Think Tank Covers

Our friends at Think Tank Photo have released two new concepts in camera gear protection.  The Emergency Rain Covers, that come in two sizes, are small, lightweight, fast-deploying protective covers you can have on hand when weather conditions change swiftly and you need to protect your bodies and lenses. The Hydrophobia V3.0 have also been released with a new Hydrophobia 24-70 V3.0 for smaller lenses. Check out all the Rain Covers HERE.

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The Lens Case Duos are protective lens sleeves that can be used both when transporting your lenses in transit and while shooting.  They are available in a range of sizes to fit most DSLR and Mirrorless lenses. 

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Don’t forget that when you use these special URLs you will receive free gear and free shipping on all orders over $50.

Photography for Newspapers

It came up as a topic of conversation the other day so I put together this quick article for the photographers out there that are thinking about submitting work to newspapers or other media outlets.

Obviously this is is not an all encompassing list but it should point you in the right direction.

Photography for Newspapers

Back to Fall Sports

School is getting ready to start again (or has already started) and with that comes the fall sports season. Unfortunately I was busy the first week of football but I made up for it by photographing two games last week.

I almost missed both these games because they didn't play on Friday night like normal. The first game was on Thursday night (which luckily I noticed Thursday morning) and the second game was a lucky break because it got rained/flooded out Friday night and they played on Saturday afternoon. 

Here are a few photos from both games. Enjoy.

Lightroom Series: Develop Module Part 1 (General Overview)

Moving on in the Lightroom series I've been doing I started with a basic overview of the Develop Module. There is a ton of features in the develop module, much more than you can go over in one video. With that being said, Ill be doing a couple more videos on the features found in the Develop module. 

If there is anything specific you would like me to talk about leave a comment or send me a message. 

Think Tank Retrospective Version 2.0

Our friends at Think Tank Photo have just released Version 2.0 of what may be the most popular shoulder bags in photo industry history, the Retrospective V2.0.  The Retrospective V2.0 retain their classic look but include many innovative new features. Keeping the soft, form-fitting design, they are lighter than the original. For greater security, they added a zippered opening under the main flap that tucks away when not in use. Each bag has a dedicated interior tablet or laptop pocket, luggage handle pass-through, and a compressible water bottle pocket. They even improved their “Sound Silencer” technology to help you work quietly.  Be sure to use our link to order as you will receive free gear and free shipping!

Miss ECSC 2018 Final Round

Miss ECSC Final Round was on August 26th at the 56th Annual Coastal Edge East Coast Surfing Championship presented by Vans and Fueled by Monster Energy.

Miss ECSC 2018 Preliminary Round 9

Miss ECSC Preliminary Round 9 was on August 22nd at Coastal Edge in Virginia Beach. Check out all the photos on my Facebook Page.

The top 4 of each round advance to the semi-finals in August at the 56th Annual Coastal Edge East Coast Surfing Championship presented by Vans and Fueled by Monster Energy

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Miss ECSC 2018 Preliminary Round 8

Miss ECSC Preliminary Round 8 was on August 12th at Chicho's Oceanfront in Virginia Beach. Check out all the photos on my Facebook Page.

The top 4 of each round advance to the semi-finals in August at the 56th Annual Coastal Edge East Coast Surfing Championship presented by Vans and Fueled by Monster Energy.

Preliminary Round #9 will be August 22nd, at Coastal Edge.

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Miss ECSC 2018 Preliminary Round 7

Miss ECSC Preliminary Round 7 was on July 12th at Tapped Crafthouse. in Virginia Beach. Check out all the photos on my Facebook Page.

The top 4 of each round advance to the semi-finals in August at the 56th Annual Coastal Edge East Coast Surfing Championship presented by Vans and Fueled by Monster Energy.

Preliminary Round #8 will be August 12th, at Chicho's Oceanfront.

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Miss ECSC 2018 Preliminary Round 6

Miss ECSC Preliminary Round 6 was on July 3rd at Peabody's Nightclub in Virginia Beach. Check out all the photos on my Facebook Page.

The top 4 of each round advance to the semi-finals in August at the 56th Annual Coastal Edge East Coast Surfing Championship presented by Vans and Fueled by Monster Energy.

Preliminary Round #7 will be tomorrow, July 12th, at Tapped Crafthouse.

