My life...just not on the road I expected (but it's still dang good).

Photography course information (and a few shots of Ross).

Ok, I have to admit that it scares the daylights out of me to actually put a date down in writing, but here it goes...

My first online photography course will start on:

Monday, June 2nd

And if everything continues to go smoothly with the website, registration for the course will open up on:

Thursday, May 1st at 6:00pm PST

Sign-ups will be on a first-come, first-served basis on the Snapshots of a Good Life website.  I will be limiting the number of students per class in order to offer each student individual attention, answers, critiques and feedback (the first class will be limited to 50 students - if I find that I can comfortably add to that number to accommodate more students in future classes, I will).

There are currently about 400 people who have expressed an interest in signing up for this class, which means that registration day might get a little crazy.  Please do not be discouraged if you do not get into the first class.  My plan is to start a new class every 8 weeks so there will be more opportunities.

The course will run for 8 weeks and the fee is $250.00.

This is not going to be an easy course, it is going to be a pull up your sleeves, study hard and practice even harder type of a course, geared for beginners to intermediates (it's funny though, I've even been learning some new stuff as I've been putting together the lessons).

It is strongly recommended that you have a film or digital SLR for this course, or be interested in shooting with one in the future (if you have a point-and-shoot style camera and are interested in taking the class, please email me at karencrussell@charter.net so that we can discuss whether or not this course would be a benefit to you).

There will be a forum available for registered students.  The forum will have the following sections:  Daily Lessons, Assignments, Q&A board, Picture of the Day board and a Photo Critiques board.

There will be a new lesson posted in the forum each weekday, Monday-Friday.  Lessons will be available in both written and audio formats (both formats contain tons of visuals).

Assignments will be posted each Friday and reviewed/commented on by the instructor (that's me).

Course outline (the outline I have is four pages long, so this is a drastically simplified version):

Week 1 - Composition

Week 2 - Aperture (my favorite subject in the world)

Week 3 - Shutter Speed, ISO and the Exposure Triangle

Week 4- Exposure

Week 5 - Focus

Week 6 - Additional camera settings

Week 7 - Lighting

Week 8 - How I shoot and why I shoot that way

You do not have to be in the forum at specific times, you can access the lessons and assignments at your convenience.  In addition, all students will have access to the forum for 1 year following the class.

I will keep you all posted of any changes (please keep in mind that there are some things that are out of my control...like website development).

Ok, I hope that covered everything.

If you have additional questions or feedback, please post it in the comments section.

And a few pictures of Ross (more post processing than I normally do on a few of these, but I liked the results).

You can see my reflection on his guitar.

And my favorite.

Answering a few questions.

Coley and Annie picking some flowers today.

1. I got both of the desks for the girl's room from the 6th st. Antique Mall (it's my favorite antique shop in town).

2. I do have a camera bag and though I think it is would be the perfect bag for shooting weddings, portraits, etc. (it is actually meant to hold extra lenses, not camera's) and I love all the covers (I have the Baroque), it just doesn't work well for "every day" shooting (for me).  It doesn't have any zippers and my camera doesn't fit in it.  To tell you the truth, I haven't found a camera bag that I like enough to spend the money on it.

Funny story about my camera bag...when I ordered it, I thought, wow, $49.00, that's a great price.  When it arrived, I tore open the box, excited to see my new camera bag only to find that $49.00 just paid for the cute, decorative Baroque flap.  The actual camera bag is an additional $179.0o.

3. Honestly though, I'm not really a camera bag kind of girl anyhow.  I like to wear my camera around my neck because I want it quickly accessible (I can't imagine how many shots I would miss if I always had to get my camera out of the camera bag first).  And I think that looking like a dork with my camera slung around my neck at all times is a small price to pay for not missing the shot.

4. I don't keep a lens cap on any of my lenses either (I don't want to deal with taking them on and off).  The first thing I do when I get a new lens is put a UV filter on it (which serves as a UV filter and protects the lens). 

5. Yes, I still recommend the Canon Digital Rebel Xti (although the new Rebel Xsi is due out next month).  I think it's a great camera at a great price.  Although you can invest in a higher end camera (if finances are not a huge concern for you, a higher end camera like the  Canon 40D or the Canon 5D is a great way to go), but honestly, once you get into a good DSLR (like the Canon Rebel), your money is better spent on good lenses.  You will see more improvement in your photos by investing in a better lens, than investing in a better camera (I shoot with a Canon and am familiar with them, that's why I am making Canon recommendations).

6. I recommend purchasing your camera body separate from you lenses.  The lenses that come in a kit with a camera are designed to be cost effective lenses, not high quality lenses.  Lot's of camera store employees will try to talk you into purchasing the kit, but just say no.

