP Austin Happy Hour (Central Market Cafe)

20th- The Icons of Photography #4 Lecture - Lauren Greenfield

21st- The Slideluck Potshow Austin (Shangri-La)

Please let me know of any events that I have not included.

Lighting question

2009-05-19T10:40:00.001-05:00

OK, so I am thinking about getting some more advanced lighting than just my Canon 430 EX flash. The 430 has done well for me when I photographed a wedding and I think it does really well for an on the move type flash. But I am thinking more of studio portraits.

Now I know that there are people who will say that if you buy a Canon 580 flash then you can slave the 430 to it and get comparable results to studio flashes. Having worked with some studio equipment at ACC, I just don't think that it is possible. You might be able to get some decent results from this set up, but the studio flashes are designed to be used for portraits and the 430 and 580 flashes are designed to add light when you are out and about. (A good comparison might be that your factory Mazda 3 may be able to beat some race cars, but that is not what it was designed for and eventually you will lose big time)

Here are a couple of the studio setups I am thinking about:

The Calumet Genesis 200

The Adorama Budget Studio Kit

One consideration that I am looking into is how much it costs to add on to the basic kit after I get started. If anyone has had experience with this type of purchase, I would love to hear from you.

More along the road well travelled

2009-04-24T14:01:00.000-05:00

It is getting close to the end of the semester and I would like to share some of the things I have learned since the semester started.

First of all, make sure you have a good starter camera. Buy as good as you can afford and from my limited experience that is going to be either a Canon or a Nikon camera.

Why not Olympus or Sony or any other digital SLR's out there? Simply because on of the great benefits of attending ACC is the lens lending library. They have a lot of really cool lenses to lend out to students taking camera classes and they only have Canon and Nikon lenses. This allows you to check out and experiment with thousands of dollars worth of glass before investing any of your dinero on something that sounded cool, but doesn't do what you hoped. This more than covers the cost of tuition.

That leads me to the next thing which is don't buy any lenses until you are ready to commit to the best you can afford and make sure that if you are using one of the starter DSLR's like me that your lenses will fit the cameras you will be graduating to. For example, one of the lenses that I really enjoy is the Canon 10-22mm lens. It is a wonderful little lens that lets me shoot what I want to outside. I have checked this lens out from ACC many times. I probably won't buy it though because it does not fit on any Canon full frame cameras (5d or 1d). I eventually want to get the 5d Mk2 and it would be frustrating for me to get a lens that I will no longer be able to use once I upgrade my camera. (although I may keep my little Rebel XSI as a backup camera.)

Photo contests

2008-08-06T19:10:00.001-05:00

Here are some photo contest that I found. Please add any others you know of to the comments.

http://www.keyetv.com/content/contests/photocontest/default.aspx
The winner receives a $50 gift certificate from Precision Camera and Video. Winners are also showcased in the Winners Gallery Slideshow. (Contest Ended)

http://photocontest.smithsonianmag.com/v4/index.php
The 4th annual photo contest prizes :a Smithsonian Journeys adventure for two to the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta in October (or the cash equivalent). Each category winner will receive $500. (Contest Ended)

http://www.kvue.com/weather/snapshot/?ln
Mark Murray will choose one winner daily from all valid submissions. Those daily winners will then have the opportunity to win a monthly prize -- a $100 IBC Bank Cashcard. Cashcard must be used within three months or fees will apply. A committee of KVUE Television employees will select winners of the monthly prize. Total prize value will differ month to month.

http://www.austin.com/content/view/782/1/
Take a picture of the this boat on one of the highland lakes and you could win a $500 wakeboard lesson package!

http://worldinfocuscontest.com/
An amateur and a professional photo contest!

http://www.theeveryman.com/81.php
Amateurs only!

http://www.picture.com/contest/enter.asp
Prize $10,000!

http://www.betterphoto.com/contest.asp
The Grand Prize winner gets a Deluxe BetterPholio™ or 4-week photography course.
First Place winners receive a Tamrac Sling Pack

http://www.viewbug.net/?gclid=CJnW5pa2-pQCFQZqswodTmH6tg
Win $200

http://www.photolaureates.org/upload.php?gclid=CMf_0uS2-pQCFQlqsgodbEeCqQ
$6500 prize!

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/photo-contest/photo-contest
The First Place winner in each Category will each receive a digital camera kit. Approximate Retail Value ("ARV") of each first prize is $1,000.

http://www.ritzcamera.com/help/Photo+Contest.htm
50 winners, including 5 Grand Prize Winners who are awarded $2,000 each, and 15 First Prize Winners who take home $1,000 each!

Getting started.

2008-08-05T16:40:00.000-05:00

I just took a class in photography at Austin Community College.

You know how it is, I was always taking pictures and if a quarter of them turned out good I was happy. Of course it was just shear luck that they turned out good so I wanted to learn how to take photos that have a better than average chance of being good pictures.

In this blog I will share the secrets and interesting bits that I have discovered including any photo contests that I come upon.

Please leave a comment if you know of any photo contests that you would like to share.

I live in Pflugerville, TX so I will share any interesting photos from here or the surrounding area.

Pflugerpete