After a somewhat wet and windy week, I finally escaped for an evening to visit another nearby landmark Perch Rock New Brighton, on the River Mersey and Wirral peninsular, by now you will be thinking I’m obsessed with lighthouses, and errm well you are quite right, I am. There is something about a lighthouse that is just like a magnet to me, I can’t resist photographing them at every given opportunity. I like everything a lighthouse stands for, the guiding light, the solid structure that will withstand all weather conditions; they all have stories to tell, and seem symbolic monuments of the bravery of countless lifeboat crews that risked and indeed sometimes lost their very lives to the sea. It was a Monday and I was in luck as there weren’t many people about at all. There was a great deal of broken cloud, but I thought to myself “hmmmm that might look good later on as the sun drops” After a walk up and down the beach I took a few shots of the sea defence groynes, but nothing I could do in the current light made them look like anything other than what they were i.e. Ugly brown things! Moving swiftly on to the light house I discovered a rock pool and set up my tripod. Whilst I made adjustments to my gear I became aware of the presence of a couple of young lads, who seemed pre-occupied with looking in rock pools nearby. Hoping they would depart quickly I thought I might be able to help find what they were looking for. I said “Alright lads, looking for anything in particular” they looked at each other then both answered in unison “Crabs” I replied “ooh right ok …well you might find some down there by those groynes, I noticed a lot of rock pools there” Not to be deterred, they then went on to explain that they were interested in starting a marine life project at home with an aquarium and all the filters pumps and paraphernalia that goes with them. As it turned out they were a couple of pleasant lads. Before departing I took a few shots of them and one asked “Will we be famous now”? and I replied ….”It’s very likely ……Standing there with that big pink bucket and your hands on your hips, you should attract some attention” They laughed and moved away at last leaving me to my clouds, rapidly incoming tide and last light of day. The pool in front of the lighthouse was filling with water fast, and I managed to finish the long exposure just in time to avoid wet feet.

Image Name: Incoming

I retreated to the relative safety of the rocks and took a few more shots, the light and cloud was changing by the second, and about 5 minutes after taking this shot, all the rocks were completely submerged.

Image Name: Mersey Tide

Saturday Night and I’m out enjoying myself again, no not partying, or drinking huge quantities of alcohol, not dancing the night away nor chatting to beautiful women. None of those things, I’m out perched on the side of a hill with the wind howling and whistling past my ears, peering into the viewfinder of my camera, and although conditions are not ideal, I wouldn’t swap places with anyone!

The first building placed at Dinas Brân was not the castle which now stands in ruins on top of the hill but an Iron Age Hillfort built around 600 BC, Though the castle, as it is visible today, was probably built around the 1260’s.

As I walked up the steep gradient to the top, I wasn’t difficult to imagine just hard it would have been to attack a place like this. It was hard enough just to walk to the top, but trying to do so with boulders and stones being thrown at you as well as spears and arrows and anything else that would deter would be attackers, was quite a sobering thought.

For some strange reason known only to them, people that visit this site often take the stones from the walls and arrange them on the hillside to form their own names. As I wandered about the site I come to another name arranged in stones on the hillside “Ceri” then later out of curiosity I looked up the name, which originates from a welsh village not far away in Powys, Mid Wales. I don’t know If it was by coincidence or by design, but there were definite connections between the name that had been arranged in stone a few days ago, and the ancient Castle. Ahh well “truth is stranger than fiction” as they say.

I used some of the stones to give a sense of depth and foreground interest to this HDR image

Image Name: Castle Dinas Bran

Should you have any questions regarding this or previous postings, or require any further information regarding the above images, please feel free to contact me through my website www.alfbaileyphotography.co.uk

Related posts:

1. Diary of a Landscape Photographer | Part 1
2. Diary of a Landscape Photographer | Part 2
3. Diary of a Landscape photographer | Part 3

Why use FotoFusion?
The most important benefit of switching to FotoFusion for your album design is the time you’ll save using the simple, intuitive, and powerful functions which we’ll get more into later in the article.

The second reason is that the software will help you create a better overall product by freeing you from the constraints of difficult and time consuming processes. For example, if you want to see how the images in a spread would look with a black border, add it with a few clicks; and if it doesn’t look good, remove and resize them with the same ease. Being able to quickly and easily visualize your design concept allows you to arrange your spreads until you’re completely happy with the results. Contrast this freedom with the constraints placed on the process when making simple changes is made difficult or time consuming. The overall product suffers.

The third reason is that the software applies to more than just album design, and it can help you create nice collages for print or for display on your websites and blogs.

Before we get into the details of the review, here’s the basic information:
Website: http://www.LumaPix.com/extreme/ext_overview.shtml
Cost: $299
Video Introduction:

Auto-Collage
A rough draft of an entire multi-page album can be created (or at least initialized) in a few clicks with the ‘Auto-Collage Wizard.’ The Wizard takes your selected images and automatically populates spreads based on your selected options. These options include the number of pages and images per page, creative enhancements on all of the images like the borders, shadows, etc, and sorting options for your images like date, filename, and other metadata. This is a great starting point, from which you can make the necessary adjustments and finishing touches for each spread.

Besides the Auto-Collage Wizard, there’s also the regular ‘Auto-Collage’ function. If you’re unhappy with how a spread is laid out, you can click ‘auto-collage’ and the images are rearranged. After a few clicks and a few quick adjustments, your spread can look exactly the way you want it. Skeptical about how ‘quick’ the ‘quick adjustments’ are? Let’s take a look at more of these features.
Arranging your images
One of the most frustrating things about album design using other software is arranging the images. Cutting windows in a mask, zooming in to inspect the alignment of each image, and calculating the exact height and width of each window make the initial design, and moreover, the revisions, time consuming with programs like Photoshop.
With LumaPix, you change the size of the image by dragging a side or corner. As you drag and resize, the sides of the images snap to both the edges of the canvas and the edges of the other images, helping you avoid misalignment and saving you hours of zooming to inspect each edge. Also, to align the images, center images, or distribute images evenly, highlight the selected images and click your desired option. These are just a few of the many features that LumaPix has implemented to save you time.
Other Options
In a few clicks, you can add borders, add drop shadows, change your images to black and white, change the opacity of an images, change and angle of an image, and more. There really are too many features to describe without writing what would seem like an operating manual. You’ll likely continue to learn new features every time you use the software.
Output Options
In your output, you have full control over your DPI, file size, sharpening and image quality. You also have various file type options like JPEGs, PNGs, PDFs and more. You can even output as Photoshop (PSD) files, allowing you to edit the pages as layers outside of the software. The destination of the files is also in your hands, as you can output the file to your desktop, to your email, or directly to your server. These robust output options give you complete control over your finished product.

More Than Just and Album Designer
The software is not limited to album design. It’s useful in any situation where you’re creating a collage of images, from printed canvases to web collages. Here are a couple of collages that we used for our wedding photography blog.

Tutorials and Customer Support
LumaPix is available by email or phone with a friendly and helpful customer service team. They also have plenty of online resources and helpful tutorials on their website for free.

This wouldn’t be a fair review if we didn’t mention the few things that we didn’t like about the software; and as great as FotoFusion is, the software is not without a couple of cons.
Not Compatible with Macs
FotoFusion Extreme is not compatible with Macs (as of the time this article was written). However, a LumaPix representative reassured me that it’s in the works.
Overly Strict License Policies
Officially, the purchase of FotoFusion Extreme allows you to run the software on one laptop and one desktop. This might be frustrating if you have a team of album designers or multiple photographers in your studio, as you may have to purchase a few licenses. However, a LumaPix representative assured me that LumaPix does not prevent the software from running on two machines at the same time. They simply track the number of machines that a license has been activated on and will only take action if they feel the license is being abused. This has only happened a few times in their history; so this likely won’t be an issue.

Deciding what to use for album design is a tough decision. There are time consuming options like Adobe’s Photoshop or Indesign. There are expensive services that charge anywhere from $10-$20 dollars a spread with pricing structures that discourage revisions and customization. There are free design services with album companies that force the photographer to leave their finished product in the hands of someone with no knowledge of the wedding day. Then there’s FotoFusion, a solution that can help your studio increase the speed of album design as well as the quality of the albums. As always, we would love to hear your thoughts below in the comments.

Related posts:

1. Pictage Slideshow Example and Review
2. Showit Web (Showit Fast) Review and Tutorial
3. Black Rapid RS-4 and RS-W1 Camera Strap Review

Longleat is a fascinating experience, the combination of the old mansion house and the safari Park is well worth a visit. My wife being a great animal lover, always wanted to go there, and as a birthday treat I organised the visit. As luck would have it, the farmhouse that I randomly chose from a photo on the internet just happened to be about as close to the park as you could get. Clean and tidy with good food and two friendly cats, well what more could we want!

The safari trip was excellent, it was a great atmosphere and looking at rhino’s giraffes and even hippo’s in a very natural looking environment was very pleasing to the eye.

I don’t like the idea of animals in captivity but when I consider the kinds of dangers that exist in their natural habitats, (mostly from mankind invading their space) then I suppose this is going to be the only way some species will survive in the future.

Now for the Gorilla story.

Nico, the Western Lowland Silverback Gorilla is aged 50 years in Human terms, in Gorilla terms this equates to 100 years old. (The oldest on record in captivity lived to be 57 human years old) Nico lives in his own house on a small island on the Longleat estate and enjoys watching TV (The keepers informed us that he has just been upgraded to SKY HD and yes, indeed when we seen his house, we could see the satellite dish outside) Apparently they have to curtail his viewing time, as they don’t want him turning into a couch potato.

The tour guide explained “The only chance you get to see Nico is to take a trip on the boat, this way you might just get a glimpse of him” Now my wife, having watched BBC TV series about Longleat, knew all about this, and the fact that sadly Nico’s life long partner had sadly died some years previously. So she was really looking forward to getting a look at Nico close up. I said to her “You haven’t got much chance off seeing him, he’s probably in bed sleeping off a Banana liqueur session, or watching The Muppet Show or Planet Of The Apes on TV” but she wasn’t deterred and we duly queued up for the boat trip.

On board the boat at last, we passed the Hippo’s (that looked for all the world like small grey islands with eyes), and slowly approached Nico’s island, the pilot cut the engines and we drifted silently towards the island “Shhhh be quiet” said the tour guide, “he’s just behind that bush , you can just see him” everyone peered at the bush, and suddenly it exploded as Nico come charging out, now I have to say, for a creature that is supposed to be 100 years old in real terms, it sure could move fast! The speed and power of this magnificent animal was just magical to witness. After hastily snapping a few blurry shots with my camera, I managed to get one as he sat down and just stared at me with such soulful eyes ………well suffice to say it was a moving moment.

I said to the wife afterwards “Did you see the speed of him? Maybe I should change my diet and start eating more greens and banana’s” to which she muttered something about moving me to an island with Sky TV. Humph!

Not really a Landscape shot I know, but it’s still nature after all.

Just a few word regarding this image, I cheated ….well, manipulated this photograph to some degree. The blurred background was created from the “Filters” menu in photoshop. I created a layer then blurred the whole image using the said tool in the filters menu. I then used the eraser to reveal the sharp image beneath of Nico. The other bit of manipulation was the removal of an unsightly line that was in fact the barrier used to keep Nico on his island, I simply used the clone tool to make this disappear.

Image Name: NICO

Liverpool is one of the few cities that can boast two cathedrals, The Liverpool Anglican cathedral professes to be the largest Christian Cathedral in the world

(Though this title is often contested by The Cathedral of St John The Divine in New York) The foundation stone was laid for the building of the Liverpool Anglican Cathedral in 1904 and the first part of the work (The Lady Chapel) was completed in 1910.

This, “The Lady Chapel” is the oldest part of the building and is indeed my favorite part of this huge building, it’s a brilliant place to visit, the people are so friendly and all you have to do is ask, and they will allow you to wander around freely taking photographs as much as you like. (Outside Service times of course) This HDR is a sample of the great architecture that exists inside. Unfortunately light conditions were such that outside shots looked awful, but that’s one for another visit another day.

Image Name: Cathedral Light

Should you have any questions regarding this or previous postings, or require any further information regarding the above images, please feel free to contact me through my website www.alfbaileyphotography.co.uk

Related posts:

1. Diary of a Landscape photographer | Part 4
2. Diary of a Landscape Photographer | Part 2
3. Diary of a Landscape Photographer | Part 1

Before dismissing this article as irrelevant, realize that shooting in RAW is not the absolute white balance fix. First and most importantly, there may be situations where you have mixed lighting, e.g. flash in tungsten rooms, window light in fluorescent rooms, etc; Understanding white balance and color temperatures will help you mitigate (or accentuate) the effects of the mixed lighting to suit your desired results.

Secondly, the more color correction you need in post processing, the longer your work flow becomes. And lastly, if your client wants to see the results in camera, you want your image looking as good as it possibly can. So basically, read this article and start mastering white balance and color temperatures.

Without memorizing any definitions or complex concepts, lets start off with understanding what we have to work with. Our cameras are pretty smart these days, but AWB (Auto White Balance) isn’t always going to yield your desired results. In general, AWB does a good job guessing temperatures in daylight. However, at night time or when shooting indoors, you are going to want to manually set your white balance. Every Camera is a little different, but in general you’ll find the white balance settings somewhere in basic options of the Menu. The image on the left is a visual representation of the white balance settings on a Canon 50D.

In it’s most basic sense, match the icon with your current lighting situation. Most of the icons are pretty self explanatory, with the sun obviously representing sunlight and the bolt of light representing flash. With such useful icons, many photographers end their white balance learning there. But let’s look again.

What’s the weird icon with a square the two triangles, what’s that weird rectangle that seems to be glowing, and what’s K 5200? It’s important to memorize the chart on the left. Note that selecting custom white balance requires a subsequent step of selecting an image displaying a white (or neutral) color. This is not the focus of this article, but you can find plenty of video and written tutorials on setting your custom white balance. Also note that K is not mentioned in the chart on the left. The K stands for Kelvin, the unit of measurement for the temperature (or color) of light. We’ll talk more about this in step 3.

The K setting in your white balance settings is arguably the most important white balance setting to understand, as you’ll have a hard time using Gels and correcting mixed lighting without understanding kelvins. Try scrolling over the “K” setting, as you see in the image on the left, and scrolling all the way down to 2500K. If you take a picture, your image is likely blueish (the degree of blue depending on your current lighting situation). Now scroll to the opposite end to the 10,000K and take a picture. Your image is likely orange. In the simplest terms, the more you increase the K, the more orange the image becomes; and the more you decrease the K, the more blue the image becomes. The advantage of using the K option, as opposed to the other icons, is that you can check your images and adjust accordingly, instead of settling for a preset.

