My schedule has finally eased up a bit so I can have some fun with my photography. On Saturday, one of my favorite instructors, Efrain Cruz of Illuminate Workshops, will be hosting his free monthly night photowalk in downtown Denver. The gathering is open to anyone who would like to join us. It's so much more fun to practice photography with other like minded, creative photogs.
Check out this link to find out more information and what you need to bring.
This blog post includes images I shot during a night photowalk even last year. Check out this link on Flickr to see what other photography students have shot during previous photo walks.
Shane, Kim and Branden shot at a Colorado Strobist Meetup
Tomorrow, I will be attending a Colorado Strobist meet-up. It's been a while since I've had the time to participate in one of these, and I've been looking forward to it. OpticPixelWarrior has arranged this great shoot in a new local salon called Voila. A dress designer will be letting us shoot her clothing line, while the salon plans to chip in with hair and makeup for the models in trade for photos. The studio in historic downtown Denver is housed in a cool brick building and has a great basement for interesting shots. Plus, the streets of the city should be great for shooting in as well if the weather cooperates.
Continuing my education in off-camera flash is a priority for me. While I have been learning more how to control my Alien Bees in my home studio, I still want to learn how to combine flash with ambient light on location shoots. Plus, I have the AB Vagabond battery pack but have never used it, and I've never taken my AB's outside of the comfort of my home studio.
These informal Strobist meet-ups are the perfect time for me to practice using my equipment without feeling pressure to have to satisfy anyone but myself and my own professional growth. My only hesitation is that this group is so large that it doesn't necessary lend itself to a good teaching environment. Having 35 or more photographers in the same space can be overwhelming and taxing. But my plan is to get there early and set up my equipment in a private station so I'm forced to use it!
Last night I booked my first engagement photo session! My contact who helped me secure shooting the National Brotherhood of Skiers summit conference in January referred me to Kim, my new client, who is getting married next year out-of-state. Kim and her fiancee Michael want to have an engagement pictures as well coverage of their engagement party next month here in Denver, and they have asked me to shoot both events.
I'm not worried about the party, as I've had plenty of experience shooting these type of gatherings. I have asked Kim to give me a shot list and assign someone to point out important people to make sure I get photos of all the family members who will be traveling to the party, but probably won't make it to the actual wedding.
But I need to spend this weekend researching how to take engagement photos. In my initial consultation, Kim told me that she and Mike met while skiing in a Slippers-n-Sliders club event. So I definitely loved her idea of trying to recreate the first time they met by dressing them up in ski gear and hoisting their skis. I wish there was some snow on the ground! I also like the idea of shooting them where Mike proposed. And I definitely want to capture the romance and fun of their relationship.
Know any examples of engagement shots you love? Please send them my way so I can check them out. I've also visited several Flickr E-session groups to get some ideas on posing. And I will be hitting my photography books to see what I can find about lighting this situation as well, since we will be holding the session outside.
Schmap also created this widgetized version of the guide to include on my blog.
Several of my trusted colleagues say they have not gotten any exposure from having their photos featured in Schmap, while others on the Flickr forum say the inclusion has led more referrals to their account, although no royalties for using the photo. There also seems to be some controversy over whether anyone should allow Schmap to include their photos without payment as seen in these various Flickr discussions. The jury is still out for me, as this is the first image I've had accepted, and as of yet have not had any other inquiries for purchasing this image. It's also one of the images that is available for sale in the Heidi's Deli in downtown Denver.
What do you think? Is this an instance where a photography shouldn't allow usage of a photo unless they are being paid for it, or is the free exposure payment enough?
I happened upon this great Flickr group over the weekend that I wanted to share: "high school senior portraits-living on the creative edge." I joined this group, added several photos to the group pool and have left tons of comments on photos that have simply amazed me because of their quality and creativity. The photos are inspiring and really have great examples of some outstanding, non-traditional senior portraits. It's the kind of direction I want to go with my own senior portrait photography, and I think you can learn from seeing how the best do it better.
Flickr is fast becoming a key resource for advertisers to seek out (or troll, however you see it) new talent. But at it's heart of hearts, Flickr is still about connecting with other photographers, sharing your work with as many people as you can, earning accolades and constructive criticism, and getting ideas to make your own photography stand out. Take advantage of this resource by uploading your own photos and joining groups.
