More film camera issues

When I decide to do something, I usually just go all in.  I know I should probably take my time and work up to things, but it's just not what I do.

Take, for example, my recent acquisition of a WWII era Speed Graphic.  Photo here:

Now, I already have the Graphic View camera, so why did I need this?  Well, of course, I didn't.  But I wanted to do a project and this camera was necessary.

Historically, this is a cool camera.  It weighs a ton and I don't really know how the journalist photographers back in the day could lug this thing around and actually get photos of any action.  It's not conducive.  But that's what they did and most every photo in a newspaper or magazine from the early 1900s until just after WWII would have been taken with a camera like this.  I like this history.

But, my real purpose was to use an old lens that I've been carrying around since 1980.  In my grad school days in an optics lab, I rescued an old war surplus Kodak Aero Ektar aerial photography lens that we had bought for cannibalization purposes.  The optics were great, and I could not bring myself to see the thing go in the dumpster, so I saved it.  I always wanted to use it to make a large format camera, but never knew how to start.

Recently I realized there are other strange photographers like me who also have AE lenses, and they found a way to retrofit them into the Speed Graphic cameras.  See, the SG camera has a focal plane shutter in addition to the normal leaf shutter in the front lens, so an AE retrofit without a leaf shutter will still work.

Great, you say.  So what?  Why go to all the trouble?

And the answer is:  Portraits.

The AE lens on the SG body gives you a 7-inch focal length with f/2.5 speed onto a 4 x 5 inch negative.  That means very small depth of field, perfect for portraits.  Plus, the positional adjustments available with the rails on the SG camera allow some funky control over perspective and focus area.  Look at this photo, for example courtesy of (https://www.facebook.com/macieklesniakfotografia?fref=photo):

By playing around with the positioning of the lens board with respect to the film plane, you can control what areas of the image are in focus and which are not.  Here's another more extreme example courtesy of (https://www.facebook.com/kornel.kabaja.portrety/photos/a.617290181622240.1073741828.617195194965072/1093089077375679/?type=1&theater)

OK, so maybe you don't care about this stuff, but I think it's cool and I wanted to play around with it some.  So, I take my 50 year-old lens and my 70 year old camera body and make some interesting photos.  That's the definition of a hobby, to me.

Going back to film

I really like my digital cameras.  Really.  Like. Them.

And when I have to shoot something important, I'm very happy to have the instant review features, as well as the latitude of adjustments available when shooting raw.

But, well, it can get sort of boring sometimes.

See, the affordability of high quality digital cameras has created a proliferation of wanna-be photographers that I find incredibly annoying.  In the old days, photography was an actual skill that combined both understanding of light, imaging and chemistry, as well as a trained artistic eye.  Now, anybody with $1000 can actually make images with high technical quality.  Of course, they mostly don't have the creative eye, but it's surprising how many clients can't tell the difference.

Well, I don't try to make money at this so I don't care about the faux-tographers unless they get in my way.  But I do like to find ways to set my work apart from theirs, as haughty as that sounds.  Sorry.

So, recently I decided to take up film photography again, as a hobby-art thing.  So I'll post some stuff here about that in case anybody wants to get into it.

First, I had to gear up.  I still have my old film cameras (Nikkormat, Nikon 2000, Yashica Mat 124G) and I got fresh batteries to make them work again.  But I was intrigued by the availability of some classic film cameras that were beyond my reach when they (and I) were 30 years younger.  So I bought a 1956 Leica M3 and a Mamiya RB67 Pro SD.  Then I picked up a Graflex Graphic View II camera and finally a Graflex Speed Graphic.

Don't ask.

Here are a couple of photos of the gear:

First, the Leica -

The View Camera-

And finally the RB67-

Now, a few of my initial photos.  Nothing special, just playing around.

Here's an instant film shot from the RB on Fuji instant film.  Scanned on an Epson V700 and cleaned up in Photoshop to remove dust, etc.

That actually came out a lot better than I expected, although the instant film is very soft and had to be sharpened up in PS.

