..tomorrow. It's going to be on the lines of 'Don't just sit there....' So I'll be talking about showing and processing wide angle panoramas from Blackpool promenade...how to shoot and produce Mash ups with a Blackpool twist...going through shooting shadows and looking at things in a different way...same subject matter different style... so if you are about get along to Poulton Photographic society tomorrow and see if there are some techniques you might add to your quiver.... So last talk for a while and I won't be doing any more group tutorials (well until July) for a while as I chuck my efforts behind my new retail adventure..if this Manchester one works then I have a blueprint to apply to all the other Cities where I have shot far too many images in.... fact of the day...I've never been to London on a photoshoot.... will rectify this soon.....anyway So if you are in the Castlefield region of Manchester on Sunday bob along and see some new images and my take on presentation..I think it's different and feedback has been good...ah but those twin imposters....It'll be a double trouser glove and hat day but I'll be under the arches..come and say Hi..... there may be a give away.......! now there's me giving up on selling stuff through other websites and this week it all goes a little potty over on Redbubble where all manner of stuff has gone topped off this morning by a monster sized framed print of this http://www.redbubble.com/people/maxblack/works/7301710-water-lily?utm_campaign=artist-notification&utm_medium=email&utm_source=RB
Maybe I was too hasty in my assesment of the online market...
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resumes during this week, well my kind of normality, shooting with a DSLR and getting stuck into all the projects I've had brewing over the last few months.. But first, catalogue and handouts to get together for my return to the outdoor market flogging pictures thing that I last did 28 years ago.... my regular reader will already know that I used to zip all over the country selling mounts, pictures and frames I used to make and kept doing until I opened my first shop.. but back on the streets and although I have a lot of stock and a part finished display stand, I've nothing that folk can take away ponder and maybe order from...hmmmm the website will probably have to change again , I havn't got any of the big images of Manchester that I'll have on sale So , after I've gone and picked up Di from the hospital with her shiny new porcelain hip I'll be getting stuck into handout creation...oh and the final talk of this seasons camera club chats...this one is along the lines of 'Don't just sit there....' but with a view to alternative shooting in Blackpool as ever I'm looking forward to it
with the Nokia 920 are really good quality. Jpegs are a bit tricky to load into Photoshop, mainly as I'm missing all the Nokia Software and am dragging images off the phone by using it as an extra drive on my computer. There are problems with the blue areas in that if you push them they do get that granular over processed 'jpeg' look. Having a RAW option would be nice but what the heck, we are talking Point and Shoot here, the simplest way to take an image, half press, wait till it focuses and blam, on the card. As a city street snapper this is quite a good machine, most people don't bat an eyelid as you hold up your phone as opposed to poking a stonking big SLR straight into their chops would induce scurrying and head turning. in many ways it makes or helps you become a more honest photographer, non of this 'shooting from the hip' stuff that seems to dominate street shooting at the moment. In fact there is no hiding place for this big Ferrari red shiny block of a machine, I found that once you hold it up to take a shot more people actually look towards it. So as a 'hiding in plain site' street shooting camera I'd say that this is a good one. So some black and whites from the other day, just given a wafty once over in CS6. If you want to see what the results of a 2 hour walk around Manchester look like...well then here they are ......Nokia 920 Manchester wander. So on to test the Nokias low light capabilities, it seems to be one of it's strengths..... On a processing note... +3 in CS6's lens correction filter will sort out most of the distortion that the 26mm Carl Zeiss gives....
It really is a very easy to use piece of kit...well seeing as there is no sim card and my Nokia sim is too big I will be using this as a point and shoot and as such it does a really good job.
Autofocus is snappy although I blew it's brains a bit by shooting into the sun. Good range of ISO settings although for point and shoots sake I'll leave it on auto.The image you've captured swipes off screen, good reminder that you've taken a shot. The large bright screen is nicely saturated although I found, for my taste that a gentle tickle in CS6 popped the images a bit more. Shoots in a default 16-9 format which looks great on the screen As I can't download the Nokia software I've had to go on a convoluted route to get the images into CS6. Dragging from the Windows image file into CS6 just won't happen, neither does clicking to open in bridge...for a start it dosn't recognise the file type and I had the same problem with Bridge in that the file type wasn't recognised. So...open in Windows Viewer and then in the drop down click open in Photoshop...click off the 'windows drive' screen and , after a pause it's there in Photoshop...okay if you have a sim card and are fully connected this will not be a problem, it's just how I've had to sort out getting images off the Nokia by treting it as a new drive. Odd that Photoshop dosn't recognise the file type.... Now there are a lot of toys available once you can access and download from the nokia app site but this will be point and shoot, got to say it really is a lovely, but big piece of kit and in Ferrari Red...hmmmmmm..I like it. Okay here are the first snaps from a walk through the Heatons shopping on saturday... Yep, been working hard to develop a range of framed images that are now looking good, well I think so and my fiercest critic but finest champion , Mrs Max that'll be, quite likes them too. Start retailing at the beginning of April in Manchester, exciting times I can tell you, it's like stepping back 30 years to when I had my first stall at Styal Mill, where basically, I had no idea about anything but bags of enthusiasm...other way round now... Still I've so many images I can make up so many different styles of taste, just got to work out how to display them best...head scratchy time....
