Here’s a slideshow I wanted to share from a recent Spring time engagement session photoshoot with some friends of mine.  The location was a country New England orchard, and made for great scenery.  These images will soon be available for royalty-free stock photo licensing.

One of my favorite selects from the shoot is the photo of the diamond engagement ring wrapped around the wild onion grass.  I love it when you are working with a couple who is willing to add their own creative ideas and suggestions.  It’s easy to get lost in the photo shoot and to forgot certain details that you wanted to capture, so when I’m able to work with people who are also creatively minded, it helps us to push the shoot to an even higher level or variety.  We also were able to hang the ring on some apple flower buds, that was just starting to turn into tiny baby apples.  I really enjoy photographing engagement sessions, because there is a wide variety of things to capture – from the location and environment, the couple doing certain activities (such as tossing a frisbee, or riding a motorcycle), down to the very tiny details.

You can see a few more stills from this shoot here on our facebook page.

Did you ever scan a photo or some film negatives on a flatbed or film scanner, only to realize that the image is covered in pieces of dust, pet hair, or lint?  Or maybe you photographed a closeup of an object only to find a bunch of obvious dust or scratches that were not very noticeable to the eye beforehand?  This Photoshop tutorial by the late Bob Mizerek will show you how to Photoshop out dust and scratches in a jiffy using this simple technique.

While the standard dust and scratches removal feature in Photoshop may be enough, you might find that many times that it takes away too much quality from the original image.  Using Bob’s method (as seen in the youtube video above) you will learn that dust removal can be a lot more selective using layers and masking; therefore preserving the important parts of the image, and all of its important details.

Here is a new amazing photography website that helps anyone learn how to light.  Ever look at a photo and wonder, “I wonder what type of lighting setup they used?”.  Well, now there’s a website (and an app) for that.  Strobox is an entire website dedicated to the behind the scenes setups of each and ever image submitted.Here is a stock photo I had shot, along with the lighting diagram I just posted.  It took me a total of about 2 minutes to make the diagram and post.  I’m definitely going to be bookmarking this website for those days when I just feel dull, and need some strobist lighting inspiration.

It’s always good to have a network of friends and colleagues to push work back and forth to/from. Remember – one hand washes the other. When you “pay work forward”, it all comes back around. Whoever is too swamped at the time, or doesn’t want to do a particular job, will push it over someone else that might want it. This type of arrangement is highly recommended with regards to any type of freelancing position.  Sometimes you might not want to deal with a certain type of a client.  Dealing with the public can be trying, and not all of us handle certain types of people as well as others.  This is another perfect scenario of why you might want to shoot the job over to your colleague; not to dump them with a jerk of a client, but maybe you know they really could use the work.  “Beggars can’t be choosers”.  Wow, two old school expressions in the same blog post *facepalm*.

Great platforms for building your social work network such are twitter, behance, google+, linkedin; anywhere you can interact and connect with like minded creatives.  It takes constant effort, though.  You’ll need to actually keep in touch with your “creative network” somehow, and make sure you communicate regularly.  You’ll want to remember members of your network, and hope they remember you as well.  Keep each other updated on how busy everyone is, and who is in need of the most work at that present moment.

Do you already have something like this?  Please share your story in the comments section below.

Before you think you’re finding a great deal on the newest model, look at the next few older ones in the series. Whether you choose Nikon or Canon, the glass will outlive many many camera bodies. You have to hold and feel them in your hands. Personally, I never really liked the smaller plastic DSLR’s, so I always went with older model prosumer bodies made of magnesium allow (Canon XXD series).  The thumb wheel (not sure what the proper name for it is) makes it so much easier to quickly change the settings.  On the Canon Digital Rebel series camera bodies, there is no wheel.

