6400+ Unemployed at Job Fair
Over 6400 people came to the “Jobs Gone Wild” job Fair Thursday January 28th. 6400 unemployed people in one place! Over 200 of them wanted Free Business Portraits. Unfortunately I was only able to get to a little over 170 in the 4.5 hours I had to shoot. I wanted to stay and photograph them all but the facility had to kick me out due to another event schedule just a few hours later.
I arrived at 5:45am to begin setting up and to be interviewed by Michelle Buckman of Fox 29 News in Philadelphia. When I arrived fire… Continue reading
Only A Week Away!
Last year I created Free Business Portraits for the Unemployed to give back to my community. I wanted to do something for those around me that had found themselves without a means of paying their bills, wondering how they could ever afford a photo shoot if it is a challenge to put food on the table. I have been there. I know what it’s like to not have the money to pay the bills, to put all the bills in a hat and pull out the one you are going to pay this month. I have been without a home too. I have spent weeks living in my car, sleeping in it or on sofas. I know what it’s like to have nothing and I never want to be there again, ever!
I said to myself one day last summer, “what can I do to give back to all those that helped me? What can I do that will make people feel good and that will help them out of the jam they find themselves in?” What can I don’t have a lot of money, I don’t have a huge house or even a couch the average person can sleep on. I can take pictures and I do that well. I can take peoples portraits and I can help them look their best when recruiters and potential employers look at their resume’ on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. That is something I can do!
HDR In Photography
Unless you have been living in a vacuum for the last few years you have heard of the latest trend in still photography, HDR (High Dynamic Range). Everything from real estate to portraits to advertising is using HDR as a way to grab the viewer’s attention. Even I have written a couple of pieces on HDR and how to get the effects that really make an image pop.
Is it a trend or the future of photography? I believe that the trend has passed and that HDR is here to stay. More photographers are using HDR everyday and with that, more ways to get ‘the look’ are being used and discussed.
Is there a best way to get the HDR look in your images? I don’t feel that any one technique has yet emerged as the single ‘best’ way. Clearly HDR soft’s (http://www.hdrsoft.com/) Photomatix and Photomatix Pro are the current choice of the majority of users today. Of course many are using the HDR component in Photoshop as well. It just seems that Photomatix is a better tool for tone-mapping than what is included in Photoshop, so far.
Click the link to read more Continue reading
“True” HDR Portraits (You Know, with Bracketing?)
On my last tutorial I received many comments on how changing the exposure level of a single raw file then creating an HDR image is not a ‘true’ HDR image. So I shot a bracketed self portrait and generated a new tutorial. This is the image that resulted.
I am not sure how letting the computer in my camera do the bracketing is any less ‘true’ than doing the same thing manually in Lightroom or Photoshop. But, I come from a purist photography background; as in I shot film, developed film and have lost years of my life in a dark room (go into the darkroom at 7 in the morning and come out and it’s still 7am, on a different day!), and I am actually fond of the smell of fixer.
To watch the tutorial Click the Link: Continue reading