7. If you are shooting primarily everyday life and portraits, I think that a 50mm lens is the way to go.  If you are shooting Canon, you can get the 50mm f1.8 for $89, the 50mm f1.4 for $309 or the 50mm f1.2 for $1359.  If you need to watch your spending, I think the 50mm f1.8 for $89 bucks is the deal of the century (if you decide to upgrade later, you can always turn around and sell it on Ebay for 50 bucks).  If you are able to spend a bit more, the 50mm f1.4 is an amazing lens.  I don't really think the 50mm f1.4 is all that necessary unless you have plans of shooting professionally.  These lenses do not have any sort of "zoom" and are not ideal for shooting stuff like sports, when your subject may be far away from you.  But it is (in my opinion) an ideal lens for shooting everyday stuff (when you can get relatively close to your subject), portraits and indoors under low light situations when you don't want to use a flash.  I keep a 50mm lens on my camera probably 90% of the time (I actually have to force myself to use my other lenses).

8. I shot with a Tamron 28-75mm lens for more than 3 years and I think it's a great "zoom" lens for the price (about $350).  After shooting with and seeing the clarity, sharpness and color from the 50mm f1.4 and the 50mm f1.2 though, I would have a tough time going back to the Tamron though.  But if you prefer a lens that "zooms" and will allow you to work in reasonably low light situations, this really is a great lens.  The Canon version of this lens is about $1139.

9. If there were 1 perfect lens, we'd all be shooting with it, but there are a lot of variables when it comes to purchasing a lens based on what you primarily shoot and your budget.

10. When am coming back to teach at the Scrapbook Clubhouse in Westbrook, CT?...funny you should ask.  Sharon (the owner) asked me if I would come back if she sent me some chocolate.  I said that chocolate might just do the trick.  She overnighted me some truffles and I'm coming back sometime in June (will keep you posted on a date).

11. All the great labels (in a bazillion colors) that I posted about awhile back are from this Etsy shop (thanks Trish).  They might just be the best thing ever.

12. Ross just pretends to be a University of Oregon Ducks fan to get Cole and Josh (the die-hard Oregon State Beavers fans) riled up.

13. Erin (or anyone else), you can email me at karencrussell@charter.net if you still have questions about my online photography class. 

14. Still planning on launching my online photography classes by June (hopefully sooner), but will keep you all posted.  If you have not already been put on the list of people who want to be emailed when I have a sign-up date, please email me at karencrussell@charter.net and put "please email me when you are taking sign-ups" in the subject title.

14. I get most of the fabric trim and lace that I use on my layouts from a variety of fabric stores.  Unfortunately (and I don't know why), it's getting harder to find a store with a good variety though.

15. I usually save photos to upload to Typepad as a 4x6 at 100dpi.  When I upload a vertical photo to typepad, I upload it at 400 pixels in width and I upload a horizontal photo at 600 pixels in width.

Ok, I hope that answered everything.  I try really hard not to miss any questions, but I know I do (sorry).

Online Photography classes.

A lot of store owners have been contacting me about teaching at their stores and a lot of people have been emailing me about when/if I am going to teach online photography classes.

My response has generally been the same...

I don't really know what my plans are for 2008 yet.

But, with 2008 just a few weeks away, it has been making me really nervous to not know "what my plans are for 2008" yet.

Usually I'm a really quick decision maker (sometimes too quick...which I think is also called hasty, or impulsive).

But this one's been harder for me.

Because there are a lot of variables (and I'm a worrier, so believe me, I've thought of every variable).

And because really, I have to decide somewhat between teaching scrapbooking classes all over the place like I've been doing, or teaching photography classes right here from my computer.

Time-wise, I just can't do both (at least not at my current pace).

So Josh & I sat down last night to come up with a decision since I haven't been able to come up with one on my own.

And I am going to start online photography classes (and I am still going to teach a very limited number of scrapbooking classes).

For now.

I say "for now", so that if in 6 months, I miss teaching scrapbooking classes really badly (because honestly, teaching scrapbooking classes is my favorite part of what I do), I have an "out".

Right now though,  I want to be home with my kids more often.  Right now, I am so in love with photography, that I am having a tough time focusing on anything else.  And right now,  I don't want to give up teaching. 

So teaching online photography classes just makes sense.

And so, here's my thought process so far...I'm going to have a website designed so that there can be a forum specifically for these classes (so that I can post lessons and visuals, so that students can ask questions and so that students can upload photos for fun or for critique).  Each class would run approx. 8 weeks.  I would take a limited number of students so that I could really have time for each person individually.  I haven't settled on a fee yet, but I think it would be around $250 for the 8 week course. 

I do have questions though and am looking for input, because although I know what I would want from a photography course, I don't know what you all would want.

So, if you have any thoughts at all on this, I would love to hear them.

What would you be looking for in a photography class?  What specific topics would you want to cover?  What teaching style helps you to learn better?  If you've taken any sort of photography or online class in the past, what did you like about the class?  What didn't you like about the class?  Would you like two separate classes (one devoted to photography and one devoted to photo editing)?  What are you struggling with most in photography?

I'm looking for any input or question (however big or small).

And if you leave a comment or question, I'll do some sort of drawing tomorrow...not sure what you'll win...but I'll think of something.

And, since a post without a photo, really isn't a post at all...

Adobe RGB vs. sRGB

Finally figured out why all my images are looking "grey-ish" on my blog.

A month or so back, someone recommended to me that I change the color space setting on my camera to Adobe RGB to capture a better range of colors in my photos and so I did.