Everything seems pretty straight forward so far right? Well now it’s important to check out the chart on the left. In the chart, you will see that the lower the Kelvin the more orange the color of the light, conversely, the higher the Kelvin the more blue the color of the light. So what exactly does this mean? Well, this means that if we are shooting in a Tungsten (3000K) lit room, setting our cameras to 3000K will result in the light being “neutral” or white. If we go down from there to say 2500K, the light will turn more blue and hence we would be “cooling off” the image, and if we go up from there say to 3500K the light will turn more yellow/orange and hence we would be “warming up” the image.

When you hear someone say, “I prefer to produce my pictures slightly on the warmer side” or perhaps “slightly on the cooler side.” That isn’t a reference to the actual temperature of the color, but rather it is a reference to how the white balance is set in relation to the temperature of the light in the scene. For example, the person that prefers slightly warmer images would post produce a Tungsten (3000K) image to have a white balance of 3300K. Thus, the overall color would be more yellow and more warm. To make daylight sun (5500K) look warm, that same person would post produce it with a white balance of perhaps 5700K or some amount above 5500K where the light is neutral and white.

Conversely, if someone prefers their images “cooler” they would do the opposite. If the light in the image was Tungsten (3000K) or Daylight (5500K) they would post produce with a white balance of 2800K or 5300K respectively. Any temperature setting lower than the color temperature of the light in a scene, will yield a more blue or “cooler” image.

At this point, it’s beneficial to get back into practical application. So you walk into a hotel ballroom, and notice that the lights are tungsten(ish). Try setting your K low, somewhere between 2500 and 3500 (depending on your preference for warmth or coolness). What do you do if the picture is too orange? At this point, you should know how to troubleshoot this issue by going into your settings and decreasing the kelvins. If it’s too blue, try going the opposite direction. What if you go back outside to sunlight or if you’re using flash (which is approximately the same as sunlight)? Go up to around 5000 to 5500K and fiddle around until you’re happy. The 3000 range and the 5000 range are probably the two most common ranges you’ll experience and therefore worth memorizing.

So why does all of this matter? Shouldn’t AWB take care of it all? As we mentioned, often times AWB will get it right, particularly in simple situations like in daylight. But you’re going to run into issues when you have mixed lighting in the scene. When your flash is turned on, AWB automatically goes to the Flash white balance setting (5500K). In a tungsten setting, this makes already yellow Tungsten lighting become a muddy orange. For the sake of learning, let’s rehash why this is the case. Your camera setting is around 5500K, which makes your flash lighting white. This is great for your subjects, but remember that in order for your yellow/orange tungsten backgrounds to be white, your camera settings need to be lower around the 3000K range. So, since the flash is at approximately 5500K while your background is at around 3000K, post producing the flash to look correct will cause your backgrounds to be 2500K too high, and thus unnaturally orange. While on the other hand, post producing the scene to match your background Tungsten light of 3000K will result in your 5500K flash coming out completely blue, giving you smurfs for subjects. So now instead of wondering why your images are producing strange colors, you should now be able to troubleshoot and decide for yourself what effect you want.

The next step in learning white balance and color matching can be learned by picking up a set of Gels for your flash. We’ll get further into Gels in a later tutorial that branches off of the understanding you gained from this article, but we wanted to give you a brief example of what gels can do for your photography. Basically if you stick a gel over your flash that matches the color of lighting in the background, then set your K accordingly, you can effectively match the light in the foreground and background. In the picture below, notice the clean and consistent lighting from the subjects to the background from a geled flash inside of a tungsten(ish) lit room. As I mentioned, we’ll get into this in another article, but this should give you a quick introduction to the subject matter; and furthermore, you should have a decent idea of the white balance concepts at play in the image.

At this point, you should know enough to start playing around with mixed lighting and geled flashes. Look out for the next tutorial on Flash Gelling and Off-Camera Lighting; but in the meantime, feel free to take a look at the images below and start thinking of how they’re being achieved.
In this image, we took off the tungsten gel on the hair light flash (leaving it at standard flash temperature of 5500K) while using Tungsten (3000K) lights to illuminate their faces and bodies. This combination exaggerates the background blues.

By underexposing this daytime image, using a tungsten geled flash in the front and a tungsten geled flash source as a hairlight from behind, the daylight turns an exaggerated blue in the sky in the background.

Using a tungsten light source from the front, placing an off-camera flash (at a standard daylight temperature of 5500k-ish) in the back, and positioning the subjects in an ally with green background lights creates scene with an interesting interaction between the colors.

Related posts:

1. How to Color Correct with Lightroom
2. WPPI 2009 – Platform Speaker Notes – Doug Gordon
3. Understanding SEO (That Search Thing) – A Basic Starting Point for Photographers

1) Start with a Basic Portrait Session – What differentiates your photography style from others is probably not how well you take basic portraits, but it’s important to get your session started with some. First off, your couple gets warmed up, loose, and used to the camera in a quite, low-key location. Secondly, it gives you a chance to assess your subject and watch out for certain details. For example, are you going to have to look out for double chins? Is he a “blinker?” Having a slow, relaxed start can help you determine what you might have to watch for during the entire session. Thirdly, these are actually very important shots. As much as we all love stunning, artistic photography, we need a few basic portraits for mom, for their wedding website, or even for their invitations. Lastly, these can look pretty good if you choose the right background and the right lighting.

2) Let Clients Chimp – Chimping is a popular (and kinda ridiculous) term for looking at the pictures in the LCD of the camera. Although these images aren’t yet finished in post production, it’s important to have the clients see what you’re getting, not for every single shot, but at least for the images that focus on expressions and close-ups. In the end, it’s their opinion that matters. You could go the entire session thinking that you’re getting great stuff with great lighting but not noticing an awkward smile that he’s making, a wardrobe malfunction, or other small details. Most people are their own worst critics and it’s better take note of their insecurities and “flaws” during the shoot than to notice it after.

3) Bring the Right Gear – This tip is border-line too obvious to include in this article, but it’s worth noting that not everyone requires the same amount of equipment; and, moreover, not every shoot requires the same equipment. If your style is more “lifestyle,” where you’re finding locations with the ideal lighting and focusing on expressions, posing, and getting clean, crisp, natural images, you may not need all of your flash gear, your tripods, and multiple lenses. However, if your style involves playing around with creative, off-camera flash, HDRs, and other techniques, you’ll probably need a lot more gear. It’s important to determine what kind of style you are going for before the session and plan accordingly.

4) Bring an Assistant - A good assistant will not only relieve some of the strain of carrying your equipment but will also perform critical lighting tasks, like holding reflectors to bring out the shadows under eyes. A good assistant can also ensure that all equipment is accounted for; and a good assistant will help watch for the details, like stray hairs or random objects in the background.

Here’s an HDR shot that is difficult to execute without a tripod, which might be too heavy to lug around for one photographer for an entire shoot:

Here’s a portrait that required two flashes and a hot light, a very difficult shot to execute without an assistant:

5) Have a Backup Plan - Any photographer, heck any person, will tell you that things hardly ever go as planned. If you show up for your favorite location and it’s closed for whatever reason, what do you do? Having a backup plan is important for avoiding the panic of finding a new location on-the-spot. The possibility of getting kicked out, inclement weather, and traffic/road closures are also things to consider in your planning.

6) Visit Fewer Locations - Many clients are going to literally want the world for their engagement sessions. They might want beach shots, city shots, night shots, and nature shots all in one session. While client satisfaction should always be a top priority, it’s important to take your time with each location. There’s already so much to think about without the time pressure; and being rushed increases the risk of something going wrong. Taking your time and focusing on the right expressions, ideal backgrounds, and perfect settings in one or two locations creates a better product and a more enjoyable overall experience than cramming in multiple locations in a few hours.

7) Take Fewer Shots - In line with the cliche “less is more,” this point is a branch off of the previous point. Taking your time to create thought-out, creative, high-quality imagery produces a better overall product than spamming your subjects and coming away with hundreds of average shots. This also goes back to allowing your clients to chimp in order to make sure that both you and your clients are happy with the results.

8) Ensure Proper Client Preparation - It goes without saying that happy, relaxed, and up-beat clients will likely photograph better than clients in the opposite mindset. As obvious as this is, the steps to helping clients stay happy throughout the session aren’t as clear. Every photographer will have his or her own methods, but here are a few general tips. First off, if your session is going through dinner, suggest that they eat prior to the shoot and maybe even pack a snack. If there’s even the slightest chance of it being cold, make sure they bring a jacket and maybe even have a backup in your car. It’s amazing how many sessions end early because the clients get too cold. The list can go on and on, but it’s important to anticipate the possible dilemmas and plan accordingly.

9) Have The End Product in Mind - If your client is ordering a 20 page sign in book, you might need more photos than if they’re looking for one picture to blow up at their reception. Furthermore, if they’re looking to create a book, you might cater the shots to fit well in your style of books. For example, some photographers might take more sequenced shots to place in a row; or some might look for more variety in locations. In contrast, if you’re looking for that one, stunning shot to be enlarged for their reception, you might need to shoot with that in mind. Without changing your natural style too much, knowing the final product helps ensure that you’re delivering the right photos for the end product.

10) Stay Flexible - Photography ideas that stem from the client are sometimes cheesy and sometimes (actually, often times) just plain bad. On the other hand, they can be great and even inspirational. Regardless of the idea, it’s your ability to accommodate, modify, and improve their ideas to match their personalities and their style that will determine the overall client satisfaction.

We hope you learned, or were reminded of, a few things in this article, and as always, we would love a friendly discussion of engagement photography tips in the comments below.

Related posts:

1. Top 10 Los Angeles Engagement Photography Locations
2. Business – The Engagement Shoot Experience
3. 10 Tips for Stunning Landscape Photography

Black Rapid, a Seattle-based company founded by professional photographer Ron Henry, creates innovative camera carrying solutions with single or double straps. If you have neck pains associated with the neck straps, or if you’re simply looking for a more comfortable, stylish solution, then this article along with their line of camera straps is definitely worth your time and consideration.

Seen below, the RS-4, is a lightweight, low-profile strap that accommodates the needs of all types of photographers. The RS-W1 is essentially the same strap but slightly modified to address the specific ergonomic needs of female shooters. Although these are two different strap models, the core features are essentially the same so we will contain both reviews in the same article. Continue reading for more information and a detailed review of the pros and cons.

Below, you can see what both straps look like in action. A quick thank you to Justin of LJP, rockin’ the RS-4 and and Ashley of Ashley Photographer modeling the RS-W1. They were gracious enough to take time to be our models, as well as provide detailed feedback into their testing and trials of each product.

How it works: The “FastenR,” a small bolt-like device, connects directly to the tripod mount of your camera. The “FastenR” connects to a “ConnectR,” which is connected to the strap. Confusing? Check out their video below to see it in action. The strap slings right over one of your shoulders, with the camera hanging upside down at your hip. This gives you easy access to your camera, which glides up and down the strap as you lift and drop your camera, keeping the strap in place.
Compatibility: All cameras bodies and lenses with a tripod mount.
Official URL: http://www.blackrapid.com/
Price: RS-4: $54.00, RS-W1:$59.00
Links to Buy: Official Website and Amazon or your favorite photography retailer
Founder: Ron Henry

Quality – You won’t have to worry about anything tearing or breaking, as the strap and its components are well made and durable. The strap is make of ripstop nylon and Bomb-proof webbing while the FastenR and the ConnectR are made of High strength steel. In addition, the product comes with a 1 year replacement warranty. From our testing, short of taking a sharp set of scissors to this strap, nothing in the course of regular use would ever cause the strap to break.

Security and Freedom – This strap does a wonderful job of not only keeping your camera secure, but in also freeing up both of your hands and freeing the space in front of you from any camera. On several occasions, our cameras have slipped from our hands to be caught safely by the strap.

Aesthetics – The strap is simple, low-key, and stylish, as you can see from the images. In addition, since the camera hangs at your hip rather than across the chest, it is much more subtle than standard neck strap solutions.

Here’s a closer view of the RS-W1. Notice the sleek curve and the elegant design accent that make this strap unique.

Comfort – The strap is worn across the torso from shoulder to hip with a thick pad that rests on one shoulder as seen in the pictures above. The mesh underside of the pad, seen below, allowed it to breath while on our shoulders. We found that the padding and design of the strap is a big step up from most standard neck straps including the ones that come with your SLR;  In fact, even after daily shoots lasting 8 – 10 hours we found that our neck and shoulders were much less sore than with using standard strap solutions.

Pockets – The R-Strap features a convenient, secure pocket for storing up to two extra memory cards in their protective cases or other small camera accessories. This may seem like a minor detail; but used memory cards are the most irreplaceable item in your bag, and it’s important to keep them in a safe and accessible place. We found the slot quite useful for storing a couple empty cards for quick access during key moments.

Ease of Attachment – The FastenR, which connects the R-Strap to the tripod socket, is easy and quick to attach. Compared to stringing a neck strap or fastening other camera carrying systems with wrenches and other tools, this attachment is a breeze. With a bit of practice, you can get your camera on and off the strap within 5 – 10 seconds with ease.

Quick Access Gliding – Black Rapid promotes the Rapid Strap as being “the fastest strap around” which is a statement we find to be quite accurate. While the camera isn’t being used, it will gently rest on your hip. When you are ready to shoot, you simply pull the camera up and it will glide up the strap where you can bring it to your eye and shoot as shown in the images below. In general, you can have the camera up from your hip and ready to shoot in a second or less. When compared to a neck strap that is actually worn around the neck, it may be a bit slower, but unnoticeably so; when compared to a neck strap slung on the shoulder, it is actually much faster. It is also a bit more convenient and quick than hip based solutions like the Spider Camera Holster being that the camera won’t possibly get caught on anything when trying to quickly pull it up for a shot.

Enables Dual Camera Shooting – These straps are prefect for dual-camera shooters. If you have one camera on the RS-4 or RS-W1 and the other around a neck strap, you can avoid camera collisions. However, if you are serious about dual camera shooting, you should also look into the Black Rapid RS DR-1.

Shoulder Pad Shifting - While quickly grabbing and accessing your camera, often times the strap will shift from the shoulder to your back. This is slightly annoying being that you must periodically reposition the strap on your shoulder. While Black Rapid does teach its users to user their specific method in raising the camera by pulling it up and away from the body creating a little bit of tension on the line, it still takes getting used to, and you may still need to periodically adjust the shoulder pad manually. It should be known though that most of our testers found this issue to only be a minor inconvenience.

