Color Paper: Free WP Theme

They are really on a roll over at Smashing Magazine.

Color Paper: A Free WordPress Theme | Freebies | Smashing Magazine: "Today, we are glad to release Color Paper: a free professional Wordpress theme, created by the DreamTemplate team. This theme aims to combine visual appeal with clean typography and vivid design elements. It was created especially for Smashing Magazine and its readers."

What a Shame

Without comment.

DRR.net

Is Photography Popular?

Hmmm... this is page one of 6 showing available magazines on photography.

My answer would be, well... yes.

Universal News On Demand.

They will deliver these to your home or office on a one off sort of thing I believe.

Create a value... money will follow

This is so apropos for photographers looking to break into the business. Read it all.

Home Based Business Ideas » The #1 Blog on How to Start a Business: "When you think about making money first, it corrupts your ability to make the most valuable product because you’ve already decided your course of action. You never stop the ask, “is this even the best way to help people?”"

Something to Think About: Should Photography be Easy?

LIGHTING ESSENTIALS : For Photographers - Something to Think About: Should Photography be Easy?: "Is photography easy?

Should it be?

We seem to expect it to be. I see the ads about how easy it is to “click” and get a picture. Kodak said it decades earlier: “Push the button and we do the rest.” Now Ashton Kucher, the uh, actor or whatever he is, tells us that it is even easier.

I see post after post on forums everywhere that seem to say “I don’t have time to learn this, just show me how to do it really well. I got a minute. I have to do an annual report next tuesday and my ass is on the line. How do I light a CEO?”

To record an image to a sensor is an extremely easy thing to do these days. Point and shoots do it amazingly well. And the new pro cameras are simply awesome. Throw in a flash and a modicum understanding of light and ‘voila’ - a photograph."

Briana in an Ad for Apricot Lane, City Center, Phoenix, AZ

Briana in an Ad for Apricot Lane, City Center, Phoenix, AZ
Originally uploaded by Wizwow

Just finished this half page ad for Apricot Lane. It will run for a year in hotel magazine. Full page and Quarter page ads have been produced as well, and now we are placing images.

Model is Briana : www.brianamodel.com
MUA is Lorri: www.lorrimitchell.com

Briana and I did an ad shoot for ACE 4 Volleyball in Prescott, AZ

Briana and I did an ad shoot for ACE 4 Volleyball in Prescott, AZ
Originally uploaded by Wizwow

The meme of the ad is conservation of paper by going with electronic VB stats. We faced some challenges as well. You can read about them at the Flickr page.

A Labor of Love

Great blog post (even the pics of the strange guy who came first... what was that?) If you shoot for yourself sometimes, you will get some interesting things that transcend the commercial.

Kountry Keith Photography: Labor of Love: "I rarely shoot these days without having to answer to somebody for the outcome of the shot if it is not up to expected standards. Even while shooting my friends and family I feel tremendous pressure to do a good job because I want to make them feel good about themselves. So I guess by going and shooting this weekend I was afforded the option to truly not care what the outcome of the shots were. Of course I always want to please myself with my work -- which can be hard to do, but that was the only person I had to worry about pleasing. I shot a number of production stills while Don was teaching and just kind of fell into my groove."

Gosh. I wonder what he thinks about photographers?

Recessions are the Best Times for Business | Men With Pens

YES YES YES... Keep this in mind. Read it all. Rejoice.

Recessions are the Best Times for Business | Men With Pens: "’m no economist, but I believe there has never been a better time to start your online business. The economy is down, job security is iffy, companies are downsizing and everyone is hoarding money in case the situation gets worse.

It’s great, really. This is the perfect time to launch a business and make your dreams a reality.

“James, are you insane? How much coffee have you had today? Times are tough – terrible even! No one is buying, there’s competition all over the place and everyone’s losing money by the minute.”
Well, that’s true. Times are tough. There is competition. Some people are losing money, yes. Guess what? It’s time to take action.

Online, the opportunities are ripe for both sellers and buyers, ready for picking.

"Kill him" allegation unfounded

Well it seems that lying and cheating and making things up is systemic. How can we trust anyone these days? Of course the press isn't just complicit in this kind of crap, it is the instigator.

Secret Service says "Kill him" allegation unfounded | Wilkes-Barre breaking news | timesleader.com - The Times Leader: "The Scranton Times-Tribune first reported the alleged incident on its Web site Tuesday and then again in its print edition Wednesday. The first story, written by reporter David Singleton, appeared with allegations that while congressional candidate Chris Hackett was addressing the crowd and mentioned Oabama’s name a man in the audience shouted “kill him.'

News organizations including ABC, The Associated Press, The Washington Monthly and MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann reported the claim, with most attributing the allegations to the Times-Tribune story.

