Photo Shoot List
My new iOS application for photographers, Photo Shoot List, has been released and is now available in the iTunes App Store.
Photo Shoot List is a to-do list for photographers. You use it to keep lists of shots you want to take either at some location like a National Park, or in the studio, or at wedding. Along with each item in the list you can add a sample photo of the shot to take.
For shoots you do on a regular basis you can create shoot templates to use as a basis for the shoot list, or you can purchase pre-done lists from the iTunes store using in-app purchase.
More information can be found at PhotoShootList.com
Critique of my Photos
Meetup.com
At the Google Plus Photographer's Conference earlier this week I talked to a lot of photographers who were just getting into photographing people. Several had shot some of the models at the conference and discovered how much they loved it. (I know the feeling).
Most of them were asking me how to get started with model photography and I recommended joining a local Meetup.com photography group and going to a few meetups. A lot of the groups schedule model shoots and they are great for learning posing techniques, some lighting, and just getting comfortable in the studio.
For the Bay Area photographers, here is the list of meetup groups I am a member of. Not all of these do model shoots, but they are all worthwhile. Check them out.
A SOUTH BAY DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY GROUP
*ARTISTIC GLAMOUR AND FINE ART PHOTOGRAPHY CLUB*
Adobe Creative Suite User Group - San Jose
BAMPS - Bay Area Model Photo Shoots
Bay Area Image Maker's Collective
Bay Area Photographers Working Together
The Bay Area Photography & Exploration Society
Chasing Light N Photographing Landscape
Creative Portraiture in Santa Cruz
Digital Photography Society of Santa Cruz
EXPOSED - A Photography Showcase
Fremont Digital Photo Freeschool
Hold the Eye Images Meetup Group
Jules CAFE Photo Peeps Meetup and PUG
Northern California Bikini & Boudoir Workshops
Photography Classes and Workshops - All Levels
Photolight - Photography & Lighting (SF Bay Area)
Renegade Photo Shoots - Bay Area
The San Francisco Photography Meetup Group
San Jose Photoshop Users Group
SF Bay Area Glamour and Fine Art Nude Photography
Silicon Valley Digital Photography Workshops
The South Bay Photography Meetup Group
This Week in Photo (TWiP) & SmugMug Bay Area Meetup
Supermodel Cleavage Trumps Good Photography
I was walking through my local shopping center one evening last week when I was stopped in my tracks by this Skullcandy poster in the window of the Tilly's store. What stopped me was not the model (is this a sign I'm getting old?), but the poor photography. It is not a very well done photograph. There are numerous things that I consider wrong with this poster and if I had taken this shot, I would have discarded it during my initial selection process. Here are a few of the things I think are wrong
- Pig Nose - Kate has her head tilted back and the photograph was shot at a slight upward angle, resulting in a very unattractive nose. This alone should have sent this photo to the discard pile.
- Reflections of the studio lights in the balloons. I find these extremely distracting and would have either rejected the photo of cloned them out.
- Blown out hair on top of her head. Although my cell phone shot here doesn't do it justice, the whole photo was poorly exposed.
- You can hardly see the product! In fact, I did not see the headphones until after I had read all the text then gone back to the photo. Some say that might be OK, because I did read the text, however, I think you should have both.
Apparently the Art Director was judging the photos by how great Kate's boobs looked and all the other stuff was secondary. Supermodel Cleavage trumps a good photo.
To give the Art Director credit I did find other shots from this shoot that are much nicer photographically. Here is one from Skullcandy's Facebook page. I'm just shocked that this one made the cut.
22 Useful Photography Cheat Sheets
Here is a post on PhotoPoly where they have compiled a list of photography cheat sheets. Some great stuff here.
http://www.photopoly.net/22-useful-photography-and-photo-editing-cheat-sheets/
Have You Registered Your Photos?
In the past few weeks I've had several photographer friends who have had their photos stolen and in one case one was put on a stock photography site. Neither of these photographers had registered their photos so the only recourse they really have is to request the photo to be taken down, but they will unlikely ever recover any money.
I've been meaning to register my photos with the US Copyright Office for the past year, but I kept putting it off. These incidents made me decide it was time to do it. However I wasn't quite sure how to proceed. I had heard some good things about this book and decided to give it a try.
It's an easy and quick read that describes copyright law and why you should register your photos. But the most valuable part of the book was a step-by-step walk through of submitting your photos to the copyright web site. The web site is not the most intutive or user friendly site and without the walk-through I would have been lost at several points during the submission process. It took about 20 minutes the first time through, but now that the initial information has been filled out it should only take a couple of minutes for the next submission.