So not taking many shots at the moment but delving into my badly organised archives and pulling out stuff from days gone by...well 4 years ago and then there's all the stuff from 2007 to 2009 that had far too much Photoshop on it....ah well we all learn and grow... and the talking at Photographic clubs season starts again soon, blimey I may even put some courses back up on the website... ..I'm going through a cyclical process of man flu, colds and chesticle infections that has medical science on the back foot...still here if not in some drug addled state...still managing to sit up and put coherent sentences together like
" Yes some malt whisky in the lemsip would be nice..." Colds...what are they good for???? All stems from my trip to Spain and Gibraltar...foreign germs coming over here... So, I'm trying to get this place sorted and more retail based, almost there. We'll be saying tata to my Photodeck site as I put more stuff up on my other Image library site, you can have a browse through all the old stuff on there and buy downloads either as RM or RF licensed... So as I now have the Adobe creative cloud at my fingertips I thought I'd go through all the very old stuff that proved a challenge in CS3 and CS4...so they may not have seen the light of day but technically I'll consider them as new images and I'll be having a play with layering stuff again, yes I know not everyone's cup of tea but if I don't mash about and do it...who else will???? Here's one from the Black Mountains... Morning all, another week and i need to send out a bucket load of marketing emails, or maybe eat toast and drink coffee instead....hmmm anyway well into the latest batch of CS6 youtube tutorials and here is another new one. I won't say this will change your life but it might give you an idea of how powerful CS6 is when it comes to working on your images. I'll be getting stuck into Portrait work this week so I'll keep you posted and maybe get the courses back out there seeing as we are just about getting to the back end of the really grim weather.
Well here we go then, on the cusp of ditching buying software and flopping some cash over to Adobe to join in their Creative cloud. Why...well it does make a bit of financial sense and gives access to all of Adobes software...yes all of it. Any student nipping off to do Photography, Film or design at college should have this before they set off...I couldn't survive without having Adobe on hand to tickle things up and you are always up to date..no patching and it seems CS6 has a raft of doohickies only available to Cloud members... I will have to root them out and post some online toots. Been a bit lax on that front as I knock the retail stuff into shape but getting there. Still getting between 150-200 views a day over on Youtube so some folk appear to be learning something.
I'll be putting the outdoor tutorial stuff back on line at the end of this month and all the dates for this years class based stuff, just really need to get the prints sorted and I think it's going to take the next 3 weeks to achieve that. This place will become the home for everything from now on. So that'll be new stuff, prints , training, give away's and info..I did that crazy thing and went to 123 Reg to see what names are up for grabs with a view to more web sites...I must have been slipped a mickey and I banged my head on the keyboard and came back to my senses..so here is home..for now and forever...... Fuggy flatness in the light department means a day in the workshop and on here today with Radio 6 and then 5Live for the footy.
I take groups and individuals out for training in and around Manchester and one of the things I try and impress on folk is to...slow down ..and do that thing that money can't buy..think....yep think..as a concept it's not too hard to grasp but in practice it can sometimes prove elusive..I'm talking about thinking about your Images..not photos or snaps but images... and in many ways once you've cracked the thinking about image creation rather than posting a succession of photos out on the web you suddenly find that you are developing a style..your leitmotif...the way in which other folk can see 'you' in your images and in this overdosed digital world a personal style is probably the only way your images will stand out..okay I'm no stranger to the 'Twin Imposters' so developing a personal style is not the singular way to fame and fortune, loads of great snappers out there who have an individual take on image creation and have tumbleweed blowing about in their comments boxes but here's part two of this little article...thinking and creating images is the first part the second being...are you creating images so you can accumulate reams of comments and virtual love????or are you drawing something out of yourself..stopping thinking shooting creating; creating personal satisfaction from the image itself rather than the virtual love of 'friends' ?? I'm not saying there is a right or wrong a Black or White side to this but one of the things I always question myself on is why I'm shooting something in a certain way, most times it's for the personal challenge. I like seeing things my way and more often than not the image is in my' head' before I'm out there shooting it..I know I've probably just taken a left turn towards pseuds corner but all I'm trying to put over to you in this blog piece is just to stop, think and question...then get creating the best image you've ever done..and never fear the tumbleweed.......... ...and the light is even worse..off to IKEA to grab some frames and see what these new multi window mounts look like in their natural environment and then I'll be posting them up on ETSY and maybe a few samples here on the mounts and cards page.
