I love shopping at B&H Photo and Video. In person, by phone or online. I always get super service by salespeople who know what’s what. But this is not a plug for B&H. This is a recommendation for a great resource for researching equipment online: B&H’s site and product reviews by shoppers.
Here are some of the advantages of doing research online at B&H:
• Clean interface. The whole site is easy to navigate and search. Links from one product to another are intelligent and help with making comparisons.
Continue reading “The B&H Research Advantage”
Tags: B&H, Camera Research, Camera Reviews, dpreview.com, Photography Product Reviews, Research
With her stunningly beautiful and truly inspiring Window Seat: The Art of Digital Photography & Creative Thinking (O’Reilly Media, 2006), Julieanne Kost has created one of the very best books on the topic of the creative process of digital photography. It is safe to say that utterly unique and provocative book Kost, who is Adobe’s Senior Digital Imaging Evangelist, will motivate and help focus your digital image making efforts regardless of your skill level or photographic specialty.
Window Seat is structured around a portfolio of more than 150 images that Kost photographed out of commercial airplane windows while traveling for business over a five-year period. In her book, Kost couples her digitally-made images with a description of her creative process. The premise is simple. But there is power in simplicity when a project is executed with the elegance found in Window Seat.
In producing Window Seat, Kost risked creating a book that could have easily been labeled trite. But taking risks is one of the most important Continue reading “An Utterly Inspiring View for Improving Digital Creativity”
Tags: Books, Creative Thinking, Digital Photography, Julieanne Kost, Window Seat: The Art of Digital Photography & Creative Thinking
While researching “Beyond Chimping,” an article for AfterCapture about how to avoid some of the pitfalls inherent in making the transition to digital, I had a great chat with Stewart Cohen, a highly successful commercial photographer based in Dallas, Texas. Cohen told me that he personally edits every single image he shoots, frame by frame, slowly and meticulously—even though he has a large, capable staff he could call on for help. And he wouldn’t have it any other way.
Cohen is a great artist and a savvy businessman who’s always willing to share his wealth of knowledge. “Beyond Chimping” included a number of Continue reading “Edit Like a Hawk—On Steroids”
Tags: Editing, Editing Strategies, Stewart Cohen, “Beyond Chimping"
Actually, it would be more appropriate to call it a lack of metadata crisis, and it is—without any hyperbole—a deadly serious problem that is taking place in every corner of the professional photography landscape. It’s an unnerving nightmare that affects you and every other photographer. Unfortunately, few photographers seem to know about it. Luckily, there are very easy steps you can take to avoid being a metadata-less victim.
Obviously metadata is an extremely broad term, with all kinds of metadata for all types of uses. What I am referring to here is the most basic metadata that all photographers must add to their files: your name, your contact information and the copyright status of your image. (Ranking, keyword and processing instruction metadata are all cool, but not adding them results in workflow inefficiencies, not an industry-wide crisis.)
Continue reading “The Big, Scary Metadata Crisis (And How To Address It)”
Tags: Copyright, Metadata, Metadata Template, Orphan Works, “Basic Metadata: Don’t Process Without It”
In my last post I offered resources for thinking about maintaining a blog in a fresh, innovative way to help you get the most out of this unprecedentedly powerful media for marketing your services. Now, let’s turn to some practical strategies that I gleaned from interviews with more than a dozen photographer power bloggers.
Personal, Creative Freedom with Clear Business Goals in Mind
What distinguishes the photographers I interviewed from the average, aint-this-fun! bloggers is that they are all very aware of the business value of their blogging efforts. In short, they know they are blogging for potential clients as well family, friends and fans. Yet every one of them insisted that this focused marketing did not require a major effort. They all said if you are not having fun, there’s something wrong with your blogging.
This is the secret of power blogging for photographers: Finding a way to enjoy yourself in a relaxed, unfettered way — a break from regular chores and obligations! — but with an eye on Continue reading “Practical Strategies for Power Blogging”
Tags: Blogger.com, Blogging Strategies, Self Promotion, WordPress
How’s your blogging going these days? Are you having fun? Are you finding new ways to express your photographic creativity? And most important from a business standpoint, are you impressing potential clients and landing more jobs? If not, read on for a little help with Power Blogging 101.
“I blog, therefore I am,” Suzanne Salvo told me when I interviewed her for “Enter the Blogoshere,” an AfterCapture article that highlighted the blog-o-thinking of three photographers who jumped on the blog bandwagon with particularly adept insight into the marketing potential of blogs.
Continue reading “Power Blogging: A Professional Photographers Best Friend”
Tags: Blogging, Blogging Strategies, Chase Jarvis, Chris Salvo, Joseph Pobereskin, Self Promotion, Suzanne Salvo, Wayne Wallace, “Enter the Blogoshere”
Here are the four critical things you need know about the DNG, the Adobe-developed, open-source Digital Negative:
1. The DNG is the coolest RAW electronic imaging file format on Earth.
2. The DNG is absolutely the best archival format for all your RAW files.
3. The DNG offers amazingly innovative workflow benefits.
4. You should embrace the Digital Negative by converting all of your RAW captures to DNGs as part of your normal workflow.
Like many elegantly simple and powerful inventions, the DNG is sadly misunderstood. And because the majority of photographers are not yet using the DNG and not yet
Continue reading “The DNG is Way Cooler Than Cool. So Use It!”
Tags: Digital Negative, DNG, DNG Converter, Peter Krogh, RAW, The DAM Book
We all know that excellent color management practices are the foundation of survival, success and satisfaction in the world of digital photography postproduction. Yet, anecdotal evidence strongly suggests that many photographers still do not even systematically calibrate their monitors—let alone juggle different color spaces, make CMYK conversions and maintain mastery over a lot of other critical color practices.
If you’re struggling with any aspect of color management, you probably have two pressing questions. Am I a color management moron? No! Is there Continue reading “Tapp Into Excellent, Enjoyable Color Management”
Tags: CMYK Conversion, Color Management, Color Space, Eddie Tapp, Monitor Calibration, Practical Color Management: Eddie Tapp on Digital Photography
We’ve all accepted that working with the digital photography medium is a process of constant learning. Still, wouldn’t it be nice if there were one place we could go to find all the answers to all our digital imaging questions? Well there is. It’s a wonderful place called UPDIG.
The Universal Photographic Digital Imaging Guidelines (UPDIG) are a set of very concise and well informed guidelines related to the full scope of digital imaging practices. Just a few of the topics covered include color management, monitor calibration, file formats, naming conventions, resolution, sharpening, file delivery and workflow. And there’s much, much more.
Continue reading “Dig This! UPDIG Offers THE Answers”
Tags: ASMP, DAM, Online Learning Resources, Richard Anderson, UPDIG, Workflow
As far as I can tell, the only clear thing separating so-called digital photography experts and the rest of us photographers is the word “expert.” I’ve met helpful photographers with a mind-blowing amount of experience and knowledge who refuse to call themselves experts. On the other hand, I’ve bumped into a few self-proclaimed experts who could use a lesson or two on some basic aspects of the craft.
While I’m the host of ACMetaforum, I definitely do not consider myself a digital photography expert. At the same time, I have been lucky enough to learn quite a bit of information about a few areas of electronic imaging from some photographers who definitely deserve to be called experts. And all of these experts have digital knowledge blind spots.
This brings us to the interesting reality that digital photography—with its myriad, constantly evolving tools—has totally changed Continue reading “What IS a Digital Photography Expert?”
Tags: Ansel Adams, David Riecks, John Nack, Mikkel Aaland, Peter Krogh, Richard Anderson, The Negative, The Print, Victoria Bjorklund