Lightroom Series: Collections and Client Proofing

Next up in my Lightroom series we have Lightroom collections. Collections can  be used for many things such as easily posting to Instagram and Facebook, as well as creating galleries to send to clients so they can pick photos they like.

This part focuses primarily on creating galleries for client proofing. This is an incredibly useful (yet under used) feature in Lightroom CC and takes just a few minutes to set up. 

First thing you have to do is open Lightroom and make sure you're signed into Adobe CC. In the Library view you're going to click on collections then click the plus (+) symbol. Here you have a few options. One is to create a collection set and the other is to create a collection.

Collections are the galleries where your photos will be. Collection sets is basically a folder you can use to organize your collections.

Once you click the plus (+) sign select create a collection. Give your collection a name, add it to a collection set, and make sure you have "Sync with Lightroom CC" checked. Now if you already have the photos selected that you want to add to the collection you can check the box that says add selected photos. If you do not have the photos selected yet once you create the collection you can drag and drop the photos you want into the collection.

After you create the collection and add the photos, you will see a syncing photos indicator in the upper left hand corner. This is syncing the photos to Lightroom CC. While you're waiting for the photos to sync you can use this time to flag the photos (either approved or rejected). Personally, I go through and reject photos I do not want clients to see. This will come up later when you go to share the gallery.

Once the photos are done syncing go to http://lightroom.adobe.com/ and sign in using your Adobe CC account (if you're not already signed in).

Once the page loads, on the left hand side click on the collection you want to share and the photos will load. On the left had side with the collection, there will be a little gear symbol. Click on that and you get the collection options.

One of the options is to share the album. Click on that then select start sharing. This will give you an adobe link that you can use to share with the clients. Under the link there are options that you can select but the biggest one is the flag option. If you flagged the photos in Lightroom you can use this option to select the photos you want the client to see when the go to the link.

Once you click share all you have to do is give the link to the clients. Now on the client end they will have to sign up for an Adobe ID. It is free and they can unsubscribe from all the adobe emails. Once the client creates an Adobe ID and signs in they will see the gallery of photos you have selected to share with them (they will only see the photos based on the flag settings you use)

If they click on a photo it gets bigger and they can scroll through the photos. On the right hand side there is a button that looks like a comment bubble. If they click on that they have two options. They can click on the heart icon to like the photo or they can send you a comment. Both likes and comments will show up directly in Lightroom.

You can even reply to comments directly from Lightroom. Once the client is done liking and commenting on the photos you can sort the photos by last comment and see all the photos up top that the client liked. From there you can star or label the photos and move onto the editing.

Check out the video below for a walk through of how to set up collections for client proofing.

Lightroom Series: Publish to Instagram and Facebook (version 2.0)

I've done a video in the past on how to use Lightroom's Publish Services to post photos directly from Lightroom to Instagram and Facebook. Unfortunately due to changes with the Facebook API this is going to be going away. You can read about the specific reasons on Adobe's website.

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Now, the Publish Services is a very powerful tool for photographers and makes posting to social media sites very easy. I did not want to go back to exporting photos, transferring them to my phone, then uploading to the individual social media apps.

The "work around" I found is pretty simple, doesn't add too many steps, and hopefully it will stay around for a while. 

The two things you need to start is an Adobe CC account and you need to have your Facebook page that you want to post to linked to your Instagram account that you want to post to.

Inside Lightroom, you're going to create a collection for your social media posts and make sure it is synced to Lightroom CC. Pick the photos that you want to post and add them to the collection. Once the photos are finished syncing open up the Lightroom CC app on your phone and go into the collection.

Select the photo that you want to post and click the share button at the top (box with the arrow). Choose the photo size and the phone will open up a sharing menu. In that sharing menu select "Copy to Instagram."

Once you click Copy to Instagram, Instagram will open and you will have the choice to add the photo to you story or to your feed. Pick where you want to post the photo.

If you choose feed the normal upload sequence will commence where you pick the cropping, filters, and you add your captions tags, and locations. On the page where you add your captions, as long as you have connected your Facebook account, you will also have the option to post the photo to Facebook (and Twitter and Tumblr) at the same time you post to Instagram. Make sure the button next to Facebook is selected (it will be blue) then press share. 