You have to remember, any older model dslr you can still purchase right now was amazing and mind blowing when it first came out, just a few years ago. Keeping up with the latest and greatest tech doesn’t make you a better photographer. Sure, they are tools – and newer features/technological help tremendously.  What lenses should you get?  That’s a whole other story.  For basic, starter, and cheap lenses… get the 50mm f1.8 (about $80-130 depending on Nikon or Canon).  I only know Canon, because that’s what I use.  There is nothing wrong with Nikon, or Pentac, or Olympus either!  You should try both, and see which button layout you like the most, and feel more comfortable with.  It won’t take long to test them out in a local store, and decide for yourself.  I went with Canon because I had a lot of friends also with Canon, and knew we could easily swap, trade, buy, sell, and/or borrow gear from one another.  I always saw that it was easier to buy used gear that was more readily available if I went with one of the main dslr manufacturers, Nikon or Canon.  Canon glass is a little bit cheaper than Nikon, from what I’ve seen too.  Just a tiny bit.  Another lens that is pretty standard is the 18-55 IS or VR lens.  This will cover a decent wide angle to mid zoom range for landscapes and portraits.  Once you get into the higher end lenses, the costs begin to surpass even the prices of the camera bodies themselves, as it should.  Bodies come and go, but good glass is forever (or at least until you drop it, and it breaks).  Don’t think you can’t make amazing pictures with basic starter and kit lenses.  Just look online, and you’ll see millions of folks already doing so.  I have been using my 18-55 IS lens and 50mm f1.8 lenses for almost 7 years now, and still use them to this day, along with my higher end L lenses.

I hope this post has helped – a final bit of advice, is to read read read the reviews online of whatever you’re interested in buying.  You can save SO much money by buying camera bodies use, and that are at least 3-5 years old.  Usually they depreciate in value down to about 25-40% of their original price, in a short matter of years.  Buy what you can afford, and don’t bite off more than you can chew until you know you are serious about photography.

PS: I’ll be updating our gear list with everything we use here at Arena Creative for our stock imagery, if you are looking for additional recommendations.

Here Bob (“The Miz”) shows us how easy it is with just a few steps to remove color cast issues that might have happened in your images.  Make sure to subscribe to our youtube channel for more step-by-step, easy-to-follow Photoshop video tutorials!

The above stock images are all available for royalty-free and editorial licensing at http://arenacreative.com There are many more to choose from, to be sure to search for keywords “new york” the next time you browse the collection.

We all know that education is important.  In most cases, having some sort of training is vital to at least start you off on the direction you’re going to make your move in.  Whether you want to become a tradesman, a creative professional, or even just a general business associate, you usually have to have some form of training in order to even be considered for the job.  My parents always encouraged me to get a college degree, as it was a great feather in your cap, as well as something to fall back on.  Four and a half years later, I did just that – and it did get me started on the road to the creative fields I wanted to work in.  But know this: college doesn’t guarantee you a job.  I’ll say it again.  College does not guarantee you a job.  There are tons spewing out of the universities that can’t even find employment in their field of study within even the first year or two after graduation.  College could land you a great job that feels secure, but actually isn’t.  Having a degree doesn’t seem to as much influence or value as it used to.  Associates, Bachelors, Masters; heck – even a Doctorate degree.  In the end, I feel that I definitely learned a lot about design, business, and other people in general, in college.  I don’t regret it, but sometimes I wonder if it would have really mattered.  That’s an entire story in itself, but let me get back to where I was going with this before I digress further.

Going back to the year 2000, when I had just started my first semester of college, I thought I knew which direction I was headed.  Originally I had starting out in college with a computer science major; taking advanced calculus classes, and java to learn the basics of programming. The math part was challenging, but I was always pretty good at it. The java, was (to me) incredibly boring and dry, very very complicated stuff. The entire class was filled with your typical programming nerds, mostly Asians and Indian in their late teens that were probably foreign exchange students. They all seemed to be understanding everything and eating it up like it was fresh cupcakes on a platter being served up.  I looked around and asked myself… did I take a wrong turn somewhere?

