Sophia

I have been spending more time on FB posting images and ideas on RedTown page, completely neglecting the blog! This ends now.

Hello again big beautiful photos.

First up - a recent test shoot with Sophia of BMG Models.

New Business Cards

Look what the mailman dropped off the other day.

I've been in need of new business cards in a desperate way for sometime now. I've always designed my own cards to save on costs (and because I enjoy the work). I've used a variety of different online printers out there and every time I received the final product I swore up and down that the next time I'd do it right and get quality cards from a local printer. I've done this about 5 times now.

I've always struggled with what to put on my business cards that would appeal to the broadest group of potential clients while still being interesting. I've usually simply opted to not put a photograph and instead put my logo on one side and contact info on the other. However, I always wanted to put my photos on my cards - it's far more likely to be kept by a potential client after you've parted ways and has the added bonus of being a great mini piece of art. A few years ago a friend of mine showed me her mini moo cards which were cute and unusually sized and featured different photos on each card. I liked the concept of being able to have more than one photo on a card for the sake of variety. If I'm trying to convince someone to hang one of my landscapes, it seems only fitting that I can pass out a business card with a landscape photo on it. But alternatively, it doesn't make much sense when trying to get new portrait clients. Obviously I need cards with people on them. Moo cards seemed great because of the ability to print different photos per run, but I wasn't a huge fan of their mini size - sorry.

Well some years have passed and here I was again, in need of new business cards. So I decided to take another look at moo.com and I was pleasantly surprised to see that not only did they still make their signature mini cards, but they made full size cards too. Not only that, they even made cards with rounded corners! I watched their promo videos about their paper quality and printing process and was instantly sold. So I immediately got to work, selected 25 of my favorite photos, and decided to take a chance.

A week and change later, here's what arrived at my door:

Surprisingly nice packaging and presentation. I was very impressed by this level of care and design. I'm used to receiving my cards in something not much better than a glorified shoebox. This packaging showed commitment and integrity. 

I ordered 200 cards, and they threw in a cool little black rolodex box to keep track of your collected cards. I felt kinda special, but I don't know, maybe they do this for everyone?

I even splurged on a $10 sticker book of 90 stickers. They're pretty rad.

You can print up to 50 different photos, but I decided to keep things civilized and printed only 25. Moo.com preferes a pdf print profile which I found to look a little bizarre when I exported my images, but with just a bit of tweaking I was able to get my photos to look pretty close to how I wanted them. Some of the shadows are a little muddier than I'd like, but that may be on my end and not necessarily due to the satin finish of the cards. A satin finish that is absolutely stunning by the way.

The cards themselves feel amazing. I'm totally in love with the rounded corners and the weight and feel of the card in hand is really just awesome. These are hands down the best feeling cards I've ever had.

I love this mini potfolio of business cards.

On the reverse I stripped away all the nonsense you usually get on a business card and simply listed my website against a repeating scroll of "RedTown photography".

I'm totally in love with these cards and can't wait to fan some out for a potential client and have them choose their favorite. In today's world there are so many different ways to get your work in front of people but there's still something to be said for a great business card. If you're in the market for some new ones yourself, this should be your first stop: www.moo.com

Gary, IN

I recently spent some time in Gary, IN exploring some of the more famous condemned and abandoned sites of this once vibrant industrial city. Urbex photography is actually a relatively new hobby for me, though I've been exploring sewers and empty buildings for years. Unfortunately, urban exploring is still a very underground scene, as most of the activity involves trespassing and other illegal activities. As a society we're quick to hold someone else liable for our own mistakes, so it's only natural that local governments and private land owners would want to discourage people from exploring their abandoned buildings which are, frankly, lawsuit magnets waiting to happen. This is sad, but a reality of life.

To me urbex is important, simply because these abandoned sites are a historical artifact of our existence and should be recorded and shared, if not for current generations, then for posterity. The urban ecosystem is designed to recycle itself, so these relics never last for long, as their bulldozed to make room for new condos or shopping centers. Indeed, one might visit these places and think they're only eyesores and shelters for violence and gang activity that should be demolished and the sooner the better. I think this viewpoint is narrow-minded and uninspired. It's certainly tough to drive through once iconic main street Gary and see it's store fronts now shuttered and forgotten. But it's also inspiring to experience the impermanence of humanity's creation as evidenced by the decay of these architectural relics. All things return to earth, which is a lesson so easily understood by experiencing this beauty first hand.

