Recently in Photography Category

I decided to enter some images into the FotoWeek DC contest this year. FotoWeek DC is trying to establish itself as the nation's premiere photography festival and also highlight and recognize the most talented photographers in the DC area.

I typically don't enter photo contests. In the past I usually learn about them too late for submission, or I just don't get up the nerve or energy to submit anything. Well this year I had plenty of time and I figured I may as well give it a try.

So I have entered the following photos in each of the following categories in the amateur class.

Animals: I submitted the following two images.

     

Landscapes: I submitted a recent sunflower photo and also one of my favorite photos from my a trip to Montana.

     

Fine Art: In the fine art category I picked two of my favorite Infrared photos. I have printed both of these large and they look great in my home.

     

The entry deadline for submission is September 22nd, so if you are on the fence thinking about it, my advice is to just do it. You never know what could happen.

This past weekend was packed with photowalking events. The first was organized by Trevor Carpenter from photowalking.org fame. There were over 50 people who meet on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial for a sunset walk down the National Capital Mall. This was my first night time photowalking event and it was a blast. I'm thinking one of the future photowalking events I will host needs to be at night (maybe Christmas lights?)

It was nice to see some familiar photowalk faces and to meet some new local photographers. A group photo and additional information can be found at the DC Photo Guide website.

Here is a slideshow from the Friday night photowalk at the National Mall in Washington DC.



The next morning I headed out to Old Town Alexandria VA to attend Scott Kelby's World Wide Photowalking event. The local host/leader of this walk was Jeff Revell and the entire day was a great sucess. He wrote up a recap post on his PhotoWalk Pro website and he also includes a group photo from the two walks he hosted that day.

There were many familiar faces from the night before and I was finally able to meet some Flickr/Twitter friends in person as well. Both Patty Hankins and Shawn Duffy have recap posts on their respective blogs from the morning event. Scott Kelby also wrote on his blog about the success of the event and has decided to make it an annual event.

Here is a slideshow from my photos from the Saturday photowalk in Alexendria.

Last week the family went on a Disney cruise with some family friends. The main priority of the trip was to relax and forget about work. In preparation of this trip I brought the Canon WP-DC21 Underwater housing for my Canon G9 and planned to use it while snorkeling on Disney's Castaway Cay island. On my last cruise I brought my Canon 5D and was able to get up early each morning to wander the decks to take some stock photos. Some of these photos happen to be my best sellers for stock.

For this trip I decided to bring both my Canon 5D and the Canon G9. I think I took a total of 5 photos with the 5D for the entire week. The G9 just always seemed like my go to camera on this trip. I loved the portability and its ability to shoot RAW. I'm not sure if the files from the G9 would be good enough for stock sales, but it was great for the needs of this trip.

This post was not meant to be a review of the G9, but I feel confident that on future family trips I could comfortably leave my DSLR at home.

The underwater housing for the G9 also worked great. I did find that the shutter lag  common to point and shoot cameras was difficult to work with underwater. But after a while I was able to workaround the lag by anticipating the shot. Normally you can by pass the lag with a half press of the shutter to lock focus. But, I found the housing made it difficult to do the half press trick. I may just need more practice with the feel of the shutter and the housing.

On this trip I also discovered I loved being underwater with the fish and taking pictures. I have subscribed to several underwater photoblogs (echeng.com for example) for a while and I can now see the allure of this type of photography. What I discovered is the 30-60 seconds you have underwater during each breath was just not enough and it made me seriously think about taking scuba classes. 

Here are a selection of photos from the trip. I may try to submit a couple of the underwater photos to my stock agency just to see if the G9 is able to keep up with my 5D.

Those that can't do, teach... and those that can't teach ... teach gym. - "School of Rock" Jack Black

About a month ago I offered to teach a class to one of my photoclubs on Lightroom. I'm finding that many people are afraid to try new software and workflow processes. Most people are just not adventurous to try new software. These are the same people that don't shoot RAW or are using programs like Elements. I have nothing bad to say about the low end of  software spectrum. It suits the needs for the majority of the public photographic needs.