However, the guys at Black Rapid have thought of everything, and if this is an issue for you, you can purchase an add-on mod to the strap called the Black Rapid Arm Defence or “BRAD” for short as seen below.

The BRAD is a $16 add on that will secure the shoulder strap under the arm preventing it from moving. You can get more information on the BRAD by clicking here.
Incompatible with Tripod – The FastenR takes up the tripod mount, so you have to unscrew the strap in order to use a tripod. This can be frustrating if time is a big factor with your tripod shots. Though given the ease of releasing and connecting the fastening screw to the tripod mount, this shouldn’t be a big issue for most as you can have your camera off the strap and onto your tripod within 20 – 30 seconds. Furthermore, the team at Black Rapid has informed us that they are working on a new FastenR product that will work with quick release systems and the R-Strap.

Upper Body Pressure – If you’re having back problems or other pain associated with shooting, there is no guarantee that these straps will alleviate the pain. Yes, the weight is taken off the neck, but instead, it’s placed over one shoulder. Moreover, the pressure is still on the upper body, unlike camera carrying solutions like the Spider Holster, which places the weight at the hip. For many shooters, these straps will be a drastic improvement over the neck strap solution in terms of comfort. However, this will vary from person to person.

Learning Curve – There is a small learning curve to the rapid strap system. While the system is very easy to connect and use, you will need to get used to changing lenses at the hip and maneuvering through a crowd with the new positioning of your camera. While on the side of your hip, you’re effectively 4-8 inches wider than your body and with a large lens attached, you might have a very expensive tail sticking out that you’ll have to get used to taking care of. We recommend when navigating tight areas to simply push and hold the camera body behind your back making it simple and easy to avoid bumping your camera or lens on any surrounding objects.

Black Rapid has done its homework. It has created a line of camera straps that address the needs and styles of most photographers. The RS-4 and the RS-W1 are no exception. Their sleek, high-quality design, coupled with the comfort of the strap and the convenience of the small pockets, make it a strap that we are proud to stand behind and recommend to any and all photographers. In fact, we now exclusively use Black Rapid straps in our studio for all of our shoots.

Great job to Ron Henry and his team at Black Rapid for creating a truly great photography product and at a very reasonable price!

Related posts:

1. Spider Camera Holster Review
2. Equipment Review – E1 Hand Strap & BG-E2N Battery Grip
3. Equipment Review – The Shootsac

Hey, Zach Prez here to talk about a very specific piece of search engine optimization for blogs. Hopefully you already blog into the wee hours of the morning, describing your photo sessions in equisite detail in order to capture the fascination of potential new clients? New, is the operative keyword. I expect most photographers blog for their existing audience, but blogging with search engines in mind will quickly grow traffic by a factor of 10x. Your same 50 friends will no longer make up 90% of your traffic, but shift to make room for the 50% or more of traffic you should be getting from Google. Let those new clients become satisfied customers and then refer even more business.

I know making a shift to writing for search instead of your existing customers is a tough one to swallow. But keep this in mind. Potential clients don’t go looking for blogs to read. They search for a phrase and find a relevant result – a page talking specifically about the topic they searched. Google finds those topical pages by looking for similar phrases in the keywords of your page or post. All you have to do is get the keywords you think your users are searching for into your pages.

If you’re reading this post, I bet you already know a bit about search engine optimization (SEO). You may think you already know everything about keyword placement and are already doing it. That’s why I’ll focus this post on the last place I see photographers using their keywords. URLs. Google first looks for keywords in the page title, then second it looks to the URL. That’s right, URLs are more important for keyword placement than in the first paragraph of text, images, or even H1 tags. Blogs make it fairly easy to control URLs. I’ll show you how with this excerpt from my latest ebook, Blog SEO Zen for photographers.

Types of URLs

When a user searches for a phrase like Napa wedding photographer (broad keywords) or Ritz Hotel Napa wedding (specific niche keywords), one of the first places Google checks for those words is the URL of your blog page or post. There are 4 parts to a URL:
1. Subdomain name: myblog.blogger.com
2. Domain name: myblog.com
3. URL Path: myblog.com/category/post-name.html
4. Slug: myblog.com/category/post-name.html
Example: napa-photo.com/weddings/ritz-hotel-outdoor-reception.html

Subdomain Names
Google devalues subdomains, which is a shared domain name. A blog using a free domain like mysite.blogger.com should immediately switch to use its own URL or face an extremely difficult time in ranking. The reason is that Google thinks a shared domain is not a serious blog site and may disappear from the web at any time, thus it won’t risk ranking that site in its results.

Domain Names
The domain tells Google and users the main focus of the blog. If your domain name is yourname.com, then Google assumes your site is about YourName, making it more difficult for you to rank for other keywords. A domain name is best suited toward broad keywords that you intend to rank for since those appear on all pages of the blog. Dashes (hyphens) are perfectly fine, telling Google “This is a space between keywords.” By the way, purchasing a domain with quality keywords to forward to another domain does not work.

URL Path
The path to blog pages and posts are generated via a permalink structure. Permalink just means the permanent link or URL location for a blog page/post. Here are some of the ways a blog will generate the permalink structure for a blog post:

Default: myblog.com/?p=123
Day and name: myblog.com/2010/05/23/post-name.html
Month and name: myblog.com/2010/05/post-name.html

No post keywords are used in the default slug, and numbers meaningless to search are used in the paths of the other two. Ideally, the URL would include quality keywords in the path and the slug.

To change this in WordPress (sorry – not available in Blogger or Typepad) go to Settings > Permalinks and select the radio button for custom structure. Enter one of these:

/%category%/%postname%/
/%postname%/

The first one puts the post’s first category name into the URL path and the second one doesn’t. For example if your Ritz Carlton post was in a blog category called weddings, the URL would look like this:
napa-photo.com/weddings/ritz-hotel-outdoor-reception.html

Categories are a cool way to integrate keywords into the URL without having to think about it.

Note: By changing the permalink structure, all the URLs in the blog change. Links within your blog should continue to work, but anything linking to your old locations (like from other sites) will be broken. To avoid broken links you need to upload a file to your FTP server telling it the old URL and the new URL for each post on your blog. THis gets rather technical, so hopefully you have a developer who can help you out with that part.

Slugs
Slugs are the keywords in a blog post that appear at the end of the URL, telling Google what the post is about before it even starts reading the text. Most blogs (like Blogger.com) create this automatically from the post headline, but you can click Edit to remove any unnecessary words so that you end up with about 3-7 words, separated with dashes, that describe your post using the best possible keywords for search (not a list of keywords). If you’re a Napa Wedding Photographer like Tinywater Photography, you might update your slug permalink like so:

Post Title: Ritz Hotel Beautiful Outdoor Reception in Napa
Default slug: ritz-hotel-beautiful-outdoor-reception-in-napa
New slug: ritz-hotel-outdoor-reception

So if your using WordPress, remember to update the keywords at the end of the URL to be useful. If you’re using Blogger or similar platform then use quality words at the beginning of the post headlines since they will automatically get added to the URL. Remember that changing the permalink will break any outside links pointing to the post (if you are going back to old posts). I would not advise editing this field for all existing posts, but develop it into standard practice moving forward.

Video Demo for the Above URL Updates

Image URLs

Every image has its own URL, often times helping that image to rank by itself at images.google.com, which can be a secret source of huge traffic for people searching for photos. The image URL also appears in the code of each page where that image is embedded. Using keywords in the URLs to your advantage helps both images and pages rank well, especially for a page that might have 10 posts on it, and 10 images per post – that’s now 100 key phrases in one spot!

Get keywords into the image URL by:

• Name the image file properly
• Change the default upload location for images

When Google sees hundreds of default named images on your site, it assumes your site is about nothing. Not good for search results. Help it visualize your photos with names like bride-holding-roses-at-ritz-hotel.jpg instead of img004.jpg. Simply describe the photo in the filename. No need to include broad keywords like Napa wedding photographer because your image/post will never rank for it, and when those start repeating across images it looks like spam to Google. Note: I would only make it standard practice to name images moving forward and not spend the time to go back, except for your most essential images and blog posts.
A step beyond a great filename, is choosing a great URL path where the image will live. If you manually upload your images through an FTP location and embed the location in your post, then just make sure your folder structure uses quality keywords in the folder names. If you’re just clicking the image icon to upload the image to your blog from your computer, figure out where that image is being held and if you can customize the location.

In WordPress under Settings > Miscellaneous you can see the default folder for uploading images and change it to a folder that has keywords in the name.

Using the two recommendations above, my future images will change:

• From napa-photo.com/wp-content/uploads/image004.jpg
• To napa-photo.com/wedding-photos/bride-holding-roses-at-ritz-hotel.jpg

A rockin’ update moving forward considering I post a hundred images a month.

Zach Prez provides photoblog SEO and template reviews. His ebooks and free photography SEO email class have helped hundreds of photographers improve their search engine position to grow their businesses.
Also by Zach Prez on SLR Lounge:
Understanding SEO (That Search Thing) – A Basic Starting Point for Photographers
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – Backlinks!

Related posts:

1. SLR Lounge Photography WordPress Blog Theme
2. Understanding SEO (That Search Thing) – A Basic Starting Point for Photographers
3. Optimize Your Images for Search Engines

We had been experiencing some really nice weather, and I thought I might try a few sunset shots at Talacre beach not too far away. Although sunsets have been photographed every which way you can think of, I still look at every one and marvel at their splendour and feast of colour that nature provides. I set off in good time (so I thought) but it wasn’t long before I ran into my first set of road works and temporary traffic lights, by the time I was stopped for a fourth time by more of the same, I was getting a touch miffed! Growling and hissing at no one in particular I dodged speed camera’s as I raced like someone possessed towards Talacre and a rapidly sinking sun.

Getting out of the car grabbing my gear and racing over the sand dunes, I was just in time to get a few shots before the light was gone. As is often the case, the last photo I took that evening as I walked back to the car, was the one I liked best , the pronounced ripples in the sand gave some nice foreground textures (the little whites bits are shells) and the light show was beautiful. Although I mentioned above that every sunset is potentially beautiful, I always find that a second or third point of interest to compliment it is a good recipe for success, in this case, the rippled sand and the lighthouse.

This venue is perhaps not the most obvious of locations for a landscape photographer, but with little or no wind, some nice reflections and touches of last light colour, maybe I would get something worth looking at. I tried shooting the old dock building that had been converted into very plush block of flats, but the longest lens in my kit bag (a Nikkor 50mm F1.4 prime lens) just wasn’t long enough to get the composition I wanted, so observing the gathering colour in the sky I turned my attention to the other side of the dock, this is where the business end now operates from, and the dockside cranes seemed to be a good focal point. The moon making a guest appearance was a bonus too. This following image may just inspire you to think of a location in your area worthy of a second look.

We had decided to visit Landwynne Island, one of my favourite locations, in order to try some Star Trail experiments, the weather forecast had predicted clear sky’s, the weather was warm, and so we (Myself, Gary & Paul) all set off on Saturday evening to arrive in Anglesey at about 8.20pm, (via a dodgy kebab take away meal en route and accompanied by chronic indigestion) allowing us enough time to get a few shots before dark and still give us enough time to establish good vantage points for our start trail shots.
(Just a word of caution, it is worth noting that when considering nocturnal or late evening ventures out with your expensive camera equipment, it is probably advisable to travel in a group or at least with a companion. I don’t want to alarm anyone unduly, as I travel extensively alone and have never had cause for concern, but even I wouldn’t have lingered at the Birkenhead docks location alone.)
We noticed with dismay a large cloud bank gathering on the horizon as we emerged from the walk along the path through the pine trees onto the beach. Convinced that the cloud would disperse we carried on towards the lighthouse at the far end of the Island. I took a few shots of the ponies that roam free on the island, but none that were spectacular; I then spotted some small yellow wild flowers that I thought would make a good foreground to the lighthouse and composed a shot of that.

After wandering round for a few more hours it became ever more apparent that the weather forecast had got it wrong yet again! The skies were now full of cloud and barely a star could be seen, muttering curses and proclaiming British weather forecasters as the worst liars in the world, we set off back to the car. After travelling back to the first beach we discovered just why Landwynne Island was indeed called an Island, having walked onto it on numerous occasions, it never occurred to me that it would ever be surrounded by water, but at 11.30pm that particular evening we found ourselves cut off from the mainland by about a 30 meter expanse of sea, it just wasn’t our night!

We settled down to chat about past photographic experiences and after another 90 minutes the tide had receded enough for us to attempt to walk through the last of the water, of course my left foot was the one that found the deep hole in the sand and consequently soaked my foot. The strange squidgy noise my left trainer made now echoed as we made way along the path through the pines. Several toads seemed to appear in our torchlight, and they hopped and jumped on the path in front of us, strangely increasing in number as we walked along. Both Gary and Paul suggested it was my squeaky trainer that was attracting them, Hmmm yeah right very funny!

I got home at about 2.00am and decided to download the images I had managed to get, onto my PC. As usual I made a new file in readiness, then placed the flash card in the card reader, and opened the file to browse the images, having looked through them; I removed the flash card, placed it back in the camera, and formatted the card read for my next trip. Then I opened the file I had created to have another look at the images. I blinked in incredulity at the blank file and it hit me all at once like a hammer! I had forgotten to transfer the images from the card to the new file! After some cursing and swearing along with a few self derogatory comments aimed at myself I resigned myself to the fact that the images were lost forever. I spoke to Gary the next day and told him about my gargantuan error. After some rather flippant and unnecessary remarks about my age and mental health state he decided to be helpful and asked “have you tried using that Sandisk Extreme Rescue PRO software that we got free when we bought the memory cards”?

I had forgotten all about it, but replied “No I haven’t but it’s got to be worth a try” Returning home that evening I went through the software download routine and put all the appropriate codes into the right places, then clicked on the memory card and waited while the programme scanned it for lost images. At this point I wasn’t really expecting very much in the way of results. After what seemed like an age, but was in reality about 20 minutes, to my utter astonishment, this programme had found every single image that had been saved on the flash card. What an incredible result!! Ok I have only had the flash card for about 2 months but there were hundreds of images found. If you haven’t found anything worth knowing in the rest of my ramblings, but didn’t know about this bit of software, then you haven’t wasted your time. This little bit of software can be an absolute life saver. I am told it even works on old or partially damaged memory cards where the images have been lost or deleted. A great big Thank You! to Sandisk and not forgetting Gary who actually remembered about the software, well one of us has to have a decent memory! (wouldn’t it be great if we had a slot in the back of our skulls where we could upgrade our own memory, by just putting another card in)

Thank you all for reading the above. If you have any questions thoughts, suggestions or feedback, please feel free to comment or contact me through my web site.

