FocalPower...the blog

Photographers’ Best Photos of 2008

Greg Lato — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 20:49:33 +0000

Before 2009 gets completely spun up, here is one more chance to look back at 2008. Jim Goldstein just published a wonderful blog project where he asked his readers to post their Best Photos of 2008.� Jim had stellar turn out for his project with 92 photographers participating.� Enjoy reviewing 2008 from 92 points of view from around the world.

Poll: Photo or Food, What Do You Do?

Greg Lato — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 15:28:59 +0000

While out shooting the other night, I was faced with this very situation and started wondering what would other photographers do? Yes, it’s very situational type of question but generalize it and go with your gut answer (pun intended)!

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

If you have a story where you encountered this situation recently, share with the community in the comments and let us know what impact your decision had.

Genius of Photography Available Online

Greg Lato — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 19:31:39 +0000

Sometime around the middle of last year (that’s 2008 for those who, like me, don’t feel like it should be the new year yet) I had accidentally discovered the BBC documentary series The Genius of Photography.� It was airing on the Ovation cable station here in the US, and since then I have not seen it rebroadcast.

So I was excited this morning when I read on Syl Arena’s PixSylated that the entire series has been uploaded to YouTube in 10 minute chunks.� Thanks Syl for linking directly to each of the 37 segments!

Since these segments have been on YouTube since June, they should remain up on the site for a while; I don’t think BBC posted these themselves and not sure if they try to have clips of their shows removed from social sharing sites or not.

Take advantage of these segments and learn a bit of photography history.

Reflecting on 2008 Through Photos

Greg Lato — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 07:27:02 +0000

The end of the year is always a time to look back and reflect on the year just past.� Below is a collection of the best sites that review 2008 in photos.� While there are some repeated images across these different sites, each has enough unique value that warranted inclusion in this list.� Occasionally you will see the same situation photographed from different vantage points. Quite often you will find very clever and uniquely constructed images that tell a story or capture the drama of every day life.

Enjoy the images that made up 2008:

BBC’s The Year in Pictures 2008
The Boston Globe’ The Big Picture: The year 2008 in Photographs (part 1 of 3) (part 2 | part 3)
Chicago Tribune’s Photo Essay: Joy and Sorrow in 2008 (make sure to turn on captions to get a description for each photo, though you may have to manually advance the slide show)
MSNBC 2008 Year in Pictures (3 slide shows: news, sports, vote)
National Geographic’s Photo of The Day: Best of 2008 (also check out their Photo of The Day: Best of The Month, starting in January)
The New York Times’ 2008 - The Year in Pictures (A full screen slide show with 8 Sections: The Election, The Economy, The Nation, The World, Iraq and Afghanistan, The (New York) Region, Sports, Art & Entertainment)
Sacramento Bee’s The Frame: News Pictures from 2008,� Election Pictures from 2008, Feature Pictures from 2008, and Sports Pictures from 2008
The San Francisco Chronicle’s 2008: A Year in Pictures (Broken down into select photos per month, too bad they didn’t include dates with each photo…)
Time’s Pictures of The Year 2008
Vanity Fair’s Year in Pictures, Part One (Part Two)
The Wall Street Journal’s 2008 Year in Pictures (Slide show with 10 Sections: Financial Crash, Sports, Global Conflict, The Elements, Campaign, The Year’s Best, Fashion, Biggest Buys, Top Entertainers, WSJ’s Photowall)
World Press Photos of the Year - 2008

Happy New Year!

Updates to the Blog

Greg Lato — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 02:40:43 +0000

This afternoon the the FocalPower blog was updated to WordPress 2.7.� While you may not even have noticed, this is a huge change to the FocalPower team who write these posts.� WordPress 2.7 is a major release that changes the entire administration interface to the blog.� (If you can’t tell, we’re pretty jazzed about it…and plan on posting a bit more frequently now that we have some major coding behind us.)

If you notice any strangeness on the blog, please let us know.� There might have been a few incompatabilities that we haven’t caught yet.

Update from the Team

Greg Lato — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 07:44:38 +0000

The Team has been quiet for a while and we thought it time to give a formal update as to what has been happening at FocalPower.

