For the last year, I’ve been switching between my Canon 24-70mm 2.8L and Tamron 17-50mm 2.8 to capture wide angles and some zoom shots, but the only long lens I have is an ultra-slow Tamron super zoom. For financial reasons, I was torn between this lens and the new Tamron 70-200mm, but the IS put this one over the top. I’ve been doing a lot more photography of people at podiums from a distance and I need the extra few stops of protection to avoid camera shake.

I’m taking the new lens out to Centralia this weekend to see what it can do. Barring rain or accidental death, I’ll post photos on Monday.

This entire set was shot with a Canon G9 point and shoot. For those on the fence about getting one, stop thinking, The G9 is the best sub-pro camera and handy in situations where you are forbidden to bring in a pro camera.

Case in point: For some reason or another I got shut out of shooting the Maiden show in Jersey. After being asked not to bring any cameras into the venue with removable lenses, I figured I might as well bring along the G9.

We were in row 20 from the stage with pretty good sight lines but no way to get a clear or steady shot. I set the camera on aperture priority and started firing at whatever I could get. If I timed the shot with the lights, I could get some decent highlights, but the grain at 800 and 1600 sucked. Luckily, a little post processing and some creative license later and I think we have some usable shots.

These are definitely not tack sharp shots taken with my 24-70mm L lens, but they are better than nothing. Or at least, better than the army of camera phone shooters I had to dodge.

I got a nice pick up by IronMaiden.com. Take a look here. I guess I’m not good enough to get a press pass, but good enough to land above Rolling Stone and The New York Times on Maiden’s own site. Go figure.

That’s what a ton of people in the blogosphere are saying about the photo networking site’s recent deal with Getty that will allow the stock giant access to Flickr photos. From what I understand, Getty will hand select the best photos on Flickr and then offer the photographers the option to license the photos for sale through Getty. The photographer gets paid on a sliding pay scale and Getty gets a ton of rights to the photos.

I personally don’t see it as a bum deal. Amateur photographers that would normally just have their work sitting on Flickr can now make some cash for their work, and pros that have never entered the world of stock photography can have an added revenue stream. If you don’t want Getty to own your work, don’t sign the agreement.

I realize that this deal sucks for professionals that have relied on Getty for years to make their living, but sadly, with microstock sites proliferating like bad weeds, it is bound to happen anyway.

The fact is, photo editors are already scouring Flickr for stock and news photos. I’ve sold hundreds of dollars worth of pictures that would be collecting digital dust on my hard drives if they weren’t on the site. I’ve always used Flickr as a place to dump photos that are either personal or I can’t sell to magazines. I upload them at low res with watermarks and have had very few images stolen. Sure, I’ve received the occasional lame email from an editor asking to use my photo in exchange for some useless photo credit, but just as often, I’ve had a legitimate offer to buy a photo.

What I’m more surprised about, is why Flickr–and its parent company Yahoo–never tried to turn the site into a microstock site similar to iStock or Shutterstock. They could have cut out the middle man and reaped most of the benefits. As of now, Flickr is mum about what they are getting out of this. It’s also interesting that Flickr’s founders quit the company just a month before this thing was announced. Only time will tell. Getty says that nothing has been decided on yet, and they will be selecting photos over the next six months or so.

Skin & Ink Magazine just published a feature story I wrote about tattoo portrait artist Shawn Barber. For those that don’t know, Shawn does portraits of tattoo artists and uses really surreal techniques to capture their limbs at different angles. He was a great guy to interview and I think he chatted with me for over two hours during two separate interviews. The August issue is on newsstands now.

One of the dumbest ideas I’ve had as of late was to try and interview artist Sunny Buick while she was tattooing me. I lasted one question and then just stopped talking. I did get some nice portraits of her after the tattoo session. Hopefully, I can pick her brain next time she is in town and I’m not getting inked by her. This photo was taken while in the middle of being pricked. Lots of fun.

Those that listen to me babble know that I’m enthralled by the photoworks of Adam Wallacavage. The man does some of the best wide angle portraits I’ve ever seen and I’m obsessed with his use of saturated colors, particularly in his band photos.

What I didn’t know until a year or so ago was that Adam also makes giant octopus-looking chandeliers. We’re not talking cheesy glass and crystal lights here. These are ornate, hand-casted fixtures that look like they were dredged out of the Atlantic.