The new mount cutter has taken a lot of the guesswork out of where the blade enters the board...so no over cuts then....hmmmmm I'm jumping into my Lightroom catalogue and rooting around for all my macro and nature stuff that never really gets an airing and I think I need to get them together into a coherent set. That after all is what I seem to be doing with all the other disparate strands of image making. I fancy a bit of ICM landscape and woodland work as well so hopefully when the sun pops out there will be snow on the ground...ice on the trees and a bit of colour in the sky...yeh..Pigs and aviation exploits... So I'll get cracking on the macro stuff and then , if I time it right off to IKEA for some frames a Dog and a Coffee.... day sorted then... ..I should just sit on my hands and stop trying new stuff...not the image making as I quite enjoy that..but making new products/categories of stuff to sell...it's almost like having a proper job...I mean I woke up at 4 this morning head buzzing with a product problem that got me to 'grape squeezing' anger yesterday..and the solution in the end was pretty simple. I suppose that's the moral..nothing is insurmountable if you put your mind to it and even with my alcohol depleted grey cells I figured out a 'way around the problem' instead of crashing my head against the keyboard and growling at folk who came too close to me... yep I was 'peeved' yesterday but today...meh...full of the joys...
So I'm working through all my sites and getting them all lined up in a non OCD kind of way, there is and will be crossover of products as I get my head around everything and I may even drop some more sites as things progress I just need to be finished by the end of the week and get my marketing act together ......act it may well be as I fluff my way through these opening nights. I'll be out and about flogging stuff this year as well, getting it into peoples hands I actually miss that and here's today's little anecdote to end things off. I've been in the cellars a lot, clearing space for stock and equipment and I came across a drawer with all the stuff from the early 80's when I did...well..basically what I'm setting up now.a picture and mounting business..well I found a stack of old price lists and catalogues and sales receipts...all still as clear as a bell so anyway I made my way down to the far end of the village on Saturday and there in all it's pristine glory was a fully mounted 50 window framed cigarette card picture...Uniforms of the British Empire glass both sides and unmarked..for £40.00..no I didn't buy it but I gave the Manageress the background to it and when I'd made it...1983...30 years ago...lawks....I sold loads to America and Germany...I think Cigarette card dealers should give me an award for single handedly raising the price of Golf, Film Star and Motor Car ciggie cards during the 80's......and here ends the anecdote for I must away and continue designing ranges of Art Cards..... Found out yesterday after the minimal amount of research , that you can create your own buy it now with drop down menus over at Paypal
Okay a wee bit clunky but a quick way of getting a selling option onto your web pages by just copying a bit of html code in... I'll be giving that a go later today. You may have noticed that some of the pages have a password lock on them...that's because I'm working on them and will get them all polished up in time for January. if you are my eagle eyed viewer you may have also noticed that there are a lot more galleries appearing on here...Architecture Tags and Graffiti are just 2 and I'll be adding more as the day rolls on, although I'll be having a wee bit of fun with my latest Grandson...mwaaarh..xxxx during the day. So this old web site should be stuffed to the gunnels by the time 2013 turns up, providing of course today isn't the day we all end up under a Mayan apocalypse...this video may help you get through the day..I'll see you on the other side. ..so now is the time to get cracking and start making all the samples up and getting prints sorted. It's all going to be in-house...so that'll be me being busy then. For the regular blog reader amongst you you may have picked up that I'm moving more towards retail and gallery stuff with my images which will be online, to galleries, at shows and through local advertising. So I've spent a bit of time getting work into coherent galleries, now all the right gear has turned up...the only thing I'm lacking is space. The equipment I've now got is on the chuffing BIG size and I reckon at some point I'm going to have to look at a workshop/studio to accommodate things...but that's the future and this new venture will have to generate it's own income to justify that....I'm already using part of the cellars but I'd have to get an industrial heater if i was to work down there on a permanent basis.