LA Lights

On a recent trip to LA I visited Griffith Observatory on what was one of the clearest nights I've ever seen in the city. They were throwing a viewing party with multiple telescopes which gave us a chance to look at the belts of Jupiter, the star factory known as the Orion Nebula, and a far away star cluster of hundreds of stars too distant to be seen by the naked eye. I've always loved going to Griffith since I was a little kid, and this most recent visit reminded me why it's such a special place, especially at night.

My Fuji X100 (sorta) Review

I've purchased many cameras over the years, always looking to find just the right tool that would make me the better photographer, always naively telling myself that "if only I had this camera then...". Of course every photographer romanticizes that they can walk the streets of say, Paris with some exotic old camera, perhaps a Hasselblad, and that because of this magical camera, they will become a master photographer and every frame will come out ready to hang in a gallery. Every photographer deludes themselves with this idea because the technology that makes photography possible is part of the appeal of being a photographer in the first place. So why not dream big?

I caught the camera bug early in my college days. In fact, my first big camera purchase was a Hasselblad 501cm with 3 lenses and 2 film backs and a Polaroid back -the works.  But in the end, guess how that camera spent most of its time. Yep, on a shelf, collecting dust. The dream that now that I had the perfect camera I would be on my way to being a great photographer turned out to be exactly that: just a dream. That's not to say I didn't shoot my fair share of film through that camera. I certainly did. But as my photography output increased, the fact of the matter was that I could no longer justify the time or resources it took to shoot film, and sadly this beautiful piece of photographic technology became the last choice when it came time to grab a camera and go. It's a digital age and I needed a camera that can give me the immediacy that digital photography affords.  The problem was (and I suspect many other photographers feel the same way) that carrying a digital camera around with you everywhere just wasn't cool. I hate to say it, but when your only choice is to grab your big, heavy, dorky digital slr or an expensive and antiquated film camera, you often left the house with no camera at all. In fact, I found myself becoming less and less a photographer because I simply had my camera with me less and less of the time.

So when the Fuji X100 was announced in 2010, I, as did so many other photographers, took a knee and thanked the photo gods for answering our prayers. Here was a piece of technology that seemed to be designed by Cartier-Bresson himself, had he only lived in the age of iPods and HDTV. The romance of photography was back, as this camera married oldschool style with cutting edge performance. In short, this was the camera that would make carrying a camera around your neck cool again. But I wouldn't let myself buy another camera just for camera's sake. I had neglected too many good cameras and determined that in order to take in a new camera, I had to sell another I already owned. So after much agonizing and suffering, I sold my Hasselblad kit (a decision any photographer would understand I did not make lightly) and bought the Fuji X100.

Was it the right move? In a word: yes.

In more than one word: yes, yes.

There are enough reviews of this camera out there for you to read if you need to geek out over specs and features. I recommend starting here. For me, I only need the camera to tick off a few things. As I already said above, it needs to be convenient enough to carry with me anywhere, while providing me the convenience and performance of today's current digital sensor technologies. The X100 does this in spades. Sure the camera is too big to carry in a pocket like an iPhone, but the camera has a full aps-c size sensor with amazing low-light performance, a beautiful 35mm (equivalent) lens, and a gorgeous hybrid ovf/evf which makes the act of photography feel so much more authentic than using an iPhone. So in a way, this camera is more about making me feel more like a photographer than anything else. And while I've finally grown out of the dream that having the right camera will make be a great photographer, this camera makes me feel like every time I use it I'm becoming more and more the photographer I want to be.  That experience is something that I don't think is stressed enough when you read online reviews.

I've been settling in with this camera for a few weeks now, and I'm loving every moment with it. Not only does it feel and look like the camera I've been waiting for, but the performance is simply unmatched. Sure, there are some issues with it. The manual focus sucks, and in low light, the AF can hunt a little. The menu isn't great and I also don't like that I can't seem to turn the image review off which sometimes hurts my ability to get the photo in a clutch moment. But my god, this camera does so much else right, how can you possibly whine about any of that other nonsense? The lens is amazing (I don't miss not having a zoom, in fact I love the discipline that comes with using prime lenses) the image quality is superb, and using it in silent mode people don't even know I have a camera with me. It is hands down my favorite camera and am happy to say that it's the first camera I've ever purchased that doesn't spend most of its time gathering dust on a shelf. Here's to being a photographer again. Thank you Fuji.

Self Portrait

Here are some of my recent photos: