Bethesda Fine Arts Festival - Observations

Maybe it's me, but the festival seemed much smaller this year. My sister and I went on Sunday, and stopped by or scanned all of the booths. This year, there were far fewer photography booths than in previous years. Some observations:

1) No one had macro photography - at least not of flowers. This is interesting, because this is my strength. I wonder if it's because the audience (a typical consumer) isn't interested in that kind of work? Anyway, this raised a lot of questions for me, so I'm going to blog about this later in the week.

2) The best booth had pictures that looked a great deal like these:







My sister made the same observation. What was different was where these types of pictures were taken - central Europe. I've never been there. I'm guessing it would be an amazing experience for me. Also, though, I felt like I was potentially on the right track with my cathedral shots, and that's important, too.

3) The cityscapes done by this artist were huge crowd pleasers. He printed some on watercolor paper. I've thought about that for my macro work, but that might look pretty with something like this:



Or this:



I don't know where this leaves me exactly, but I do have some pending projects:

1) Brookside - butterfly reshoot (the more, the merrier)

2) The domed cathedral on Mass Ave (DC) - a must, if I can find the time

3) Visit more art shows - this is the easiest to accomplish, because there is one in June that I want to attend. It's the NCCF one. I want to see which photographers' artwork was accepted, and to see what I can learn. I'm looking forward to it!

Tomorrow - macro photography musings.

Special Effects Online!

This is one of those weeks where I really wanted to play around with everything that is fun and frivolous. Here are some examples of online websites where I was able to do that, using these pictures as my inspiration:







I mean, who doesn't adore my little sister Hala? :)

Dumpr - I loved the Rubik's cube one. Check her out!

Imageloop - I referenced this yesterday. Here she is! Be sure to click on "Show Slideshow" in the upper right hand corner. Bonus - you can use this for work and play. Specifically, you can embed these in PDFs, Powerpoints, blog posts, and other places.

Photofunia - this is very fully featured, but I played with the Magazine category. Here she is!



Cute, no?

There were many other sites, but these were the quickest, cheapest, and easiest. Try them out and have fun!

Tomorrow - a great post I saw on LinkedIn.

More Special Effects - HDR

HDR has been around for a while, but I've resisted. It has always seemed like a lot of work to me, considering that my camera doesn't support it out of the box.

So, what is it? It's a special effect that I feel gives your pictures a more precise, vibrant look. But, it's a special effect, nonetheless.

I downloaded a tool called FDRToolsBasic to see what this would look like, and if a free tool could simulate the effect easily. Here's my before picture:



Here's the after:



Taking a look at it, it's interesting. I do see a bit more depth. A plus is that the software is easy to use. I read the manual for about three minutes, and got started quickly.

Here's another example:



This is the before - taken in DC.



The after is ... interesting. I don't know, honestly. It's fun, but I think I like my pictures the way they are. Admittedly, though, I like special effects as much as the next person. After all, I'm the one who wants a fisheye lens, and a tilt-shift lens. So what's the difference? Well, no one is right or wrong. It's just a personal choice. I'd rather use lenses to produce special effects. Others like software. No big deal. :)

By the way, maybe I could have done this in Aperture, maybe not. But that's missing the point.

There are other tools, too, but many of them seem to be Windows-centric. For me, it's not a big deal, since I don't plan to do much with this. However, it's very interesting to see others' work. An example is this link:

Some very cool work is on that page!

Anyway, I can't post tomorrow - I'm in meetings for around 12 hours. Wednesday - I'll look for other online tools that a hobbyist could use.

My Never-Ending Dilemna

I've procrastinated, where entering contests is concerned. Two weeks ago, I narrowed down my selections. I'd indicated, though, that I was still struggling.

So, why? Well, this isn't just a contest. It's a charity auction for one of my favorite charities. I really want to contribute work that I love, but work that people will want. That's not the easiest thing for me. On Flickr, I've noticed that most of my favorites are not the typical "crowd pleasers".

So, what did I decide with this contest? I chose the following:







In other words, I (sort of) split the difference. I chose two crowd pleasers, and one that I love. Hopefully, you can guess which is which.

Now, all I need to do is submit and send! And then, hope for the best. :)

Tomorrow - I'm traveling, so no updates from me.
Thursday - a photo challenge and my decision.

Photo Challenges

As you know, I try to enter contests every month (that didn't work out so well last month). I don't participate in photo challenges, though. But what are they?

Well, from what I can tell, they're like contests, but with a very specific focus. So as an example, contests can be about a subject like macro photography, but a challenge might restrict it by subject (one particular object, like a bottle) or colors. Something along those lines.