Having always been an honors student, school and grades always seemed to come easy for me. I was always a good student back in grade school, studying and doing all of my homework.  I definitely was not an overachiever, however.  I did the absolute minimum to get by, but I made sure I did my best at whatever I was assigned.  Yes, it was a lot of work – but I actually did care about my grades.  Not so much what my teachers or the other students thought of me; I was more concerned about proving to myself that I did my best.  Now, here I am in a class learning programming.  What was I thinking?  I didn’t want to be a computer programmer.  Somewhere along the way, I must have thought that a computer science course of study would eventually lead back over to graphics, and playing around with Adobe Photoshop – one of my beloved past-times.  It turns out, there was another major in the university I had been attending. It was called Graphic/Info Design – a course of study more specific to what I really wanted to do for work.

This design degree program was a great fit for me.  The math classes required for it were all basic, that I was kicking myself for already suffering through a lot of advanced ones.  Papers and research projects in this Graphic Design major were now transformed into design projects.  I hated writing papers (now I just write super long blog posts; go figure).  Ask my parents – they will attest to me staying up many many late nights, gluing my design pieces to black foam core and then covering them with acetate until 2 in the morning.  But – I got to play with Photoshop!  That made it all worth it.

So I did well, graduated with mostly A’s in design classes, got a couple of bad grades from some tough history classes, and ended up with a 3.28 GPA – not bad.  Now what?  I started applying for jobs.  There were very few, and a lot of candidates.  Designers in my area were spitting out of colleges by the hundreds.  Who wouldn’t want to have a cushy computer desk job, where they get to play around with artwork and photography layouts all day?  Probably a lot of people.  But there are also a lot that see that type of work as “just their fit”.  I applied and interviewed and applied and interviewed, and then three months later found out of an opening in a company that a friend told me about.  That was my in.   Who knows how long it would have taken me to land a job, otherwise.  Sometimes it’s not what you can do, or what you’ve got in your cap, but who you know.  How did she know I would be interested in a graphic design position?  Because I talked about it.  A lot.  Use your yapper, and the right people will hear you, eventually.

That worked out great for a while, and I learned so much on the job.  After getting married and realizing there wasn’t much more room for growth, (you need more income when you have to support a family, of course) I eventually left the company to move on to broader horizons; so I thought.  The pay was better – the design work was more fun / interesting, and the benefits were excellent.  Later on, I was regretting that decision, due to the high stress level of that job.  About a year after that I got a pink slip, due to the corporation going into Chapter 11 bankruptcy, around 2008 when the worldwide economy was really tanking.  Oh wait- what just happened?  I thought those with college degrees could never get laid off?  Ha.  Huge myth and common misunderstanding.  There’s no such thing as “job security” in anything you do.  There’s only something called “time to figure out your next move, plan, and execute it”.  Remember that.  Still, that layoff was a huge blessing in disguise.  If you’re currently laid off, reading this – try to look at it in hindsight – not as a curse, or a drawback, but as a blessing to hit the “reset” button on your path and to try something else.

All while I was working these traditional graphic design jobs for 4 or so years, designing everything from custom magazines, to marketing materials, and advertising of all shapes and sizes, I was introduced to the wonder world of stock imagery.  Stock photography is something as a graphic design that you are forced to at least get familiar with in the course of your job.  You obviously need effective imagery to advertise.  What our eyes see is a powerful influence on the mind.  I ended up using a lot of stock photography, and eventually in my endless searches I noticed that there were individual names attached to some of the images I was purchasing on the microstock websites, like Dreamstime and iStockphoto. I also learned what I was looking for, as an image buyer.  That placed me directly inside that type of customer mindset.

I realized that stock imagery was something I wanted to dabble in, for a side income.  I could make graphics and illustrations, even shoot some snapshots with my digital point and shoot; and then hawk them online for small commissions.  Awesome.  So, with much persistence, I got in.  It grew.  One image I got approved on istock had even earned $3000 over it’s short life span.  I was spending a few hours here and there on nights or weekends doing stock, mostly as a fun hobby to see how many sales I could rack up.  My earnings were viewed more like a score, or points.  This was just a game for me.  Something fun I could mess around with, and get the jollies when learning which images people liked to purchase the most.  Eventually I was earning enough to pay a lot of my family’s major bills, like the mortgage.  That’s right about when I was laid off from my graphic design dayjob.  Thankfully, stock imagery was my next major move.

