Nov 7 - the Artlife show opened.
Posted by Colin | Filed under Uncategorized
Thanks again to everyone that showed up!
Here is a little video of the setup and opening: SHOW ME
My first art show!
Posted by Colin | Filed under Uncategorized
Pretty stoked about this one. It’s free and booze will be available so, if you live around here, COME ON DOWN! Most of my work will be new stuff that nobody has seen.
It’s been a lot of work, though… much more than I anticipated. I’m hoping to bring something a little different to the gallery.
It certainly hasn’t been cheap. I refuse to go the gallery frame route. Not that there is anything wrong with that, I just think I’ll add some spice to the mix.
So, for anyone else planning something like this I’ll outline my costs so far:
7 frames from the net: $850
Glass for 5 of those and backboard for 2: $140
2 Frames from local source: $70
Matting: $100
Matting kit: $100
Prints: $300
Wow. Gotta try to stimulate that economy.
I could have done this much cheaper, but I felt that I’d be short changing myself if I didn’t pursue the vision I had.
Photographer rage
Posted by Colin | Filed under Uncategorized
Its a meme.
The Mac’s of the camera world.
Posted by Colin | Filed under Nonsense
Gearlust strikes again. I want more megapixels.
After reading the reviews I was open to the Sony a900. I’m not going to shoot movies, its low ISO image quality is fantastic and its high ISO performance outstrips my current Nikon D80 anyway. Plus it has in body image stabilization which is a nice touch.
I go down to the store and check it out with the legitimate intent of letting it convince me to stimulate the economy.
ISO, WB and IQ settings are nice and easy to adjust - important aspects for me. Love the feel of that big shutter flapping inside that body at the press of the button. One thing that is critical to me is easy LCD zoomability and it MUST zoom in on the focus point. I cannot stand scrolling around to locate the point of most interest - what I focused on - to ensure that its sharp. Lo and behold the Sony a900 has this feature… nice!
Ok lets bring up the shot on the LCD. Press the ‘>’ button. Two, three, four seconds passes. Finally after about 5 seconds the image appears. WTF? I retest, same thing.
Ok… this sales guy must have some ancient card in here. Let’s try the Canon 5D2. We transfer the card into the Canon, take a shot, review it and *bing* it pops up on the screen within a second.
Sorry Sony but this simply will not do. I review my pictures a lot and I am not about to wait 5 seconds to see it, particularly on a THREE-FREAKIN-THOUSAND dollar camera.
Bah.
Lets try the Canon, then (I really want to spend some money). Take a couple pics, go to change the ISO. Uhhh… what’s this? You have to contort your fingers into pretzels to adjust the ISO. Same with the WB. Lets change the focus point. WHAT? I gotta press TWO buttons for this? Ridiculous. Ok… last test. Let’s see if this three thousand dollar camera zooms into the focus point when reviewing shots in the LCD.
Nope.
Three thousand dollars and it doesn’t zoom into the focus point. Every Nikon above the D200 has this feature.
Nikon is the Mac of the camera world. It costs a bit more, but usability is far superior. Well thought out UI’s are worth money and Nikon delivers. Ive discovered that I will be sticking to the Nikon world.
Just one request, Nikon: please make a D700x. Pleeeeeease?!?!?
Bunch o’ new shots up.
Posted by Colin | Filed under Uncategorized
I have no idea if anyone is following the feed for my blog (is there a way to tell?) but, if there is, I have a whack of new shots on my site. I put them up last weekend.
Check ‘em or wreck ‘em.
Hey Audi… hire me.
Posted by Colin | Filed under Other photographers, Uncategorized
European car makers often have some of the most jaw-droppingly cool imagery available in their ads… including Audi.
But this piece from their website is.. well… lets just say it looks like the VP of Marketing’s kid just got thier first copy of Photoshop:
The house is so obviously comp’ed in and the car car itself is clearly ’shopped. The house is way to big, the shadows are all screwy and the perspective of both is just plain wrong. WTF?
Audi - I know the recession is causing some cutbacks but I’ll do it for cheap!