Agent Bill Slavoski said he was in the audience, along with an undisclosed number of additional secret service agents and other law enforcement officers and not one heard the comment.

“I was baffled,” he said after reading the report in Wednesday’s Times-Tribune.

He said the agency conducted an investigation Wednesday, after seeing the story, and could not find one person to corroborate the allegation other than Singleton.

Slavoski said more than 20 non-security agents were interviewed Wednesday, from news media to ordinary citizens in attendance at the rally for the Republican vice presidential candidate held at the Riverfront Sports Complex. He said"

8 Strategies For Successful Relations With Clients | How-To | Smashing Magazine

This is another reason why I love Smashing Magazine so much. Read this and if you are a photographer as well, just change the language from designer to photographer. This is a thoughtful, well written article.

8 Strategies For Successful Relations With Clients | How-To | Smashing Magazine: "Zen philosophy teaches you to approach every task with a beginner’s mind. This is simple when you’re trying to teach yourself hyper-astro-meta-particle physics, but not as easy as you think when it comes to something you do all day, every day. Try hard to put yourself in the shoes of a beginner; you will be more apt to understand and sympathize with your client’s point of view. You will also find that by using less jargon (by assuming the language of a beginner) your client will understand and internalize your point much more quickly, which in turn helps to create an evangelist for your work in your client’s organization, which always makes your life easier.

But adopting a beginner’s mind isn’t as simple as dropping your haughty design-speak in favor of a fifth grade vocabulary. You need to approach each conversation or communication as a beginner does, with no expectations and no preconceived notions. Without the benefit of assumptions or preconceived notions, you will be forced to ask more questions and in turn draw more information out of the client; and just like that, your job will have gotten easier. Disclaimer: If all this Zen stuff is too new age for you, just remember the old adage: When you assume, you make an ass out of u"

Character: It's still important you know

This wonderful little read caught my attention because it is about the good things we do as creative people. So much focus on the negative makes us forget the incredible things we are doing right. Read the whole thing. Really read it.

Players of Character: "Why do I bring all this up? Because it occurs to me that more and more, ours is becoming a business obsessed with skill sets. 'Does he know Flash?' 'Is she versed in new media?' 'Can they build a site map?' No doubt, these are important questions to ask, but so are some others. Like, 'Will he treat my agency as if it's his agency?' 'Will she put the client's best interest above her own?' 'Will the rest of us be better for having spent 10 hours a day with them?' What I'm getting at is that in our quest to find the most qualified applicants, I'm worried that all too often we overlook the best person for the job -- the people like Noah and Ana"

Briana in Mexico: A New Portfolio

A set of images taken of Briana in Mexico. Enjoy.

Keith Taylor hangs out with the Lighting Essentials Workshop in Atlanta

IMG_1336_B&W
Originally uploaded by Keith Taylor Photography

Keith Taylor came down and hung out with us for a while at the Atlanta workshop. He mentioned that he would not bring his camera and I insisted he bring it. I am glad I did. See the whole set there.

I sure am glad that he did -- because it was the first time I had really shot for fun in a long time. Made me remember why I fell in love with photography to begin with. As if this was not enough -- I also managed to get some great shots and portraits during the two days of shooting. I don't remember the last time I got so many shots of different people that I was proud of in such a short period of time.

Keith Taylor, Photographer. Atlanta, GA. Taken during the Lighting Essentials Workshop

Keith Taylor, Photographer. Atlanta, GA. Taken during the Lighting Essentials Workshop
Originally uploaded by Wizwow

Keith Taylor is a great new friend in Atlanta. A talented photographer, witty buddy on the road and a good sport for letting me wrap him in vines for this portrait at the weekend's Atlanta Lighting Essentials Workshop. Keith graciously came down to the workshop and showed his beautiful books and presentation and ended up hanging with the students and shooting with them.

Seems both Keith and the students loved that.

Thanks, KT... hope to see you soon.

1,000 Recordings To Hear Before You Die

Tom Moon delivers the list. Pretty cool, so take a look... er, listen as soon as you can. (I would get started pretty darn soon too... these are albums not singles... ya know.)

Amazon.com: 1,000 Recordings To Hear Before You Die: "Seasoned critic Tom Moon guides adventurous listeners through a labyrinth of indispensable albums from throughout the entire history of recorded music. Lavished in clear, concise, evocative prose, Moon's reviews are as well written as his choices are endlessly debatable. What's more, the Mt. Olympus of music lists is available in three formats: hardcover, paperback, and Kindle edition."

Yeay Roel!

Roel attended my Detroit Workshop and we became friends and drove all over the Detroit area shooting and solving most of the world's problems. This is wonderful news and it couldn't go to a better or more talented shooter. Roel rocks it in the wedding world of Canada. Read the whole thing.

