Saturday, June 19, 2010

Wireless Photo Frames

I took pictures at the 12 & Under League Softball Tournament today (and will be tomorrow as well) in Auburn. I download my pictures to my laptop throughout the day and thought it would be neat to have a digital photo frame setup at the concession area showing the pictures I've been taking - don't you think that would be cool?

I know a few years ago, I saw a nice, large digital picture frame that had the ability to wirelessly display pictures directly from your computer on the frame. I figured since I had seen this several years ago... there would probably be several to choose from now. I sure thought WRONG!!

I have been looking online for about 2 hours now. I have found very few that will share wirelessly directly from your computer. Now, most of the wireless frames download from flickr and picasa and sometimes even facebook. I don't see why, if it can connect to a network, that you can't just grab pictures from a networked computer. Most of the places I take pictures, I don't have Internet access and I definitely don't have time to upload the 2200 pictures I took today during the tournament.

If anyone knows of a digital photo frame that has decent reviews that can do what I'm wanting and is currently available.... I'll give you some credit towards photos for the information!

Saturday, June 5, 2010

Falls City Swim Meet

For the most part, today was a nice day for a swim meet. I could have done without the sprinkles from time to time... especially the one time I actually had to put my laptop away because it was sprinkling a little too hard. Overall, though, it was nice - not too hot, but not too cold either (at least, I don't think it was too cold - I wasn't actually in the water).

This year, there were only 3 teams; Falls City, Hiawatha and Sabetha. Marysville had their own swim meet going this year, so they didn't make it like they have the past few years I've taken pictures at the meet. That helped it get over about an hour ahead of usual - it was only 4 hours long today.

I try to get good pictures of every athlete in every event that they're in. In those 4 hours today, I took 3,750 photos. Watching them slideshow on my laptop, it looks like there are a lot of great ones! It is going to take some time to go through all of them and get them up, so I'm hoping to have that done in a couple weeks. Until then, the link associated with this post has the pictures from last year's meet - once this year's are posted, it'll have those pictures at the link.

A big Thank You to Roger Lampe for letting me take pictures at his great Swim Meet!

Wednesday, June 2, 2010

New Facebook Candids Page

Since I do a lot of candid sports photography and in peak times will be doing 5 - 10 different events in a week, I don't want to bombard everyone with all of the different sports games that I go to. Because of this, I have been using our Natural-Beauty Photography Facebook page only for our portraits and "professional side" of our business.

I created another Facebook Business Page for our Natural-Beauty Photography Candid Photography. On this page, I'll list events that I'm planning on attending, have attended, when I post photos from events and even ask members of the page which game I should attend if there are conflicting games that I can't decide which to go to.

Join our new facebook page to keep up with everything we're doing with our original candid photography that we started Natural-Beauty Photography with!

Continuing Education in Chicago

      Last week I went to Chicago for a photoshop class that happened to be on one of the two days of an online photography seminar I also wanted to take part in. It was a long trip, but well worth it. Since the online seminar was from 9:00 - 6:00 Monday & Tuesday, it was good to be away from the store so I wasn't distracted by the everyday business of my retail store. The Photoshop class was from 6:00 - 10:00 Monday night, so they fit together perfectly.
      The photoshop class was exciting. I learned some new techniques to make my basic editing faster and some new effects I can start using. I also learned some more detailed editing and retouching that I can now do that make portraits look fantastic! Since it often takes 30 - 90 minutes on a picture doing all the little details they showed us, it will be something we charge extra for - but it's well worth it!
      The online seminar had a lot to do with Wedding Photography and promoting your business. I loved the posing techniques of one of the speakers and plan to get some posing dvds and guide cards to learn more of how to do some of his poses. I'll be looking for a couple or two to expirement with in the near future - before I actually try to apply it at the all important weddings. I also got a few ideas from almost all of the other speakers as well (10 in all). I'll soon have new business cards to hand out too.
      Overall, this week was an overload of information, but sooo well worth it. It's going to help my wedding photography a lot and gave me several fresh ideas for promotion and my business practices in general.