Photojojo review

Oh let's see... Well, its been a week since I last posted. Been busy. I attended a wedding last weekend.  A good friend of mine is getting married this Friday. Plans of home improvements are just that, plans.

I have a twitter account mostly for new and pop culture. Through one of the people I follow, I can across this website and book from it.  Both have a great variety of DIY photo ideas and projects. Some are crafty, some artsy. All told, there are 50 different projects which are presented in an easy to understand format. I look forward to trying a couple during the winter.  There's already a lot of praise for the book and its readily available at amamzon.com or Barnes & Noble.

During the week, I put up some new pictures on flickr, like usual. This one must've been tagged as "interesting" and ended up on the frontpage, because I got a huge amount of view. Here it is for your viewing pleasure:

This is a picure from Times Square, New York City. The building to the left is MTV studios. This was more of an experiment, than anything. I didn't have my tripod, so I rested it against a nearby pole, adjusted the settings, and took lots of shots. Some were too blurry, but this one turned out nicely.

While I appreciate all the views, my photo assistant doesn't like that she's been trumped. She's inspired to try some new things and hopefully come up with something that'll win your love once again.

Fall TV shows have started up. Nothing really interests me, aside from Heroes. A new show I got into recently is Project Runway. Now, I'm a straight guy, but I think the show is fabulous. I'm not a fashion person, which is clear by what i choose to wear day to day, but I DVR it every week. If you've never seen it and don't mind reality shows, check it out on Thursday nights.

New jobs!

Well, the blog has paid off. No Quarter has been fortunate to get some new work through my collection I've put up and the topics I've discussed. Thank you to all my readers! Google Analytics tells me you're out there, so I continue to post new things. I'm not gonna give away what I got cooking, but I'll be sure to post the results as they happen.

I've been busy since the weekend, so I haven't got to much. Finally nice weather in Wisconsin. Too bad summer is over and it gets nice out. I was able to finish up some pictures for my sister. She wanted a photojournalist feel, which is a good idea, but the dogs didn't cooperate much. So it turned to a couple attempts at "posing" them. One of the results below. A couple more here.

The first real "job" I had was at her wedding a bit over 5 years ago. The photographer she hired let me shoot from a distance. I ended up getting some of the best people pictures I've taken to this day. I entered the below picture to a couple contests and ended up placing every time. No tricks, it came out that way from the camera.

I'm not a fan of shooting weddings any more. They're good work, but I don't like the stress of the event. I enjoy the more laid back, personal portraits that I've been doing as of late. I'll take the time to promote a local photographer that does weddings, Sarah Spottswood. She is a lovely lady and very personal. She shoots with her husband. Their blog is located here. I had the oppurtunity to speak to her lately and I was very impressed. Check it out. Not cheap, but they do some great work.

A quick follow up to my posting regarding the 9-9-09 sale at Art's Camera: terrible service! The email receipt said a next day return. I figured that they would be swamped, so I gave them an extra day. Sure enough, not ready. I make a second trip to find my pictures were ready, but my assistant's were not. She was steamed and had a lengthy phone conversation with the manager. End result was free shipping, so we don't have to go back. 

Still working on senior pictures. They were fun. It was hard to catch one of her not smiling.

I continue to put new pictures on flickr. I'm hoping to put up a wish list of sorts. Pictures that I would like to recreate if someone is so inclined to work with me.

Not too much about photography...

I'm really impressed by the amount and types of blogs out there. There are blogs on any subject you can think of. I've been looking thru all sorts of photography blogs to get ideas to better my own presentation. I found some really good examples and some not so good ones. I definately need to work on the general appearance. I chose a standard template that blogspot offered. If I took just a little time to understand html, I'm sure I could get it. Besides, presentation is everything when selling a service. I think a better logo should be the first order of business.

To better understand my audience, I signed up for Google Analytics. If you have any kind of website, whether blog or business, I highly recommend looking into this. It let's you track all sorts of data from your site, from the basic to the advanced.  I found that I have a reader from the Scottsdale, AZ area (Mel?).  As expected most of my readership comes from the south eastern Wisconsin area.  Thank you so much for checking out my blog so far. I hope to continue come up with somewhat interesting tid bits every couple day for you.

My highlight for 9-9-09, was $.09 prints at Art's Camera. I've had some problems with their results in the past, so I'm holding my breath till I pick them up tomorrow.   I'll be sure to post my review of the results. In the past, I've had some prints that were cropped funny and had some ink quality problems. I've never used an internet only source.  Does anyone have any recommendation of what has been reliable for them?