The past few months has seen an unprecedented number of economic, market, and political changes. Dave and I have been absorbing the implications of all these changes just like the rest of you have. These changes have definitely increase the challenges faced by FocalPower as a boot-strapping startup. Regardless, we continue forward with even more enthusiasm behind what we are doing because we believe that:

the FocalPower vision speaks even louder today to the challenges facing photographers
recent changes in the photography market only validates FocalPower’s vision and plan

Dave and I have both been busy with our day jobs (which is what currently funds FocalPower toward our initial service launch).� Yet we still burn the midnight oil working on the FocalPower Photo Asset Management service.� And we are both excited at the continual interest and increasing usage of the Photo Quote Widget, now serving up thousands of quotes daily!

On a personal note, Dave and his fianc� took a long weekend break a few months back to sneak off to elope with a handful of friends in attendance. Congratulations Dave!

Life changes and changing times aside, we have been hard at work executing against our launch plan. As we push toward a public beta of the service, we have expanded our development team by bringing on additional contractors. We are also looking for even more contractors, specifically Flash developers.� Any talented flash developers out there who have a passion for photography or digital media and want to strut their stuff to the world as part of the FocalPower Photo Asset Management service, get in touch with us!

As we march forward to a public beta, we do have early access passes available to those who enjoy getting their hands on the latest technology and understand the rigors of early product release (i.e., working with an evolving service, running a service through it’s paces, providing feedback to help shape the future of a service).

Interested? Send us an email to the contact us address on the main website.� And make sure you convince us of why you should earn the priveldge of an early access pass.� We’ll get in touch with your early access pass.

Poll: What’s Your Local Photo Archive Storage Device?

Greg Lato — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 04:54:25 +0000

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Tell the world how you store your local photo archive.� If you’re using some other device, post a comment and sing it’s praises.� If you thinking of changing your current device, tell the world why and see what’s so special about the other options.

Photo Op: Zeppelin Arriving in San Franciso Bay Area

Greg Lato — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 01:54:57 +0000

Here is a last minute notice for a wondeful photo opportunity in the San Francico Bay Area.� Tomorrow, Saturday October 25th, a Zeppelin will be arriving in the San Francisoc Bay Area and doing a few fly overs.� This is part of the launch of the Zeppelin sight seeing service offered by Airship Ventures.� Airship Ventures is also looking to engage the local photography community with a photo contest.� You can read more details at latoga photography.� This is great reason for Bay Area photographers to pickup their cameras and get out and make some photos!

New Customer For Architectural Photographers

Greg Lato — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 02:41:27 +0000

While cleaning up the stacks of papers from my desk today, I came across an article from the New York Times that intrigued me.� It appears that in certain metro areas, some architectural photographers have expanded to a new set of clients. Picture, Picture on the Wall talks about a growing trend of some upper scale home owners having custom photography created of their homes; almost like a Architectural Digest photo shoot minus the publication.� For some homeowners, they have photos taken of their vacation homes for display at the non-vacation homes or work.� Others, seem to enjoy displaying the photos of their homes in their homes.

I found this an interesting targeted vertical market for some photographers to cater to.� If you have experience capturing architecture, why not leverage it in a new way?� Marketing this type of service as a high end service to a high end clientele is important.� You want to remove the C and B clients from the A clients as soon as possible.

Of course, being a photographer in the right market helps.� Offering this service in New York City, San Francisco, Miami, or Los Angeles and you can build a nice little revenue stream to feed into your business river.� Offering this in Nashville, San Antonio, Milwaukee, or Los Alamos most likely isn’t going to be worth the business investement.� However, keeping your eye out for new focused vertical markets is smart regardless of your locale.

Poll: How Do You Rate Jill Greenberg’s Actions?

Greg Lato — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 07:15:20 +0000

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Read more about this particular photo shoot at PDNPulse.� See more of Jill Greenberg’s work.

Vote your opinion on the situation and leave a comment with more details explaining your opinion.� FocalPower is interesting in a discussion about the professionalism around Jill Greenberg’s actions as a photographer, please keep the disucssion focused on the profession of photography.� We reserve the right to delete comments that stray to far into political rhetoric.