Well...it turns out that the internet uses (for the most part) an sRGB color space and that when a photo with an Adobe RGB color space is posted on the web (which again, uses an sRGB color space), that the file because desaturated - especially the red tones (which would explain why all the skin tones in my photos have been grey-ish).

So, I can continue to shoot in Adobe RGB, but before I upload anything to my blog, I have to make sure to change it to sRGB (in Photoshop CS3 you go to Edit-Convert to profile-sRGB).

Took me half the day to figure that one out.

I posted this photo a few weeks back.

The first one is my Adobe RGB file (which looks fine when I edit it in Adobe Photoshop, but looks "grey-ish" and desaturated when I post it on the internet).

 

And this is the same photo after I converted it to sRGB.

Hoping that since I wasted half a day of my life trying to figure this out, that this will save someone half a day of their life by reading it.

Photography questions.

Lots of photography questions in the last few weeks that I've been wanting to address.

1. I work in Photoshop CS3, which is the most current version of Adobe Photoshop.  The program costs $649.00, although I already had Photoshop 7, so I just had to pay to upgrade to CS3, which I think was about $200.00.

2. I don't think that basic photo editing really requires Photoshop CS3.  I use CS3 for my artwork for Creative Imaginations and since I have it, I use it for my photo editing too.  But to be honest, after using it for over 5 years now, I bet I still know less than 5% of it's capabilities.  CS3 would be overkill for most photographers.  That said, it's a staple for most professional photographers.

3. Adobe Elements 5 is probably a great photo editing program for most photographers and you can pick it up for about $150 through Adobe.

4. I often use something called "actions" on my photos in CS3 to enhance their color, change them to black & white or add other cool effects.  An action is just a prerecorded set of photo editing steps that you can purchase online.  There might be 25+ steps in a single action, but all I have to do is decide which action (or combination of actions) that I want to use and then press the "play" button and in a matter of seconds, it it preforms all of the steps.  The benefit for me is that I don't necessarily know how to do all of the individual steps in CS3 to get the results that I want and even if I did know how to do all of it, doing each step individually might take 15+ minutes per photo, rather than the 3 seconds it takes to use the action (I hope that makes sense).  So it's a huge time-saver and the results are really cool.

5. That said, most actions that you can purchase online are not compatible with Adobe Elements (you have to have Adobe Photoshop or CS).  I do think that this will change in the future.  I think that the people who are designing the action sets will realize that they are missing a big target audience by not making it available to Adobe Elements users.  I did find this article about using Photoshop actions in Adobe Elements, so perhaps it is possible (but I don't know a lot about it).  Even without actions though, you can still do a lot to color edit your photos with "hue & saturation", "levels", "contrast" and some sharpening with the "unsharp mask".  If you go to the comments section under this post and go to the 5th comment by Diane (thanks Diane), she talked a bit about actions for Photoshop Elements users.

6. I am currently using actions from ittybittyactions, totallyradactions and kubota.

7. It takes some time to figure out how to use actions correctly, so plan on investing a fair amount of time in the initial learning curve.

8. The vignetting (darkness around the perimeter of the photo) that I had on a lot of the soccer pictures that I took the other day is a vignette action from totallyradactions.  You can create your own vignetting in Photoshop (but again, why would I take the time, when I can just do it with an action?).

9. You can also create your own actions once you have a good understanding of how actions work.

10. Photo editing is really just a preference thing.  Right now, blow-out highlights, heavily popped color and tilted camera angulation is huge (and I'm loving it), but in a year, it could be something entirely different.  I've looked at pictures that I edited 3 months ago and went "What were you thinking?", but that's never a problem because I always keep an unedited original of every photo.

11. You can take a great photo and make it look amazing in Photoshop or you can take a mediocre photo and make it look good.  But if you're starting with a bad photo, no amount of editing will ever make it amazing.  The goal then of course, is to get it as the best image possible straight out of the camera.

12. Here's a link to a bunch of before/after edits from Joe Photo (a really great wedding photographer).  Some of the edits are more dramatic than others - but it's really cool to see the "out of camera" images vs. the edited images.

13. And a recent edit of mine.

14. I recently invested a bunch of money in new camera equipment, with the intentions of starting to shoot weddings professionally (a back-up plan for when my scrapbooking career takes a dive).  I picked up some really great equipment:

- Canon 5D

- Canon 24mm f1.4 lens (great for wide-angle shots)

- Canon 50mm f1.2 lens (great for everyday candids/portraits)

- Canon 85mm f1.8 lens (perfect for still portraits)

- Canon 200mm f2.8 lens (great telephoto)

My old Tamron 28-75mm f2.8 lens broke while I was in Germany (although I am looking into getting it repaired),  I ended up selling my 50mm f1.4 and decided to keep my Canon 20D body as a back-up camera.

It's all great equipment, but again, I think it's overkill unless you have plans of shooting professionally.