Here are a couple of shots taken with the Leica and the Nikon on old, expired film.

I was also pleased with these, but I had to clean them up some to remove excessive grain that resulted from the film being expired about 15 years ago.

I should pause here to talk about exposure.  The Leica and RB67 do not have built-in light meters, and frankly, I am a bit rusty using the old fashioned hand-held meters.  So I used a combination of a separate digital camera, an old Seiko light meter that seems not to be working very well any more, and a light meter app on my phone.  And guesswork.  After playing around with a lot of bad exposures, I realized that I just need to shoot more so that I get my intuition back.  Turns out the sunny 16 rule plus experience is pretty much all you need in most situations.  But I did pick up a newer, modern light meter from a friend to help me out.

Here are a few more shots I took just to finish off this entry.  More fun and details next time.

Video experiment

As promised, here is a link to my first attempt at a video production from the D800.  Recorded the guitar clip first, then a bunch of clips of the vocal.  I used Final Cut Pro to put it all together.

I'm still learning the program.  The interface is very similar to iMovie if you have a Mac, but it has a lot more options and the codec is much more sophisticated, producing 1080 quality HD video output.  I found it a bit tricky to overlay clips and stills and texture and video simultaneously, and I'm still working on that aspect.  This is just the basic shots with a black-white process overlaid with an 'old paper' texture.  Nothing fancy.  I can tell now that the audio is distorted, so I'll have to go back and output the file again with the audio track attenuated some.  Anyway, I am pleased at the promise of this new option for me.  Here is the result from YouTube - click the image to view the clip.

Long Portrait

As I mentioned in a previous post, I decided to try my hand at a "long portrait".  The LP is essentially just a video portrait.  The intent is to capture more of the subject than is possible in a 'flat' image.  I thought of this a couple of months ago, and then with a little research found out that some pro photographers had started using them.  Generally, they just do a 30-second clip, and frankly I was not impressed.  I really didn't feel that I was seeing anything extra in the video.  For that matter, the still image actually seems to convey more interest than those long portraits because it engages my imagination.  So when I thought about how to set up my version, I chose to set the mood with the lighting and expression of the model, and to set it to appropriate music.  Here is the result (click the image to view the video on YouTube):

I am pleased with the way this turned out.  I had some technical issues with the natural lighting and the depth of field, but the look of the portrait is very close to what I had imagined.  My goal was to create a thoughtful portrait.  The model, Renee, is actually a very bright and bubbly girl, so she took my direction very well.  I also had to come up the learning curve on Final Cut Pro X, which is no trivial thing in itself.  I am still learning what I can do with that program, and I'll probably do a revised version with fancier post processing at some point in the future.

And, as a bonus, because Renee is a singer as well, I took the opportunity to record a music video with her. So that will be coming at a later date.

Captain Video

So, since I have this fancy camera that can shoot HD video, I decided to give it a shot.  This past Saturday I spent a couple of hours with a beautiful young lady, having her pose for some stills and then do some video.  My original idea was to get a sort of (slightly) moving portrait that would communicate a bit more than a still. After getting myself all pumped up that I had discovered a new artistic angle, I consulted my go-to reference work (the Interweb) and found out (gasp!) somebody else already thought of it.  It's called a "long portrait" and there are some pros out there who have been doing it for a while, apparently.  But rather than sulking about it, I decided there's no reason I shouldn't try my hand.  So I did.  Once I finish editing the clips I'll post a link so you can tell me how I should stick to the still stuff.  In the meantime, here are a couple of shots of the model, processed of course.  She was great to work with and I think she had a lot of fun.  In any case she's a good sport to allow me to mangle her visage to suit my warped photo styling muse.

Saving a photo

Sometimes things don't go well when you are shooting.  But that doesn't mean you can't dig out a decent photo from a lost cause snap.   Here is an example.

I took this shot of the Cape Hatteras lighthouse on a dreary day in the late afternoon under less than interesting lighting conditions.  As you can see, the colors are all washed out, and even though I tried very hard to set up something interesting with the local foliage, it just wasn't working.

