We had a recent shoot with a beautiful model recently that I thought I might share.  Let me know what you think. All of the images here will soon be available for licensing on http://store.arenacreative.com

If you live in the New England or Connecticut area and are in need of Senior portraits, an engagement session, or just a general portrait shoot for your modeling portfolio, please feel free to contact me at the link above.

Summer Thunderstorm in New England from Todd on Vimeo.

This is a summer thunderstorm rolling through the neighborhood on a muggy, humid summer evening. My wife caught multiple bolts of lightning in this clip. In the background you can hear our stressed out beagle dog panting and walking around the room. I was trying to catch some still shots of the lightning on my Canon 40D at the same time. The best display of lightning is around 00:38 of this clip if you want to fast forward to the best part Enjoy

Out of any other area of the US, New England probably sensationalizes the weather and forecast the most.  A few days prior to this we had a rash of tornados that popped up around the area, causing multiple downed trees.  Driving through a local town we spotted sights like this:

Not cool.

Below are some screen grabs from the video, as well as a few I crappily captured hand held with my DSLR.  To do lightning right, you need to have excellent timing, a slow enough shutter, and a sturdy tripod.

This photo was shot at night. I kid you not… at 11:54 pm to be exact. So riddle me this… how is this possible?

Let’s see who gets it first

Here’s some really awesome commercials, clips, and inspiring examples of creativity I’ve seen recently that I really enjoyed.

Empty LA  by Matt Logue.  Los Angeles without any cars or people…  Crazy.

PDF article by AfterCapture magazine:
http://www.rangefindermag.com/storage/articles/AC0610_Logue_Smith.pdf

And for all of you that are videographers, or love to produce stock footage and video for microstock…  enjoy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SItFvB0Upb8

Don’t judge the B ROLL!

I just got called a “parasite of the stock industry” and I was told to “wake up”. Well, isn’t that special? I’ll just go back to making my living now…

It’s still hard for me to believe how many bitter feelings are still being held about microstock by those who have been in the stock business for decades. I’m not sure the Rights Managed photobanks will ever forgive it. Microstock strikes a very painful nerve with most rights managed photographers. I can understand where they’re coming from, but it’s been a good 6 years that microstock has been in the limelight. I don’t think rights managed will ever go away totally, but its definitely on the decline. But don’t blame microstock – blame technology and it’s advancement. You can get an 8mp DSLR used for $200 right now in the US. That’s less than the cost of an ipod or iphone, and we all know how many of those are in people’s pockets.

A lot of credit has to be given to those traditional stock shooters that have either embraced microstock, or at least given it some respect and consideration.  Guys like Jack Hollingsworth and John Lund.  Not everyone is a hater, thankfully.  Check out their amazing blogs.

Heck, if I could license all of my work at prices ranging from $100-10,000 per license, I most definitely would.  Unfortunately, I had my start in microstock, and I’ve been playing the “bulk sales” game ever since.  If you’re a rights managed stock photographer and are still maintaining your sales, that’s incredible – keep up the good work.  All the best to you.  I’m not knocking that side of the business at all.

All I’m saying… is that the creative fields change yearly, if not monthly.  If you can’t roll with the punches, and the changes of the market (the same as in any other field) then you’re going to be left behind.  Just because some of us choose to sell micro, doesn’t mean we’re giving stuff away for free.  The prices of microstock are, in many case on the increase.  The price wars will continue to go on between the newer and upcoming agencies.  But you can trust me on this: you will never see my giving my work away for free.  It’s one thing to give stuff away.  We all do it, you almost have to nowadays just to get hits to your website.  Free advice, free tutorials, etc.  It helps one another out, and one hand washes the other as in all things.

Different strokes for different folks, is all I’m saying.  I’m done ranting, time for me to get back to work.  Happy shooting!

Photoshop Tutorial – Getting Rid of Wrinkles from Todd on Vimeo.

A quick and painless demonstration of wrinkle removal using some tools in Photoshop. I apologize for the fact that it sounds like the mic was inside of my mouth…

Do you ever feel like your work is never good enough?  Do you get praise from others about your creations, but deep down inside you don’t feel the same way?  Maybe you feel like you just served up a pile of trash.  To be honest, I feel this way about my own work a lot.  I recently did a few photoshoots and nothing I shot really wow-ed me.  This type of thing happens other creatives I have spoken to, as well.

I Am My Own Worst Critic
I’m definitely my own worst enemy when it comes to criticism. I see the flaws in my work.  Even if they are minor, almost untraceable to others, I still manage to find them.  Am I just being over critical?  Am I bored with what I’m doing?  Is it just because I’m being overly anal?  What’s wrong with me?  I want to be happy with what I’m doing.  I am definitely enjoying it, but I don’t think I’ll ever be 100% proud of where I’m at creatively.  I think we all want to have our own “style” but this is easier said than done.  I’m still trying to figure out what it is, and probably will continue to do so for a very long time. 