15. My recommendations for someone who is serious about learning photography and wants to make an investment without breaking the bank would be this:  Get a Canon Digital Rebel Xti (body only - don't buy it in a kit with a lens) for a little over 600 bucks.  If you want to spend the extra money, you can pick up a Canon 30D (body only) for $1000.00.  Prices on the 30D are going down since the Canon 40D just released (I shot with the Canon 10D before it was stolen and shot with the 20D until recently).  But quite honestly, I think the difference in cost between the Rebel and the 30D would be better spent on lenses.

16. Once you have a good camera body, the quality of your images is mostly dependant upon the quality of the lenses you put on it (that's why I tell people who have a Rebel and are thinking of upgrading to a 30D, that I think their money is better spent on lenses).

17. I don't recommend kit lenses because they typically don't have low enough aperture settings to allow you to work in low light situations or to get nice blurred backgrounds and it's sometime hard to get really tack sharp focus with kit lenses.

18.  Unfortunately, there is not one lens that meets everyone's needs, so I recommend lenses based on what you most frequently shoot.  Here's my recommendations:

- If you are primarily shooting portrait style stuff and candids of your kids/family, oftentimes indoors under low light situations (but it works great outdoors too), then I think the best lens for the money is either the Canon 50mm f1.8 for about 80 bucks (that's the deal of the century as far as lenses go) or the Canon 50mm f1.4 for about $300.  Big price difference and of course if you can swing the more expensive of the two, it's worth it.  You'll be able to work in lower light situations with the f1.4 and it produces sharper images and creamier skin tones, but if you want to stay within a certain budget, I just don't think you can go wrong with the 50mm f1.8 for $80.  You can get some incredible portraits and candids with this lens and even if you used if for a year and then decided to upgrade, you can still sell it online and recoup some of your money (and it will still be the best $80.00 you ever spent).  Ali Edwards shoots with the 50mm f1.8.   These are both prime/fixed lenses (meaning that they doesn't zoom...so you are the zoom...walk forward to zoom in...walk backwards to zoom out).

- If you are wanting something with a zoom, you'll have to invest a bit more money to get a good quality one.  The only lens I had for 3 years was a Tamron 28-75mm f2.8 for $379.00.  It's a great lens.  You can pick up the Canon equivalent for about $1200.00 (but there's a lot of reviews that say that the Tamron is nearly as good in quality and doesn't have as many focusing problems...so I'd say, go for the cheaper Tamron).  It's an investment, but if you can swing it, it's a good one.  It will still let you work in moderately low light situations, but not as well the 50mm that I discussed above.  Zoom lenses in general are never quite as good in quality as prime/fixed lenses and they don't come with apertures that go below f2.8 (which limits how low of light situations you can work in).  My good friend Tanya is selling her Tamron 28-75, you can email her at kentwebee@comcast.net.

- If you can financially swing both of the lenses I mentioned above, you'll have a really good set-up that will allow you to work in a variety of situations.  This combo won't meet every single shooting situation out there, but I'd venture to say it could cover 90% of what I shoot (minus far away sports shots).  There are plenty of pros who shoot with this combination or upgraded versions of this combination.

19.  I spent a lot of time trying to figure out the perfect lenses for me, given what I shoot on a regular basis (portraits/candids/sports) and what I want to shoot professionally (weddings) and that is how I came up with the group of lenses I am working with now.  I gave up some of the flexibility/convenience of working with zoom lenses in favor of the lower apertures/better focusing that you get with primes/fixed lenses.  But it also means that I have to swap out lenses while I'm shooting which can be inconvenient sometimes (a lot of wedding photographers shoot with two camera bodies so they don't have to switch out lenses as frequently).

20. Don't use your new lens until you've got a UV filter on it though (helps protect the lens from being scratched/damaged/broken and also improves color quality and prevents hazy looking photos).

21. And a bit more info. on Scrapbookpictures.com: They have a lab tech. who does general color correction on all of the photos that are being processed, rather than color correction done by a computer, which typically results in better color correction.  If you edit/color correct your photos yourself, you can leave a note in the comments section to ask that they not preform any color correction on your photos.  But you have to keep in mind, that if your computer monitor at home is not color calibrated, that they color you see on your computer screen may not be accurate in the first place.  On the opposite end of that, if you don't do any color editing at home, it's a nice option to be able to leave a note in the comments section that says something along the lines of "please increase contrast all all photos" or "please increase color saturation on all photos".  Good to have options.  Also, I don't resize my photos before downloading them to Scrapbookpictures.com, which means that yes, it does take hours to download a big group of photos.  I just start the download before I go to bed at night and when I wake up in the morning, it's done.  Also, if you would rather mail a CD of your images to them, they will download it for you (I think it's 5 bucks per CD).

22. I am not currently working on any fine art textures for Scrapbookpictures.com, but it's something I'd like to offer in the future (when I find some time)!

23. Someone had asked why their pictures are looking blow-out when they have their 85mm set at f1.8...and I can't find the comment to respond directly to them.  I'd have to have more info. to help trouble-shoot this, like what mode you're shooting in (aperture priority, shutter speed priority, etc.).  So just leave another comment under this post with some more details.