I actually sort of wrote this one off, until I had a happy accident one day.  I was playing around with some black and white conversion workflows, and selected this photo as an object to test.  Since it was originally shot in raw format, I opened the image in ACR and started playing with it.  I was attempting to set the max and min black and white levels appropriately, when I accidentally grabbed the exposure slider and pushed it down toward under exposure.  That's when the magic happened.  It turns out that there was a lot of sky color hidden in the file, and underexposure let it show through.  I could have played around with the vibrance and saturation on the original and tried to save it, but that would have introduced too much false color, and really I don't think the result would have been pleasing.  But pushing the exposure down a couple of stops actually converted this into a totally different type of photo, with very pleasing results.  Here's the final after a little sharpening and cropping:

I think this is a nice, dramatic rendering that appears to be a twilight shot even though the photo was taken in the afternoon, facing generally east toward the ocean, away from the sun.

So, a couple of lessons here.  First, shoot in raw - it gives you many more options in post.  Second, look at your failures a second time, and see if there might be a way to save them.  This shot made Flickr explore, and you can see the larger version here.

Do you really need 36 megapixels?

Yes.

No.

Maybe.

How's that for being definitive?  I think I have pretty much covered all the bases there, don't you?

I recently purchased a Nikon D800.  While I do make money from photography, I don't make a living with it so acquiring a 36 megapixel camera is a bit of a stretch for me.  Certainly one does not need that much resolution to make a good photo.  My Olympus PEN E-P3 does just fine in most situations, and it is a micro four-thirds format.  It's only about 12 MP, so that would actually be a little small for making big prints, but otherwise it works fine, especially if you can control the lighting.  It's easy to carry and you can attach high quality lenses to it.

My other cameras have always been APS-C sensors, with about 12 MP resolution.  The larger pixels are better than the micro 4/3 sensor in the Olympus, but not as good as full frame, nor do they have the low noise/high ISO performance of the 16 MP Nikon D7000.

When I decided to move up, I had basically three choices, given that I have so much nice Nikon glass already:  (1) used or new D700, (2) D800, and (3) D4.  I never really considered a D3.

I like the D700, but it's getting a bit long in the tooth and I didn't want to remain behind the technology curve.  The D800 is a bit pricey, but at $3k not totally out of reach for a serious semi-pro.  All my research on image quality tells me that the D4 is the way to go, but at 2X the price of the D800, I just can't justify it.

So, I settled on the D800, even though I had some reservations about the file sizes:  RAW files uncompressed on the D800 are about 77 MB.  My aging iMac had to be taken into account.

Anyway, after searching to find a vendor who actually had a D800 to sell, I finally got it a few days ago and took a few random shots to see how it performed.  I was not disappointed, and I'll show you why.

Here is a full frame jpg at 72 dpi converted from the original photo I took using the D800 with a Nikon 50mm f/1.4 @ f/2.5, 1/160 sec, ISO 1250.  

Here is a crop from the center of the frame, at 120 dpi.

And here is a further crop, still at 120 dpi.  You can see a larger version on the flickr page, here.

So, what's the deal?  Ok, here is what I have seen so far.   The raw images are simply wonderful.  I suspect the noise in the image, which can in fact be seen when you crop down this much, is not as good as a top of the line D4 or Canon 5D MkIII, although I can't really compare myself.  But the noise is very tiny and adds a slight, fine-grain look so it's not objectionable at all.  This photo was shot in relatively dim room light, and so I am very impressed.

Did I need a 36MP camera to make these photos?  Maybe not.  Probably the D7000 might have given the same low-light images in this instance.  But there is something important that the high resolution sensor gives me, and that is....HIGH RESOLUTION.

See, I don't want to go out and buy another $5k of lenses, and this camera pretty much requires nice primes to fully appreciate the tiny pixels.  So, I can, as in this instance, use a 50mm lens and crop down pretty much to my heart's desire and still get good images.