Related posts:

1. Diary of a Landscape Photographer | Part 1
2. Diary of a Landscape photographer | Part 4
3. Diary of a Landscape photographer | Part 3

Please don’t do this at a wedding! You have to feel bad for the guy; but it’s impossible not to laugh just a little bit.

Not nearly as costly or as embarrassing as the video above, I’ve had a couple of mishaps before as well. The most recent one was during a “formals” session at a wedding. I was trying to get the wedding party to do a fun jumping shot. Not wanting stiff, boring jumps, I decided to demonstrate a ‘leprechaun’ jump, clicking both heels mid air to the side of the body. I bet you can imagine where this is going. Midair, I heard a nice long ….. and very loud ripping sound. Unfortunately, I wasn’t the only one who heard it. The groomsmen were on the ground laughing, as I stood there with a giant rip right down the middle of the crotch. I guess it could have been worse because, unlike the guy in the video, this embarrassing moment only cost me a little bit of pride.

We’d love to hear your experiences and any other comments you might have!

Related posts:

1. 5 reasons wedding photographers should use Craigslist
2. What is the best hosting service for photographers?

Big news in the photography industry was announced today as Pictage, a photography community and service for marketing, selling and fulfilling photography products acquires ShootQ, a business management service for photographers. The move brings Pictage one big step towards being the one-stop solution for mid to high volume photographers. Before the acquisition, both companies were already providing valuable services. Pictage’s services included, among other things, marketing and fulfilling print orders, designing, printing, and binding albums, serving as a third party backup of jpg files, and other important functions. On the other hand, ShootQ simplified invoicing clients, signing electronic contracts, managing bookings, and other business management functions. In our view, the combination of the two services makes perfect sense. Feel free to read the official press release below; and as always, we welcome your comments.

“Torrance, CA July 7, 2010 – Pictage, the leading professional photographer community and platform for marketing, selling and fulfilling professional photo products, today announced the acquisition of ShootQ, a web-based software company offering the industry’s most advanced business management solution. The combination of Pictage and ShootQ will create the first comprehensive platform for photographers to manage their workflow, promote their brand, connect with community, and sell their work.

“This is a deeply gratifying and exciting day for Pictage and I believe for the photographers associated with Pictage and ShootQ. This step creates the first single source, end-to-end solution with most of the support services necessary to succeed in the business of professional photography,” says Jim Collins, CEO of Pictage.

Pictage and ShootQ combined will offer the services professional photographers need to drive a successful business in today’s market. Pictage provides a full suite of services and products to help photographers with “post-shoot” workflow, however, photographers increasingly looked to Pictage to extend support for the advanced “pre-shoot” workflow that ShootQ provides. Together, Pictage and ShootQ will offer their clients the best of both worlds; empowering them literally from the moment they make the choice to pursue photography as a full-time career.

“ShootQ exists to help photographers create purposeful, profitable businesses. As a small, bootstrapped company, it has been difficult to achieve our vision with limited resources. While watching the Pictage management team in action, we discovered kindred spirits who are devoted to making photographers’ lives easier. We are convinced that Pictage and ShootQ will grow together to enable photographers’ success,” says Andrew Niesen, CEO and co-founder of ShootQ.

Pictage and ShootQ share a deep respect for photographers and a passion for the art of photography. Both companies also believe that images can change lives and are committed to envisioning, coordinating, and sponsoring programs that strengthen that belief. ShootQ’s Grant Program annually awards $10,000 to a photographer to raise awareness about important social, environmental, or economic issues. In that same spirit, Pictage has programs like “Lens & Learn” and “Katrina Families” that create opportunities for photographers to inspire and give back to communities and people in need.

Plans are in place for the joint development and integration of Pictage and ShootQ, as well as multi-city town hall meetings. These meetings are designed to provide an in-person opportunity for both companies’ customers to talk through the opportunities, plans, and benefits that arise from such an exciting, impactful collaboration.

About Pictage
Founded in 2000, Pictage is the leading community and business enabler for professional photographers. Pictage empowers professional photographers to manage their workflow, promote their brand, connect with community, and sell their work.

About ShootQ
ShootQ.com is the first web-based management software designed specifically to automate photography businesses. ShootQ is a photographer’s virtual business partner; assisting them from the moment a prospective client contacts them until the final product is delivered.”

Related posts:

1. Business – Online Printing & Proofing (Pictage, Zenfolio, SmugMug, & more…)
2. Pictage Slideshow Example and Review
3. 10 Ways to Make Your Photography Studio High-End

It had been a bright day, warm and sunny so I didn’t expect the wind to be as strong as I walked through the sand dunes spitting out sand, and half closing my eyes against the abrasive onslaught. Gary my partner in crime who accompanies me on most outings screwed his eyes up too and pointed towards the shelter of the trees and sand dunes, indicating the way forward.

I remember Formby and Freshfields as a youngster, there was an abundance of wildlife, Great Crested Newts, and Natterjack toads, and it was and still is, one of the last refuges of the British Red Squirrel. No squirrels about today though, they had more sense than us, and kept themselves out of the wind. The patterns in the sand dunes can make an interesting image, and one thing about the wind in our favour is that it very quickly obliterates any signs of the many footprints of the frequent visitors to the beach.

I wanted to leave the sky blue, but create a warmer looking sand, so I processed the same image twice in Lightroom, once with a cool tint and one with warmer tones. I then opened both images in Photoshop using the arrow tool, I held down the Alt and shift key on my keyboard and then dragged the cooler coloured image over the warm one, and this action forms a layer. The next thing to do is reveal the warm sand by choosing the eraser (setting for eraser 33% Opacity and 18% Flow this helps prevent streaky marks) and using even strokes pass it over the sand part of the image until the warm sand is revealed, but leaving the blue sky intact.

One hour later and the sun had started to head for the horizon, there was a slight haze in the sky now, but it was making the most wonderful patterns and colours in the sky. The wind had also dropped so I abandoned Gary in the sand dunes and headed towards the beach, I was still a bit dubious about risking my D700 in the sandy conditions but as it turned out by the time I reached the water, the wind had dropped altogether. One good bit of advice I can pass on though it to purchase a small brush / blower, these great little inventions takes all the risk away from cleaning your lenses and LCD screens in sandy conditions. Wiping your lens with a cloth in such conditions can prove expensive, as sand has a habit of finding its way into everything. If you do have to use a cloth, make sure you shake it well first.

I took quite a few shots with my Nikon D700 and Nikkor 16 – 35mm and wasn’t keen on changing lenses just in case a stray grain of sand found it’s way into the camera. The image below was looking to me like an Angel Fish. (Another quick note here, windy conditions where particles or moisture are present are not ideal for changing lenses, and should be avoided if possible) After some reflection about the Angel Fish (No pun intended) I decided it was time to head for home before I started seeing Pink Elephants too. The angel fish image required minimal processing, just a slight adjustment to levels and sharpening.

My normal Job entails visiting sites throughout the North West of England and Wales assessing the suitability of Cranes and providing lifting solutions for a million different sites and scenario’s. Sometimes I get lucky with an interesting location and this is when my camera accompanies me.

Powis Castle in Newtown Powys, Mid Wales, is not the best place to try and get a 20 Ton Crane, but there are some lovely gardens and interesting features to the place. So after some time spent solving the crane access problem and business over, I got permission from the Head Gardener to take a few photo’s, and hurriedly set about my task, but as I approached the castle I heard the strangest noise, it was like a cross between a strangled cat and a hyena, the noise grew louder the closer I got to the castle and then I saw the offending creature, it was a peacock, well no wonder they are good looking birds, I thought to myself, it must be gods compensation for their dreadful vocal qualities. : – )

Having established where the noise come from I thought “hmmm peacock, huge feather display, great photo opportunity”. I climbed the castle steps as these thoughts raced through my mind, and I set the camera on its tripod in readiness for the wonderful display I was about to witness. After some minutes it become apparent that Mr peacock wasn’t playing ball, no display, no strutting it’s stuff for the camera, nothing but the occasional bloody curdling yowl that I has heard previously. There must be something that triggers the display, I thought to myself, maybe a bit of competition for attention would work. To this end I stood on one leg and flapped my arms holding my coat open in a vain attempt to look spectacular, the look of utter contempt from the bird and a few smothered giggles from a young couple that had sneaked up the steps behind me was enough to halt my sad attempt to emulate the mating dance of the peacock.

“I’m errrm trying to get it to show it’s feathers” I muttered in explanation to the couple who now smiled and nodded sympathetically as they walked past, the guy then turned and said “have you tried negotiating with it” to more giggles and snorts from his partner. I returned a hollow “ha ha” in return and gave them a scornful glance.

Beaten, humiliated, but still determined to get a shot of the stubborn bird. I bracketed 5 shots 1 EV stop apart. Then I took a few shots of the gardens and grounds before hastily departing from the castle to make my way to another customer that required my services. I later used Photomatix Pro 3 to produce this HDR image, maybe not the classic landscape / nature photo I was hoping for, but I wanted to show the potential of the shot and how sometimes you just don’t get your own way, no matter how hard you try.

Thank you all for reading the above. If you have any questions thoughts, suggestions or feedback, please feel free to comment or contact me through my web site.

Don’t forget to stop by at the end of July or beginning of August when I hope to bring you more news of my photo excursions and hopefully a few decent photo’s too

Related posts:

1. Diary of a Landscape photographer | Part 4
2. Diary of a Landscape Photographer | Part 2
3. Diary of a Landscape photographer | Part 3

The common bond that most wedding photographers share is our humble beginnings. We didn’t buy an office and a client list as a dentist might do. Most of us weren’t lucky enough to inherit a family business. Nor did most of us build a client base, a reputation, and a network without a time of struggle. The duration of that struggle, however, varies from photographer to photographer with some seemingly stuck in it. Some are doing everything they can do to grow their business, while others are relying on luck, wishful thinking, and marketing tips that they learned from a 2 hour DVD.

You’ll probably never hear a photographer at conventions like WPPI giving speeches on Craigslist marketing. Actually scratch that, one photographer who we greatly respect is Robert Evans. During a presentation, Robert actually showed us his very first wedding he shot. He gave us a glimpse of the truth and where his humble beginnings started. The wedding looked so depressing that if every “aspiring professional photographer” saw it, 90% would probably reconsider their choice of profession. It is because of this reason that we so greatly admire Robert Evans. Because we know what it took to get where he is today as a celebrity photographer.

Truth is, showing these events and these humble beginnings simply isn’t sexy. Catering, or should i say, bargaining with budget couples isn’t considered “living the dream.” Instead, the majority of the industry has bought into a dream of $10K weddings and mailboxes overflowing with inquiries through marketing techniques catered to high end brides. It’s not that the photographers promoting these techniques are being unrealistic or telling anything other than the truth based on their experiences. Rather, I think the interpretation and application of these high end marketing theories, coupled with the “anyone can do it” sentiment that’s almost ubiquitous in the industry, have made some photographers unable or unwilling to hustle just a little bit. I’m not implying a lack of work ethic or devotion to their business. But I’m asking, are these people doing everything that they can to grow their business?

We all need to start somewhere and build up; and I think it’s important that we use all of the resources available to us, including free classifieds like Craigslist. There are important rules and tips to follow for creating effective posts dealing with the time of day to post, the content and titles of the post, the cities to post in, and the frequencies of your posts; and I will talk about creating effective Craigslist campaigns in another article. But for this article, I want to focus on convincing those photographers who are just starting their businesses that Craigslist, despite all that you may have heard, is a good resource to help grow your business. So here are 5 reasons wedding photographers should post on Craigslist.

1) Free Targeted Traffic - Almost everyone who clicks through to your post will be 1) looking for a wedding photographer and 2) located in your area (or an area you’re willing to travel to). This seems obvious, but contrast this with an advertisement in a magazine where brides, ex-brides, and wannabe brides are viewing your ad from locations all around the world. To reach such a target audience as the one you’ll reach through Craigslist is any marketer’s dream. And it’s free!

When our studio was posting, we were getting an average of 2 hits per post to our main website linandjirsa.com according to Google Analytics. Two potential clients for the 2 minutes of work for posting is a very good return on investment by anyone’s standards. Contrast that with a $3,500 ad we placed on a large national website where we received around 30 hits a month. Annualized, we probably paid just under a dollar per visit, mostly from brides in irrelevant locations around the nation.

2) Some Mid Range Budgets – While most couples who contacted us through Craigslist were on tight budgets, we had a few here and there who were ready to allocate a fair amount of money for their photography. With the right post, good photography, and good sales techniques, you could land a few $3k to $5k weddings here and there from clients who don’t see Craigslist as a place for budget brides but rather a website they are accustomed to visiting for finding local goods and services.

3) Low End Can Lead to High End – When we first started, we did plenty of 6+ hour weddings for $500 bucks. Ridiculous right? In actuality, I’m sure this is a common story for most wedding photographers. In our case, we treated them like $10K weddings, bringing out the whole team, trying advanced photography techniques, schmoozing with the clients, etc. Just because a bride has a $500 budget doesn’t mean all of her guests do. From one of these gigs, we booked our first high-end destination wedding.

4) Experience and Practice – You can second shoot forever and still not know how to deliver a consistent, high-quality wedding photography product. There’s nothing like learning through the pressure of posing your couple and getting the right shot when a wedding’s running late, getting a crisp shot of a first kiss in a dark chapel, or improvising when equipment seems to act up. Monetarily, these $500 dollar gigs might amount to little more than minimum wage after you factor in a 2 photog team, post production, sales time and delivery of the final product, but the experience is priceless.

5) Book Without Damaging Your Brand – With very good reason, many photographers fear that their presence on Craigslist will affect their overall brand image. For example, you might not want a Google search bringing up your website along with all of your Craigslist postings. Though this is a valid concern, there are certain ways to avoid the potential damage. For example, you don’t have to mention your studio name in the ad. Instead, you can say “click here to view our work” and link directly from the “click here” or link directly from the image collage you include in your post.

Conclusion: I’m not arguing that Craigslist postings will solve all of your problems, or that it’s all you need to be doing. Concurrently with posting on Craigslist, we were putting in a lot of time and effort building our web presence, networking with planners, florists, and other wedding professionals, and most importantly, learning new techniques and improving our skills in order to differentiate ourselves from others in the competitive market of Southern California. After some time, there was no longer a need to post; but I can’t imagine how much longer it would have taken to get our business to its current state without the hustle of posting on Craigslist.

As always, I would love to hear what you think in the comments!

