LeggNet's Digital Capture

Photowalking Utah has teamed up with the Utah Chapter of the National MS Society for a unique photowalk on April 24th, 2010 in Salt Lake City.  The group has been asked to capture images of the WALK 2010 event and its 4,000+ participants.  This is a great way for us as photographers to help ‘give back’ to a great cause through our photography.  Here are the details:

• Date:  April 24, 2010
• Time:  8:30 am – complete  (before noon)
• Where:  Meet in front of the Apple Store at the Gateway (10 South Rio Grande Street, Salt Lake City)

The Photowalking Utah crew will meet up near the starting point of the walk.  After some info and instructions on the day, we will fan out and take photos of the event.  For anyone who has ever wanted to try out ‘photojournalistic’ type of shooting, this will be a great place to do so.  After the event participating photographers will be asked to share any of their images that they would like with the local MS Chapter for it to use.  It’s worth noting that photos taken at this event in years past have been picked up by national publications.

As always, these events are free of charge and open to anyone regardless of your photographic skill or what kind of camera you have.  For more information and/or to let us know you’re coming, head on over to the event discussion at the Photowalking Utah Flickr Group.

I hope to see a good crowd on the 24th!

UPDATE

Paul Dennison will be heading a Photowalking Utah group to cover the Ogden MS Walk on the 10th. Here are the details:

Date: April 10th, 2010
When: 8:30 – Complete
Where: Lorin Farr Park 1691 Gramercy Avenue, Ogden, UT

Thanks for stepping up, Paul 🙂

Here’s the recorded video stream from the talk on Success in Microstock Photography I gave earlier this month at PhotoCamp Utah.  I covered a lot of material in a relatively short period of time (I get a bit rushed at the end), but hopefully the info I shared will give a bit of insight into me and the topic.  Big kudos to the hard working video team that were able to stream and record several of this year’s presentations.  To see the videos, visit the PhotoCamp Utah UStream channel.

Canon 5D Mark II, Canon 24-105 f/4L lens – 1/50 second, f/4.0, ISO 3200

Canon 5D Mark II, Canon 70-200 F/4L lens – 1/60 second, f/5.6, ISO 100

Talk about getting your nickel’s worth, the Davis Hospital and Medical Center sure seems to like my image of Alyssa.  This is the third different place I have seen it used by them.  This is a great example of one of the advantages (and controversial?) of using Royalty Free Microstock images – the ability to use an image multiple times for a single purchase price.

This past Saturday, shortly after I finished giving my talk on Microstock Photography at Photocamp Utah, I sold the 100,000th image from my portfolio at iStockphoto.com.  While reaching this milestone doesn’t really change my life, it marks a major accomplishment for me personally.  Tomorrow is my third anniversary of being accepted as an Exclusive Contributor at iStock.  Back when I was accepted on 03.23.07, I had just reached 500 downloads.  Now just three short years later it is amazing to realize I have sold over 100,000 downloads and that this has been my full-time career since 2008.

The 100,000th download is a fitting image for marking the achievement.  Not only is it an older image (it was taken on March 24th, 2007 – just one day after going exclusive), it provides a nice visual for me to remember the journey that got me where I am.  It was my faith in what I was doing that allowed me to put the Rubber to the Road and build what I have today.

Lastly, if it were not for the help of family and friends supporting me in what I do, I would not be doing it at all. From Michelle’s (and our daughters) early support and understanding of what I was building to the countless friends who have modeled and assisted over the years, I cannot say Thank You enough for the help and encouragement.

Now, enough of this sappy looking back stuff. On toward 200,000! 🙂

Note from Rich: Today’s blog post is a guest entry written by Utah photographer Jon Williams. This is Jon’s story of his experience of having his camera equipment stolen last year. I am sharing it here since I feel Jon is sharing important info for any photographer to hear.

By Jon Williams

I was one of the unlucky photographers that fell victim to the “Temple Square Thieves” last November. I lost a large Lowe Pro bag filled with Canon equipment. The loss was around $6000.00. The bag was stolen from my locked van which was parked at Crown Burger and/or Pictureline.

They had watched me shooting a wedding at Temple Square, and then watched where I stowed away my gear in the back of my full size Ford van (the van has my company name on the doors).  They then just needed to follow me until I stopped somewhere. I went in Crown Burger to use the restroom. I was in there maybe four minutes. I then stopped at Pictureline for maybe ten minutes. I parked where I could watch the van, but they still got me.

They drilled out the key hole, unlocked the power door locks, opened the rear, took the large bag, and relocked the van. I didn’t even know I had been robbed until that evening when I was on my say to shoot the wedding reception. Whoops! No camera gear! My brides temple pictures were also taken.

I thought I was well insured through Hill and Usher/Hartford. It wasn’t too good as it turned out. I found the claims process to be slow and tedious. Also the coverage did not allow me to buy what I had lost. Did you know they deduct 15% depreciation for items that were supposedly covered for “full replacement value?” Also many small items were not covered because I had not individually listed the items on the insurance inventory. Examples: Flash bracket, PC cords, Diffusors for flash, back up flashes etc. This added up to around $300.00. (I have since listed a Misc. package of unspecified equipment of $ 450.00 on my insured listing)

Salt Lake City police tried their best to catch this “ring” but with no luck.

This theft really – set me back– in terms of lost time, lost work, and reparations to the bride. Even though I received about $4000.00 from insurance, I have been forced to sell some of my beloved Hasselblad equipment to pay for new digital gear. My insurance company would not pay for anything under “Errors and Omissions” because they determined that I did not make any errors (strange but true).

I have been paying about $700.00 per year for this Hill and Usher policy which is advertised as “Package Plus” for Professional Photographers and endorsed by WPPI. I think there must be a better way to go after my experience.

Professional photographers need to carry a wide variety of insurance and it may not be feasable to have one insurance provider. I plan to send out a carefully worded RFP to several insurance companies to see if I can obtain a comprehensive policy to cover camera equipment, facilities, buildings, liability, computer equipment, office equipment, etc.  I’ve been told that Travelers Insurance is very good.

This is a good website and I appreciate the chance to share my story with other photographers.

Jon Williams
Professional Photographer
Ogden, Utah
JonWilliamsPhotographer.com

I’m coming off a busy few days of photography having completed three fairly large stock shoots and two studio shoots in the past week.  The largest of these was a doctor’s office shoot on Saturday night.  Even though medical themed images are in an (over?)abundance on iStock, I have done quite well in the past with my healthcare series.

Saturday night’s outing gave me the opportunity to add to my existing collection with some fresh faces and shot ideas.  Since we had over a dozen models, I had the chance to work on some larger shots.  One of my main ideas was to recreate a ‘busy waiting room’ scene.  Today’s image is a quick edit from that set.

Canon 5D Mark II, Canon 24-105 f/4L lens – 1/125 second, f/4.5, ISO 100

Yesterday’s post comparing studio portraits taken with a Canon 5D Mark II and a G11 elicited a lot of comments.  It was great to read everyone’s guess and their reasoning behind it.

The above image (the one on the right yesterday) is the version photographed with the 5D Mark II.  A few of the commenters (Harley, Nicole, Eric…) touched on what I felt was the obvious “Tell” – the fact that the expression was better in the 5D version.  There are a couple of reasons for this.  The first is that I spent more time on the 5D image since it was to be the “Keeper” for Melinda.  The second reason is that I found it a bit uncomfortable taking a studio portrait with the G11.  Lining up the composition on the back of the LCD was a bit disconcerting.  Even though the G11 has a viewfinder, the fact that it only has ~75% coverage means it cannot be used to properly line up the composition.

As I said yesterday (and the reader comments back this up), it is extremely difficult (impossible?) to discern the difference at this resolution.  If I had shown these images at a size of around 1500+ pixels (long side) the difference in sharpness would become readily apparent.

Lastly, it wasn’t mentioned yesterday, but even though there was a $3,000 difference in camera cost we can’t forget something that was a major factor in the difficulty in telling the images apart – this was a studio shot using a couple thousand dollars worth of lighting equipment.  The four light setup I used definitely helped to even the playing field between the cameras.

Thanks everyone for chiming in yesterday.  It made for a fun afternoon reading the guesses as they came in through the comments and on Facebook.  And thanks Melinda for allowing me to use her headshot session for this experiment.

Canon 5D Mark II, Canon 24-105 f/4L lens – 1/125 second, f/5.6, ISO 100

Canon 5D Mark II, Canon 70-200 f/4L lens – 1/160 second, f/4, ISO 100

One of the challenges of doing last month’s movie theater audience stock photo shoot was keeping track of what models were in each particular shot.  To help me do this I took several “Index Shots” once the models were in place.  Each person was assigned a number which corresponded to their model release.  They then held these numbers up for the index photo.  When it came time to match the model releases to the individual images and put the index shots to work, I noticed that more than a few of the models added their own unique touch that made me smile.

It appears that the mugging mainly falls into three categories:

1. The Model Face
2. The Sad Clown
3. The Grinning/Twisted/Open Mouth

oh, and then there’s Scott’s (#47) always changing take on number placement.

Now that the editing is done and the images are making their way through inspection, I want to say another THANKS to all the great folks that came out early on a Saturday morning to make the shoot happen.  We had a great time!  To see the images (as they become available), check out my “At the Movies” collection on iStockphoto by clicking here.

Here’s a quick panorama I stitched together from 5 G11 images of Friday night’s University of Utah gymnastics meet.  Since my seat was nowhere near the caliber of Ann Torrence’s front row throne, this is about the only image I created at the outing (click the image for a larger view).

How about an “image in use” for this Sunday morning?  Long time blog reader (and my good friend) Mark spotted this shot of Andrew and Katie while doing some morning reading.  Thanks Mark!

Canon 5D Mark II, Canon 24-105 f/4L lens – 1/125 second, f/4, ISO 100

This video of Judge Joe Brown has been making the rounds today on more than a few photography related websites.  What is apparent to me in watching his honor berate the (so-called) professional wedding photographer for things such as using inexpensive equipment, poor exposure and inferior image quality is that the judge appears to have more than a passing knowledge of photography.  I would go as far as guessing that Judge Joe Brown has spent a considerable amount of time behind his camera.

Be sure to watch until the very end to see what Judge Joe rules as the judgement.  Wow!

Canon 5D Mark II, Canon 24-105 f/4L lens – 1/160 second, f/7.1, ISO 100