SO…the story goes like this…I was reading JAZZIE’s happy hour interview on the BLU BLOG and how her FAV lens of the moment was the CANON USM 28mm 1.8!! Funny she should mention that, I had heard about that lens SEVERAL time in the past week or so!! (In typical LENS JUNKIE style I think to myself, “it MUST be a sign!”) So, I then look at a SHOOT that she did with that lens, when she borrowed it from someone else and my ears perked up because the images were GREAT!!!!(images featured below!) THEN…on yet another DELIGHTFUL blog, I hear how MORE people are in love with this little lens! SEE…SIGNS, I tell you!!! Soo….what’s a GIRL TO DO other than to STOP thinking about it and GO OUT and GET IT!!! Plus, LENSES are one of my FAVORITE things ever and I will admit to having a SLIGHT obsession with them!! The BEST part of this lens is how CHEAP it is!! I’m usually an L glass girl so when I went into my local distributor, Roberts, and told them what I needed, they ACTUALLY responded by saying, ARE YOU SURE? That’s NOT an L lens, YOU KNOW!!!! DUH, i said!!! If you COULD get L glass for $399 then I would be homeless (ok, maybe just living on ramen!) but with every single L lens on the planet in MY POSSESSION!!!!! Anyway…where was I? OH…THE 28!!! Ok, so below are JASMINE STAR’s IMAGES from that lens and WOW….see why I was SURE it was a sign?? So, I now own the little guy…OH and I really mean little guy…it’s the SMALLEST lens I’ve ever owned!! I love cute little things!!! I have yet to really use this lens, but I know it’s going to be great!! So, I’m sure I’ll be back soon with my NEXT lens obsession story!!

FROM the LOVELY & TALENTED, Jasmine Star:

A few months ago, I heard about this cool new site called STRATEGY AVENUE. It is a BLOG that is about the BUSINESS SIDE of photography, including the financial aspect and technical stuff that none of us really like but we HAVE TO DO!! It’s done by Laura Novak & John Meyer of Laura Novak Photography! They offer business insight, marketing tips, celebrity interviews with photogs such as Jess Claire and Susan Stripling. It’s pretty cool…CHECK IT OUT!!!

I just found a GEM of a DIGITAL CAMERA!! It’s the CANON POWERSHOT SD1000!! I LOVE IT!!! I have gone through MANY digital point and shoots! I get bored with them…or they break…or they get dropped! I don’t EVER invest more than $250 in a point and shoot because I KNOW how it will end up! Soo, I heard rumors that this little cutie was a good point & shoot…and I read a few reviews…and I was sold!

THEN, I checked B&H, where the camera is only $214 AND THEN…they have a $50 REBATE! So, this awesome little guy is a GREAT deal….and super easy to use! It even has this awesome “face recognition” feature where it actually finds the face in an image and focuses on it. So, you don’t have the blurred point and shoot images…like all my other cameras would take!! There are two other BIG features that I LOVE about this camera….it has video mode and the videos are SUPER!! THEN….a battery wall charger COMES WITH it…so you don’t have those RIDICULOUS docking station deals…OH, I HATE THOSE things..they just take up space!! SO, you just take the battery out, throw it on the wall charger and it’s FULLY CHARGED in an hour! LOVE THAT!!! THEN…GET THIS…I got the SD cards that have a BUILT IN USB…so you pull the SD card right out of the camera, throw it into the usb and you have your pictures!! YAY! I’m throwing all those stupid docking stations with their 50 cords IN THE TRASH!! YAY!!

Ok, here are the first two pictures I took with the camera….Mark and I were headed to dinner and I did a few of my famous “self portrait in the car” shots!

I know I’ve been talking about albums alot…but I guess in all of that, I’ve somehow missed mentioning my actual album company…because I’ve been getting lots of emails about it!! LEATHER CRAFTSMEN!!!! I LOVE LOVE LOVE Leather Craftsmen! They are truly wonderful, produce fantastic products, have quick turn around time and awesome customer service!

On a side note, I know alot of you think I just LOVE everything and everyone because I’m always talking about how much I love everything, but I assure you, that is NOT the case!

My last album company was an absolute NIGHTMARE to work with and I’ll openly tell you about it if you like…so please trust that my words are credible and I’m basing what I tell you off of the experiences I’ve had!

Ok, so anyway, I use the 3500 flush mount series albums! They are great albums because they are very classic & clean with simple lines, yet are modern and stylish!! I’ve mentioned how I don’t like alot of FLUFF on anything or excessive “pretty” stuff….I think timeless, simple stuff is best and the 3500 series is EXACTLY that!!!

They also have GREAT cover treatment options!!! I recently discovered that I LOVE the cowhide leather options!! I was reeeeeally into the suede for a while!! I LOVE the suede…especially in the celadon, apricot, mushroom, & solar yellow…but I’m on a cowhide kick right now!! I got an album in the cowhide and it was GREAT!!! Shiney and modern…and SLICK!! The font looked perfect with the sleekness of the album!! LOVED IT!!! Check it out!! And if you aren’t a huge fan of your album company, CALL LEATHER CRAFTSMEN!!!!