Eagle eyed ones out there will have noticed that I have a new blank gallery called 'The Picture Shop' which will start to house all the retail stuff, although of course any image on here or here is available as a print...just pop me an email maxblackphotos@gmail.com and I'll get back to you toot suite... Sun's out..good day for ICM shots, still got a load in the can from Monday in Manchester to have a look through but may nip out again for some snapping... Not had one of these for a while but as I live on the web (for the moment, things change in 2013) but time for a heads up on who is watching, where they are from and WTF it means if anything....
So I have all this data that piles up in graphs and charts from all my sites and I'll tell you about this place first, well most of the traffic actually comes from online searching, there's me thinking that sticking links to back on here would drive a bit of traffic, hey, wrong again!!! Second in the table is Youtube, yes youtube where I seem to get new followers all the time and some wander across to see what that old fella has been wittering on about and linger for a while. Next up is Google in all it's national incarnations from .de to .ve the data is there and if I could speaka da lingo I'd thank them all individually....bumping along is twitter and propping up the pile is flickr....does anyone still think flickr is a viable and vibrant place for images???? It seems to be yawning it's way to oblivion, for gods sakes Getty do the decent thing and make a land grab now, ah flickr how bright shiny and vibrant you were back in the day...... so about 180 hardy souls bob in here on a daily basis which is okay and I'm hoping to eclipse that next year once the 'local' advertising hit's the streets.... Youtube how I love all that statistical data, charts, graphs demographics you've got the lot and it's time to big up the newest country to pop in for a nosy so as you might expect America is my biggest visitor with 68% blokeys and the dear ladies in at 32% with the majority coming from the 45 to 65 years old age demographic.....yes I'm getting bored with this as well. So who is the smallest country with the least visitors I hear you say through a stifled yawn, well that would be the Azores with one male in his 30's.....so exciting Last is my Library site where I hardly get a peep from any UK visitors but loads from Japan, Russia, the Americas and Europe...totally different group than those that drop in here....so what does it mean...for me stop looking at the data and get those snaps processed, between 500 to 700 'unique' visitors call through in any 24 hour period across my sites and if I could I'd shake you all by the hand and say 'Thanks for calling by...' which is what I'm now saying to you dear viewer....... ...are at a record high or so I remember World Service telling me at some wee small hour or other this morning...and I think I've just added to them..one lens too heavy for special delivery so sent insured parcelforce....aye caramba!!!!!!!!!!!....I'll personally take things in a taxi next time....ah well not much gear left to flog now, may get rid of the flash stands and softboxes next week but I think gumtree might be a better idea...oh TFI friday and what a cracker of a day it is...if it had some scudding clouds I'd be out and about doing some Daylight long exposures but it's not so I ain't...
More new gear turning up next week, not so much an early Christmas present as a way of shifting the focus of the business. I've come to the conclusion that the image library business is over saturated with a deluge of images going on-line by the minute and only a finite number of buyers let alone the folk who spend their time copying and nicking images from screens...now if I can remove watermarks from my images then it's not beyond the ken of mere mortals to be able to do the same...so I have stopped my subscriptions to libraries...my own online library will now be more dedicated to print sales and mounted and framed images, I'm quite excited...no really and look forward to getting to grips with all the gear that is going to be turning up over the next few weeks. I'll also be cutting back on all the 'free' stuff which is 'free training' and tutorials that I give away..I love to share things and tell people how things are done but maybe now is the time to put all my energies into trade and retail selling, Mrs Max has been telling me this for ages..I'll listen more...I will. So for the New Year I'll be out selling my images...heck was it really 30 years ago I tried this last time...you know it was and that led on to owning galleries and framing studios...I've no idea if that will happen this time but I'll be braced and ready for it if it does.....here's one from yesterday's faffing in photoshop session... I have some well cared for Nikon Gear for sale. A rather nice Nikon 105VR Micro f2.8 lens, boxed, nikon caps, pouch and manual for £450. A Nikon 80-200 f2,8, Nikon caps, metal hood, leather case and Cullman shoulder carrying bag over here on ebay for £295. And also , if you cut mounts or want to cut mounts a Logan 650 40" mount cutter as new, boxed with a box of Logan blades to get you started again it's on ebay. Quite welcome to come on down and have a try first, unless of course they have been snapped up.
