Michael [mahy-kuhl] – noun
1. A male given name. 2. A witty, charming professional wedding photographer who enjoys movies, exercise, romantic walks on the beach and large pepperoni pizzas.
Maven [may-ven] – noun
1. A connoisseur or trusted expert in a particular field who seeks to pass his knowledge onto others. 2. An intense gatherer of useful information. 3. An individual who demonstrates passion for learning and teaching a specific topic, particularly through a well connected social network.
Thank you for coming to my blog! I update it regularly, so if you ever want to know what I am up to, please come by and take a peek. Feel free to leave your comments below.
Speaking of LED lights- Lightpanels just announced a very interesting new 1x1 panel that lets you adjust Color Temperature as well as Brightness.
This is a very nice feature, considering that the LED panels are cool to the touch (not like hot lamps) & require very little power. Its a little too expensive right now (About $2500), but this is a good sign of things to come as prices will definitely come down with time. I think their non-temp control 1x1 models run just over $1,500 and I saw one at Vincent Laforet's workshop. It was extremely nice. Everyone I know that has used one has very positive things to say about them, the one major drawback: they have limited range.
If you haven't already you might want to take a look at their website, they have a lot of great information about video lighting:
I found their "On the Set" Section to be quite surprising, there are a lot of big time productions that are using these more and more.
I would imagine there will be several apps that will take advantage of the very bright LED light on the iPhone 4. I think this is somewhat funny because I was just talking with my programmer today about something like this, but these guys are way ahead of me and it looks like they have already submitted it.
I think this is significant because the LED on the iPhone 4 light is very bright- enough to possibly even use for a very soft fill for photography in the right circumstances, absolutely better than nothing and much more than just illuminating the screen with white. If someone could figure out how to overcrank the output on something like an iPAD, you could possibly have a way to use it as a light Panel.
I have a quick lesson on the APT DVD that shows you what the Sky Cam is and how it works. This was taken during filming. I haven't decided though, do you guys think I should include the Sky Cam Adapter instructions as part of the DVD ROM Bonus? I usually sell this separately for $35, (and I think the DVD will be about $39). I don't want to sell myself short, but I also want to pack it with as much content as possible.
So I've been trying to call my Dad to try the Facetime feature on our iPhones & we couldn't get it to work. I noticed when I called him, I had a "Facetime" button on my phone menu and thought you just push that to use it. We were both in WiFi range, but no luck.
Turns out there is one little setting you need to turn on. Its under "Settings" --> "Phone" --> Facetime --> "On"
Once we both did that, we were able to connect right there during the phone call. I must say...it was pretty cool to be able to see my Dad on Maui and chat with him through my iPhone. It works in both Horizontal and Vertical modes too! Looking forward to the day that I will be able to do this over my phone service instead of just WiFi.
Bonus Tip: How to take Screen Shots with your iPhone : Ever wonder how to take a screen shot of whatever was on your iPhone? No Problemo: Simply tap your home button and on/off button at the same time. If you do it right, you will get a white "flash" and a screen shot is sent to "photos. :)
Was digging through some really old images and found this from the Canon 580 Speedlite DVD. I becoming more and more a fan of having as minimal gear as possible, and attracting as little attention as possible. It seems that the more gear you have, the more unwanted attention it attracts. This set up was for the 'long exposures" video, and while one woman picked up on what I was doing (she actually came up, sat down and quietly listened without saying anything until I was finished), most passerby's ignore me completely.
Audio was fed in through a wireless mic, I used the white foam board for fill and held it place with my bag tripod cord. Slapped the camera on my tripod, used live view to compose, flipped lens switch to manual, focused on plane where I expected my head to line up, and did some tests. Once I felt I had a good set up, I shot the 5 minute clip in one take.
Picked up my iPhone 4 yesterday and wanted to tell you guys my initial impressions.
I arrived at 730am at the Chandler Mall and figured since I had pre-ordered I would be in and out in maybe 1-2 hours. There were a TON of people there, several hundred. I immediately noticed that there were a lot of weird things going on, some good, some bad.
First the good-
1. I give Apple props for handing out water & Gatorade, various snacks and what not and a little later on in the day, Pizza.
2. Once I got in the store, the service was fantastic and they had my 32GB iphone reserved as promised (which was otherwise sold out) for walk-ins.
3. Even though I had only reserved one iPhone, I decided to push my luck and ask for another, they gladly obliged. They had what seemed like hundreds of 16GB iPhones there and allowed me to purchase another for my Father. No problemo.
This was a little curious because it told me that there was indeed excess stock at the store, and not a little. While Apple reports that it sold 600,000 pre-orders, there were probably much, much more actually sold yesterday. Its possible that Apple has found a way to artificially manipulate demand just a little.
Think about it. Make a million (or 2 million for that matter) iPhones, and then sell out of "pre-orders". Perceived supply goes down, (which may or may not be the actual case) Perceived demand goes up...way up. Websites curiously have several issues (for the next several days), again, supply goes down, demand goes up. Apple conservatively forecasts that new shipments wont be available until July or August, again, perceived supplies go down, demand goes up. I am wondering if this is all a very brilliant marketing strategy?
There were a few things that I didn't like about yesterdays pick up:
A. The fact that Apple was letting walk-ins come in and buy. They were slowing the process down for those who had pre-ordered. At first they said it was a 5:1 (they would let in 5 Pre-Orders for every one, but in reality, it was probably closer to 2:1.
