Brilliant spot for Subura. So simple, but shows the power of a great script and good acting. Completely gets the message across and pulls the emotional strings as well.

Beautifully done CG world of paint chips. I actually saw a slightly different one (couldn’t find it online), but they are all really well done.

Hopefully the first clip inspires you to make sure you have a great story. And the other clips offer some technical inspiration.

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“Cabo in the Summer” by Maggie Percell, www.maggiemaephoto.com

When looking to submit to a photo contest, I try to find ones that don’t stress my budget, which can be hard considering that most entry fees range from $30-$40 per image. When I see an entry fee between FREE and $10, I jump at the chance to enter my work. Photomedia Center provided me such an opportunity.

Photomedia Center is a non-profit organization which promotes the creation and exhibition of fine art photography and digital media. The entry fee for the 2010 Open Juried Exhibition was $5 per image, $3 if you entered early and FREE for members.

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Catering to female fashion is ages old but seems to be a new trend in photography. I did a little googling and didn’t any resources for female-specific clothing though there’s lots of material about how to dress your female models (hint: in very little).

I did see some merchandising at two trade shows, PMA and WPPI, earlier this year. At WPPI in March, for instance, the ShootSac company was a popular destination. They create fashionable messenger bags that are designed to attractively and securely carry photography gear. These bags attract female photographers — of course! — and to help along the marketing, Shootsac gave out colorful flowers to pin in your hair. A lot of female consumers were wearing them on the show floor and that’s what attracted my attention — yep, I’m a woman — though my male coworker didn’t notice the flowers at all.

See more images on our Flickr site.

Slightly off-topic but also at WPPI, the Boudoir Divas booth was very busy wearing jaunty little hats covered in flowers. This photography studio specializes in photographing female clients in sexy, intimate settings. They boast an all-female staff and sell their information with training workshops and social media outreach. Looks like a great business (and schwagg campaign) and many women at WPPI thought so too.

By the way, there were no men in the ShootSac or Boudoir Divas booths no matter when I passed by. If you were a single guy at this show, these were definitely the places to be.

regards -debbie

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In the first article, The 10 Most Common Mistakes Web Designers Make, the Author talks about, “with a little diligence, poor design can be easily avoided.” My favorite one, which is #1, talks about busy, crowded pages. There’s nothing worse then going to a website and not being able to find what you are looking for.

The second article, 20 Virtual Techniques & Best Practices For Effective Web Design, refers to “twenty excellent techniques and design elements you can incorporate into your designs to create a beautiful, polished website.” I found #20 interesting as it talks about adding a cartoon element. The Author says, “cartoon characters and other design elements keep your site looking fresher and younger.” So if you want to add a cartoon element to your web page, why not use our Photoshop plugin, Toonit! Photo? Toonit! Photo is an easy way to give your photos that sought-after cartoon look. Want to try the free demo? Click here.

To end this post off, here is a  funny footnote for a bad design article: The Ultimate Ugly Showcase of Current Government Websites. Go ahead knock yourselves out!

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My Layers subscription is running out and the reminder email is titled: “It’s all fun and games till someone expires”. Funny! A great reminder as well that you can get someone to sit up and notice if you do it in the right way. Learn about Layers magazine at www.layersmagazine.com.

I personally love Layers because they give terrific tips about all of the Adobe CS5 software, and they also write some pretty sweet stuff about our Digital Anarchy products. So does their sister magazine Photoshop User and the related internet channel Layers TV. Check out some recent reviews of our 3D Invigorator plugin on this Press page.

regards -debbie

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A few days ago, I posted an ad in the Talent section of Craigslist. The captcha that I had to fill out, ‘discontented bacon’, was geekiness to its max. More on what this talent ad was for in a few days… we’re excited.

Yesterday I registered Digital Anarchy for a new Twitter name and the captcha that came up made me giggle. The term ‘the overusing’ perfectly describes how Twitter is often handled.

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Summary of the four tips to take compelling corporate photos, which is almost an oxymoron:

“1. Change the angle. The easiest way to add interest to a potentially boring photo is to move your camera off-center. Try shooting from the sides, above, below, or behind—a different perspective can go a long way… [For instance] Salvo says she’s had some success taking award photos from behind the stage rather than in front.”

Ok, this isn’t a corporate photo. But it’s an interesting angle of my dog and his little friend.

“2. Incorporate objects. Another technique Ogden uses is making a relevant object part of the photograph. For example, if he’s taking photos of people who work in a lab, he will find an empty glass beaker and take the photo of the subjects through that. Similarly, taking the photograph with something out of focus in the foreground draws the eyes to the subjects in focus, while making the composition more interesting.”

“3. Capture the emotion and action. If objects aren’t interesting enough for you, try action. A Pittsburgh-based communicator who commented on a MyRagan forum said she carries a camera around with her at company events to take candid photos. “I’ve become known as the paparazzi in my office! I’ll show up to lunch-and-learns, in-office meetings and staff social events with my camera— they beat the ‘mug’ shot any day.””