For those who like to display their work in large format, printing 400ppi or 500ppi with these large files is possible, when utilizing an APS-C sensor would probably not be.

The price point on the camera is really a huge selling point.  Lots of D700s, hardly used, are showing up on eBay for about $1800 now, often with the battery grip and a lens, as D700 users upgrade to the D800.  Once the D800s really start shipping, I suspect the D700s will be much easier to pick up.  But it won't give you this resolution.

All in all, it's a spectacular opportunity.

Brenizer portraits

I would love to be able to afford a medium format camera, say, like a Hasselblad, with a digital back and lots of insanely expensive lenses.  That large format can't be beat for landscape and portrait work.

But, I can't.

However, there is an alternative.  It's called the Brenizer method, and it was created by a wedding photographer Ryan Brenizer.  Using this method, you can simulate a much larger camera than the one used to actually take the photo.

Here's how it works.  First, you take a bunch of overlapping images with a very shallow depth of field.  Then you use a post processing program, like Photoshop, for example, to stitch them back together into a larger image.  The result, as shown below, is the equivalent of having a camera sensor many times the size of the one actually in the camera you used.

This is an image of my son, Erik, that was stitched together from about a dozen separate photos. [Here is a larger version so you can see more detail.] Now, you may think it's just a typical photo, but look closely.  The detail is much greater than I could have gotten with a single shot, especially considering the shallow depth of field.  I did crop this down from a larger frame to eliminate some of the distracting background.  If I were trying to do this for money, I would have taken the photo someplace with a better background.  But I was just playing.

I could have gotten a somewhat similar shot using a single frame, but it would not have looked like this.  A normal lens shot this close would have produced perspective distortion, and a telephoto would not have produced the same bokeh.

Brenizer couples this with some crazy lighting, where he has an assistant walk around lighting up different parts of the scene with a remotely triggered flash, then uses additional post processing to blend the images.  The result is an image that really can't be obtained any other way, and it's pretty cool.

Anyway, if you have PS, you should try this.  Just be sure to not change your own location when you take the shots - otherwise the program will give you some strange results.

Black and White photography

I am liking black and white photography more and more.

There are lots of different types of photographs, and the use of color can be spectacular, especially in landscapes.  But lately I have been thinking a lot about portraits, and how much I always liked to see the old black and white versions.  Sure, back in the day it was all that was really available.  But there's something fundamentally interesting about reducing the portrait to its basic elements by eliminating the distraction of color.  Here's an example.

This was originally a color shot from a live performance of Chris Thile and the Punch Brothers.  The lighting was very poor and sort of crazy with all the colored spots.  And there is a certain interest in those color shots.  But I took a crop from the original shot and converted it to black and white, while bumping the contrast and adding noise.  The blurring of Chris' features is the result of a relatively slow shutter speed coupled with his trademark stage action.  The black and white image focuses attention on the subject without distracting colors, and the blurring of parts of the image communicate the frenzied style of his performance.  I think this really captures more of the 'essence' of the performer, which is exactly what we want in an environmental portrait.

There are lots of ways to communicate with a camera, but I am liking black and white these days.

Punch Brothers Wow Crowd on Snowy February Evening

Chris Thile brought his band, the Punch Brothers, to the Jefferson Center Sunday night to play to a sellout crowd.  The only problem was, half of the ticket holders were unable to slog through 7 inches of wet snow to experience the concert.  For those of us who made it, we were certainly not disappointed.

Thile's style of music, and musicianship, continues to evolve into a higher form of entertainment experience.  In it's current incarnation, it is alternately experimental acoustic jazz with classical overtones and traditional bluegrass, but with the sharp edges worn off by Thile's distinctive musical vision.  The addition of an experienced bass player has enriched the music indescribably, and the impeccable skills of the band members truly weave a unique acoustic tapestry that simply cannot be duplicated by any other band.

