Tomorrow (May 1, 2009) is First Friday in the Tennyson Arts District.  From 6-10pm galleries will be open along Tennyson, including gallery nrc.  For First Friday in May, gallery nrc will donate 25% of all sales to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society through their Team in Training program.

Stop by this Friday and check out some new art, as well as help out the LLS.

Yesterday I mentioned the Rocky Mountain Spring Camera Show which is being hosted by the Denver Photographic Society.  DPS is a local camera club, and one of the questions I am often asked is what group, organizations or clubs do I belong to and how do they benefit your work.  As I mentioned this event sponsored by a local club I thought this would be a good time to talk about the options available.

First off, I am not a member of DPS and I have not been to any of their meetings, but I did mention the camera show as I thought it may be of interest to the local Denver readers of this blog.  There are many positives to joining a local camera club, however if it is the right decision for you depends on your objectives and what you would like to get out of the club.  In the Denver area there are quite a few options for photo clubs you may consider depending on your location, I recommend checking out a few prior to joining a specific club.

Since photography is quite popular in Colorado there are many options available, but if you are in a smaller town or restricted on time an online forum may be the right option for you. Depending on the type of photography which interests you, there is most likely an online forum which will focus on your subject.  For my personal work, I follow or participate on Nature Photographers Network, Nature Photographers of Colorado as well as Sports Shooter.  There are others I also look on occasionally, but these three are the top.  Besides the traditional forums, you have sharing websites like Flickr, and photo.net however I encourage you to read the terms of usage for whatever online forum you use to make sure how any photos you upload may be utilized by the site.

For the professional side of my work, I belong to Indie Arsenal which is a local group of creatives who through online forums collaborate and network at no charge.  With members from varying disciplines it also provides the opportunity to talk to other creatives who may be having similar problems whether in the same discipline or not.  From the meetings, I have found an issue discussed by a web designer may be something I am dealing with as well and it is helpful to have different backgrounds trying to find the problem.  In addition to Indie Arsenal, I am also a member of the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce.  While Indie has creative businesses strongly represented, the chamber represents businesses of all sizes and provides many opportunities to network with fellow members at events during the course of the year.  The main item to remember with the chamber is that the more you take part in the events, the more you will get back.  If you are in the Denver area and are interested in trying out the chamber, let me know and I would be happy to take you to an event and provide you a contact at the Chamber to talk to in more detail.

On a National level, I am a member of two different professional organizations.  The first is the American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP) which is an organization of photographers who mainly photograph for publication.  ASMP helps promote the interest of photographers in the industry as well as provides resources which help photographers with their business and growth.  One publication which is a great resource is the ASMP Professional Business Practices in Photography which is available for anyone to purchase.  While ASMP is at a national level, there are also local chapters which have events.  ASMP Colorado is my local chapter and they have meetings about once a month allowing members to get together and network.  While I have heard in the past some people do not like this as it is more so a gripe session, just like any organization it is all about what you wish to get from the opportunities.  The other national organization I am a member is the National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP).  To be honest at first I questioned joining this organization, however with their extensive online resources as well as printed magazine I have found great value in being a member.  Additionally with the discounts you can get through being a member the membership basically pays for itself.  If you are using Lightroom and/or Photoshop there is a great wealth of information available to help you naviagte the complexities of these programs.

There are many more groups and associations out there whether local, regional, national or online.  The bottom line is to find what works best for your specialization and see if being a member is right for you.  Whether it is PPA, NANPA, WPPI, APA or any of the many others talk to your peers as well and see what makes sense. Are there any organizations which you are a member of currently, leave a comment and let me know.

This Sunday (May 3, 2009) at the Jefferson County Fairgrounds the only Denver photographic swap meet will take place with about forty to fifty vendors set-up offering new and used photo equipment.  There is a $5 entrance fee, however you never know what you may find.

More information including on how to obtain a sellers table may be found on the Denver Photographic Society information page about the swap meet.

You may recall a year ago I mentioned the Brain Tumor Walk in San Francisco, and this year I will once again mention the event as the Linking the Week site.  On Saturday May 2nd the event will take place at Golden Gate Park this year.  I bring up this event as I know more people than I should who have been impacted from brain tumors.  From college friends, spouses of friends and neighbors the number of people is greater than zero.

For the San Francisco walk, my friend Venu who was diagnosed with a brain tumor over eight years ago, will be walking and is also featured on the main picture on the right hand side.  You can support his efforts to raise money for brain tumor research at his fundraising page.

You may also find more information about the National Brain Tumor Foundation and the work they do and how you can support their efforts by visiting their website.

World Pinhole Camera Day is this Sunday April 26th 2009, and as I read about this event it got me thinking about trying this on my own.  If you are familiar with pinhole photography you know it is one of the original methods for capturing images and even today people still photograph with pinhole cameras.  Today you have the basic and complex portable models, as well as some photographers who turn their car or a room of their house to a pinhole camera.  The premise of the pinhole camera is quite straight forward, as light goes through the hole it will project an image onto the back side of the camera or wall which is then captured on film or a digital sensor.  You may have even seen this when a small amount of light is coming into your house and projecting on a wall.  The smaller the size of the hole the sharper the image, however the perfect size hole depends on the distance between the hole and where the image is bring captured.

