I was shocked at my favorite product this year at PPE. Mostly because it wasn't digital, electronic, or even made of glass. I was most impressed with a product that helps our capture workflow in studio and on location.
This week we purchased our first LED lights pad kit and I have never been more excited. After much debate on which kit, which manufacturer, how many lights, we finally pulled the trigger on the ROSCO Gaffers Lite Pad Axiom Kit sold at BH Photo. There are so many options on new lights today and the choices are overwhelming. In the end we wanted a large kit that was compact, durable, dynamic, daylight balanced, and easy for a small crew to set up. This kit did all of that.
I'm all kinds of excited for Photo Expo this week in New York. One of the biggest things I am looking forward to is Shoot NYC just down the street from the Convention. If you are planning on attending the convention this week, don't forget to register for the Hasselblad/Broncolor Shoot NYC. It's packed with free speakers and will be a great chance to get your hands on some of the worlds best gear. Plus it's totally free.
Last week I published an open letter to Adobe Lightroom written from the perspective of photographers that use the web gallery feature in Lightroom. It generated a decent amount of feedback both positive and negative. Many people told me that this couldn't be done and that Adobe would never offer something like this. Then I read a comment from a reader that was doing exactly what I wanted. Problem solved!
The Canon 5D MK III was a considerable upgrade for me and I have loved every minute of it. The 61 point focusing system and low light capabilities have made this our go-to system when shooting on-location. Today, BH Photo has announced a pretty decent sale that gives you $300 off the camera, 4% rewards, and a free 32 GB SDHC Extreme Card, Extra Camera Battery, Gadget Bag, and Mono-Pod. If you've been waiting for a good time to pick one up, this may be it.
I've been using a product called IndieMats for over a year now and I absolutely love them. My wife and I are big DIY'ers and decorated our daughter's room with them by creating a large collage of funny photos at a fraction of the cost of traditional frames. It's an awesome new way to display your photos with unique wall decor.
I've been using Adobe Lightroom rather intensely for several years now. Overall I've been quite happy with how the program streamlines my workload, organizes my photos, and how often it get's an update. Having said that, I am rather surprised that Adobe hasn't improved one area of Lightroom and it's wasting both me and my clients valuable time every week. The following letter is written on behalf of photographers everywhere that use Adobe web galleries. Please share this so Adobe listens and improves.
For the last 25 years, Michael Paul Smith has been building detailed scale models for an imaginary world he calls "Elgin Park." Michael builds eerily identical scaled models of cars 1/24th the size. He carefully picks out real world environments for these cars and builds whatever else is needed to sell the shot. He then uses backgrounds of real environments to make the shot as realistic as possible. Here's the kicker: he's doing all of this on a $200 point and shoot.
I'm a big fan of clever puns. I'm an even bigger fan of puns done in an original way, which is hard to do these days. The Instagram / Tumblr account "Talking Food" has blended the awesomeness of food photography and pop culture puns like "Go Shawty It's Sherbert Day" and my favorite "Batman and Reuben." If you have a few minutes to kill check out the page for over 100 puns that will put a smile on your face and food that will make you hungry. The most impressive part, the graphic design is all done on an iPhone.
Arguably the most important person on any production set is the producer. Charged with preparing for the worst and having a back up plan to a back up plan, a producer is responsible for making sure any shoot happens without any mishap, injury, or stoppage whatsoever. Blaine Deutsch is commercial advertising producer who handles days of pre-production, casting, big crews, planning, preparing, investing, paperwork, contracts, permits, and thousands of dollars on the line.
I recently came across this beautiful "IR" time-lapse of an empty Philadelphia city and was instantly mesmerized by the lack of moving things like people or cars. Upon further investigation on the technique, I was surprised on how easy this was to actually do myself in FCP X, which adds considerable value to your time-lapse videos. I followed the comments of this video to Ross Ching, a filmmaker that inspired the creating of this video. I've posted a link to the original website below.
Michael De Rubeis, AKA Michael J. Distasio Photography, never heard the timeless advice "under promise -over deliver." Or maybe he may have completely misinterpreted the saying and ran with it. Mr. De Rubeis made a living out of scamming couples on their wedding day, which is probably one of the worst things you could do to someone. The Passaic County, N.J.police department says there are at least 70 couples who paid the Walden photographer thousands of dollars for photos and albums they never received.
Before you shell out a ton of cash for a new MacBook consider a few DIY options that can drastically increase the performance of your machine. For me, there is nothing more frustrating than having a program take four minutes to open, having programs crash or the spinning beach ball of death. Computers, like most things, need occasional maintenance and tune ups. If you don't address this on a semi regular basis then you are wasting all those duckets you spent on your fancy Macbook Pro.
Dixie Dixon is a Dallas based badass and one of the sixteen "celebrated contemporary photographers" of the Nikon ambassador program. Dixie specializes in commercial fashion photography and is a prime example of how hard work, apprenticeship, and relentless dedication pays off in commercial photography. I recently chatted with her and stole all of her secrets of success for you, the reader. Because that's how much I love you, reader.
I don't even know where to begin with Erik Almas. His imagery simply stops you in your tracks and makes you wonder how something can be so perfectly imaginative. For photographers, or me at least, he makes we want to cry in the fetal position. Not because his stuff is so awesome that I get verklempt, but because it will take decades to come even close to where he was ten years ago.
Imagine one day you let a photographer, maybe even a friend, take some photos of you. Then imagine that a few years later your friends and colleagues alert you that you are the poster child of an HIV positive ad in a free AM New York Newspaper. This appears to be the situation for a Brooklyn woman now suing Getty Images for the infraction.
The short film "Pictures" made by Gioacchino Petronicce is a prime example of how patience is a main ingredient in creating captivating cinema from still photos. Gioacchino spent over three years traveling multiple continents to capture perfect moments, and the images that led up to that perfect moment using a DLSR. I absolutely loved the tempo he created in this film with the acceleration up to the actual moment he froze in time.
In my first rickety little studio I called a place to take portraits, I had nowhere but a corner to store my rolls of seamless paper. In my little budget corner I found a million ways to ruin whole rolls, or ruin parts of seamless paper on an hourly basis. The ends would get damaged, the rolls would become wavy, and I would typically end up cussing and throwing away seamless that should not have been destroyed. It was money being thrown away. I want to prevent this from ever happening to you.
Sam Hon takes fighting to an entirely new level with his campaign for Optical Panecea. Sam's creative vision in this campaign was to make each fighter fight themselves while drawing creativity from each fighters raw character to make each image unique.
Once upon a time at brunch in Santa Monica, I created the biggest, most complex cheeseburger anyone had ever even attempted to ask a chef to make. I basically picked my top 10 things off the menu and asked the chef to put it between ciabatta bread. Then I ate the entire thing. It gave me severe meat sweats and rendered me unconscious afterwards, but it was the most delicious thing I had ever created. It's my single greatest achievement in life. I learned a lot about myself that day and will tell the Epic Burger story to my great great great great grandkids.
