Kate Benson

This is geeky. Aren’t photographers supposed to be though? I don’t have an iPhone, I don’t even like the iPhone. But it’s because I LOVE Google Voice (so if you ever call me and are prompted to say your name you are calling my Google Voice number) and the iPhone doesn’t support Google Voice. So I will never buy an iPhone. That’s okay though, because in June Sprint released the HTC EVO and everyday my husband or I find something new and fun that this phone does. But I’m not trying to sell you the phone, I want you to check out this app and whether you like the iPhone, the HTC EVO, or any other smartphone this app is too much fun not to recommend!

http://www.appstorehq.com/retrocamera-android-240837/app it’s a free app that applies filters to your photographs so that they look like different types of Polaroids, a pinhole camera exposure onto film, or other really cool effects. I’m in love with it. My only negative thought is that the images produced are teeny weeny tiny files and my phone has an 8 megapixel camera on it. So while these images will never do anything more than live in cyberspace, I will keep using this app because it is so neat.

Here’s a few to check out, there will be many more Retro Camera App posts… oh yes, this is way too fun.

Retro Camera photograph of I95 somewhere between Orlando and Miami

Retro Camera photography of powerlines at sunset off the highway

Retro Camera photography using the pinhole camera in b&w

Retro Camera photography using the polaroid camera, buildings on I95

Shooting portraits is hard so it’s nice to get on the other side of the camera and remember how much work it is to be photographed. Sam really was my motivator this morning, he has been twisting my arm for months to get a new artist portrait. So with the help of our dog Budapest (I like to call Boo because he is afraid of just about everything) we had a little photoshoot in the backyard. For the most part, we were shooting for fun. Sam did a great job as photographer and I choose the first shot we took to be my new headshot, after that we just decided to play.

Here’s some of the photographs!

Budapest on my lap

Giving Boo a hug

The new headshot

Of course we had to snap a shot of us together!

And then I took the camera back to shoot Sam's new big arms from Dragon Boating!

Classic dog and master photograph here. Sam is the favorite.

Boo smelling the camera

He's a happy boy

I was really excited and lucky to have my sister Jacquelyn Benson (she’s an amazing writer) and her boyfriend Dan visiting this week. Besides hitting the beach and BBQing almost every day we also took a fishing trip, visited Tobacco Road, and had many more adventures. Naturally I was sad to see them go back to their home in Maine but I look forward to heading up north sometime this summer to play with them again.

To start you off, a little love shot from Sam of him and I!

Hope I have been able to temp some of my family and friend in far away lands to come visit too!

My loving husband set the alarm for quarter to seven in the morning today. Not exactly the way I was hoping to start my day, but I had promised him the next time I had a free morning I would go take some photographs with him and our dog Budapest.

It was crazy windy at the beach my hat kept blowing away and I had forgotten to bring a hair tie so it made it hard to see! But I got some cool shots in because we had great light!

I was really inspired by the colors and as a result I wanted to pay tribute to the golden days of Polaroid.

I had a lot of fun creating these and I hope that comes through! The colors, light and texture are so graphic on Polaroid transfers.

Getting inspired!!

These are blogs that put other photobloggers to shame. I imagine keeping up with these blogs alone take all the photographers time! If only one day I could travel the world to take pictures, then play with them in retouching and post them to my blog for a living. *sigh* A photographer can dream can’t she??

Stuck in Customs -wow, wow, wow, Trey Ratcliff way to be dedicate! He promises to put a new photo on every day and keeps that promise (claims to only miss about 10 days a year). Somehow, between traveling the world to take pictures, giving speeches + interviews, playing with all his fun Nik software tricks, he sits down and creates (from what I can tell) a substantial post with a photo. The real kicker, the photo’s are really really good! Most photographers would be happy to create a shot like that a month, or a year even! Trey just whips them out every day.

