When was the last time you stopped from taking pictures and just sat and talked with someone who you’ve wanted to or have photographed? Or when was the last time that you actually cared enough to stop and speak with someone, a stranger, a friend? 

I’ve often felt that we as photographers don’t care. We get involved in creating a masterpiece, a something, anything, that we completely lose our human touch of interaction and involvement. We’re often viewed as “snoops” stealing moments from others.

At this moment we, as photographers, need to finish being inhuman. We need to learn that putting down the camera is sometimes more important then using it as a barrier between us and our subjects. That our “subjects” are just as human as us, hurting, joyful, kind, wanting to share a story and feel a true intimate connection. Realizing that our cameras are nearly a means that we use to tell a story but the true connection happens when we put down the lens and interact. 

We need give before we expect others to relinquish their sense of personal barrier and stare down the barrel of camera. I believe photography is a tool to break down barriers, alas it has been used as form of personal “right” that allows the user to poke their noses into the lives of others without any questioning of whether it is an uplifting thing to do. 

Use this art form as a tool to build connections with others. The more I dive into photography the more I begin to realize it’s less about how technically good you are and more about how vulnerable you are with others. When you become vulnerable with others, they open up to you, and a connection is formed.

First learn to be human, then learn your craft. Stop and be more human.

For most serious photographers even thinking about using the iPhone camera to capture decent images is completely out of the question. Well I have an argument against those thoughts. I do feel that the iPhone camera is not as good of quality as it could be, but quality shouldn’t limit your creativity. 

Just recently there was a great app. released for the iPhone called “Camera Bag“. This app allows the user to stylize the images that you take on the iPhone, from Holga effects to B&W’s. Here are a few samples:

Once again, these images aren’t about supreme quality but rather content and effectiveness of conveying good stylized images. I have been very impressed with how this little program allows the user to take a so-so image and transform it into an well post-pro’d image. I am excited to see what the future holds for the camera software in the iPhone and hope to see some more customization in the future.

A little while ago a friend of mine David duChemin ran a bit of a contest for some new types of camera straps. They were BlackRapid’s R-Strap. No unfortantely he did not pick me (DOH!), but I did do some more research into these straps and man, what an awesome evolution of the camera strap this is. 

Yes, that is excitement you read there, excitement about a camera strap. I never thought that I would ever get excited about a camera strap either, but these are so different from any other out there that they deserve some face time. Now most will look at the strap - like I did - and just see your usual strap without much difference from another. What actually sold me was the video they had posted, while it is corny, it explains how it works and why it is so revolutionary. Watch the video HERE.

These are fairly expensive for a camera strap, but I feel that they allow the user to hold your camera in such a different and better way that it’s worth it. I’ve ordered two and will have a quick review of them once I get them.

With the recent acquisition of a couple 250GB portable HD’s I knew that the biggest issue would be how to back up all that onto the HD’s. A while ago I posted on the programs that I use to back-up all my data, one piece of software that was among them was Super-Duper. Since that post I have had major issues with this program and have deleted it off my system. A program that has replaced Super-Duper is a great program by the folks at ECon called ChronoSync.

What differs from Super-Duper to ChronoSync is the fundamental differences of what type of back-up it is. Super-Duper will makes a clone of your entire drive (including the errors!). While ChronoSync will back-up and sync just the files on the drive that you have selected. It has automatic back-ups and allows the user to even make sure specific files types aren’t backed-up. 

I have yet to have any errors or issues involving back-ups. It has run flawlessly for over 7 months now and you become accustomed to hearing that wonderful “DING” when the back-up is successfully finished. 

It costs $30 to buy and has a 30 day trial as well. I would highly suggest any photographer who uses a mac use this software for backing-up their photographs. It can even back-up your files to MobileMe on a consistent basis, a feature which I use daily on an auto back-up.

Ever since I have jumped into this crazy world called photography, I have been plagued by the need of new cameras, better equipment and that ultimate piece of gear that will make you uber awesome. But lately I have been fighting that want for more, and replacing it with a need for more perfection in my shooting. 

As many know, I work with a minimal amount of gear. A 5D, 30D (thats almost toast), 3 lenses, and 1 flash. Part of this is good and most of it is great. Shooting at Qwanoes has challenged me to shoot with one of my three lenses exclusively when I should probably just fork over the money and get a better middle ground lens. But alas, I enjoy the minimalist amount of equipment. Here’s why…

Many photogs with pockets bigger then most 3rd world countries yearly budgets have the ability to fork over tens of thousands on gear every year. Alas what I find with a lot of photogs that do this, their vision for their story telling will often lack. They focus solely on the need to get the best lens for a situation rather then focusing on deepening and perfecting their storytelling.

