Irvine Portrait - Irvine Photography

http://vinsanity.com/2010/04/10/photoshops-content-aware-fill-magic-for-retouchers-and-photographer-with-no-skills/

 I want this new feature….talk about time saver!    It is magic to replace unwanted items with fill that would have taken hours to do otherwise…

This article is great for describing how to get your blog content found…http://yoast.com/articles/wordpress-seo/

http://photographyline1.blogspot.com/2010/04/10-tips-to-tell-you-how-to-start.html

Think about it, the mechanics that repair our cars don’t tell us what tools that they use. The chefs in the restaurants that we patronize don’t tell us what type of pots, pans or stoves that they use. In those businesses, it is already established what customers want and how best to give it to them. In other words, other businesses do a better job of understanding their ‘niche.’ In order to start a photography business that is consistently successful and growing, we must be clear on what niche we are offering and how to sell the benefits of our niche to the customers.

One of the obvious problems with this approach is our failure to recognize how it drastically cheapens the value of what we do as skilled photographers, in the eyes of the customers. Mistakenly, we want our customers (current and potential) to know that we can photograph anything - after all, we’re very versatile photographers! What the customers actually see is that we’re not “versatile photographers,” we’re just someone with a camera that’s available to take pictures when they call us. Serious photography customers (re: those that can afford to spend regularly) want to do business with specialists - photographers that know their photography niche.

Successful wedding photographers are clear on this, as an example of my point. Their ‘primary’ customer (usually the bride) has dreamed about her wedding day for most of her life. She isn’t looking for a vesatile photographer. She wants a “wedding photographer” that can make her ‘look’ as good, happy and beautiful as she has been in all of her lifelong dreams of ‘her day’ - her wedding day. There’s a special skill to this type of photography service. In fact, this niche has more to do with well developed ‘people skills,’ in my opinion. Successful wedding photographers that are clear on these nuances are more successful in business.

Do your research.

• Inventory Your Photo Collection - Take a look at your photo collections. Determine what it is that you 1.) shoot the most; 2.) shoot consistently well; and 3.) enjoy shooting. Identify your and categorize the photos into various niches, i.e. portraits, sports, glamor, pets, children, landscape, etc.
• Research The Photography Markets - Do internet searches using the words “photography niche.” Also, use the type of niche that you think your photos fit. For example, “event photography niche,” “wedding photography niche,” etc. Also, a good source to help identify some of the photo markets is “The Photographer’s Market.” This is a book that is published annually and claims to provide photo buying contacts and information. Online searches are the most useful, in my opinion. Books by author and photographer, Dan Heller are good places to get a better understanding of the vast world of photography, without all the ‘artsy-hype,’ in my opinion. He also has a very informative website - DanHeller.com
• Identify ‘Real’ Markets - Find out what type of photography (of your specialties) your customers currently are purchasing. What type of photography is selling? At some point, you’ll have to ‘balance’ the realities of the different niches. There can be some factors that aren’t consistent across all photography niches. For example, some niches require longer “workflow” (workflow is the post production process of taking photos) periods and tasks than others. Higher quality portraits normally require photo editing - which is time-consuming. Event photography requires the processing, packaging and delivering (presenting) of photos. True story: I went through my large photo collections and found that I had a very large number of outstandingly beautiful flowers. I can’t begin to tell you my disappointment when I found out that there is ‘virtually’ no market of photos of flowers - it seems that everybody has them already, everybody! Lesson learned - identify ‘real’ markets.      More>> See the 10 Tips for how to start a photography business

Carefully setting up FCP will avoid any problems

The explosive popularity of DSLR video has lead to a dramatic rise in the use of dual-system audio techniques, where audio is recorded separately from the video in order to get better quality sound than what be achieved in the camera itself. This has led many people to experience some subtleties in the way Final Cut Pro handles audio-only clips. We’ve written about this a couple of times (here and here) but it’s a popular topic and is worth repeating the main points. You can read the blogs referenced above for the background, but for now we’ll just summarize the steps. You will particularly want to pay attention to this if you are using audio-only tracks in your projects and you switch back and forth between projects that use an NTSC frame rate and those that don’t. Do not give in to the temptation to skip any of the steps below or will probably end up with sync drift.

• Don’t mix clips with NTSC frame rates (typically 23.98, 29.97 or 59.94 fps) and non-NTSC frame rates (typically 25, 30 or 50 fps
• Before you start your project, pick an Easy Setup that matches the frame rate of your clips. If you can’t find one that matches exactly, it’s good enough to pick one with the same NTSC properities as your clips. For example, for the Canon 5D Mark II at 30.00 fps, you could pick DV - PAL (which has a frame rate of 25 fps

Note: Singular Software, founded by CEO Bruce Sharpe produces tools for HD video and sound.  The website is at http://singularsoftware.com and his blog is located http://brucesharpe.blogspot.com/.

http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/10things/?p=1400&tag=nl.e101

 From Techrepublic:

For many years, the Internet was the “final frontier,” operating largely unregulated — in part because of the jurisdictional nightmare involved in trying to enforce laws when communications crossed not just state lines but also national boundaries. That was then; this is now. Legislation that affects the use of Internet-connected computers is springing up everywhere at the local, state and federal levels. You might be violating one of them without even knowing.