B. While the service was great once inside, they probably could have had more employees there.
Other than that, I was pretty happy with everything. I was able to get my phone in a few hours, as well as one for my Dad who wasn't expecting it for months.
Now the phone:
I've only had it for a day now, but so far my first impressions:
1. The improved screen is one of the biggest things to me. Its freaking awesome. SO sharp!
2. Clustering Apps- I LOVE it. I had pages of Apps before and now have just 3-4 because I can throw all of my "Reference", "Games" and "Photo Tools" Apps into separate folders.
3. The phone is smaller than the 3G and 3Gs.
4. It seems faster- to do anything. Not only opening Apps and websites, but even calling seems faster.
5. I like the new camera and video abilities. The Led flash (both constant for video and flash for photo) are very nice.
6. iBooks is able to transfer all of my previously purchased eBooks for my iPad, into my iPhone.
7. Oddly, iBooks is also able to open up PDF Contracts saved from Contract Maker Pro. Very, VERY, nice!
8. The resolution of text on the Apps is extremely sharp. If the update for the iPad is anything similar, this will solve all of the resolution issues we are seeing in text with non-native iPad apps. That update will probably come later this fall.
9. Im not crazy about the glass on the back, this is going to get scratched very soon. Will need to get a professional plastic wrap over it. For now I just left the original plastic that came with it, just took some scissors and cut off the bottom tab and the corner where the camera is.
Looking forward to trying out Face Time (video chat) later tonight and this weekend.
As far as all the reports about touching the left side of it hurts reception, I haven't been able to reproduce this myself, though I may not be holding it in the right-wrong way. Reception has been great, so far at least.
Anyone else get your iPhone 4? If so, what are your thoughts about it?
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We talked about doing this, so here goes:
Below are two pictures from a recent shoot. Besides resizing them, they are pretty much straight out of the camera. Browsers aside (which tend to also desaturate colors),
1. What do you see wrong with these images?
2. What would you do with them? (Would you abandon them (delete) or try to correct them in Photoshop? - If you think they are saveable, how would you correct them.
My "answers" are posted. (That's the password btw) :)
Contract Maker Pro has been on sale for just a few days, and it is just starting to get some attention. I was really worried the first day because we had almost no sales at all. It's kinda stressful because you work so hard on something for so long and it's always possible it will end up as a terrible flop. It's a risk I can live with, still a little stressful, but this is just life.
I have a TON of confidence in CMPro in terms of what it can do document wise. It has the potential to be HUGE. Everyone who has an iphone, ipod, or ipad essentially now has a way to digitally produce any type of business document they need, not just contracts and releases as we saw in Photographers Contract Maker, but all kinds of forms, receipts, bills of sale, promissary notes, you name it, and it also has the ability to produce these forms in just a few seconds. If your customers need to sign, no problem, it was built around digital signatures. This is what makes it so awesome- no more paper, incredible flexibility, extremely fast.
I am working with one company that wants a custom version of it, they sign 12,000 contracts a year and are sick of all the paper. Think of all the paper and $$ saved. CMPro can already handle the very complex intricacies of their forms with the custom placeholders.
Some good things are already happening, I am not getting my hopes up, but I am taking note. As of earlier today, Apple has it listed on the "New and Noteworthy" section on Business, I'm liking that #1 spot, but it probably doesn't mean anything.
Lastly, I have set up 2 forum pages for Contract Maker Pro, the latter will allow you to find very handy templates. Today I posted some example "Photographer's Contract Maker" templates on there, so you can copy and paste them into CMPro as starter templates if you need.
All the how to videos that are posted on iphonecontractmaker.com are embedded with Youtube videos. This will allow you to watch on just about any browser or device, including your iPad, iPhone or PC Browser as well.
Now, having said that- I realize many of you have a few questions:
1. When will we see an iPad Native version?
2. When will we see it for the Droid?
3. What is next?
All great questions. For now, here are my answers:
1. Next update to iPad software may solve the resolution issue. There is more to this answer than that statement. Planning some tests when/if I get my new iphone on Thursday and will make my point there. If the new OS4 doesnt solve it, you can expect an HD version of CMPro soon.
2. Droid Version- It all depends on how well CMPro does, we will watch carefully for now. To be honest, PCM sells ok- and if I were to decide on a Droid version of it based on PCM, it probably wouldn't happen. I will say this, most of the updates and versions will happen with CMPro. I have a HUGE list of updates we will install shortly, and I will also be listening to what customers say. We take everything very seriously when it comes to feedback. I am also making the assumption that there will be other companies out there (as we learned last time) who will randomly decide to copy CMPro, so I have to make my moves wisely and keep future updates/versions as quiet as possible. Nuff said about that.
3. There is a Michael The Maven App coming. It will have a lot of very cool features and it will be FREE. Should work on both iPhone and iPad. Beyond that, I can't say specifically - but, I will say that I think they are good and useful ideas. We are working to get them out as fast as possible, and as soon as we are ready to launch them, I will let you all know. I can say they are very specific, very aggressive and they will either be home-runs or strike outs because I am aiming for the fences.
Thank you to everyone who has been supporting me- I feel I have a lot of you pulling for me and it really helps- I absolutely appreciate it!