“4. Take your time. Getting the emotion and action you want might entail taking the photo before or after an award is given. That will give you, the photographer, the ability to take your time to get the right shot and give the subject time to breathe, says Salvo… Ogden doesn’t have a lot of time, but he takes a few minutes to talk with each subject and make them more comfortable with him and the photo. That, he says, makes them look more natural on camera.”

all the best -Debbie

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We stayed and worked in the grand Hotel de Coronado, which is a grand hotel dating to 1888 and considered a National Historical Landmark. (Interesting history is here.) It was wonderful to be in a hotel that was next to the beach and lined with palm trees, especially during the winter, but the lush surroundings did present a small problem. Here was the entrance to the exhibit room:

Which faced this area of the hotel property:

You can see our dilemma. The show was interesting, as were the attendees, but boy was it difficult to stay inside, especially when it’s feeling like January in our hometown. The trees and sun kept calling.

Despite these odds, Jim Tierney and I managed to spend quality time at the SPA Event showing off our Adobe Photoshop plugins. We talked to a lot of interesting photographers and some speakers, all of whom specialize in High School Senior photography. We demo’ed our green screen masking tool, Primatte Chromakey, which is great for creating custom and unique portraits. Two other crowd-pleasers are always Backdrop Designer for generating digital muslin drapery and ToonIt! Photo for turning photographs into lovely cartoons. We also showed off our newest product, Beauty Box for Video, which does subtle digital skin smoothing on large images like HD footage.

Jim, Debbie and a large red logo at the Digital Anarchy stand:

If you photograph high school seniors or a related subject for a living, definitely consider joining the SPA group. Seems like good networking and information services. More info is here.

You can see more photos of the SPA Event and the gorgeous Hotel de Coronado in our Digital Anarchy Flickr group.

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See if you can figure which link is ours.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/digitalanarchy/sets/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/whitehouse/sets/

On the White House Flickr stream, the photos that I am digging are decidedly non-presidential. They show Obama as a eprson, not a politician, which I would guess is the point of having a stream. Hopefully, you can enjoy seeing a photo of the US president playing hoops, and playing pretty well, no matter what your politics are.

On the Digital Anarchy Flickr stream, I am digging being able to add in photos that don’t have a proper home on our DigitalAnarchy.com website. There is more flexibility in posting a string of fun, related photos on Flickr then adding similar (= repetative)  images to the website.

Wired magazine did an interesting piece on the president’s Flickr stream a few months ago. It covers a bit of the history of photo documenting the less rigid side of presidency. Wired hasn’t covered Digital Anarchy’s stream yet but there’s still time…

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One of the interesting observations at the conference was the way our picture taking habits are changing. We (as a society) are taking a LOT more pictures. However, these pictures tend to have a lower value on average, with a shorter shelf life so to speak. In the past, pictures were somewhat difficult to take and get printed so there was some value to them, even the crappy ones. Now we snap pictures everywhere, immediately send them around to our network of friends. We can immediately see our friends pictures who are doing the same thing. But a lot of these photos are ‘of the moment’. Pictures from very recent events that are not great photos, but are interesting because of their immediacy. Most are not pictures you’ll be looking at five years from now. There are a few things that can change the value of a picture immediately, for example, if someone passes away any pictures you have of them become more valuable.

Another interesting point was that the value of some pictures have a ‘V’ shaped curve over time. They are very valuable when first taken, but that value diminishes over time. However at some point along the timeline, because of the age of the photo, a death, or something else, the value of the photo starts to increase.

Ok, but why does this matter?

As a photographer, it matters because you may be asking yourself, “with all these cameras around, will there still be a need for me?”. So it’s important to understand why people are taking pictures and what they’re doing with them. Not only from the perspective of will you have a job, but are there products or services that you can sell to them that will incorporate their photos as well as the images you take of them.

The other reason it matters, is the industry as a whole (especially companies that make printers) is asking whether consumers will still want prints. Now that you can email photos around and view them on beautiful high resolution screens, why would you ever want to print?

My takeaways from the conference:

I don’t think prints are going anywhere. People still live in boxes (houses, cubicles, etc) and they want to hang stuff on the walls of those boxes. Electronic photoframes are nifty, but what parents house would be complete without a Wall of Shame featuring their progeny? I find it unlikely that you’ll see tons of photoframes up on the wall displaying slideshows, if only because you would have to have 50 power outlets.

Consumers ARE printing less, taken as a percentage of the number of pictures they take. However, because they’re taking so many more pictures, the absolute number of prints being made is staying about the same. This makes sense. You no longer have to print out an entire roll of pictures to get the one or two you really want. Many of the cameras out there, especially camera phones, don’t take great pictures. They’re fine for posting on Facebook to let folks know what you did last Friday, but they aren’t exactly keepsake quality.

And speaking about Keepsakes… what about professional photographers? Again, I don’t think there’s anything to worry about. Photography is a skill and getting consistently good shots will continue to be valued. But the value of the experience of going to a pro photographer will go up. If someone is going to go to the trouble of getting a professional portrait, they’re going to expect it to be an experience worth remembering in and of itself. Many photographers already understand this, so its hardly news. But I’m guessing it’ll become even more important. This may involve stuff like shooting video from the moment they walk in and giving them a DVD of the photo shoot process, a sort of  ‘behind the scenes’ documentary. This becomes another selling point or thing to be sold. Creating a photo book of all the behind the scenes images, for example.

