I’m heading back to Windsor this weekend for the Windsor International Photographic Seminar Web Site. Last year I was one of the guest speakers along with Tony Sweet and James Sidney. This year I’ve been invited back, but this time as a guest of the Windsor Photo Guild. The speakers this year are Charles Needle, Daryl Benson, Freeman Patterson, Don Martel and Tyler Brownbridge.
Windsor International Photo Seminar
November 13th, 2008Questions and Comments
November 2nd, 2008The last few blog entries have generated quite a few email questions and comments from readers. I’m not sure why there are so many, I’ve always received questions but lately there seems to be considerably more. I think that it may have something to do with the popularity of digital cameras. It seems as though almost everyone now has one and for a lot of these people, photography has become a passion, and that passion has driven them to learn as much about photography as possible.
The most common and probably the one question that I have been asked the most over the years is about stock photography. What is it? Do you make enough to earn a living? Can I make money doing it? And how can I join a stock agency? Which stock agency should I join? What about Rights Managed, Royalty Free and Microstock?
There has also been questions about equipment. Why did I switch from Nikon to Canon a couple of years ago? Would I have made the switch today or stayed with Nikon? What photo gear do I have now? There are questions about travelling and photographing internationally and here at home camping in our 5th wheel RV.
There have been questions and comments on other subjects too. Over the coming weeks I hope to be able to post answers to all of these questions.
CS4 and Capture One Pro Upgrades
October 21st, 2008Last week there were upgrades to two of the photo editing software programs that I use. And I was just starting to master all of the features in the old programs, now I’ll have to go through the learning curve with the new ones.
The first program is Adobe Photoshop CS4. This is by far and away the program that I spend most of my time using. Adobe upgrades this program around every 18 months, this is now the 11th version of it. When I started using Photoshop in 1997 it was at version 4. I’ve upgraded with every new version that came along, so I’ve spent somewhere close to $2500. in total for this program. That might seem like a lot of money for a computer program, but that’s cheap if I was to calculate the total overall hourly usage that I’ve gotten from it, not to mention the income from the images that I’ve created by using it. This version has a couple of new updates that I find very interesting, although there are many other features as well. The Adjustment Brushes, this let you adjust exposure, brightness, contrast, clarity, saturation, sharpness and colour all in Camera Raw. Content sensitive scaling, this allows you scale an image without distorting the key image areas. Depth of field tool, lets you combine multiple shots of the same image but in varying focus depths, the software takes all of these shots and attempts to make everything in focus.
The second program is Capture One 4 Pro, which hasn’t had a major upgrade in 4-5 years. This upgrade is really a major upgrade, and once again it has become one of the leading Raw Workflow software programs. I had been using Capture One Pro v3.7.7 for my Raw file conversions until about a year ago, when I switched to Adobe Camera Raw in Photoshop CS3. With this upgrade I’ll be switching back to using Capture One for most of file processing, and will use Camera Raw in Photoshop CS4 for certain images that would benefit from using the Adjustment Brushes. A bonus that you get with Capture One Pro is that you get 2 free major upgrades from the current version that you purchase.
The other Photo Editing Programs that I use are:
- Photo Mechanic
- IView Media Pro – Microsoft Expression Media
- Noise Ninja
- PixelGenius PhotoKit Sharpener
- Pixel Genius PhotoKit Color 2.0
- Nik Color Efex Pro
- Photomatix Pro 3.0
A question that I am quite often asked is whether you should upgrade with the newest versions of software. Personally, I normally do, but keep in mind that this is what I do for a living also it’s a tax write off. If photography is only a hobby for you or produces a small amount of income, I might suggest that you hold off on every upgrade and get every second or third upgrade. That is unless money isn’t a determining factor for you.
