2011 365 Group

Happy New Year everyone! Hope you are planning on joining us on 1/1/2011 by adding an image a day to our flickr 365 group, Focused on 365. Images can be from your DSLR, point and shoot, phone, anything, but it must be taken that day. You will need to sign up for a flickr account, and they are free for 200 images, which means only your most recent 200 images will be viewable. The pro account allows unlimited images, and is $25 a year.

If your new to flickr, here is a quick tutorial on how to upload and add images to the group. Can't wait to see all of your images!

2011 365 Group

The images that you see here were all shot and used as part of my 365 photography challenge this year. The premise is simple. Shoot and post 1 image a day, every day, for 365 days. The reality is that it's just not that simple.

Live Oak Memorial Park Dia De Los Muertos

Hey there everybody!

Had a fantastic time at Live Oak's annual Dia De Los Muertos event last night. And WOW has it grown! If you are stopping by to view images, you can find them here: http://www.flickr.com/groups/liveoakdiadelosmuertos/

In order to view or post images you took there you will need a flickr account. Sign up is free. It is the only way we can get this many photographers to share the images with the viewing public. If you took images at the event, please feel free to post them to the group. Remember to tag them with "Dia De Los Muertos" and "Live Oak Memorial Park". If the images weren't shot at that specific event, they will be removed.

Hope you had a wonderful time, and I look forward to seeing all the images. There are already images in the group, and I would imagine that by this weekend, there will be many more.

Enjoy!

Frank

Sunset at the observatory

Stella and I went chasing sunsets yesterday. We found one at the Griffith Park Observatory.

Enjoy,

Frank

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everyone! Welcome to 2010. To celebrate the new year, focus my passion, and to promote Faded & Blurred, I started a 365 project. But instead of doing an individual 365, I started a group. Each member of the group will be posting 1 image daily for 365 days. We already have over 30 members in the group, and I am really looking forward to seeing what develops over time. Both with individual creativity, and with my own photography. It will be a nice benchmark to see where we started, and where we wind up.

If you would like more info about the group, you can find it here. To follow along or join the group, you can find it here. All you need to join is to be a Faded & Blurred member and have a flickr account. Both are free.

Just shoot!

As photographers, some of us spend an awful amount of time obsessing about the latest and greatest cameras and equipment. 21mp's in this one, and 24mp's in that one, 10 frames per second, facial recognition, and the list goes on and on. Fact of the matter is that if it's a crappy picture, than it is taking up more space on a hard drive than the crappy pictures we took with last years model.

In the interest of full disclosure, I do have a new camera. It's a beast that shoots 21mp images and will shoot video in full 1080 hd. I love the images it captures, and it has the most film like quality I have seen from a camera. So why am I writing this?

2 reasons. The first reason is my iPhone. Barely 1mp images. But it is always with m

e.

My DSLR isn't. And that is the key. It is ALWAYS with me. I use it all the time. It has no zoom, it has no flash. It forces me to be more creative to get the shot I really want. And it has some really terrific applications to tweak those tiny little images. Camerabag and Photogene are my 2 favorites. Little teeny, tiny versions of photoshop "lite". Really "lite". Did I just say I even tweak my cameraphone images? Yes, yes I do. My name is Frank, and I am battling a disease. Again, you are really limited with what you can do with these programs, as the images are small, so you really think before you shoot. I find myself being reinvigorated by trying to get decent shots from it. And it won't do 10 frames per second, so it forces you to slow down.

The 2nd reason is Twitter. Twitter has applications like twitpic that make it really easy to share your shots from your phone, and get them on-line fast. Take the shot, email the shot, friends view the shot. I have several friends that share images on Twitter shot with their phones. I see what they are shooting, it makes me want to go shoot something. I want to impress them, they want to impress me. We are always pushing each other to get better, more creative shots. And then there is Chase Jarvis. He is in a league all by himself. Go look at his website. He has a whole portfolio dedicated to shots only taken with his iPhone. It is here: http://www.chasejarvis.com/ . Almost makes you want to put down your DSLR, and use it for a doorstop.

So why is all this coming up now? I was going through my Flickr photostream, and had to laugh when I realized that many of my recent images have all been shot with the iPhone. All of the images posted in this post have all come from my iPhone too. Do I recommend you go out and get an iPhone? No, but if you did you wouldn't regret it. No, I am writing this to remind you that if you have don't always leave the house with your DSLR and a bag full of glass, make sure you do leave with some type of camera, a cameraphone, a small point and shoot, just always have a camera with you. You never know what you might see...


And here are some good uses for your small camera you may not have thought of. At a theme park you aren't familiar with, and hate carrying a map? Take a picture of it, and you can look at it on your LCD and scroll around or zoom into the image. See an item at a store you like, but thimk you can find it cheaper on line? Take a picture of the item and the SKU tag. When you get home, you can use that info to search the web. Have a husband/wife that is a bad gift giver? Take pictures of things you like and send it to them in an email. Ever been in a car accident? Take pictures of the damage. The list goes on.

I have a throw away point and shoot I always carry in my glove box. It is powered by AA batteries, so I never have to worry about the rechargeble battery going dead, or accidentily leaving the battery on the charger when I leave the house. Why? Because you never know when you will be in a hail storm in Baldwin Park in May!

I will leave you with a couple more iPhone snaps I took. Are they great images? No, not really. But I wouldn't have taken them if I didn't have my iPhone with me, and I am glad that I took them.

Have a great rest of the weekend!

Frank