Most of the photography blogs that I read have a thread about sensor cleaning. It's the bane of digital cameras. While computers and digital imaging have opened up an amazing new world of vision for us, it's also given photographers some new frustrations. I can't remember ever being so frustrated by dust on the lens or mirrors of my old Canon A1. The occasional inexpensive cleaning and tuneup at my local camera shop always took care of the problem. All my old Canons from the late 70s and early 80s are still working just fine, BTW.

With the cost of cleaning digital cameras through the local camera shops being about $100 the last time I checked, I quickly looked for another way to get my sensor clean. My Canon Mark II is too old to have an automatic cleaning ...

It seems that either competition season is upon us, or I'm the new Dreamstime contest guru. Interesting photo contests keep popping up in magazines and on web sites that I frequent. Entering contests not for all of us, but for photographers who are so inclined, it's a great source of publicity.....and some extra cash for the winners.

The latest one that I've run across is the Smithsonian Magazine 6th Annual Photo Contest. The entry deadline is December 1. There are 5 categories in which to enter and various levels of prizes. It's worth taking a look at the prospectus. It means wonderful exposure in the Smithsonian Magazine at the very least.

http://photocontest.smithsonianmag.com/v6/index.html

Pat Ballard

This must be competition season because I'm finding things to enter that look worthwhile almost everyday this week. Or is it just that I'm now on a ton of photography email lists?

This was sent to me in the Santa Fe Photography Workshops email news letter. If they think it's worth entering, it is! Center is another photography non-profit in Santa Fe. It is sponsoring four juried events during the next year. It is mostly aimed at professional fine art photographers who have developed a style and a large portfolio. We all know that the average microstock photographer has many facets to their work, so this may apply to many of you, too. They also sponsor portfolio reviews in Santa Fe and Los Angeles during the year. I do remember my daughter attending the Santa Fe portfolio ...

The Los Angeles Center for Digital Art is hosting a non-juried show. It's called "Snap to Grid." I have to admit that the title really attracts me. Most of us are currently emphasizing the commercial side of our art, but a little extra publicity never hurts. I've never entered a show sponsored by LACDA, but I know of photographers and illustrators who have. It seems to be a good organization. I'm entering this one. Just thought some of the Dreamstime crowd might be interested.

Here's the link to their web site.

http://lacda.com/juried/juriedshow.html

Pat Ballard

After I wrote my original blog on archival CDs and DVDs, a friend on another site wrote that it's possible for even these two forms of back up to fail at the same time. It's a remote possibility, but it can happen. He suggested online storage as another form of backup. While this sounds great in theory, and I'm sure that the best online storage sites will ba around for most of our careers as photographers, and designers; it has it's problems, too. I have heard of sites failing and photographers losing huge portions of their work, but it's probably as safe as any form of backup.

Operating systems change, discs become unreadable, hard drives fail, and online storage goes belly up. The conclusion that I've come to after studying this issue is that we'...

This blog is for everyone who is so busy producing work that they don't always have the time to stay caught up on the technical side of digital imaging and photography.

During a workshop that I took last week, the topic of long term media storage came up. I had totally missed the introduction of archival CDs and DVDs. I knew that regular discs didn't last forever and had planned to sort and re-burn my early work. This is not good enough, my teacher feels that we need to save to an external hard drive and burn to a gold archival CD or DVD. These discs are not inexpensive as they cost over a dollar apiece, but they are supposed to last over 100 years. Plus, never write on any disc with a sharpie as the ink will eventually eat through the disc making it unreadable. There ...

The workshop is finished! I spent last week at the Santa Fe Photography Workshops. It was an incredible experience. I'd recommend it for any amateur photographer who just wants to learn more and for any professional who wants to explore a new area of potential income.

It's an intense week of work. Many of the days are 12 hours long or longer. I plan to take more classes in the future, but before I do it again, I'll spend more time training for the physical part of it. We hiked slot canyons, tried to stop for a picnic one afternoon and ended up on a Bollywood movie set that was on our picnic grounds, spent an afternoon at Jackalope pottery in Santa Fe, and Shidoni foundry and sculpture garden. Much of our class time was spent learning how to improve ...

Below is a small list of color theory web sites. It's been a fun hunt, and I'll continue it with periodic updates. Wikipedia turned out to be a great starting point. Some of these sites are serious some are just for fun, but I want to study all of them when I have the time.

Pantone

http://www.colormatters.com

http://www.colorschemer.com/online.html

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/color/

http://www.w3schools.com/HTML/html_colornames.asp

http://worqx.com/color/

Pat Ballard

An interesting thread on another blog that I follow popped up this week. One of the contributors wanted to know what colors sold the most images. It's been about 4 years, but I attended a one day design workshop in New York where many top people from the design industry and software industry spoke about commercial art and color choices. The man who does the graphic design for Martha Stewart, or did at the time, spoke on color choices. A woman who writes books on color for Pantone was there, too. I can't remember their names, but I do remember the basic ideas of their speeches.

The designer said that over 60% of Americans when polled on their favorite color listed blue as their first choice. Green was a distant second with all other choices being ...

One of the most refreshing things about any commercial art is that it's commercial with no pretense. My daughter spent two years as a photography major at a famous art school only to quit. She got very tired of people who had to "suffer" for their art and acted like any type of commercial activity was selling out.

The glamorous starving artist in a garrett in Paris (I wish) only came in with the rise of Impressionism during the late 19th century. Impressionism was a direct reaction to the invention of photography. The painter was suddenly freed from having to produce pictorial realism. They studied the science of light and the mechanics of the eye as well as painting. This radical new style of painting caused a violent reaction among the art loving French. It was years ...