Flickr finally released an iPhone app. The interface is slick.  It runs okay on my first generation phone when on Edge.  With wifi it's much better. The only problem it that my phone only has a 1 megapixel camera, which isn't good for much besides an occasional facebook update. Hopefully this fall I can get the 3Gs. It's always so frustrating when I'm without my camera and can't even take a decent snapshot with my phone. Grrr!

While on the topic of Apple products, Apple released several new iPod products today. I'd link to the site, but it keeps crashing Internet Explorer for some reason, so here to coverage at cnet.com. And I just bought a nano after I got back from New York. Oh well, I really didn't need a video camera on my iPod. Such a strange feature, but I'm not really part of the youtube generation either.

So, now that I rambled about all things not related to my photography, I'll mention that I'm hoping to work again with Danielle this fall. Through some creativity on both our parts and some production help from my assistant, we came up with this picture:

Now, after I shared this with some people, they were freaked out by it. Some said it was morbid, but to me, it was an oppurtunity to try something new and fun.

As far as this week, I'll be adding more to flickr and working on the senior pictures I took this past weekend.

Looking forward to fall

It's been a slow week at No Quarter. I spent the hours between my day job and real life to go through some older pictures to eventually put some on flickr. Going through my old photos is a trip through my memories.  Memories of different times and different people. Some good, some not. I found this one way back from 2005:

Back then I was making several trips to the Baraboo area and snapped this on my way home.  And all it could remind me of is that fall and winter are coming too soon.  Not like there was ever really a summer in south-eastern Wisconsin, but I dread the cold more and more every year. I like fall for the cool night and great colors, but the dead of winter is no fun. Hopefully retirement will take me somewhere warmer, but that's still 20+ years away.  Unless I start selling lots of photos, but I digress.

I had a slower than usual week at my 9 to 5, so I was able to edit and put up some more pictures onto flickr.  I went through and finished some pictures that I took of Mindy from a while ago.  I coincidentally bumped into her this week, which was nice.  You can see a set of her pictures here. Hopefully I can work with her again someday. She is always fun and full of energy.

Looking into a couple other projects for the fall and winter months ahead. Do you have a suggestion? Leave a comment or a link.

Where have you been?

As I've mentioned here, here, and aluded to back there, is that I have a passion for seeing and photographing all varieties of national parks.  Here's a list of those that I've visited in reverse chronological order as best as I can remember:

1. Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore
2. Independence National Historical Park
3. Statue of Liberty
4. Apostle Islands National Lakeshore
5. Grand Teton National Park
6. Yellowstone National Park
7. Devil's Tower National Monument
8. Mount Rushmore National Monument
9. Wind Cave National Park
10. Badlands National Park
11. Glen Canyon National Recreation Area
12. Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument
13. Byrce Canyon National Park
14. Zion National Park
15. Isle Royale National Park
16. Northern Cascades National Park
17. Olympic National Park
18. Mount Rainier National Park
19. Cumberland Gap National Historical Park
20. Mammoth Cave National Park
21. Everglades National Park

I know that was long and I appreciate it if you've stuck around to continue reading this entry.  Looking back through the list, they have all been special in their own way.  Visisting national parks has been the biggest joy of my adult life.  Honestly, I'd rather give up photography than visiting the parks.  For some examples, I've convienently put a set together on flickr for your view pleasure.  Check back later, as I'm always adding new pictures.

Looking ahead, I'm not sure what park I'd like to visit next.  I've always had Yosemite and Glacier on my list, but there are so many more.  I would love to pass on my passion to a child of my own or niece/nephew some day, but there isn't one of those in my life, so I guess I'll have to slowly introduce my assistant to them.  She enjoyed Indiana Dunes as you might have seen on flickr.  She's just not into the whole backpacking thing yet.  It's a hard sell, but once you are into the backcountry, where 90% of the people never venture, you really get to see the beauty each park has.

So, my question to you, where have you been?  What was your favorite?  Where do you plan on going?  Leave a comment and let me know.

Editted to add: Canon just released the official annoucement of the 7D.  The retail sites don't have the price updated yet, but I'm already trying to figure out how I can fit this in my budget.  Very sexy!

P.S. Off topic a bit, but if you have a blog of your own I highly recommend watching this video to understand some geeky mechanics of how Google searches and blog construction.  Also, check out Google Analytics for free stats of your traffic.  I just set mine up and can't wait to see where my viewers are coming from.