“The object of a question is to obtain information that matters to us, and no one else.” - Sean Connery as William Forrester in "Finding Forrester" |
I was just reading Ben Willmore's blog and he's hinting at the creation of a monthly video podcast that could be launched within the next few months.
Ben is a great photographer and Photoshop instructor. I had the pleasure of sitting in on one of his sessions at Photoshop World in Boston last year - and I'll be there again in April, for the whole thing this time.
My friend Laura from college offered this nugget of humor that is strikingly appropriate for this day:
My Chinese professor says he gets a lot of college kids, particularly skimpily dressed girls, coming to his door on Halloween. He enjoys answering the doorbell with responses such as this:
Playboy Bunny: “Trick or Treat!”
Professor: “Aren’t you a little old to be giving me that option?”
I just finished reading this article on photo manipulation. It doesn't delve too deeply into the discussion but it raises a few interesting points.
(via Photoshop News)
I just finished reading a post by The Online Photographer about wedding photography that reminded me of something my dad talks about quite often. In his post Mike Johnston says:
One of the things we notice when quoting projects is that no matter how low we quote the most common response is that it's too much - and our fatal flaw is charging too little already. It is generally clients like these that want a lot of extras or demand a great deal of time and effort to be complete sooner than humanly possible.So every now and then someone says, can you recommend a good wedding photographer? There have been a few I've recommended over the years, including the late Susan Kennedy, in the Washington, D.C. area, who had a knack for putting brides at ease and adding a nice presence to the ceremony. But most of the time, regardless of who I recommend, and regardless of price they charge, the follow-up is the same: can't you recommend somebody cheaper?
Well, heck. And then a third of the couples in America complain about their wedding photography. (One day I'm going to write a book called "Two Plus Two," about the many ways in which people overlook obvious explanations for things that are right in front of their noses—for instance, in the 1980s there were thousands of spooky, unexplained Elvis sightings. There were also 200 full- or part-time Elvis impersonators in America! Put two and two together, people....) So do you want cheap or do you want good? The two can be different things.
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Regular readers and those who know me know that travel is a very important part of my life and that I feel the experiences gained and self-knowledge learned while traveling is unlike anything else.
Earlier this year I came across a show on the Travel Channel called 5Takes. In it, 5 young adults (TJs or "travel journalists") come together to explore new places all on a budget of $50/person/day. They each have an interest area that they will be focusing on at different points along the way - be it food or night life or culture or religion, etc. When I first saw the show the group was traveling all over the Pacific Rim and actually visited a few places I have been to, like the Po Lin Monastery on Lantau Island outside of Hong Kong. It was exciting to see again a place that now seems so far away. After all, it's been over 4 years now since I was there.
It's an interactive show in that they tape, edit, and air each episode all within about a week and a half so you can go to their website to post comments, tips, ideas, and vote on where to go for their final destination.
This time around, the 5 TJs are all from Pacific Rim countries (Taiwan, Singapore, Indonesia, The Philippians, and Australia) and they are touring around the USA. Their first stop along the way was to spend 5 days in Las Vegas - an interesting first look at the US - and they are off to Alaska for next week's show.
Having traveled a lot myself, I always find it interesting to see how Americans are perceived by the everyday people in other countries. Their view is so filtered by television and other stereotypes that many are only tangentially aware of what the reality is. And the same is true for the general opinions most Americans hold for people of other countries around the world, even moreso in fact.
In my travels with work these past few weeks, my dad and I were listening to the audiobook of Nicholas Sparks' memoir Three Weeks with My Brother. In the book Nicholas and his brother Micah recall their lives growing up while they travel around the world over the course of three weeks in late January and early February 2003. There is a scene from their trip where they are talking with a guide about traveling to the US. The guide had been to major cities and felt that Las Vegas was the epitome of what America is: the lights, the energy, the money, extravagance, the food. For me, and I would presume for most Americans, Vegas is certainly not definitive "America."
But that's what I like about this show, it gives us a number of different perspectives on what the world has to offer. And, this season anyway, we are given a glimpse of how we are viewed by those from other countries. Definitely worth a watch. Here, it's on Saturday nights at 10pm (EST) on the Travel Channel. Take a look!
Thus far I have only mentioned in passing that I have been seeing someone. Almost a month and a half ago I met Kim. She is a first-year art education graduate student at Syracuse University. We have similar temperaments, interests, senses of humor, and we spend as much time together as our schedules allow - given that they are very different from each other.
She's intelligent, a talented artist, sweet, caring, beautiful, she makes me smile and laugh, she is just an all-around wonderful person and I am humbled that she would want to be with me.
It's been tough these past few weeks as I've been working out of town and she's been in the midst of papers, presentations and midterms along with the demands of work and life but I feel as though we've forged a strong foundation and I look forward to see where this will lead.
About a year or so ago I was looking on iTunes for Photoshop-related video podcasts to help me learn more about my craft and gain some inspiration for future projects. In my searching I came across The Photoshop Workbench, put together by the folks over at The Radiant Vista.
With my busy work schedule and sometimes not agreeing with the creative choices of the host I allowed it to slip out of my regular circulation of podcasts for a long time. A couple of months ago, though, while working on a large CD duplication project I needed some background noise to help keep me from going too nuts from the tedium of assembling CDs. So, I once again searched to see what The Radiant Vista had to offer.
