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It may have come to your attention, over these last 5 months that I have been pretty busy getting my head around a lot of different shooting techniques, software and new chunks of shiny hardware and really it's all in preparation for a bit of an adventure I'll be off on in about 4 weeks time as from then on I can't see myself having a spare moment for at least the following 12 months at which point I will be hurling myself into my 7th decade..let's all bow our heads for a minutes silence here...7th decade.... aye caramba, thank heavens I've still got my good looks and nothings fallen off yet....ahem... So, as I am getting more and more 'old stuff' faffed and tickled into some kind of retail shape I thought I'd let you know where I'm up to image wise. If you are that solitary reader who has managed to part the clouds of Guff that hang about this place like a Saharan dust storm smog, you'll remember that I always say..queue funny voice 'Always squirrel away lots of files when it's sunny so during the dross months of winter you'll have somethign to give a good old spanking to and not have to watch telly' Well as I've switched systems from the Steam powered Dell that wheezed it's way through a stack of adjustment layers to Hal, the all powerful pixel muncher..I discovered that, probably like a lot of Squirrels out there, that I'd saved any number of image files in completely random folders all over the place, workflow now is of the sensible kind but as I was switching from Lightroom to Photoshop to Bridge and back stuff was being hoicked all over the show in a multi format unfathomable morrass... after many tears things seem to be making far more sense..new Catalogue in LR5, bring in images from various hard drives..Lightroom to Photoshop then saved to Lightroom and exported via presets from Lightroom to their life on the net. (for the non photographer who may have just read that last passage, it's what we in the trade call Photoshop Bollocks..) So alamy, Getty and redbubble are getting fed on a constant conveyor of tasty jpegs 500px gets some exclusives now and then..they are licencing some of my images now as well as doing prints, downloads and canvas things. Now that Getty has given up on flickr I'll probably stick the odd image on just to let folk I've not passed on, nearly my 7th decade lets not forget...so here are some motorbikes from a stack of files I've had hanging around for a while
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Well that was an exciting crossing, Bit like being on an enormous version of the Wild Mouse going there and on the way back...hmmm well all those French Rugby fans made it an 'intresting' journey coming back with their singing , stamping and chanting...come on Wales..stuff them...is all I have to add. Business done over there and had a few days when the weather turned peachy to take a few snaps and also check out a lot of galleries dotted about Brittany, you can teach an old dog new tricks as I saw some ways of presentation that , well maybe, only the French could dream up...I will be stealing in my best plagiarising way some of them... Images to follow.. computer grinding away as it (finally) gets another of my WWPW2013 prizes .so will the NIK EFX collection change the way my images appear...well Silver Efx may do that to my Mono stuff but until I rummage around in there...well who knows!! Okay as it's a google product it shut down the lot and after a while, I'm back again... so I'll buzz of and go and see what NIK software can do for me what no other software can.... but in the mean time... 500 px seems to want, and now does , licence some of my images, as well as have them there for retail purposes which is nice..I think I'll jump a bit more into 500px as it does sem to suit the ..ahem..'quirky' style of image making I'm doing at the moment, wallet out time for a subscription then.. almost fainted as Getty pulled their finger out and sold something last month...was there an R in the month???? So time to download some more french stuff, I've gone back a bit on the technique front and done quite a few, double exposures...yes just the 2 multi's..some looked good but what do I know until we go full screen could be bin jobs...best to find out... Morlaix, Huelgoat, Roscoff...and odd bits of countryside..I will whip them all up into a souffle of quirkyness... 
