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Posts Tagged ‘technology’

Personal, Photography, Technology | 0 comment

Photography and Social Media – Tech Thursday

Social-Media-collage-www.timelinedc.com

My career as a photographer has grown leaps and bounds with the explosion of social media. I first saw the power of social networking in reconnecting with old school friends and previous job friends. Also I have family that reside across the globe. The next step was the ability to connect with other photographers that I admired. With photographers linking directly into their Facebook pages and their Twitter feeds it became easy to reach out and connect. As it became normal to communicate this way, I was able to introduce myself. Additionally I was able to let people know what I do. I asked them for business tips, photo technique tips, and ideas for other shoots.

Connected Marketing

Social-Media-collage-www.timelinedc.com

Facebook and Google Plus in particular make sharing photography a top priority. These are the best way that I have used to show off my photos and current projects. Posting to these pages let not only my friends, but their friends that are not directly connected to me view some awesome images! When their friends view, like, and comment on images, my contact information will be easy to find. I have connected with clients this way and have been invited to shoot events this way too.

Event Marketing

As you have seen, I do shoot lots of ballroom dance events. I get so  many action shots from these weekends, that I can keep posting images on this blog for a long time to come. These shots can be used by the organizers to promote future events, by judges that are marketing their services to other events, and to the teachers that use events as recruiting for new students and studios.

The organizers of the New Jersey State Open held in Atlantic City, NJ have used lots of my images in their routine postings on Facebook. Adding some of my photos that show their event as it was held has helped them to get over 4000 subscribers to their web page!  They will be the first to know about any developments on their event, and the visual images helped to keep them at the top of mind for dancers planning their competition schedule this year.

There are so many resources available for small businesses that allow them to market their services to targeted audiences on social media. Having good head shots, environmental, and other promotional photography is important to convey your company on the internet. Show off your products, your culture, and your style through photos. If you have any need for these, contact me. I can be reached on social and traditional means below –

TimeLine Media – www.timelinedc.com
TimeLine Media Facebook Page
Rassi’s Twitter Page
Rassi’s Google Plus Page
Email: rassi @ timelinedc.com
Phone: 703-864-8208

Photography, Technology | 0 comment

Cameras – Tech Thursday

Nikon D4-TimeLine Media-www.timelinedc.com

Equipment Matters

One of the photography mantras that is repeated on blogs and forums has to be “It doesn’t matter the equipment, only the operators behind the cameras that matters in making photographs.” There are so many examples of this from the collection of iPhone photographs, to Instagram superstars that create wonderful imagery with humble, accessible gear. With digital photography you can experiment with angles, lighting, time exposures, almost any variable you can imaging using the controls built into DSLRs or the slides built into smartphone apps. This has helped me to understand the functions of my camera and allowed me to quickly grow as a photographer much faster than I could have with film. This can take you only so far as a hobbyist or advanced amateur.

Nikon D4-TimeLine Media-www.timelinedc.com

Professional Consideration

As a professional, my growth was also tied to the equipment that I was carrying in my bag. My first digital camera was a Nikon Coolpix 5700 that exposed me to RAW file capture, and some exposure control. My first DSLR was a Nikon D100 which I used with old camera lenses my father had from the 1980’s. They still worked on the D100, and I learned about full manual control using these old optics. I secured my first photographic jobs with this body because of my skills in composition, technique, and post processing.

But I soon ran into a technology wall. The Nikon D200 was released, and there had been a jump in quality. Whereas I could be interviewed after showing my portfolio, when my equipment list was discussed, I was turned away. It is not just that your images must look good, but your equipment must look the part as well.

That sounds controversial, but I see its merit especially in a time when everyone has a DSLR and standing out from the crowd is essential for your business. The upgrade to the Nikon D3 really took my images to the top of the heap. There was no comparison between this camera and any previous camera body. The images looked 3-dimensional to me both on the back of the camera, and in the prints. And the construction of the body of the camera with a built-in grip really looked the part. Knowing what to do with the camera in your hand is important, but in today’s marketplace, the kind of equipment you carry with you definitely plays a part in getting you noticed, and in the door.

TimeLine Media – www.timelinedc.com
703-864-8208

Personal, Photography, Technology | 0 comment

Adobe Lightroom Library – Tech Thursday

Adobe Lightroom Version 4

In photography school, my first digital class introduced me to Lightroom when it was still a free downloadable beta program. Much like Quickbooks for accountants, this program is the most essential piece of software for photographers today. In each version, they have added so many features, that it is rare when initially editing an event where I have to go into the full version of Photoshop. I think of Lightroom as the version of Photoshop with all of the non-photographer functions stripped out. Then fitted with a modern interface that is analagous to working on touchscreen or tablets more than keyboard and mouse.

Library Module

In the screen capture below, you can see the Library module – the default for working in Lightroom.

Adobe Lightroom 4 Library

TimeLine Media – www.timelinedc.com

In this module, you can get a quick overview of the photos in your collection. Each cell shows the file name, and some of the important data in the corners. There are also many icons around the image which help to identify your progress. You can sort by photos that you want to keep, delete photos that are not usable, and organize the thousands of photos into sections that you can break down prior to working.

On the left side of the screen is a Navigator which has an enlargement of the selected photo, then a file explorer-type interface for working with the files on your computer. This allows management of images whether they are stored locally, or on network drives. Collections also helps to keep track of photos that you may want use later, or favorites of especially good photos that you want to go back to in the future.

On the right side of the screen, there is a histogram of the selected image. This is a graphical representation of the tones in the images from darkest on the left, to lightest on the right. This helps to see how good an exposure is for each photograph – a curve skewing to the left will tend to be underexposed (too dark) while a curve skewing to the right will tend to be overexposed (too bright). In the Develop module, I will talk about this more, but it is in the Library module too if you want to use any of the Quick Develop functions just underneath the histogram.

Keywords

Keywording, underneath the Quick Develop, is another way that Lightroom makes managing photos great for working photographers and saves them lots of time in the process. If you have a catalog of thousands of photos of various events from weddings, ballroom dance, personal photos, etc., keywording lets you tag photos with descriptive words to help you identify photos in case you need to find them quickly in the future. This can be powerful for photojournalists or sports photographers to find previous subjects when requested by newspapers, customers, etc.

The last buttons on the right perform “Sync” functions from selected photos. “Sync Settings” will let you apply changes that you make to one photo (Exposure, color balance, saturation, etc.) and apply those same changes to a group of selected photos. This is an AMAZING time saver and helps me to work on more important aspects of an image, rather than having to make adjustments to many photos one at a time.

When I first started using Lightroom, I could not foresee that my photography career would lead to shooting ballroom dance events with 10,000+ photos each. This program alone has allowed me to make many photos for dancers and edit them as quickly as I can for them to see within 2 weeks of events. It is still a lot of work, but from the feedback I get from customers, I think the results are worth it.

TimeLine Media – www.timelinedc.com
703-864-8208

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