Related posts:

1. Business – The Wedding Photography Market Size (Estimating The Number of Wedding Photographers in the United States)
2. Understanding SEO (That Search Thing) – A Basic Starting Point for Photographers
3. Equipment – Canon Vs. Nikon – What Do the Best Wedding Photographers Use?

Then there are those that prefer abandoning the idea of a strap altogether. The Spider Camera Holster was created for those who prefer to place the weight of the camera at the hip instead of their upper bodies. This alleviates many of the upper body pains associated with long shoots and heavy equipment. The holster gives you “quick draw access,” hanging comfortably at your hip until needed.

After the basic introduction to the camera carrying system, we’ll go into the pros and cons of the Spider Camera Holster, followed by a brief summary. If you would like to add your experiences with this product, we invite you to comment below.

Compatibility: “Designed all pro camera bodies and lenses”
Official URL: http://www.spiderholster.com/
Price: $109.99
Where to Buy: Official Spider Website (Not yet available at Amazon, B&H, or Adorama)
Founder: Shai Eynav http://www.shaiphoto.com/
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/spiderholster
Twitter: http://twitter.com/spiderholster
Includes: spyder camera holster, spider belt, and the spider plate (see video below for details)

Before we go any further, we can get a good idea of the basic features, functions, and aesthetics of the Spider Camera Holster by watching their official introduction video.

1) Comfort - This is by far the biggest pro for this camera carrying system. While back and neck problems are almost inevitable with any occupation in which you’re carrying around 5lbs or more for 12 hours straight, using the Spider Camera Holster will significantly reduce the pain in both your neck and back in comparison to a basic neck strap.

2) Quality Construction - From the packaging to the actual product, you can clearly see the high quality of craftsmenship in this product. The Holster Belt itself is made from what appears to be a webbed nylon material which Spider states is the same material used in army/police equipment. We can say quite assuredly that there is no chance this belt would ever rip or tear during use. In addition, the actual Spider Pro Camera Holster is made of steel and hardened aluminum. From its smooth beveled edges to its overall polished look and feel, the Spider is definitely a well designed and manufactured product.

3) Placement – Girls with fairly large bust lines may not feel comfortable with straps that cut directly through their chest as they can often be uncomfortable as well as create an awkward appearance. Since that the Spider Camera Holster isn’t a strap based solution, this issue can be completely avoided.

4) Dual Camera Solution – Before the Spider Camera Holster, photographers that carry two cameras on their bodies, had very few options. You could use two neck straps and carry them both around your neck, putting all of the pressure around the neck and risking the collision of your equipment. You could use a basic neck strap in conjunction with a strap that slings around the shoulder and hangs down by the hip (like the rapid strap). Or you can use full two camera solutions like the DR-1 Double Strap by BlackRapid.  While this is a better option than using two neck straps, all of these solutions still place all the weight of the two cameras around the upper body. Using the Spider with a basic neck strap, you have the weight of one camera around the neck and the weight of the other camera around the hip, creating a comfortable disbursement of the weight. (See left image below)

5) Compatibility with Tripod Mounts – Unlike solutions such as the Rapid Strap which screw into the camera’s tripod mount, the Spider Holster is compatible with tripods and accessories that attach to the bottom of your camera via the mounting holes on the Spider mounting plate (see right image above).

6) Free Movement - Using the Spider mounting system gives you full mobility and usage of your hands while the camera is secured in the Spider holster. Most strap solutions require you to use your hands to prevent the camera from swinging, moving, or bumping into other objects, thus restricting your movement and what you could normally carry or move with two hands.

7) Belt Usage - The Spider Holster is removable from the Spider belt allowing you to place the holster directly on any leather belt. You may need to tighten your belt quite a bit, as hanging 10 pounds from your belt can cause your belt to hang low. The image left shows the plate being attached to the belt and the image right shows the belt with a camera hanging from it. You will notice how it pulls the belt down, which can get uncomfortable with larger setups.

8) Pleasing Aesthetics – While the belt and holster may appear a bit bulky at first sight, we find that once you are wearing the belt it actually looks quite good on the body. When shooting in casual attire, we found that our un-tucked t-shirts completely concealed the belt making only the camera visible. While wearing professional attire for wedding shoots, we found that the black belt on our black pants actually looked quite decent. See the pictures below.

9) Safety - The Spider Holster has a locking feature which will keep the camera from coming out of the holster while still allowing the camera a limited amount of movement to shift naturally while walking (left picture below). It also has a safety on the buckle so that the buckle doesn’t accidentally come undone (right picture below).

1) Security – Slight user error can cause thousands of dollars in repair bills. If you decide to use the Spider Holster, make sure you’re always using the protective band to hold the plate to the belt (see left picture below). Without this band, gravity and friction are the only things holding the holster onto the belt. If you happen to bump into something or wear a photography bag like the Shootsac on the same side that happens to bump the camera, you might knock the plate (and the attached camera) off the belt (see right picture below).

Unfortunately, the protective bands have come loose several times while testing the Spider Holster. While most of the time we noticed this issue and quickly corrected it, there was one instance during testing where this issue went unnoticed; and a slight bump from a tripod bag that I was putting on my shoulder knocked the holster along with my 5D Mark II and 50mm 1.2L straight off the Spider Belt and onto the concrete floor. Therefore, it does bear mentioning. However, this can be prevented by checking the bands throughout your shoot and avoiding the carrying of bags on the same side as the camera. In particular, we noticed that the bands tend to come off the holster when sitting down with the camera in the holster, taking off and putting on the belt, and while standing/sitting in awkward shooting positions while using the holster.

Along the lines of security, throughout the years, my camera has been saved by the strap in a few situations where a near drop is prevented by a last second, mid-air grab of the strap. Without a strap, you lose that added security. However, if this is a major concern for you, we find that a lot of Spider users will use them in conjuction with the Rapid Strap for an added layer of security if the holster were to come off the belt, or if the camera was about to drop.

2) Difficult to use with large setup – The holster works well if you have camera body, a smaller lens and maybe even a flash. But once you add on your Battery Pack, your telephoto lens, and your diffuser (a basic wedding reception setup), the holster becomes difficult to use, especially if you kneel often during your shoots (see picture below).

We find that the holster really shows its strength during portrait shoots and engagement sessions when your camera body consists of, at most, a telephoto and a flash. Any more than that, and it becomes rather large and cumbersome to hang from the waist, making it less useful in night time wedding reception situations. However, depending on shooting style, this may not be an issue, as many photographers may not need or use such large setups.

3) Single Lens Shooters – For those of us who switch lenses often during a shoot, changing lenses from a camera hanging from the neck is much more convenient than changing lenses from a camera hanging on one hip. Admittedly, I got faster and faster as I used the Spider more and more, but the task never became as natural or as quick as it was with a neck strap solution.

4) Attaching The Mount – Attaching the mount could be made a lot easier with a hand twistable mounting screw. Currently, the Spider Mounting Plate can only be attached with an Allen wrench which adds an additional component needed to attach the plate and makes attaching the plate more cumbersome.

5) Allen Wrench Security – The Allen wrench that fits into the Spider holster easily slides out, making it easily dropped and lost.  In fact, we lost our Allen wrench that came with the Spider Holster on our third shoot. If this was to happen during a shoot, you would not be able to remove the holster, which could lead to some trouble if you had to remove it for any reason (to attach a battery grip, etc).

6) Added Width – With the holster on your hip, you add an extra 4-6 inches to the overall width of your body. This can be an issue in tight spaces where you have to quickly move to be in position, such as a small wedding reception venue.

The Spider Holster is a great product. It’s innovative, comfortable, and most importantly, it puts the pressure from the weight of your camera somewhere else other than your overworked upper body. This is one of those products where there isn’t a clear cut yes or no as to whether or not a photographer should use it. It depends on a variety of factors, from your shooting style to your typical equipment set up. However, if you understand the cons outlined above and feel that the pros outweigh them, you can be assured that you’re getting a high quality, well thought-out product.

Related posts:

1. Black Rapid RS-4 and RS-W1 Camera Strap Review
2. Equipment Review – The Shootsac
3. Equipment Review – E1 Hand Strap & BG-E2N Battery Grip

Location: Lake District, Cumbria, UK
Camera: Nikon D90, Lens: Nikkor 18-55mm, Time: 14.31, Date: 7th January 2009, Format: JPEG, ISO; 200, Exposure: 1/500, F Stop: 8.0, Metering: Matrix, Aperture Priority, Tripod

I started taking photographs just 3 years ago. I was your typical “finger over the lens, cut the subjects head off, fumbling photography buffoon” until a friend of mine showed me some of his images; and I was that inspired, I had to try it for myself. Then I got the bug, the photography infection set in, and I’ve since enjoyed every minute of it. These days I take some, what I would consider “decent photographs”, and I’m very pleased to pass on the little bits of knowledge that I have gained (sometimes the hard way) over the last few years, so that you can do likewise. The following is an overview of what can be a very in-depth and sometimes complex subject.

There are whole books on cameras and lenses, but I’m going to keep it simple. Choose the best you can afford, but don’t be tempted to buy a really expensive camera and then fit it with a very average lens. The results will be….well…very average. Better to buy an average camera with a first rate lens, as the lens is the bit that does the most important work. I can personally recommend the Sigma 10-20mm and the Nikkor 16-35mm . Both are brilliant wide angle landscape lenses.

You will also need the following: a good sturdy tripod (carry it in the car, never leave home without it), a cable release, a carrying case that will protect your gear, a grad filter and a UV filter, lens cleaning cloth, a pair of wellies, waterproof trousers and jacket and a good road atlas or better still, an ordinance survey map of the area you intend to visit. Oh and don’t forget your packed lunch. Photography can be hungry work and the chances are you will end up miles away from anywhere that sells food.

The only rule I tend to try and follow is the “rule of thirds.” I nearly always find that placing a subject close to the third intersections, works well, even better if you can get a near and far focus point in diagonal corners of the thirds (See “Old Red and The Lighthouse” image below) but I will say a bit more about composition in section 5.

Location: Landwynne Island, Anglesey, North Wales UK
Camera: Nikon D700, Lens Nikkor: 50mm F1.4G, Time: 18.46, 3rd April 2010, Format: JPEG, ISO: 200, Exposure: 1/125 sec, F Stop: 16.0, Metering: Matrix, Aperture Priority, Hand Held

There are exceptions to the rule of thirds and again I will come to that in section 5.

Without doubt, early morning late evening is the very best times to take photographs, the light is much more forgiving, and can be much more dramatic, so be prepared to stay up late or get up early and sometimes both!. That’s not to say that you can’t take photographs in the bright mid-day sun, you can! But it’s far more difficult to achieve good results and I usually tend to avoid these times of day.

Of course a location can be the difference between an average shot and a complete stunner. My advice is, get to know your area, have a look at your local art galleries and online information. Just type in the name of your area into your browser followed by the word “photographs” or “Images” and you will be surprised at the amount of information that will turn up. Even if you live in a big city, there are parks, rivers, docks, and canals that can all offer great photo opportunities, if you own a car then your only a couple of hours away from some excellent scenery in the UK. Look for bridges, waterfalls, stone circles, windmills, lighthouses, water mills, and even wind turbines for great locations, though the list is endless.

Just a note on SAFETY:

1. Always tell someone where you are going and when you expect to be back.
2. Carry food and water
3. Carry suitable clothing for the environment of your intended destination

Things to avoid getting in the frame: your shadow, telephone wires, electricity pylons, cars, litter (coke cans, plastic bags, etc can be a real pain when you notice them later and have to try and clone them out of an otherwise great shot). When taking long exposures, avoid anything that moves, people, ducks, cars etc.

Take your time and remember the following: have a good look through the viewfinder, look in all of the corners, straighten the horizon, zoom in/out for optimum composition, remember the rule of thirds, explore trying to get some foreground detail as well as the main subject, step to the left or right to get rid of your shadow, or merge your shadow with that of a tree etc.

There are of course exceptions to the rule of thirds, but it is important to know and understand the rules before you break them. Some central compositions can be dynamic and powerful (See the “Sun Tower” image below) but think about what you want to achieve when the subject is in the frame. Cropping afterwards is always the second best solution. If your not sure, try it both ways with a centrally composed shot and a shot using the rule of thirds.

Location: – Brenig, North Wales, UK
Camera: Nikon D90, Lens: Sigma 10 – 20mm, Time: 15.49, Date: 9th January 2010, Format: JPEG, ISO: 200 Exposure: 1/350 second
F Stop:16.0, Metering:Matrix, Aperture Priority, Tripod

Above I mentioned, a few obvious features to look for above are lighthouses, water mills, etc but people with an “eye” for photography will often be the ones that can find the less obvious features and make a beautiful landscape from them. A lone tree on a hill, a person within the landscape, (See “the Other Photographer” image below) or a section of the landscape that can be selected through your lens and isolated to create another a less obvious landscape with in a landscape (see “One Fell Over”). With time, you will become more aware of everything around you. My wife raises her eyebrows in mock exasperation as I point out “interesting cloud formations” and “Dramatic Sky’s” as part of our usual conversation in car journeys. Yes, be prepared to bore everyone but other photographers with your newly found enthusiasm for every aspect of the landscape.

Location: Lake Windermere, Lake District Cumbria UK
Camera: Nikon D90, Lens: Sigma 10 – 20mm, Time: 10.05, Date: 12th December 2009, Format: JPEG, ISO: 200, Exposure: 1/5 seconds, F Stop:14.0, Metering: Matrix, Aperture Priority, Tripod

Again I keep it simple, the following settings are typical but variable to different conditions

1. RAW format
2. Aperture Priority: F11 to F22 (Variable)
3. ISO : 200
4. Focus : Auto Focus
5. Metering : Matrix
6. White Balance: Auto

A. Converting to jpeg – If you are not using RAW format for shooting, start now. It is a bit daunting at first, but persevere and you will be rewarded with richer, more colorful images that you have more control over in the processing stage. Try a few different RAW converters until you find one that suits you. You can normally get free trials from the various software producers.

My preference for a RAW converter is Adobe Lightroom, and it is here that I will carry out basic processing and often process the same image 2 to 3 times with different levels of light and color to blend in Photoshop afterwards.

B. Long exposures: This is a great technique for waterfalls, rivers, and oceans. They create a smoothing effect of the water (see “one fell over”) It is vital to remember to use a tripod, cable release or timer mechanism as the slightest movement of the camera will result in a blurred photograph. This is true of all photographs, but particularly long exposures.

I chose “One fell Over” as an example for a few reasons. To start with, it shows the smoothing effect on water of the long exposure, it was one of my first long exposures that I was pleased with. It was taken with a relatively inexpensive camera and lens (Nikon D40 with 18-55mm kit lens) and it shows the “landscape within a landscape” referred to in section 6.

