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Hi y’all!

First of all, I’d like to welcome you to the new blog and wish you a happy new year. I know it’s late, but season greetings become a social faux-pas after the 31st of January, which we luckily haven’t passed yet.  As you’ve noticed, we’ve completely switched shops here. We used to be an all WordPress shop, with everything combined into one mainframe, but we’ve gone separate ways now.

We’ve divided the site into two categrories. The professional portfolio/photofolio powered by ProFolio. It’s open-source, freeware and it just rocks. It’s got everything any photographer would need, looks fancy, has an intuitive CMS based control panel and did I mention it was free? I don’t mind spending bucks to get good results, but why spend ‘em when you can get results like that for free? It’s fantastic.

The blog interface however still relies on the most popular and extensible backframe of WordPress. We’ve gone through a completely other interface/design and we like it. We’ve tried to unite the designs of the portfolio, the blog and my twitter page to provide an ‘ensemble’ that keeps you in the right frame of mind.

We’ve added functionality through a right-sided twitter board, a tag cloud, search box, etc…all the things that we missed with the old blog. We hope you like it.

We’ve also added upgraded iPhone functionality. The site should be completely viewable on your iPhone, without any distortion or weirdness whatsoever.

Keep in mind, that we’re constantly upgrading the site, and it’s still in it’s babyshoes for the moment

As far as New Year’s Resolutions go, we have some, but we most of all have some for you!

This year, the beginning of a new decade has to be spectacular that’s why we wish you (in no particular order) to do the following :

- Book that trip you’ve been wanting to book.
A lot of thing indicate that travelling will become more expensive in the near future and then return to it’s old fares, but in the meanwhile the forthcoming years it will be more expensive so you need to go to that place you’ve been wanting to go to. It’ll be great for your inspiration, and you might come home with some nice frames!

-Ask that girl/model you’ve been wanting to work with.
A lot of people I know are ‘afraid’ of asking a model (even if it isn’t a professional one) for a shoot. Don’t be. You might get turned down, but at least you’ll have an answer in stead of pining away in the corner. You might be surprised by the responses. A lot of people (and this includes non-pro models) don’t have nice pictures of them self. By that I mean pictures that have been thought out, etc…and they would most certainly love to be in front of your lens.

-Book that pro-model you’ve been wanting to work with.
Even if she is pro, than just book her and make some stunning images. It’s worth it.

-Save up for that accessory you’ve been dying to have.
A new softbox, an octabox or a beautydish? Save up for it!

-Buy that accessory you’ve been saving for.
When it’s time to buyu it, don’t beasle out and do it! You’ll thank yourself later on.

-Pick up that book you’ve been wanting to read and learn about new techniques.
Knowledge is power and in a day and age where dSlr’s are incredibly affordable you’ll have to stand out of the pack by knowing every inch of your material, and that comes by learning!

-Plan that shoot you’ve been dying to do.
Time to put said knowledge to the test and try out the tecniques! Plan a shoot completely. Book your models, book your MUA, scout a location, rent the gear. Plan everything, and then go over it again so you’re sure you haven’t missed a thing!

- Fill in with what you want to do in 2010!

There really aren’t limits to this list, and it’s up to you to fill it up. I’ve already accomplished my first task which was to set up and deploy the new portfolio, blog and twitter interface. What’s your challenge?

In the meantime, here’s a short video-résumé of y New Year’s Eve party. Yes, that is a paper backdrop that survived for about 15 minutes.

Music courtesy of Ghostland Observatory.

That’s a resumé of my newyear. I hope you had a blast as well, i certainly did. By the way, I’m the moron with the red pants and the inherent santa-claus syndrome that comes with a pair of the trousers.

Love to you all and a prosperous 2010,

Morgan

Hi all!

Finally caught up with the postprocessing work I had to do, and some time to write is here!

About three weeks ago, I was in New York for about a week. Saw some crazy things, met some even crazier people. What an incredible city, I think I can honestly say I’m in love with the big apple.

Something did strike whilst being there : there are so many interesting and various things to photograph. I’m not talking about the shot-to-death-tourist things, like the Statue of Liberty, or NYSE but just simple, everyday stuff that’s beautfully shown in this town.

