Recently, I was over come with spam.  Maybe overcome is putting it lightly.  I was getting more spam email in my inbox than I was actual email.  Which for reasons that are far too obvious is a horrible thing.  Thankfully I found a fix. Read more »

As my business partner and I continue to grow our photography business, we have been looking to build our portfolio.  As he has many more years experience with photography than I, namely weddings, we lean a lot on his body of work.  As a testimony to his ability, he shot my wedding, and did so with a Pentax medium format camera.  While the photos were great, the drawback is having the work in negatives when we need them digitally to work them into our website, studio books, etc. Read more »

If you are a geek like me and also in possession of an iPhone, you most certainly have looked around at the various photography related applications available. I have been trying my hand at two of them, CameraBag and CameraKit, and wanted to share my thoughts with you should you be in the market to purchase one yourself. Read more »

Whether a prosumer, hobbyist, or working professional, you have certainly looked around and done some comparison shopping as to what company would provide you with prints of your work. Some of you, like me, have probably run into local printing vendors who were either horribly over-priced or were not capable of printing larger format images for you, forcing your search online.

As a user at Deviant Art I purchased a print account quite some time ago.  In fact, it was during their 2-year anniversary (if memory serves) and the print accounts were offered half-price.  With no local options and my work already on Deviant Art, their print program seemed like a great option.  As the years went by, my work and needs have also changed, evolved, and adapted.

For the longest time, I have wished to see improvements to the Deviant Art Prints (DAP) program to make it more user friendly for experienced artists.  A fellow photographer recommended using Mpix.  After seeing some of his work printed I knew that I had to give them a test run and see how their services compared against that of Deviant Art Prints.

Some might cry foul here stating that Deviant Art built their print program on top of a “community” and did not start off with the same purpose as Mpix might have started with.  Deviant Art added the print program on top of the community and integrated it in, offering a cool and unique service that many communities cannot do.  All things considered, I think they did well with the integration, separating their site from others that are similar.

Regardless of origins, offering the same services opens you to the same critique.    For the review below, I compared both companies in the following categories: shipping, quality, uploading , pricing, options, and speed. Read more »

After a workshop late last year, I had my mind firmly set on purchasing a new camera strap.  If you have ever used the traditional camera strap, shot portrait, and been highly annoyed at how the strap hangs in the way of the viewfinder, then this new strap is right up your alley. Read more »

I have been researching current Photoshop related books as I prepare to write my own.  My research brought me into a local book store where I was flipping through their collection.  I came across a Scott Kelby book and after flipping through it, the book made its way to the register and on to home. Read more »

Adobe Photoshop CS3 offers a nice array of improvements.  I cannot remember the exact upgrade (I want to say from v6 to v7) but there have been times when upgrading to the newest version just didn’t seem worth the time or money.  CS3 is different, and the panoramic merge improvements are just one of many examples.

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I have been “protected” for about a year now via Norton and felt that I was reasonably secure.  Yet when the subscription ran out I continually ignored the warnings to upgrade, probably because I really didn’t want to come out of pocket for anything.  So it was no real shock to me when my computer was bombarded with utter garbage this past week. Read more »

Yesterday I attended a “Toy Camera Class”, instructed by Rob Holland at The Camera Doctor.  The last photography class I had was back during my first year in college.  Even then, it was not a formal class on photography but merely a section of our art class devoted to the darkroom as it dealt with one of our projects.  Not really sure what I was getting into, I ventured over to check it out. Read more »