(Photo) Life is so RAW
In Facebook I’m doing an exercise called Photo Diem. The idea is to take an interesting photo every day and post it in a Facebook Album. Most of my images for this exercise are shot in “camera raw” mode. We use raw all the time at the studio because it allows extensive high quality adjustments. RAW files have to be converted to a usable format (like jpeg) in a RAW converter like “Adobe Camera Raw.” Even though I’ve been using this method for years, I picked up a book on the subject to see if I was missing anything. Happily, I was! So I learned some new tricks, some new shortcuts, and got some new ideas. You can never learn too much. Besides that, the NEW version of ACR and Photoshop will out in 12 days. The learning in the digital age never ends!
This image was enhanced significantly utilizing Adobe Camera Raw
Photoplay
Last night I played with this image that I photographed the day before. Often, particularly in the days of digital photography, the exposure is merely the first step in the process. On this image I worked with some brushes that are buried in the stock photoshop toolbox. It is always nice to learn new things!
Can I get personal with you?
The Bender Photography blog is generally about studio photography, portraiture, senior pictures and other stuff that we do at our studio in Stroudsburg. You can read about what is happening here in the blog.
But there’s a personal side to my photography, too. And it happens on a daily basis. For the past six months or so I’ve been posting my personal photos in the albums of my Facebook profile. I’ve posted a couple of the better ones here for you to take a peek at. You can look at all of them by following this link:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=178587&id=514423161&l=0d52d4c352
The albums are called “Photo Diem”, which is my term for “A picture a day”. It has been a great little challenge and is very rewarding. As you might imagine, it is difficult to find something new to photograph within the daily grind of life. But it forces me to look at things differently and to slow down a little.
Photo Diem has also found a nice little following of folks
Taken in the dead of night, this experimental photo is a photo diem favorite.
Taken while attending a photo conference in Las Vegas
This felt like the polar express and was created while visiting family in Minnesota
who look for the images every day. They comment and hit the “like” button for their favorites. That’s pretty nice! And it keeps me going! Yay!
I encourage anyone who is interested in photography to take a picture a day. You don’t have to show them to the world, but you will find that after a while you will be looking at things differently. And that can be a good thing!
We’re twits
In the never ending quest to have an internet voice, we’ve added Twitter to our frequently visited list of web locales. You can follow us at http://twitter.com/BenderPhoto
Currently, we blog here, put personal photos on Facebook, Put business photos on our Facebook “page” and now tweet on Twitter. Yay!
Retrieve your heritage with photo restoration
This was the resulting image from the negative that our client brought to us
Recently one of our Facebook fans brought us a couple of glass plate negatives to work with. in the old days of photography, actually the days before film, negatives were made of glass. At Bender Photography we don’t do a lot of photo restoration, but I was intrigued with the idea of working with such old images.
At first, we weren’t sure if we could even work with them. They needed to be scanned and entered into our imaging system. But we found that with a little work, we could get a good scan and have a file to work with. The negatives were of decent quality, considering their age. But like much of the stuff from that era there were things that we could fix using photoshop.
We had our experienced photo retouchers work their magic on the two images and we were pleased with the results! It turns out that the images were created in the 1920’s!
Photography, snapshots and family portraits are such an important part of life. For most families, it is their only recorded family history. It was fun working with those old negatives.
Contact Bender Photography for your photography needs. Chances are, we can help you to do what you want to do.
Be sure to “fan” Bender Photography on Facebook at
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Stroudsburg-PA/Bender-Photography/61162176001
We look forward to seeing you!
Better senior photos for the class of 2011!
Every year in January the full time staff at Bender Photography criss crosses the country to learn new photography techniques for senior portraits. This year was no exception. Earlier in the month Dixie and I learned a number of cool senior portrait techniques in San Diego with the top senior photographers in the country . Then Jeff went to Nashville and learned a number of new sports photo techniques. Currently I am in Las Vegas at another conference learning some awesome photo techniques for our portrait and commercial photography programs.
The reason is that we want to remain the Poconos leading photography studio. It takes a lot to be be on the cutting edge and we strive for that all the time.
An image I created at a conference in Las Vegas
Great Portraits of Great Realtors!
