Ash, Mike, and I managed to grab this great engagement photo of them during their engagement party at Waipuna Lodge. We took this engagement photo in a corner of the bar area with light from a speedlight mounted in the camera's hot shoe. The light was bounced off the ceiling and also thrown forward a little bit by virtue of the speedlight's built in bounce card.
While the technical elements are important in setting the camera up to capture the image what really makes this shot are the natural expressions that Ash and Mike are showing. They're enjoying themselves and, at this point in time, weren't really expecting me to take a photo. Candid moments like this, with people showing real emotion, are what real photographs are made of.
Lately my inbox has been hit by a lot of phishing scams pretending to be from ASB. Here's the latest scam that avoided my spam filter. At the bottom of the post are reasons to believe it is a scam.
update@asbbank.co.nzme@localhost.com
Due to incorrect information provided during your signup process, your account has been deactivated from using our online services. Therefore, we invite you to update your profile in order to regain full access to our services. Our enhanced security procedures will help protect your personal information.
To update your profile, please follow the reference below: ASB FastNet Login >>
If your account information is not updated within the next 24 hours, your account will be permanently deleted and you will no longer be able to use our online services.
We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.
Sincerely,
ASB Bank Customer Care
Reasons to believe it is a scam: 1) The last time I signed up with any bank was over 2 years ago. If they've gone 2 years without contacting me there are bigger issues with their service than them having a minor glitch during the sign-up process 2) ASB shouldn't have my e-mail address anyway 3) The link in the e-mail goes to a non-ASB page (judging by the address, I haven't clicked the link and neither should you) 4) They haven't used my name or any identifying information 5) The e-mail is sent to undisclosed recipients meaning the same message has been sent to a lot of people 6) There are no contact details provided in the message 7) There aren't even any ASB logos in the message (making this a crap phishing attempt) 8) There are 2 from addresses - 1 is from asbbank, the other is from localhost. Neither of these are from the actual asb domain asb.co.nz 9) Your bank will NEVER ask you to do something like this.
Interestingly new sign-ups are reasonably common around this time of year, particularly with University students being offered all kinds of incentives to sign-up to a particular bank. This scam may be looking to target this sign-up period. However if this is the case they're actually about 4 weeks early as the Unviersity Semester starts in late February and the banks are yet to launch their normal sign-up campaigns.
Colour temperature is measured in K and ranges from low blue temperatures to higher orange temperatures. Colour temperature varies by light source. Tungsten lights, standard domestic lights, appear warm and orange to most cameras. When shooting using a tungsten white balance the white point is moved higher meaning that things that would otherwise appear orange appear white and things that would otherwise appear white now appear blue.
In the example above the white balance has been set for the tungsten house lights in the kitchen and a flash without a gel has been used to light the foreground. Normally light from a flash is appears white in camera. However as the flash has a cooler colour temperature than the house lights (which the white balance has been set for) here the light from the flash appears blue.
The shot above is exactly the same as the first except this time the white balance has been set for the flash. Now the areas lit by the flash appear white and the areas lit by the tungsten house lights appear orange.
It is fairly common for photographers to offer clients a few packages to choose from. Some photographers offer more choice, some less. Which is best?
Despite what you may initially think less choice is usually better than more choice. Fewer choices mean that fewer decisions must be made while more choices means more decisions must be made. More decisions = more fatigure = less enthusiasm = less sales.
In this video Alexis Ohanian uses the example of a Greenpeace 'name the whale' poll to demonstrate how losing control of your message can be a good thing. While Greenpeace wanted the whale to have a sensible name they got more attention by providing a silly name then conceding to the wishes of their audience. Importantly while they didn't achieve one small goal, giving the whale a sensible name, the attention that they garnered through the process helped them achieve bigger goals. The most important being that awareness of the issue was increased.
While Mr. Splashy Pants was not their first choice it was their BEST choice.
Here the examples of how the Chinese Government and Barack Obama use and control social media is highlighted. Here it is suggested that a lack of control can be beneficial.
What follows is poorly written and may be more confusing than beneficial. You have been warned.
While Freud and Rogers were both psychologists they each had very different views on what drove people and how they dealt with inner conflict. While both theorists suggested that people used defences to help alleivate the psychological consequences of inner conflict the nature of these defences varied in a number of ways. These are best understood in terms of the basic view of the person, the source of the conflict, how the conflict is alleviated, and the long term consequences of these actions.
