Shooting some friends w/ newborn today...

...hopefully I'll have some interesting stuff to post this evening.

I offered a friends with a newborn some free prints and images in exchange for allowing me to use their images to promote my business. This is the "working for a living" part of being a photographer that I'm doing. I'm hoping that a good set of family images in a casual style will communicate the kind of portrait photography I'm interested in doing.

In addition, I'm using a dual speedlight setup, using a wireless transmitter, for the first time.

I'll have to remember to make some backups in natural light - and to save .jpgs as well as raw files, for viewing on-site.

Exhibiting at ArtSpace April 7 to May 3, 2009

("In A Row" Copyright ©2006 Edward Hahn All Rights Reserved)
I'm very excited to announce that I've been selected to exhibit solo at the ArtSpace in Herndon, Virginia, for the month of April. The opening reception will actually be on Saturday, April 18, to avoid Easter and spring break holidays.

Obviously, I'm ecstatic and humbled about this. More details as they emerge.

Websites...

("Blue Ridge Abstract" Copyright ©2005 Edward Hahn All Rights Reserved)
Well, everyone needs a website these days, right? I've been working mine over pretty heavily the last couple of days, and am at a point where I don't mind people looking at it. So, without further ado.

This brings up a huge dilemma, though, for photographers. Given that anything that's on the net can be easily lifted, many photographers go to significant pains to prevent unauthorized use. And that's reasonable, since the image is the photographer's livelihood. But at the same time, does it really help sell yourself if you put huge watermarks onto images? Or potentially worse, use a Flash-based navigation system that, while it prevents simply right-clicking to save the image, makes navigation fussy and still doesn't really protect you (since anyone can simply take a screenshot)?

Other philosophical issues I'm wrestling with is uploading of tiny, degraded, low-resolution images. It seems to me that anything fuzzy enough to prevent casual use can hardly showcase your skills as a photographer.

So, until I resolve these issues in my head, I'm going to try to avoid these steps at this point.

(Hoist by my own petard! The first time I posted this, I forgot that I had enabled "no direct linking" on the gallery where the photo was hosted! I got a nice "Direct Linking Denied" message!)

Watch Photography...duh!

So I was talking with an established commercial photographer yesterday, and he had a recent shoot of jewelry. The way he spoke about it was that it was very difficult to capture well.

As it turns out, one of my other hobbies is watch collecting - in fact, I help moderate a website dedicated to it (plug: www.timezone.com). One of the things we do is write articles and reviews of watches.

Well, watches - particularly ones with polished cases - fall into the category of jewelry that's difficult to shoot. I've already spent a fair amount of time figuring out a good setup for shooting them, and have a homebrew softbox to shoot them in. So...why not post some photos of watches in my portfolio? Duh.

(Photo Copyright ©2009 Edward Hahn All Rights Reserved.)

Some new features in Photoshop CS4 for photographers...

I found this article at Macworld.com yesterday. While all of the new features mentioned in the article appear to be of some utility, the fourth hint, where you can interact with curves and hue/saturation adjustment layers by clicking to select the tone/color to edit, and dragging in the image to adjust, seems to be the most useful.

After a brief test, it's very useful because it allows you to zero in on the specific point in the curve, or the specific color tone, and make adjustments that affect it directly. I've always found curves to be fussy to deal with, as it was sometimes difficult to figure out exactly which part of the curve you needed to adjust to get the desired result; this seems to be a valuable addition.

Musical Interlude...

So...the camera factory has recognized their egregious error on the camera and is fixing it under warranty post-haste. I may even see it back this week.

In the mean time, check out three of the bands on my personal heavy rotation (at youtube, since that seems to be the best way to link to songs these days without worrying that the links will be dead in a week/day/hour. Unfortunately, the videos for the last two are rather a dog's breakfast.)


Nomo


David Holmes


Elbow

Enjoy!

ed

The Bathtub Curve...

So, I recently purchased a new camera to bring me up to the current technology level - my old camera is from the late Triassic period. Naturally, getting something that's brand spanking new means two hazards.

First, you have to find a place that actually has some stock. I was able to find one last week, and was from a reputable dealer that I've dealt with before.

Second, you are dealing with early production models. Unfortunately, the problem here is that early production can sometimes be a bit dicey.

So...my new camera gets bitten by the second bug (started showing failures after about 30 photos), which left me with two unattractive options:  one, return the camera to the dealer and get a new one - while I'm sure they would do it, the problem is they are out of stock again, so I'd not get a replacement any time soon.  Second option, send it to the factory repair center, and hope they can fix it right and get it back to me in a reasonably short amount of time.

For me, I chose the second option - hopefully it won't be more than a week or two.

Welcome to my blog!

To kick this blog off, a short intro:  I'm a long time photographer as a hobbyist, but am just starting out to see whether I can make a living as a full-time pro.  I guess my timing could have been better.

While I'd love to be able to support myself doing just fine art photography, I expect that I'll need to do events and commercial work (if I can find it) to support myself.

I've already been part of  two exhibitions, and have some potential shows in the works, so I've already had more success (luck) starting out than seems reasonable.

Anyway, I'm not starting this blog to just spout off, so here's a link to an interesting article on the Luminous Landscape, that talks about the artist in relationship to his/her audience.

"Vapor", Copyright ©2008 Edward Hahn All Rights Reserved