24. Unrelated to photography...Annie's dress from my 8/6 post was from Gymboree (I buy stuff from them when it's on clearance/out of season, so I always buy it a size or two too big...which unfortunately means that it's not available through Gymboree anymore).  Her dress from 8/7 was from Target.  The Joss Stone concert was great (man, that girl can sing) and Summer Jo's is off of "G" Street (if you follow G Street out of town, you'll see signs for it - but the signs are easy to miss).

Hope this is a help.

Scrapbookpictures.com

That's just a new favorite of Annie (I took yesterday afternoon), with a new scratch on her face, which has absolutely nothing to do with my post today.

I started using Quick Stop Photo about 6+ years ago.

I wasn't a scrapbooker at the time, but I was really into photography (although I wasn't any good at it).

When someone told me about Quick Stop Photo, I remember thinking, I'm not going to use any lab called "Quick Stop Photo"...that would be like "Quick Stop Dentistry" (I was a dental hygienist for 11 years).

I just (wrongly) assumed that if their focus was on being "quick", then their focus couldn't be on "quality".

So it took a few more recommendations before I was willing to try them.

I loved their quality.

I loved that they were a third generation family owned lab.

I loved that they had been in business since 1949.

And I found out that they were called "Quick Stop Photo" because they were the first lab in the country to offer 1 hr. services.

So that's who I've used for years now (minus a brief stint when I moved 4 hours away from the lab and made the mistake of thinking I could find the same quality elsewhere).

It must have been a few years ago that Quick Stop Photo started a spin-off branch of their lab geared towards scrapbookers, called Scrapbookpictures.com.  The best thing for me was that they started offering almost 30 different print sizes, a lot of which are unique to scrapbookers (like 12x12's and 8.5x11's) and that I could choose to have my photos printed in color, B&W or sepia (which, when I had a film camera, was a huge relief because it meant that I didn't have to sweat over the decision of whether to put color or B&W film in my camera anymore).

And even though I have a really nice 12x12 photo printer at home, I end up with a cheaper and better quality print from Scrapbookpictures (so I only use my home printer when I am in needing something ASAP).

I also use Scrapbookpictures as a back-up form of storage for all of my photos.

I store almost 40,000 photos on their site for free (well technically, I have to order 1 print a year for them, so it costs me more like 16 cents).

I organize my photos on Scrapbookpictures the exact same way I organize my photos on my external hard drive at home (it's easier to find photos when they are organized in the same manner).

I've got a folder for 2004, 2005, 2006, etc.

And then, inside each of those "year" folders, I've got 12 "month" folders (01 for January, 02 for February, etc.)

And then, inside each of those "month" folders, I've got specific folders by event.

So, for example, inside the October folder for 2006, there are additional folders that say "Cole's birthday", "Pumpkin Patch", "Halloween", etc.

So my goal is to take all of my pictures off of my memory card each day (I take pictures almost every day).  I don't leave them on my memory card because it's hard for me to remember later if I've downloaded the pictures from the card or not and also because I've had a few cards go through the washing machine and dryer (and no, they don't work afterward).  Plus a card is just like any other piece of computer equipment, which is prone to failure (although cards are more stable than computers).

So I take my pictures off of my card and save them to my computer.

I have an external hard drive (it's a Maxtor 500G hard drive that I think I paid about $150.00 for) that is hooked up to my computer and is set up to automatically back up all of my photos and all of my artwork for Creative Imaginations at 2am every morning.

I don't delete the photos from my card until I know they were succesfully backed up to my external hard drive.

So then, my photos are on both my computer and my external hard drive (because I always want to have two back-ups).

And then my goal is to daily or weekly back up my photos from my computer to Scrapbookpictures.

Once they're backed up to Scrapbookpictures, I take them off of my computer (but they are still on my external hard drive), so that they aren't taking up too much space and slowing my computer down.

And again, I've got two back-ups.

I feel pretty comfortable with that system.  If my external hard drive crashes (and I've had two of the crash), then I can have Scrapbookpictures copy all of my photos to disk and send them to me so that I can put them onto a new external hard drive.  I don't worry about Scrapbookpictures losing my photos as they themselves have multiple sources of back up.

I don't use the CD's as a form of back-up (but I talked about that awhile back - you can look for it in the "Photography Tips" section of my blog).

I am planning on setting up a second external hard drive as a third source of back-up, just because it would be more convenient than having Scrapbookpictures copy all my photos to disk the next time one of my external hard drives crashes.

The thing with computer equipment is not a question of if it will crash or have problems, it is more a question of when it will crash or have problems (that's just the downfall with computers and computer equipment).

It takes a bit of time to learn how to navigate the Scrapbookpictures website, but once you figure it out, it's really, really easy.

You just set up an account with them (if you don't have an account with them already, you can use the code QAZ937 to get 15 free 4x6 inch prints).

From there, you can start organizing your folders and then you can start uploading your digital photos via a high speed internet connection (it takes a long time to download your files).

Scrapbookpictures does not automatically resize your photos to meet their size limitations (some labs automatically resize your photos), so even if you've got a 12megapixel camera, set at it's highest resolution, you won't have any resizing issues.

Once you've downloaded your photos, you can select which ones you'd like to order and add them to your cart.  From your cart, you can crop, select your photo sizes, choose color, B&W and/or sepia, choose matte, glossy and/or metallic paper, add borders in any color, etc.