Thile seems to have a special affinity for Roanoke and the Jefferson Center.  During a break he remarked about how many times he has played the venue.  "I'm so excited, because this time we sold out!" he remarked as he scanned the many empty seats in the auditorium due to the weather.  "It's just that you can't tell...".

The Punch Brothers are not just a backup band for Thile.  They are highly skilled musicians making serious music.  And although the sound is clearly derived from Thile's past, the richness and complexity as well as the addition of significant rhythm elements has taken them to a new level of performance.

Check out their schedule on the website at punchbrothers.com for dates and venues, and whatever you do, make it to one of the concerts.  I drove through 35 miles of blinding snow, and it was worth it.  You won't be disappointed.

Shooting with a purpose

It's great to just wander around in the world taking photos as you go. Once in a while you happen to be in the right place at the right time to get an interesting shot.  However, I find that those opportunities are rare.  To me, the point of photography is more communicating a message than just making pretty pictures.  Don't get me wrong, I like pretty pictures.  Love 'em, in fact.  But I suppose the journalist in me is always looking for something else going on.  The image should pull you into the story and make you wonder what is going on - maybe fill in the blanks for yourself.  Take this series of shots, for example.

My daughter and her husband were visiting yesterday, and at some point decided to break out the instruments and play a little music.  Guitar and banjo, in the old time style.  They are both good musicians and it's great to hear them play together, particularly when they are working on an original composition, like they were when I took these shots.

Now, I was really just playing around with my Olympus PEN camera with a Nikon 50mm lens, shooting totally manual, and I decided to use one of the built-in art processes and get some grainy black and white shots.  But when I looked at the proofs, I decided I would string them together like this to try to communicate a little bit of what making music is about.  You can begin to understand a little when you look at this arrangement.  It's fun and it's work.  Music demands some precision, and of course skill, but the point is to have fun creating something ephemerically beautiful.  You weave a tapestry of auditory color that hangs in the air for a moment and then exists only in your memory.  And when it's over, both the performer and the listener walk away a little richer.

Olympus PEN E-P3 review

I recently purchased an Olympus PEN E-P3 mirrorless micro four-thirds (m43) camera to carry around with me.  I know most of my photographer friends use DSLRs now, as do I, but there are times when I have needed a decent camera with me and did not have the ability to lug all that DSLR equipment.  See the photo for my reasoning...

As you can see, the D300 with grip and 17-55 f/2.8 is a monster compared to the PEN with it's pancake 17 mm f/2.8.  The PEN is not a shirt-pocket camera, but I can pretty much carry it wherever I go and get good photos with it.

There are a number of m43 cameras out there.  Prior to purchasing the PEN, I tried a Fuji x100, for example.  I absolutely loved the retro styling (it resembles the Leica M9) and many of the features, but the cost ($1200) combined with the inability to change lenses (the X100 has a 35 mm) just made it a no-go.

I also compared a number of other cameras in the m43 world, and finally decided the PEN was approximately equivalent to all of them for the price, and with a suitable adapter, I can attach most of my old Nikon film camera lenses (see photo).

This shows my old Nikon 50mm f/1.8 attached to the PEN.  It's a great combination and the quality is fantastic.  The 17 mm lens (35 mm equivalent) is ok - perfectly serviceable, but the quality of the Nikon is clearly superior.  The 50mm converts to 100mm so it's a perfect portrait lens.

So how is the quality of the images out of the PEN?  Very good.  The sensor is 12.3 mp but of a previous generation build, so it's a little noisy in high ISO operation.  There are a lot of comparison reviews floating around on the web, so check those out for extreme pixel peeping.  Your mileage may vary.

I will give one comparison to demonstrate a practical head-to-head in an actual photo situation.  I was writing an article about a local business with some neat new technology and I had to get a quick shot to go with the copy.  I loaded up my D300 with SB800 flash and I also brought along my PEN so I could determine if it was good enough to use professionally if I didn't have the larger rig with me.  Below is a comparison shot of the two images I took.

