John Burchell Photography

I’ve been long over-due for updating and adding to my equipment list and within the last several weeks I’ve made a huge investment in a lot of up-to-date and modern equipment.  I’m totally pumped!

Some of the great new equipment added to my arsenal:  An entire studio of equipment just ready for permanent space.  A set of 4) Alien Bees B800’s, light stands, softboxes, colored gels, barn doors, a background stand and two new cotton muslin backgrounds.  Plus, I’ve added a few new pieces of camera equipment that will no doubt be helpful in low light situations.

I’ve been working as much as I can on my new website.  I’m a much better photographer than I am a website designer and creator so I’m still working on it… I believe it’s at a point where it’s beginning to have merit, so I’m mentioning it here.

Please check out my new website and tell me what you think… http://www.johnburchell.com

I only have one gallery - the wedding gallery - up right now.  I may actually be moving in the direction of strictly photographing weddings.  I still haven’t decided.  I still love photographing people in portraits and at events and I love photographing products and still life, but the weddings seem to be what people are calling me for most often.

Please check it out and tell me what you think. - Oh - and if you found this blog post from my new domain name, then congrats to you for finding it!  It’s still a work in progress and I haven’t made the official conversion.

Thanks for your continued support and I look forward to photographing you soon !

I didn’t have time to go into it as much as I should have but I didn’t want to bore you.  If you read yesterdays post about PPOShool, you know I’m a believer in it.  If you want to check out the site for yourself, here’s the link: http://www.pposchool.com/ .

Something worth mentioning about this summer’s class -  There are going to be several wonderful intructors and they are coming from far and wide.  This is something really special for us here in the heartland to have all this great talent coming our way.

The 2008 lineup is:

• Hanson Fong “Mastering the Techniques”  Hanson Fong is a truly great wedding photographer
• John Woodward “Mastering the Light” - John Woodward is a master instructor of light
• A week long class on Computer Enhancements for your Studio - presented in two parts by Cheri MacCallum and Kent Shirley
• And Professional Photography 101 - A “Boot Camp” for photographers who have been in photography for less than a couple of yours or for those who are considering getting into professional photography.

Pick your path and the cost is ONLY $399 for mempers of the Professional Photographers Association of Oklahoma.  An aspiring photographer is only $50.00 per year, an Active photographer is $90.00 per year.  So even if you have to pay to join the PPOK as an Active photographer, the cost is less than $500.00.  This will be the best money you could spend on a seminar.

 June 22-26 2008  Mark Your Calendars!

I copied their graphic off their website, I hope they don’t mind.  Their website is http://www.pposchool.com.

The school is coming again and I’m very much looking forward to it.  I attended for the first time last year and I loved it so much I’m not only going back, I’m going back to hear the same instructor.  I learned enough about photography to comfortably start booking appointments and photographing all kinds of people. 

During the last year, I’ve photographed several seniors, several families and several weddings.  I have also met and worked with several photographers in Oklahoma and Texas.  The education I got last year at PPO School has more than paid for itself.

If you love photography  and want to learn more or if you are considering photography as a professional career then you are sure to get something valuable and useful.  I’m not being paid for this message in any way.  I’m just letting people know about it because it’s not marketed on the internet that well.  I had been looking for schools or seminars, on the internet, where I could learn more about photography for years.  Somehow PPO School never made it into my web browser even though I searching for this specific thing!   It’s a great experience! it’s fun and educational!  The classes are small enough to get really personalized attention and the price is unbeatable for the quality of information you get.  People come to this school from Texas, Kansas, Arkansas and Louisiana.  Last year, I met 3 other photographers that were in John Woodward’s class that were from out of Oklahoma.

 I look forward to meeting you there!

I went by the camera shop today to pick up a few things and I got to meet the local Nikon rep.  I got my hands on a D300 and took a couple of shots there in the store.  This is definitely one sweet camera!  This camera is the high end amateur/pro version and has a lot of the same features the Pro D3 has.  Some of the features worth mentioning:

• a New 12.3 Megapixel DX-Format CMOS Sensor
• 3.0-inch super density VGA color monitor for viewing with 170 degree wide angle viewing.
• Continuous shooting up to 6 frames per second and 8 frames per second with the battery pack.
• FAST 51 point autofocus with 3d Focus Tracking
• Nikon Exclusive Scene Recognition System for more intelligent auto exposure/white balance.
• Dynamic Integrated Dust Reduction System that is a self cleaning sensor unit

Plus a few more things.  I had a blast with the new 51 point autofocus tracking, continuous shooting and the 3 inch view monitor is a dream!  The camera shop had them on sale for around $1,400.00, which seems to be a really good deal.  I’m real tempted to upgrade, but I’m sticking to my plan and upgrade next year.  If you’re into Nikon Camera, or even if you’re not, thats one sweet camera.  It is hot!

It supports Wi-Fi, so you have the camera store the images you shoot straight to your computer!  I could go on, but Ken Rockwell has already outlined this camera quite well.  I’ve been eye-ing his post and it was a real pleasure to actually get my hands on one of these things.

