Sat 27 Dec 2008
I’ve been testing the new Lensbaby Composer with the four interchangeable lenses. A full review will be going up on the new Lensbaby page on DIMi soon, but before then I wanted to show you some of the results.
These shots are taken with the two element glass lens on my converted for IR Canon 350D.
Fri 15 Aug 2008
Life does sometimes get in the way of photography. We’ve had a few dramas and distractions here over the last month. Some of these are continuing but the end is, I think, in sight. The rest are resolved.
The thing is, some of these issues and the people involved have been quite emotionally draining. It is hard to get motivated for creativity sometimes when that is going on, though when you can make it happen the creativity really does help you to get past things. This is the key, somehow you have to make good, positive things happen and keep your focus on them. Eventually the other stuff doesn’t seem so important.
Some quite positive stuff has been happening lately. I’ve been running workshops from a new venue and they have been going well. We spent a lot of time converting a garage into a joint studio for my wife, Adriana, a painter, and myself. While not huge it is now a nice space to work in and feels good for us both. It also offers us what we have always talked about, the opportunity to explore some joint artwork developments.
My first book is off with possible publishers for consideration and my second book, a photography title, is near to completion. DIMi has been redesigned and now has some new behind the scenes features, which will pay dividends shortly. The An ImageMaker analog photography site is up and awaiting the first articles, while The Digital ImageMaker Gallery of photography and digital art is now up and running and has the first group of invited photographers and artists working on their galleries and statements.
Lately I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about just how important a creative outlet is to the frame of mind of creative people. For myself having a creative outlet, my photography, actually working for me is a key to overcoming life’s hassles from the issues of being school council president at my daughter’s school, having negative people having a go at you and having things that you thought were a done deal turn flat. Stresses happen but with an outlet you can weather them.
I’ve seen some really positive examples recently. Bonny Lhotka, one of the three who published the great Digital Art Studio book (our review of the book can be read here) sent me her latest activity, a training DVD in doing inkjet transfers. The DVD, Inkjet Transfer Techniques, is outstanding and was an excellent next step for Bonny. Through watching it I also noticed she had moved to selling some unique products (clear film for inkjet printing to do the transfers with) that make perfect sense and nicely extend her activities. Another comes from my spiritual counseling work that I do with people. I recently really helped a client to get a different perspective on their life. That’s what it is all about.
When life presents you with some challenges, try to find a way to keep positive and to keep creating. If you do, you may just create a much more positive future for yourself.
Thu 26 Jun 2008
We’ve been going through a site redesign at DIMi (www.dimagemaker.com) to better handle some major expansion we are doing.
Over the next couple of weeks we are opening a variety of new features, from free web hosting of galleries for selected photographers and artists, dimagemaker.net, (people can apply) to a companion site for analog and fine art photography (AnImageMaker.com) to on both sites (D and An ImageMaker) exhibition and portfolio reviews (a move into art and photographic criticism prompted by discussions offlist with a number of people) and more (newsletters, for example, and a big, multipronged push into fine art photography).
The free web hosting of galleries of work (with artist statements, profiles and links to their other sites) is a way to give back to the people who use the site and make good use of a large slab of excess hosting space and bandwidth we had. I’m hoping this will develop further as we are looking at ways to promote the people who we have on board (we can handle about 4,000 people giving each around 15MB of free space) and are putting in place networking opportunities between the exhibitors. I’m hoping things like joint exhibitions, collaborations and such may come out of it.
More later
Thu 20 Dec 2007
Steve Ingraham’s Point and Shoot Landscape is a new photography blog that is focused on the value of point and shoot cameras as a creative choice for photographers.
Steve has set himself an active publishing schedule and the content on the site already offers some stimulating articles on how to get the ost out of your point and shoot cameras and why to chose to use a point and shoot.
Whilst my preference is to use an SLR for various reasons, I also use point and shoot cameras frequently and see their value. In fact in many circumstances they are easier to get great images from. For example, many offer amazing macro capabilities and the live preview and tiltable LCDs of many models make low level shooting painless on the knees and back.
So Steve’s site is definitely worth a regular look.
Wed 17 Oct 2007
Recently Joe Nalven asked me to contribute some words and images to a piece on infrared photography. The resulting article, with several other IR photographer’s thoughts as well as mine, makes a good read and is a useful document. You can find it on Joe’s Digital Art Guild website.
Sat 14 Apr 2007
Photography can be a solitary avocation, giving you time along, just you, your camera and your subject. In such a way, photography can be a highly meditative and contemplative hobby or job, depending on the type of photography you do, obviously.
Mon 2 Apr 2007
Life has been very busy recently, and my output on DIMI and here has suffered. But I’ve still been shooting.
Sat 7 Oct 2006
Last night I went to one of my standard camera test locations, a bridge that gives me an uninterrupted view of our central business district testing the Panasonic FZ50.
Mon 1 May 2006
A Series of Articles About the Development of a Photography Business
- continued
Since posting the introduction to this series, I’ve been busy completing a detailed configuration and design for the PhotoArtCanvas website. Part of that effort has involved actually producing some fully finished products – completed, full-size and mounted prints – such that photography of these can be completed for an online gallery and catalog. Below I’ve included samples from this pre-production exercise, allowing directly for “before-and after” comparisons. Lady before gentleman.
Wed 26 Apr 2006
Following on from the last post, John Stevenson, who is writing a series of articles on this blog, pointed me to http://www.photoattorney.com/, which contains great information. A blog by a lawyer, Carolyn Wright, there is great information here for those with questions about the various laws and how they apply to photography. Note that it does cover things from a US perspective.
