Fearman Photo

The dream of becoming a professional photographer is one filled with ideas of exciting clients, creative freedom and endless artistic possibilities. Rarely does that dream include laborious paperwork tasks, diligent contract negotiations with a client, tax filings or invoicing, yet that’s what a lot of photographers end up spending a majority of their time doing. 

Just a few years ago studio photographers had to shell out hundreds or thousands of dollars for database developers who would create custom (or at least semi-custom) solutions to track their businesses operating tasks. Programs like FileMaker or Microsoft Access were used to track clients and jobs, despite the sometimes clumsy or tedious steps needed just to generate an invoice or follow up on an e-mail. If a studio’s database developer went out of business, they were often stuck without the ability to make changes to documents or fix the inevitable bugs that crop up. 

Luckily the Internet has allowed specialized tools to be developed in markets that were otherwise too small for large software companies to focus their attention on, and a host of custom solutions are now offered with affordable (and scalable) pricing and support that’s always available. And with the data being generated by online apps living in the cloud, there’s less fear that a lost or stolen computer will mean the end of a studio’s ability to conduct business. 

The following is a breakdown of our favorite studio-management tools available to photographers today. 

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“Sure, we’ve seen our share of weird accessories that may come across as odd or absurd, but what about the cleverly-designed items inspired by cameras? Some shutterbugs would go to great lengths to acquire camera-inspired items to remind them of their beloved snappers. They may come in the form of cufflinks to match an outfit or a pencil sharpener resembling a vintage twin-lens reflex camera. We’ve scoured the Web and rounded up some of the more interesting peripherals that may interest you, take a look.”

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Aaron Nace at Phlearn has put together a incredibly solid list of the “Most Inspirational Photographers” out there. Well done my friend, a lot of incredible talent on that list. 

(Source: phlearn.com)

“And Why It’s Now Official – I Am Permanently Switching To Lightroom 4x

Since dropping out of MacWorld and most of the other big electronics/computer shows, WWDC (The World Wide Developer’s Conference) in San Francisco has become Apple’s most important venue for product announcements. What used to be all about code and SDKs is now about that and hardware.

This week’s WWDC Keynote brought lots of hardware. A few surprises and a few things that I predicted.

Let’s start with the new MacBook laptop line. The big news is a 15.4″ 2880×1880, 4.46 pound laptop code named Verge. It’s just .71 inches thick. Comes with SD reader, HDMI port, USB2/3 x2 and two Thunderbolt ports. It ships with 2.3GHz quad core i7 processor, eight GB RAM and very fast video memory with seven hours of battery life for $2199 in the base configuration. Configured the way I plan to order my unit the cost is a ridiculous $4098.00 including the best of the best of the best in each category with Apple Care. This will be the most expensive laptop I ever buy so I’m waiting 30-60 days to let the early adopters help Apple work out the bugs.

The new display will be a boon to photographers but slow your roll. The new display means Photoshop and similar programs will need to be recoded to work with it. I suspect current calibration hardware/software might need to be re-worked as well. So don’t jump into this thing with mission-critical work just yet. Let it sort itself out. That’s another reason I am waiting. I want to make sure that Lightroom and Photoshop (along with the various plug-ins I use) are all compatible.

Apple also announced Mountain Lion – shipping in July – it’s new $19.95 (upgrade price from Snow Leopard up) OS which has all sorts of cool new features that those of us in the Mac community will likely enjoy. The new iCloud services look to be improved – and they needed to be.

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“APE contributor Meaghen Brown interviews Howard Bernstein about the most often asked question we get.

Considered among New York’s most respected photography agents, Howard Bernstein, has been keeping an eye on talented photographers for over 25 years now, and his artists management firm, Bernstein and Andriulli, now boasts a hot-list of clients ranging from Adidas to The New Yorker. We caught up with him for a bit of insight as to how the relationship between photographers and agents actually works.”

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“If you admire those moody, sparsely lit portraits where the subject’s face is surrounded by darkness, you may despair that you will never get that shot without a studio and black backdrop. Glyn Dewis, a professional photographer, retoucher and trainer in Britain, uses this technique often, calling it “the invisible black backdrop.” It turns out you don’t need either. You can fake a black backdrop even on a sunny day outdoors with just a camera and separate flash.”

Now I can’t personally say that I have all these items but there are certainly some good recommendations on this list…

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“Photography as both a profession and a hobby is an incredibly expansive topic that covers a remarkably vast range of subjects from science and art. No matter where you lie on the professional spectrum, there is simply always more to learn. We spent countless hours scouring the web for the best content we could find and share with you, and today we’ll help you expand your knowledge with 100 photography related tutorials!”

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