I just got an email a few minutes ago from Flickr that one of my uploaded photos has been short-listed for inclusion in the fifth edition of the Schmap Denver Guide to be published late October 2008.
Schmap Guide is an online interactive experience that includes maps and guide content allowing intuitive, real-time access to reviews and photo slideshows for places of interest.
The image above was chosen out of my Flickr uploads to be submitted into the final selection phase for the edition. It is one of the shots I took while covering Bill Coleman's Giant-sized Puppets participating in the Denver St. Patrick's Day Parade earlier this year. The Guide will send a message to my Flickr account when the guide is released, letting me know whether or not my photo has been included.
While the Guide offers no payment for publication, many photographers willingly submit their photos, as Schmap Guides give their work recognition and wide exposure, and are free of charge to readers. Photos are published at a maximum width of 150 pixels, are clearly attributed, and link to high-resolution originals at Flickr.
I emailed the managing editor and let her know I regularly shoot images in Colorado and might have other photos she would like include in her guide. I included a link to my business website and gave her my cell phone number too. Maybe this could lead to other commissions.
This is definitely an example of how advertisers and companies are gaining access to a talented pool of advid pro and semi-pro photographers who regularly upload their images to the online community. It's the second time someone has come across one of my uploaded images and asked to use it. The first time, a nonprofit pregnancy crisis center found one of my Flickr images that they wanted to use for an ad campaign. When I told them how much the image would cost ($150) they said they didn't have enough funds for the image. Even though I blogged about this incident and decried the Freebie Photo Phenomenon, I have often worried if not giving the center the photo for free was a mistake.
In this instance though, I think possibly allowing Schmap to host one of my images for free online might work in my favor because of the worldwide audience and exposure.
Don't shoot alone! Take advantage of these worldwide events to capture images among the company of other talented shooters in your actual or "virtual" community.
SCOTT KELBY'S WORLDWIDE PHOTO WALK
You're invited to join Scott Kelby and his friends on August 23, 2008, for the first ever "Worldwide Photo Walk." Join us for this free, social photography event to celebrate the release of the update to the world's bestselling Lightroom book, "The Lightroom 2 Book for Digital Photographers." One participant selected by the host of each city will receive a free copy of The Lightroom 2 for Digital Photographers book by Scott Kelby or be eligible for this grandprize. New cities are joining every day, but if you don't see your city on the list, then lead a group yourself! I have already signed up for the Denver event, and I hope to see you there!
A year ago, just over 7,000 of you shared a slice of your day from May 5, 2007. It was wonderful to see the similarities (weddings, birthdays, graduations, Cinco de Mayo celebrations, etc.) and differences across the flickrverse. We’re going to celebrate another 24 hours of Flickr — Flickr 888. Take a photo anytime when it’s August 8th where you are, then share it in the group.
There’s more! Our cool friends at MOO are going to create unique Flickr 888 Postcard Packs that will be available early this fall. So, mark your calendars and save the date for another 24 hours of Flickr, Friday August 8, 2008.
Flickr's visibility helped an organization contact me to purchase an image for its advertising campaign. Make it easy for potential clients to find you by uploading to a Flickr photo gallery like mine.
July's monthly assignment "HISTORY" is due by Sunday. Please email submissions to shebawheeler@picture-yourworld.com or post them to the new Picture Your World Photography Flickr group.
A painful knee swollen to as large as my head kept me sidelined all weekend. That's what I get for getting back out on the volleyball court too soon before my last knee injury healed. So I didn't get to go to Dinosaur Ridge or the night shoot with Illuminate Photography Workshops. So I've got one week to get my History assignment done too! Good luck with your images everybody!
Shooting Rifle Falls last weekend was a great opportunity for me to experiment with water, motion and shutter speeds. I packed away my polarizers to soften the glare of the shiny water and neutral density filters to add depth to the blue skies. Well, at least my intentions were in the right place. I completely forgot that all of filters were bought to fit my older smaller lenses, not my new 16-35 or my 70-200. All kind of curse words! So that meant I was going to have to rely only on shooting in the shadows, a small aperture and large f-stop to stop down the camera enough to capture those tale-tell cottony streams of long-exposed water.
