Using Photoshop for Photographers 2012-05-03

If you are a photographer then you use Adobe Photoshop. There is just no way around it. If you use photoshop for image editing here are a couple of important tips to keep in mind.

1. Do not leave anything in the oven if you leave the house to use Photoshop.
2. Do use photoshop’s built in filters quite heavily, as this is a new and novel way to approach photography and everyone loves the filters.
3. If you are using photoshop during a thunderstorm, it is advisable to hear a tinfoil helmet.

NO POST TODAY 2012-04-25

There will be no post today, so don’t bother to check here or read this. I mean, I don’t want to tell you what to do. Well, yes I do. I do if it involves sending me large quantities of cash or something I can turn into cash. Or one of the things I’d buy with the cash, like happiness. You can send me happiness. Just make sure to send it parcel post. Cheaper that way.

Marketing for Photographers 2012-04-23

Marketing yourself as a photographer can be a really fun and interesting enterprise. I mean, what do creative professionals love more than annoying people into hiring you? So … what you really want to do is be passive, right? Send people stuff. Do some killer SEO. Find out some damning information and blackmail the art director. Well, that’s not quite as passive. But in any case, you don’t want to actually talk to anyone, if at all possible. What I spend most of my time doing is sending out “vibes.” If you spend a lot of time sending out vibes, the work will come your way. Just envision it. Then go for a bike ride. When you get home there’ll be a giant pile of work on your doorstep, possibly in flames.

Seriously, though. There is a real science to marketing yourself as a photographer. What you want to do is to adopt a great big phony personality and then never leave anyone who hires photographers alone. This will get even the biggest hack noticed around town. If you can, just bluster right past any secretaries that might be in your way. Throw your book at the art director. Force feed the art director your ipad. Do what it takes, damn you! Do it now!

Don't misfire with your marketing.

Food Photography 2012-04-24

Few things are more complex than food photography. The food must be photographed promptly before it is eaten by underpaid assistants. The lights must be positioned just so. None of the procedure should be done near a prison.

That being said, there are a few tips and guidelines that can be shared.

1. Blindfold the food.
Food has many dimensions, but the most important organ we have is our brain. When one sense is hindered, our other senses — via the brain — clamor to compensate. For example, a deaf person has increased sensory awareness — sight, smell, touch, and vibrations. Blindfolding your food increases her sensory awareness. She doesn’t know where you are or what you are going to do next. This creates anticipation.

2. Massage.
Sensual touch is one of the most highly relaxing and sexy things you can do for your partner, which is why it makes it onto our food list. Our bodies are almost without exception tense in some area, if not many areas. This hinders our energy flow — including food. Imagine a car that has a clogged fuel filter: the fuel (our energy) can’t get to where it needs to go quickly and smoothly, and the car performs inefficiently and ineffectively.

3. Play a game.
Get a pack of cards and play strip poker for better food photography. It may seem like something you would have done when you were in high school, but adult strip poker is a good way to get food photographed. Once you are both naked (or nearly naked), you can start on the really fun part: A loss means the other person gets to choose what action is performed on them by the loser. Time limits like one minute on said action means that it is a prolonged game of seduction, which by the end will have you both clamoring to be both the winner and the loser. There are many other games you can play “strip” to, as long as there is regular winner and loser to reward and punish respectively.

So to sum up: use lighting, don’t let the assistant eat the food before it is photographed, and stay away from prisons.

Bon appetit and happy shooting!

Making people smile 2012-04-17

We all smile in photos these days, right? Well, at least we’re supposed to. If you don’t you look like some sort of crank. Or a fashion model. Or someone who just had surgery. As photographers we run into the problem of problem smilers all the time. It’s a problem. Usually we are not documentarians, which means that people are supposed to have a big, but not too big, natural smile plastered across their fair visages. So what do you do? Yesterday I had to stick my tongue out at a CEO. She did not smile. It didn’t help. One lawyer made me quack like a duck at him. He said that that was the only thing that could get him to smile. Weirdo.

But so what else? What else can you do? Well, not much. If they just won’t smile sometimes they are doing a little kind of power trip with you. It’s all like “I’m so annoyed at having my picture taken that I refuse to make the tiniest effort to fake a smile, or to get myself to think happy thoughts, or use the Method” or whatever damned thing that people use to get themselves to look really happy. Often I threaten to tell jokes. Threatening to tell jokes can get people to smile, but then sometimes they call your bluff and make me actually tell the joke. I’ve got a duck joke which is pretty good, and simple. It’s not the same as the quacking thing I talked about earlier, it’s the one about the guy going to the doctor with a duck on his head. I also have some photographer jokes and a dirty joke about Bill Clinton. But if you finally have to resort to telling jokes to get a smile, that is, if your stockpile of goofy expressions and your ability to quack have all run out, you are maybe almost in trouble. You better hope that joke works, or you are screwed. Good luck.