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

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

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!

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.

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?

#1. Anyone interested in being an artist really needs to read Caroll Michels book, How to Survive and Prosper as an Artist, Selling Yourself Without Selling Your Soul. It’s amazing how glamorous being an artist, a photographer, a singer sounds before you get into what being an independent business owner entails!

#2. Photographers, you need to join www.asmp.com -if you’re not a member yet; you really aren’t doing what you should be. The American Society of Media Photographers is “A trade association which protects and promotes the interests of photographers whose work is for publication”. The resources here are valuable to photographers of all walks of life, not just publication/editorial photographers. Every intern I have, and photographer friend I make I encourage joining. The membership isn’t that much to start and being a member offers you discounts at places like B&H, Livebooks, and more. On the website, photographers post sample estimates, another section has bad contract examples that teach you what words to stay away from! But really, this is the most helpful group I’ve joined. Experts travel around the country giving lectures on the business; the site has a seemly infinite amount of resources!

#3. Use the web wisely! I searched the better part of a day to find and read contracts that were posted on the web to help artist not get screwed. A few that I liked are, http://www.enchantedcreek.com/Art/Contracts/artist-gallery.html -this sample contract is for an artist and gallery consignment agreement. I used this contract, along with http://www.docstoc.com/docs/21100400/ArtistGallery-Consignment-Agreement and www.clackamasartsalliance.org to get what I needed.

For my needs, none of the 3 contracts did the trick just right. So I created a hybrid of the 3, added and changed what I needed to customize it to fit my selling relationship. I suspect most galleries have a contract ready to go. But being ready to help your client who may not have one, but wants to sell your work is always a good idea. Remember, in the world of freelance photography, it’s about giving your clients what they are asking for and keeping their lives as easy as possible while doing it but if it’s not in writing you’ve got no guarantee. It’s not fair to ask your clients just to trust you, a contract gives them piece of mind as much as it give you piece of.

South Beach Patrol Headquarters

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!

Click on the above images to see them larger.

On my birthday (about 2 weeks ago) my husband and I received a phone call from a neighbor asking us if we would like to possibly adopt a dog. Friends of a friend of a friend had found this dog running around in 3 lanes of traffic and quickly put him in their car and saved his life. Once they got him home their dog did not like this new addition and they had been trying to find a home for him since.

Having already started the process of adopting a dog (getting the paperwork together from the landlady to bring to the shelter, etc) we were surprised by the phone call and agreed to meet him. Needless to say, the next day he started his new life in the Benson/Trotter family.

Lots of calls started coming in from our friends and family, everyone wanted to see the dog. So I snapped a few pictures of him using the window as my light source and a high ISO. He’s just had the bad surgery so he is wearing a cone, which cracks me up! The pictures are retouched, lowered the saturation, threw in a curves layer and some channel mixers for fun but I would go back and match the colors and tones better to each other if I were to do anything with these shots. Enjoy!

So you get that phone call, someone wants to hire you and wants a quote. It’s a job you are crazy excited to do, and to be honest, you would do it for free just because you are that excited. But that is the #1 mistake you can make! If you don’t put a value on your work, no one else will. So you know better, you know if you offer your services for free and are hoping the client will be excited and think ‘what an amazing person to work with, they’ll do it for free!! I’ll always work with them!’. When really, a serious client is thinking, ‘oops, free? Hmm.. I thought this photographer was really amazing and now I’m not sure. Why would they be doing this for free? What do they know that I don’t’ or ‘oh! I guess this photographer isn’t as experienced as I was hoping. I don’t want to take a risk like that with this shoot.’

Yet even giving a client pricing that is way off market will also leave them thinking your not experienced and can scare them away.

I know how it is in the beginning. Your hungry! You want to have these jobs because it will be building your book and getting you on the right track towards doing this full time. In the words of experience with this, don’t do it! There are many different types of clients out there, and in the same way there are all kinds of levels of photographers. Working with the wrong type of client, especially in the beginning can throw off your whole business plan and mean you end up doing damage control for years!

Friends of mine often get in touch with me because someone wants them to do a HUGE job for them and they are asked to give them a quote. I remind them, it’s not very many times you quote someone and they take it without any problems. A lot of people, especially in 2009 are looking to cut corners but still get everything done. Always, if you hear your client sounding disappointed in the quote see if there is a way to make it work for both of you.

On the flip side of that, there are people who are way off base with the value of photography today. I had one guy want to buy some images from me, license them for 2 years to use in international and domestic adds, make prints of them, etc. He said he was looking for full usage for 2 years, exclusively. It was for quite a few images and I had not been asked for this kind of usage. I looked at stock sites and did a lot of research to find out what the value of these images would be. It was a high number, and I knew he wouldn’t pay it. But that is what the images would make if I sold these rights through those stock sites with that usage. We sat down, had a meeting. I gave him my number and he said he was thinking $100 for the images with those terms. There was no way to negotiate because the prices were so far away from each other. I walked away from that meeting, quickly!

This is a client you don’t want. This is the kind of client that hasn’t made any decisions about what he wants to use the images for/in and just wants to have all options available to him, but also has no idea of the value of an image. You can’t work with a client like this. I never could have given him the images for $100. If I had, it would have been unfair to all of my other clients who are loyal to me and agree to pay fair prices. Other opportunities for those images have come along and they have made me money. Much more than what he was looking to spend. A lot of people intentionally take advantage of younger professionals and despite my age, I look young and have a surprisingly established business for being under 30.

So before you give your quote, look everywhere for rates. Even if it’s the strangers places, like a reputable stock site with the licensing and usage plugged in. But don’t undercut yourself! And be careful how you quote! Again, interning and assisting full time with an established photographer is a great way to hear how they negotiate and handle rates!

Ever tried flying with your camera, laptop, lighting, modifiers, hard drive, tripod and the rest of your gear?

It sucks. We all, even if have never had the opportunity, can agree that although sounding glamours, traveling with all that stuff is just a headache. We can always rent the gear when we get there, if of course we’re going somewhere that is an option. Even then though, is it really worth giving up the comfort of using your equipment to have the discomfort of traveling with it? Forget about the international issues. Making sure you have paperwork for any equipment that looks new so you won’t be accused of buying it over sea’s and required to pay taxes on it, again. Trying to debate how much you can get away with bringing on board with you verses (shutter) checking in your gear cases. The homework of just figuring this out takes an insane amount of time. So luckily there are some other options! The one that I am most excited about is Southwest Cargo. I’m a big Southwest Air fan to start, so their cargo shipping really gets me excited. Of course it’s really not an option for international travel but totally worth looking into for domestic shoots. www.swacargo.com there are photographers who swear by this. You can ship it before you go, it’s a whole lot faster than UPS and cheaper than regular mail.

I highly recommend looking into it!