Due to the amount and the variety of neighborhoods, districts, and ‘towns’ you get a complete change of scenery depending on where you’re walking. Whether it’d be in the trendy SoHo, cultural Chinatown or massive midtown, what you see varies greatly and therefore offers you an immense array of photographic opportunities. In a city this large, there’s always something to shoot.

The thing is, when you’re at the point where you can’t avoid to shoot the things everyone at home wants to see because otherwise they’ll club you to death, in order not to take good ‘ol (boring) pictures of it, try to be creative. This is an advice I follow each time, and it pays off most of the time.

Shoot the details! Aside from shooting the obvious landmark, shoot a detail that reflects the thing clearly, but that doesn’t show it. People will have that uneasy second of ‘why is that moron shooting a street sign?’ and then they’ll go ‘Oooh. That’s why.’ Try to imagine the grin on your face

Look Up! Some of the most interesting details are often located above head-level, which is why you miss ‘em quite often. Shifting your head those extra 45 degrees can produce incredible images, because they’re the ones most people simply ignore.

Incorporate a new item in your scenery! Putting ‘the most important thing’ on the second place might produce an interesting image, because it won’t strike you as ‘that obvious’ put it’ll still be the picture of ‘the famous thing she saw in that movie’ and thus making everyone happy. It’s also a challenge to your compositing eye!

Try that new lens you bought. Especially if it’s a wide angle lens, like the ones we’ve discussed in an earlier thread. Those lenses really make their money’s worth when you visit a city that has prominent building and skyscrapers every friggin’ corner. They’re also incredible to use within majestic buildings like churches…

Shoot Macro. Although this might look like a misplaced tip, it’s really not. Macro can give you some splendid results, if you combine them with the details tip I gave you. Macro narrows your depth-of-field so much, that it really emphasizes on a subject/object’s properties, like in this case a Jackson Pollock painting at the MOMA.

So, these we’re a few pointers for shooting in a city. The thing you’ve always got to keep in mind, is that shooting in a city is always a challenge towards yourself to excel in composition, adaptation and creativity. It’s a great way to recharge your creative batteries, meet new and interesting people and get reboosted for doing the thing you love most.

Cheerz,

M.

It had to happen. It just did. You hear about other’s stories, predicaments and mad rants about it, and hope to God you won’t have the same bad luck, but deep within yourself you just know it’s a matter of time before it strikes you as well.

And it never strikes at the good moment, it’s always when you want it the least. Classic Murphy.
I’m talking about one of the drawbacks of relying mainly on digital hardware for your photography.

2 weeks ago I was in New York. Evidently I brought the dSlr along, with some CF-cards, Speedlight, the usual gear to take some shots. After the second day, for a reason that’s still unknown to me I switch the CF-card that was in my camera for another, empty one. I thought it felt sluggish, a touch non-responsive, but really nothing mindboggling. I could see the pictures fine on the back of the camera and they looked great to me.

I end up shooting the rest of the trip on that second card, and get home in Belgium well.
Once I recovered from the jetlag I decided to empty my cards on my laptop and start with the one that was still in my camera. 260 NEF-transfers later the second card was empty, and Lightroom filled up with the New York Skyline. I hop the first card into my card reader and then disaster strikes.

It makes all kinds of funny noises, and then comes the prompt. ‘This card is corrupt and unreadable. Please format it before use.’ Your heart starts pumping, your blood vessels open up and you feel your fingers tingle. Moisty hands ahead y’all !

Okay, might be a reading error, don’t freak. I retry it in the cardreader, and retry from the camera hooked up to the laptop. Nada.

‘Knock, knock. Who’s there? Murphy’.

I immediately open up Google and type ‘Photo Recovery Software’. 138.000 hits. Greaaat.
Narrowed it down to 2 I tried essential software’s.
-SanDisk RescuePro (free with Extreme cards, otherwise purchase)

-WinRecovery CardRecovery (28€)

I gather all my courage and boot up CardRecovery. He starts scanning and about an hour later the results show up. Found over a 1,000 files. Great! Right? I start looking over what the card found, and amongst the pictures were pictures of past holidays, other shoots, and the NYC photos. I think I’m saved until I look at the specifications of the picture. Image Dimensions : 128×128 & File Size : 43,3 Kb
It’s even worse than not getting anything back, because now I know there are some residues left of those photos on the card, but they’re just fragments. I try to open up the NEF’s (which were the right filesize) in Photoshop CS4 but again an error. I’m starting to lose my cool, but manage to regain my composure.