Google has some really wonderful tools. I discovered how to create a “customized search engine” and found this very helpful while studying and learning about taking better photos. Anyone can create their own search engine from here: http://www.google.com/coop/cse/, but if you’re looking for one that gives great results for tips on the internet for taking better photos, you can use the one I set up.

I’ve been using this for a while and I really get what I’m looking for quick, as long as I’m looking for tips and ideas to make my photos Better.

I’m not a huge fan of prepared lists because they can take away from my creativity. When I have to concentrate on a list of traditional photos I tend to lose a bit of creative sight. Most photographers will end up taking those photos anyway but making them an absolute requirement takes a lot away from the photojournalistic approach. But there are a list of “Must-Have” shots that I figure are automatic and go without saying, but here is the list of all the photographs to get.

Bride dressing for ceremony, dress on chair/bed, full-length solo, with parents, with mother/father seperately, with sisters/brothers, grandparents, flower girl. Bride with maid of honor, with attendants.

Groom Garter toss, getting dressed, full-length solo, with parents, mother/father seperately, with grandparents, sisters/brothers, with best man and groomsmen.

Ceremony Groom and Brides parents being seated, bridesmaids walking down the aisle, flower girl, ring bearer walking down aisle. Bride and father approahcing altar. Bride’s father giving her hand to the groom. Exchanging vows, unity candle, ring ceremony, the kiss, Mr. & Mrs. walking down the aisle.

Ring-Bearers/Flower Girls These jobs are very important and we must get these. I know I already mentioned them, but these wind up to be so much fun!

Recessional Formal bride and groom. Newlyweds together, with parents, with entire bridal party. Close-ups of bride and groom clasped hands with ring.

Reception Receiving line, guests and bridal party. Cake table, cutting the cake, feeding the cake. Best man toast. Newlyweds toasting each other. Cake and punch servers. Musicians. Newlyweds first dance, guests dancing, father daughter dance, bouquet toss, groom removing garter, tossing the garter. Newlyweds getting into limousine/carriage, newlyweds in limousine/carriage.

I recently found an excellent multi-part article, originally posted by range, over at http://thememoirs.org, titled “Understanding modern HDR Photography, a set of tools, links examples and explanations”.   I’ve never seen such a complete and concise article anywhere else that covers the topic as well.  The article goes into many great topics including the functionality of modern Digital Cameras, their ability to capture the range of color, how the technology works and some techniques using software to extend the range of digital cameras to produce absolutely stunning results.

“Although the meaning of dynamic range for a real-world scene is simply the ratio between lightest and darkest regions (contrast ratio)” He mentions, “its definition becomes more complicated when describing measurement devices such as digital cameras and scanners.”

And the several articles the cites and posts go to great lengths to clarify those definitions.

No matter what your skill level is, this article will definitely provide something useful that will help you master the light and color of anything you might be photographing with a modern digital camera.  I would consider this article a MUST READ for anyone that works with digital images.  Bookmark this article and check it frequently for any future posts on this topic.

You probably spent a lot of time or money or both to get a great looking website up and running. You might even be keeping up with a Blog on your site as often as you can but chances are, unless you’re paying very big bucks, your site traffic is less than what you’d like it to be. Directing traffic to your website is a science some people make their living off of but at the bottom of it all is having some really stuff on your site. A lot of other people have written some really great articles and posts and have incredible information on their sites…. For instance, take this link:

http://cheapshooter.com Where another Blog poster took the time to locate and identify 11 videos that were posted on YouTube.  In their words:

Cheapshooter has been busy pre-screening a lot of YouTube videos to make this list of the best video photography tips available online. They are among the best examples of photography tips on YouTube - well-produced videos that know what they’re talking about.

He’s gone through YouTube and watched several videos about how to take better photos, how to use your camera and other things. There’s no telling how many hours he spent looking them over. Then he was kind enough to actually put the best ones together and group them. By citing the article here and taking advantage of the trackback feature built into my bloggins software, WordPress, I can accomplish several things:

1. I can provide some decent content that would be interesting to other photographers, aspiring photographers, or the general public intersted learning something about what to expect out of a good photographer.

2. I can send a direct Thank You to the website who did all that initial research to combine those YouTube videos and publish them all in one place.

3. By using trackbacks, it’s almost like getting an ultimate Kudo. Nothing excites a webmaster more than knowing all their hard work and effort actually paid off. It lets them know that people are actually reading their blogs.

4. Last but not least, it creates links to each of our websites. This is where the website marketing people go nuts but the simple explanation is that websites that are cool have cool stuff. And when people find cool websites, they build links to them. Because I think there is a cool article on cheapshooter.com, I can easily let the rest of the world know it by casting a cool vote for them by using the trackback feature built into my blogging software.

It’s very important to calibrate your monitor when viewing proofs online, or viewing digital images from your computer screen.  If the color or contrast isn’t adjusted properly, the printed images will look a lot different.

 Here is an 11 color scale for adjusting contrast.

If you’re really up for calibrating the gamma of your monitor, and you should if you’re going to be proofing or editing photos, you might want to take a look at a brief explanation of how to do it on zonezero.  You can find his explanation here: http://www.zonezero.com/calibration/english.html.