The settings:Time / Date December 2008 5.50pm, Aperture Priority, Center Weighted Metering, 13 Seconds, F25, Tripod, Cable release

C. Bracketing and multi exposures

Without going into too much detail, the general idea of bracketing your shots is so that all detail can be captured from highlights and shadows that can then be blended in a software program to create a HDR image (explained later in section 9) or manually blended in photoshop.

One common fault when trying to capture a sunset for instance, is blowing the highlights in the sky. The way to avoid this is to mount you camera on a tripod, leaving it free to swivel up and down on the mechanism. Then meter for the sky by holding the metering button on your camera whilst pointing it at the desired average bright part of the sky. Then still holding the meter button down, lower the camera on its tripod, re-compose your shot and press the shutter release button, without moving the camera from that position. Then tighten the tripod levers and take the shot again but without holding the metering button this time. This should result in you having two identical shots, one with the sky exposed correctly and one showing details of the foreground.

It’s a bit tricky holding down buttons and swiveling the camera in the up an down arc motion at first, but definitely worth practicing.

Scale is something worth considering when taking landscape shots. Tt’s not always vital, but there are times when I look at some shots and wonder just how vast the landscape is, as there is nothing within the image that is recognizable to give the image scale.

Consider including, people, tractors, sheep, horses, boats, etc and for foreground scale consider Shells, starfish, flowers. These are just a few examples of the hundreds of things that will add scale and interest to an image. (See “Fishing Therapy”)

A thing to remember about HDR is that not everything looks good as a HDR image, it is easy to get carried away with HDR and bracket every shot you take; but in my experience, this inevitably ends up clogging up your hard drive with hundreds of images that you will never use. So think about what you want to achieve before you start.

There are whole books written on this subject, and it is worth mentioning that if HDR is something you want to pursue seriously, then I recommend reading a book such as “Complete Guide To High Dynamic Range Photography” by Ferrell McCollough. Again I’ll try to keep this infinitely complex subject as simple as possible.

There are a number of ways to produce a HDR image, the most common way is to bracket anything from 3 to 9 exposures, then blend them in a dedicated program such as Photomatix Pro, although some people prefer to use photoshop.

I generally use 5 exposures, 1 EV stop apart. Alternatively, you can use 3 exposures 2 EV stops apart both these settings will cover a 10 EV range and should be sufficient for most scenes.

Things to remember when bracketing images: use a tripod, and use a cable release if possible, (the slightest movement will result in poor results), check your histogram and your LCD monitor for each exposure to make sure the complete range of light levels have been covered. If they haven’t, take another image at + or – the EV level already taken. For example, using 3 exposures at 2 EV spacing as an example, if the most underexposed shot, – 2 EV, still has blown highlights then take another exposure at – 3 EV. Similarly at the other end of the scale, if the most overexposed image, + 2 EV, does not reveal all the shadow details than take another exposure at + 3 EV.

It is a lot simpler using a camera such as a Nikon D700 that will automatically bracket up to 9 exposures, but as described above this can be achieved manually also.

Once you have combined the images in Photomatix, then the fun can begin in the “Tone Mapping” or editing section of the program. There are pre-set options to choose from, but my advise is to experiment, try to find similar subject comparisons on-line and check the settings used if possible. Or refer to a book like the one described above. After you have finished editing, you will be left with a fairly bland looking image, I have seen people leave them at this stage as finished products, but they generally look rather flat and need processing in photoshop to bring out all the detail.

Location: Lyn Dinas, North Wales UK
Settings: Camera – Nikon D700, Lens – Nikkor 50mm f1.4G, Tripod, Aperture F14, 0.63 sec, 5 bracketed images 1 EV stop apart, Photomatix Pro 3 HDR software

After Tone Mapping in photomatix, you will need to complete the process in photoshop to get the best of the HDR effect. At this stage, I will make sure the image is straight and do any necessary cropping. I would also check for blemishes, flys, and anything else that requires cloning out of the image and make the necessary adjustments on a new layer.

Then I will create a layer and from the toolbar choose “Image-Adjustments- Brightness/Contrast” and use the contrast slider to give the image richness and depth. It is worth noting that when you do this, the image can become oversaturated and you will need to flatten the image choosing “Layer/ flatten Image.” Then you will have to make another layer and choose “Image- adjustment-Hue/Saturation” and use the Saturation slider very slowly move it to the left to adjust the level of color saturation until you are satisfied it looks to your liking.

After every adjustment, it is important to flatten the image and make a new layer. Most of my highlights and shadows are 85% dealt with in Lightroom, but further adjustments can be made by choosing “Image-Adjustments-Levels.” Use the sliders to make the image lighter / darker, but before flattening the image this time, use the eraser tool to erase chosen parts of the image that you want retaining to all or part of it’s original light levels.

For example you may have an image with a bright sky and an adequately exposed foreground. To make the sky darker, you would use the levels slider as described above. To make the whole image darker, you would then use the eraser tool to erase the darkening process in the foreground and so achieve a well balanced lighting for your image. Flatten the image once you are happy and create another layer and choose “Filters” from the toolbar. Then choose “Sharpen and Unsharp Mask” from the submenu; and after clicking on unsharp Mask you will see 3 sliders, the following settings are generally what I use but are intended just a guideline.

1. AMOUNT:133 – 149
2. RADIUS:1.5 – 1.9
3. THRESHOLD:1 – 2

Images will vary to some degree depending on what equipment has been used, but the above settings generally work for me.

You should now be looking at a sharp, well-defined image with no unsightly smudges or marks. Save the image in a new name, so that if you decide that you want to start again, you will still have the original and won’t have to use the HDR process or a RAW converter over again (although it is important to keep the original Raw File too).

Ok so you’re a happy bunny. You have saved your image, what next I hear you say? Just one more thing I advise, before you send it for printing, or enter it in a competition, or do anything else with it, leave it for 24 hours. The reason why is, you have now been working on this image for some time. Your eyes and your mind have been focused intently on what you have been doing and so can become somewhat oblivious to things, like the amount of saturation for instance.

So step away from your PC, and sleep on it. I have worked on images in the past, and when re-visited the next day, they have looked what I can only describe as hideous. Looking at your creation with fresh eyes will make you your own best critic, and you can then make any final adjustments in confidence.

The last thing I will mention is the enjoyment factor. I can’t think of anything more satisfying than when someone tells you they enjoyed looking at your image, and that goes for anyone, whether it be member of your family or another photographer that you respect. Get some feedback and remember don’t be scared to have a go, don’t be scared to ask advice, (I do that all the time) and enjoy the buzz and the adventure.

People wishing to view further images of Alf Bailey should visit his web site on www.alfbaileyphotography.co.uk or contact Alf by email at alfishy1@aol.com

Related posts:

1. Techniques – Concert Photography Tips
2. 10 Overlooked Engagement Photography Tips
3. Technique – Timelapse & Wedding Photography

Here’s the official information:

“Milpitas, Calif., June 8, 2010 – SanDisk Corporation (NASDAQ: SNDK), the global leader in flash memory cards, today announced that it will launch a professional photography contest on the SanDisk Extreme Team Facebook page starting June 8. Participants will be able to submit photos in four different categories – Nature, Wedding/Events, Action and Fashion. The Facebook community of SanDisk Extreme Team Facebook fans can vote for their favorite photos, and a SanDisk panel of professional photographers from the SanDisk Extreme Team will review the quarterfinalists and select the contest winners.

The grand prize winner will be offered a one year spot on the SanDisk Extreme Team and the grand prize winning photo will be exhibited in the “Winner’s Circle” gallery showing during the PhotoPlus Expo in New York City. The four finalists, the winners of each category, will each receive a $1,000 cash prize and their photos will be featured in the online Winner’s Circle gallery. Eight runners-up will receive $250 worth of SanDisk imaging cards and their photos will be featured in the online Winner’s Circle gallery.

Who: Anyone eligible can enter, but the contest is recommended for professional photographers. Simply complete an official entry form and submit a photograph to the SanDisk Extreme Team Facebook page. See Official Rules for eligibility restrictions and entry details.

When: The contest begins June 8 with a submission deadline of July 31 at 11:30 p.m. PT. SanDisk Extreme Team Facebook Fan users can vote for their favorite photos from August 1 through August 31. The ten most popular submissions in each of the four categories will proceed to the final round of the competition where a panel of professional photographers from SanDisk’s Extreme Team will pick the finalists and then select the winners for each category as well as the grand prize contest winner. The winners will be announced on or around October 31 and the grand prize winner’s photo will be showcased at the Winner’s Circle gallery showing during PhotoPlus Expo in October.

Where: SanDisk Extreme Team Facebook page.

About SanDisk SanDisk Corporation is the global leader in flash memory cards, from research, manufacturing and product design to consumer branding and retail distribution. SanDisk’s product portfolio includes flash memory cards for mobile phones, digital cameras and camcorders; digital audio/video players; USB flash drives for consumers and the enterprise; embedded memory for mobile devices; and solid state drives for computers. SanDisk is a Silicon Valley-based S&P 500 company, with more than half its sales outside the United States.”

Related posts:

1. Business – The Top Photography Contests and Competitions
2. Wallpaper Stories – “The Professional Buddhist Monk”
3. Diary of a Landscape Photographer | Part 2

WordPress is our recommended blogging platform for a variety of reasons, one of which is its extensive library of 3rd party plugins. These plugins make life easier for us bloggers, with functionality ranging from aesthetics to SEO. You can link to your Twitter and Facebook accounts, include “sexy bookmarks,” flash headers, and add other great, useful, and good looking features to your site.

However, the problems with any extensive library are saturation and convolution. For example, there are 18 Twitter-related plugins, 19 Facebook plugins, and dozens of SEO-related plugins. So this article is intended to serve as a guide through the jungle. A few of these, such as Akismet, All in one SEO, and Broken Links Checker are considered must-haves, while others like Gravity Forms, Flash Fader, and Facebook Like Button should be used when appropriate. If you feel that I’ve left out some important ones, feel free to comment with recommendations in the comment section of this article.

The Akismet WordPress plugin ships with WordPress 2.0 and later by default, but make sure you activate it and input your API Key. If you’re tired of all of that comment and trackback spam, Automattic Kismet (Akismet for short), is your no-brainer solution. If, for some reason, you don’t have the plugin, you can download it here

This plugin is another must-have for anyone running a WordPress blog. You can download it here and check out its extensive full list of features. The most notable features are 1) Automatic optimization titles for search engines, 2) automatic generation of META tags, and 3) inclusion/exclusion of categories, archives and other pages to avoid duplicate content.

Broken Links, links that lead to an error or unavailable content, hurt you in two ways. First off, they reflect poorly on the content of your site, as it makes the information you present seem outdated and/or inaccurate. Secondly, it hurts your SEO, as you get dinged by search engines for every broken link on your site. The hard part about managing broken links is that the process of the link becoming broken is not controlled by you. If the webmaster or the site owner decides to change the URL or remove a page, a broken link is generated. With Broken Links Checker, you can avoid these problems, as it warns you in the dashboard of your WordPress site when your site contains a broken link.

There are dozens of Facebook and Twitter plugins, but Status Updater is my favorite. As of the time of this article, it’s the only one I found that allows you to automatically publish directly to a Facebook Fan Page. Others allow you to publish to your own status, but I prefer to only update those who have joined our fan page and not all of my Facebook friends. In addition to your Facebook status and your Facebook Page, you can include your Twitter account and (for those of you who still happen to use it) your Myspace profile as well.

The Facebook Like Button is a great way to increase awareness of your site. See the Facebook like buttons at the beginning and end of this article for an example. When your reader clicks the “like” button in your article, it appears in their Facebook profile. Talk about an easy way to advertise! This plugin gives you the option to include the button at the beginning of the article, the end of the article, both, or by an article by article basis.

This is actually a paid plugin, but Gravity Forms provides a look and feel that the other free form plugins just won’t provide. If you have any kind of form on your site, whether it be a contact form, an album order form, or any other form, Gravity Forms will give it sleek functionality and aesthetics. With conditional fields (fields that appear only when a certain other value in the form is selected) and validation (functionality that does not allow the form to be submitted unless certain forms are filled out correctly) these forms are worth the small price.

Create a Flash slideshow with Flashfader. There are drawbacks to this plugin, specifically the relative difficulty (in comparison with other WordPress plugins) to set up, but once you have it up and running, it creates a reliable, good-looking slideshow for your header, sidebar, or any other location on your site.

Image Searches can lead to a lot of traffic for your site, but in order for Google to find your images, they need to be optimized. The difficulty is the time it takes to create titles and alt tags for all of your images. With the help of SEO Friends Images you don’t have to spend hours on each post making sure each image is optimized. The plugin automatically creates titles and alt tags for your images. Now all you need to do is make sure you’re naming your images right and surrounding it with relevant, contextual content.

XML Sitemap Generator helps search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo index your blog and makes it easier for the crawlers to see and retrieve the complete structure of your site. I know we’ve beaten the topic of SEO to death in this article, but this one is just as important as the others in this article for getting you more readers and more clients.

If you started using WordPress out of the box, like most of us, you didn’t pay any attention to permalinks. If so, your URL’s look something like this http://example.com/?p=N. Even WordPress calls this “ugly” in their article on using permalinks. The problem is that if you change your permalink structure, you not only create broken links for anyone who has linked to your article, but you also lose all of your SEO page rank for that post. With Permalinks Migration, you automatically generate 301 Redirects that redirect the old URLs to the new URLs and also preserves their page rank.

Related posts:

1. SLR Lounge Photography WordPress Blog Theme
2. Free Photography WordPress Themes
3. Installation of Your SLR Lounge Photography Theme

The following video is a must watch for any photographer, mostly for its comedic value. It’s sad and hilarious all at the same time. On one side, you have a “professional” with a Canon Rebel stock kit and a terrible attitude; and other other other side you have a sad bride who was somehow tricked into hiring her. The curve ball in the scenario is Judge Joe Brown’s knowledge of photography. A good portion of the video is Judge Joe grilling her about her F-stops, equipment, use of natural light, and other photography topics. At one point in the video, Judge Joe asks her about the speed her 70-300mm lens; and the photographer has no idea what he is talking about.

I wonder how a regular, non-television, photography-ignorant judge would have handled the exact same case. I also wonder how he would have ruled if the defendant wasn’t so crabby. Any thoughts SLR Lounge community?

