Now that nearly all computer related issues have been resolved, I’m able to do a bit of scanning and put up a few blog posts. Here’s the latest “The Traveling Photographer” from the December issue of Okinawa Living Magazine. This month it’s all about using natural framing. See a larger, readable, scan of the page here.
A follow up to Apple Mac by Kafka. The Good Applications bought on iTunes could be downloaded again. This was nice as I had just paid about 20 bucks for the Japanese Ap. that works as a great English/Japanese dictionary. I easily reinstall the applications Soundslides, iVCD and Earthdesk via downloads from the web. Happily I still had all the license codes. To get Fetch again I needed to upgrade to the latest version for a few bucks, but that too is now up and running. The Bad Photoshop CS3 install disk doesn’t run. In a bizarre twist it looks like CS3 is compatible with Snow Leopard but it seems that the tiny little program that installs the program isn’t. Adobe doesn’t support CS3 anymore. Supposedly there are no problems with CS4. I bite the bullet and order a CS3 to CS4 upgrade from Adobe. (I realize this is rewarding bad behavior). No longer have the CD or code for Word for Mac. Go out and buy copy of Microsoft Office for Mac 2008. Get …
There seems to be an endless number of books, magazines and Internet forums discussing the latest camera equipment. There are fewer places to get information about actually taking photographs, even fewer with regards to printing those photos, and hardly any giving advice about putting on an exhibition. Over the past two years I’ve had my first 4 exhibitions. It has been a real learning experience, from the initial stages of working out how I am going to produce the prints to finally sitting in a room watching other people stare at my photographs. There are many things I know now that I wish I had been aware of a couple of years ago. They may be obvious to some, but I thought I would share these little nuggets of wisdom. Time Do not underestimate the amount of time it will take. If you are putting on a solo show with numerous prints life is going to be busy! For example, I thought it would be quite simple to frame all the prints by myself. It …
Just had an interesting email which shows the importance of watermarking your images. The webmaster of a model / photographer website contacted me saying that he was suspicious of a new member’s application. The new member, a photographer named “Youko Maeda” from “Hawaii”, uploaded some examples of her photographs (including the one above) all of which had TRAVEL 67 watermarks on them. The webmaster decided to visit http://www.travel67.com found out the photographer was a Chris Willson and not a Youko Maeda and got in touch. The new member’s application has been denied, hopefully thwarting some dirtbags plans. A simple watermark gives potential clients or customers the ability to find who the owner of the copyright is, and hopefully dissuades others from stealing your work. Having said that people can still crop or photoshop watermarks away. This is one of the reasons why I don’t have huge images on the web. I once got an “Okinwan Souvenir” on Facebook of some Taketomi Island star sand. Ironically the tiny gift image had been taken from my …
Over the last year I’ve talked about a few inspirational photography books on my bookshelf. This time, I thought I’d make my discovery of the photographic masters a little more interactive. Would it not be more interesting to read the book at the same time as others? Similar to a book club, but with less Oprah and more photographs. I thought we could start with a book I’ve just ordered for Christmas The Americans by Robert Frank. So if you’re interested please beg, borrow or buy a copy and then I’d love to hear your comments. Exciting stuff.
American photographer Robert Cameron died last week aged 98. He specialized in aerial photographs, most famously for his “Above” series of books. Just three months ago he was up in a helicopter taking shots of the famously contorted Lombard Street in San Francisco. What I hadn’t realized was that he took photos with a Pentax 67 attached to a gyroscope to minimize vibrations. Many of his photographs are stunning. This has inspired me to do some aerial shots of Okinawa. All I need is a plane or a helicopter, and a pilot. So if you or any of your friends happen to have a plane in Okinawa please get in touch!
10 days ago my 1TB external hard drive stopped working. This hard drive was running Time Machine continually making backups of all my data. I took it back to the store. They said they would send it back to the manufacturer IO DATA. IO DATA phoned a couple of days ago and said they would fix it but I would lose the data. No problems I said it’s only the backup, everything is safe on my very reliable Mac Pro computer…. This morning turn on my computer and all I get is the Apple logo and a little thinking symbol. Call Apple support. First question… Is all your data saved? AGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!! After an hour of trying various things. The lady on the phone says that I should reinstall Snow Leopard, but I will lose all information on the hard drive. But there is hope….. All my data is on my second “DATA” hard disk. Only applications are on the first “APPLICATIONS” hard disk. I figured I could reinstall on the first hard disk and all …
Pentax ceased production of the Pentax 67II camera this year. Maybe it was just too expensive to produce in small numbers, or maybe Pentax decided it was simpler to make the move to an all digital lineup of cameras. There are some photographers however that are still use, and love, the Pentax 67II. It turns out that Helena Christensen, supermodel turned photographer, is one of them. I spotted this image of Helena with her Pentax 67 on the home page of the Guardian newspaper. It links to a slideshow of her images documenting the effects climate change is having in Peru. You can see the slideshow here. Well worth checking out.
Here’s the second image from the model shoot of Nikki I did with Eboh last month.
Thanks very much to the folks who came out to the Kadena Market Day. Overall, it was a good experience, met a lot of nice people and had some interesting conversations. Many, if not most, freelance photographers have to act as their own accountant, business manager, travel agent, website designer, publicist and even therapist. Adding the role of “vendor” has its own challenges to overcome, its own skill set to learn. I guess the only way to approach it is, like anything in life, to simply do it to the best of your ability.
TRAVEL 67 : Chris Willson Photography 