In creating a pinhole camera, my approach was quite easy.  I purchased a couple of extra camera body caps and placed a small hole in the center.  This “small hole” or pinhole allows light to come through the “lens” and onto the digital sensor.  While there are advantages of using digital for a pinhole camera since you can see the result on the LCD and adjust as needed, there is also the issue of dust getting through the opening and onto the sensor.

Once I had the camera ready I tried it out around gallery nrc and in the parking lot.  The following images were taken with the above set-up, and had some minor adjustments performed in Adobe Lightroom.

The back wall of The Historical Oriental Theater

There is a lot of playing around you can do with this, and also experimenting with different size pinholes for your camera as it will provide different results as well.  Lastly, I recommend using an older camera as of the issue with dust getting on the sensor and it could take a while to get it totally clean.

Do you have any pinhole shots you have taken recently, feel free to post a link in the comments.

Earlier this year I mentioned I am helping on trail support for Team in Training as we raise money for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. Over the past couple of months we have hit the trails along the front range of Denver to get the participants for the Grand Canyon event ready and over the next few weeks we will be finishing up this season.  It has been interesting with the weather this year since winter along the front range of Colorado has really taken shape in the last four weeks.  During the true season of winter we had minimal snow and more so wind this year.  In the past few weeks I brought my camera along and have the following images to show of the hikes.

Button Rock Preserve (Thanks to Shawn for letting me use her camera)

Apex Park – Jefferson County Open Space

Apex Park Trails - Jefferson County Colorado

White Ranch Open Space – This was probably the most fun due to the fact there was three feet of snow.  Fortunately a couple of us had our snowshoes to help with making a trail.

April snowstorm at White Ranch Open Space in Jefferson County

Hiking at White Ranch Open Space

Didn't take long for Cristy, Kelly, Mary, Mike, Shawn and myself to make this snowman

With this season almost over the next season of Team in Training is being planned and scheduled to kick off on May 9th.  I will be hiking again this summer and doing fundraising this time around.  If you would like to contribute to my efforts you may learn more at the Neil Corman Team in Training page.

It was about a year ago when I headed to Chicago for a weekend seminar entitled SB2.  For two days I networked with fellow photographers and learned a great deal of information about the photography business.  While SB2 visited four different cities in 2008, not every one was able to attend.  Now a year later the folks at ASMP have started the Strictly Business Blog.  The information provided on the blog is a good reminder of what I learned on the business side in Chicago, but also brings new information to the table from what presenters have learned in the past year.  If you are a photographer I strongly recommend bookmarking this site and checking back often to see the latest posts.

The linking the week site for this week consists of a couple of distractions for your work week.  The first site donates 10 grains of rice for every correct answer you get through the United Nations World Food Program.  After sharing this site with a friend over the weekend I was informed it made his head hurt and was a reminder of the vocabulary section of the SAT.  The second site may not hurt your head but it will help you remember those Chicago Bears quarterbacks since they won the Super Bowl and have you shaking your head with some of those names.  In addition Sporcle will test you on pretty much anything from fast food restaurants to common chat acronyms.

Hopefully these sites will give you a little break, but of course you don’t want to spend too much time on the sites.

The website A Photo Editor has an interesting post from earlier this month regarding the photograph on U2′s new album No Line on the Horizon.  The title song of the album was inspired by the photographers work and he allowed it to be the album cover with the condition of no text may obstruct any part of the image, which something not really done.  Additionally the terms of the usage was an artist to artist deal, meaning U2 could use the image and the photographer obtained rights to the song for his use in the future.  More information of how this whole transaction came about may be found on the A Photo Editor website and his recent post Hiroshi Sugimoto’s No Cash Deal with U2.

I find this transaction interesting with the value of the work exchanged between two artists.  While Sugimoto will receive the exposure by being on the front of the new album and likewise have his image show up on any iPod when music from the album is playing, which can be quite significant for a band like U2, for this the value exchanged are the rights to use the title song of the new CD, which was influenced by his images, in any project of his in the future.

Photographers should look at this exchange with interest as there is a common misconception of when it is alright to use music as part of a presentation or more so website without the proper license.  I have been to numerous websites of photographers who have strong statements about stealing their images, but yet use pieces of music which are quite mainstream and most likely not licensed for commercial use.  If we are trying to educate people on why it is wrong to take images from a website shouldn’t we respect the work of other artists?

On Friday April 10, 2009 the silent auction event, Bid to Beat Blood Cancers will take place.  For $17 you receive one drink, unlimited appetizers, the opportunity to bid on many great items at a silent auction, fun and knowing you are raising money for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.

One of the items which will be available to bid on at the silent auction is Winter in Washington Park which is a photograph I took earlier this year in Washington Park here in Denver.  With a starting bid of $25 for a matted 16×20 print there is a great value available.

The event which takes place from 5:30-8:30PM is being held at Michelangelo’s Coffee and Wine Bar which is located at 1 Broadway in Denver.  I hope to see your there!