So, I had a great start. About 3.5 years of working at shooting photos, designing graphics and layouts, keywording, description tagging them, uploading them via ftp to the agencies, processing them, and tracking stats led me into a lucrative side gig.  I knew that it was do or die time.  I needed to prove to myself, and everyone else, that when you dedicated a full time work week to this, you could make it a full time job.  Just three to six months later, I had hustled so hard that I was making double the earnings from my stock images.  I know that stress, anxiety, fear, and hunger had a lot to do with my hustle.  Sometimes its healthy to get a little hungry.  Have a little ambition.  Put your best foot forward, and work your hardest at whatever you set out to accomplish.  At least if you fail, you’ll realize that you tried your best.  Now I’m mostly a photographer.  After 6 years shooting, learning, improving, I finally consider myself a little bit more a photographer than I do a graphic designer.   Who’d have thunk it?  Not me.  So I went from high school grocery store employee (customer service booth jockey, cashier, cart pusher, grocery bagger, and dairy stocker – how I paid my way through college, and much motivation to stay in school so I could get out of that rat hole dead-end job) to computer science student, to graphic designer, to photographer.

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed if you ever find yourself at some sort of a “career path crossroads”.  Maybe in 5-10 years, I’ll be doing something entirely different.  Who knows? Don’t let anxiety or stress get the best of you.  Things will eventually work out, as long as you’re keeping your eyes, ears, and mind open to different potential opportunities.  Don’t forget to be adaptable.

Ask yourself the following questions:

What am I really good at? 

What have I learned about myself and about the industries I’ve worked in? 

Which businesses do I know the client, inside and out? 

What do I love doing, and actually have a passion for? 

If there’s a way to actually make money doing it, how can I combine the two into a job that will support myself and/or my family? 

Even if I don’t think I’ll absolutely love a certain type of job at first, am I willing to take a chance on it, and see where it leads me? 

Is college or some form of secular training course going to be affordable, or even worth pursuing for this specific field? 

Have I done my homework by talking to other friends, neighbors, or even random internet friends about what they have learned? 

Always keep your options open, kiddos.  You will eventually find your niche. Some fall into it quick, while it takes very many years for others.  There are never really any wrong moves, because with each move your learn more about where you’d rather be or what you’d rather do.  There are risks, and there are educated risks.  Use your noggin.  Sometimes you learn what you really would like to do isn’t always possible.  Either way, you can’t be afraid to make a decision when they time comes to do so.  Life is a journey.  We all have to remember to try and enjoy the ride as we figure ours out.

Have you ever taken a photograph of someone near a brightly colored wall, object, or in a certain environment; only to realize there has been a terrible colorcast on the subject?  This happens a lot.  The white balance isn’t always the issue, but more so what the light is reflecting off of.  Taking photographs of someone in the grass on a sunny day can many times make them have a slight greenish hue in their skin tones. Using some simple color range selections, and curves adjustment techniques, you can easily remove color cast issues using this simple technique that Bob Mizerek demonstrates in this video tutorial.

Want to learn how to crate and use actions in Adobe Photoshop?  Maybe you’ve heard about it, or tried it in the past, only to find yourself getting stuck or held up at a certain point?  This tutorial is for you.  It will walk you through the basics of how to record an action and then how to use it in your post processing workflow.  Tutorial by the one and only Bob Mizerek.

Cross processing is a technique where you either have the same image, shot on a tripod, captured with multiple exposures. Or, cross-processing can also be done by creating mutltiple exposure levels in post, using an original RAW file.  Here, Bob Mizerek gives us a peek inside his personal workflow to see how he took a landscape photo of a forest from dull to spectacular by cross-processing the image.

Here is a Photoshop tutorial by Bob Mizerek which shows you how to move layer masks; no matter which version of Photoshop you have.

