When I need to send a contract out to a bride or other photography client I never have a stamp. Which makes the document sit on my desk till I finally force myself to swing by the post office (which is never a happy place). Well now there is a website that can help you bypass the mail and hopefully speed up the contract signing process.
Our good friend Dave Lehl is at it again and this time he’s moved out of the snow and into the skate park. To add a bit of flare to the standard skateboarding shot Dave taped sparklers to the bottom of the board and used smoke bombs to set the mood. Check out the full post to a link to the high res finished shots. [more]
Macro photography is already difficult enough to master in my opinion. You have very small subjects that are usually moving around and capturing them at the closest possible distance takes loads of practice, and patience. Russian photographer Andrew Osokin has obviously put it some serious time honing his craft. He shoots wonderful images of your standard flowers and insects, but in my opinion his winter work is where he truly stands out.
Although being a photographer means you are in direct competition with every other photographer out there , I think it is very important to build a strong community and look out for one another. Our jobs as photographers are never secure, most of us live our lives one day to the next with out a guarantee of when our next job will be. I have always been one to help people to the best of my abilities, whether it be sharing knowledge our lending out equipment. Can you imagine what you would do if someone stole every piece of photographic equipment you owned. [more]
Recently I was chatting in a photo forum and mentioned that I am loving my new Canon 5D MK2. Someone noticed and said, “do you mean the MK3?” When I told them no, I recently bought a new MK2 I got flamed with questions of, “WHY?!?!” Well let me explain…
Lomography is into film revivals lately, recently releasing something quite similar to Kodak’s discontinued Aerochrome film, Lomography Purple. What’s so special about Lomography Purple? It changes all of your greens into a bright purple color. Surely such psychedelic effects will be revered by hipsters, lomographers, and acid-dropping enthusiasts around the world, but what is the actual use of such a film? Believe it or not, there is one (or two)… [more]
Marc Donahue from Permagrin Films has been busy since his production of Dream Music, which got over 2 million views on YouTube. Most recently, Marc has been experimenting with GoPro camera arrays for a unique effect, most similar to bullet-time like in the Matrix. Click on to see the final video and read an interview with the man behind the lens. [more]
If you’ve been wanting to get an aerial perspective but dont have a clue how to fly an octocopter, check out the new LA100 by Lehmann Aviation. They’ve designed a drone that flies itself while an attached GoPro records the flight. After take off, the drone follows a preset flight pattern for five minutes and gives an excellent view of the surrounding area. While the usefulness for creative filming is severely limited by the lack of variety in flight path, it’s a fantastic idea for hobbyists who want to get a birds eye view.
If you are like me, the acronym SEO brings a shudder to your bones. If you are a photographer with a website, you have no doubt received countless emails from sites offering to optimize your site for a fee. In this post, I will tell you the things I did for free or next to nothing that helped push my photography website to page one of organic Google searches. The one thing that I already had working to my advantage is that my website is a non-flash site that was launched almost seven years ago. [more]
One of our favorite lenses for cropped DSLR cameras is currently on sale at BH Photo for a ridiculously low price of $289 (Next lowest price is Amazon at $349). If you’ve been looking at getting a nice wide angle lens for low light or super shallow depth of field, this lens is one to consider. We’ve shot a lot of Fstoppers Originals with this prime lens and it’s a great choice for those wedding fusion videos in extremely low light situations. Comes in versions for Canon, Nikon, and Sony. [more]
Fuji previously released firmware updates that upgraded the X-Pro 1′s autofocus performance, among other things, turning it into another kind of beast. Now, they again promise AF accuracy improvements and more for the X-Pro 1, X-E1, and XF 35mm f1.4 lens. [more]
Now here’s something I’ve never seen before. Photographer Mark Gee shot this footage of the moon rising in real time at Mt Victoria in Wellington, New Zealand. The video, shot with a Canon 1d Mark IV, 500mm lens and 2x teleconverter from over 2km away used the extremely long focal length to create an incredibly surreal look, which silhoutted [more]
Sometimes a Journey song can wax poetic. “Small town girl…lonely world.” We’ve heard it before. But for whatever reason, it’s the song I can’t get out of my head while I’m sitting with Jenny Woods in a small, Persian restaurant in the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Standing a towering five-foot-nothing and with a demeanor that couldn’t ruffle a sleeping kitten, Jenny, or Bunny Jenny, as she goes by, is a photographer from a very small town in Florida. [more]
One of my favorite books is Love Is A Killer App by Tim Sanders. In it we read that business love is “the act of intelligently and sensibly sharing your intangibles (knowledge, network, and compassion) with your bizpartners.” One person who exemplifies this concept perfectly is Jasmine Star and her series of videos called Shooting Star. The videos are full of great advise for new as well as experienced wedding photographers ready to learn new tips that will help them grow their business. [more]
PhotoShelter released their results from a 2012 survey that was sent out to over 5,000 professional and aspiring photographers worldwide. The survey asked photographers about the various ways in which they were planning on marketing their photography business in 2013 and the results they were hoping to achieve from their efforts.