However, the people I'm talking to are advanced ametures or even semi-pro/pro photographers. They are constanly running into the limitations of the low end software and are asking for workarounds. Well the work around is to get a real photographic workflow tool. I have been helping people come over to the "light" for the last couple of months and I figured it was time to hold a class.

Since I work in the technology field, part of my job is to try new software, so I'm always checking out the latest and greatest tool. I jumped at the chance to be part of the beta of Lightroom when it first came out. LR has been out for over a year and has been completely integrated into my photographic workflow process. I was a firm Bridge/Photoshop/iView Media user for several years. After giving LR a try during the beta, I knew I had a new home.

Well this week I was preparing my notes for the class and I was going to touch on the new features of LR 2 that were under beta. In my notes I was constantly saying "but wait, when they release LR2 this will become much easier."

Well, thanks to Adobe I'm now teaching a Lightroom 2 class tomorrow morning rather than just a Lightroom class. The new version of the software shipped this week and this new version adds many features that make it an even better workflow tool.

 I'm excited about teaching my first class and I'm excited about sharing the new features that are available under LR2.

There will be a photowalk of the Washington DC National Mall on August 22nd at 6pm. This photowalk is being organized by Trevor Carpenter from Photowalking.org fame.

The plans are to meet on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial at 6pm. We will be walking down the National Mall towards the Capital building. I'm planning on attending and several other local photographers are scheduled to attend as well.

Here is the Upcoming link and a link to a map of the route.

Get more info over at Trevor's site.

Each month in the year brings different photographic opportunities. As part of my 30 Seasons project I'm starting to document each of these opportunities so I can revisit them in the coming years.

Last year I learned about the McKee-Beshers Wildlife Management Area in Potomac Maryland. Every year the parks department plants sunflowers in a large open field. I tried to photograph the flowers last year, but I was about a week too late to get some good sunflower photos. The peak of the sunflowers are typically the second week of July.

This year I was able to keep close tabs on the development of the fields and received scouting reports from several other local photographers. This allowed me to visit the fields a couple of times this season during the peak of the sunflower blooms.

My recent visits allowed me to take a large number of photographs and several that I feel are good enough to go into my portfolio.

I plan on returning to the fields later in the year once the flower heads have gone to seed. I suspect I should be able to get some good bird photos at that time.

Here are some of the photo highlights this year from the Sunflower fields.


Sunflower Sunset — © 2008 Mark Anderson


Sunflower Light Painting — © 2008 Mark Anderson


Sunflowers in Infrared — © 2008 Mark Anderson

During the 4th of July Holiday I took the time needed to make some much needed website changes. I have now unified the look and feel of my main photography website and this 30 Seasons blog.

I have also finally gotten around to setting up a portfolio as well. My main goal was to provide a way for people to view my work, and also purchase prints if they wanted.

I debated between going with many different options on how to host my portfolio. I could have hosted my own portfolio gallery templates or go with a service. I decedided the fastest and easiest option was to go with a hosted service. There are many players in this space and I have tried most of them (i.e. PhotoShelter, SmugMug, ImageKind) but I decided on Zenfolio to host my personal portfolio. The number one reason I chose them over all the others is their partnership with MPIX for printing. I made the switch to MPIX for all my professional printing about a year ago and I love the quality. They also offer competitive printing rates and services.

So this weekend I loaded up about 100 photos to my portfolio and also updated my websites with new templates. It was a busy weekend, but I like the end result.

Please leave me a comment if you see anything odd or hinky and I will try to get it fixed as soon as possible.

I received a new Canon G9 point and shoot digital camera from my in-laws for my birthday this year. My recent vacation to California gave me a real chance to give this new camera a test. It performed like a champ and is now my "carry everywhere I go camera." The images that come off the camera are great and the size is a little larger than most compact cameras, but is still very portable. The noise at anything above 400 ISO is a little bad, but it works well in most situations.

One added bonus is this camera has video capability. For a while I was thinking of getting a Flip video camera to play around with. But my new G9 is working great as a video camera as well.

On our vacation we went to the Aquarium of the Pacific and I took several videos of the exhibits.




The video quality suits me just fine and I have been recently exploring the world of moving pictures.

The day before I left for vacation I did a family portrait shoot for a friend at work. I typically don't do portrait sittings, but I'm always willing to help out a friend.