This video tutorial shows you a few different ways in which you can select parts of your image for isolation using Adobe Photoshop.  Tutorial by the late Bob Mizerek.  Comment, share, and subscribe to our YouTube channel for many more tuts and creative goodness.

Selectively highlighting parts of your photographs is made easy, using the methods taught in this free quality Photoshop tutorial by Robert Mizerek.  Put it in HD mode, and watch it full screen.  The best part about this method, is because it gives you the freedom to selectively accentuate certain parts of your image.  Less is more, many times.  Comment / share / subscribe to our youtube channel for more.

Here Bob takes a nature / landscape photograph and shows us how to really bring it to life even further using Adobe Photoshop.

Have you ever wondered how you can make someone or some thing look like it is melting or bursting into pieces in Photoshop?  Another way to describe it is dispersion techniques or fragmentation.  Here is a tutorial I found of basketball player melting or being liquified by Doucin Pierre that will walk you through it step by step.

For example… I’m a full time stock photographer.  Still, people are always asking me to shoot events or weddings.  Then I have to explain to them that I only shoot commercial stock photography.  Then they look at me funny, like they still don’t get it.  You know… the types of generic images that you see in newspapers, billboards, advertisements, and on websites. They soon after usually respond with, “but you could do it… right?”; then I have to make another excuse why I can’t, or why I don’t want to, or even have to.  “I don’t have the right equipment for that type of work”, or “No thanks, I don’t want to work nights or weekends.”  I’m being honest.  I don’t even own an on-camera speedlight flash.  What do I need that for?  I use studio strobes for the type of work I do.  They’re just a lot less portable, and definitely not suited for shooting events or weddings.  I did enough of that working nights and weekends baloney when I was working my way through school.  Back when I was exclusively a graphic designer, all I ever got asked was if I could do web development. Remember, that it’s your right to be able to pick and choose the type of work you want to take on.  If I so badly needed the income, then yeah – then I might consider taking on non-residual types of photographic income like events, weddings, etc.

I wonder if medical doctors get asked if they can operate on their friends’ pets, or if pizza restaurant owners get asked if they can make a batch of cupcakes up for their friends’ kids’ party.  In the end, you can’t expect everyone to know exactly what you do for work.  Some of our jobs are a lot more complicated to explain than others. Once in a while I’ll get a certain photography or portrait request, and if I’m able to make it work for stock imagery, I will be able to work with the person.  Usually with signed model releases, my normal shoot rates are deeply discounted, or even nonexistent. It just doesn’t always happen that someone is in need of the type of images that I can make work as commercial stock photography.  I’ve been able to turn engagement shoots, senior portrait sessions into stock image shoots.  Are they the best sellers?  Not usually.  The best selling stock images are those that tell a story, or are generic enough for many purposes.  If the shoot consists of general headshots and portraits of a smiling person, well there are 5 million other images on the stock agencies just like those that you’re going to have to compete with for sales.

Yes, I have shot weddings before.  I borrowed the gear I needed at the time.  Is it my cup of tea?  Definitely not.  Am I going to be a good wedding photographer?  Probably not a great one.  I don’t shoot them enough, and I’m already spoiled with the aspect of control and direction when I produce stock imagery.  Live events are nothing like that.  You have to be ready to capture the action as it happens; just as a bystander.  It’s really tough work, and I give wedding photographers a lot of credit.  When my sister got married about a year ago, I didn’t shoot her wedding.  I did help them out with their engagement portraits, though. Even when I attend a wedding or event and bring along my DSRL, I think to myself, “Goodness the lighting in here is awful. No wonder all the photographers have to rely on flash so much.”  In stock, we don’t run anywhere past the ISO 100-200 range, whereas with weddings you are sometimes rocking out in ISO800-1600 for a large portion of the evening.  So no, there really isn’t much use for me in shooting someone’s wedding with signed model releases, for the purpose of stock.  High ISO images are just not going to cut the quality standards required for stock photography.

So that’s my Monday rant… let me know what irks you guys in the comments section below.