In this article, we’ll take a look at some of the existing laws and some of the pending legislation that can influence how we use our computers and the Internet. Nothing in this article should be construed as legal advice; this is merely an overview of some of the legislation that’s out there, how it has been interpreted by the courts (if applicable), and possible implications for computer users.   Read 10 things…

Want to know how to create images that show details in the shadows, and does not burn out your highlights? Try HDR, a technique for merging different exposures of the same image into a well toned image.

This article by Canon can be applied to any camera really, using the software Photomatrix and Photoshop CS3 or above.

http://www.usa.canon.com/dlc/controller?act=GetArticleAct&articleID=1646

http://www.exploremodeling.com/ContactDirectory/Default.aspx

This is a great searchable directory for models and actors looking for agencies.

agencies.xls

Agency list for models and actors

Models provide agencies with Polaroids (not necessarily real polaroids, they are no longer making polaroid film) that show basic parts of a model to give an idea of his/her proportions. The photographs are very basic, no retouching, shot from an angle to give true proportions (not real wide, not shooting high/low just at center of the shot). Many beginning models don’t have these, and providing their best images is good up until the photographer or agency says “but what do you really look like”?

The “polaroids” can be done with a point/shoot camera against a plain light colored background, wearing a two piece bathing suit (if you’re a girl that is.)

http://www.jurgita.com/articles-id2058.html

http://www.asmp.org/strictlybusiness/2009/04/not-working-enough/

Wonderful video about what works, what doen’t for a photographer’s website and book.

In any economy, photographers seek those clients who are willing and able to make orders large enough to allow a photographer to spending significant time applying her talent to each picture and still make a profit large enough to live on. In a down economy, many photographers are looking for additional clients regardless of whether their clients are in the optimal market segment.

To accomplish these objectives, photographers should be ready and able to take portraits in their client’s home, or anywhere else their client’s desire.

>>more

http://www.layersmagazine.com/category/tutorials

Great stuff here for those going beyond retouching photographs….

http://www.psd2html.com

This service takes your webpage design in a photoshop file and turns it into a fully functional and standards compliant CSS, xhtml or other.   I am pretty good with photoshop and basic html, but when it comes to CSS I’m out of my league.   This looks like a great solution.

http://www.shootsmarter.com

Found this site and thought I’d share; great stuff, free too!

http://multimedia.journalism.berkeley.edu/tutorials/shooting_tips/

Introduction
Planning Your Shoot
Roll Blank Tape Before You Shoot
Check Your Audio
Shoot Selectively
Shut Up When You Shoot
Hold Your Shots
Excessive Panning and Zooming
Shoot in Sequences
Framing and Composing Your Shots
Headroom and Noseroom
Depth of Field
Change Angles and Perspectives
Get People in Your Scenes
Tripods for Steady Shots
Anticipate Action
Interviews
Sit-Down Interviews
Microphones
Avoid High Contrast in Lighting Situations
Manual Exposure
Get All the Shots You Need
Labeling Your Tapes

Fantastically, the 5d Mark II does not allow you to control iso, aperture, speed during HD video shooting.  Now this firmware update gives you this!

A colleague asked about finding some flexible clamp solution for doing macros, since even small gusts of wind move the plant beyond the intended plane (when DOF is a big deal it is key to a good flower macro.)

 So, I recommended he read this article>

Soil anchor and “plamp” for macrophotography

Introduction
In my search for useful parts for my macro flash bracket project, I also came across some plastic clamps which reminded me of what Wimberley uses for their Plamp® and McClamp uses for their Clamp® and Stick®.  Both are basically just clamps on a gooseneck, used to fasten plants (or whatever you are photographing), reflectors, or whatever you need to stay put while you are working. These products do all use the flexible Loc-line® water hose which I used for my flash bracket.  The anchor is very simple to make and if you have the parts anyway it takes you no more than 30-60 minutes depending on how fancy you want it to be.

Full story: http://www.thufa.net/jo/misc/m_anchor.htm

Also you could go to Wimberly’s http://www.tripodhead.com/products/plamp-main.cfm and get one for $36

I’ve decided to maintain a post about online photography courses; in this day and age it’s great to be able to learn more while you are comfortably able to do so, especially for those that are free of work-related bother in the evenings

http://www.betterphoto.com/home.asp << a good pay site, with some good topics
http://www.webphotoschool.com << great for beginners, and new classes added regularly