Category Archives: Photography

General photography natter — gear, thoughts, ideas, and the odd photo.

Photography

Sales!

I neglected to mention that while I was gone to SF, I sold six prints.

Our company is a huge sponsor of the United Way campaign, and as a fundraiser, they had an employee vendor day. This allowed folks to show off their home-business wares — tupperware, cooking stuff, jewelry, etc. — and sell them at work, with a portion of the proceeds going to the UWay campaign. Well, during my absence, Beck handled my prints, and was able to sell six of them. I was hurrying through the airport in Denver when she told me about it, and I thought I’d fly home all by myself — no plane needed!

This is a great encouragement to me, and for my craft. And, the profit from that pays for about a third of the cost of my new printer. Pretty cool!!!!

Geek-Speak, Photography

New Gear: Logitech NuLOOQ Professional Series

The Logitech NuLOOQ is one weird controller, but I couldn’t keep from buying it. Basically, it is a very Photoshop-centric device for your non-mouse-or-stylus ladened hand. The theory is that you keep one hand on the NuLOOQ, and another on your device of choice in PS. In practice, this actually seems to work.

With one hand on my Wacom stylus, and the other on the NuLOOQ, I tried to get the little device to work. And it just wouldn’t. 🙁 That is, it wouldn’t until I plugged it directly into the back of my Quad. For some reason, it didn’t like my USB hub. Once the cable was moved, it the little guy began to work flawlessly. I believe it’s gonna take more retraining — kinda like when I got my Wacom in January — for me to use the thing well, but it seems to have so much promise.

I’ve seen some criticisms of the NuLOOQ — not heavy enough (although it does weigh 300gm, which seems plenty heavy enough to me), slides around on the desk (not on my glasstop it doesn’t!), and that it’s not very portable (I don’t get that one). The biggest complaint I think though is that it is an Mac-only device! 🙂

Anyway, two thumbs up, along with an occassional pinky (’cause I’m polite) — this is a cool little device!

Apple Existence, Photography

Apple Twists

Well, the “twists” part is that I rolled my ankle…. AGAIN! This morning, I was rolling my bike out to the truck, planning for a ride after work to take advantage of this great weather, when suddenly, both the bike and I were on the ground — fortunately, neither of us were tangled up with the other. Near as I can figure, I stepped on some kind of nut that the squirrels have been hiding and harvesting in the yard. I feel like a doof, but all I can do is baby the thing today, and try to get back to work tomorrow.

Being home isn’t all bad though. I was able to watch the Apple rumor sites do live coverage of the announcement of Aperture 1.5. From what I can tell from the release notes, it sounds like it’ll be a free upgrade to folks that own Aperture 1.1 — that’s good news. It seems like Apple’s listened to the user base, and have made some changes based on their input. That’s always a good thing.

Adobe, not to be outdone, released the fourth beta of Lightroom today. Still no word on pricing of this code, and exactly when it’ll be available.

I still haven’t figured out which of these suits my needs, or even if I need either of them. I know my workflow is a bit clunky, and nowhere near as zippy as I care for, but it does work for me, and that’s the whole point!

Geek-Speak, Photography

New Gear: A New Epson Stylus Photo R1800

Yup, me and Best Buy looked at each other squarely in the eyes… and they flinched.

OK, so it wasn’t quite that dramatic. They were actually very nice, and after seeing the print quality I was getting, exchanged the R1800 I bought Saturday with the only one in Best Buy’s in-town inventory. This one is brand spanking new, and has all the parts it’s supposed to.

As I unpacked this one, it was obvious that one of the roll paper holders was missing — a surprise, as I thought I had all the parts with the other one. Yet another good reason to trade in the new/pre-installed/inspected one for the new one.

I’ve made a couple of prints, and Beck says they are way better. That’s great news, and will, I’m sure, keep me busy doing test prints over the coming weeks.

Apple Existence, Geek-Speak, Photography

New Gear: Epson Stylus Photo R1800 Printer

Well, it’s a holiday weekend, so I had to go buy something big. (That’s been the things that always seems to happen with Beck and me on these long weekends!)

Best Buy had a 12% off coupon, and I’ve been itching for a printer. I really wanted an HP B9180, but those crazy things just don’t seem to be getting released — folks have been waiting since February. The itch finally got too bad, so with the encouragement of the coupon, I walked out of the local Best Buy with the R1800.

This is a pretty legendary printer, allegedly with stunning color, decent black and white, and plenty of capabilities to handle my on-demand printing.

So far, let’s say my jury is still out.

I unboxed the beast — it is large — and noticed that the print cartridges were already installed, and most of the shipping tape had been removed from the cover panels. This wasn’t a good sign. The box had “Inspected by Best Buy” tape on the seals, so I assume that they must’ve opened it up to play, or this unit had been in someone else’s house and was returned.