D300 image SOOC, jpg, 1/160, f/5.0, ISO 400, 20mm (30mm eq)

PEN image SOOC, jpg, 1/60, f/2.8, ISO 500, 17mm (35mm eq)

The D300 shot was taken with flash while the PEN was not.  Both shots are directly from the camera converted from raw to jpg using Adobe Camera Raw without any processing.  The Nikon image is wider because the PEN at full sensor is in the 4:3 proportion.  I used 160 shutter on the D300 so I could set the white balance to flash and eliminate contributions from the overhead fluorescent lights.

So, in my opinion, either of these images is useable with only minor sharpening and contrast adjustment that I do in post.  In fact, I sent both of them to the editor and let him decide which one to use.  The PEN is no replacement for a quality DSLR, but quality and practicality make it a very nice tool to have in the bag, and definitely is a lower-cost option for those who would like to move up from a point and shoot to something with more flexibility.

I won't go into all the cool features of the PEN camera controls.  But most importantly, I can shoot raw and I can shoot fully manual.  There is no optical viewfinder (you have to use the nice live view screen), but I can tell you the touch to focus aspects of the control are a dream.  There is no need to focus lock and recompose a shot - just touch the area of the screen where you want the focus to be, and the camera takes a photo.  Done.

For about the same price, you can now apparently buy a Panasonic Lumix GX1 which is a very similar camera, but which has slightly better high ISO performance and a 16 mp sensor.  I think either of these cameras is worthy to be in the bag with your gear, and unless you need the high IQ of a D3 or 5D Mark II, you can make great photos with these mirrorless cameras.  In fact, I would go so far as to suggest that the next generation of pro cameras will dispense with the bulky and expensive pentaprism optical finders and look more like the Leica M9.

Stagg Bowl Again!

Once again this year, Virginia Media Services will be providing photography of the game for the Old Dominion Athletic Council.  We had to miss it last year due to the gigantic freak snowstorm that blocked I-81 for most of two days, just as the Virginia Tech students were trying to get home for the holidays.  Here's a link to a photo from the game held in 2008.  The same two teams, Mount Union and UW-Whitewater, seem to end up in the championship every year, and 2010 is no exception.  Here's another action shot from the game.  Here's a small fan, and here's another sort of participant.

Weather will be cold but otherwise not too bad.  Come to the game!

Texture application

Here is an example of taking a poor photo and dressing it up with some judicious cropping and application of texture.  The image on the right was taken at dusk using a point-and-shoot camera.  The colors are muted and there is a lot of noise in the photo due to the low light conditions.  I cropped to move the boat out of the exact center of the frame, and to use the cluster of flowers on the left as a balance.  There was not much tonal variety in the original shot, and the application of texture, while warming the image, did not improve the tonality.  I really liked the dark moodiness of the edited photo, but the boat was pretty much lost in the background so I applied a mask to increase the level and bring it up a little, and also added a slight warming tone over just the boat.  It helped separate the boat from the background without totally spoiling the mood. You can see a larger version of the final processed image here. The other version is a watercolor conversion of the same image, just to see how it would be different.  I like it, but it loses some of the dark spookiness.

Photo to art conversion

Final 'artistic' version

Original Point-and-Shoot photo

While I would normally use a more sophisticated technique to convert photos to photoshop painting, I set this one up for a friend who did not own the full Photoshop program to demonstrate what is possible using PS Elements and some textures.  The process starts with the key step of simplifying the photo to remove tiny details.  A low-res point-and-shoot image is often ideal.  Use a blurring technique to remove the details if possible, but at the very least resize the image to a low resolution - around 72 dpi is fine.  Next apply a combination of filter effects which should at least include a watercolor effect.  Then obtain a 'watercolor texture' and apply it to the image to render the paint stroke effects.  Finally, apply a texture overlay of watercolor paper, etc., to give it an authentic presentation.  I always wanted to paint, but never had any talent in that direction.  Digital image processing programs such as PS Elements can almost make you look like a painter.  See more on the flickr page  http://www.flickr.com/photos/vamedia/

PR shots demonstrate crop and texture

Original Shot unedited

Final Shot

Here is a sample of a PR image taken for Brian Muller, local bluegrass and jazz musician.  Two processes were performed on the original shot.  First, the image was cropped to convert the original digital frame to an 8" x 10" format for use in promotions and to tighten the focus on the musician.  The shots in the studio are generally left a little wide so that I can crop to suit during post-production.  Second, I added a little texture overlay to the image which warmed it slightly and created a little more flatness while simultaneously smoothing and vignetting the backdrop.  There is a slight loss of contrast in the result, but for printing purposes, that is often desirable.