Give it a few seconds and the photo along with the caption will be posted to both Instagram and Facebook. 

Check out the video below to see the start to finish how to.

Miss ECSC 2018 Preliminary Round 5

Miss ECSC Preliminary Round 5 was last weekend at Blue Pete's Restaurant in Virginia Beach. Despite the heavy rain there was still a good turnout.

The top 4 of each round advance to the semi-finals in August at the 56th Annual Coastal Edge East Coast Surfing Championship presented by Vans and Fueled by Monster Energy.

Preliminary Round #6 will be tomorrow, July 3rd, at Peabody's.

Lightroom Series: Library View

Part two of my Lightroom series with an overview of the Library view. There are a lot of helpful features in the library view that some might not know about. If you're in the folders tab on the left hand side you can now search through the folders for keywords. So if you're looking for a specific folder but aren't exactly sure where it is, you can do a search and Lightroom will find all the folders with that word. 

For example if you're trying to find all the folders from a particular school you have photographed, if the folder names have the school in them, you can search for the school name and they will all show up.

You can also tag folders with color labels which is a pretty helpful feature if you want a quick visual reminder where certain folders are.

The collections tab is going to get its own video because there are a lot of power features in collections including client proofing. 

I've done a video in the past on the Publish Services tab. This is a very under used feature if you want to post photos to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or other social media sites directly from Lightroom. You can check out that video here.

I also talked about the different photo view modes (grid, compare, survey, etc). All have their place and are useful tools when going through and selecting photos.

You can check out the video below.

Miss ECSC 2018 Preliminary Round 4

Miss ECSC Preliminary Round 4 took place over Memorial Day weekend at The Shack in Virginia Beach. The top 4 of each round advance to the semi-finals in August at the 56th Annual Coastal Edge East Coast Surfing Championship presented by Vans and Fueled by Monster Energy.

Preliminary Round #5 will be tomorrow, June 23rd,  at Blue Pete's Restaurant

Lightroom Series: Organization

I've gotten a lot of questions about different features in Lightroom and how I use Lightroom in my workflow. Im going to be doing a series on Lightroom answering these questions.

The first part of the series is going to be on Organization. Organization is key for every photographer. You need to be able to find your photos in the future. The main way that I organize my photos is by synchronizing all of them into Lightroom. 

Before you synchronize your photos into Lightroom you need to come up with a file naming and folder hierarchy system. For my folders they always start with two digit year, two digit month, and two digit day. So for June 20, 2018 it would start "180620." The second part is what the event was. If it was a sports event Ill put the two teams. Modeling Ill put the name of the client.

For file naming I start the exact same way with year, month day. This is followed by "-N-EP388-." This is a Navy file naming thing so you don't have to put this. The important part is the last part and that is the sequence number. The first photo I take in a day will start with a sequence number of "001" and that will increase for all the photo. So the first photo I take today will be:
"180620-N-EP388-001"

The important thing to remember is do not reset the sequence number throughout the day. If you do multiple events, just keep the sequence number increasing. This will keep you from having duplicate file names.

The next part is the Map feature. I geotag all my photos so I can find locations I've shot at previously. When you geotag the photos it will add a marker on the map. Whatever folder you have selected in the library view will populate the markers in the map. You can select multiple folders in the Library view if you want to look at multiple folders on the map.

The third part is face detection. I use face detection to identify the subjects in all the photos. The name that you enter into the face detection box will be added to the keywords field. Going along with face detection is using keywords. Using keywords for your photos makes it very easy to search and find your photos at a later date. 

The search feature in Lightroom is also pretty powerful. At the top of the Library view you have three choices to search. You can search by name, attribute, or metadata. Using the name search you can search the keyword field and all the photos with that keyword will show up. This works for regular keywords you enter as well as any names you enter using face detection.

The attribute search allows you to search the selected folder(s) by star rating or color class. If you want to just see photos with a particular star rating you can select that rating and only those photos will show up.

The last search feature is metadata. The metadata allows you to search through your photos using filters like camera, lens, shutter speed, focal length, aperture, ISO, etc. This is helpful if you're looking for photos taken with a particular set of settings or taken with a particular camera/ lens.

You can check out the video I made below. If you have any comments or suggestions for future videos let me know.