Just clearing the decks as new gear is on the way for next years projects and I've already cleared off my SB800 kit so really need to lighten the load and get these items out to someone who may find a good use for them.... Had a minor panic yesterday as I lost loads of images...well if you put them on a portable HDD and then store them away and then forget that you put them on there to keep them safe.....don't get old, it's bloody annoying at times..anyway found and as I have a different PP process I'll be giving those a mighty slap and tickle today. I look at stuff I 'over' processed from 3 years ago and shake my head, lot of strong images hidden in a smear of outre Photoshop , that was then and this is now as '80's pop Diva's ABC once sang to us...I've also taken a bit of a fancy to square format images again...I can hear my old Bronica weeping gently in my 'Man' cupboard upstairs. Today must have been the darkest bleakest yackiest start to a day for a long time, even the chickens couldn't be arsed to get pecking this morning, who can blame them, mind you I have a request for some 'Wet Umbrella' shots so should be good for a trip into Manchester later. well I must say I've had a lot of fun and also some jaw dropping moments working my way through Lightroom 4.2. Yes, I know, I'm late to the party, loved my workflow from LR 3.6 into Photoshop and back again but now things have changed...... I've embraced DNG...no loss of quality and a smaller size, there's only one winner there...saving from Photoshop and back into Lightroom for noise and cropping in a totally non destructive way..very nice especially as I have set up some Export templates... But the greatest thing and I really mean this is it's Camera Process 2012 version...there are files that were in the 'Grr too hard to get something out of pile' that now spring to life in LR4, I'm impressed big time. I'm posting some bite sized Lightroom tips and i may even set up a Lightroom page...yes I'm that impressed especially when you consider what a dyed in the wool Photoshop diehard I am...here's a bit of bite size ...okay Youtube has just gone tit's up so you'll have to wait but just check out my Youtube tutorials...any problems ask and I'll do a quick video.....here's a LR4 processed image that was about 4 stops under and flat as a pancake Okay Youtube is back online....... I was trying to get things down to a minute but 2 minutes is short enough for todays generation of flitters and flighters....
'...biggest job I had to do Sir, did I do well...' Okay the Robert Donat version is not one for the purists but it's a film I'd gladly sit through over and over again. Tenuous connection but I think I've just taken on the biggest job and I hope I do well. Across various hard drives I reckon that I have 20,000 usable images..ones that are not personal faves but recognisable, viewable, not too hard to digestable!!!... and the trick I am about to perform is get them out to a wider market, I've already started. Templates and rough designs are already made, databases are being developed (yep very slowly though) business plans are being run up the flagpole and markets are being targeted. In fact all I'm doing is what I did 30 years ago but this time with the aid of all things digital, lets hope it involves less legwork this time but it will be taking up most of my time, clocks about to change, light becoming less; time to look through the last 6 months stuff and get tickling and faffing. Now I've relied on the internet to do the selling for me...more people are doing it and as I've mentioned before the pre crash 'Golden' days of spending really havn't returned even though 'The Recession ' is coming to an end...hmmm take a look at history first...few more years to go I think ...so less time to do other things. So time to stop spending time on non core sites, move away from social sites,unless they give me access to customers and more time on here and my library site
Nose to the grindstone, shoulder to the wheel, pedal to the metal...it's time to put my Worzel Gummidge selling head on...I hope it looks good on me Getting ready for all the new stuff that will be coming online over the next few weeks. It will be a move away from some of the more 'social' photographic areas like tweeting and facebooking and into the retailing side of things with the emphasis being on promoting away from my photographic circles. No I'm not going away just redrawing the boundaries a bit. It also means a move away from image library work. Even I can see where it is going, more images going on line every single day, prices constantly dropping, payment times increasing..... So I will be shooting less which should work out okay as fitting in the 'plonk and shoot' library stuff was beginning to wear anyway, I'm glad I was there when it was vibrant and buzzing which is only 5 years ago..the crash did a lot of damage...more people trying to make a living out of their cameras and the deluge of pretty decent DSLR equipment onto the market , image libraries and news agencies now take Phone images, so times change and if you don't evolve chances are you'll be left behind. So for me with my stock of over 10,000 usable images it's time for me to make some retail use out of them and that's certainly what I intend to do now.
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What's all this then????An unyeilding torrent of Photo babbel full of unconfirmed facts and manufactured photo drivel.. take from it what you like, it won't change the world but may leave you feeling nauseous... Categories
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