The most time consuming part was compiling all my images to upload. I only registered images that had been published, which includes anything put in public view on my web site, Flickr, message boards, etc. That ended up being just over a thousand images going back to 2001.
My plan going forward is to register my photos every quarter. This should be a good trade-off between protection and finding the time to do it.
I highly recommend the book and recommend you register your photos.
Open Letter to Adobe from Scott Kelby
Scott Kelby has written this very good open letter to Adobe about their recently announced pricing strategy for the next release of Photoshop and the Creative Suite.
Of course Scott has ulterior motives, in that if his 70K NAPP members don't upgrade to the new version they are less likely to have need of Scott's and NAPP's services. But even so it is well argued and to the point.
My guess is that Adobe wants everybody to convert to the subscription model, as long term that is a better business decision. It also means they don't have to keep coming up with huge revoltionary features but can instead rely on incremental evolutionary features.
It will be interesting to see how this all pans out.
The Power of Sketching Your Photographic Ideas
My approach to photography has gone through an evolution over the past 6 months and I'm finally to the point where I feel like it's all coming together.
In March 2011 I took a workshop with John Paul Caponigro in Death Valley called Illuminating Creativity. This was a life changing workshop for me. This wasn't your typical photography workshop where they take you to great photographic spots and turn you loose. John Paul would take us to such places and tell us to go ahead and take the "Postcard Shot" but then we were expected to start taking the real photographs. John Paul spent a lot of time talking about creativity and how to improve our creative thought and how to make it into a process. There were a lot of techniques discussed and I've been using many of them but the one I wanted to talk about in this post is the power of sketching.
After the workshop I purchased several artist sketchbooks and put them in my car, next to my bed, on my desk at work. Whenever I would have an idea for a photograph I would write a quick sketch in the sketchbook. Often the act of sketching it would trigger additional ideas and I would find myself filling several pages in the book. A few weeks later I would go back and read through the sketchbook and would always have additional ideas pop into my head. Often these new ideas would be completely unrelated to any of the ideas in the sketchbook. Soon I had over 60 pages of ideas to photograph and 3 months after starting the sketchbook I went out to shoot one of the ideas.
Here was the first sketch idea.
As you can see I'm not much of an artist, but I was able to sketch enough of the idea to convey the idea and remind myself of the details. Here is the resulting image:
As you can see the image is almost exactly as described in the sketchbook and I don't think I would have been able to take a photo like this if I had not planned it out first in the sketchbook.
A fellow photographer friend approached me a few weeks later and asked for my help in doing a Little Red Riding Hood themed shoot. I didn't really have any ideas ready for such a shoot so I started thinking about it and over the next few days wrote my ideas in the sketchbook. Here is the result.
Here are the resulting photos
Again the resulting photographs were very similar to the ideas in the sketchbook.
Over the next couple of months I continued adding ideas to the sketchbook and realized I was coming up with a lot of ideas but not implementing any of them. So I booked some models and over the next couple of weeks knocked off 4 ideas from the sketchbook. Here's the latest
So just like a filmmaker will make a storyboard for their film, making a sketch of the photo idea helps to visualize the idea and acts as a reminder for all the details.
When I started the workshop with John Paul Caponigro I was very skeptical of the whole sketching idea. I am more of a left brain type guy and sketching seemed more right brain and not for me. But I decided to try everything John Paul suggested and have been ecstatic with the result. As I said the workshop changed my approach to photography (hopefully for the better :) ). The sketchbook is a now a solid part of my workflow and is a tool I will use for the rest of my photographic career. Give it a try.
Little Red Riding Hood
I enjoy doing themed shoots and a Little Red Riding Hood theme has been on my list for a long time. My photographer friend Rebekah was doing this shoot and invitied me along because she needed someone to wear the wolf costume. We had a great time and got some pretty good shots. I would much rather have a real wolf in the shots, but the costume adds a bit of fun to the shots.
This was my favorite shot of the day. This is similar to something I've been planning and thinking on for many months so it was nice to see it come together. I'll have another post soon talking about my planning process.
Rebekah is into levitation photos, so I decided to give it a try. I don't think I did too bad for a first effort, but think I can do much better.
Photography Marketing Magic with Sandy Puc'
Sandy Puc' - How to Make Pigs Fly, and Other Marketing Magic! from Frederick Van Johnson on Vimeo.
I attended this presentation by Sandy Puc' a few weeks back in Palo Alto and was blown away by her presentation. During the presentation I remember thinking to myself, "I suck" and was depressed that I had not accomplished even 25% of what Sandy has with her photography business, but by the end of the presentation I was inspired and have been working on improving my business and marketing.
This is a 2 hour long video and there are a few technical glitches at the beginning, but it's worth taking the time to watch.