Now, about a year older and more serious about photography and much farther along in my appreciation of varied creative points of view, I began watching The Photoshop Workbench once again. I didn't stop there, however, since I forgot what it was called, I did a search for "Radiant Vista" and discovered the other podcasts they put out. Now, I watch 3 of them on a regular basis:
In all honesty, there are times when I don't agree with what is suggested and I think the original image presents a stronger message. However, with that said, I have taken a lot away from these podcasts and in the end I've grown quite a bit from them and I would recommend them highly to anyone who wants to perform at a higher level.
*Other podcasts to consider: Photoshop TV, Photoshop Killer Tips with Matt Kloskowski, The Adobe Creative Suite Podcast with Terry White.
As I said last week, I've been out of town doing sound and video for live events of various kinds and I'm actually heading out again this afternoon for another one. Depending on the availability of internet access this week, I'll try to write more.
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Here’s what’s been happening in The Photoshop & Photography Blogroll:
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As always, if you have any suggestions or notice a discrepancy, please email me.
I've been delinquent these past few days because I've had to focus on work. I'm actually in Valley Forge, PA this weekend doing sound for an event with people from across the northeast and will be out of town for the bulk of this coming week and the next for two other events we have on the calendar. I'll blog more later on once I'm back in town and recover from the craziness. And I'll cover the next edition of the P&P Weekly as usual either tomorrow or Monday morning.
I was checking the NAPP member website yesterday and looked in the Member Portfolio Section to see what was chosen as the "Image of the Week" and "Editor's Choices" for this week. Low and behold, my shot of a bench that I took a few weeks ago was selected as one of the "Editor's Choices." This is my 3rd image to be selected over the past year or so and I'm quite excited! Even though I'm not egotistical - at least, no more than the next person - and I take photos for myself more than anything, it's nice to be recognized every now and again for your work.
So stop over and take a look at my, and the other, shots that have been chosen this week!
**UPDATE:** In the comments for this photo I received some very nice feedback from the judges and the NAPP Executive Director, Larry Becker.
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Andy Smith of Visual RealiaThis has felt like an odd week for me. I've been at least a day off everyday. Because I had Monday off, Tuesday felt like Monday, Wednesday felt like Thursday, yesterday felt like Friday, today sort of feels like Friday but I'm working tomorrow too which makes it feel like Thursday again. There's just something wrong with that!
It's been tough to find balance in my life lately, too. I've recently started seeing someone and though things are going great between us, our schedules don't line up as neatly as we would like. As I wrote in my last post, I've been doing a lot of tasks at work that require little, if any creativity. Over the next 3 weeks I'll be out of town three different times so it will be tough to find much rest - though the time off to compensate for it will definitely help - and, again, it won't be on the really creative side of things.
It's funny how it all works out. As things begin to go well in one area, something else comes along to take some of the wind out of your sails. At the same time, when you're really feeling the stress of life, something - or someone - enters in to help turn things around.
Tomorrow we will be finishing up interviews for a stewardship video for a local church. This church has gone through a series of changes in its 40 year lifespan, always faithfully risking to move forward, whether it's something big or only a little at a time. People who were youth and young adults when the church started are now the parents and grandparents of the current youth - the focus of their current stewardship drive. It's cyclical. Life, in all its incarnations, finds balance. And I'm trying to reach that balance in my own life too.
One of my favorite aspects of Eastern religions is the desire to live in harmony with nature and to walk a line of moderation between any extremes. Whether it's the Middle Way between self-indulgence and self-denial or trying to leave a place better than you found it. It's about doing the best you can; it's about trying to contribute to the greater good without getting in the way or bringing it down around you.
It's been a little tedious and tiresome in certain areas of my life - though never dull - and I have longed, for so long, to find rest and the fullness of life, to find balance. Out of nowhere, in amazing ways things are starting to change and grow and move closer to that sense of equilibrium for me. The adjustments may keep me a little off for awhile but I can feel things start falling into place. And for that I'm thankful.
Coming off of an unusual weekend where I had Saturday off, worked Sunday, had Monday off, and am back to work again today, I haven't gotten back up to full speed quite yet. With three events over the next three weeks and another day of shooting interviews this Saturday, I feel like I'm already getting a bit drained.
I am what is considered a "creative professional" which encompasses design-oriented fields and basically all things visual. After completing a pretty detail intensive project last month we switched gears into duplicating 3,000 copies of it for our client. It was a nice change of pace, a way to unwind from focusing on all of the ins and outs of such a technical product. However, that too, began to bog me down with the repetition of loading the disk printer and stuffing the mailers and packing the mailers into boxes and on and on. We then had a job for 500 copies of another project - just the duplication - and we're expecting the arrival of the master for yet another 200 disks this week. We've been archiving a local history video series - for which we've been producing new editions - and I've been typing in the content for the wraps and inserting the thumbnails of the subjects.
That coupled with the event work we have coming up for most of this month hasn't been getting me all that excited, to be honest. I need to be creative or at least have the creative areas of my brain stimulated for me to feel motivated and productive. The past couple of weeks haven't really gone towards helping in that area - aside from the afternoon of shooting outside of NYC and redesigning the website for a youth group I work with.
I assume that other creative people find themselves in this situation as well; it's probably true in one form or another in any profession/interest area/what-have-you. Things are great when you are doing what you enjoy, what you were meant to do and when you do the things you have to do that aren't necessarily what you enjoy, you are left feeling drained rather than rejuvenated.
At least, that's where I'm at right now.
I know I've departed a bit from my more traditional posts lately where I write about what's been on my mind but I've been really focusing on work and photography over the last month or so. I'll get back to some of that later on.
In the meantime, I came across this interview with Scott Kelby over at PC Book Review that is pretty interesting.
Have a read!
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