Summer’s Over
October 13th, 2008My sincere apologies to those readers who haven’t found anything posted here for the last 3 months! It’s not that I’ve been off to some remote world destination for an extended stay, in fact quite the opposite. After returning from France in June we had decided to stay in Ottawa for the summer, something that we had not done for the last 13 years. We had some house renovations and upkeep maintenance to do, I had a large backlog of images to edit and post-processing and finally I also thought this would give me the opportunity to get out and shoot around the Ottawa area during the summer.
Well now that summer is over, what did I accomplish? All of our home projects are finished, that was big and expensive. It ended up that I hardly did in photography in Ottawa, the weather here was horrible. So with the cameras sitting on the shelves most of the summer we decided that we just had to get away. We had a couple options, either taking the 5th wheel RV out on a road trip or flying away somewhere. A decision that I’m sure anybody would love the opportunity to have to make. We ended up choosing on returning to Europe and on this trip to explore Southern Germany – Bavaria, Romantic Road and the Rhine and Mosel Valleys. We left in mid Sept and returned back home last week. It was another great trip, and now I have lots of material to process from this trip. This only adds to the mountain of other work that I still have to edit and process. I’ve come to the realization that I will always have a backlog of images, but I no longer feel guilty about it. The reason that I got into photography many years ago, was that special feeling you get when you look through the viewfinder and everything just comes together and you know you’ve got the image as you release the shutter. For me that’s what photography is all about!
On the subject of editing and processing of images, this is probably what I spent the majority of my time working on this summer. I finished all the images from our 2 trips to New York City last year (spring and Christmas) as well as the images from a fall trip to Las Vegas. I’ve now started on the photos from Paris and France, but I still have all of the images from last summer’s road trip to Colorado and Utah as well as several thousand images from the road trip the summer before (2006) to New England.
I now have over 6000 images on Masterfile’s web site, I’m ranked as the third highest artist with the most number of images out of more than 300 contributing photographers.
Exploring France
June 26th, 2008A few years ago I spent a week photographing all the major sites in Paris and until my recent trip, that had been the extent of my travels in France. On this recent trip we also spent a week in Paris, but then we rented a car and started exploring. Valerie had spent months researching, the 3 areas that we had decided to explore were Normandy, Brittany and the Loire Valley. Travel in Europe is completely different than in North America, or for that matter most of the world. In Europe you don’t have to travel far before you’re in the next town/city/country or dramatically different looking scenery. Which for serious photography means that you have to slow down and see what’s there and not race through it like you were on bus tour.
Despite our slowed down pace there were many towns and areas that we didn’t get to see, even though it was a small region of France that we were exploring. But what we did see and experience was marvelous, not to mention the food and the wine!
It will be a while before I start processing the files from this trip, currently I’m working on the images from New York City at Christmas. As well I’m working on the not so exciting job of replacing the fence in the backyard.
Two Months Later
March 3rd, 2008I haven’t posted anything here for the last two months. If you’re a frequent visitor to the site you may have thought, what have I been up to? I’ve been spending most of my time processing RAW images and also digital post-processing with Photoshop. I finally installed Photoshop CS3, I had been procrastinating installing it as I really didn’t want to take the time to learn how to use all of the new features. For me it’s about creating images, not on how I did it or with which equipment and software was used. While the equipment and software is important, lately I find that there is an infatuation with the technology of photography rather than the art of photography. Technology and art go hand in hand in creating a photograph, but face it all the technology can’t change a boring and bad photo, in the end that’s all it will be.
This winter we’ve almost broke the yearly record for the most amount of snow, so I’ve spent many hours shovelling, well actually I have a snow blower but it still takes a long time. Val has been planning our next trip, France in May and June, which will be here before I know it.
I’ve received many e-mail requests about stock photography and which agencies to submit to and where to find them. Well, Rob Haggart the former Director of Photography for Men’s Journal and Outside magazine, has created a very interesting list of stock agencies. This is from a photo buyers point of view, so far there are 90 comments, many adding additional agencies to the list. Here’s the link http://aphotoeditor.com/2008/02/27/stock-photo-agencies/
Back Home and Back to Work
December 27th, 2007
On the flight back home to Ottawa from NYC (it’s a short flight, less than an hour). I was thinking about all of the photos that I had just taken on this trip and also about all of the work that I had waiting for me back at home. I have never considered taking pictures as work, although it is and I do work at it very hard. And it is how I make my living. But still it’s not like work, taking pictures is what I love doing. I suppose that if you are interested in photography, I’m probably preaching to the choir right now.
What I do consider as work is sitting in front of the computer processing all of these images, I also used to consider processing the film in E-6 chemistry as work as well. The difference is that E-6 was much faster and I could get through huge shoots in very little time. All of the photographers that I know, who are shooting on a regular basis now have a backlog of digital images to process. I’ve heard some people say that because it’s digital you’ll shoot more, there isn’t the film and processing costs to consider so with digital as long as you have free hard drive space shoot away. That may be the case for some photographers, but I think they would be in the minority. I’m not shooting any more now than I did when I was shooting with film, in fact I probably shoot less. Now I can now tell right away when I’ve got the shot, so I don’t waste time shooting repetitive images.
My problem is that I’m on the road shooting for 4 months straight in the summer and then another 2 months of travelling spread throughout the remainder of the year. Then when we do get back home, Val and I spend our time planning for new trips and trying to catch up on the editing and digital processing. Time management is the answer, I just have to figure out how to adjust my time for digital work compared to what I’ve been doing for the past 25 years shooting film.
Christmas in NYC
December 25th, 2007It wasn’t a white Christmas in New York City this year, in fact on average there’s only a 14% chance that it will be. But even without snow we had a great time. One of the events that we attended was the Radio City Christmas Spectacular. It’s probably the only show in NYC that you’re allowed to photograph.
Rockefeller Center Rink and Christmas Tree. On Christmas Eve this place was packed with as many people as there are in Times Square on New Year’s Eve.
Christmas Concert
December 13th, 2007
One of the best performances that I’ve attended this year, if not ever, was the Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s Christmas concert. Their music is a blend of rock and classical and their light show is just incredible. For a photographer and I suppose everyone in the audience it was visually spectacular and a sensory overload. The lighting design is very unique. There’s lighting all over and around the stage including banks of lights that are suspended on independently moving tresses above the stage, lasers, fog and snow machines, with fire and fireworks at the end of the show. What is even an added bonus for their show, is that you’re allowed to take photos (not with pro cameras – but P&S is OK). I wasn’t aware that photos are allowed before going to the show, but fortunately Val had her camera with her, so I snapped a few shots. This is in such sharp contrast to most concerts, where NO PHOTOS are allowed. The worst had to be the Celine Dion “A New Day” show that I saw this past October in Las Vegas , where everyone had to go through metal detectors. Every camera, video and cell phone etc had to be handed over to security and was returned at the end of the show.
New Computer
December 9th, 2007This week I received a new desktop computer, although “desktop” isn’t exactly the word I would give to describe it. It’s physical size is actually 23″x23″x9″ and weighs about 35lbs, it’s HUGE! I normally replace my computers about every 3 years, and monitors every 5 years.
This one is a Dell XPS 720 with a Intel Dual Core Processor (3.0 GHz, 4GB SDRAM, 2 Hard Drives 250GB and 160GB, 256MB Video Card running on Windows XP). I’ve used Dell XPS computers for the past 10 years, and would highly recommend them to anyone. Over the years I have had a few problems with the computers (components) and Dell has always resolved these problems quickly. This fall I purchased a Vostro 1500 laptop from them and I’ve also purchased my LaCie 500GB External Hard Drives from them (they have them on sale quite often).
The downside to getting a new computer is setting it up. Not the physical setting up of it but rather loading and installing all the software, entering serial numbers, setting preferences, transferring of files and this is usually the time when I try to reorganize all of those files. Every time I get a new computer, I can count on it taking me about 3 days to get everything set up and running just right. I don’t know if it’s just me or does everyone takes that long?
Now I can get back to work, processing my backlog of images.