Is it just me, or are we all a bit more creative when we have some distance between ourselves and our chaos?Living life - be it adventure, struggle, conflict or resolution - gives us the bedrock of artistic inspiration. But if you're anything like me, actualizing that inspiration requires moments of calm.Case in point: Just sitting here working my ass off in the studio, 10pm on a Friday night...the last few weeks have been a... read more ›
Oct
16
Oct
11
If chapter titles like..._Working with Reps, Assistants, Employees, and Contractors: The Pitfalls and Benefits, or_Transitioning to Freelance, or_Licensing Your Work, or_Setting Your Photographer’s Fees, or_Releases: Model, Property, and Others ..don't get you to buy this book, perhaps my assessment of the book will:I think Best Business Practices for Photographers, Second Edition is essential reading for anyone even thinking about licensing an image, starting a business in photography, or dreaming of taking their photo game "pro".Long... read more ›
Sep
29
Hopefully you were tuned in the previous coupla weeks to our play-by-play campaign shooting for SanDisk in New Zealand. Well, we're back in the states, digging out, editing and what not, and as promised, we've got more content from the trip to post. In this Chase Jarvis TECH, I'm responding to hordes of you who asked 1)why are you shooting so many frames? 2) why in the world are you shooting on a tripod?... read more ›
Aug
17
WARNING: Nerdy tech content. If you're shooting a lot of video with all the video dSLRs and even the iPhone 3Gs, you've no doubt noticed the slight "wobble" when panning those cameras quickly. It usually translates visually into the slanting, or canting, of what are supposed to be vertical lines in image that you're recording. This phenomenon is the result of the digital rolling shutter, the mechanism by which these cameras write to their... read more ›
Aug
10
[UPDATE: Martin has chimed in with more details and original photos...all info after the jump].After reading the headline of this post and looking at the image, you're probably waiting for the other shoe to drop. What's the catch? Well, there isn't one. Yes, my pal Martin Gisborne used only an iPhone 3Gs and a telescope to get this shot. He did some slight tweaking in Aperture, but no crazy-fancy space cameras, no Photoshop, no compositing,... read more ›
Aug
09
Whether you love it or hate it, the term "journalist" is increasingly being accepted by our culture to include freelancers, bloggers, even just citizens who happen to "be there".In a crazy story I read about first over at Wired Mag's new photo blog, RawFile, they report that a student photographer who photographed paramedics tending to a homicide victim was given journalistic protection provided for by the law. From the Wired story: "In recognizing the journalistic... read more ›
Aug
05
Problem: I think a lot of photographers (myself included at some point in the past) pour too much strobed light into an image out of technical misunderstandings rather than stylistic choice. Under-exposing 2 stops and then popping your subject from 5 feet away with a direct shot from your strobe is certainly a style, but unless it’s done deliberately as a style, it often distracts the viewer from the image rather than adding to it.... read more ›
Jul
27
It was fun reading all the great attempts to deconstruct the photo from Monday's post. As you might imagine, many of you got close or even nailed some of the components, and many of you were way in left field. And that's exactly what I expected, especially since this image has some tricky, unexpected stuff going on. At any rate, here's the debrief: Concept: This image is really a snapshot. I confess to liking it... read more ›
Jul
27
One of the ways that helped me learn to create the kind of pictures I wanted to create from a technical standpoint was by trying to reverse engineer the work of others... work that was my friends, that was the photography masters, or, even just cool images I'd seen in magazines. I'd sit there for hours considering what might be at work. It's a good exercise in trying to understand both the technical stuff AND... read more ›
May
12
I'm taking the liberty of suggesting that you do one or more of the following today:1. Shoot personal work. Call in some favors, get creative with no budget, and shoot something for yourself.2. Set free that idea you've been holding onto. Write a blog post about it. Ask your friends what they think. Tell the world.3. Learn about video. Don't have a camera? Buy drip coffee for a month instead of lattes, and buy a... read more ›