CardRecovery failed me so I switch over to SanDisk’s RescuePro software. If you use like my, Sandisk Extreme IV CF-Card’s, you get a this software with your memorycard. I install it, boot it up and scan the card. An hour later again, I look over the results and they look a helluvalot better.
RescuePro managed to get back approximatively the same amount of pictures, but most importantly : IT RECOVERED MY PICTURES!

The freaky thing though is that it recovered the NYC pictures in JPG format. I shot everything in RAW so I don’t know where it got those JPG’s, but it’s better than nothing. They appeared to be shot in JPG BEST FINE so the quality was more than acceptable.

I’m going to share a couple of tips with you on how to avoid this little encounter with Murphy because frankly, there’s nothing more frustrating than coming home after shooting and discovering you’ve been doing it for nothing!

Memorycards operate in the same way as books do. Your individual photos are the pages, and just like in a book there’s a Table of Contents (TOC). When you plug in your card to your pc, or your camera, the first thing it’ll do is try to look up the TOC to see what’s filled on your card.

About 70% of corrupted memorycards are due to a damaged TOC which means your computer assumes the card is empty since it can’t read the TOC and therefore demands you to format the card (which is the last thing you should do)
However ! The fact of the matter is that your photos are STILL there! There’s just no way to look ‘em up due to the faulty TOC.

Recovery software like Sandisk’s get past the faulty TOC and just retrieve all the data on the card, so you can do with it whatever you wish.

Corrupted databases can occur due to several things that you can easily avoid :
-Avoid shooting with a empty battery, if for your camera shuts off whilst writing to your memorycard it could cause this problem

-Although you camera indicated how much space there’s left on the card to the shot accurately, I like to leave a margin of about 5-10 shots. Why? Memorycards contain information about previous photos even if you think you’ve formatted them, and that info eats up space so if for some reason your last shot overwrites a ‘ghost’ file, and jams the whole thing up it might crash your card.

-Use high speed cards for high speed photography. If you often shoot sports, or anything that requires sequences of numerous images shot in full burst you better get a card that’s up to the task (at least x133 speeds). If you shoot bursts and the card can’t follow, it’ll start writing over it’s own photos and you’ll end up with half-and-half shots.

-Format in between shoots. However, as I’ve noticed it’s not bulletproof, but it’s better than nothing. I format my card each time I shoot something new but as you’ve read in my story, it’s not bulletproof.

-Cards are still mechanical things, they look simple from the outside but they most certainly aren’t, and sometimes they just break. Most pro-cards like the Sandisk Ultra IV have about 500,000 write/read cycles which is plenty. Other cards can have more or less, but it’s something to keep in mind. Better to spend a couple of bucks on a new card, than to overuse an old one, and end up losing all your pictures.

-If you’re uncertain about the quality of your external card reader, use the in-camera USB transfer option. Some, cheaper models of external card readers can damage CF-cards.

-Back Up your work regularly. This is more something for your computer but computers aren’t the most reliable of things again. Back up your work very regularly. It’s a pain in the ass when you have to do, but you’ll love yourself afterwards if you ever come to be in the position where you lose all your stuff. I back all my photos up to 2 external hard drives. Works like a charm.
Check out the Drobo, which is a great backup solution!

Good evenin’ Guys!

M.

 Not yet being a full-time professional photographer there are moments where I have other obligations, which keep me from being behind the lens. Everybody has ‘em, these moments where you’re stuck doing something else that must be done, or are in a situation where you simply can’t spend the time shooting.

These moments away from photography are quite annoying to me, and therefore I try to squeeze in a lil’ something related to photography each day, to keep in touch with your art. I think it’s extremely important never to fully disconnect from your work. Don’t get me wrong, it can be immensely positive to put down the camera once in a while, take a step back from what you’ve been shooting and reasses whether it’s really what you wanted, and if you need to redirect yourself, to do so at once.

