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.

I have been using a Macbeth Color Checker Chart for quite a while now and just recently stumbled across there new Passport system. It is actually a series of Charts and Cards combined with a software system for your computer that works directly with Photoshop to produce a calibration for a batch of images. I have been very satisfied with the results of the Color Checker and would love to fiddle around with the new system. For now, check out this video from X-Rite.

So things went relatively smoothly with the new about page photo. No more “mug shot” so my family will be happy. Below are the two pages to compare. Comments are welcome!

Old "Mug Shot"

New and Improved

Lately this blog has taken a backseat to other aspects of my business and I intend to rectify that starting today. I haven’t posted in more than 2 months and there is just no excuse for that. So over the coming months I intend to change gears a bit. This afternoon I am being photographed to replace my current “mugshot” (as it has been described).

I will post later today about how that shoot goes and from now on I will try to post something every week day.

For now though, check out John Harrington’s Blog, Photo Business News & Forum, for some info on the release of his latest edition to his book “Best Business Practices for Photographers”.