Quick Hit Monday: Moving To Fine Art Photography, iPhone Photography, Easy Learning, and More

Good Morning Everybody,

We left Florida on Saturday and headed north to Nashville.  The weather forecasts had us worried a bit and as we headed into Tennessee on Sunday morning, you could see the remnants from the nasty ice/snow that had blown through a few days earlier.

For one short stretch of highway, the trees continued to be encrusted with ice - a beautiful sight, but I sure would not have been wanting to drive through that storm.

Anyway, we finally landed in Nashville, got settled into our hotel room, and immediately hit the convention floor.  This year's Imaging USA convention is taking place at the Gaylord Opryland Hotel, a cavernous place that looks like it holds about a million people ;~)  For all the bad weather, the place was packed with some estimates putting the attendance at around 10,000 - WOW!

Our first stop was to the Canon Booth.  I haven't mentioned it yet, but I recently purchased Canon's ImagePROGRAF iPF8100 ink-jet printer which is to be delivered after our return.  All I hear are great things about this printer and the canvass prints we showed at last year's DWUC tour were amazingly beautiful.

 In 2010, I'm exploring the possibilities of landscape and fine art photography into my business and the Canon printer should easily fill the bill in producing the images.  By the way, that's me with Peter Tvarkunas of Canon's Professional Services standing in front of the printer. I promise  more news on this move in the near future.

For this week's Quick Hit Monday, I'm going to make it short and sweet.  We want to get back to the trade show floor and and check out all the new cool stuff.  So here we go with a few interesting things to check out.

iPhone and More

Last Tuesday I posted an image from my iPhone entitled, "Nuuanu Pali Lookout" [link]. Don't worry, That won't be the norm around here but it was a nice shot and I wanted to see what kind of reactions it would get. Thanks for all the nice comments, by the way.

Anyway, the iPhone post raised my curiosity about what kind of imagery was being produced by the iPhone.  Turns out there's an entire site dedicated to iPhone photography called iPhoneography.com.  Here is the link right here.  Turns out the site is pretty cool - lots of images and lots of apps reviewed that we iPhone geeks might find interesting.  Check it out, it's kind of fun.

And while we're on the topic of the iPhone - have you seen this yet? Yes, a steadicam for your iPhone. It's called the Steadicam Smoothee from Tiffen [link] and was just announced last week. Over at Amazon, there showing the Tiffen Steadicam Merlin for only $799 - I can't wait to see the price on the Smoothee. Let's just say I not holding my breath on this one.  It still amazes me though that there is a market for this kind of thing - maybe I'm missing something here.

Learning Is Easier Than Ever

As we head into the new year, one thing I encourage each and everyone one of you to do is learn something new. There are so many resources available to us, it sure makes it easy to do just that.

Here are two that fill the bill.  The folks at DataColor [link] have some great tips on printing from Lightroom and Photoshop.  Maybe you don't do your own printing but armed with some solid info on the subject, you just may want to give it a try in the future.

DataColor's site includes not just articles but some good videos, too.  And, wait there's more. You can even download 6 free Photoshop actions right here. The "Anti-Noise" one looks pretty interesting to me. Hey, they're all free!

Another great learning resource can be found over at DigitalPhotoPro [link] - lots of solid articles on photography technique like Dialing In Skin Tone and Exposing For RAW. Hey, it's worth the trip - check it out.

And Even More Training Coming To A City Near You

Yesterday, I ran into my buddy Sandy Puc and we had a nice visit. Sandy is one of the most ambitious trainers on the circuit these days. For the last two years she has toured the county with two very successful tours - "Bellies To Babies" and last year "Tots To Teens".

In two weeks she heads out on her 52 city tour entitled "Passion For Profit - Families".  Check it out right here.  Sam always puts on a great program - I plan to be there myself.  Maybe I'll see you there.

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Hey gang, that's it for me today.  We are heading out to check out all the things we missed yesterday.  Check back tomorrow and I let you in on some of the more interesting items I found at the show.

See ya' tomorrow,  -David