This last week I started my project 365. If you didn’t know about this project, basically it is where I will be taking a picture every day for a whole year. Now I said that I would start on the 19th of June, but unfortunately I totally forgot and didn’t have a chance to make some photographs. Of course most of my photographs are related to me, mostly because well that’s what I do and where I go.

This picture was taken in our house and my son usually hates it when I try to take his photograph but I got a smile out of him. Probably because he was playing hid and seek and didn’t know that I had my camera with me.

I was walking through the McKay library here in Rexburg and I just thought that this would make a nice photograph. I think the light is what really caprtured my attention and how it created this shadow.

I know that this is a little bit of a cop-out but I was taking some bridals for my business and I just really liked this photograph. We tried a new location which is probably why I like this photograph so much.

Last week there was this crazy lighting storm and I ran out with my camera to take some pictures. I got all set up and the next thing I knew, my memory card was still in my computer back home. So I had to make the return drive (20 min) and drive to another spot that was closer. Its sad because the storm when right over head and I was hoping for something a little closer. But I really like this photograph too.

On Sunday I went out and took some pictures of our daughter. She just turned one and my wife was really itching for some new pictures of her. I love this photograph because it just screams Elena.

Now again, if you are doing this project with me, let me know. I really want to see what you are coming up with. Leave a comment and tell me your site. I will totally allow those comments to be posted so that everyone can see them.

Have you ever asked or been asked, what kind of camera do you use? What lens do you find yourself using the most? Or even, how do you get the photographs you do? I know I used to ask photographers, that I admire, those same questions. The reason why I asked them was to find out if there was some sort of equipment that made their photography so exceptional. I looked for excuses to justify their talent and then to think if I get that same equipment I will be that good.

During my time as I have scoured the blogworld I have come to the realization that a camera or lens doesn’t make the photographer. The camera, the lens, or any other equipment is just that.. equipment. It is a tool, just as a brush in a persons hand is just a brush. But once it is placed in the hands of a skilled painter, that it is when it is transformed into something much more than the tool. A camera is the same as a brush. It becomes an extension of the photographer, and only is a tool that will capture and create what the photographer sees and wants it to create.

Being a tool, however, doesn’t excuse the photographer from knowing how to use that tool and how manipulate it to make the photographs that you want to make. An artist needs to know how to use his tools to be able and create that master piece of art that he or she wanted.

For me this is something different to comprehend. Besides the education I received regarding photography, I have learned a great deal about photography from looking at other photographers blogs. If you look at their blogs and truly analyze their photography you can start to develop your own style and brand. You are also able to learn important truths about the craft and how to make better photographs.

My encouragement to you is to go out and find your favorite photographers blogs and check on them daily. Learn their photography style. Find out what makes them unique, and use everything you learn to better your own photography. One thing you might also want to try, recreate a photograph that you like of theirs. I know this may sound bad at first, but you’ll be surprised on what you learn from that experience.

The one last thing, the last post I talked about taking a new picture every day for a year. This starts on Saturday June 19th. I encourage everyone to take the opportunity to do this with me. Read the other post to find out why, but I really think that you are going to have fun with this year long assignment.

Have you ever heard of project 365? Basically this project is where you take a picture every day for an entire year. This picture can be of anything which basically shows the world through your eyes for a whole year. Many photographers have taken this challenge and even regular amateurs who want to try something new.

So you are probably thinking, why should I do this? Well some people have said that it allows you to look back on your past year, remember the people you meet, the places you visited, and the things that you have learned. This same year long album would be an amazing way to document  your accomplishments, your haircuts, and even relationships. Think of the past year, can you remember what you what you did and what you experienced? What an awesome thing you could have.

The biggest reason for me to take on this quest would be to make myself a better photographer. Think of it like this, every day you will be required to take a new and different picture. This means you will actually have to pick up your camera every day. How many of you do that? I know I don’t take a new picture every day. If you are taking a new picture every day, wouldn’t that also mean that you would get to know your camera pretty well? If you didn’t know how to use your camera, by the end of the 365 days you sure would.

Also, like most of us, we don’t really lead that great of a life. Most of us don’t go on extravagant trips, or constantly do crazy new things. Most of us spend our time in the same locations, doing the same things over and over again. When we stay in the same locations it requires one of two things. It would either require you to look at things in new ways and start getting creative with what you have. Or it will make you get out and find new photographs.

Down to business. After careful consideration I have decided to try my luck and make a new photograph once a day for an entire year. I will be post the images once a week on Friday so that everyone can see some of my crazy photographs. The official day will start on June 19th 2010 and I wont stop until June 19th 2011. I encourage all of you who want to do it with me to do so. Leave a comment, tell me where you are going to post your images, and we can keep track all together.

Lately I have been trying to think how I can improve my photography business and while I have been researching I thought that I would share somethings to those photographers who are really starting out. The one thing that I think we should have done differently was how we first priced our art and when we started charging.

