Well I just was informed today that the Creative Design in Photography Level II class that I was registered in at Metro has been canceled due to a lack of enrollment. The next offering won't be until February of 2009. I was really looking forward to this class as it's been almost 4 months since I completed my last class (not counting the Photoshop class I took in February). The next class I'm registered for is Designing Wedding Photography with Tracy Grabowski which starts in June. Hopefully the enrollment will be enough for them to proceed with that class otherwise I will have to wait until the fall to take some more classes.
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
New Gear
As I gear up for a very busy spring and summer season it was time to, well, gear up! The first thing I needed to do was expand the home network. Upgrades include a new HP Core 2 Duo desktop which will be used primarily for Photoshop work and a new 22" wide-screen LCD. I also picked up a small Bamboo tablet from Wacom for photo editing.
With the photo collection growing at a rapid pace, backups are more and more important so I added an HP Home Server with mirrored drives along with 2 new external hard drives. My plan is to backup my laptop and desktop to the server and then backup those backups to one of the external drives periodically. This drive I'll leave at my parents so that in the event of a fire or theft I won't lose everything. The 2nd external drive will primarily be used to backup photos only and provide extra storage when I'm traveling with my laptop.
On the software side I decided to make the move to Lightroom. I had been experimenting with Bridge for awhile but after downloading a demo of LR I decided that it was a much better tool and provided much better organizational features than Bridge. I also liked the ability to jump right into the Develop mode and start tweaking photos without having to open them in Camera RAW.
The last big piece of the puzzle was my camera equipment. I contemplated upgrading to the Canon 1D Mark III but just couldn't justify the $5000 price tag yet. The 5D was my next option but it's been out now for a couple of years and is due to be replaced so I didn't want to get stuck buying something that will be outdated the second I buy it so I finally decided to buy a 40D. It has some great new features including Live View, automatic sensor cleaning and it uses the new Digic III processor. Of course I also had to buy new batteries a new battery grip because the one I have for my Rebel doesn't fit the 40D.
In addition to a new body, I also bought a couple of new lenses including Canon's 24-70mm f2.8 and my friend Greg sold me his 70-200mm f2.8 along with a 1.4x converter. Both lenses are great and I'm really happy with how they perform in low light conditions.
My last purchase this spring (for now anyway) was a new ball head for my tripod. Until 
now I had just been using the ball head that came with my Slik tripod and it was enough for the smaller Rebel and the glass that I had. I quickly realized that it was not strong enough to support the larger 40D and the heavier glass so I purchased the Manfrotto 322RC2 pistol grip ball head. It can hold up to 11 lbs and comes with a quick release plate. The pistol grip is great for quickly adjusting the position of the camera to move between horizontal and vertical shooting. Looking forward to testing it out this weekend on a wedding shoot that I am doing for a couple at the Legislature.
Over the course of the summer I'm sure I'll add some more glass to the collection as well as a portable light meter, a lens baby and a new cable release for the 40D because of course the current cable release that I have for the Rebel wont' work with the 40D. What a surprise.
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
One Stop Shop at Alltop
I subscribe to several great Photography blogs covering topics from the technical to the artistic and everything in between. Most of the blogs I currently read I found via a Google search and then discovered others by following links from those blogs to other blogs.
Recently, Guy Kawasaki who was one of the original guys at Apple, started a new site called Alltop. It is basically a blog aggregator of all the best blogs on the Net organized by categories. The thing I like about Alltop is that it lists all the top blogs on a particular topic on one page with the 5 most recent posts from each blog. By surveying the most recent posts from a variety of blogs on a related topic, it's very easy to see if a particular issue or news item is bubbling to the surface in the blogosphere.
Of course one of the categories on Alltop is Photography and I have discovered some great blogs to read. Check it out at http://photography.alltop.com/
One of my new favourites that I discovered through Alltop is Scott Kelby's blog. He is the author of a great Photoshop book called The Photoshop CS3 Book for Digital Photographers. I highly recommend it if you are interested in photography and deal with an post-processing of images. Read Scott's blog at http://www.scottkelby.com/blog/
One funny side note. I was reading through their About section and found this great FAQ and I thought their response was great:
Q. Couldn’t I build my own custom aggregation using a feed reader, customizable home pages, Netvibes, etc?
A. Yes, you could—knock yourself out. While you’re at it, you could backup your hard disk, bake your own bread, iron your own shirts, floss daily, tune your own car, and bike to work.
