Road Trip! All the way across the river to Gloucester County College, and their home grown anime convention KortiCon.

Over 1000 people, a great deal of them in costume attended the event, which was also a fundraiser for both Hurricane Sandy victims, and Liberty in North Korea (LiNK), a human rights organization that aids North Korean refugees.

The event featured musical performances, demonstrations, panels, artists, and a dealer area to buy assorted anime related items. The exceptionally warm Jan. day also allowed for plenty of spontaneous outdoor activity including what seemed to be a never ending circle dance to a song that only had one verse.

All in all it was a fun day, and a great place for images.

(more images)

Wishing all a very merry Xmas.

Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday!

Since I’m one that finds little joy in fighting with templates and CSS codes, the recent introduction of Iconify offers a unique and simplified approach to expanding our audience.  While it won’t take the place of my current gallery,  because of Iconify’s social media friendliness, it works for me as a great way to get new projects and current work out into the world.

Four Brits,  Doug Logue, Lucas Taylor,  Bronson Taylor and Brian Westzloff  have recently developed the Iconify project. The principles surrounding their development?

• Portfolios should be downloadable as an app on mobile devices.
• Portfolios should be responsive, so they look good on any screen resolution or device.
• Interface should be be minimal, to focus the viewer’s attention exclusively on what’s being presented.
• Portfolios should provide obvious contact information.
• Sharing should be easy.

The result is a portfolio platform that turns photographers into a web presence that offers itself as a downloadable app that is easily shared with via smartphones, and tablets.

In about 10 minutes any photographer can create a web portfolio that gives full contact information, website links, a link to a google map for your location, as well as the upload space for 500 images that can be separated into galleries.

As for sharing your images and reaching out to potential clients, the platforms always anyone to download an app to their mobile devices that links directly to the portfolios.  Additionally, it offers connection to Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites.

The cost?  Free for galleries up to 10 images only.  A Pro accounts allowing up to 500 photos is only $5 a month.

Check it out at www.iconify.co

Or if you want to see it in actual use, check out mine at www.iconify.co/fitchettphotography

Now that the Philadelphia Open Studio Tour is over, we continue on at the Photographers in Philadelphia studios. We are pleased that we now have a permanent on-going gallery of photographic works by members and other local photographers. This provides a great expansion beyond our collection of workshops and individual work created by the twelve Photographers in Philadelphia members.

It’s also a moment to reflect on projects underway by some of the Meet-Up Groups affiliated with Photographers in Philadelphia. Lou Dallara runs a Master Photographers 101 Discussion Group under the South Jersey Photography Meet-Up Group. He offers an examination of the work of some of the past masters and assignments to members to replicate or expand on that past body of work. Those interested in some creative opportunities should look up Lou’s group.

For those who love portraiture, one of the greats is George Hurrell. As the official studio photographer for MGM and Warner Brothers in the 1930′s and 40′s, he created a style of light and shadows with a large view camera that captured some of that periods greatest movie stars.

There is great fun in attempting to rediscover just a small bit of that with a combination of today’s digital technology. This shot of one of the studio’s up and coming models, Shelby, is an attempt to bottle just a tiny bit of Hurrell

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Almost finished converting the studio to gallery mode for the Philadelphia Open Studio Tour.. and it’s a good thing we’re almost finished; time runs out tomorrow night.  We’ve got over 100 large (13×19 or larger) images all over the studio, and in the hallway.  Everything is pretty much laid out, and people are busy hanging prints.  It looks amazing (that’s a totally objective point of view).

Come on out, this Sat or Sun (10/20-10/21)… We’ll be there from 11:30-6:30 both days.  There’s even cheese and crackers!

On Friday night, a group of us decided to set up and do street portraits as part of First Friday in Philly.  We thought if we shot 10, maybe 15 portraits we’d be lucky.  Turns out we underestimated a bit… we ended up shooting 38 different people.  By the end, our big concern was that we’d run out of releases.  See street portraits here.