Freud and Rogers disagreed about what motivated people. Freud believed that we had two main drives, one for sex and one for aggression. Unrestricted these drives would produce behaviour that is incompatible with our society and thus these drives needed to be controlled by the superego (rules about what is acceptable in society) and the ego (the middle man responsible for satisfying the id and the superego). As such Freud felt that people were essentially bad and society played in role in making us good.
The conflict between the sexual and aggressive drives of the id and the rules of the superego lead to psychological anxiety. For Freud defence mechanisms were the tools that the ego used to relieve this anxiety. Defence mechanisms allow for the energy from the sexual or aggressive drives to be released in a way that is acceptable to the superego.
Under Freud's theory defence mechanisms are essentially good things. They allow us to go about our daily lives without constantly expressing aggressive or sexual behaviour. Assuming everything functions as it should defence mechanisms can be used long term with no ill effect. In fact defence mechanisms must be used by everyone long term if we want to have a functioning society.
Rogers on the other hand felt that we all had a desire to be the best that we could be; a desire to self actualise. He felt that people's pychological issues were the result of some aspect of society, our environment, or even ourselves, preventing us from being able to follow this tendency. To Rogers then people are essentially good.
For Rogers defences are things that we use in order to fool ourselves into thinking that our actions are in line with who we think we are/who we want to be. Defences allow us to continue to think that we are moving towards being our ideal selves.
Unfortunately though with long term use of defences it is possible for people to lose track of who they are. As defences are used more and more the gap between the ideal self (who we want to be) and the actual self (who we are) widens. The gap between these two versions of ourselves is termed incongruence and greater incocngruence indicates poorer psychological wellbeing. Ironically then Rogers defencces are not particularly beneficial to those that use them.
Chase got where he is backwards. He didn't assist anyone. He didn't study photography formally.
Quitting
Chase quit medical school, a PhD program, and sport to do what he loved. He wanted to create things.
Transparency
- Information should be free
- Sharing trade secrets
- Blogging
- Youtube videos
- A rising tide (of knowledge) floats all boats
Villain
Sharing lead Chase to be vilified by his peers and the old guard. They were worried that what he was doing was taking money from their pockets and putting it in the hands of a 14 year old with a D40.
Now is the time for change
Content creators are now also distributors. That is what the internet has done for photography, video, and other sources. This is what makes the audience of hundreds of thousands possible.
Time for a new culture around creativity
Move from old art to social art, create content and context
interdisciplinary
participate
interact
symbiotic
everybody can win
incomplete without another person participating in some way
An opportunity for ecosystems
This collaboration requires a place to occur. In can be a physical location or one based online. If you provide a space for a community to thrive and a way to draw people in you can create a healthy creative environment like the Best Camera community.
Why do this?
It's good for you. It helps your soul, it can help your career. and it can help you develop your own creativity.
It's good for the world. Apparently creativity has been plummeting since the 1990s.
Jasmine Star
Top 10 wedding photographer in 4 years with no formal qualifications
Quit a law program to become a wedding photographer. Started with a simple Canon camera (20d) and a kit lens.
Zack Arias remembers her from a course he ran because she had excellent people skills, sent him cards, and had her brand in place before she even had a lens in her hand.
Joey Lawrence
Self taught pro Photoshopper and Photographer from 16
No formal training. Made home movies since childhood. Started photography with local bands. Crafted his portfolio to make it look like he had worked more jobs than he actually did.
Rob Haggart
Photo editor
The definition of photographer is changing. You are no longer restricted to being a shooter of still images. Create value with your images and your equipment in anyway that you can. Break out of the cog mode of thinking and working.
Zack Arias
Simple Gear for amazing photos
Also succeeded by doing things backwards, by not using the typical path in terms of gear etc.
Don't fear your clients. They are real people who are often under a lot of pressure, try to understand their needs and feel free to discuss your approach with them to reach a common understanding.
Jobs have 3 kinds of value - economic, creativity, opportunity
Vincent Laforet
dSLR filmmaker
Usually a late adopter but an early dSLR filmmaker, nothing makes him feel more alive than sharing.
The career paths that used to work often no longer exist.
Fear is the worst thing in life. It will freeze you up.
You aren't born with talent. You cultivate it.
Chase Jarvis
Photographer
You develop your look by taking a lot of photos.
What follows is the summary of experiences related to 4 similar but not quite identical photobooks ordered from an emerging company during their first Christmas Rush. Lessons have almost certainly been learnt and all interactions with customer service people were fantastic. While I may have been able to get things moving a bit quicker by making more noise I was sympathetic to the stresses they were likely to be under at this time of year so I avoided being difficult.
