by Linda Bellingham and Jean Ann Bybee
It may be easiest to start with what this book is not. This book, and the lessons within, will not make you a food stylist. This book will not take work away from stylists. We all know there are times when we don’t have the option of working with a professional stylist, whether due to budget, time or logistical constraints. They will not replace the expertise, talents and skills of a professional food stylist.
This isn’t really a review so much as it’s a giant, stinky, slobbery dog-kiss on the people who make this program. I can’t believe I waited so long to buy it.
There is an important principle in business called the Pareto Principle – it says that 80% of your results will come from 20% of your effort.
Applied to photography, it means that 80% of your income is going to come from 20% of your efforts. The other 20% of your income will come from 80% of your effort.
It usually works for larger percentages, too – 90% of your income on 10% of your customers, 95/5, etc. (more…)
I photograph a lot of events – weddings, tournaments, parties.
One of my least favorite situations is when a photographer comes around to the table where everybody is eating, and wants to take a picture of the people at the table.
I have several problems with this. (more…)
In my last post about clarity, I’d get back to “negative clarity”. Now, despite the firm protests of my students on the last Oregon photo workshop I gave, negative clarity does not require the use of fine California vintages. Instead it’s a feature, introduced by Adobe in Lightroom 2 and Adobe Camera Raw, that allows the strength of the clarity effect to be negative as well as positive, and the visual effect of negative clarity is both interesting and occasionally quite useful. In this post, I’ll talk a bit more about it but also suggest an interesting application or two. (more…)
One of the greatest things about being a full time photographer who owns the business is the flexibility it offers in scheduling. Case in point – last week. My kids were out of school for spring break and even though it’s a busy season for me, I was able to move things around on the schedule and spend some good time with them. Of course, like most things there are trade offs that come with this flexibility. The biggest is lack of security. Another is the constant need for self discipline when it comes to non assignment shooting and other internal tasks. (more…)
In teaching Lightroom workshops, I’ve found that one of the most difficult controls to explain to photographers is the clarity slider. It’s fairly easy to demonstrate, and people pick up what it does fairly intuitively with a little practice, but I’m going to try in this post to explain what’s going on with clarity with a goal of helping you understand how to use this very useful control (and it’s local adjustment brethern) more effectively. (more…)
In my last installment, I discussed some of the joys and challenges of photographing lightning. One of the tools I use to capture images of lightning is Stepping Stone Products’ Lightning Trigger which is particularly valuable for daylight lightning captures. (more…)
My how times have changed. I remember spending long nights in my darkroom processing black and white film and prints. I also remember making last minute runs to the color labs to drop off my E-6 and C-41, then patiently waiting to run back to pick-up my order, most times ripping open the boxes of slides or prints and looking through them right there as the cashier was running my credit card. Yeah – times have really changed. It’s amazing that not that long ago, we actually had patience. (more…)