This is the second time I did a shoot for a group of this size and I felt more comfortable with my strobist techniques. The family and I were happy with the results and I may continue to do more of these in the future.

Most of the shots I took were the run-of-the-mill variety shots. Once I had those nailed down I proceeded to do some of the fun shots I always wanted to try. As I get more comfortable with these portrait sittings, I'm willing to do some experimentation. With a group this size I was finally able to try the laying on the ground looking up shot. I was laying on the ground with my 16-35mm lens (at 16 mm) and a shoot through umbrella next to me at 1/4 power. If you have never tried this (and don't mind getting dirty) give it a try. Both the family and I were pleased with the results. 

Tomorrow night I will be attending a memorial service for a fellow photographer that passed away last week. He was a member of the National Zoo FONZ Photoclub and an active member in the Flickr community. About a month ago Takuma and I carpooled together to the Gettysburg Photowalk and it was a shock to learn about his death last week. He will be missed.

When someone that you know dies, you start to think about your own situation. My wife and I started working on the legal documents for an estate plan at the start of the year and it is about 90% done. It has been sitting there waiting to be completed and this was another reminder that we need to finish them. If you don't have any type of estate plan in place, I recommend that you work on that first before you even think of creating a Photography estate plan.

I also recently listened to George Jardine's podcast with Jay Maisel, Greg Gorman, and Seth Resnick (episode #42) and they briefly touched on some ideas of what happens to your photography when you die.

This got me to thinking that I need to create an estate plan for my photography. It maybe the case that when I die, nobody cares about my photography. However,  as a photographer that cares a great deal about my work, I feel it is important that when I leave this life my family would know where to find my work and also more importantly where to find what I consider is my best work. This is the same concept that Jay Maisel mentions in the podcast interview.

Well known photographers (the Jay Maisel's of the world) are represented by agencies and have staff with a knowledge base about the work and how to find it. These same people have worked with them for years and have come to understand their wants, needs and wishes. They understand the photographers' aesthetic and can continue to maintain these works after they are gone.

However, I would estimate that 99% of the photographers in the world don't have this type of support infrastructure. Basically we are sitting out there alone creating tons of work (some of it may actually be good work.) When we die, does it just sit there waiting for the eventual bit bucket or can it continue to live on for the people that care about it.

In the world of your finances, when you pass your family should know how to access all your various financial accounts.  Does your family know how to find all your photos? Have you taken the time to document where you are storing the gigabytes (or terabytes) of photo files you have created in your lifetime? Do they know how to find your best works? As I type this I know my wife wouldn't have a clue to where to find my photos.

After Takuma's death one of his co-workers contacted me to find out how to get the photos off his work laptop so he can burn them to a CD for his family. He was stumped since he had no idea how to open an NEF file (Nikon RAW file) or if that was really a photo file.

I can imagine this will become a common occurrence in the future. As we photographers have moved away from the photos and negatives in a shoebox to a world of bits and bytes our heirs may not know how to deal with our files. These digital files have become our legacy. When someone stops by to look at your computer in the future, if they can't open a file, does it just get trashed or forgotten?

What about another practical application? What if your wife wants to find the photos you took of your newborn child that were taken 10 years ago so she can make prints? Would she know how to find those photos and open them?

This brings me back to my need to create an estate plan for my photographs. I don't have an egotistical idea that my work will be valuable after my death by the world at large. However, it will be valuable on a personal level to my friends and family. The photography estate plan doesn't have to be a formal legal document. It just has to be a letter that documents the following:

• Where the photos are located.
• How to open the photo files.
• How to find photos in your catalog.
• How you mark, rank, or tag your best work.

This letter could be stored with your other estate planning documents. It could also be a READ ME file on your computer, or even a blog post. The key is whoever is in control of your estate needs to know where to find that document.

Since you are creating this document, you may also want to list where you have your photos posted on the internet (i.e. Flickr, iStockPhoto, etc.) and how to access those accounts as well.

Once you are done with the document, it would also be a good idea to walk through it with your family and show them where files are stored, how to open files, how to search, etc.

You should also review and update the document on a regular basis as well (maybe yearly.)

You never know when your time will come up and it is best to be prepared.