I was able to hand hold this shot at 1/60th of a second. The faster shutter speed freezes the waterfall.
At 1/13th of a second, the waterfall is in between worlds of being visibly slowed down, but still showing movement. At this point, you would have to have a steady grip to hand-hold this without camera shake.
A tripod is a must trying to capture this image at f/22 and 3.2 seconds. I tend to favor the slower exposure because I love the dreamy, almost otherworldly feel of the water. Which shot works for you?
A cry for help in a Digital Photography School forum spurred me to do something I should have done a long time ago: back up all of my photography files and images. Southernbelle, a new online friend and fellow fotog, lost her photos when her hard drive crashed. Thankfully though, she had been uploading all of her images to a Kodak gallery for the last four years. She was able to buy an archival CD from Kodak containing all of her 6,000 original images.
It is a lesson we should all learn from.
Several months ago, I purchased a professional membership to Flickr, which allows me to backup and store my images online. Even though I had this extra security, I had been remiss in uploading my photos. Today, I decided to take action. Before I leave the city and head to Rifle to take pictures of the lovely triple beauty of the Rifle Falls, I WILL backup everything on my Flickr site. I also want to check out the Kodak gallery as well. When it comes to backing up, I think redundancy and paranoia is a good thing. I also have two external hard drives with all the images backed up as well.
Thank you Southernbelle for sharing your experiences. I plan to take heed to my friend's warning!
Armando Martinez, my new friend and Photoshop instructor-extraordinaire, tipped me off last night during one of his classes about an exciting new partnership between Getty and Flickr.
According to this Seattle PI article and this blog posted on the Getty Images blog, Getty editors "will be exploring Flickr's collection of public photos and inviting some of these photographers to be part of the Flickr collection on Getty Images."
What does that mean for you and me? Getty Images customers will have access to our photos and give us a chance to license our images commercially with an internationally recognized digital media organization. Check out the Flickr collection on www.gettyimages.com in coming months to see what the editors have selected. That also means those tags and keyword searches are going to be more important than ever in helping get your photos to the editors. Plus, Getty will pay many of us amateur and semi-pro fotogs the same way they pay professionals, with percentages pased on use and restrictions. Getty will likely be looking for "scenic and creative shots".
Armando seems to think Getty Images and Flickr might try to use the dollar stock model to sell the images cheap. Read PhotoShelter's response to this move by their top competitor and why they think Getty is killing the stock industry.
I will definitely keep an ear out for more information about this. Look for more great ideas and information from Armando later this week, since his Photoshop 2 class was so incredible that it blew my mind and opened the door to so many new possibilities for achieving better photos.
Saturday night and well into Sunday morning, I attended a free night photography group shoot hosted by Illuminate Photography Workshops in Denver. BTW, that's me in the back row of the photo above! I can't tell you how much fun it was to be apart of this creative group of people. It was fun to shoot with friends and professional colleagues John Freeman and Tiffany Trott. Plus, working alongside other talented photographers is very motivational and its fun to see how different "eyes" see and capture a similar topic, such as the Denver Millenium Bridge. I felt safe traveling around the city at night with so many other people around me. And nothing compares to getting to see and experience your hometown as it lives and breathes in the darkness.
Workshop director Efrain Cruz (directing students above) plans to host these events each month, offering former students an opportunity to learn new techniques and shoot on location with workshop instructors like Armando Martinez. But I also think it's a great way to grow Efrain's business. He's creating a sense of community among current and potentially new students in a non-threatening and fun way. Plus, people who attend the event are encouraged to post up their images on Flickr, another great avenue for getting your photography out to a public audience.
Up until now, I have to admit I've loathed my tripod and rarely used it. To be perfectly honest, that contraption scared me and made me worry that my camera wasn't attached correctly and would eventually end up crashing to the floor. But you can't take long night exposures without a tripod keeping your camera steady, so I couldn't avoid the Bogen any longer. Everyone seemed to understand my initial aversion to the tripod and thankfully no one laughed at me (to my face anyway) when I needed to be schooled on how to work it. Hey, cut me some slack, at least I had the bloody damned thing! But before the morning came, I was confidently lugging my camera attached atop my tripod just like everybody else, and my respect and confidence for the Bogen has grown tremendously. Especially since it helped me take amazing shots like these:
See more images from the night's adventure on the Illuminate Workshop Flickr Group pool.
