I love this idea…

I’m always a sucker for cool ways to market products and saw this one.

I’ve got a serious wristwatch problem.  Call me the Imelda Marcos of watches.  I’m a sucker for a cool watch.

So this photo had a double whammy impression for me. Thought I’d share it.

Courtesy: http://dwerf.wordpress.com/  Photographer

Livebooks as a resource….

As I toil and writhe about the decision to go or not to go to a LiveBooks based site (this is not only a control thing, but a $ thing - sponsors welcome!) I’ve uncovered something that I did not expect as I delved deeper into their site….

I am an information junkie, a techno geek on all things photography. I’m constantly searching for new and unique ideas to push me. I’ve been following David Hobby on Strobist.com, Lightsource Podcasts on StudioLighting.net and Chase Jarvis on ChaseJarvis.com/blog…. I’m constantly inspired and re-energized by all of those who are willing to share their photographic knowledge. I’ve been into photography for a long while, and I still find lots to learn every time I check them out. I applaud all the efforts of the guys who are “…revealing what goes on in the black box of photography…”

Well as I said, I found something new on LiveBooks site…another source of inspiration. They have a good deal of information from photographers whom they’ve interviewed and featured on their site. Check out their interviews here and their sites of the week here.

I have not watched them all, or read them all, but think it’s safe to say, there’s some pretty good work going on there

Here’s a video from their site…
Enjoy

Slideshow Pro Madness….

So I’ve avoided (thus far) having a LiveBooks site. While I LOVE the presentation and clean lines that a LiveBooks site has (link to perfect example here —> Chase Jarvis and here —> Justin Francis) I’ve not been able to break down and spend the money on having one made.

I’ve been working with SlideShow Pro for some time and have had relatively good success at building a look that suits my needs and my budget…that is until now. With the latest release of SSP for LightRoom…I’ve run into a snafu, now it’s got me thinking. Do I want to save the jack and figure things out on my own as I have been, or hand it over to the folks at LiveBooks to craft me a new site? Live books, from what I hear has a sweet back end that allows for seemless re-building of your web galleries and portfolios by simply uploading your new files to their server. It re-builds your site automatically and you just sit back and watch. Something I’m thinking sounds pretty good right now.

Here goes my train of thought and the real reason for the post. There seems to come a time in most professional photgrapher’s lives where they have to give up some control, be it the finances, the phone wrangling, the styling, scouting, etc. The website for me is the current conundrum. What may seem like a simple marketing tool and fairly straightforward part of my business has given me a lot of grief lately. Making it do what I want, when I want and on my terms has not been an easy task, mainly due to Flash galleries. I had found an answer which until now did the trick (darned software updates!).

I’ve dabbled in web development for years and have built countless websites for friends, colleages, models and even my father. Until now, no problemo! But I think I’m at a breaking point. While all my senses say, HOLD ON, don’t let go, my tolerance for “re-learning” all the software updates and changes is keeping me from progressing on what I’m out to do — SHOOT — Take Pictures!

I’m finding more and more that when I make time to shoot, be creative and spend more time looking through the viewfinder, the more I love my work. It’s when I’ve got to sit and wrangle a keyboard for hours just to make one photo come up first where I loose my patience. I just read a great post that Chase Jarvis had on his blog titled “The Creative Gap”. To boil it down…in order to shoot better, we need to shoot more…do more work. Well that’s where I’m at with this website stuff. It’s keeping me from doing more work. Instead of setting up personal work for growth opportunities, I’m messing with more stuff that looks like this:

  <style type=“text/css”>
body {
  color: #666666;
  margin-bottom: 0;
  margin-top: 10px;
  background:#fff 50%;
  padding:0px;
  font:11px/16px “Helvetica Neue”, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;
  text-align:center;

Than this

So until I’ve made my mind up, my front page sits stagnant, in a frozen state…

I’d say I’ll let you know how it goes, whether the senses and budget win the battle to keep control or my disgust makes my budget give in, but you’ll soon find out by just stopping back at the home page.

Let’s just hope it happens sooner rather than later…and we all can learn something from it.

New Personal Projects….

I’m always looking to shoot new and interesting things.  I’ve added a portion to my Portfolio Page entitled Personal work.  I’ll be sharing some personal work with you that either stems from commercial work or is completely self assigned.

Recently I put together a series that I titled “Doors”.  Its a series that I started when I was in Florence, Italy and comprises some of the many doors that I saw there.  Since then, I have begun to gather more shots both in Italy and now here in the states.  What you’ll see now is Florence, Tuscany and Rome….and a few cities in between.  Look for more “Doors” project galleries to come.

Also, another recent project that I completed was a swing band shoot.  The Big Bad Voodoo Daddy’s were here in town this past weekend and I decided to make it a goal to grab some awesome stage shots.  Shooting under sub optimal lighting conditions is always a challenge I’m up for and this was no walk in the park.  I got some fun shots that I feel capture the band and the emotion of their set well.

In addition to catching a great show, I also had the pleasure of meeting Dirk the string bass player in the band afterwards.  The one thing I found absolutely amazing about them, other than their immense talent and rockin’ show, is that they’ve all been together for over 15 years.  Other than a few additions, they’re all original band members!!!!  Congrats on that accomplishment BBVD - it’s quite rare.

Thanks again for spending some time with us after the show.

New Portfolio, New Look, More Photos…

I have been spending quite a bit of time lately “procrastinating” the re-launch of my portfolio galleries on my site…that is until today. I’ve finally finished updating and organizing my portfolios. It’s been time well spent, you can now see the main areas of focus for my photography and a few of you may even recognize some of the new shots from my recent trip to Italy. See if you can find the additions.

In addition to the portfolio update, I’ve updated the home page as well with a few new photos and a new slideshow. Hope you enjoy the change. Also I’ve added a new link (not yet active) that will link to some of my new Personal Projects. Of those the Italy trip and a “Doors” project. I can’t wait to share this area of my site as it will have updates on a (hopefully) consistent basis, showing you what goes on outside of the work I am doing commercially.

I’ve adopted the mantra of “Shoot more for personal work…” that Chase Jarvis has followed. It’s with this line of thinking that has challenged me and pushed me to shoot not only what I’m hired, but what I want to shoot as well. So I’ll be putting out there some OUT THERE stuff.

That’s all for now…stop back soon.