And in terms of what consumers want, photo books are way up there. It’s one of those things that can be difficult for them to create themselves, especially when you’re talking about high quality photo books. It’s really what people are looking for and there are tons of options out there. So as a photographer, you’re not just selling a print, you’re selling a multimedia experience that culminates in a great 16×20 photo, photo books, and even a DVD.

We’ll talk about cameras and other technology in part II.

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Clever commercials, not quite as clever as the Mac vs. PC ads, but obviously effective. Apple apparently had lawyers call Microsoft and request they stop running the ads.

Only Apple would have the balls to call a competitor and ask them to stop running ads that make them look bad. “Those ads are true! How dare you run them!” Poor Apple.  It’s kind of hilarious.

Here’s a link to the Journal article if you want to read it for yourself.

btw… It is true that the same laptop will usually be cheaper on the Windows side, especially if you time your purchase with a Dell 30% off sale, which are frequent these days. The fact that Apple’s machines never go on sale makes them more pricey than similar Windows machines which are constantly on sale. The laptops in the Laptop Hunter ads are usually a bit less powerful than the higher priced Apple, but the reality of computers is that many people don’t need the extra power.

fwiw… I’m platform agnostic. I use both Macs and PCs and have a love/hate relationship with both. If I get to a point where I’m thinking about the operating system, it means that said computer has done something that makes me want to drop kick it through a window. I haven’t found either platform to be more or less problematic. Yes, Vista 1.0 sucked… but then, OS X 10.2 was fraught with problems as well. It happens.

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Very cool to see what the actual shots were and what the printed ad ended up being with all the compositing, color correction, and other assorted image processing. Oh, yeah, and the lions. Ya gotta have lions.

Of course, my all time favorite ‘breakdown’ is the Dove ‘Real Beauty’ ad,  Evolution Of Beauty on YouTube.

And, of course, the quite awesome parody of said Dove ad, which is also on YouTube as the  Dove Evolution Parody.

regards, Jim

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The former brand, Studio Photography.

From Diane’s letter: “As of this issue, Studio Photography’s name is changing to Studio & Location Photography, which better signifies the type of shooting you — our readers — do. We’ll still be featuring articles on the different niches of professional photography: wedding, portrait, event, commercial, photojournalism, schools and seniors, sports and more. However, since 67% of your shooting is done on location or outdoors, not in a studio, we wanted the magazine’s name to reflect that. We’ve also changed the magazine’s tagline from “The business behind the image” to “Inspiration • Technique • Business” which also more closely represents the magazine’s editorial.”

The new brand, Studio & Location Photography.

Great idea! More cool stuff. (Less about software, but that’s okay…) A week later, the magazine’s parent company, Cygnus Business Media, ceased operations of all of the publications in the photo group. This included PTN magazine, Studio Photography magazine, Photokina dailies, and the imaginginfo.com website. I can only imagine that SP’s staff was taken by surprise since they had just gone through a rebranding. Interestingly, I just now went to SP’s website and there is no mention of the discontinuation. Just content from the April 2009 issue, a still-active subscription link, and staff email addresses. Odd after two months.

And now… this week, an announcement from another of my favorite publications, Studio Monthly. This magazine has been an incredibly reliable and interesting source of news and tips about the video and animation community. Beth Merchant, the Editor-in-Chief, wrote an open letter titled ‘Studio Monthly Magazine Cease Print Edition’.

From Beth’s letter: “Maybe it was prophetic that the coverline on Studio/monthly’s June issue included the words “to Web.” I wrote that coverline long before the decision was made to end the magazine’s four-and-a-half year run as a standalone print and digital publication. But the Web is where The Studio Group is strongest and where we’ll continue to grow. Studio/monthly will deliver the same award-winning content at www.studiomonthly.com. The magazine online will do what it’s done from the start: provide practical, well-edited product reviews, in-depth tutorials, first-person advice and analysis of emerging trends at Studiomonthly.com and through our portal, Studiodaily.com. You’ll see the site evolve, however, as we refresh it more often with the kind of dynamic content that a monthly magazine could simply not deliver.”

The Studio Group will continue in he form of their companion website StudioMonthly.com and its portal, StudioDaily.com. I had also found these venues to be a wealth of information and in truth, spent more time on StudioDaily because of its human interest stories. Apparently, neither are just a companion any longer.

Both the SP and SM magazines had looked a little thin since early 2008. Of course, this is not due to the quality of their content, but instead a fall-out of the economy. Our company, Digital Anarchy, isn’t doing a lot of print advertising these days. It’s quite expensive and difficult to measure an audience hit unless you are doing a series of ads, preferably half page or larger, over the course of a few months. Which is expensive. Certainly other companies have been doing the same. And thus, the shrunken pages of the print magazine.

I am glad to see that Studio Monthly faired better. We all keep marching bravely alongside time.

regards -debbie

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