And if you have any problems at all, they've got amazing customer service.  Just email doug@scrapbookpictures.com and he'll take care of you.

And, they've got a flat $2 shipping rate within the US (no matter how big your order is).

And good news for me...I'm done going through and deleting all of my digital files for 2006 and 2007 (I've just got 2004 and 2005 left to do).

Hoping to get it all done today so that I can take advantage of the 12cent prints Scrapbookpictures is offering (which ends tomorrow).

Online camera shopping

I think that B&H Photo is a great place to shop online for camera equipment.

Good prices and they're reputable.

Here's the Canon fixed 50mm f1.8 and here's the  f1.4 (which by the way, is at a phenomenal price)and they even make a (completely unaffordable) f1.2.

Of course, the more money you pay, the better lens you're going to get.

That said, I own the f1.4, middle-of-the-road version.

There's also something to be said for making these kind of purchases from your local camera shop.  You'll pay a little more money (they really can't match online prices), but it's often worth it for the customer service you get in exchange.

If I buy a camera or a lens from a local shop (and with the exception of one lens that I own, all of my equipment has come from local shops) and I have a problem or a question, I'll go down to the camera shop and ask questions for 20 minutes or an hour (however long it takes) and I feel ok about taking that much of their time, because I'm supporting that store with my business.  If I'm not supporting their business, then I wouldn't feel right in taking that much of their time.

And online?...you just won't get that kind of service.

Here's my newest lens.  And they, of course, make a ridiculously priced version of this lens (that I can only dream about).

A few more answers.

1.  I shoot in AV (aperture priority mode) 99% of the time.  Lots more on aperture if you scroll through here.

2.  I shoot Canon.  Just my preference (probably because I started out on a Canon).  I think there was a time when Nikon was better than Canon, but I think these days, Canon and Nikon are very comparable.  I think both the digital Rebel and the 30D are both great cameras, but the 30D cost twice as much.  So if someone was working with a fixed budget (and most of us are), I would recommend a digital Rebel (and the money that you save on the Rebel can be spent on lenses).

3. I think a really good starter lens would be a Canon fixed 50mm (either the f1.4 or the f1.8).  Both will let you work in low light settings and will give you a nice blurred background when set at their lower apertures.  Again, if you are working with a fixed budget, the 1.8 for less than $100 bucks is the way to go, but if you can swing the $400, the picture quality with the 1.4 is incredible.

4. I purposely overexpose most of my shots just a bit (I have my camera set to slightly overexpose all of my photos and I usually overexpose them even more in Photoshop).  Again, just a preference.

5.  A hard concept to understand, but I learned something new the other day...if a background is 3 stops darker than the subject you are exposing for, it will make the background in your photo appear black (I get a lot of questions about whether or not I use a black backdrop on particular photos, and although I do use one occasionally, more often, it is just a result of my background being 3 stops darker than my subject).

6. And if you're looking for good camera/equipment reviews, check out www.dpreview.com.

Blurring the background.

I've discussed this quite a bit here, but have been getting a few emails about it and so I wanted to throw out a little more info.

And (as always), my disclaimer:

I am NOT a professional professional photographer by any stretch of the imagination.

That said...

In portrait style photography, it is often the goal to have  your subject crisp and in focus, while your background it out of focus.

This effect is created by the aperture setting on your camera.

Think of your camera as a light-proof box.

And in order to capture a photo, light must enter the camera and hit the light sensor inside of it (digital cameras have light sensors, regular cameras have film).

The light that enters your camera comes in through an opening inside your lens, made by a bunch of overlapping metal blades, called an aperture.

That aperture can open and close to varying widths (because the metal blades overlap one another).  When the aperture is open as wide as it can possibly go, you can imagine that it lets more light inside your camera (allowing you to work in lower light situations).  And so, of course, when the aperture is closed down very small, it lets in very little light (not so good in low light situations).

As you increase the width of your aperture, you decrease how much of your photo can be in focus at any given time (that is why you can have your subject perfectly in focus and your background out of focus).

As you decrease the width of your aperture, you increase how much of your photo can be in focus at any given time (that is why you can have a wild flower right in front of your camera perfectly in focus and have the mountain range ten miles away in perfect focus too).

How much of your photo is in focus is called depth of field (used somewhat interchangeably with the word aperture).

A camera with interchangeable lenses and any camera that will allow you to work in manual settings will allow you to decide how wide you want your aperture (point and shoot cameras will not allow you to do that).

There are numbers, called f-stops that correlate to the width of your aperture.  Those numbers typically range from f1 to f22.  It's a little confusing, but the the lower the number, the wider your aperture is open.  And so, the higher the number, the smaller your aperture.

If your a numbers kind of girl (which I am not), it might make a little more sense to know that an f-stop is written like a fraction.  The "f" in the equation being equal to the focal length of your lens, which is then divided by the number you see next to the "f".  So if you are shooting with a 50mm lens, and your aperture was f4, the equation would look like this 50/4  (50 divided by 4), which helps to make sense of why the lower the f-stop number, the wider your aperture and the higher the f-stop number, the smaller your aperture.