Still sounding like a bad impression of Darth Vader with Bronchitis..thanks for asking...it'll pass or kill me....meh.. Anyway Getty and Istock shooters have you had the call yet ????.....had mine this morning...so they want me to up mobile phone shots to Getty Image moments...yes mobile shots...lets just have a ponder..... world's biggest image libraries wanting to market and make money out of mobile shots...well whoopy doo if they sell any of mine but surely an overstuffed market of images will have it's seams sorely tested by something like this, jaded picture buyers and editors screaming 'ENOUGH.....' dedicated SLR shooters tossing D800's into the bin and studio managers mothballing gear...okay, it's not the end of the world and if I was a big image library I'd want as many good selling images on my books as possible, for them it's a big no lose situation, regular image suppliers will see this as a way of clawing back sales and picture buyers will look upon these images as being, (besides stealing off the net) the cheapest way to get some images into their online content... so does that make everyone happy??? Well maybe it says more about the rocketing upward curve of quality available from a phone, I still salute and am in awe of the quality of image produced by the Nokia 925 that those folk at Nokia gave me to play with and with all the Post production toys available in phone or on a computer it's relatively easy to 'stylize' an image so is this the tipping point...is this along the lines of when George Eastman introduced the Kodak Box Brownie and the democratisation of photography was born, an explosion of images and, as a bonus, all the peripheral business that expanded with it, mounts, labs, competitors, frames, retailers and hadware..... Here's link to the app...apparently you have to have you're Getty log in details to make it work but have a look as this could be the future of Online Image Libraries... Moments I started this off with Maximise, and that really is what I try and do with any shoot these days, so from Spain, I had the holiday snaps which are now on Snapfish, the 'arty' stuff which goes on here, the stock images which will be on alamy later and the book cover images that will be off on their way as soon as i finish this. So when I'm out with the camera I'm always on the look out for images that will fit into certain areas, which is all about maximising your time, your camera time, give it a try...here are some Book cover shots about to go off... So just fizzed past some from January of this year and now into a rump of files from June mainly to do with the Scottish Highlands...so many..and looks like i had a fluffy sensor at some points so a bit of uber-tickling with some content aware spotting. Here's some I did earlier  Europa Beach, Lewis  Luskentyre and Taransay, Harris , Outer Hebrides  McDonald Stone, South Harris.  Europa Beach, Isle of Lewis. So new Panoramas and a big pile of Daylight long exposures to get through, now they'll all fill up a gallery on their own soon but I'll post into these blog pages until I have them all done. Next trick is to send them hither and thither to earn themselves a crust... that can wait as I just havn't got it in me to do some mega keyword faff...back to those Bonny Scottish files.. aaayyyyyyeeee.... Well where did that week go..ah ..processing and uploading...the office chair needs a rest I think .....and I have some ideas for something completely different..... I've got 600mm of Nikkor to put through it's paces...yes 600mm...it looks as battered as I do but the glass, besides a few dust flecks is clear and shiny... I will be out and about with it... also some barking Portrait/studio/person stuff that I have lodged away in my head needs to be brought to life especially as my tortoises are looking at hibernating...(yes tortoises).... besides that I have a lot of macro stuff to do and if I can make this work..telephoto panoramas.......I'll run out of ideas one day...ideas are good, putting them into practice is always the tricky part.... Judgement day beckons on the Worldwide Photowalk images..some good ones on there already and I'm looking forward to the rest appearing soon..yes that would be very, very soon guys...the 14th is looming, you can't win a prize unless you buy a ticket!! Right I have some book cover images to smack into shape, oh some of my images that are appearing on Audio books appear to have that bit liceneced already so even though I've found them in geographical areas that they shouldn't appear in...well they have...hmmmmm , can't say I'm convinced totally but Mr Amazon in all your .com, .co.uk, .it.de.fr variations...I am watching you..oh yes...    Some stuff off to the publishers for a Yay or nay.
This time next week we will all be joshing and jostling ready for the start of Manchester's take on the Worldwide Photowalk as I type it appears we have an opening of 1 place.... Just finding out if the model is coming along as well and we should be all sorted...I'm running through 'my bit' which will be some live demo's of some techniques some of the photographers may want to use.... You'll start seeing the fruits of everyone's labours soon afterwards.... I'm giving this place a bit of a once over with a big feather duster, some new pages on here now Piers , Salford Quays and Footbridge I'm also putting links on to all the libraries and retail sites you can download and buy from...yes it's all getting a bit joined up. So short one today but full of stuff to have a wander through... I'll leave you with this today 
If I could live off praise I wouldn't be sitting here now typing this pile of old tosh but for some odd reason we need fresh air to live but can't survive on fresh air alone. Now it's nice when stuff sells, okay if I took more 'commercially minded' images I'd probably sell more but if you read the previous post you will now know that I take photos because I like to...shock horror old man takes quirky snaps beacuse he just wants to...red top tabloid stuff I think you'll agree. Now I also mentioned that I can live without a constant stream of praise to boost my already hyper inflated ego I even considered disabling comments so that folk came and just looked and then floated away...hang on I'm on the cusp of rambling... So approbation, yesterday was a good day, a really good day, Getty sent me an email wanting more images and besides the flappy dither I got into wondering where the chuff I'd put all the old model releases I found uploaded and waved good bye in that 'tear in the eye first day at school' way and look forward to them furthering there fledgling career on Getty images...and then, well for me, a biggie....I got an appreciation..meh shmeh you may well say but it was from Julieanne Kost principal digital imaging eveangelist for Adobe .com. Now this was for one of my behance projects and although the images weren't optioned in the end I think they make a pretty decent set to look at. Check out Julieannes very slick and informative Lightroom and Photoshop videos on Adobe TV Now then I ran my own image library last year and as a sales tool it was as useful as a Chocolate teapot so I binned it..older viewers will know that one of my business principles is 'Give it 12 months....' but I ended up with thousands of images just sitting about, shooting the breeze and drinking caffeine based beverages on a selection of hard drives..and then I realised that those fine folk on flickr had given us all 1Tb of space to fill...so I will... I started yesterday with some North Wales stuff and more 'quirky stuff' will be shovelled on later today.. Feel free to call by, look and if you really have to..offer some approbation, after all it's the fresh air that feeds us all. 