The physical set up was easy, but getting the first plain paper print out of the thing was challenging. It seemed to want only roll paper, and I was having none of that. I finally figured out how to make that problem go away, and was able to print some fast draft plain paper prints. Easy.

I pulled up an image of Fergie — loads of minute detail in her fur, and plenty of gradual color changes. I figured this would be a good image to work with. I opened it in Photoshop, resized it, sharpened it with Nik using the Epson settings, and began to print.

Banding. I had banding. Ugh. There was an especially bad band in the last quarter-inch of print area. This was not good.

I took the same image — no changes — and ran it through my HP 8450, and it printed like a champ. Beautiful print.

Since I didn’t know how long the print cartridges had sat quietly hardening in the box, I ran through a nozzle cleaning exercise, and printed again.

Again I had banding, although not as bad.

Next was a print head alignment. For this next test print, I noticed a setting for “Best Photo” rather than “Photo” in the print driver. I set that, and between those two changes, my printing was better.

But, there was still banding, especially noticeable in the green grass around Fergie. And, there was still a color shift band in the last quarter inch of print. Urgh.

I bought a set of new ink cartridges with the printer — about $115 — and I’m inclined to install them and see if the banding disappears. If the printheads are replaced along with the cartridges, then that might work. However, before popping the cork on eight pricey cartridges, I’ve got a little more research to do. Perhaps there’s some quick fix out there.

I ain’t holding my breath. 🙁

Photography

The Show Is Over

This afternoon, I took down my art from Stage Left, and packed it all up to bring it home.

Yeah, I only sold one piece — although I might have a line on another sale — but the experience was marvelous, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. And, I’m ready for the next show, with lots of stuff framed and ready to hang.

Hopefully, this is just the first of many shows to come!

Photography

Spend Your Money!

Tonight, I’ve gotten the first few images up on Yessy for purchase. If you don’t see one that you’re looking for, drop me a note or leave a comment, and I’ll some priority on those images.

Yessy has turned out to be a god-send, and is sooooo much easier to get my images up and ready for sale. I am so very impressed with their system. Yeah, it’s not as personalized to my tastes for design and color, but that’s ok for now — I can personalize my site once I get a few sales under my belt! 🙂

Photography

Now This Is Cool!

A photographer friend of mine, Lenny, has been staging some of his images at Yessy. Yessy is an art sales site run by artists for artists, and Lenny’s had some success handling some of his sales through that site.

I bugged Lenny last week to send me a referral to the site — he gets a referral bonus — so I could start setting up my work there. I figured my commercial site is a good thing to have, but this site would give me much more exposure and access to an already-built large base of customers whom are looking to purchase art. The searches are done by keywords, so my art will be intermingled with others’ art as customers search.

I put my first image up yesterday — the pink Gateway Arch — at my Yessy site and expected to see nothing big happen with it. I made it a “coming soon” image, so folks could see it, but not yet buy it. This would give me some time to get the backend stuff up and ready.

However, this morning, I got a message from Yessy showing my traffic statistics. The thumbnail of my image had been seen almost 75 times — this would be through folks’ searches, so that tactic seems to be working. But there had also been four folks who had enough interest to click through and look at the main image.

Four folks in the world yesterday were interested enough to look at one of my images — now that is cool!

Photography

It’s a Little Too Quiet Out There… Again

And it has been quiet. Becky’s been home convalescing after her knee surgery. I’ve been cycling, albeit not as much as I would like.

The biggest thing I’ve been working on is planning a big ol’ makeover for Colin Wright Photography. I’ve chosen to use a pre-built template from AllWebCo Design that includes galleries, a PayPal shopping cart (just for you Auntie M!) and massive extensibility. I’ve kinda decided that I need to expend my energies on expanding my presence and name recognition, rather than tinkering with code quite as much on the site.

I’m hoping to have the revamped site up over the weekend — kinda depends on how well the conversion goes. Stay tuned!

Photography

Reception

My first exhibit reception is now behind me, and I have to say I think it was a resounding success. For three hours, there was a parade of friends and colleagues, all focused on my photography, and seeming to enjoy both the work as well as the conversation.

It seems like I blinked and it was over… I know it was really three hours of stress though, ’cause I’m beat! And, as Sio would remind me, there was no reason to stress over it. It went very well, and there really was genuine praise for my work. That was so cool.

And, I sold one piece — a 16 x 20 of the swirling leaves photo that I like so well. That was also very nice. However, had I not sold a thing, I’d have still been thrilled for the experience of having so many folks enjoying my work, and enjoying a celebration like this.