When we first started out we took on a few clients and did them for free. We probably did around 20 clients for free before we started charging. This time (where we offered our services for free) was crucial to our growth as photographers. We were able to find out how to act and react with the clients. We started to find our style as photographers, and we really found out what things worked and didn’t work. Some photographers call this their portfolio building time, and most photographers are anxious to get out of this important time. I know I was anxious to be done with building our portfolio and after the few clients we decided that we could move on to bigger and better things.

What I wish I would have done is spend a little more time building my portfolio. I wish I would have started asking questions about what kind of business that I wanted to run, what I think could be the best methods. I wish I would have tried new things like programs, methods, styles, client types. I really feel that this exploratory time is underutilized by beginning photographers.

Now if you are a photographer that is still starting out, I would recommend using a portfolio building experience every so often. For example we wanted to try some new things with wedding photography but we don’t really want to try it on the actual wedding day. So, we held a casting call asking for volunteers that wanted to get some pictures taken in their wedding dresses and tuxes for free. We quickly found out, quite a few people didn’t get the photos they wanted because they hired a cheep photographer. Now they want something that can help recreate the memories of their wedding days. These clients knew that we wanted to try new things and they were excited to be a part of that. This gave us some great experience, we were able to try the new things we wanted to, and even did some great marketing for us.

If there is one thing that I hope you remember from this post it take the time to figure out what you want and use the portfolio building to its fullest.

The other day I was doing some research and found out about the golden mean anyway I thought that the information is pretty cool and can be helpful to photographers. So I made a quick little podcast and wanted to put it up here.

Are you the kind of person that takes a look at acronyms and say what in the world does that mean? Isn’t that how so many things are these day though? I think it comes from companies being to lazy to say Electro-Optical-System (EOS) Camera and then no one else understands what it means. If you didn’t catch EOS is a camera thing and there are a ton more acronyms that goes with it. These acronyms are a good thing to know and can help when using your camera or buying one. In this post I am only going to talk about lenses and some of the things that you need to know about them. So the first one on the list is EF lenses. EF stands for “Electro-Focus”: automatic focusing on EF lenses is handled by a dedicated electric motor built into the lens. Now there is something else called EF-S and the S stands for short back focus. So what does this mean for you? If you are using a half frame camera than these lenses will be a normal length instead of being closer. What this also means is if you try and use a EF-S lens on full frame camera it could ruin the lens. A full frame camera basically is a camera whose lens sensor is about the same as a 35 mm camera. The half frame cameras basically have a smaller sensor and in order to compensate the it manipulates the image to make a lens zoom in closer than what it actually is supposed to be.

The next acronym you should no about is IS, which means image stabilization. This technology helps with hand held photographs. Most people shake when they take pictures and that is exactly what the IS feature helps reduce.

Most lenses also come with an AF function now too. The AF stands for auto focus, but along with AF most lenses will come with a M setting. M stands for manual and from there it will be your choice to manually focus and auto focus the lens.

Now that we have talked about some of the features of lenses we should talk about the lens options. There are a couple of different main types of lenses and I think that a photographer needs the kind of lens that will help them in what they photograph.

The first one is a Macro lens, which is a lens used for close up photography.  The most common definition is that the image projected on the sensor or film is close to the same size as the subject. Next is a Wide Angle, and wide angle lenses are all lenses with a focal length less than 50 mm.  Like the 18mm lens and so on. A Normal lens would be a 50 mm lens but nobody really says normal anymore. Telephoto lenses are all lenses that are greater than 50 mm.  Like the 85mm which happens to be one of my favorite lenses. One lens that I don’t have but want is a nice Zoom lens. Zoom lenses have a range of field of view.  One of my professors really likes her 70-200mm but I can’t bring myself to by it. Mostly because I like sharp and crisp photographs and it is agreed that they generally aren’t as crisp as a Prime lens. Prime Lenses have a single focal length unlike a zoom lens. So the nifty-fifty (50mm,) or 85 mm are two of my favorite lenses.  Along with sharpness they are also faster than zoom lenses.

If you want to know my favorite lens, it is the 50mm f1.4 lens. I really think that you can’t bet the price, quality, and clarity of this fabulous lens. You can get this lens, new, for somewhere around $350. But my ultimate advice is to really research a lens before you buy it and even possible rent it from one of the many places online.

Not long ago being a professional photographer took a lot more effort than now days. There has been a things that has leveled the playing field allowing more people to become a photographer. Now I’m not saying that is a bad thing, mostly because I am one of those photographers that has benefited from these leveling elements. Having more photographers can help the industry in a whole but that is a topic for another blog post.

The first and greatest leveler was when digital camera really became an acceptable method of photographing. If you remember that far back, film was the way to go because really it was the only way to go. The cost of film and developing tools, combined with the time put into developing really made photography a pricey business. When things switched over it was easier to shoot hundreds of pictures without incurring the costs of film. Without this added cost more and more people who were merely interested in photography now had the means to become a more than merely interested. Along with the digitization of the camera the internet and the ability to create your own web site and showcase your photographs became easier and gave even the smallest photographer a chance to be seen.

