Category — Blogs About Photography

The Strobist - David Hobby

I had the great fortune to get a seat last Sunday for David Hobby’s Strobist lighting seminar in Los Angeles. [If you're a student of lighting and just said "Stro-who?", then let me be the first to welcome you to our planet. Check out the Strobist site and we'll see you back here in a couple days.]

To say that a ticket to the Stobist workshop is a hot item is an understatement. Two days x 50 seats = 100 happy photogs. 24 hours = more time than it took for both seminars to sell out. If you’re among the legions who wished they could attend a Strobist workshop, then let me ease your pain (or pour salt on your wounds) by sharing some of the highlights of the day. [Read on, I promise you'll also find links to sources of info on virtually every concept presented during the seminar.] [Read more →]

The PocketWizard blog has been up and running for six months. Funny. Somehow I missed it’s launch. [Yet another indication of how quickly the blogosphere is growing.]

If you’re a Wizard fan or just want to learn what other shooters are doing with wireless triggers (for strobes and cameras), the PW blog is worth checking out.

I have just merged one of my other blogs, Photo-Resources, into PixSylated. The original thought behind Photo-Resources was that it would be short posts on events and resources for photographers. As the lines between what should be on PixSylated and what should be on Photo-Resources have grown very blurry of late, I’ve merged all of the posts and comments into PixSylated. If you never visited Photo-Resources, you might want to cruise PixSylated’s expanded list of posts to see what’s been added. Onward!

Vincent Laforet, the energetic New York photographer who recently published an insightful treatise on the state of editorial photography (’The Cloud Is Falling’ covered here), has launched a blog. Vincent is just about to head to China to cover the Olympics for Newsweek and promises daily posts. Be sure the peruse the left column of Vincent’s blog. It’s a virtual treasure-trove of other great blogs and photographer’s sites. I’m certain that Vincent will prove himself to be as good a blogger as he is a shooter… which means that we are all in for great insights and commentary on a regular basis.

This post last updated: August 3, 2008.

Back in the middle of photography’s dark ages, during the formative years of my youth (circa 1968), listening to shortwave radio was a keen fascination. When I visited my cousin’s house, at night, we would tune in to stations from around the world on his shortwave set. We laughed as the path opened for us to discover exotic languages and music. Other than scrounging up an old receiver and some wire for an antenna, there was no cost to riding the airwaves.

Today, I think the blogosphere is at a similar state of evolution. For only the cost of access to the Internet, I can tune in to the thoughts of photographers (and other colorful thinkers) far and wide. Likewise, the cost of starting and running a blog can be minimal. Consider that WordPress, the most widely-used blog software, is a free download and that thousands of blogs, including some of the most highly-visited sites (like Strobist), are hosted for free on Blogger. [Read more →]

Like many photographers, I am a voyeur. That’s why I love to read Death To Film - the blog of Image Mechanics.

IM is the gang of superheros based in Santa Monica that’s lead by Michael Britt (the fellow who wrote the original Lightroom user’s guide for Adobe.) As digital capture specialists, these guys have to manage as many captures in a day as most non-pro shooters will create in a lifetime.

The greatest thing about the Image Mechanics crew and their blog is that they share virtually all of their secrets. Check out the latest post about their off-line archiving system. Then just start scrolling through their archives. You’ll find tale after tale about being in the trenches of high-volume digital capture. Need more? Then jump over to the IM site for another long session of good reading.

It’s great when a pro shooter will let you peak into his camera bag. It’s even better when he’ll unpack the dang thing and explain all the contents… on the web.

John Harrington is an energetic, editorial shooter based in Washington DC. I’ve read and highly recommend his book, Best Business Practices for Photographers. I heard him speak at Photoshop World in Vegas last fall and at ASMP Strictly Business 2 in Los Angeles this winter. If you get a chance to meet or listen to John, consider it a must-do.

To get a sense of the diverse environments in which John must shoot, spend some time on his portfolio site. Then think about all the gear you’d have to have to face so many different challenges.

Now click over to John’s Assignment Construct. Of particular interest are the 30+ short videos in which he unpacks and discusses the various gear kits that he takes on assignments. There’s so much to watch. Perhaps the best place to start is with John’s intro to the videos. [Read more →]

Many digital photographers believe that the era of the lens filter is ending along with the reign of film. Except for the UV filter that protects the front of their lens (hopefully), they see no need to carry an assortment of filters. “Everything can be done in Photoshop”, they say.

Spending ten minutes on the Singh-Ray Filter site will change that opinion. High-quality, photographic filters are as much a part of modern photography as they ever have been. Spending one extra minute in the field to use a filter can save significant amounts of time in post-production. It seems that the more experienced the photographer, the more this “do-it-in-the-camera-when-you-can” philosophy is embraced. [Read more →]

For a photographer, the “stock market” does not refer to Wall Street. Rather, it’s the place that photo editors, graphic designers and kids working on term papers go for images - either because they have no budget to hire a photographer or because they have no time. In the golden era, which began to crumble six or so years ago, many pro photographers made very nice incomes through stock photography. Today, the rise of the internet and microstock has eroded the foundations upon which the stock titans, like Getty and Corbis, were built. As their margins get thinner, the amount paid through to the photographer continues to evaporate. Still, for the agile and the astute, there are many opportunities in today’s stock market. So where to start learning about stock photography?

PhotoShelter’s School of Stock is a great place. Originally conceived as an online archive for photographers, PhotoShelter continues to evolve with the stock market. Last year PhotoShelter launched the Collection as an online market for photo buyers. With School of Stock, PhotoShelter continues to gain momentum as an equitable meeting point between photographers and buyers. Check out their free tutorials - especially the Buyer Survey 2008. School of Stock is a blog - so use your favorite reader to subscribe to the frequently produced updates. [Read more →]

I met Atlanta-based / editorial / music / headshot photographer Zack Arias yesterday… not face-to-face, but through the digital matchmaker, David Hobby over at Strobist. David posted a handful of blurbs - one linked to my other blog, PixSylated, and one linked to Zack’s incredible 5-part white seamless tutorial.

I’ve now spent the better part of, well let’s say, way more time than I really have cruising Zack’s websites. I was totally sucked in and tangled up (is that why it’s called the “internet”?). My conclusion, Zack is a guy that up-and-coming photographers (and open-minded, old-dogs, like me) need to study.

Zack’s story is typical of many (”will probably be recognized as great someday”) photographers. He shoots not because there’s tons of money in it (which is a becoming a universal truth). Rather, he shoots because it’s who he is. You can tell by looking at his photographs. You can tell by reading his websites. [Read more →]