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So much to do, So little time to do it

I've been home from my trip to Oregon and California for a week now and I'm just starting to edit the images from this trip. In total, I shot about 4000 RAW files while I was away. This is about an average number for me. In the first draft, I've pared it down to about 600 usable images. Of these, I expect to end up with 400 images that are marketable. A 10% average which, I've found to be a pretty consistent number for me.

Now, I've already spent about 10 hours converting all the files to TIFFS and deleting those that are "technically" bad, meaning they are either out of focus o the exposure is way off. Once that's done, I go though again and delete similar files that ar all good but, I don't need more than a couple versions of them. Then, I go thorough again and delete all the ones that just are'nt interesting, are poorly composed or make no sense and I can't image why I ever took the picture.

Once that's done, I get down to the serious editing, spotting, color correcting, cropping etc. The image here is of Multnomah Falls in Oregon. I actually shot about 100 images here in a 90 minute period and ended up keeping about 20 of them. Waterfalls are a great subject but, hard to do well. Contrast and depth of field are issues here as well as focus. I always shoot waterfalls on a tripod with a very long exposure in order to get that soft, misty water. In this case, because the sun was streaming into the canyon, I actually added both a 2 stop ND filter and a polarizer in order to get a shutter speed slow enough to get the effect I wanted from the water. Once I started editing the image, I boosted contrast and saturation, dodged the water to whiten it up and burned the area around the water to further add contrast. Lastly, I did some USM in photoshop and we're done. Multiply that times 20 other images and add the fact that I still have about 350 pics to edit from this trip and I've still got a lot of work to do.

An interesting article in the Times and a new idea

Last week, I had an interesting discussion with another photographer in California about how he has grown his business simply by making sure his website was easy to find by people searching for images on the web. He explained that I was missing the boat by not making a bigger effort to commercialize my website and make my presence known in search engines by practicing something called SEO. Six months ago, I thought just having a website was enough to promote my work. As well, I've paid good money to build the site I have now and then paid even more good money to have a number of experts tell me everything from "it's perfect" to "it looks very low rent". I'm not kidding.

When it come to consultants, I've concluded that if you are going to pay them for an opinion, they'll give it to you whether they actually have one or not.

Now, this guy's website was really low rent, and he was the first to tell me it was a jumbled mess that was five years over due for a rebuild. So I asked the obvious question, why not up date it? and his response was that since he made $100,000 a year in print and license sales, rebuilding his site was low on the list.

This got me thinking that, even though I thought I was a pretty savvy internet user, I might actually be one of those guys that's so far behind, he thinks he's ahead. So last week while I was away, I took a couple of hours and headed over to Borders to browse the computer section and was shocked to see how many titles were dedicated to the subject of search engine marketing which, frankly, was a term I had never heard of until talking to this guy. I bought a couple of titles, and while reading them, I have concluded that I am missing some real opportunities here so, I've also added yet another website re-work to my to do list.

This morning, I'm going through the NY Times Sunday Magazine and came across a really interesting article that relates to all this. You can see it here http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/13/magazine/13audience-t.html?_r=1&ref=magazine&oref=slogin


Basically, the article is all about how a musician quit his day job and started a music career on his own using the internet, viral marketing and all the other things I've been reading about and originally heard about from another photographer a week ago.

So what's the point? Well, for me and my new business, I guess the point is that I've really missed a giant elephant standing in the room. We all know how "awesome" the power of the internet is but do we really understand it and what the potential is for our business? I know in my case, I've really been focusing on more traditional ways of marketing that, on second thought, may not be all that relevant any more. I think I keep up with current thinking by reading a few magazines and newspapers but the reality is that today, there is almost too much information out there an finding relevant sources and staying current is a full time job in itself. I think the people who really get ahead in any business are the ones who seek out new and unusual sources of information and ways of doing things all the time.

Yahacts Oregon and an image of the Golden Gate Bridge

On Sunday evening, I checked into my hotel in San Francisco and rushed off to get some shots of the Golden Gate Bridge. Since it was a foggy evening, I know it had the potential to render some great images and I wasn't disappointed.

The trick with an iconic image like the Golden Gate Bridge is light. The world is full of great images of the bridge and in my opinion, none of them are shot in the middle of the day when there are no clouds, fog or lights to add mood to the image. To get a great image of the bridge, you have to be here at what is known as the golden hour which is about 30 minutes before sunset until at least 30 minutes after sunset. The fog is really a bonus as it softens the lights of the bridge and causes reflections to glow. In this case, I got here about two hours early, picked a spot that I felt was right and composed the shot in camera. Then, I moved the camera, changed the composition and switched lens about 25 times so that I could look like a real pro to the tourists standing around. Once I was satisfied, I sat down on a park bench with a good book and waited for the right light. It's not hard to get an image like this, you just have to be patient and be able to know what good light is and how to capture it in camera.

Once the lights on the bridge started coming on, I started to pay attention to the fog patterns and pressed the shutter every time it looked interesting. Basically, I'm looking for balance here. With the piers of th bridge positioned at each end of the picture, I wanted the bulk of the fog to collect around the piers which eventually happened. You'll need a tripod for this kind of shot because long exposures are required. In this case, the image was shot at 200 ISO at F13 for 4 seconds. This image was under exposed by about 2 1/2 stops so that the blue in the sky would oversaturate the image and make the light glow a little better.

If you want more detail on this image, send me an email and I'll be glad to help. I'm in Yahacts Oregon right now and I'm going to try and capture a similar image of the Haceta Head lighthouse tonight so, I'll post the results in a few days.