Sunset, the big travel magazine devoted to the American Southwest, contacted me today asking to buy this photo from the Burning Man festival. It will run in an article called “Amazing West” in their November issue. And they offered me the biggest fee I’ve ever received for a single image. Now that’s a nice way to start the day.
Photography
Sunset Magazine Comes Calling
Flash Photography Tips (video)
Gotta love YouTube for always coming up with a splash screen where I have a funny expression on my face. They must have a special filter that searches for those frames.
If you’re interested, here is my course on Off-Camera Flash Photography.
You can also view this Flash Photography Tips video on YouTube.
Gearing up for Burning Man
Just some of the gear I'm packing
Preparing for Burning Man is only slightly less daunting than packing for a polar expedition — or perhaps a mission to Mars is a better analogy.
Each year my packing list grows longer and more complex (it now spans 8 pages of closely-spaced typing), and each year I nevertheless forget several important items and end up cursing myself out there in the Nevada desert when I discover that I forgot to bring, say, the superglue that I need to re-attach the sole of my shoe so that I don’t have to walk 3 miles back to camp barefoot on the blistering, 120-degree surface of the alkaline lakebed. Or the charger for my camera battery. Or my can opener. Or, even worse, the beer. Or any one of the hundreds of other things that make life bearable in the extreme environment of Burning Man. (more…)
Perspective Correction in Lightroom 3
For me, this feature alone was worth the $99 upgrade from Lightroom 2. And it’s just one of many improvements. If you want to buy me a beer, use one of the links below when you buy or upgrade.
The Joy of Tear Sheets
Tear sheets (that’s tear as in rip, not as in cry) is the name given to pages from a magazine or book sent to the photographer who took the photos. Sometimes they are literally sheets torn out of the publication, but I always request several copies of the entire magazine or book and usually get it. (more…)
Off-Camera Flash Photography – How and Why
If you own a detachable Speedlite-style flash, and you are shooting with it on your camera, you are wasting your investment in that expensive flash.
Face it, on-camera flash sucks. It drains the life out of your subject and makes everyone look like they are posing for a police line-up or a driver’s license photo.
You gotta get that flash off your camera!
The video above is my YouTube “commercial” for my off-camera flash course. Frankly I don’t know if it’s cheesy or if it’s cool, but I had fun making it, and people seem to love it on YouTube, so I thought I’d share it with you here.
Hard Rock Model Shoot (Video)
It’s not every day you get to have this much fun. Photographer Brad Mahler booked a suite at the Hard Rock Hotel, lined up some great models, and invited me to join him for a day of shooting. How could I say no? Check out this video for a behind-the-scenes look at the whole process.
By the way, if you’re a gear geek you’ll notice the difference between our lighting setups. Brad is using his big Alien Bees studio lights, while I’m using my favorite small-flash setup, shooting Canon Speedlites through umbrellas. You’ll see me using both the Canon wireless (master/slave) system, when I need one light, and radio triggers when I need two lights.
If you’d like to know exactly how all this works, you can get the full story in my new 9-video course called “How to Shoot Professional-Looking Headshots and Portraits on a Budget Using Small Flashes.”
That’s my first video product, and I’m pretty damn excited about it, so if you think it sounds interesting, check it out, or at least hit one of the social media links below and share this video with your friends!
How to Sell Photos to a Book Publisher
Since I so often kick myself for doing things wrong, today I’m going to celebrate doing it right.
Today I turned a publisher’s request for a single photo—with no offer of payment—into a 5-photo sale for hundreds of dollars. It’s a lesson for me, and maybe for you, in what to do right.
I was contacted by a Japanese travel book publisher, who wanted to use the image at left from my Burning Man Festival photos (caution, some nudity) in their “Dream Trips” guidebook, which will include a chapter on Burning Man as a tourist destination. (Of course, the notion of busloads of Japanese tourists arriving at Burning Man is pretty damn funny. If you’re not familiar with Burning Man, it’s the annual festival of “radical self-expression” held in the Nevada desert — a photographer’s dreamland of fantastic characters, art, and spectacle — but definitely not for the faint of heart.)
Anyway, this publisher offered no payment, only credit. (more…)
Video: Introduction to Adobe Lightroom Workflow
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom is the premiere photo managment software for digital photographers. It can handle your entire photo workflow from importing images, to organizing, editing, printing, and exporting to websites like Picasa, Flickr, or your own custom-made web galleries.
I just created a free 23-minute video tutorial illustrating the process of working in Lightroom. If you’re considering buying Lightroom, or if you’re a new Lightroom owner looking to get more out of the software, this video is for you.
In this tutorial, I walk you step-by-step through my own Lightroom workflow, narrating as I process a set of photos from camera import through organizing, renaming, editing, and exporting as a fully-functional flash web gallery.
If you’re curious about Lightroom, I invite you to check it out on my photo tutorials page.