Transform
Last year Atlanta Georgia based editorial photographer Zack Arias made a video like no other.  It described a personal struggle that a creative has and lives through.  I don’t care if you’re a graphic designer, a hairdresser, a chef, a contractor, a sculptor, or even a basket weaver… if you create on a daily basis, watch this video.  It’s a must see, and I am pretty sure you will be able to highly relate to it.  Any creative professional should see this.

Getting In and Out of Creative Rutts
We all get in the same creative patterns sometimes, and many times we might not even notice it.  As a designer I would find myself using a lot of the same typefaces, or laying thing out with the same compositions all the time.  In photography, I might find myself framing a lot of headshots in the same way.  Or, I might continue shooting the same themes and subjects with different models.  What do you do when you realize you’re in a rutt?  You do whatever you can to get the heck out of it.  Don’t wait around for someone else to tell you what to do.  Mess around and get crazy the next time you get to work.  Change things up surprisingly.  Look elsewhere for inspiration, if you need some.  Try something new (maybe a different subject, theme, or style) that you might have passed up before.  I personally find that when I get out of my comfort zone and try something new, I get a lot more satisfaction out of my successes.  You will also realize whether or not your new experiments are for you or not, and just might step back into your comfort zone.  Even still, you’re going to be a lot more well rounded of a creative than before.

It’s Okay…
Being your own worst creative enemy is not necessarily a bad thing… be worried when the opposite is true.  Then, you might have a problem.  Heck, maybe it’s healthy.  It’s nice to have a constant semi-dissatisfaction with your work, in a way, so that you can use that to drive you onward to the next level.  I talked to my mom about this topic recently (she’s a hairdresser that’s been in the business for over 30 years).  We agreed that sometimes you just have to keep doing what you know you have to to please your clients and pay the bills.  Feeling completely satisfied with where you are as an artist or craftsman might be a lifelong quest… just try not to beat yourself up so much along the way.

When it comes to searching for the right stock photos, I know from personal experience as a past image buyer that it can be a huge hassle.  You can many times get lost or even sidetracked very easily when browsing through the ocean of stock photos and graphics.  The sooner you find what you need, the sooner you will get your work done, nailing those time sensitive deadlines.  Searching for stock photos can be pretty annoying if you’re not going about it the right way.  Here are some tips and advice I can offer that might just make your next “hunt” a little more successful, or at least maybe a little less time consuming.

Be Specific
Let’s face it, there is a sea of images out there for royalty free licensing.  You can sometimes search for “cat” and get “dog”.  Unfortunately, image keywords are prone to mistakes, spamming, and more.  You don’t want to have to dig through a sea of crap before finding the types of images you’re looking for.  How can you avoid this?  By being specific.  If you’re looking for a photo of a cat, go as far as describing what breed, color, and even what pose.  You just might be pleasantly surprised in your results.  Don’t be so specific that your search string is more than 5 words long, as you might miss a lot of pretty good results.  But, at the same time you don’t want to use simple one word searches and have to sift through hundreds of pages of images.  An exception to this, of course, would be if you were searching something very rare or a rarely covered subject.

Narrow Results With Additional Secret Words
These words aren’t anything super top-secret, but many image buyers might not be aware of them.  They are widely used by stock photographers.  Try them in your upcoming searches and be blown away by how this trims down your results to a more reasonable size.

isolated: A cut-out image or person object with a solid color background.  These types of images make it easy to pop into solid colored backgrounds or layouts, even easily add or remove negative space.  Be sure to include whichever color you would want it isolated over; ie: black, white, red, etc. Other variation: cutout, cut out

clipping path: sick of making selections to isolate images?  Search for this phrase and find images that have a preset clipping path already embedded in the jpeg.

copy space: Use this when you want images with negative space, or a little bit of room to breath.  Every good deigner knows what negative space is, but not many remember to search with the term copy space. Other variations: copyspace or copy-space

seamless: If you’re looking for a texture that tiles seamlessly as a pattern in any direction, include this one.  Also don’t forget about: seamlessly, tiling, tiles

studio: If you’re looking specifically for photos captured in a studio environment, try this word.

vector: If you want just vectors, use the word.  The word illustration also works, but unless you want a lot of jpeg graphic results included, use vector.

Employ the Special Modifiers
There usually are different modifiers you can check off on each website.  These usually are site specific, but are incredibly helpful.  For instance, let’s say you don’t want to see anything but vector illustrations.  Usually you will have the option to choose only vectors, and this will allow you to avoid having to use the word vector in your keyword search string.  Maybe they opposite is true, and all you want to see are photos – not illustrations.  Then you would do the opposite and tick off the “photos only” box.  Some agencies go even further.  If you searched for the word girl on istockphoto.com, for instance, you could then check off whether you meant: Women (Female), Teenage Girls (Female), Little Girls (Female), or Baby Girls (Female). Many of my personal friends say they don’t even bother with doing that, and they simple keep on scrolling through pages upon pages of stuff before they find what they need.  Why would you want to make it harder on yourself?  Make sure you employ these additional features created to help you out.