For myself I have been focusing on the need to deepen my stories that I tell. This often will in turn make you focus less on the equipment you use and more on your creative ability to focus on a situation. A good friend has a tag line that he loves using, “Gear is good, vision is better.” - David DuChemin. He’s right, gear can be good, but your vision is what will set your apart from the rest. A vision is your passion, your heart, your connection to your subject matter. It can mean the difference between a snapshot and an immensely moving photograph. 

So for the love of the story, take pictures! Don’t let your equipment sit on your desk collecting dust while you surf the internet mindlessly for that next 5D Mark II rumor. Love your story, perfect the grammar, get rid of a bad habit, learning can mean failure, take it slowly and with a humble heart. It takes time, but your story will show your passion for the content.

The hardest part of photography for me, is when I have to engage into a situation with my heart. It can be fruitful for your photography but it can also be a threat to how you view a situation and you can lose perspective.

Over the years I have begun to shoot more with my heart and less with my head.  A progressive journey that has taken me all over the map mentally, emotionally and physically. The journey is similar to anyone who starts to engage into their form of creative process in order to provoke a primal string in a persons heart. There are ups and downs that take you in directions that you wouldn’t normal go. It can sometimes be illogical to people who observe you, and trying to explain why you shoot what you did can be mind numbingly hard.

But what really happens is your images carry weight, a weight which your voice can’t explain away. People begin to understand situations, moments, emotions. They are transmitted to a place in time. That is when you know your heart was absorbed into your creation and transmitted to the viewer.

Furthermore, the purpose of shooting with your heart is that it shows your love for your content, and allows others to experience your sincerity, love and joy. Thus you have done a greater good by allowing yourself to be vulnerable alongside your subjects, allowing the viewer to then as well engage with all parties creating a beautiful cycle of engagement.

This is an ongoing thought process I have had for a while. If you have anything to add, I’d love to hear it.

With the recent update of the infamously out-dated .Mac service to the newly named MobileMe service has brought about a new level of great services. One that I was very curious about trying out was the web galleries. Ever since the implementation of the amazing web galleries with iPhoto and Aperture, I was extremely jealous. But now Apple has offered the ability to create these great web galleries for anyone who has a “MobileMe” account.

Upon logging into the MobileMe service you can navigate to the “gallery” section. Here you will be greeted with simplified interface that makes even the simplest mind jump for joy. From here you can create new albums, edit album names, re-organize old albums, etc.

Creating a new album is as simple as selecting it from the drop down menu, typing in a name, figuring out what type of “share” options you want on or off and clicking “ok”. 

From there you will need to upload your images. And yes, once again a simplified interface has been implimented to make the stupidest simplest minded person happy.

Once you have selected the images you want and clicked the “select” button, you will begin to upload you images. The upload window will show which images were uploaded by marking them with a check-mark and show the progress of the ones uploading with a progress bar.

From there you can view you newly created web gallery in the sleek MobileMe gallery interface! What is even better about this new web gallery app. is now even the mortal PC users can use it to make their own galleries. Yes I can see you all jumping for joy right now!

Pros:

• Simple interface
• Large 20GB storage capacity
• Gallery interface is very sleek and professional

Cons:

• Expensive for just gallery usage.
• MobileMe is a stupid name

Do you find that you often rate your images to high? Images that you rated as a four star one year ago you would actually rate as a two star today? Well this was an issue that I was having. So I began to simply rate my images a one star.

What this means is that if an image is rated with a one star, that means that I want to keep the image and all the others will be deleted. Then later I will go through and rate two stars for the ones that are the selects.

This not only simplifies your workflow, it keeps you on a consistent path towards proper ratings. Next up, keywording…

I’ve often found myself in a creative rut. For multiple different reasons, sometimes its lack of compelling content, sometimes its for lack of energy and sometimes its because I have to much on my mind to think of anything creative

If there was one place that I also seem to turn to for inspiration and to learn is National Geographic. I am a current subscriber of the magazine and a frequent viewer of the their website. While I was knee high to a grasshopper I used to spend hours reading my parents stack of Nat. Geo. in the basement, not reading the articles but admiring the images. Diving into the life that they captured, the stories and the emotion. Lately I have often found myself turning there once again, but this time it is with a different eye. An eye that sees these things in a bigger picture and imagines what the photographer thought through to simplify and capture the image he/she did.

National Geographic will always be a goldie oldie in my mind.

Since the day of the release of Aperture 2 I have been messing around with it. Overall I have been very impressed by it, clean design, great raw processing and very good image management. But there has been one thing that is constantly coming back to me as an issue, does it have it where it counts?