However, there are a few things I like to do whenever I know I won’t be shooting for a quite some time to keep in touch. You’ll find that these things I list are great for other things as well, and don’t have to be done only when you can’t be shooting.

1. Explore portfolio’s. What I do whenever I need to fuel the inspirational gastank is to browse through portfolio’s. How? It’s very simple : just open up Google or the likes, and then type X photographer. X being the type,domain of speciality you wish to explore, so if your speciality is fashion, just go ahead and type ‘fashion photographer’.

The chances are you’ll find thousands of sites and links corresponding to your search query, and the chances are even bigger that you’ll be disappointed by what you find. But fear not. Every once in a while you’ll stumble upon that rare gem, that diamond in the rough-portfolio that you’ll adore. Now browse through it, admire, contemplate, criticize, envy. I have made it my ‘mission’ if you wish to find one great portfolio each day. Doesn’t matter on which subject. Sometimes it’be sports, other times fashion and so on. I then bookmark them in a ‘dossier’ for future references.

If I ever find an image that really appeals to me, i’ll use some sort of screen snipping tool (Windows Vista has a great little tool like that built right in, Windows Snipping Tool) and take a ‘snipshot’ of it and save it as an image. This brings me immediately to my second point.

Isn’t this stealing? Not at all, everyone does it. It’s not that different from seeing a scene in a film and thinking ‘Wow, that’s a great idea, i could turn and twist this to make a photo!’. Of course I’m not saying to bluntly copy the image, but use it as inspiration.

2. Build a LookBook.
A what now? Well, I don’t know if it’s the official term for it , but that’s the way i call it. Essentially it’s just a book in which I ad pictures i really like. There’s no clear distinction between them, you can arrange them as you wish but i prefer not to . I just mix everything together, sports, ads, fashion, nature, everything together in one big stew.

I referred to this earlier with the snipping tool. Everytime I see a picture that I find fantastic for some or other reason i snip it, print it and stick it in my lookbook. This lookbook will become your bible. Every shoot you go on, every trip you take you should have it with you .It’ll be an immense source of inspiration for you, and it might save your life once if you find yourself on a shoot with an empty creative tank.

Why do you mix all kinds of photos together? Well, it’s been my experience you can get incredible ideas by mixing certain types of photos. It usually works best with 2 styles that don’t go together at all. You’ll have created intersting, uncommon photos that’ll really make you stand out as a photographer.

3. Do the jobs you’ve been putting off.
For me, it’s accounting. Although I like have a clean, tightly run accounting (which is an absolute necessity if you want to come over as ‘pro’ towards your clients.) I never seem to get on with doing it. Well, if you have a dead moment, just do it. Sure, it’s not as fun as editing or shooting, but it’s a necesary evil. You’ll thank yourself later if you ever have a problem with a client, or just need to present some form of track record of your work. I recommend using BlinkBid to keep an overview of your clients, your shoots, and monetary situations. If you haven’t got a buck to spare for that software, I recommend using Bamboo Invoicing software. It’s freeware, and sits on your server so that you’ll be able to access it all over the world. This is incredible for a piece of free software. You’ll be able to talk it over with your clients on the spot, wherever your are.

4. Check up on a technique you’ve been wanting to master
The internet is full of über-detailed guides to almost every single aspect of photography. Always wanted to learn how to create beautiful landscapes with long exposures? Want to master time-lapse photography? Browse the net for guides, how-to video’s, etc… Really immerge yourself in a subject, and learn every aspect of it so you’ll know exactly what to do when you’ll apply it. A site where I spend a huge amount of time is KelbyTraining. It’s a cavern filled with how-to video’s on a hugely different amount of categories. I even believe they’ve got a month-free trial period.

5. Work out an entire shoot/idea in your head.
Sitting behind my desk working away on something ‘irrelevant’  I usually work out idea’s for shoots. I recently came up with a crime-themed shoot, worked out the lighting scheme and checking techniques on the net for making certain shots happen. It can be everywhere on everything. I also worked some schemes out on napkins in restaurants. Anything works.

Well, there are a lot of things related to photography you can do while ‘not doing’ photography.

It’s all about staying connected to your creative side, and exploring every facet of it without even doing it.