all the standard images

This is a picture of the Wamego City Band conductor, handing his baton to a band member’s 2- or 3-year-old son because he really wanted his mommy and then walking over to sit in the stands as the boy conducted the entire march.

And he never took his binky out the whole time.

Unphotographable

For a while now, I’ve been using this blog to post some of my favorite personal images, along with the occasional shoot that I’ve been able to do along the way. I’ve often thought of how this blog would look to someone who was purely interested in me as a professional, as someone that they might consider hiring to make images for them, and I’ve come to realize that while there is much about this blog that I like, it simply doesn’t give me an easy way to present what I consider to be some of my finest images in a professional looking portfolio.

I puzzled over how to put one together, whether the basic tools provided by my blog service (wordpress.com, which I highly recommend to anyone interested in putting their own blog together) gave me the power to really craft a nice looking collection of my work. And basically, they don’t; I mean, they’re a brilliant blog service, not a portfolio host.

That’s about when I heard about carbonmade.com, a site completely dedicated to helping visual artists put together professional portfolios in a snap. And basically, they do it really well.

There’s a free account you can sign up for that allows you to post a limited number of projects with a limited number of images. On the one hand, it’s very…well, limited. On the other hand, though, this has really forced me to look at everything I’ve put together in the last year or so and decide what are actually my best images.

It was super easy to set everything up and super easy to adjust things once I saw how it was all coming together. Most of it is check-box and drag-and-drop simple with stunning results. Here’s a little sneak peek (if you want to see more, just click the picture to go to the portfolio):

Is it perfect? No. Like anything designed with simplicity in mind, there are some more advanced controls missing that I’m hoping they’ll add someday. For example, right now, you can’t customize the project thumbnail image (like the ones above). They just use the middle of whatever image is first in the gallery. So, you have to choose which is your first image very carefully to make sure there is something of interest within that space.

That said, I’m very firmly in like with my portfolio. Head on over, click around for a while and check it all out, then use the back button a whole bunch to pop back over here and let me know what you think. I’d love to hear it all, both positive and negative.

And finally, if you’re in the Wamego area (and by “area,” I mean Manhattan, Junction City, Westmoreland, Alma, anything close by…shoot, even Topeka, on a good day) and have a family, kid, kids, baby bump or senior that you’d like images of, contact me to see about the possibility of getting your session shot for free to help me build my portfolio!

Green for Earth Day.

We took a walk on Sunday evening to our friends’ house to drop something off, pulling the kids along in our pulled-from-the-trash wagon. This is probably not that significant to you, until you consider that our friends live a mile away. Exactly. A mile is a distance that we don’t usually just walk, especially not when we are pulling kids along in a wagon. And there are hills to go up.

But look at us anyways, saving the Earth while saving our wallets and our hearts.

And before you say anything, I pulled the kids the whole way there. And it’s a good thing I did, because the sunset was amazing. Those pictures will have to be for another post, though.

Top: ISO 100, 1/50s, f3.5, 18mm; Bottom: ISO 100, 1/30s, f3.5, 18mm

Occasionally, because they know that I dabble in the photographic arts, people ask me what camera they should buy. That’s a really tough question to answer because, really, there are so many variables involved, the majority of which I cannot possibly foresee for whoever has posed the question. I recently ran across a blog post (that I have tried and tried and tried to find, to no avail) from a photographer who used to provide the best possible comparison of different camera types, models, and so on, in the hopes of providing some basis for the person to choose a camera from. It would take time, effort, and nerves (what if he recommended a camera that the person bought and then hated?). Now, however, he has a different response:

If you want to take better pictures, invest in a photography course instead.

That’s not the point of this post, but it is such an important point, I had to include it somewhere.

The point of this is to introduce all of you “I’m in the market for a camera, so what should I buy?” types, along with all you gadget-o-philes, to a brand-new camera that may be exactly what you’ve been looking for.

You see, Casio has just announced that, in a short time (about two weeks), you can buy your very own time machine.

Really.

The Exilim EX-F1 is an amazing new digital camera that has all the features you always knew that you needed in a camera because Star Trek made you want them. With this camera, you can actually get those shots that you have missed every single time before. By holding the shutter button half-way down, the camera starts silently recording 60 shots a second until you press the button, discarding all the old shots as you go. After you hit the trigger, you can then review all 60 shots from the second before you hit the button, choose the perfect one, and get rid of the rest. Or keep them all, just for kicks (or to turn into a movie). Or delete them all because the shot you really want was over a second ago and your reflexes are just that bad.

And really, it’s the camera’s ability to shoot at 60 frames a second that is so extraordinary, especially when you consider that a movie camera only shoots at 24 or 30 frames a second, and the best, professional cameras that I know of can only pull 10 or 11 frames per second. Mine only does 3 per second. Of course, you can only keep up this sort of speed for a second, but you can, of course, adjust the frame rate to give you more shooting time: 30 frames a second for 2 seconds, 20 frames a second for 3 seconds, and so on.

One very important point to make: these are not tiny little shots that you would have to think hard about whether you’d even post them on your blog because they’re so small. No, they’re fully 6 MP images. You can print posters with these suckers.

So, you can start shooting 60 frames a second right before something happens, hold the button down half-way in anticipation of something happening, or you can set the camera down and let it shoot the good stuff all by itself. That’s right: if you ask it to, it will sit there for hours (if you’re battery is charged sufficiently, I’m sure), wait for something to move, and shoot a 60-fps burst all by itself. Catch all the great action that comes along when you are not there.

Did I mention it does full-HD movies with stereo sound? Or shoot ultra-high-speed movies for ultra-slow-mo playback? We’re talking up to 1200 frames per second here…that’s some serious speed!

Of course, with the good comes the bad (including the $1000 price tag, which actually sounds quite reasonable). Get the rest of the skinny from the NY Times (along with a nifty, and actually entertaining, video of the EX-F1 in action).

Okay people, this is an extremely important call to action here: It’s time to be active, people. It’s time to find your voice and express it. For far too long, too many of us have sat back and allowed the active minority to decide our fate for us. No more, I say! Rise with me, and make your voices heard! I mean, if you don’t vote for my adorable picture, who will?

Seriously, who?!