I was reading a few blogs this morning and came across this video post by McNally. If you are a photographer or photo editor that deals with a lot of us, you will love it. Hilarious!!

I may have gone over board on the screen capture but I want it to be as obvious as possible that this is another persons blog. Just click the screen capture and watch the video at Joe McNally’s Blog.

My living room has a sliding glass door that takes you out on to the balcony. My son loves to stand against the window (evident by the many hand prints) and gaze out on whatever may be happening. With a storm coming in and 2009 heading out I thought it would be a great image to end the year. Tomorrow the hand prints will be removed and he can start smudging all over again.

After a long holiday break I am back from visiting family and back to work. Projects and marketing plans are in the works and I hope to be bringing some pretty big updates to the site in the coming weeks.

Hope everyone had a happy holiday!

I spend at least a few hours every morning checking some blogs that I frequent to see what is going on in the photographic community. On occasion I allow my self to get sucked into the potentially endless stream of clicks that lead you to all kinds of interesting discoveries.

Today my interest was peaked by a look into my own past. I was born in Berlin, Germany…West Berlin at the time and this morning Rob Galbraith posted some links to a few galleries showing photographs of the wall.

One such link led me to MAGNUM PHOTOS, where I was able to delightfully rediscover some of the work that drew me to photography to begin with. David Alan Harvey is an amazingly talented photographer with a vision that has inspired me for years and I hope that some of you will take the time to view some of his work the next time you “let your mouse do the clicking”.

For some interesting reading check out Burn Magazines Dialogue Section. David Alan Harvey is the editor and this is his new blog in place of the old Road Trip Blog.

There are many factors that go into every photograph, the most basic of which is Exposure. The one thing in every photograph that can be controlled is the exposure or the amount of light that is recorded by the light sensitive material. The light sensitive material can be a digital cameras sensor, a piece of film, or anything else that reacts when introduced to light. From here on however, I will be referring to the digital camera’s sensor.

So what determines a “Correct” exposure? Well, for the sake of argument a correct exposure would record each color tone as it appears in real life. You will often hear people referring to a “Grey Card”. This is simply a card that reflects 18% of all light that hits it. If you point your camera at this card and fill the view finder with just the card, you would have a “Correct” exposure when the light meter was at 0 or centered.

It is really a pretty simple concept, your camera has a light meter in it. This measures the amount of light being reflected off of the subject. Based on the amount of light being reflected the meter determines what the object will look like if you take the photograph with your current settings and displays that tonal value to you on a chart. The chart (for most of you reading this) is on the bottom edge of your viewfinder and has a + sign at one side, a – sign at the other and a 0 in the middle.

• +||||||0||||||- Nikon
•  
• -||||||0||||||+ Cannon

So if the indicator is on the + side of 0 then the image will be brighter or closer to white and if the indicator is on the – side of 0 then the image will be darker or closer to black. This means, if you are photographing a white wall you want the indicator to be all the way to the + sign without going over and if you are photographing a black wall you want the indicator to be all the way to the – sign without going over.

The light meter we find in the viewfinder helps us to get the exposure right before we take the picture but what about after. The LCD display on the back of the camera is NOT an accurate rendition of the image that we have captured so how do we know if we got what we wanted? That is where the histogram comes in. That thing that looks like a photo of jagged mountains, that is important.

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I am constantly looking at other photographers work and trying to find some inspiration that will lead to a project that every facebook and twitter user will comment on. Bringing my work in front of every photo buyer in the nation and thus propelling my career like a rocket in an instant.

This is unlikely to actually occur, but along the way I come across all types of work. Good, bad… everything in between and it shocks me how high the percentage is of good work being shown at the F Stop Magazine. They find all types of photographers and display their work to the world. I am not sure what their readership is like, but any one that isnt watching them should be.

Here is a link to the most recent article they have posted. Check it out if you get a chance and don’t forget to bookmark their RSS.

On Monday I spent my day photographing furniture on location at the Boston Design Center for John Herbert. John has me come down pretty regularly now to take some photographs of his most recent work. I travel to his workshop rather than having him transport his large, shiny, very expensive and labor intensive pieces of furniture to a studio.

Location shooting can be very difficult depending on where you end up but bringing a studio to a location like the design center is usually much easier than most.

1. The guys at the Boston Furniture Collaborative are kind enough to keep a roll of 12′ seamless hung in the 20′ wide hallway for me most of the time
2. When you flip the light switch all of the lights go out
3. I have more than 150′ to back up and finally,
4. There are ample wall sockets to plug into with easy breaker (and restroom) access.

The list may seem strange to some but, combined with a hard working assistant, these things make life a vacation for a photographer. There is one window to worry about when you have to burn in ambient light, like I did for this piece:

…but it never gets direct light and it comes from a narrow spot in the hall that can easily be blocked.

Even with all of these great advantages to the location, it is still not a studio and requires a bit more post production than I would like.

Here is the original. (I have already done the basic LR adjustments)

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Again, at the beginning of the summer… I was in the buying mood. I needed a camera that I would give to almost anyone (aka an assistant) and get decent photo and video clips for blog posts. With very little research I was able to narrow my selections to three cameras.

• 1. Cannon’s G10
• 2. Nikon’s P6000
• 3. Panasonic’s LX3

Without getting to involved here with comparisons, I went with Nikon’s P6000.

I have been using it for the past few months and feel comfortable reviewing it here.

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So, at the beginning of the summer I went shopping for monolights. It took me a month or two to commit to a purchase after reading review after review, but I finally settled on Elinchrom’s BX500Ri.

I went with Elinchrom for a lot of reason’s, and so far I am not disappointed.

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Just saw this over on the Photo Editor’s Blog. I figured some NESOP people might be interested. A documentary symposium online tonight at 8pm. Click here to check it out or the photo clip below. Also, take a look at some of the Photo Editor’s recent posts, some great video and interesting views.