Great work Roel!

WPPI - Newsletter: "To hone in on what kind of shots he'll need, Roël has couples go through a visualization process, asking them to imagine themselves looking through their album 10 years after their wedding. 'I ask them to describe what they're seeing, and usually that question gives me about 80 to 90 percent of what I need,' he says. He also asks the couple to use three adjectives to describe their wedding, and then has each couple explain what each of the three adjectives means to them. Roël says his client base has gotten away from wanting the 'line 'em up and shoot 'em' style of photographs. 'Wedding photography, in my humble opinion, is being looked at as more of an art form,' he says. 'I think the bar has been raised quite dramatically.'"

Mexico... Yeah, it was this much fun.

And it was educational too.

Rocky Point photography "Teaser" from Jesse Hoekstra on Vimeo.

You can see the HiDef version here.

Thanks Jesse!

Seth's Blog: Look for the guy with a hammer

As a photographer, you should want to be the 'guy with the hammer.' Ya know? Being just a guy who can do something is fine, but a guy (or gal) who can do something extremely well... that's differentiation. Be good at what you do, but maybe look for something you do even better than most.

Seth's Blog: Look for the guy with a hammer: "The old adage is that for someone with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

It's a warning that people who are only good at one thing often believe that the one thing is the answer to every problem. And it's a good warning.

But what if you've decided that in fact, a hammer is exactly the tool that will solve your problem? My advice: hire a guy who only uses a hammer. Odds are, he's pretty good at it."

Detroit: Sunday's Workshop Day

In Detroit for the Workshop:

Yesterday was a blast for everyone. We had a huge studio to shoot in and the students rocked it with amazing creativity and energy.

It is cold here today, but the skies are clear and the light is very nice. It will be a great day.

David Seah'S New 2009 Compact Calendar

This is pretty cool. I recommend taking a look. They are handy as heck and really help with productivity.

David Seah - Design, Productivity, Inspiration, and Empowerment: "What Is It?

The Compact Calendar is my impromptu planning calendar, designed to be printed on paper from Excel. Print a bunch of these sheets out; it's great for bringing to a meeting and sketching out a schedule on-the-fly. I keep a supply on hand when I'm actively out in the field. Unlike other calendars, it represents the months as a solid 'bar of time', which makes it easier to visualize how much time you really have. Plus, it just looks neat.

You can read more about the use and design of the Compact Calendar on the Compact Calendar Page."

Glam Teams With GumGum To Serve Free, Legal Images

Well, GumGum finally gets with the system and develops a new way to deliver images to make both the advertiser and the content provider happy. This technology will be available for smaller websites soon where a single photographer can start to make money - albeit in small increments - off of serving images as content for third party sites.

I wonder how Flickr and those will handle that. Why would I post it there for viewing for free if I could license imagery with a few local websites and make money? And with the licensing deal delivering the money from advertisers instead of the small sites... it could be a substantial win-win for all.

Glam Teams With GumGum To Serve Free, Legal Images: "The deal comes two months after GumGum annouced a major shift in the technology used to power its platform. In the past, the site would issue photographs as Flash objects, which made them easy to track and monetize with ads. But Flash-based images are slow and clunky compared to a normal image file, which made the system unappealing to publishers.

In July GumGum dropped the Flash technology in favor of a system that uses standard image formats. Now, publishers are free to crop and modify their images (which they couldn’t do with the Flash version). GumGum uses a combination of photo metadata and image recognition to identify the licensed photos, and overlays ads accordingly. If a publisher doesn’t want ads to appear on their images, they can pay a modest fee tied to the number of times an image is viewed, rather than the one-time bulk fee typically associated with image licensing."

William Eggleston

The Year in Pictures has a great little post on William Eggleston and the new show. I have always been fascinated by Eggleston's pictures. They seem so simple, and yet they draw you in and keep you engaged. I love that about a still photograph. Take a moment and read the whole thing.

The Year in Pictures: William Eggleston: "The photographs coming up for sale present a wide cross section of Eggleston’s work – some of his best pieces and some less so. The sale lacks his most famous single work, the seminal “Red Ceiling”, but it has images from most of Eggleston’s important series and includes a full set of the Los Alamos portfolios – 75 dye transfer prints taken from 1965 to 1974 encompassing all of the artists major concerns and themes. (The set is estimated at a lowball figure of $350,000 - $550,000 but is probably worth more in the $1 million range.)