"We're looking for beautiful nature photography representing the diversity of life on Earth. Your own original digital images of our lands, waters, plants, animals and people in nature are all eligible for the competition.
We are especially interested in images that showcase the wide range of habitats across our planet, including all types of forests, grasslands, lakes and rivers, deserts and arid lands, rainforests, marine habitats and coral reefs."
To enter photos, upload them to the Conservancy's Flickr group and tag them with PhotoContest-TNCO8 or complete an online form and email each photo, one at a time.
Submit as many photos as you'd like, as often as you like up unitl 11:59 PST on OCTOBER 15, 2008. Make sure to read all the rules. They want photos of flora and fauna found in the wild....so that trip you took to the local zoo won't count last summer won't count!
I've already submitted some photos to the Flickr group, including the shot of the chick in this blog and my favorite shot of that elusive red fox in my boyfriend's mountain cabin backyard. I was shocked to see that more than 75,000 photos have already been entered. But don't let that hold you back. You won't know what the response will be until you do it.
Explore is a Flickr feature with the intent of showing you "some of the most awesome photos on Flickr." Photos are automatically selected by computer according to a secret algorithm called Interestingness (see below for more about that).
Considering how many images are uploaded to Flickr on a daily basis, I think it's an amazing feat to have something of yours noted and featured based on how many other people took the time to view a post or post a comment. Thank you to everyone who has commented on my photos in the past, offering sorely needed advice and criticism to improve my images.
Here is an image from my portfolio that I am turning in today as my entry for the Colorado 4x4 Shutterbug forum's Photo of the Week. I took this over the weekend during a Flickr Colorado Strobist meetup. I can't tell you enough how great it has been working and learning from this terrific group of people. Strobist enjoy using lighting techniques with off-camera flash. The members of this particular group are very knowledgeable and willing to share their expertise as we all learn together.
This photo was achieved by taping a Canon flash with a purple gel onto the back of a motorcycle. Another flash was mounted on a stand camera right and triggered by a Pocket Wizard to create the silhouette. What's really cool about this is that I totally understood what I just said right now and a month ago I wouldn't have been able too. ;) It has been so much fun learning and mastering new techniques. If you haven't already done so, check out Flickr to see if there is a group operating in your area that can help you progress as well. Here is another image I took that weekend at the meetup.
I am also entering it in the monthly assignment contest, "It's All About the Light!" hosted by the Digital Photo Academy. (FYI folks, the DPA's contest is open to all shooters, so submit something already! And remember, the winner who is selected will be part of the 12 assignment images that will be on display in museums, galleries and studios around the country. Yours truly won the first month's assignment, "The Allure of Water" with the following image:
Picture Your World Photography is a Denver-based studio specializing in photo-journalistic portraits, weddings and special event coverage. Sheba Wheeler, owner and lead photographer, is a long-time Colorado journalist who blends her skills as a former lifestyle's reporter at the Denver Post with contemporary portraiture techniques and lighting to capture your real-life experiences.
Sheba's candid portraits capture the essence of your moment and your personality while at the same time showcasing her signature artistic vision. Use her portraits for all types of personal and business applications.
Whether shooting in her private home-based studio or on location in fantastic, outdoor Colorado landscapes, Sheba knows what settings can help you shine.
"Doesn't matter what brings a person; only what they leave with!"
This blog will chronicle my transformation from a print journalist to a digital photographer. Look for these categories to help guide your reading: 1)Get the Goods:buying the necessary equipment and education 2)Get Connected: joining online forums and meeting other talented shooters 3)Get Out There: self-promotion, marketing, and networking 4)Get the Job Done: snagging paid assignments
5) Get Inspired:revive your creative juices by gaining inspiration from other talented photographers.
Every week I will feature images pulled"From My Portfolio,"including personal favorites and images taken for clients. My books, DVDs and magazine reviews"In My Library"will help you catch up on your reading. In "This Weekend" readers can see what I have planned for upcoming sessions with clients.