Related posts:

1. Business – A Day in the Life of a Wedding Photographer
2. Business – Wedding Photographer Expectations
3. 5 Inspirational Wedding Photographer Blogs to Follow

Whether or not this should be the primary style of any wedding photographer is a topic of another conversation, as many (including myself) believe that the best results come from a nice balance of multiples styles of photography. However, in this article, I want to focus solely on improving photojournalism skills by following 8 tips.

1) Redefine Photojournalism – The first thing we have to do is redefine our notions of photojournalism. We have to go beyond capturing the entire story and focus on certain parts of the story. For example, the bride may be stressed for any number of reasons, but she won’t want to see that emotion reflected in her pictures. Also, pictures of expressionless people chewing on food or two guys having an deep, serious conversation about work might tell the story; but it’s not the story our clients are going to want to see. If the picture has no emotion, or it has a negative emotion, it’s probably not worth taking, even if it tells part of the story.

2) Find a Foreground (when available) – We want each image to tell a full story; and for that we need to see, not only the emotion of subject(s), but also the person or object that is bringing out the emotion. Whatever is bringing out that emotion is usually going to be in the foreground of our images, so sometimes we have to find the perfect crop and composition in order to include the whole story. As you look at the following examples, imagine the same image cropped in, without the foreground. They leave the viewer asking questions like, “what is she laughing at?” or “Why is she crying?”

3) Listen and Anticipate – Stand close to your potential subjects and listen in on their conversations. If it seems like it’s going to lead to a smile or a laugh, be ready, as most people smile right after they finish a sentence. Also, it’s tempting to laugh at a funny moment and laugh all you want behind the lens. Just make sure you’re getting everyone else’s reactions as well. This may take a lot of poise, as it’s easy to shy away and act guilty if someone catches you pointing a camera at them or eavesdropping. It’s important to maintain your composure, stay in position and have your camera ready to fire at any moment.

5) Be in the Right Position – As we listen to the sounds of any wedding, every laugh we hear is a missed opportunity for a nice candid image. Being in the right position at the right time is important for getting the most and best possible candid images. Walk around the group of people talking, climb on chairs, and do whatever it takes to find that position. For example, if we see our bride approaching a guest for the first time on her wedding day, we’ll probably want to be directly behind her so we can get the expressions on the face of the person hugging our bride.

4) Use the Right Lens – This is probably the most obvious tip, but it’s worth mentioning for those who are still hesitating to pick up that expensive zoom lens. Almost all people freeze up or act differently when they know a camera is pointed at them, so most candids are going to be shot with higher zoom lenses, such as the 70-200mm lens.

6) Use the Right Lighting – For most of your images, make sure you’re using a nice diffused and matched light source, and consider using natural light. An image looses a part of its story telling power when the lighting looks artificial for any reason, whether it be mixed lighting or harsh flash lighting. If your flash and the background vary widely in temperature, your subjects can seem removed from their environment. Similarly, if you’re using direct, harsh lighting, your subjects might look like a deer caught in the headlights. Basically, the more natural you can make the lighting look, the more natural the image will look, and the more effective your image will be for telling the story of that particular moment in time.

7) Use Creative Lighting – This next point, using creative lighting, is going to seemingly contradict the first point. It’s true that we want most of our candid images to look natural, with matched, diffused, and soft lighting; but every once in a while, we should spice things up a bit. Just because we’re capturing a real moment, doesn’t mean we can’t add interest and style to the image by utilizing our lighting skills. You’ll have to pick and choose the right moments to use your creative lighting techniques based on your style and preference, but for certain expressions and moments, this can vastly improve your overall photography.

8) Know Your Moments – Knowing what to look for at the right moment is important to producing great wedding photojournalism. For example, there’s a lot to focus on during the wedding ceremony, but out of the corner of your eye, keep an eye out for tears from the bridesmaids and the parents of the bride. During the father/daughter dance, make sure you’re focusing, not only on the subjects dancing, but also the emotions of the mother and the groom in the crowd. During bride preparation, watch for the reactions of the bride’s mother and the bridesmaids upon seeing the bride for the first time. The list goes on and on with a different focus for each scene; but remember that these transient moments are easy to miss if you’re not keeping an eye out for them.

It’s easy to throw around the phrase “wedding photojournalist.” As a sort of catch-phrase these days, it’s almost impossible to find a bride who doesn’t want wedding photojournalism incorporated in at least part of their wedding photography. I think it’s important that before we call ourselves photojournalists, we develop our skills for capturing these story-telling moments and deliver a product that qualifies as the term we are classifying our styles as. I hope this article has helped; and feel free to leave your thoughts and/or additional tips in the comments below.

Related posts:

1. Techniques – Concert Photography Tips
2. 10 Tips for Stunning Landscape Photography
3. 10 Overlooked Engagement Photography Tips

The program has its pros and cons. Before reading on, it’s important to note that the slideshow program is only available to Pictage members (for free). If you’re considering using Pictage as your printers, image backup solution, album maker, and/or credit card processing service, this may give you additional incentive to take the leap. Pictage itself isn’t without many flaws, including high print costs and high membership fees. However, that’s another topic entirely. For this article, I’m going to focus on their slideshow program.

To briefly summarize, the slideshow program is good if you’re not a perfectionist. If you’re looking to get a quick slideshow up online, I can’t think of a faster way to do it (if your images are already uploaded on Pictage). However, it lacks customization, the most important of which is the music selection. But let’s get into the details of the pros and cons.

1) Simple and Fast – My goodness this program is easy to use. Find your event, select the folder with your images, select you song (from their list of royalty free music), and publish. From there you can email the client to view it and/or grab the embed code in various sizes to include in your blog. You can literally do this in 5 minutes.

2) Direct marketing to the event – The slideshows include a link to your Pictage event. As your clients spread the word of the slideshow, more and more people will see and buy your photographs.

3) Easy Embedding – I know this is mentioned in the first point, but it’s worth mentioning again. You don’t have to upload anything via FTP programs, nor do you have to customize the code. You literally copy and paste and your slideshow is ready to view on your photography blog.

4) Good looking – You’ll see from the example slideshow created that the slideshow looks good, with sleek button controls, good (not great image quality) and a good overall appearance.

5) Quick loading – The image sizes are reduced enough to ensure quick load times for your slideshow.

1) No Music Selection - This is by far the biggest flaw of this slideshow program. You can only select from their list of royalty free music. Some of them are low quality recordings, while others are just plain bad. I think I only found a handful that I would consider using.

2) Effect Options – The program doesn’t come with any effects besides a choppy zoom/pan and a fade. However, the fade is a good, clean option. If you’re the type that likes to control the movement of every slide, you’ll quickly realize the limitations of this software.

3) No Custom Timing – The Pictage slideshow program doesn’t allow custom timing, a big drawback for those of you who like to create dramatic, animated, and other interesting effects involving the timing of the images.

4) Difficult to Add and Subtract Images – To add additional images to your show, you have to go into the folder where the slideshow is pulling the images and add the images to that folder. The additional images are then added to the end of your show; and you then have to go and sort each image manually. with less than perfect planning, this can become a time consuming process.

For an idea of what I’m talking about, I put together a quick example. This took me a total of 15 minutes to select the images, select the song and input into this article.

In the end, most photographers put a high level of care into the optimal presentation of their images; and for these consumers, the software falls short. The best solution we’ve found so far is Showit Fast, a software I reviewed previously in this article here). However, Pictage’s Slideshow program is also a good program and offers some good functionality; and in the end, it’s still better to use this slideshow program than no slideshow software at all.

Related posts:

1. Showit Web (Showit Fast) Review and Tutorial
2. Photography News: Pictage Acquires Shootq
3. Business – Online Printing & Proofing (Pictage, Zenfolio, SmugMug, & more…)

SLR Lounge used to be hosted on Go Daddy, but after hours lost dealing with various issues, from injected malware to slow loading times and beyond, we decided to transfer SLR Lounge to Bluehost. If you’re not convinced, we compare them side by side in this SLR Lounge article. We had been happily using Bluehost for various websites; but we never got around to using it for SLR Lounge until a few recent experiences pushed us over the top.

Some of you may feel as married to your hosting as you are to your Camera brand, as the transfer process can seem daunting and time-consuming. However, switching your hosting (from Go Daddy or any other hosting service) to Bluehost can be as quick as a couple of hours, depending on the size of your database and the number of files; and you can do so with little to no downtime for your site.

The following methods is based on my experience with transferring 3 different sites from Go Daddy to Bluehost. There are a variety of ways to achieve the same result; and there may be unique situations that I have not encountered. However, the following steps should work, or at least give you a good reference, for transferring your site.

So let’s get right into how we can transfer, switch, migrate (or whatever else you want to call it) your hosting to Bluehost.

If you’re using a WordPress site, you can either follow the steps (1 through 8) in the second portion of this tutorial (and migrate your entire site, it’s databases and all of it’s content); or you can go another route that I’ll call the “Alternate Route”.

This method does not involve transferring your existing databases; but instead, it only transfers all of your content. Imagine moving into a new home (as opposed to moving your entire house). The negative aspect of this method is that you have to reinstall all of your plug-ins, set all of your permalink preferences again, and make a plethora of adjustments to get your site to exactly match it’s previous state. The time and effort this method takes depends greatly on how much you strayed from the default WordPress settings, how many plug ins you’re utilizing, and how close you want your site to match the previous version.

The trade off is that this method is a bit more straight forward than the one outlined below; and may be easier if you’re not used to working with MySQL, PHPMyAdmin, and FTP Programs.

Here are the steps if you want to use this method.

a) Get a Bluehost hosting account ( Click Here)
b) Assign the domain to your Bluehost account (see step 7 below for instructions)
c) Installing WordPress (see this SLR Lounge Article for instructions)
d) Export Content from Old Blog and Import Content to New blog. (See This Tutorial).

However, if you want to transfer the entire contents of your site, whether it be running WordPress, another CMS, or any other content you can also follow the rest of the steps in this tutorial. Imagine moving your entire home with the entire structure in tact (as opposed to moving into a new house).

a) For Go Daddy, make your way to your “Hosting Control Center”
b) Click “Manage Account” > Click “Databases” > Click “Mysql” (as shown below)

c) Click “Manage via MyphpAdmin” and Log in
d) Click on your database (on the left side)
e) Click the “Export” tab. You should see the following:

f) Check the first 4 boxes in “Structure” and the “save as file” box
g) Enter a name you’ll be able to identify into “save name template,” and click “Go.”

a) Use an FTP Program to connect to your site (If you don’t have a free FTP program, see step 6 in this tutorial).
b) Create a folder on your desktop and transfer all of the files from your site into that folder you created.

a) First off, create a Bluehost account create (by clicking here) or Sign into your existingBluehost Account.
b) Click “Mysql databases”
c) Enter the name of your database in the “create new database” field
d) “Add new user” if you would like (or if you don’t have any users) making sure the user has full privileges
e) Under the “Add User to Database” section, match up the User with the database you just created.

In the example of a WordPress site, you’ll go into your wp-config file and change the database name, username, password, and host. Your username and password will be the one set up in the previous step. If you’re not using WordPress, find the file that contains all of your database information.

Using your FTP program, create a folder for your site in the root directory and upload your files from the folder you created in step 2.

a) From your Bluehost C Panel, go to Myphpadmin

b) Click on the database you created in step 3
c) Click import and browse for the file you exported in step 1.

1) Follow the instructions in this tutorial Your directory will be the FTP folder you created in step 5.

Note: For Godaddy, the Authorization (EPP) Code is in the domain manager. (See below)

If everything went well, your site should be transferred. If you see an “error connecting to the database”, your wp-config file has some incorrect information. Double check the fields and re upload using the FTP.

Related posts:

1. Install WordPress with Blue Host
2. What is the best hosting service for photographers?
3. Install WordPress with Godaddy Hosting Services

There are many voices in my life. Some of these voices come from people in my life, however, I find that the majority of voices in my life come from either something inanimate or from within myself. One of the stronger voices in my life, whom I call “Jimbo,” is the internal voice that is constantly demanding that I be more efficient and productive with my time. He is the voice that makes me drive at odd hours of the day just to avoid the hell that we Los Angeleans call “traffic.” He insists that I work deep into the night, and wake up early just to get a few extra hours of work in each day. Not to mention that he is the reason I am currently in Palos Verdes at 7:30pm.

After finishing up a client meeting in Palos Verdes at around 5pm one summer evening, Jimbo convinced me that I could get a couple extra hours of work in while traffic died down. Agreeing with that sentiment, I found a nice little spot overlooking the Pacific Ocean on Palos Verdes Drive, pulled out my laptop and started hammering away at the keyboard. 7:30pm Rolled around and Jimbo politely let me know that most of the traffic would be gone by now, so it was time to head home. Besides, he added, you can be much more productive at home in front of your desktop.

So, I tucked away my laptop, turned on my GPS and began leisurely driving my way back home. While weaving and winding my way South on Palos Verdes Drive, another voice which took the form of a robotic European female, (yes, I chose the European female accent on my TomTom because it is slightly more pleasing to listen to) my GPS whom I call Holly, requested that I “turn left onto South Western Avenue.” However, unlike my typical lemming-like obedience to Jimbo and Holly, today I decided to defy both of their confident and borderline overbearing guidance and make a U-turn.

You see, while driving I saw something that Jimbo and Holly couldn’t. I saw this amazing cloud formation gathering over the horizon. Being that sunset was only about thirty minutes away, I thought that it might be an appropriate time to stop to enjoy a sunset. Shortly after realizing my “error” Holly began furiously spouting commands, “turn right, make a u-turn, stop idiot!” Ok, maybe the last one was a bit of an exaggeration, but seriously, Holly is not a polite person and I would say she is borderline domineering. It would be nice to hear a please, or thank you from her on occasion. Holly’s final sentence, “make a u-turn whe…” was cut short as I proudly turned her off.

One voice down and one to go. As I was driving back up Palos Verdes Drive, Jimbo began his rational plea for why I should be on my way home. Jimbo started his argument by reminding me just how much work I had sitting on my plate and that it was irresponsible of me to not be taking care of it. His argument was quickly refuted though as I realized there was nothing that couldn’t wait an hour or even a day. His second argument was a bit more wily, “If you want to relax, why not go play some games, or catch a movie? Sunsets happen every day, they are nothing special.” His argument seemed rational, but then how often am I up on the cliffs of Palos Verdes just before what I think is going to be an amazing sunset? In my mind I turned Jimbo off in the same manner as his infernal robotic European female companion and then thought to myself, why not go one step further and turn off my phone as well.

The car was silent, my mind was silent and I had disappeared from the world. As I pulled into a little park just off of Palos Verdes Drive, I grabbed my camera and tripod and walked out to the cliff line. I setup my camera, and over the next 20 minutes witnessed one of the most amazing sunsets I have ever seen.The clouds swirled and took control of the sky, but left an unobstructed window of space on the horizon for the sun to put on his show. In silence, I observed this awe-inspiring event as I took a personal inventory of myself, my life and my spiritual beliefs.