Durham Township -Kathleen Connally, showing us the way to look around you to find amazing photos. She’s not traveling the world like Trey, she driving/walking/exploring around her town and county showing us how beautiful photos can be taken without paying for those plane tickets. Although she doesn’t post every day (we can’t all be like Trey) she posts a lot. Check out the photo information, she isn’t shy about letting us know what she’s shooting with and doing to each picture to get the images to look like that! It’s a great learning tool, and she has motivated me to purchase a new lens or two.

And just for fun, Stumbled Across This Gem -It’s not always about pretty pictures, sometime it’s about resources. This list of helpful links includes photoblogs, creative sites like Cheapshooter.com and more. It’s from photography-colleges.org and called the top 100 photography blogs, very cool.

What’s your favorite photoblog?

South Beach Patrol Headquarters

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One of the last shots I caught that morning.

Last weekend I had a photo assignment to capture Ocean Drive and give it a route 66, old postcard type feel. I had to wait for the perfect day, something where the clouds were really interesting and when it was early enough in the morning (and also late enough) to get the buildings lit just right. My patience (or procrastination) paid off and last weekend we had the perfect day!

Remember junior high? How you had to hit spell check after you wrote an essay? How about when you were doing your math homework and gave it that little once over to catch any mistakes? Although we would all LOVE to repress those memories a little longer there is an important lesson in them: proof read your work. Just because we graduated junior high, high school and some of us even college doesn’t get us off the hook for double checking what we do.

Sometimes it’s a little easier. For example if your sending out your resume of COURSE you’ll check your spelling. But do you take it any further than that? Do you actually read it out loud to hear how it is going to sound to someone reading it? If you recognize the importance of sounding intelligent in a resume than wouldn’t you also recognize that any email there after to that client is equally important. Take the time, read your email out loud. Most email hosts have a check spelling option but if you hit the wrong key and managed to still spell an actual work (although not the word you wanted) spell check is not going to catch it. Reading it back to yourself is.

Then there are harder places to double check, like your images. If you are creating a series of pictures you need to make sure any retouching you’ve done stays consistent throughout all of them. Don’t saturate the crap out of you sky in one shot and then leave it be in the next if they are part of the same story. If it’s personal work for yourself or work for a client, this is a very good habit to develop. If possible, use a program that let’s you open all the images in one window and see how they flow together. I love using Bridge for this. You can hold down the command key and select multiple images to be viewed at once. I do this for all my editorials. This also creates an amazing editing tool. Often I take a photograph out and replace it with another to see if the story is stronger that way. I’ve even gotten into the habit of taking screen shots of the edit and sending it to the editor I’m working with. It’s fairly normal to have 6 or 7 different takes on the story before we settle on the strongest layout.

Yet, if the images weren’t edited to look like they fit together this process wouldn’t work. Of course an image that doesn’t match the others in color and tone is going to create a stumble in the story. All the shots we consider putting into the fashion spread are given a quick retouch so we can edit fairly. See this example,

When you haven't retouched both images.

When you have retouched both images.

If your deadline/due date for an assignment isn’t due right away, finish it early and come back to it a few days later. Check to see if you still like the edits you made in post production. There are a lot of times I will get excited about something and then realize two days later it just doesn’t work.

Even when you have a client and you’ve shots 500 images for their website, go back and check. Although at the end of shooting, loading, and retouching 500 photo’s the last thing you want to do is see any more of it, force yourself to do it. You don’t want your clients thinking you are sloppy and there’s the chance that someone else isn’t going to catch your mistake either (if they are doing anything with your images odds are they are sick of them too). Worse case scenario, your careless mistake ends up published somewhere for the world to see.

So take a few extra minutes, a half an hour late without any mistakes is going to save your client more time in the end and will help you build a better reputation as a professional.

sedona2

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The sun is disappearing on Bell Rock.

How often does it rain in the desert? Well, in my case almost exactly the whole trip! I was trying to get something totally different than Miami landscapes in my portfolio and I went to Sedona to visit friends and take some great images. Crisp shots of desert sun with blue skies were my hope but mother nature had something else in mind. But I have to admit that although it wasn’t what I was expecting to shoot, there were a few beautiful pictures that I did walk away with. I’d still love to go back and hike and shoot some more.