Social Media: A tool, not THE tool

It's been truly amazing to see how social media marketing has risen in prominence over the past few years. First, MySpace started a trend and then FaceBook opened up to public users instead of being restricted to .edu email addresses. That's when the floodgates opened.

Savvy marketing folks, and especially those self-proclaimed SM gurus who got ahead of the curve, began to explore the rules and push the envelope of the new channel. Once it was enough to have a good website, but now the website is probably the third thing the potential customer will see with your name on it, the first being your tweets and the second being your FaceBook page.

I don't think this situation is inherently good or bad -it's just a result of the continuing development of the now almost universal (except in China) online experience. But I already see abuses, if we can call them that, by the so-called gurus who lure internet advertising novices into their chatty lair with horror stories of how company x went out of business because they didn't tweet.

For example, I have personally seen one of these self-ordained SM priests visit the following atrocity on their clients. They think it's all about traffic, so naturally they have learned some tricks to increasing it. They set up multiple websites with blogs, and then set up multiple Twitter accounts. Finally, they set up a network of other SM 'experts' and they begin to engage in a giant twitter party.

First, the 'guru' will write a blog about something useless, full of irrelevant links to unrelated sites, some of which belong to the guru. Then the guru will tweet about the blog using twitter account 1. Then the same guru will retweet using twitter account 2. Then guru will get back on account 1 and thank account 2 for the retweet, after which account 2 replies, don't mention it, etc. This can go on for ten cycles or more, and eventually branches out to other 'gurus' who have clandestine agreements with guru1 for mutual assured retweeting.

I gotta tell you, when I see this sort of thing going on, I know one thing for sure: the object of the original blog post, presumably a customer paying for the SM exposure using guru1, has nothing to say, and nothing to sell me. If this is the best they can do with advertising, then I will never purchase their products.

I know this seems a bit harsh, but it's still about return-on-investment, and many companies' marketing directors are now emerging from their traditional PR caves and asking what all the money they are paying to the SM zen masters is getting them.

Two links if you want to do it right. First, read this blog post from a guy in the business, who gets it. Then, check out the website of this online marketing company, RYP Marketing.

The 'RYP' in the name stands for "Raise Your Profits". That's what I'm talkin' about!

Watercolor photo conversion

Here is another watercolor painting conversion of a bridal shot. Original photo is by Kurt Grosshans. While it is a nice photo, the art conversion really needs a tighter crop. After some significant thought, I chose a crop that may seem a little odd at first glance. The original photo is interesting, but not easy to convert into the watercolor effect because of the scale, and I was not really sure what the pose was trying to convey. However, the tight crop seems to have a bit more movement in it, and it shows the effect of the brush strokes better than the longer view would have. I intentionally cut off part of the model and left a little extra black background on the left side. This allows the potential for either a tighter crop toward the face, or space for text down the left side of the frame.

Photo exhibition

Woo-hoo! Artist reception this Saturday, March 6, from 1-3 pm in the Coffee Depot in Christiansburg. Come see photos from Kirk Carter, Bob Abraham and Michael Miller; meet and talk with the artists. More details to be found here.

CD Launch Party features Va Media photos

The local old-time string band Old Sledge will have a launch party for their new CD today from 5 to 8 pm at the Palisades restaurant in Eggleston. Here is a link to the MySpace page for the band, and here is a link to the webpage for the Palisades. The album cover features an interior shot of the band on location in an abandoned building in Eggleston.