Restrict Certain Words
Certain stock agencies (the better search engines) will also allow you to restrict certain words from coming up in the image results.  That has helped me tremendously in the past.  For example, you might want a photo of two brothers playing outdoors.  For this search you could start with the keywords boys and brothers.  If that yields too many results, you could also try adding the word two.  You probably might find a bunch of images that have boys or brothers in them, but also have other children or girls in them.  You will probably also get a bunch of family portraits.  This is when you would restrict words like mother, father, girl, etc to narrow down what you need.

Search For Specific Artists
On most stock photography websites you will also see the artist’s name beside every image with a hyperlink.  Yeah, that’s right – you can click it and see all of that artists specific images.  If you like what you see, or are maybe looking for more images from a similar shoot, many times you can search within that person’s portfolio.  Maybe you like one specific shoot theme that artist has done, but only found a few results from the main site’s search engine.  A lot of times you can find similar shots with different angles or with other different variations by searching through that photographer or artist’s personal portfolio.  You can also search from scratch for a certain artist.  For example, if you search username “arenacreative” you might just find my stuff (shameless self promotion, sorry…)

Change the Search Type
By default, most websites employ results by the newest or most downloaded.  Don’t forget, however, that you are able to easily change that search method.  You can usually sort the results by most views, download, popularity (usually that is a mix of views and download), newest, oldest, or random (if you feel like living dangerously).

Spend Less by Shopping Around
Shop around – don’t just stick to one agency just because it’s the same one you’ve been using for 5 years.  It takes only a minute to register an account on a different agency.  Some websites require a minimum credit package purchase, while others are a better deal by getting a monthly subscription (especially if you need a bulk number of images).  If you’re spending company dollars, you boss will probably appreciate how much you’ve saved for the company by purchase (many times the same) images somewhere else for up to 25-50% less.  Prices and selection vary from agency to agency.  Guess what – most microstock contributors sell their work under the same user name.  If you find an image at Pricier Site A try looking that photographer up at Cheaper Site B and you might just be pleasantly surprised to find it there at a much lower cost.  You might even be able to score an XXL high resolution version for the same price as the medium size price at Pricier Site A.

If at First You Don’t Succeed…
…keep on trying different keyword combinations.  You will find what you’re looking for!  Be persistent and enjoy your “hunt”   There’s nothing like the feeling of finding an incredible image that fulfills the exact idea you had in your head.

ST. LOUIS (May 26, 2010) – Graphic Leftovers (GL) has launched GL4iPad, the internet’s premier iPad-dedicated stock graphics and images website. With the launch of this site, GL becomes the only stock image resource on the web where iPad users can purchase and download graphics and images directly to their photos folder. iPad users now have an abundant resource for affordable, royalty-free JPEG images for use in their Keynote, Pages and other apps.

In developing the site, GL created features that iPad users will love; right-hand navigation, large high-definition thumbnails, one-click favorite tracking, one-page search results that can be browsed with a flick of the finger and a pay-as-you-go purchase platform. Anyone can access GraphicLeftovers.com to purchase images online, but only iPad users can experience the new GL4iPad site, which includes over 30 free iPad wallpapers.

GL co-founders Kelly Jay and Daniel Errante were able to accomplish the rapid launch of the new GL4iPad site by initially developing GraphicLeftovers.com on an open-source, non-flash platform with a scalable database architecture and search functionality. The creation of this new iPad-only site was a natural evolutionary step forward for GL.

“We create everything on a Mac, we love the brand and are huge fans of the new iPad platform. We knew the development of business productivity apps would create demand for users needing high quality graphics and images,” said Jay.

“We intentionally built GraphicLeftovers.com using leading technologies so we could efficiently evolve the site to work with the exploding mobile market. We kept Graphic Leftovers.com simple and it paid off by using HTML5 and CSS3 for the launch of our new GL4iPad site,” said Errante.

Steve Jobs said it best in his recent open letter “Thoughts on Flash” posted on Apple’s website; “Our motivation is simple – we want to provide the most advanced and innovative platform to our developers, and we want them to stand directly on the shoulders of this platform and create the best apps the world has ever seen.” GL heard Jobs loud and clear and launched the only stock image site for iPad users.

GraphicLeftovers.com is the leading equitable stock image marketplace for both contributors and buyers on the internet. The company is an innovative provider of high quality, royalty-free graphics and images serving creative professionals around the world. With thousands of images added weekly, GraphicLeftovers.com is the only provider of downloadable graphics and images specifically built for Apple’s new iPad.

#stockphotooftheday

Graduation time is fast approaching for high school and college students.  Many of them are thinking how they will even afford college.  Will they be able to get help from their parents? Or,  maybe some help from the government through financial aid?  Will they need to take out loans that will come back to haunt them once they are done with school?  Be smart when choosing your educational path.  Debt can stab you over with many pains, so be very careful when planning out your education.  I can’t stress enough how thankful I am for paying my way though a state university with a part time job working nights and weekends.  If you are a high school senior, be sure to apply for all the scholarships or grants that you can.  An extra $500 -1000 from smaller or local scholarships might not seem like much, but they will add up over 4 years.

Timing is everything… I think I might be a little late in the year for this image, but nevertheless it was a subject I wanted to cover.