I came across the following challenge topics earlier today:

Day taken at night

Urban nature

Water bottle

Two colors

Backlighting subjects

i would have entered the two colors one, but it was too late. The backlighting subjects one was really interesting. I found myself digging through my portfolio to see if I had anything that would work. I can't say that it was an easy task, but it was interesting. These pictures seem to fit the bill:













Will I enter any of these? I really don't know. I might. I have until the end of the month to decide. However, learning about the technique, as well as really focusing on my work were activities that were well worth my time.

Tomorrow: A promo offer I received in the mail.

Contest - My Finalists

Yesterday, I decided that I was going to enter the NCCF contest, and that I would narrow down my choices to 15 pictures (I can only enter 3). I actually did better than that, I'm happy to say. Here are my seven finalists:




So there you have it! I'll decide in two weeks. In the meantime, next week, I'll shift my focus to other topics ... like the Cherry Blossom Festival and my plans! Have a great weekend!

Family Day

Now and then, some of my pictures appear in the public realm (ie not my blog). I'm always excited when this happens. I like seeing my work in other places besides my blog, Facebook, and Flickr - as long as my watermark is intact, of course.

Naturally, then, I was very excited to hear that my sister wanted to use some of my pictures that we took last fall. My niece's school needed them for a Family Day piece. The fact that my sister thought that these pictures were good enough to show to a bunch of strangers was great:





You may think to yourself - what is wrong with my confidence? Nothing! It's just that as someone who considers myself a macro photographer, it's nice to know that the rest of my work is useable. I'd rather be a specialist and focus on nothing but orchids, but reality sometimes takes me in other directions. I therefore have to make sure all of my work meets a minimum standard - and it did here. Macro and abstracts will always be my absolute strength, but I can do these other things if I need to. I'd rethink this strategy if I were doing this on a professional basis, but for now, it suits me.

Looking at these again, I plan to do even better next time. The first one could use some work with the lighting - it was very late in the day. I think the second is just fine as is. :)

Till tomorrow!

Bright Lights, Big City - Time for Another Trip

I'm going to Vegas on Sunday for work. I won't be back until Thursday, but I do have some (photography) goals for my trip. Here's what I'm planning:

1) Vegas at night - cliche, but a good exercise for me. Here's an example of what I mean, from my New York trip:



2) Hotels (interiors and more) - examples:



I'm taking my point-and-shoot - and only my point-and-shoot, so this will be a challenge. All I need to do is pick up another battery charger - I seem to have misplaced mine already. They're so small!

Till next week - most likely Friday!

Marketing Myself - Part Two

Yesterday, I covered my plans to drive more traffic to my Flickr page. Today, I'm covering my plans for my blog itself.

I really love this blog. I've learned so much from my own work because of it. Not only do I want it to document my experiences, but I also want it to serve as a repository for practical information for you - my audience. If you end up having greater control over your pictures as a result of this blog, well, I'll be thrilled.

So, here's what I did last year:

1) Included the blog link in my signature file

2) Embedded my blog in my LinkedIn profile

Here's what I did in 2011:

I followed the lead of some of my Facebook friends and set up a site dedicated to my blog. For now, my goal is to provide written information, so I classified it as a site. If I decide to offer services in the future, I can obviously change that. While Facebook isn't the end-all-be-all, it's very popular, and there's merit to doing it this way. I chose this as my picture:



Later in 2011, I plan to add more product recommendations and links to vendors such as Amazon. I'm holding off for now, because there's no need to do everything at once!

Till tomorrow!

Day 11 - Pruning and Editing

As of this morning, my Flickr photostream had 1096 items in it. 247 of those were taken in the last ten days. I knew that I had to do something to organize my content a little better (because it's baby steps with me). So, this is what I did today:

I deleted the following sets (but kept the pictures in the photostream):

DC Monuments

Boulder

California Abstracts

South Beach Abstracts

Arizona

DC Minerals

I chose to do so because:

1) Many of these pictures were over three years old. I can't enter them into contests.

2) Some were no longer my best work. My (now) discerning eye picked up flaws including boring composition, harsh lighting or shadows, lack of definition, and color issues.

I also deleted some individual pictures within a set. That reduced the number of pictures in my photostream to 1035. I can live with that, especially because I have all of the originals - two copies. Then, I had to go back and review my blog. I had posted some of the deleted pictures, and the links were broken. I fixed those.

I'm hoping this will make a difference, as I tend to direct people to my Flickr sets page, and not my photostream. This way, people can pick and choose the content of the greatest interest. Now that I've pruned it somewhat, I'm hoping it will be a little easier.

I also made one more enhancement - I put up a new top photos set, which I will modify periodically. I selected 28 photos (30 seemed like too much, and I struggled to narrow it down to 25), and put them together. While they don't match my most popular, I love them and I want people to see them. I think this is the best way to accomplish that. Here are the thumbnails of my top 28:











Tomorrow, I'll go over the last topic of the Twelve Days of Photography series - lessons learned. Hint: there were plenty. Till tomorrow!