This photo will be used in a big way
This morning I had the pleasure of doing some business portraits. I like doing them because I like business people and I can make them look AWESOME. A lot of business people skimp on their portraits and I think that’s a HUGE mistake. There’s nothing worse than an amateur looking portrait on a business card or in a printed advertisement. It screams “Don’t hire me, I don’t know what I’m doing” Just because they can’t see the difference doesn’t mean that others can’t. And, the people that really CAN see the difference are usually the best prospects. So it is important to make a good impression on them. So, the message for the day is “Put your best face forward with a professionally created portrait… By Bender Photography of course
Seasons Greetings from Bender Photography! A lot has been happening at the studio. Yesterday we decorated the front of the building for the season. And the Bender Photo Elves are busy getting work completed before the holidays hit.
We are running a holiday special for family portraits! The session covers all of the basics, instant previewing and ordering and lightning fast print turnaround. Packages have options for greeting cards, wall portraits, and regular prints. Prices at $199, it is proving to be a hit!
It’s been a while since I’ve blogged here on WordPress. I apologize for that. Allow me to explain…
There are a lot of ways to blog (or create a voice on the web), and I’ve been playing around with several of them. This WordPress Blog is one of those methods and it does work well for our business. But, it does have some drawbacks. One is that there is regular maintenance required. We have to sort through and delete irrelevant comments from spammers. Often they are in Russian or other languages with weird letters. Another little problem is that photos don’t post all that easily here. We are in the photo business and want to post photos easily and regularly, so good software is important… Anyway, enough excuses about Wordpress. We’ve been establishing our voice in other ways…
I’ve been doing “photo blogging” on my Facebook page for the past few months. I’ve been posting photos on a daily basis of things that I find interesting while out and about. If you friend me on Facebook, or follow this link you can see those photos…
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=138165&id=514423161&l=56c06cb132
I have a regular following there and the comments from viewers are relevant, in English and by people that we know. Yay!
Bender Photography also has a “Fan Page” on Facebook. There we regularly post photos from our various sessions. You might be able to check it out if you are a Facebook user by clicking here
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Stroudsburg-PA/Bender-Photography/61162176001
This post should appear in our Facebook page automatically, but I’ve been leaning heavily in the Facebook direction for quite a while now.
Studio in lights
So what’s that little card?
One of the questions that regulary arises when we do one of our portrait sessions is “what’s that little black and white card all about?. You seem to photograph it all the time?
Good question… The answer is a little technical though.
The card is a color reference card. We photograph it for every lighting situation that we come across. It helps us assure that the color is right on all of our photos.
Inside, we shoot it once. We use high quality, high consistency studio lights in our camera room so there isn’t any variation in the color of the light. So once we shoot it, we’re good to go.
Outside, we shoot it every time we move to a new spot. Though you eye can’t see it, the color of the light is constantly changing. If the light comes through the trees, it tends to get green. In the shade, it gets blue. If we are photographing near a brick wall, it goes the color of the bricks.
After we finish the session we color correct all of our images by sampling the color card. That assures that the color of our subjects is just right. And it assures that if you are wearing a white shirt, it turns out white, not some other color. If we want to adjust the color after that, we can.
Many photographers don’t go to the trouble to shoot a color reference card. And it shows in their work.
We do it because it’s the way to get the color right. Our aim is to get things perfect, so that’s why we do it.
Back to school means sports… and familiar faces from all over
The soccer team at Pleasant Valley
After experiencing the summer that really wasn’t, it’s “back to school time”. I liked this summer. We created some really awesome senior portraits in a variety of cool locales. But summer, weather-wise never really happened. It rained. A LOT. Blah!
The end of the summer gets really busy for us. We do a lot fall sports. And that, in addition to being grueling, is a lot of fun. We get to see a lot of familiar faces and get a feel for how the fall sports season will shape up. The PV football coaching staff brought together faces from a variety of places. New head coach Jimmy Terwilliger should shake up the PV program. But he’s familiar to me because I took action photos of him at ESU in some of the most exciting college football that I’ve ever photographed. Another assistant coach Coach Richard Fox used to coach at North Warren in New Jersey. It was a surprise to see him at PV because we’ve photographed his teams at North Warren for years. Finally, Justin Miklos is coaching at PV too. We did award winning senior portraits of him just a few years ago. So it was cool to see all of these familiar faces and I’m sure that PV will have an exciting season with their new coaching staff.