If your not a numbers kind of a girl - just pretend you never read that last paragraph.

So an f1 would mean that your aperture is wide open, letting in as much light as possible, but only a small portion of your photo will be in focus.

And an f22 would mean that your aperture is closed down very, very small, letting in very little light, but every detail in your photo will be in focus.

In the photo on the left, I set a high aperture (f16), which resulted in everything in my photo being in focus (even the ugly construction in the background).  In the photo on the right, I set a pretty low aperture (f2.8) and the result was that Courtney was in focus, Coley was out of focus and so was to distracting background.

Another good thing to note is that the further your subject is away from the background - the more the background will be out of focus. 

How wide your aperture will open up is directly correlated to the quality (and unfortunately, the cost) of your lens.  A lens that will open up all the way to f1 is going to cost quite a bit more than a lens that will only open up to an f4.

Most of the lenses that come in a "kit" (meaning that when you buy the body of your camera, it comes with a lens or two), don't go down any lower than f3.5, and unfortunately, a 3.5 aperture will not allow you to work in low light situations, will not usually allow you to get a really good blur to your backgrounds and will limit the quality of your photos.

I used to have three lenses, none of which would go any lower than a f3.5.  When I got them, I loved them.  When I learned more about photography and tried a better quality lens, I got rid of all of them.

I have three lenses now too (just got a brand new one), and all of them will go down to an f2.8 (one of them will even go down to a f1.4).

The difference between an f3.5 and an f2.8 is enormous.  And at this point in time, I wouldn't get a lens that didn't drop down to at least a f2.8 (even if it meant that I had to wait & save until I had enough money to buy it - which is the case with the lens I just got).

Right now, the three lenses I have are:

- Tamron 28-75mm f2.8

- Canon 50mm f1.4

- And introducing my new baby, Canon 16-35mm f2.8

I think that the quality of your lens in most cases, is actually more important than the quality of your camera body.

That is why, right now, I really want a new camera body (I shoot with a Canon 20D - which don't get me wrong, is a fabulous camera, but I'd still love to upgrade), but I'm not going to get a new camera body, because I don't have a money tree in the backyard. 

And in knowing that the quality of my photos is more influenced by the quality of my lenses than the quality of my camera, I'm investing my money in lenses.

Ok, and now...how do you change your aperture settings?

If you've got a manual camera, there should be a setting on the main dial that says "AP" or "AV" or "A".  That setting is called aperture priority (that's the setting I work in 90% of the time).  In that setting, I decide what I want my aperture to be and my camera automatically sets my shutter speed for me (it's that easy).

So if I'm shooting a portrait of a person, I'd love to be at f2.8.  If I am working indoors, under poor lighting conditions, I may drop it to an f1.4.  If I am shooting a group of people outdoors, I might start at f8 and see how it looks (remember, if your aperture number is low, only a portion of your photo can be in focus at any given time, so shooting at a low aperture number with a group of people would mean that most of those people would be out of focus).  And if I'm shooting landscapes, my aperture is usually going to be set to a high number so that everything in my photo can be in focus.

Aperture is my favorite thing about photography because I think that I can work really creatively with it to tell a story and so, I find that although I have some guidelines that I follow for where I set my aperture given a particular subject, I don't abide by any strict rules (hard to be creative with strict rules).

Long term photo storage.

Ok, I haven't been avoiding the "how do you color correct your photos?" question...it's just not an easy answer - so I'm planning on getting to it when I have a little more time (promise).

I do want to take a bit of time to talk about long term storage of your photos though.

It's a topic that we discuss during my "Picture This" class and it's a topic that I feel like I still have a lot to learn on.

Sooooooooo...

My goal here is to share what info. I do have (taking into account that I am NOT an expert in this field), but to also get information from all of you (just leave a comment in the comment section if you have anything to add to the discussion so that everyone else can read it too).

And here we go...

I have two external hard drives (an external hard drive is just a little box that connects to your computer and stores information).  I decided on using external hard drives 1. because I felt (and I may be wrong) that they would be less susceptible to viruses than my computer and 2. because in the event of a fire, it would be easier to grab those boxes than it would be to grab my entire computer.

I use one of the external hard drives to store my photos and the other to store my artwork for Creative Imaginations and other companies I work with.

One of those hard drives crashed recently though.  Thankfully, it was the one with all of my Creative Imaginations artwork, which was a HUGE deal (I lost 6 weeks worth of work that I hadn't backed up), but in comparison to losing all of my photos, (I had about 3 months worth that weren't backed up at the time), which would have devastated me...I was lucky.

Took it to a specialist to see if they could salvage any of the files - no luck.

Lesson learned.

In discussing this during some recent classes - I've met plenty of people who have lost all or several years worth of photos.

The thought of which, makes my stomach flip and my heart race.

And that's exactly why I wanted to share this with you.

