howdy folks,

today I’d like to share my equipment list for my sub-10k studio.  Here we go:

• one Canon 7D ($1700)
• one Tamron 17-50mm f2.8 with vibration control ($650)
• two Canon 580 exii Flash units ($420 each)
• one radio popper Px transmitter and two rp Px receivers (approx $750 total)

We’ll also need battery packs for the camera and flash units (add $450), memory cards (add $200) and the lumiquest 80-20 promax kit ($50).

I’d like to note that the studio kit is for location portraiture or wedding photography – not  sports, architecture or nature.  Those styles can be added with just lenses at this point.

for nature or sports add – Tamron  AF 28-300mm f/3.5-6.3 with VC ($600)

for architecture or landscapes add the – Tamron AF 11-18mm f/4.5-5.6 ($550)

I rarely shoot on a tripod since I never know if I’ll be shooting kids or pets.  My tripod usually only acts as an assistant to hold my camera while I’m setting up other gear. 

On a final note, I’m undecided about flash brackets. If I were to require one I’d probably go with the Custom Brackets Digital PRO E ($250). It is has a slick quick rotation feature and you can use two quick releases on it.  One to remove the camera from the bracket quickly and the other to attach the bracket to the quick release mount on your tripod.

Howdy folks,

If I could start fresh with ten thousand dollars to buy all of my photography gear from scratch, here’s how I’d do it.

Today I’ll start with software in the order I’d buy them.

1. Photoshop CS4
2. Photoshop Lightroom 2
3. Corel Painter
4. OnOne Plugin Suite
5. Topaz Labs Plugin Suite
6. Imagenomic Portraiture 2 (for lightroom)
7. Alien Skin Exposure 2
8. Photomatix HDR software

That’s it.  To stay under the 10 grand cap I’d have to lean heavily on academic versions of the software. My next post will be my gear wish list

howdy folks,

I’ve been pretty busy working on my studio portfolio.  I’m not done yet, but it is coming along quite nicely.  Here is a link to my studio blog.  I have three new sittings since the last time I posted an update here.

http://www.facesandplacesstudio.blogspot.com/

here’s a couple teaser samples:

howdy folks,

This is going to be a hard post for me.

You see,  I’ve never been an apple fan.  I don’t own a mac or iPod or iPhone or ever visit the iTunes store.  I didn’t want to…  I grew up learning to program edLine basic (even before gwBasic for those that remember).  I didn’t like how everything apple was proprietary.  I didn’t like how you were locked in once you joined “the club”.  I built my own computers and downloaded songs from Amazon because of their DRM policy. 

The times they are a changin’

After 4 failed attempts to find a non-apple mp3 player worth it’s price, I’ve decided that if everyone else loves their iPod then they can’t be all bad – right!?!  Then my step-son acquired an iPod touch and boy did that change my tune.

Now to the heart of the problem…

After seeing what the iPod touch can do, I wondered why I hadn’t heard of it’s features before.  Maybe I didn’t pay enough attention, or maybe others glossed over it assuming that everyone who cared already knew.  I found a couple examples on one of my favorite blogs – photoshop insider by Scott Kelby.

In the first example, there isn’t even mention of the iPod touch. It just talks about a cool new app for the iPhone.

http://www.scottkelby.com/blog/2009/archives/5088

In the second example, he does mention the iPod touch but it’s kind of like an afterthought.

http://www.scottkelby.com/blog/2009/archives/6342

I always ignored the iPhone news because I wasn’t going to switch my service provider just to get a cool phone.  It just wasn’t going to happen (ask anyone who’s married).  If someone had come out and said that you don’t have to have an iPhone to have all those cool apps, it may have turned my head a long time ago. 

If you have read this far, and you write a blog or twitter or facebook, please tell your friends that the iPod  Touch has most of the features of the iPhone without the AT&T contract.  A friend of mind told me he even found an app that turns his iPod Touch into a phone.  Here’s a link to  do that: http://www.lifehacker.com.au/2008/04/turn_your_ipod_touch_into_an_iphone-2/

howdy folks,

I’ve seen a couple of news sources pointing to a new video from adobe labs.  Whether this makes it into Adobe Photoshop CS5 is uncertain, but it looks like Adobe is trying to catch up with Corel Painter in the area of realistic painting, brushes and simulated media.

here’s the link: http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=539663368359

I also talked to a co-worker who attended the recent photoshop world.  He said there was a closed door meeting with some plug-in developers that required non-disclosure agreements (big surprise).  He said he expected photoshop to be announced at one of the bigger trade shows at the beginning of the year and released before July.  I’m still sticking with my april release estimate to stick with an 18 month release schedule (with an announcement in or around February).

howdy folks,

This morning I finally loaded a totally new version of the www.outofnapkins.com website.  It’s not complete but it is a lot more attractive and functional than the previous incarnations.  I’ll post updates as the features are activated.

