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Dear Troll… Kindest regards, 2013 x x x

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Model Jen Brook have been sharing her art with the photography community for a while now. However, after seeing recent trollish remarks about females in the industry she felt the need to hit back. Here is her open letter response..

Dear Troll,

How dare you. Yes you, I see you even though you hide behind your keyboard like the faceless coward that you are. I hear every word you say and yes, they bother me…even when they are not meant for me, because just like you, I am a real person behind this avatar.

You come up from nowhere like a nasty rash, spouting bestial crap about how women are only ever successful based on their shapely figures, luscious locks or pretty little faces…attracting attention purely because of the way they look and not once because of the hard efforts they have endured.

Well more fool you my friend, more fool you.

Advanced Primer To Monitor Calibration

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Have you ever had a photo that looked great on your monitor but looked like crap when you got the final print? The colors looked nothing like what you intended.

Assuming that the printing service did ok, there is a good chance that the difference came from either you or the print shop were using uncalibrated gear. If you use a serious service, their gear is probably calibrated, which means that it is your monitor calibration to blame.

Tom’s hardware is sharing a great tutorial that will take you through the theoretic part of monitor calibration and then will help you get your monitor to show up calibrated color:

Google Thinks That Photographers Are Not Terrorists (And That They Should Not Use Groupon)

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When it comes to the question what interests the world, there is no better place to ask than Google. As the main internet hub which holds about 67% of the searches done worldwide, they know what’s on our minds.

Google uses this information to autocomplete any search query to what they think the world is interested in. This is how Google describes the service: “The search queries that you see as part of autocomplete are a reflection of the search activity of all web users and the content of web pages indexed by Google“.

The UN Women recently kicked a brilliant campaign showing how biased or even discriminating those algorithms may be against women, when Google autocompleted queries like “women should” with phrases like “stay at home” and be slaves.

I thought it would be interesting to try this concept on photographers and see what Google (and by extension the world) thinks on what photographers. If you made an interesting autocomplete for photographers leave it in the comments.

Tips to Get Paid From Photography Use Requests

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When David Hobby lets loose on a rant, it’s worth listening.  I mean, he’s usually a pretty reserved guy, but in a recent post on Strobist, he really lets the National Association of REALTORS® have it for asking permission to reproduce his work in exchange for credit (otherwise known as free).

If you’re a photographer with your photography online, you have probably experienced a request or two to use your own work for free.

In this article, I will discuss three tips that you can use to get paid for your photography.

Y’all gonna pay for that photo right?

Single Leaf Shutter Controlled by Arduino

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Here is a great little project by Kevin Kadooka if you are starting out on photography and have good Arduino understanding, or if you are starting out on Arduino and have a solid understanding of photography :)

This solenoid based single leaf shutter is controlled by Arduino and can expose a sensor or film for anywhere between 1/125 to infinity at the press of a button. The exposure duration is controlled via a small potentiometer.

Interesting Test On Overexposing And Salvaging Blackmagic Footage

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By now, we are kinda used to the fact that RAW images can be pulled or pushed to recover details in what were once lost photos.

It seems though that with “cheap” camera that produce RAW footage like the Blackmagic Cinema Camera (or a Magic Lantern loaded Canon), pulling overexposed movies is becoming a viable option for amateurs / advance amateurs videographers too. (It was always an option for the pros).

Swedish videographer Mattias Burling did a short test showing how much burnt data you can recover when shooting RAW with a Blackmagic camera.

How To Build A PVC DIY Photo Light Box

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It is no secret that we love PVC pipes turned into studio gear. we teamed up with pvcfittingsonline to make this quick and fun light tent tutorial.

I have noticed that there is a growing need for Etsy entrepreneurs, bloggers, and DIY geeks like myself, to buff up on our photography prowess. I’m sure you’ve seen and have possibly been the culprit of horrible photo documentation online. Why spend all that time working, writing, and prepping when your photos come out looking like a bad webcam experiment circa 1995? Taking all this into account, I decided my next project would be a DIY light box.

The idea of a light box is to disperse light evenly within a space so the object you’re photographing can be seen clearly and usually with a solid background. That makes light boxes perfect for taking product pictures (which I sometimes need to do for work). This light box plan gives you a space of about 20 square inches inside the box. The materials are super cheap and easy to find. Follow along with my instructional video or the written instructions below. Here’s how I made mine!

You can watch the video after the jump or go by the textual guide.

The Battle We Didn’t Choose – Photographer Documents His Wife’s Fight With Cancer [Strong Graphics]

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In the following story Photographer Angelo Merendino shares how he documented his wife’s fight with cancer. Some of the images are not easy to watch.

The first time I saw Jennifer I knew. I knew she was the one. I knew, just like my dad when he sang to his sisters in the winter of 1951 after meeting my mom for the first time, “I found her.”

The Battle We Didn't Choose - Photographer Documents His Girlfriend Fight With Cancer [Strong Graphics]

A month later Jen got a job in Manhattan and left Cleveland. I would go to the city – to see my brother, but really wanting to see Jen. At every visit my heart would scream at my brain, “tell her!!” but I couldn’t work up the courage to tell Jen that I couldn’t live without her. My heart finally prevailed and, like a schoolboy, I told Jen “I have a crush on you.” To the relief of my pounding heart, Jen’s beautiful eyes lit up and she said “Me too!”

Direction & Quality Of Light – Book Review

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It is not secret that Neil Van Niekerk (who also runs the tangents blog for photographers) is one of our favorite photographers (and favorite bloggers too). This is why we were happy to see that he has a new book out – Direction & Quality Of Light. If you are familiar with his blog, you know that Neil’s writing is clear and informative, so it won’t come as a surprise that the book ranks high on my recommendation list. The following is kind of a half review half overview of the book.

Photographer Carli Davidson Makes Epic Portraits Of Splashing Dogs

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Some would say that high speed photography is pretty hard on the technical side of photography. Others will say that portraiture is the hardest of all. Photographer Carli Davidson combines the two by taking photographs of dogs shaking water off.

The photos are part of a new book by Carliu called Shake, and are a compilation tthat started at 2012.

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