Overall:
The products and the people were great. Delivery times and clarity around the construction process provide areas for improvement. Sadly patience and understanding seem to have been a necessary component of completing the ordering process during the pre-Christmas period. While I assume this was a freak occurence I cannot yet be sure. I will re-update with future orders.
Would I order again?
I would, my wife wouldn't, and the people we gave the gifts to already have. I would as I believe that this is a valuable service that will improve overtime. My wife wouldn't as she found the uncertainty and failure to deliver our first order by the Christmas deadline unacceptable. The people who received the photobooks as gifts were impressed enough by the quality of the prints to spread the word about the company and use the service themselves.
Materials:
Cover: The cover material is very nice and differentiates itself from the book's interior. The cover seems to be printed on a light fabric or canvas. The texture is nice to the touch and also to the eye.
Construction: The books feel secure when vieiwing them on the table but a little wobbly when carrying them open. The books are generally uniform in this regard but there are slight variations in the gluing of some elements.
Pages: The pages have a nice feel to them. They are 170gsm with a slight glossiness to them. The whites are also nice and clean. They do become translucent while turning (you can see through them a bit) but are perfectly opaque under normal viewing conditions (lying flat).
Ink: The colours are vibrant and strong. In the imperfect book some of the black and white shots appeared to have a minor green tinge to them. In the reprinted book and the other books the ink goes in the other direction in some places (a magenta tint). The contrast in the new books also isn't as strong as it was in the earlier version. The cover of the new books is noticeably lighter and shows a wider range of tones. This was an improvement over the initial print.
Print Resolution: The print resolution is solid. Some of our shots came up with a resolution warning, we suspected that these warnings were on the conservative side - aimed more at printing from point-and-shoot cameras than cameras and lenses with a higher image quality (dSLRs and the like) - and it looks like we were right. All of our images look great resolution wise but it should be noted that the quality of their printers will not make up for poor quality images, cameras, or lenses.
Service:
Pros Their Zealous service came through in their detection of imperfections in our photobook. As a result they took the initiative and reprinted our book before we asked them to. As an added bonus they sent through the imperfect book so we had something to look at in the meantime. They were also easily contacted and very polite in all our dealings with them. The customer service focus of this company is a great strength. Unfortunately the cons also make it a necessary one.
Cons When the books were first listed the turnaround time was listed as 15 days. In fact the turnaround time is 15 working days. This lead to a bit of dissappointment in that the book didn't arrive when we expected it to. That being said I have been in touch with the pixelpaint team and this error should be fixed soon.
The information in the my orders section still leaves a lot to be desired. While it does indicate whether your photobook order has been placed or is printing these labels don't seem to mean much. In fact your book will be in the printing phase from the moment your order is officially processed. As such it can be 'printing' for 15 working days. Furthermore our book needed to be reprinted - this was not indicated in the my orders section.
Surprisingly our reprinted book was the last book of our batch to be completed. This seems odd given that the order was placed first and they decided to reprint it before our additional orders were placed. It is also strange that, when we contacted pixelpaint to follow up on the progress of this book, we were told it was almost ready to be shipped a full 2 weeks before it was shipped and this book was rushed through an additional reprint when it turned out it was never dispatched.
It seems that the processes (the behind the scenes elements of the business) would benefit from some love and attention.
The combination of Digital RevTV, Chase Jarvis, and a Lego Camera was always going to be a solid bit of fun. Rather unexpectedly though it is also a valuable learning experience. If you watch the video you will find that Chase inadvertantly, perhaps habitually, talks through his approach to each situation and explains how he will work around the limitations of the lego camera. He does this by anticipating the shutter delay, figuring out what the approcimate focal length is, and even building upon the basic system through the use of external flash and an ND filter.
For those unfamiliar with the triggering trick here's how it works. Most external flashes have a slave mode. When the external flash is in this mode it will fire whenever it detects that another flash has been fired. The other flash doesn't have to be particularly powerful either, it just has to be powerful enough for the external flash to see it. Here then the external flash (the SB-900) is triggered by the lego cameras flash giving Chase control over an external flash.
The ND filter is required because when the lego camera is in flash mode the settings lock to correctly expose the image for the lego camera flash. The external flash is stronger (brighter) than the lego cameras flash which then leads to the image being overexposed. The ND filter acts like a pair of sun glasses for the camera, cutting down the amount of light that enters the lens bringing the image back towards a correct exposure.