Don’t miss the photo tips section at the bottom right of the page.  Anyone is free to go to the outofnapkins photo tips blog (click the “more” link in the lower corner to access the blog) and send me suggestions for future tips.

Howdy Folks,

Since I have been writing for a few months on photography, I came to the conclusion that I probably ought to have some sort of online portfolio (something more current than my studio’s online gallery).

I present to you my studio’s blog: www.facesandplacesstudio.blogspot.com

It’s sole purpose is to provide a fresh portfolio of recent photography projects and related content.  I’m not going to be writing about gear or techniques or other general photography topics.  That informations stays here on this site.  I realize I only have a couple of photo sessions listed at the moment, but I don’t want to be posting old stuff.  I’ll post new projects as they happen.

p.s. If you visit the new blog, please feel free to comment.  I’m always looking for critiques to improve my knowledge and techniques.

howdy folks,

It’s been pretty busy around here so I haven’t been writing as frequently as I would like.  I had a portfolio shoot the other day.  I asked a couple of coworkers if they wanted some “free” family photos in exchange for letting me use them in my portfolio.  There are a lot of topics I could cover (but I’ll save them for another post). Some topics of consideration were: location scouting, outfit considerations and getting model releases.  Today I wanted to talk about the shot list.

Have you ever gone on a photo shoot and after the shoot you suddenly remember that one great pose that you saw the other day. You think “dang” (or insert your explicative of choice) because you didn’t remember the pose until it was too late. 

I remember studying wedding photography years ago.  One topic that kept popping up was the shot list with all of the various (almost mandatory) images that the newlyweds will expect to see in their photos.  Imagine no picture of the cake, no boquet toss or boquet for that matter, no first kiss, no bridesmades.  You get the idea.

Whenever you see a great pose, write it down so that you can reference it when you need ideas.  Before you head out on a shoot, review your pose catalog and make a list of poses that will be relevent to that session.  I am currently in the process of building four or five lists myself, that should cover most of the common situations I encounter.

***As a bonus, we originally planned to take all of the pictures in an extremely small park downtown, but another photographer showed up after we’d been there only 20 minutes.  I decided to pull my models and we shot in the alley.  I had scouted it a week ago and found a couple great locations.  There were a lot of great free props in the alley and it was much more visually interesting than the brick and stone found in the park.  Almost all of my favorite images were from after the park.  Rusty window grates and urban decay abounding, even the gravel parking area turned out to be a blessing in disguise.

In case you’re wondering here are a few pics from the shoot.

I think I took around 250 pics in 45 minutes.  I pulled around 80 to 100 images ( approx. 50 images for each family) for the DVD session I’m giving to my models.  I spent about 2.5 to 3 hours total in post (mostly in lightroom) cleaning and tweaking the final images.

howdy folks,

Today I saw a new light modifier from AlienBees that reminded me of a light bank made by Elinchrom.

Here’s a link to how they would be used (a link to Scott Kelby’s Photoshop Insider where he used the Elinchrom Octa Light Bank).

I wanted to see how they compared.

Both products work like brolly boxes.  Both are modelled on the good kind - where you shoot into a reflector umbrella through a flat diffuser (not the bad kind – a shoot through umbrella with a black back). 

The AlienBee product and the Elinchrom unit are around  74 inches (190 cm).  The Elinchrom appears to be a deeper unit, but I suspect that is due to the light placement (see the next point).  I was a little misled by AlienBee describing their product  as 86 inches, but tucking in a disclaimer that that was the arc measurement of the umbrella and not the flat plane (face) opening measurement.  After I catching my error, I noticed other similar clarifications (covering the same info) tucked in around the product page.

The AlienBee modifier has the light attach outside the lightsource. The Elinchrom Light Bank encloses the light within the modifier. The elinchrom unit would probably have less of a blind spot from the light itself.

When it comes to price, there isn’t much of a comparison.  The AlienBee Silver 86″ 16 Rib Parabolic Umbrella runs $75 plus you’ll probably want the diffuser front ($28) and a light and stand.  The Elinchrom unit is self contained reflector and stand for a cool $989 .  It does come with the stand and diffuser but you’ll still need to provide the lighting unit yourself.

Call me crazy, but I think the AlienBee unit is a pretty awesome deal.  Don’t get me wrong, I like Elinchrom products and use my Elinchrom skyports almost every time I use my camera.  But…. with a 800 dollar difference, I think I could sacrifice a little build quality as a low volume photographer.  It’s probably the best of both worlds, my skyports still work with the AlienBee Lights and I get a killer light modifier on the cheap.  Now to find a battery pack to become mobile.

howdy folks,

Here’s one from my flickr page.  I call it the smoker. I recently purchased a book from amazon.com called The Art of Digital Painting by Marilyn Sholin.  Here is the image.

The Smoker

I did a head swap with an image of someone else, cleaned up the photo in photoshop, color corrected in lightroom, then I changed some of the underpainting setting in the painting software (Corel Painter) but kept most of the technique the same as outlined in my blog post “rounding second…a quick painter tutorial“.