For those dying to see his work, Adam is part of a two-man show along with Ray Caesar at Jonathan Levine Gallery. I got a chance to photograph the crazed genius during the opening party and needless to say, I was a nervous wreck. There’s only so many ways you can pose an artist to make them look somewhat interesting at an art opening and I’m running low on ideas. Not to mention, it’s not exactly easy to photograph a photo legend.

Luckily, Adam had one of his sconces mounted onto a mirror that bent the light just enough to give people a distorted look. After spotting the mirror earlier in the evening, I snapped a few photos of unsuspecting onlookers to gauge the angle and the light. I eventually gained the nerve to ask him to pose for the shot, and three clicks later he told me I got the shot.

Only one problem. I got someone else in the photo to. Using my lame Photoshop skills and a few hours of work, I actually matched up the wallpaper from a few other shots and cloned it over the guy. Sure, it’s not an exact match, but the photo works much better. Hopefully the wallpaper people don’t mind.

Word of advice: never agree to shoot an art opening the day after getting tattooed on your calf. It’s going to hurt and you are going to look like an idiot. Literally 24 hours after going under Sunny Buick’s gun, I went to cover the latest show at Jonathan LeVine’s Gallery for Juxtapoz, and I’m just glad that everyone was all smiles, because it took me half an hour to hobble across the room.

Jonathan LeVine hosted Tim Biskup and Titi Freak. Both artists are great on their own, but its cool to see contrasting styles under one roof. Often, gallery owners try ganging similar artists together, but in this case, Biskup and Titi’s work provided an escape from each other. That makes no sense, but roll with it.

Biskup’s work, in particular, was so different from the prints and toys I used to buy from him a few years back. It was great to see his stature rise in such a small amount of time. I also had a blast photographing him against the giant dead dragon in the middle of the room. Titi Freak spun some great yo-yo tricks earlier in the evening for video and was kind enough to oblige me with a series of shots of him in action. We set it up so that he would throw yo-yo out at me without hitting the lens and even did a dry run to make sure he wouldn’t hit it. The shot came out great, and the lens is still okay.

Kid Robot celebrated the release of its 8″ Greed Dunny and Toy Baroness’s 29th Birthday in style with a huge bash at New York’s Knitting Factory. Artists and luminaries came out in droves to party with friends and rock out to a live performance by Spank Rock. Tim Biskup manned the turntables as hundreds of costumed Kid Robot devotees danced the night away.

I just realized that I never posted a final review of my ScanCafe experience. Well, after nearly three months of waiting, I received a nice little box from ScanCafe with a fancy DVD (full-size case with custom art) and my original photos in the shoddy packaging I had originally sent them in.

After dropping all the photos from the DVD into Lightroom, it’s safe to say that ScanCafe did a stellar job scanning and cleaning these 28 year old snapshots. The color restoration is better than the test scans I tried on my Epson scanner (which took nearly 20 minutes a photo) and the level of grain is as good (or bad) as one would expect from aging photos.
I printed up one of the photos as a 4″x6″ on my HP inkjet printer and it came out a touch soft, but way better than the original photo. The only problem I have is on my end. The original photographs that my mother took three decades ago were printed on what looks like 3.25″x4.25″ Kodak paper with rounded corners. Trying to crop these shots for modern paper is a bear.

Loving the results I got from this batch, I decided to take the plunge and sent a ton of negatives over for scanning. The only problem I had was that I couldn’t tell some of the black and white negatives from the color negatives. ScanCafe charges a premium for B&W scanning and I didn’t want to gyp them. I called to find out what I should do, and the customer service rep told me to just guess and that it would all be averaged out in the end.
I also mentioned some of my complaints, the biggest being the long transit time between shipping from their SF office to India. The guy on the other end explained that shipping to India includes time that the package sits at the office and is opened and inspected, which takes longer than transit. However, they have no way to note that. I understood, but mentioned that some customers (including myself) might worry that the package is lost. I mean three weeks to ship to India is crazy. He said they were working on updating the system.

This time, transit from SF to India only took a few time. The package is now sitting in queue waiting for scanning. I’m much happier knowing it’s there and hope for great results.