Free Sweetness

I’ve recently found these two sources for some amazing layering stuff.

The Noise and Dust Through the Viewfinder
Their pool of photos is full of delicious, grunge-covered, TTV layers! The photo to the right was spiced up with one of them. Most of the pictures are for free use, but make sure to check the creative commons..a handful are not. But there’s some great freebies there.

Steal this stuff! by 3rdFoundation
Here’s a set of layers by one of my favorite photographer friends from flickr. He has a great variety here, all which you can use – free! Whoopee! (Bonus Tip: For one sweet photo, he layered in a shot of some star formation he got from NASA, I believe. Public domain!)

There’s two of my sweet finds..what treasure troves have you stumbled upon?

Library of Congress..Flickr?

The Library of Congress is keeping with the times with..a flickr? And apparently, the photos are all under a new “non-copyright“.

“We’re also very excited that, as part of this pilot, Flickr has created a new publication model for publicly held photographic collections called “The Commons.” Flickr hopes—as do we—that the project will eventually capture the imagination and involvement of other public institutions, as well.”

My first thought? Hmm..any cool layers? Free..

(Oh, in other news, Apple came out with a new laptop. My only hope is that the price of the older models will go down a bit.)

Holy Hyperlinkage!

This has to be one of the most amazing ideas I have seen..the insanity begins at 2:47.

Photosynth

Introducing Michael Rothermel Photography!

I’m so proud to introduce Michael Rothermel Photography – www.rothermelphotography.com! I’ve worked quite awhile on this and am just very glad to get it going. The adventure begins!

Website Shopping Tip

Just a quickie – I’ve been pretty busy.

The next time you’re setting up a website, before you purchase the domain and hosting — look around for a coupon. I just got my domain from GoDaddy.com and searched for a coupon on a whim. Came up with this nice site.

Lesson: Even some web businesses have sales and coupons. Use ‘em.

(I’ll be back in a bit with an update about my website..I’ve been working hard on it!)

Amazing Inspirational Artist

“Richard Wawro was diagnosed as “moderately to severely retarded” at the age of three, a condition later recognized as autism. He did not learn to speak before the age of 11 and required eye surgery to remove cataracts, which left him with sufficiently poor eyesight to be classed as legally blind.” -Wikipedia

Richard Wawro has created some of the most amazing handmade art I have seen – with crayons. Many of his drawings look amazingly like a photograph, especially at thumbnail size. But even at larger sizes it is crazy how real they are and how it contains some elements of photography. (DOF is a large one I noticed.)

Check out his awesome work here!  (Also, see a documentary of his work here.)

Top 5 Creative-Inspiring Videos

I admit, I spend a bit of time on Youtube.  But yeah — here’s the top five coolest videos I’ve found..that are awesomely creative.

5. A flipbook..on shirts!  Pretty nifty, though tons of shirts.

4. Giant rabbits taking over NYC.  Oh yeah, brings back childhood memories of play-doh.

3. A person who doesn’t play the drums or piano..playing them.  Yet another stop-action, but more musically inclined.

2. The life of a pumpkin..this will totally change your view on pumpkin carving.

1. A music video, but – they filmed part of it underwater!  You have to watch it.  (If you don’t believe they played underwater, go behind the scenes.)

Sunshine Girl

I’ve been working on my photo editing skills a bit lately. (Unfortunately, my slow computer doesn’t like large-res photos.) There’s this certain look (akin to Dave Hill) I’ve been messing with a bit. This is my latest attempt, and I really like how it came out. Here’s how I did it in GIMP.

4 layers
1 (Background): Original photo
2: Filters>Artistic>Softglow 80% opacity
3: Filters>Artistic>Cartoon 70% opacity
4: Original photo 20% opacity Mode: Overlay

I noticed it defined itself best on the face, I’m still not sure what the reason is..but hey, it’s a start. (Note: I’m using the latest version of GIMP – get it.)

When Do You Need a Model Release?

This is a question I’ve wondered myself many times, and tonight I finally found the answer.

“The Model Release” by Dan Heller

I encourage you to read as much as you can. I browsed it (and read the main points), but it’s definitely a great read at whatever level you choose to browse. I’ve noticed Dan Heller a couple times before around online, he’s an amazing photographer – check out the rest of his work!

Cheap Competitors & The Cost of a Portrait

I was forwarded this email awhile ago by my mom.

Hello everyone–
I have a young friend from our church body who is a budding photographer/videographer and has taken several friends’ senior portraits. He and his parents are looking into possibilities for him to pursue this as a business opportunity to help pay for college. He would like me to find out if there is any interest in the community for portrait-taking, for seniors and younger students alike. His proposed package would include up to 3 outfits, up to 5 poses/shots, and a CD of the shots for your own use, for $40 (with a discount for families with more than one child having portraits done.) Please let me know if you would be interested or have any questions I could have answered. This is not a commitment on your part nor a promise on his part, but one step in determining interest.
Thanks so much,
_______

I recently shot my brother’s girlfriend’s senior portrait. (You can see the one she picked to the right.) It was actually my first time using a “backdrop” (really a dark-blue bed sheet), but still – looking at that email all I can think is, “That’s pretty cheap for all he’s offering.” Let me break down the expense of creating one portrait.

• Approximately 30 minutes of shooting – most photographers charge around 10/hour — that’s $6 including set-up and break-down time.
• About 50 photos, post-processing time for each a little less then a minute – I currently include the price of pp’ing in the hourly charge.
• Printing – I got 8 wallet prints (that’s all she currently asked for) and that’s about 6 dollars. (If I was living by myself and driving myself I would probably include the time to get the it printed, plus the gas. As it is, I live at home and can’t drive yet.)
• Extra time (before and after the shoot) was about 1 hour – including communication, extra editing for the final photo, mailing one wallet print to her school plus uploading the photos for her viewing/choosing.

This doesn’t include any of my blanket expenses, such as the costs of equipment upkeep and purchases, learning (the time and money I spend on magazines, classes, and reading up on new techniques, etc.). It does not either include any studio costs. Also, if I were not living with my parents I would have to include the cost of electricity for the batteries/computer/office, the cost of gas, extra materials such as the postage stamp and envelope, among other expenses. Thankfully, my parents are a little easy on me. But, once I move out and live on my own these are things I will have to include in the price

The total cost it takes me (while living at home) is about $36 – with only 8 wallet prints. Usually, I would sell some sort of package, such as two 8×10, sixteen wallet prints – or however they wish to customize and add more prints. One thing that really gets me is that this guy is offering the CD of photos for your use really cheap.

It is becoming more common and expected for a CD of the photos to be included – people really like that. I’m working on including that in my pricing for a wedding, but for one senior portrait it seems highly illogical. For a wedding you will have a few hundred photos you may want to print, while a senior portrait is one time, as wedding photos continue much longer to be valuable. Basically, if I give a disc of the photos, I need to charge enough to cover how much I might make printing those photos for the person, or more likely a little less. It just isn’t reasonable to do that with a senior portrait, with the cost of licensing the photos.

Overall, this guy’s handing out a pretty cheap portrait. I haven’t seen any of his work, don’t know who he is, but it sounds like he’s selling himself pretty cheap. This not only hurts himself, but the other photographers make a living off of photography. Some people will go for the cheaper guy, even if his stuff isn’t as good, especially if it is as good or better. My advice to whoever reads this – figure out how much you’re worth and then charge that much.