Although technology had advanced the photographer and helped their reach grow even further, the best way for a photographer to get new clients or gigs was through word of mouth. That is really how I started when I was in California. We took some photos for a friend and they told a friend, the next thing we knew we had an appointment every Saturday for the rest of the time we were there. So what would be the last leveler, if you haven’t guessed it is social media.

Facebook is one of the best ways that any photographer could get their name and work out there. Think of it like this, if you just took pictures of a new born for a mother what is the first thing that she is going to do with the photos. If you give her only prints she would show them to everyone she sees, which may be only a handful of people. Now days most peoples friends that are on facebook are somewhere around 200 friends (or maybe that is just me and my wife.) Think of it like this, if that same mom was given some digital images that she could put up online. Instead of only reaching a hand full of people with the fabulous images, somewhere around 200 people would see them.

Facebook can be one of the best ways to gain recognition and gain new clients, but I do have to warn you on one thing. Don’t abuse the powers of Facebook. As soon as you start sending out message after message (which could really be only once a month) people will start to find that annoying and take you off their list. That is where it is your responsibility to think of new ways to create a conversation about your work that people will want to join instead of trying to force them to talk about you.

So I don’t know about you but I really don’t like spending $1000 dollars on some software and then a little while later have it surpassed by an updated version. This doesn’t only happen with software, but also hard ware as well. As a photographer I really use both and as one updates the need to update the other also comes into play. Last year I bought a MacBook only 3 weeks before Apple announced that they would be selling the same computer for a lot cheaper. Only weeks after that they announced a major revamp in the hardware of the MacBook which would then be considered a MacBook Pro. In September of 2008 Adobe came out with their CS4 line that had some pretty cool bells and whistles. A year and a half later guess what, CS5 was announced and now I am stuck with the feelings of should I get it or not. As a photographer, designer, and I don’t know how this is totally relevant a cook. I don’t know about you but I can’t afford to buy a new software every year and a half.

Like any large purchase I think that it requires some looking into before you actually buy, so that is exactly what I did. I think the first and best place to look is actually on Adobe’s site. As a photographer I really am only interested in the things that would benefit me as a photographer and that is exactly what this list is going to be. Photoshop extended CS5 does have some really cool 3d manipulation but as my experience really has shown me, there isn’t that many needs for 3d as a photographer.

The first thing that I looked into, and really had heard a lot about was the Content aware feature. This is basically where you make a selection, delete it, and then Photoshop will refill the by making a very highly educated guess and recreate the content that would have been there. How COOL is that! So you know how you can merge together images to make a nice panoramic, but usually they have some nice rounding around the edges. Well content aware will fill that in for you. Have you ever taken a shot and then realized that there were some trash or something that you just didn’t want in the photo. Content aware can get ride of those things in minutes instead of hours or even days it would have taken to do it by hand. In my opinion this feature alone makes it worth it, but it isn’t the only thing that sets CS5 apart.

The next thing that I looked into was the new selection tools that is offered. So one of my least favorite things is to cut someone out of a photograph and place them into another photograph or picture. Well Adobe now has refined the selection options and has made it so much easier. This refinement has made selecting hair and cutting it so much easier.

Finally the last two things that really influenced my decision was the fact that they have increased the HDR capabilities and also increased the camera RAW settings and abilities. I don’t know about you but camera RAW is something that I really like and constantly use.

If you haven’t guessed by now, I totally want Adobe Photoshop Extended CS5 even though CS4 only came out a year and half ago. What is most important is not to just take my word for it, but see these things in action. Here are a couple of YouTube videos that you really should look at yourself: Content Aware, Russel Brown 5 favorite things in Photoshop CS5. Also if you want some more information about all the programs in CS5  look up Terry White’s blog.

So earlier today I was reading the news like I normally do and it happened to be about two of my favorite things. I happen to be reading about soccer and social media. This particular article was commenting on the up coming world cup and how the media coverage will be different than the last cup. The world cup, that starts in 44 days 12 hours and 4 min (thank you world cup app,) is starting to adapt to the age of social media. FIFA has now started it’s own social media site called The Club and already has 1.6 million members. FIFA also announced that it will soon be creating a Twitter account that will be adding to the all ready ample amount of chatter out there. Even though this world cup will be using more social media then years past it has also made new rules for players to not tweet while in the stadiums. Countries have also created new rules for team members and updating their fan base. For example England will not be allowing its team members to post tweets or other forms of social media while the tournament is in process. What we can expect and I agree with what Robin Sloan said to CNN, “Our notion is that [the World Cup] will eclipse everything we have seen so far [on Twitter] including the U.S. election, the Oscars or the Super Bowl, simply because it is so international.” I think we will be seeing some new things coming our way.