Wooohooooo, Jain! Success! Thanks for using TUT E-Cards – Inspiration for every occasion! With every best wish, TUT’s Adventurers Club
“Give beyond reason… care beyond hope… love without limit… reach, stretch, and dream….” ~ The Universe
Thanks so much for your support this year. Hope Santa brings you everything you want. Merry Christmas! It’s going around. ~ Jain
New York portrait and wedding photographer Linda Smith is walking the talk when it comes to social cause photography. She is setting up photo labs and workshops for former child soldiers and refugees of the Hutus-vs-Tutsi genocide in Rwanda. Her program recycles disposable and discarded cameras and provides them to children in Rwanda and Uganda, allowing them to process what has happened to their lives and villages by taking pictures. It is bringing a glimmer of peace to these forgotten children who have witnessed unthinkable horrors.
Please take a few minutes to watch this video about Linda’s “Through the Eyes of Hope” project. We can help by donating old cameras, sending the children disposable cameras, or by purchasing the project’s first 2009 calendar. All of the calendar’s photographs were taken by the children in Kigali, Rwanda. 100% of all proceeds from the sale of these calendars will go directly into funding further programs and school fees for the children.
Thanks to my friend Ellen Kasemeier-Herbert of Jupiterimages and to Linda’s brother, Mike Smith, for telling me about Linda’s terrific efforts.
At Guardian Ranch, dust gathers on a 1940 Packard. Photo by Jain Lemos.
Twenty-four weeks ago, I posted a note mentioning photo ops about dying car sales. What are you waiting for? Yesterday I drove south on Pacific Coast Highway from Hermosa to Laguna Beach, a route only suitable when travel time is not a factor. I had forgotten this 50-mile stretch of pre-freeway road is a car dealer haven. Gas prices were low ($1.65/gallon). The car lots, spooky.
This photo I took of a 1940 Packard covered in dust made me wonder what a 2008 Cadillac Escalade would look like in the year 2076. Praise the Lord that I’ll be dust by then. Unless I get that TARP bailout I applied for last week.
The new WordPress blog theme for photographers called ProPhoto2 has been released out of beta testing and you can see it here. Watching their demo, it looks easy to me and appears they have thought of everything. ProPhoto2 is on my Christmas wish list so if I get it I will test it to be sure. Let me know if you try it and find anything missing.
Thanks to Tristan Tom for pointing it out to me and you can see one of the themes in action on his site. Be sure to look at Tristan’s Golden Gate bridge fog photos while you are there.
Just when you thought you were done for the year along comes one more assignment for 2008 
. You are to shoot the cover for a glossy magazine called “Nights” and the photo has to be a vertical. Make a night portrait using street/storefront lighting as backdrops. Your subject can be any adult but they need to display some type of trendy fashion accent. If you find good Christmas light displays, go for it, but don’t make the shot look too holiday-ish, as this is for the March issue.
The cover story is “Best Places for Evening Strolls.” Work with flash to light your subject. Be sure to leave enough negative space in the frame. In post, create a masthead logo and drop it in place. Add some type around the sides for inside articles to complete the cover mock-up. An alternate assignment is to only shoot night verticals with cover art in mind for the next several days.
Enjoy, and to all my terrific mentees out there: Thanks for sharing your journey with me this year and keep up the good work!
I like Larry Mills‘ series on junk yards. Being the organized sort, I’m fascinated by spaces that are in disarray. Some days I purposely stop myself from straightening stuff on my desk but in the end, I need clean space around me in order to think. But enough about me. What Larry doesn’t have that would, IMHO, make this series better are captions or introductory text. To become a successful editorial shooter, your photos need headlines and words. What is so hard about doing that when putting together web galleries? While you are waiting for the phone to ring with an assignment, think of a headline, go shoot it, write a caption, sell.
Mike Terry popped up on my radar today. I see future-great-sports-photographer written all over his work. Mike: Call me anytime you are feeling underwhelmed and I’ll load you up with plenty of free suggestions to make your level head spin.
I am continually impressed with the offerings and features from liveBooks. Michael Costuros is doing a great job running the shop. I was looking at their platform for a client about six months ago and going back over to their website now I see they have really expanded their community channel. I think you will enjoy their interview section, especially the one with Harry Benson.
Listening to Harry and seeing him holding that large, classy print of Jacqueline Kennedy, I felt a longing for the days when great photography was the smile of a mind-boggling subject.
I received this note from Kelly Sonora today:
Hi Jain, We just posted an article, “100 Useful Tips and Tools to Research the Deep Web“. I thought I’d bring it to your attention in case you think your readers would find it interesting.
Thanks, Kelly. This is a great resource. Photo people will find this post on the Read Write Web useful, too. It describes and provides links to some of the Deep Web visual resources available.