It was at this time that I thought to myself, this last 20 minutes was one of the most poignant moments in my life and it almost never happened. Voices in our life give us guidance, assistance and help us stay motivated and productive. However, if left unchecked these voices can strangle the pleasure out of our lives. We are constantly living in the future thinking about what needs to be done, how we achieve our goals, where we want to be in 5 years, and how great life will be once we get there. You could say that this is normal since we are humans and as humans dreaming is in our nature. However, are we dreaming so much that we have forgotten and completely overlooked the beauty, enjoyment and blessings of the present?

Enjoy the image, you can click here to download the full 1920×1200 sized wallpaper.

Written by,

Pye Jirsa of Lin and Jirsa Wedding Photography, Los Angeles and Orange County Wedding Photographers. Also, authors of Lin and Jirsa Blog

Related posts:

1. Wallpaper Stories – “The Professional Buddhist Monk”
2. Diary of a Landscape Photographer | Part 1
3. Business – Presenting LESS Not More

In the sea of photography information and tutorials, there is a lot of incomplete, incorrect, or outdated information. I’ve narrowed it down to three well written and accurate resources.

1) DPS – Introduction to Shutter Speed in Digital Photography – This is a great introduction to the concepts of shutter speed, with image examples and non-technical vocabulary, a great starting point for any beginner

2) Phototuts – An Introduction to Mastering Slow Shutter Speeds – This tutorial introduces tripods, camera shake, motion blur, panning and other basic to intermediate concepts. The vocabulary is still non-technical and there are plenty of visual examples.

3) Wikipedia – Shutter Speed Wikipedia is a great place to find photography terms and definitions. However, its lack of visual examples and propensity to contain too many technical terms makes it a good resource to explore after more basic, colloquial tutorials, such as the ones I mentioned above.

After gaining a strong understanding of the basics, you might want to move on to exploring some of the intermediate to advanced techniques, such as the ones mentioned in the tutorials below. Now that you understand the basics of shutter speed, getting images like the ones you see in these tutorials should start to become less foreign.

4) PhotoTuts – Capture the Perfect Panning Shot – This tutorial provides great tips, tricks, and techniques for getting good panning shots using slower shutter speeds.

5) SLR Lounge – Getting Glassy Water – With a good tripod and perhaps a ND filter, head out to the pier and experiment with getting the glassy water effect with slow shutter speeds.

6) SLR Lounge – The Dance Floor Camera Spin – This is more of a shutter speed and a flash tutorial, but with your sound understanding of shutter speeds, you should be able to pick up this technique fairly quickly with some experimentation.

After you’ve explored these concepts, it’s time to get your inspiration. These last few don’t go into the details of getting each shot, but from the information you’ve picked up from the tutorials above, you should be able to dissect the setup and shutter speed settings of each image.

7) DPS – Long Exposure Photography – One of the main take-aways from this article should be a realization that not all long exposure shots involve spinning lights or other lavish tricks. Look at some of the landscape images in this tutorial and notice the almost-hdr-like effect a long exposure can create.

8) Pxleyes – 50 Beautiful Long Exposure Photos – Here are more examples of beautiful images involving all of the techniques you’ve learned about in the tutorials above, from smoothing out water to capturing trails of light.

9) Smashing Magazine – 50 examples of Freeze Photography – Not all amazing photography involving advanced shutter speed techniques is from slow shutter speeds. This article shows what you can do if you speed up your shutters and completely freeze your subject.

10) Smashing Magazine – 45 Motion Blur Photos – More inspiration! These have a bit more focus of motion blur, but you’ll see all of the concepts we’ve talked about in these images. A good way to wrap everything up.

We hope you’ve learned a few things here and there from this article. If you have any other good resources that you’d like to share, feel free to comment below!

Related posts:

1. Technique – Basics of Shutter Speed, Aperture, and ISO
2. Technique – Shutter Speed Guideline “the Reciprocal Rule”
3. Submit Articles and Tutorials

Before we get into the notes, I wanted to give you all a taste of the WPPI 2010 Jasmine Star experience. Being ginormous fans of Jasmine Star, it only seemed appropriate that we make it a point to attend her first ever WPPI platform lecture. At least, we hadn’t seen her prior years, so we think it was her first, perhaps she can confirm for us.

Either way, just the simple act of getting into Jasmine’s platform class felt like trying to get back stage at the first ever Lady Gaga Miley Cyrus crossroads concert. As I exited the prior platform class, I saw this line of about 600 people, and immediately the first thought that came into my head was, “this has got to be Jasmine’s line.” That thought was confirmed by another fellow line-stander and hence our 2 hour journey to get back row seats at Jasmine’s platform lecture had begun.

Two hours and 37 new friends later, we finally made it into our room and got our seats. I would use the term nosebleeds to describe the seats, but I distinctly remember having a better view of Kobe’s face than I did of Jasmine’s. Taking a look around us, our little crew of four boys (Justin Lin, Max Young, Harrison Long and myself) felt a little bit like a fish out of water given that we were completely surrounded by a sea of girls! There had to have been at least 10 girls to every guy in that room. Were I single, I think a Jasmine lecture might in fact be the holy grail of meet and greets.

Nonetheless, we were seated, and ready for the show to begin! Jasmine came out on stage, did her thing, KIR (Kept It Real… Jasmine, I feel a little weird saying that) and wowed us with her amazingly warm and personable self. Afterwards, we had a wealth of great information, and an even deeper respect and admiration for Jasmine Star. So, without further adieu, on to the notes!

Jasmine’s lecture was named “Ghetto Fabulous Marketing” or GFM for short. The whole concept behind GFM is being able to take what you got and make it work. To understand GFM and why it was relevant to Jasmine, it is important to understand her story and background.

Jasmine grew up under very humble circumstances, she even mentioned how she has stories of using food stamps and waiting in line for government cheese and such. Stories that really struck a chord with me being that I come from a very similar background being that my father, a single parent without more than a few dollars to his name, immigrated to the US to provide me a better life. So, I can definitely relate to Jasmine’s story as I stood in those same lines with my father 25 years ago.

Despite her challenging childhood, Jasmine worked hard and earned a full ride scholarship to the UCLA law program. Which mind you is no easy feat. But, it wasn’t until her mother had a relapse with cancer when she left school and had a moment to think about what she really wanted to do with her life. When she married JD, it was her wedding photographer David Jay that opened up her mind to photography. When Jasmine was considering wedding photography as a profession, JD encouraged and supported her by saying, “I would rather you fail at something you love, than succeed at something you don’t.” Forgive me Jasmine if I butchered the quote, but it is a quote that I really love.

One Canon Rebel, a basic kit lens, and just a few weddings later, we have Jasmine Star. Ok, so maybe it wasn’t that easy or quick, but you get the idea. The whole point of this story, and of GFM is to say that with a bit of hard work, it is possible to make something wonderful of nothing.

That, in a nutshell is Ghetto Fabulous Marketing. Taking what you got, whatever little it may be, and turning it into something you can look back and be proud of. Jasmine’s story resonates with so many of us in this industry because we all had to start somewhere, and usually somewhere pretty humble. So, it is inspiring to us to see someone who may have started with even less, create something so wonderful.

Note that utilizing GFM does not require significant financial investments that traditional forms of advertising would call for. Jasmine discourages against traditional advertising because its results are so unpredictable, a $9,000 magazine ad may or may not bring in revenue. I can definitely say from our own experience that GFM techniques are far more effective than traditional advertising. All of our traditional advertising techniques which we have spent over $5,000 on, while they have brought us some traffic, have never brought us a wedding.

So, as Jasmine would say “how do ya get’yo GFM on?” (it’s a bit embarrassing, but I actually would say that too) Well, Jasmine states that there are four components to GFM. Each one is detailed below and they are listed from least to most important. We have also included a little bit of our commentary for your reading pleasure, or perhaps misery… but, hopefully pleasure.

Blogging: Prior to the now popular days of Twitter and Facebook, Jasmine started out her online social networking presence by blogging. But, what makes Jasmine’s blog so unique (which is something most of you already know) is that she writes stories with each and every post. This allowed visitors to get involved in Jasmine’s shoots and personal life on a far more intimate level. Soon, visitors were returning to read the stories and not necessarily the imagery itself. The key here is to be unique and personal to allow people to get involved and invested in you as a person.

Web Slideshows: Creating a web slideshow of each and every client allowed Jasmine to turn those clients, as well as their family and friends into Jasmine cheerleaders as they would share their slideshows with everyone they knew.

Online forums and communities: Getting involved in OSP (The Open Source Photo Forum) allowed Jasmine to connect with her peers as well as learn and share techniques and thoughts with others in the industry. Today, another useful social network for photographers is Becker’s [B]School.

Build a network: As Jasmine met other peers, she created a network of close friends and allies. Most likely, those that were as driven and likely to succeed as she was. She built a relationship with these photographers and started a referral network with a select few through Google Calendar. Together, the four (including Jasmine) shared a single Google Calendar and promised to send all referrals to each other.

Vendor Promotion: Create vendor promotion and marketing collateral that promotes the vendors, not you! If you are stamping everything with your logo and studio name, then you are giving the vendor something they most likely can’t use. If vendors don’t use your collateral, then there is no opportunity to spread your name. Instead, create marketing collateral that they would be proud to show.

For example, Jasmine would create 5×7 collage prints featuring just the florist, the planner, or the venues work with their logo, and then print 50 (which only costs like $8 at Costco), box them up in nice packaging with a hand written note, and give them to each of the vendors. When starting out, most of us photographers don’t have much money, but we do have time.

Netmaking: What comes around goes around, and helping others succeed will only bring success back to you. This is a statement that our studio swears by. We provide each and every vendor we work with whatever they need to succeed. Our motto is that we are successful as those around us are successful, and it is a motto that has proved true to us over and over.

Web Technology: Ensure that your website leverages technology that can enable your clients to become organic marketers to easily spread the word. A website that is unique, and one that you can be proud of.

Differentiate and Personalize: Template websites are inexpensive and quick to get up and running which is why the vast majority of us photographers almost always start out with one. However, spend time in making sure that your site is unique. Try to find a template that is unique and personalized to you. If you can’t, then find a customizable template site to personalize it yourself. We believe in this so strongly, that we have provided a free starter blog template (with many more to come) as well as other tools and resources to our SLRLounge community which you can use to showcase your personality.

Unify: Unify your image. Make sure that your logo and branding throughout all your websites and marketing materials is consistent. For a long while, Jasmine had a blog that was much more polished than her main site. If this is the case, resolve it across the board, and once you have created a strong brand image, raise your prices. At least, that is what Jasmine did ;). After perfecting her web presence and brand image, Jasmine raised prices $1,500 across the board.

So, while her product hadn’t changed, her services and studio came with a much more professional look and feel. Thus, the perceived value of her product had increased and customers were happy to pay the higher prices. The best analogy I can think of, would be if you were to imagine putting a beautiful picture into a fantastically crappy frame. Regardless of how good the picture is, the frame will lower the perceived value of its content. Websites, marketing material, packaging, etc is no different.

Be Unique: In today’s age, with the technology becoming more and more affordable, virtually everyone is a photographer. So, again to reiterate, be unique and make sure that you are showcasing what makes you different from the person next to you.

Be Personal: Are you putting yourself out there for people to connect to you on a more personal and emotional level? Be more transparent and deliberate in sharing your life and your story. Allow people to connect to you instead of just your photography.

We hope you all were able to get some ideas and insights from these notes and commentary. Jasmine, we wish to thank you for your wonderful example, humble personality, and warm spirit. You are truly an inspiration to us all (even us boys). KOKIR!! (Keep On Keepin It Real… just in case you didn’t know… Ok, I feel a little weird again).

If you have any additional notes or commentary, please add them to the comments below!

Article by Pye Jirsa of Partner of Lin and Jirsa Los Angeles Wedding Photography

Images by Max Young of Film Foto Fusion

Related posts:

1. WPPI 2010 – Doug Gordon Flow Posing Platform Notes
2. WPPI 2010 – Jim Garner Experiential Wedding Photography Platform Notes
3. 9 Must See Speakers at WPPI 2010

Note: comments have been closed for this post. All questions and issues can be posted and resolved on the forums, found at http://www.slrlounge.com/forums

The first theme is called PhotoFeature. We designed this because we were tired of all of our great posts from a year back never getting any love, as most of of our readers stopped after the 3rd page or so. The featured slider gives your readers a chance to view your featured content.

Example: Click Here
Download: Sign Up by Clicking Here
Instructions: Click Here

If you think the featured section looks a little too busy for your taste, go with a simple flash banner instead. All the same customization ability with the addition of a flash banner instead of the featured section.

Example: Click Here
Download: Sign Up by Clicking Here
Instructions: Click Here

Still too many bells and whistles for your taste? Go with PhotoLounge, a laid-back, simple version of the two themes mentioned above. We took out the featured section and the flash header and left you with a clean, basic blog with sleek typography and easy customization.

Example: Click Here
Download: Sign Up by Clicking Here
Instructions: Click Here

We hope you enjoy!!!

Note: comments have been closed for this post. All questions and issues can be posted and resolved on the forums, found at http://www.slrlounge.com/forums

Related posts:

1. SLR Lounge Photography WordPress Blog Theme
2. Photo Flash WordPress Theme Download and Installation Instructions
3. Photo Feature WordPress Theme Download and Installation Instructions

Example: Click Here
Download: Signing Up HERE (You receive access to all 4 themes with one sign up)

1) Install WordPress. For video instructions, see this post.

2) Download the Theme by Signing Up HERE (You receive access to all 4 themes with one sign up)

3) Install Theme and begin customizing by clicking “Photo Feature by SLR Lounge Options” in the Appearance Tab

4) Customize the colors of your site using Adobe’s Kuler (Optional Resource)

5) Continue Customizing Your Blog by Continuing with the “Photo Feature by SLR Lounge Options” in the Appearance Tab

NOTE ADDED 4/12/2010: TO INSERT QUOTATION MARKS, APOSTROPHES, EXCLAMATION POINTS AND OTHER SPECIAL CHARACTERS, FOLLOW THIS RESOURCE: http://www.tedmontgomery.com/tutorial/htmlchrc.html

6) Customize The Footer

Related posts:

1. Photo Feature WordPress Theme Download and Installation Instructions
2. Photo Flash WordPress Theme Download and Installation Instructions
3. SLR Lounge Photography WordPress Blog Theme