Holiday Gift Idea: Learn to Love Your Camera!

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Your camera loves you. Yes, it's true. And if you're still looking for a great gift idea, you should know that you (or the shutterbugs in your life) can learn to love your camera back for less than $20! Available at both Barnes & Noble and Amazon, it's easy to ring in the holidays with better photos!

Here's an excerpt from the most recent review: "It's funny how many photo guides and books are out there, but when it comes right down to it, only you will know when the book in question is "the" book for you. Like that crush you had in grade school.... you didn't know what was happening, but it just felt right. Well, Your Camera Loves You should be your crush of the season." You can read the rest of the review here.

PS: If you already have the book, let others know how much you've enjoyed it and write your own review here!

A Mentoring Session That Will Literally Change The World

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If you've been thinking about scheduling a mentor session, now is the perfect time to get your questions answered and help change the world at the same time. Allow me to introduce you to-- the annual Thirst Relief Mentor Auction! Every year, the Thirst Relief Mentor Auction taps into the talent and generosity of the photography industry to create better and more successful photographers, while using the proceeds to provide safe drinking water around the world. What a cool thing!

Last year, the sponsors and 90 mentors/mentees who participated raised more than $40,700 which directly provided 8,147 people with clean water. Wow!

With 100% of the proceeds directly benefiting Thirst Relief International, at least 25 years of clean drinking water is being provided to more than 1 billion people who don't have it.

Here's where YOU come in! Up for grabs is a 90 minute mentoring session with yours truly, PLUS a copy of my Wickedly Fast Wedding Workflow Guide.

We can conduct the session in person, via Skype, over the phone, or at WPPI if you'll be there too. So start the bidding and let's change the world!

Bidding ends Nov. 17 at 11pm EST. so don't wait!

Where could a mentoring session take YOU?

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Another Way I Use InDesign

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Those of you who know me know that I'm an InDesign evangelist at heart, singing its praises to anyone who will listen (photographers—that's YOU!). Not only do I use InDesign to build all of my contracts, pricing guides, and wedding albums, but I use it to build my presentations too.

Say what?

That's right. I use it to build my presentations. Whether for a webinar or a platform class at WPPI (coming this February!), I build all my slide decks in InDesign.

Why not Power Point or Keynote? If you're familiar with InDesign, you know nothing compares to the speed and efficiency you get for quickly building and editing layouts. And since slide decks are nothing more than a collection of horizontal layouts, I use InDesign just as I would for laying out a wedding album.

Most of the time, I export the finished presentation to PDF and then present from the PDF itself (if you press cmd+L on a mac it makes the PDF full screen), using the same arrow keys, mouse clicks, or remote to advance the slides. But if I want to take advantage of Keynote's "presenter mode" where I can see a preview of the next slide before it appears, then... well... I have to use Keynote.

Messing around in Keynote for the first time, I found it frustrating, so I swore I'd figure out a better way, and I'm happy to say—I did. And here's how: I build my presentation in InDesign as usual, but instead of exporting to pdf, I export each page (slide) to jpg, and batch import them into Keynote. That's it.

Here's a quick video to demonstrate. :) PS: Obviously, if you want to embed videos and other special effects, your keynote presentation will require additional tweaking. But for the simple and clean presentations I do most the time, this works like a charm!

PSS: Curious about learning to use InDesign for your own photographer related purposes? Check out my InDesign tutorial video and save 10% with the code CRAZYFAST

RAW vs JPG: What's the Story? Part 2

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Let me just come right out and say it—I'm a JPG girl. (gasp!)

Make no mistake about it, I've experimented with RAW and occasionally shoot it for corporate clients who have specific needs—but other than that, I mostly just curse at it on the rare occasion when I find myself shooting RAW by accident.

It seems I'm never quite able to get the color I want form RAW files. They're big, bulky, and since they end up as JPGs anyway, I prefer to cut through the middle and get straight to the point.

Because I shoot in manual mode 100% of the time and keep an obsessive eye on exposure and white balance (carrying a highly used pack of color correction gels for all my flashes), I'm able to consistently nail exposure and white balance in-camera and don't need the extra weight or cushion of a RAW file to correct things later. It's part of what makes my workflow so awesomely lean and efficient.

I shoot JPG because it works for me. Others love RAW because it works for them. As long as you're shooting in a format that works for you, you're in good shape! :)

(If you're looking for Part 1 of this post, you can find it here.)

 

RAW vs JPG: What's the Story?

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The debate between JPG and RAW is sometimes a hot one, with passionate endorsements from both sides of the fence. Here’s the skinny. JPG If you’ve never messed with the file formats in your camera, you’re shooting JPGs (the default setting). Because JPG files are compressed, they’re significantly smaller files, allowing for faster shooting, faster downloading, and the ability to store more images in less space on your memory card or on your hard drive.

On the same token, because they’re compressed—there’s less information (or “cushion”) to mess with in post-production if you need to make adjustments to things like exposure and white balance.

When you shoot in JPG, the camera records the image, processes or “cooks” it per your liking (based on your picture style settings for contrast, saturation, sharpness, etc.), then writes the baked JPG to your memory card. The images are ready to download and print/share immediately (you can still finesse them gently in post-production if you choose).

RAW Compared to the nice tiny file size of a JPG, RAW files are huge. They can easily be 4x as big (or more). Their uncompressed (unprocessed) nature leaves them with all their information in tact, allowing for more dramatic adjustments in post-production later.

Because the camera doesn’t help with any of the “cooking” when you shoot RAW,  you’re responsible for processing the files yourself. Software like LightRoom makes it pretty painless, but nonetheless, it’s a step that can’t be skipped, as RAW files are unusable until they’ve been processed. (In other words, you can’t post a RAW file on Facebook, or upload a RAW file to your lab for printing.)

Bottom line? Ultimately, there is no right or wrong answer to the question of RAW vs. JPG. It really comes down to personal preference. In the end, the files that are printed for your clients are sent to the lab as JPG, so the result is the same no matter what path you take to get there. The difference is who does the cooking—you or your camera.

For more details, check out my book Your Camera Loves You, Learn to Love it Back, and come back next week to find out which format I personally prefer and how I make it work. Until then, don't let this topic weigh you down! ;) It's not as scary as you think!

Down the Aisle: Meghan + Eric

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A dead car, a defunct phone, and not even a broken foot could stop Meghan from enjoying the day she and Eric became a family.(Notice the boot on her foot in the photo below. Broken within 2 weeks of the big day!) The emotion in the room was palpable in her sister's tears, Eric's gregarious grin, and the way Meghan's voice quivered while uttering the words that would change their lives forever, "I Meghan, take you Eric, to be my husband."

I've known Meghan since we were on the high school dance team together, and she's always had a remarkable glamor about her. I could've spent the whole day capturing images of her like this...

And this...

And this... (Hello!? The 1920's called and they want their Hollywood starlet back!)

Yeah, still couldn't get enough...

Since First Plymouth was only 2 blocks away from Meghan's mom's house, the girls decided to walk (broken foot and all!).

I love Eric's reaction to seeing Meghan for the first time. Looks like she was literally tugging at his heart strings!

Looks like album cover material to me!

Eric has a terriffic sense of humor, and I love the way you can almost hear his laugh in this photo.

Sparklers!

You did it. Boot and all! Wishing you all the best on your new adventure.... :)  xoxo