So I began to run it through it’s paces. Importing my entire image library, setting images to high quality and letting them all render. When that was done my image library was over 100GB in size (thats only the previews). That is HUGE! So large that I had to start hosting the library on my 1TB raid drive. This was the first sign that I would have issues with Aperture. Not only did it take roughly 3 days of 24/7 image rendering, but it didn’t help that much. Aperture 2 seemed to actually go slower, even in quick view mode.

Throughout these setbacks I wanted to keep going with this new release, and really start developing images in it. So I began to go through image after image, tagging, stacking, editing, etc. I was very impressed with this process. The ease at which Aperture allows you to rate, stack similar images and tag is very intuitive and easy. The editing is incredible as well, the RAW 2.0 support far outreaches the old 1.0 or 1.5 decoders, even rivaling the Adobe Camera Raw decoder. With the much improved editing system and similar feature set as Lightroom, editing images seemed right at home. What I loved more about editing in Aperture 2.0 was the ability to use an eye-dropper to extract a hue from an image and only adjust that specific hue without touching other hues. To me this far exceeds the “nipple” tool in Lightroom.

So with being this impressed with the release of Aperture 2.0, what makes Lightroom win? Well I have to admit, it really came down to what fit my style and productivity workflow with a pinch of self-opinionation (is that a word?). Even with all these new features and benefits in Aperture 2.0 I couldn’t stop but love just how snappy and easy to use Lightroom is.

One huge thing that has always bugged me about the Aperture development was how GPU intensive it is. This to me is the biggest downside to the entire development process. This rules out saving a couple thousand dollars on a laptop just because I need that superior GPU to run Aperture. The underlying software built into Mac OS X is great, but shouldn’t be this intensive on your system.

Another is how slow Apple is to deliver developer details on up coming releases of Aperture. The whole basis of photo management software being so fragile at such a young age makes it hard to work with a single piece of software that you’re not sure will last another years development. Apple has kept it’s users in the dark for almost a year on the development of Aperture 2.0. Adobe has been very good in keeping its users up-to-date on its newest releases. Which I feel is a huge asset to keeping myself coming back for more from Adobe.

And lastly, it has a lot to do with who is controlling the software. I absolutely love Apple computers, software and design, I don’t trust them to be engaged into the world of photography. I feel Apple is going into this game as a “on their terms” type of mentality, which frankly scares me. The photographic community has been around long before Apple entered a part of the market and they can’t look at themselves as the end game for this software. When I start to see Apple let it’s Aperture developers be more open with it’s users, I cannot trust their development of the product.

For these reasons I have kept with Lightroom and feel it is the way to go for photographers. A company that engages it’s community is a company that I want to work with. Realize that this is my specific opinion based on two years of work with both Aperture and Lightroom. Your milage may vary…

One thing I notice a lot with people who take pictures is that they stand back and try to capture the excitement, energy and action from people. Now there are a few things that are interesting about this. One, if you were to stand back and watch people play a game would you feel the excitement of the game the same way the players would?

For example, when the Stanely Cup finals come around and there’s a Canadian team playing and they’re actually winning series and going for the cup, the amount of people engaging into the action that the team is creating is intense. People cheer, cry, scream, flail limbs and eat lots of chips to ease nervous tension. They are engaging the moment.

I feel the same is true when you are taking pictures. Engaging into a moment can bring about great success, while at the same time sometimes creating risky situations for yourself. Although the outcome will be simplistically real, authentic and emotional. Not only does it make you engage into the energy of the situation but it encapsulates you. Making the viewer feel like they are looking at an event from a personal viewpoint rather then one of a “on looker”. Again this comes back to creating images that are “alive” and the “process, absorb, distill and create” methodology.

I am very passionate about this type of photography. It requires the photographer to get out of their personal bubble to engage people, but the outcome will show through on the images. Give it a try!

While the 5D may not be meant for action, it definitely doesn’t disappoint. It may only have 3 frames per second as opposed to the 5 fps that my 30D has, there shouldn’t be any grumbling from the action addicts out there. Yes it’s slower, will you lose out because of those 2 less frames per second? Marginally. If anything, it keeps you shooting less “I hope I got that” bursts and more comprehensive shooting.

This afternoon I had a chance to take it down to the waterfront and jump into a boat for 2.5 hours and shoot the action on the tube rides. After shooting that long on 4 - 2GB cards, I’ve realized it isn’t enough space. But besides that, the camera preformed amazingly well. Full frame crop is great on a 70-200mm lens. And of course my biggest praise of all…it actually focuses!

On the other news front, I have also entered the Evrium photo contest today. So here’s to hoping for a top five position. I’ve been watching the software evolve over the past little bit and it seems to be working towards a great website suite for photographers to really display their photographs in a sleek easy to use way.

