Tara Lynn Concert

I had the privilege of meeting Tara Lynn last year at a concert she opened up for Jimmy Fortune. Tara is an incredible singer with an awesome voice and she has a stage presence that is absolutely amazing!

This past Saturday I attended another Tara Lynn concert and served as the photographer, hoping to capture the mood and excitement of the concert with my camera. Take a look at these concert photos and let me know how I did in trying to accomplish this task.

Maintaining Creativity

Do you ever find your photography creativity getting stale?

Creativity can be elusive at times. It’s like a flash in the pan–it comes out of nowhere but disappears just as quickly. Maintaining creativity is essential to keep your edge and to keep your photo dreams within reach. So how do you maintain creativity?

One thing I do is look at the work of other photographers. Seeing fellow artists’ work can stir some new ideas within us. Reading books can help, too. I have a growing photo library of good photo books which I find myself constantly referring back to time after time. The internet can be an extremely helpful in keeping our creativity alive.

What do you do to maintain your creativity?

More on Social Media

I’ve been posting to this blog for over a year now. WordPress has made blogging very easy for me and I enjoy sharing photographic insights with others. It’s a cool way to connect with others and create dialogue with fellow photographers. It also allows customers and those interested in my photography to stay updated.

This week I also began to Twitter more frequently. I had a Twitter account for some time but did not fully see the potential of this powerful social medium. Now I am posting a daily tweet including a PhotoTip. You can follow me on Twitter to see a new photo tip each day.

I also have a Facebook page that replicates each day’s blog post and displays some photos and upcoming events.

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Statues

Photographers are always looking for new subjects to photograph. It’s in our blood, I guess. We just cannot help ourselves. There is always that elusive photo that we’ve had back in the recesses of our photo brain out there somewhere. We can see it our mind’s eye and we hope and pray we will be able to see it with our camera sometime very soon!

But what do we do when we cannot find that once in a lifetime subject? Do we put our camera away and go in the corner and pout? Or do we keep our eye behind the viewfinder and keep trying?

Here is a series of photos I captured one day when the creative camera juices were flowing a little bit. It was great fun!

Get the Little Things Out of the Way

Most of us photographers like to spend time behind the camera. After all, we are photographers so this is our rightful place, isn’t it?

The problem is there are so many other details and little things that can distract us and prevent us from spending time behind the camera. Think about going on vacation for example. Just to get away there are a ton of things that must be done. Our to do list grows to enormous size and we have a lot of details to wrap up before can leave.

Even preparing for a photography-specific vacation requires paying attention to a lot of mundane details: did you charge your batteries? Did you pack enough spare flash cards? What lenses are you going to bring? Do you have cleaning supplies packed? How will you backup in the field? Do you know exactly where you are going? Do you have enough money for everything? Did you put on clean underwear? (Opps, that was bad!)

But in all seriousness all these little details can get in our way. So sit down, make a list, and begin checking these items off. The sooner you take care of the little things the sooner you can focus your camera!

More Rain but Some Constructive Photo Learning Nevertheless

It is raining in the Poconos once again. Rain, rain, go away!

But instead of letting it get me down this time I started reading a good photo book, made a plan to backup all my photographs, and started fixing a desktop computer to connect to my network.

The book is Scott Kelby’s, “The Digital Photography Book, Volume 3” and I cannot say enough about this book. Let me, however, say this, “I already ordered Volumes 1 & 2 and I’ve only had Volume 3 for one day.” Buy this book if you want to get some creative ideas for your photography. It is well worth the price and time to read this incredible book.

My backup plan started with a few paragraphs of Scott’s book, which referred me to an article on his blog. The backup scheme he uses is solid and I decided to adapt slightly a few of his ideas and use them for my backup procedure. I will follow his advice of making sure I have two copies of each photograph before reformatting a flash card, In my case I will use my laptop for one copy and a portable hard drive for the second copy. The OWC portable drives caught my eye and I plan on purchasing one soon and another one in the near future. They are smaller than the external drives I have been using up to now. I also plan on breaking down and buying a Drobo. I first heard about this little robot on “This Week in Photography.” The redundant backup scheme of this little guy far exceeds the RAID option. I will have to save a few pennies first, but since I recently acquired the 24-70mm zoom lens, I figure it is okay to spend a little dough to protect my photographs.

The desktop computer is one that I haven’t used in a while, but I want to utilize a good laser printer that I acquired and connecting this desktop to my network should allow me to do just that. I have to work around one minor monitor issue, but after that I should be up and running.

It is raining, but I’m still thinking a lot about photography nevertheless!

What To Do on Rainy Days

Well, it’s another rainy day here in the Poconos. So what is a photographer to do on such a rainy, miserable day?

Here is a list of things I can think to do photographically on rainy days:

  1. Catch up on keywording photographs.
  2. Sort and organize photos
  3. Create a list of subjects and places you would like to photograph
  4. Backup photos
  5. Clean your photo gear
  6. Shop on the internet or add to your wish list
  7. View other photographer’s websites for inspiration
  8. Check out some new photo blogs
  9. Read some good photography books
  10. Dream about photography

 

Rain, Rain…

With all the heavy rain we’ve been having I haven’t been able to put my new standard zoom lens through many paces. I was hoping to have some photos posted by now, but this just didn’t happen. It’s been raining so hard that I got to use one of my favorite sayings, “It’s raining as hard as a cow peeing on a flat rock!”

The rainy weather has put a halt to many outdoor activities: my son’s baseball tournament and the ALCS baseball game between the Angels and Yankees just to name a few. I know we need rain, but it sure puts a damper on outdoor photography. Sometimes I tough it out and go out in the rain anyway, but this weekend the rain was often very heavy. So I chose to stay inside, stay dry, and watch some college football.

My new lens will get to be used soon enough I suppose but I am impatient. Rain, rain, go away!

Photography Subjects

What are you photographing these days? Are you getting out with your camera and making photographs? Or are you busy with life so much that there is little time to spend out and about with your camera?

I absolutely love the fall season. I find there are many subjects to photograph–more than I have time to capture! Recently, in the last three to four weeks I have photographed the following:

Baseball Games
Pennsylvania Elk
Whitetail Deer
Chipmunks
Backyard Birds

I also have plans to hopefully photograph these upcoming subjects:

Fall Colors
Family Holidays
More Wildlife
Snowy Scenes
Christmas Lights

What are you photographing? Can you find some time to get out with your camera sometime soon?