 So if you saw this image posted on the internet you'd probably assume that it's either a Lensbaby, smeared vaseline over a UV filter or a bit of Photoshop faffery or even now with LR5 some work with radial filters...well it's not. This is shot with a standard 50mm f1.8...the difference being that the lens is not attached to the camera...that's right...removed and held in front of the gaping hole in the centre of your SLR. This image was shot at the Dig It festival in Manchester and at this point I found out just how tricky this technique is if you don't use a tripod and using the tripod free's up a hand to do the all important exposure work with the camera. Now I've been working in Manual...setting the aperture at f2.8 ..here's a trick to keep your lens set at the aperture you want to use. In the Nikon in your Set up menu if you scroll through you will have in your Set Up menu a Non CPU lens menu item, don't forget you are disconecting your lens so your camera has no idea what f stop your are using..... set up a variety of F stop settings in this menu. Now this only works if you have Nikon lenses that you can physically alter the f stop ring. So set the aperture on your lens..say F8 go into your non CPU lens menu and set F8 and all you have to do then is use the shutter speed and EV dial to get the exposure correct, Now there will be light leakedge which adds to how these images will look so compensating with your shutter speed, ISO and EV dial and leaving the chosen aperture alone. This really is where sitting your camera on a tripod comes in, you need one hand for holding the Lens and another for adjusting your camera settings..or an assistant or a 3rd hand.... Now you can go a bit more extreme with this and start using non standard lenses..I've used the 80mm off my Bronica S2a to great effect, just like above you can set the aperture and then use the non cpu lens menu and make sure your only variables are going to be shutter and maybe a bit of EV... give it a try.  Right , I'll be off to shovel some manure rather than type it in a short while..better and cheaper than going to the Gym. Some of my images are going to be used for the reprint of Richard Laymons crime thriller novels in Germany...( yep...me neither...) http://www.amazon.com/wiki/Richard_Laymon/ref=ntt_at_bio_wiki . Just nice to know every now and then where your images end up, that is the ones that are bought legit not the ones half inched off site..there is a little reverse search engine you can use to track images you may think are off on a jaunt without your knowledge http://www.tineye.com/ ....that is if the little monkeys havn't stripped out the metadat from your file... ah well Anyway oh yes, nice to get some work out there published albeit under a blanket of type, that's where I seem to be at the moment, on Ordnance survey maps and Paperback covers...I'd lke to say it's a living...no I really would but.... If you havn't made it across to my Behance site then here are the latest images of Manchester, I like this style ...well for the moment so expect more or completely ignore, we still live in a free world apparently... oh TFI Friday folks, big hello to you hundreds...yes I'm not making it up..hundreds of newbies who have dropped in this week for a look. No these arn't shot with the Nokia Lumia 925 but these are
So here's a link to the images I've chosen to be featured at Cepic , just follow this link http://www.fotolibra.com/gallery/lightbox/?lightbox_id=17000 and you will see a set of images which are a bit more restrained than my usual fare. Had to think of the market they were being shown to...I didn't want to frighten the horses with some of the waccy baccy stuff I pump out....anyway..middle of June lets see what kind of doors open following this then. Websites....portfolios...lightboxes..there seems to be an explosion of updated , upgraded, reworked, new pricing structure web presence things out there at the moment I was glad flickr actually did something and on first look I thought ..Wow...but after a few days I find I'm actually yearning for a return to the old interface...okay I don't look at flickr on mobile devices...which , I think, was the raison d'etre to get the decorators in...it's not tempted me to fork out on a Pro account though. Now 500px has got a new 'Portfolio' thingumybob interface thing...as long as you pay.... and then I go and discover that, as I am a fully paid up and card carryying member of that there Adobe CC ...well they have given me a Behance Prosite for free...free...okay as i always tell the kids if they tell you it's free then somewhere along the line you pay...so it must be coming out of my monthly dibs to Adobe... but hey it's a freebie it looks quite nice and clean and it's somewhere else to snag some interest.... what's not to like. have a look...okay not much in at the moment.. http://maxblackphotos.prosite.com but check out Behance as well..big old mixing pot of creatives and some great 'pro' image makers to follow...  Crossing-Shooting into the Sun up in Oldham. 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....... 
Bonnet-Curvy mono Vdub
...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... 
'...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.  |
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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