Social networking link analysis
Posted by Colin | Filed under Nonsense, Uncategorized
I have always wondered what kind of traffic a digg, reddit, slashdot etc.. ‘web2.0′ link would generate. If you don’t know what digg is then read on. Digg is, I believe, the most popular ‘Web 2.0′ site on the net. Basically people submit links to stories and the populace votes on them. The idea is that the cream will rise to the top, although this is not always true.
I prefer a similar site - reddit - and posted a link to my own shot that I though others might get the same LOL out of it as I got: my flickr pic
I submitted it (lets call it “the LOL pic”) and, sure enough, the traffic started coming. And coming. Pretty soon I was at more views in one day then I had ever been. Ok sure it was only 1,100 - but that’s a lot in my world. 
Not bad for a pic that has pretty poor reddit results:
You can see it has a mere 3 up votes (3 people said they liked the link) and 2 down votes (2 didn’t like it). Taking a quick look at the highest ranked shot on reddit that uses a flickr account I can see that it has 277 up votes, 167 down votes and a whopping 27,425 views on flickr. Wow… that is some serious traffic driving capabilities.
Back to my 1,100 views… great publicity, eh?
Well, maybe not. Out of the 1,100 visitors lets see how many other shots got some lovin’:
Meh.
The second place ‘frankencamper’ shot got 24 views - only 6 of which came after the original ‘LOL’ shot was viewed. This leads me to believe that a maximum of 6 redditors went on to explore shots a mere ‘1 degree of separation’ from the original shot. That certainly doesn’t help spread the iHartPhotos brand!
After the first 300 or so hits I remembered to put a link to my web site on the LOL pic description (D’OH!). Surely the remaining 800 hits generated some site traffic, no?
No.
Six views? SIX views all day? SIX? Sure - that’s about my average, but c’mon, Web 2.0… give me some hits! Show me some love!
My conclusion is that I got little traffic or corollary benefit from my Web 2.0 debut because my LOL pic has very little to do with my overall body of work. If I were to get a similar volume linked from reddit to a shot that is more representative of my style then I imagine I would get more useful ‘publicity’ out of it. Too bad my usual stuff would garner very little interest on these sites 
“Its like asking Hemingway what typewriter he used”
Posted by Colin | Filed under Uncategorized
I’ve seen this analogy used by numerous photographers when someone has the audacity to ask them what camera they use. Of course the photographer is implying that its not the tool that brings us these amazing pictures, its the artist. Taking this even further I recently read a blog where the photographer actually says that he get the same results whether using his G9 or his 1DSmk3. Here is a quote:
The one thing I do know is that if I shoot with a 4×5, a medium format film camera, a point-n-shoot digital or film camera, or a high end DSLR that my photos still end up all looking the same. I have not yet found a camera that improves my photography!!
I have one simple question, then:
-
Why use anything other than your point-n-shoot?
If a better camera does not improve your shots then why invest the money time and effort in lugging around anything that is bigger than pocket-sized? Doesn’t seem to make any sense to me.
Of course these people continue to use their DSLR’s, and their medium format cameras and their nice lenses. Obviously they do in fact get something out of a better camera that a mere point-n-shoot does not offer.
Where am I going with this?
Well, I guess its just that I think that the Hemingway analogy is seriously flawed. It does not hold up. I am not, however, saying that its all about the camera. I agree that a huge proportion of a final image is solely due to the photographer themselves, however the ability to translate the vision of the photographer to pixels/film is directly related to the technology used. Some technology just cannot satisfy some requirements and failing to recognize this is naive, disingenuous and misleading. Its also, I think, self-back-patting gone a bit too far.
But what do YOU think?
Now this looks interesting…
Posted by Colin | Filed under Services
Send these guys a photo, they mask it and send it back. Masking isn’t my favorite activity so maybe I’ll send them a shot and see what they get back with. The portfolio is weak in that it doesn’t show before & after which would really give people a better idea of the mask quality.
http://www.clippingimages.com/pages/about
Enough Modo… how ’bout some Photoshop
Posted by Colin | Filed under shoot
Samantha Valentine and I shot a concept we had discussed last week on Monday evening . After seeing a fantastic series of shots I wanted to try to emulate their lighting. Unfortunately the article did not include the photographer name, but, I must say, I succeeded in capturing a similar look so I’m pretty happy about that. Ultimately this is 5 different images of Sam (or pieces of Sam) stitched together.