First, lets define the word…Create: bring (something) into existence : he created a thirty-acre lake | over 170 jobs were created.• cause (something) to happen as a result of one’s actions : divorce only created problems for children.• (of an actor) originate (a role) by playing a character for the first time.• invest (someone) with a new rank or title : he was created a baronet.Now take that definition and think about it in the context of photography. As a photographer you have the privilege to bring a moment that was easily overlooked into a persons circle of concession. When I speak of concession, I am talking about a persons ability to capture and store all the information being sent at them in a single moment. So to simply say we “bring something into existence” would only be a surface scratch, but I feel it is more of an ability to point out a moment in time that we (as photographers) felt would impact the world in a moving way, whether that be positive or negative.Along with moving in positive or negative ways, the ability to create comes with a great responsibility. A creation affects existence, in indirect and direct ways. We (as photographers) must allow our moral compass to point in a direction that will benefit the human race and not destroy it. I have seen humans humble ability to create be turned into a disgusting mutation of self-fulfilling gain. Oddly enough, we as humans have a large attraction to mutated creations, and for some reason feel a boredom towards innocent creativity. Part of our fallen nature? Some would say so, others would say it’s just us being us and who’s to say a creation is a mutation or a beautiful masterpiece.I see creation as gift that we are to use to uplift and admonish one another. Like I was saying in my post previous to this, (Stills - Moving in our Minds) we have a secret romanic attraction to the still image. We secretly love to take moments to gaze and dream while our world teaches us to keep moving. For me this puts so much meaning in my photography, that we have take the time to admire the silent moments of a still image and let our minds fill the silence with meaningful sounds that change our lives. The creation of a still image to bring more meaning and understanding to a persons circle of concession - and doing so in a positive manner - means we as photographers are contributing in a beneficial way to this thing we call “life”.Again - this is by no means the end of this conversation. I would love to hear feedback and personal comments to what you feel it is to “create”.Cheers!- Jordan N

Over the next couple of weeks I am going to be diving into this topic. And a notice to the readers, this isn’t a shallow or easy topic to handle. I will be through out ideas that are not fully formed nor all my own, but I hope that all will have a positive effect on the conversation that takes place.At this point I will be tackling two specific things first, they are the words: create and innovate. This is to lay a ground work for what is to come in the later weeks of this discussion.

Once I read an article where the author stated a reason why people love a still image. He said that the human mind is one that remembers moments in singles frames, one image that will tell the story for the rest. This got me thinking. Give a person an image and they can stare at it for hours, give a person a video clip and they want more. It’s almost as though we consistently miss the still points of life and seek the more action that a video clip gives us.The Interpretation:A special aspect of photography that I find intriguing is that of interpretation. Everyone interprets a still image differently. I find a video will interpret itself, where a still image will leave a freedom to the viewer to make up their own interpretation. Ask ten people what they feel an image is saying and you will undoubtably get ten different answers. While the photographer will tell one story, the audience will interpret it slightly different. A type of paradox that we as photographers need to deal with on a daily basis.The Story:Being able to tell a good story, that is a true gift. Following in after interpretation we come to the point in interpretation where the photographer wants to tell his/her’s own interpretation of the events happening. Speaking in a very general terms, the story that the photographer will tell is one that will speak through a single image. One moment in time that encapsulates millions of them. The story behind an image will sometimes be clear within seconds of looking at an image, other times it will take hours or even the photographer telling the backstory behind the image. Photography is creating meaningful stories out of unused/unseen moments.There is always something alluring about a still image. One image that I constantly think of in this instance is the image of a girl from Afghanistan that Steve McCurry took for National Geographic. One thing to clarify here, I am not talking about the attraction of an object or person, I speak in terms of the ability to connect with a object or persons being. Now I may have just lost some of you on that statement, but stay with me. As I was speaking before, a still image gives us the ability to freeze moments and tell a story through a single moment. The ability to do this is invaluable and gives us the ability constantly go back and reconnect with a moment or through our interpretations connect into what the real moment felt like for the photographer.As you look at the image of this girl, your first feelings are probably that of her eyes. Yes, she has beautiful eyes, but is that what is really drawing you in, or is it that an amazing story is being told through this stilled moment. The colours combined with the facial expression and the slight bit of dirt on her face compliment what we already feel through looking at her eyes. The attraction draws us back again and again. The romantic affilation with a moment in time we had nothing to do with but in a way we feel we do, after looking at the image.The Conclusion:Sorry, this didn’t really need a conclusion mainly because I feel my thoughts are not yet out in full, nor do I feel this is in no way a conclusive statment. This is merely my way of verbally getting out ideas or thoughts that I have, and I hope for others to maybe join in on the conversation about it.More to come, soon… Cheers!- Jordan N.