The bottom line is that you have to back this stuff up to more than one location.  And that no single storage method is full-proof.  Here's some options:

1.  A computer.  Keeping in mind that computers crash and are susceptible to viruses.

2. An external hard drive.  They crash too though and can be affected by things like viruses, power outages, being dropped, etc. (just like a computer) and will eventually need to be replaced (a computer guy told me that the average life of an external hard drive is about 3 years - but it could be more and it of course, could be less)

3. A photo hosting site or photo lab.  There's a ton of them out there.  And I'm not familiar with all of them.  I use www.scrapbookpictures.com.  They offer free, permanent storage of any photo that you upload considering you purchase one print a year from them (so I guess that means that it actually costs you about 18 cents per year - the cost of a 4x6 print - to store your photos).  If you shoot digital, you just send them a disk, or upload via a high-speed Internet connection.  If you're shooting film - you just send them your film (3 bucks to develop and upload to your account) and they automatically save it.  I think I've got about 28,000 photos currently saved on their site.

4. CD's or DVD's.  I used to think that this was a great source of back up until I read this article, which basically says that when you are recording on a CD or DVD that you don't know whether or not you are getting a good quality initial recording (just because your computer tells you that it was a successful recording, doesn't mean that the "quality" of the recording was good)  and that if the quality of your recording was not good, that you can begin to loose information on that CD in as little as 6 months.  Even with a good recording, consumer grade material (like the kind of CD's or DVD's that you pick up from the office supply store), a CD is only expected to last between 1-5 years.  Archival grade material (which is also discussed in the article) can last much longer (up to 200 years), but again, that is assuming a "good initial recording" (and I don't think there is any way to know whether or not you got a "good initial recording").

Here's a link to some archival grade DVD's.

I don't think that I would use CD's or DVD's for a first or second back-up of my photos though (maybe a 3rd) because of the concerns with getting a good initial recording and with the fact that as technology changes, CD's and DVD's will become obsolete (gone the way of the dinosaur just like VHS tapes).

Another important note is that CD's and DVD's should only be stored in jewel cases (because jewel cases prevent the recorded side of the CD from coming into contact with anything other than air) - which means no envelopes or plastic sleeves.

Given all that, here's what I am currently doing:

I store all of my photos on an external hard drive (which I am planning to replace every 2 years) and I also store them all at www.scrapbookpictures.com.  If my external hard drive ever crashes, I would pay for ScrapbookPictures.com to copy all of my photos to DVD's and then I would immediately, copy those DVD's back to a new external hard drive. 

Scrapbookpictures.com has their own methods of back-up, and have been in business since 1949 - so I have no concerns with them losing my photos or going out of business - but I still want two forms of back-up and that's why I store my pictures on my external hard-drive also.

It's a lot of work to stay on top of it all.  It's easy for me to get lazy and not upload my photos to both my external hard drive and Scrapbookpicture.com the same day my photos were taken - but I'm working hard on it.

And if you've got years worth of photos to back-up - that's a daunting process too.  To organize them, to upload them all , etc.

But my recommendation if you only have a single source of back-up for your photos right now, or if you have any photos on CD or DVD (and if all of this is more than you can tackle right now), is to go out  TODAY and purchase an external hard-drive.  Don't worry about having all of your photos perfectly organized into specific folders, don't worry about photos you want to delete or edit, just take every single photo you have saved on your computer or CD and copy them to that external hard-drive.

THEN, after they're all backed up - you can slowly take on the task of organizing your photos into specific folders, editing & deleting photos and getting all of your photos saved to another back-up system like a photo hosting site or photo lab.

But at least for now, you can feel a little more rest assured, knowing that you have a back-up of all of your photos.

Here's how I organize my folders:

I have a folder for each year, 2006, 2007, etc. and then inside each of those yearly folders, I have a folder for each month, 01 for Jan., 02 for Feb., etc. and then inside each of those monthly folders, I have specific "event" folders, for example, in the 2007 file folder, I have a folder for the month of October, and inside that "October" folder, I have additional folders for events, such as "Halloween", "Pumpkin Patch", "Cole's Birthday", etc. - all of which makes finding a specific photo very easy.  I have these same files set up on both my external hard-drive and on www.scrapbookpictures.com.

Another important note is that anytime you work on a photo (crop, color-edit, etc.), you need to save it under a NEW file name.  If you work on a photo and then save it under the SAME file name, your computer saves the new, edited file and deletes the old, original file.  Unfortunately, every time you work on an image, save it and then open it again (a JPEG image - which is how the vast majority of us save or photos), you begin to loose quality in that image, which therefore, makes it very important that you always save any photos that you work on under a new name (I usually just keep the file name the same, but add the letter E or an E1 or an E2 to the end of the file name to tell myself that this is an "edited" version of this photo), so that your original file is never replaced or deleted.

If I think of anything else to add - I'll add it in red text, so you won't have to read through everything again and I'll store this in the "photography tips" section of my blog (which you can find in the left hand column), so that you can refer to it again if you need to. 

I'd love to hear your comments though.  Anything you want to add that you've read or done that works for you. 

Dang...that took a lot longer than I had anticipated.

Josh says that I shouldn't recommend grabbing your external hard drives if your house is on fire. 

Soooooo...if your house is on fire and you've safely escaped- don't run back in your house to get your external hard-drive (but if it happens to be located somewhere on your way out of the house and you can grab it quickly...).