Eggleston’s story is equally colorful (no pun intended). Born in Memphis, Tennessee, and raised in Sumner, Mississippi, Eggleston was an introverted and artistic child who took up photography when a friend gave him a Leica camera. Originally influenced by the work of Cartier-Bresson and Robert Frank, Eggleston began experimenting with color as early as 1965 and seems to have developed his trademark aesthetic pretty much on his own. A renowned boozer, womanizer, and charmer, his earliest patrons were MoMA’s John Szarkowski and the Corcoran’s Walter Hopps and their patronage led to a teaching job at Harvard in the mid 70s."

LIGHTING ESSENTIALS : For Photographers - Deconstruction: Briana on the Pier (Spotlight Effect)

LIGHTING ESSENTIALS : For Photographers - Deconstruction: Briana on the Pier (Spotlight Effect): "Portable Lighting - Written by wizwow on Monday, September 29, 2008 6:49 - 2 Comments
Deconstruction: Briana on the Pier (Spotlight Effect)
Tags: fashion, Model. Location, portable lighting

Let’s take a single image today and deconstruct it out to see exactly how it was created. The shot is of Briana in Mexico while we were doing the September workshop in Puerto Penasco, Mexico. Also known as Rocky Pointe, the little town had become a favorite shoot spot for us so we always return for an afternoon of image making and fun!

Evan was working with Briana in an area very close to this set so when he finished I asked to jump in real quick to take a shot. I already knew exactly what I wanted to do so it was easy and quick to set up."

File this under "Gotta Get Me One Of These."

Seriously too cool.

Only shoots JPG's, but the damn cool factor is off the charts for me.

Rolleiflex MiniDigi AF5.0: "Rolleiflex MiniDigi AF5.0
Proudly continues the Rollei Twin Lens Reflex Tradition.
If somewhere deep down you have always hankered after a Rollei, you are not alone. First developed in Germany in the 1920's, the Rollei 6x6cm Twin Lens Reflex Camera has always been a preferred tool for serious photography, especially portraits. There cannot be, for example, a single Hollywood celebrity who has not been photographed with a Rollei. Now, many of the outstanding convenience features and nostalgic design can be yours in a fashionable up-to-date digital with auto focus feature to shoot between 4 inches (10cm) to infinity on 5 mega pixel image. The Rolleiflex MiniDigi AF5.0, a world's first in its class.
MiniDigi AF5.0screen MiniDigi AF5.0screen MiniDigi AF5.0screen"

robertwrightphoto.com » Blog Archive » The credit bubble and emerging photographers

This is a must read article from Robert Wright. For me the money quote is here... but you gotta read it all.

robertwrightphoto.com » Blog Archive » The credit bubble and emerging photographers: "You can think of the term “emerging” as a kind of leverage itself. It is a term that is euphemistic at best. I think the term was a way to sell new photographers into the market at a faster pace than the market was actually responding, but you didn’t notice this in the frenzy. And by frenzy I am speaking of the explosion of blogs, contests for emerging photographers, and also the “leverage” (read onslaught) experienced this last year at openings and festivals. Wall to wall. Way beyond the actual growth of the industry. Everyone has always wanted to be a photographer, as a cliche, but this was different."

Well stated.

Ajo: a desert town on the edge of rebirth

I took a drive down to Ajo on Monday. There is a client there that I am working with and we are beginning a new phase of work, so I thought it a good thing to drive down and have a face to face with them. It is a good 2 hour drive through the desert and I like to drive, so it was a chance to be alone with my thoughts for a while.

The light was really brutal with a deep haze covering the horizon and the south sky going totally white with only a hint of blue by the time you would get to overhead. The road was nearly deserted on some spots, and for 25 miles on I10 I didn't pass or get passed by another vehicle. Seemed almost surreal.

Ajo is a slowly recovering mining town in southern Arizona. Perched at a point where people from SoCal and Phoenix have to pass through on their way to Rocky Point, Mexico, the town is perfectly positioned to take advantage of over a million cars a year. Those cars have people in them.

People need and want things.

Sad thing is that the people of Ajo are not quicker to understand what they have, or that it will take time to develop the places and reasons for travelers to actually pull the car over. So as I drive in I find some new development that unfortunately lacks any connection to the land and the heritage there, but it is clean. Comforting to the traveler I guess.

I saw opportunity after opportunity. Paint the building. Add a nice sign. Put some flowers out front. Take the garbage away from the side of the building and have the kids paint a mural on it.
Catch the visitor's eye. A million cars a day. It just wouldn't be that hard. And with the growth in Rocky Point, that will increase dramatically in the next few years.

I met with my clients and they were so excited about the new work that they are doing there. some folks are really working hard to rebuild and rebrand. Clean it up and attract attention. Make a little noise.

My work with them may help that along. That would be an additional source of pride for me along with the successful site we are building.

Maybe then when I and millions of others drive into Ajo, they would want to stay a while and enjoy this great little town. That's the goal and these folks are totally committed to making that happen.