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Ltd
Three little letters I never imagined owning but last week that all changed. Even though I'm not giving up my day job, I decided to incorporate my business after several weeks of research and talking to accountant and lawyer friends. I had originally intended to hang up my shingle and operate as a sole proprietor but several people I spoke to advised me to setup a corporation to limit my liabilities. Liabilities? What liabilities?
I suppose I am the ultimate optimist and I like to think that nothing bad is ever going to happen. I enjoy photography and I just want to have fun capturing moments for people and sharing my images. I don't want to worry about things like liabilities and legal matters. Luckily I have good friends who help me take off my rose colored glasses and look at the worst-case scenarios. What if my equipment failed during an important shoot? What if I accidentally photograph someone who doesn't want to be photographed and the image gets out and somehow damages their reputation? Granted, I am describing worst-case scenarios but what would happen if they came to fruition. Is it worth risking one's personal assets over? I think not.
So last Friday I headed down to a local registry office, filled out the paperwork, paid my $297 and presto - Moments in Digital Ltd. is officially born. What started out as hobby has started to get a little more complicated than I first envisioned but I'm having fun with it and definitely learning a lot about myself while gaining some valuable business experience. Where it goes from here only time will tell but at least for now I feel the proper foundation has been laid.
Friday, March 28, 2008
virtualPhotographer by optikVerve Labs
I was browsing around on the interwebs recently looking for some good plug-ins for Photoshop CS3 when I stumbled upon a really great set of plug-ins from optikVerve labs. Their tool is called virtualPhotographer and it is a great plug-in that allows you to apply a variety of effects to your photographs with just a few clicks. Some of the filters include film grain, soft blur, night scope, b/w, etc. Here is a photo I took of my wife playing Rock Band. The original image is on the left. I applied the soft blur filter to the photo on the right.
The set includes over 50 custom styles. The best part about these plug-ins? They are completely free and from what I can tell there are no strings attached. I have installed them on my Vista machine in Photoshop CS3 and I haven't had any issues. I can't say this for some of the other "free" plug-ins I've tried which have ended up crashing Photoshop on me.
You can download these great free plug-ins here:
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Photography Podcasts
If you own an iPod, chances are that you know about Podcasts and probably have already subscribed to some of your favorites. There are several great photography podcasts out there and I thought I would share some of my personal favorites.
TWiP - This week in Photography is a relatively new podcast that started around January of this year. Produced by Pixelcorps and hosted by Scott Bourne and Alex Lindsay, this weekly podcast includes news, reviews, tips, techniques, and discussions on everything related to photography. TWiP also has a blog at www.twipphoto.com as well as a Flickr group where members can contribute photographs, participate in assignments, and post images to be critiqued and discussed.
Tips from the Top Floor - Hosted by Chris Marquardt, this short podcast offers tips and advice for novice photographers to pro photographers. Chris also appears as a regular on Leo Laporte's radio show "The Tech Guy" which is also available on iTunes in a weekly podcast format. Chris's website can be found at www.tipsfromthetopfloor.com
Photography 101 hosted by Scott Wittenberg, is a video podcast which covers a wide range of techniques and tips on cameras, composition, and exposure as well as step-by-step instructions on how to manipulate images in Photoshop.
These are just a few of the podcasts that I listen to a regular basis that are related to photography. I also subscribe to several blogs on photography and Photoshop which provide me with some great tips and advice as well as information on new software and hardware. In a future blog post I'll write about some of my favorite photography blogs.
Thursday, March 6, 2008
David Foster Foundation
I was honoured to be selected as the official photographer for the David Foster Foundation gala event which will be held in Edmonton this September. The David Foster Foundation was started by David in 1986 to help families and their children in need of major organ transplants. Many of these families lives are turned completely upside down when they find out that their child needs a major organ transplant. According to their website, the David Foster Foundation is dedicated to two primary goals:
To provide financial assistance for non-medical expenses, which are not otherwise covered by governmental agencies, to families in Canada with children who are in need of major organ transplants, and to raise public awareness regarding organ donation.
To promote the event, David visited Edmonton on Friday, February 29th for a media event to launch this year's gala which will be held at the Winspear on September 13th. More details about the foundation and the event can be found by visiting the following websites:
Following the media event, I accompanied David over to the Stollery Children's Hospital at the University of Alberta. David and his girlfriend Yolanda spent about an hour at the hospital visiting with children who had received or were waiting for major organ transplants. The photos from that event will be published on the David Foster Foundation website in the coming weeks. In the meantime, here is just a sample of one of the images that I took during the visit:
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