Besides having a blast,  we it was a great learning experience… really good for honing posing skills on the fly, as well as pushing past all that “thinking” stuff so that you just start relying on instinct.  With the cold weather coming, we’re not sure if we’ll be doing it next month, but we’ll definitely be doing it again.  Next time we’ll tweak our lighting a bit (if we use the black background we want a hair light), as well as cleaning up a couple of other problems we encountered.

Photo by Mark J. Stein

Saturday we had a rainless workshop… it was originally supposed to be a workshop with the rain machine, but we had to cancel that portion due to some logistic problems.  But it was still a success (Note.. we have two criteria for success… people have fun, and people produce good images).  Three plus models (a mother, and an escort were pulled in for some shooting), high key, low key and a bed/pinup station, as well as our world famous 4th floor.   See images here.

In a little over two weeks, the collective is taking part in the Philadelphia Open Studio Tour.  We plan on having 100+ large prints (13×19 or bigger) on display.  It’s not easy getting ready for a show.

It took time to go through a year’s worth of work, first picking potential candidates for display, then weeding through them to make my final choices.  Next comes the printing… fortunately I keep all my master work files unsized, so it was just a matter of sizing, sharpening, and printing.

Then comes the hard part… how do I want to display my images?  Actually, that thought process needs to be started even before printing, but I ended up changing my mind, which put me back to square 1.

The reason you need to give thought to that before printing is because you need to know if you have to print to a set size.  If you decide you’re doing gallery wraps, you need extra image area for the sides of the wrap (they may be added in post processing, or by changing the crop on your image).  If you’re going to mat the image, you need to crop/print to the opening size, otherwise each image will require a custom mat.

I don’t shoot for a certain size.  In the camera, I try to use the entire frame; and when post processing, I’ll crop out extraneous areas, leaving only what I want in the frame.  That means irregular print sizes.

My original thought was to print each image as large as possible on a 13×19 piece of paper, mount it on gator board, then trim it down so it’s borderless.  The problem with that, is if it sells, it’s harder to mat/stick in a frame since the backing board is a unique size.

Next I thought I’d print as large as possible on a 13×19 piece of paper, add a border to the print, and mount with an even larger border on gatorboard.  That would work, but I started thinking how the edges of the gatorboard get chewed up, the “joy” of making sure borders are even, etc.

So I started thinking frames… Personally, for shows, I’m not a big fan of framed/matted prints.  I think if you go ornate, it can take away from the image, and if you go plain, a potential buyer is going to trash it anyway.  Unless you print to size (which I don’t) the mats need to be custom cut which is another expense.

What I decided I really wanted was a reverse shadow box.  Kind of a floating frame… where the image is mounted on gatorboard, put in a glassless frame, where it sits 3/4 or more forward of the frame back.  My problem was twofold… I only know one place that sells anything like that, and they were both a) too expensive, and b) didn’t come in the size I needed.  To do it, each one would need to be custom built (something I’m still toying with for down the line).

It’s on to plan B… find a reasonably priced, minimalist 13×19 frame.  Something with glass, and minimal frame siding.  It’s not easy to find.  I scoured the internet, hit framing shops, and craft stores.  In none of the large chains, I went up and down each framing aisle (and they had many) multiple times, coming to the shocking realization that out of all their frames, they only have one brand/style for the 13×19 size.  When I asked at the framing counter about that, the woman literally stuck her nose in the air and replied “oh, that’s digital”.

I’m happy to report, after spending way more hours than I liked looking at frames, I finally found what I was looking for.  It’s about 1/2 inch deep, black plastic that looks like black metal, and the frame edges on the front are minimal (just enough to hold the glass in place).  The price is reasonable, and the store gives a single item discount coupon for the following week with each purchase.  That means I may be buying a frame a day for the next 3 weeks, but at least I was able to find what I want.

Remember, for those of us who show images on media other than monitors, presentation needs to be considered.

Quick shot from tonight’s mystery goo shoot.  Goo shots to follow.

Spent a good portion of yesterday printing images for the Philadelphia Open Studio Tour.  Ended up with nine 13×19 images, and still have another 9 or so to go.  Then I need to mount them.  It’s going to be a good show.