So, I found this GREAT new product and I just had to share it with you! It’s a PICTAGE product, so SORRY if you aren’t with Pictage and go ahead and TUNE OUT now! It’s their new product, the COMPANION BOOK! I just sort of noticed it for the first time when placing an album order the other day! Then, I ordered some to just give them a try and turns out that THEY ARE GREAT!!! They are these little 4×5 (if you had a rectangular album) or 5×5 (if you had a square album) soft cover albums that are just a perfect duplicate of your original album! They have this awesome, modern pearlescent silver cover with a clean modern font with the names on the cover. I find that it’s very challenging to find products that are just very simple and clean without alot of fluffy or pretty stuff…and I love that this is just super simple, but VERY COOL! The pages are actually SUPER impressive!! They are cmyk, but they look REALLY good! You also buy these albums in lots of 10, 20 or more! I think they are GREAT!! CHECK THEM OUT!!!! How convenient that I happened to do the sample of these in the same album I featured on the album design post!!

I get lots of questions about my use of Pictage’s album designer…

So, I thought it might be helpful to share some before and after designs from Pictage! To explain, I start my albums by having Pictage do an initial design with 150 images! I use it as sort of a spring board and take the design that they come up with and adjust about 75% of it! The reason that I do that is because I have found that I save LOTS of time by having them do the initial work of putting the main structure of the album together…and then put about 1-2 hours of adjustments into the album! When I was doing the albums 100% by hand, I was putting up to 2 DAYS into them….so this is a GREAT solution for me! I LOVE IT and even better, the Pictage design is 100% FREEEEE!!!

HERE ARE SOME EXAMPLES:

ALBUM 1:

CLICK HERE for the Original Design

CLICK HERE for the JRS Edit

ALBUM 2:

CLICK HERE for the Original Design

CLICK HERE for the JRS Edit

ALBUM 3:

CLICK HERE for the Original Design

CLICK HERE for the JRS Edit

I honestly believe that this is an incredible service that Pictage offers!! I’m ALL about outsourcing..especiallly when it’s FREE…and I would highly recommend looking into this service if you don’t have a great album design system! CLICK HERE to view the order form and read info about getting started!!!

*****EDIT…..YOU HAVE TO HAVE A PICTAGE ACCOUNT TO VIEW THE ALBUMS! SOOO Sorry…I forgot to mention that!! I just assume the whole world uses Pictage….so I didn’t even think to mention it until I just received a few emails about it!!!

So, I have two personalities within me, ONE that says….SHOOT DIGITAL, it’s the COOOL thing to do and THE OTHER, that is my PAST and MY ROOTS that says, GO BACK TO SHOOTING FILM. The two are always at WAR, some days, Mr. Digital is totally WINNING and other days, MR. FILM puts up a REALLY GOOD FIGHT. See, my degree is in FILM PHOTOGRAPHY and I can honestly tell you that I didn’t take ONE digital class in college! NOT ONE! My days were spent at the film developing station, in the black & white and color darkrooms and buying Ilford film & paper, smelling like developing chemicals and waiting anxiously for my images to appear in the wake of chemicals rifling through the developing tray. See, film was straight art, no modifications, no “making it pretty” afterwards…and I WAS OK WITH THAT because I didn’t know ANY different. NOW, Digital has TAKEN OVER THE WORLD and you can make your work anything you want it to be. So, a part of me LOVES THAT because you have ENDLESS creative freedom but the other part of me loved that your shot was your art and the rest was history….and your WORK WAS DONE after you sent your film off to be processed. So, the story will go on because I think I will always be stuck between the two! For now, I will watch this FILM MASTERS art because he is an AWESOME FILM SHOOTER!!! Mr. Jose Villa! I’ve never met him, but I love his work and I think he’s UBER talented!! Plus, he got the cover of G.O., so that just makes him cool! I mean really…look at theses images and think of having ALMOST NO post processing in your work flow….TEMPTING, ISN’T IT!!??

So, you are going to think this cheesy, but I just need you to TRUST me on this one!! As of last year, I started receiving these PHOTOVISION DVD’s in the mail…and I would just let them stack up in the “come back to this later” pile of stuff!! Well, a month or so ago, I was organizing things and came to this collection of PHOTOVISION DVD’s and decided to throw one in and see what it was all about, while I was finishing my organizing! Seriously, before I knew it, I was to the fourth DVD and hadn’t taken my eyes off of it and it was like 2 in the morning and I’d been watching them since late afternoon! They are GREAT and packed with AWESOME stuff!!

In my first few DVD’s, I got to watch Jeff & Julia Woods do an amazing wedding in California and get a tour of their uber cool new studio, got to watch Marcus Bell do an awesome city shoot, watched Sandy Puc shoot some awesome portraiture in her daylight studio and got to see Vicki Taufer work her magic in this amazing vacant warehouse building she uses for shooting! I was seriously inspired and had no idea that these DVD’s that I had been letting stack up were SOO GREAT!!!! They also do studio tours, do demo’s of new products such as the new versions of photoshop, lightroom, etc! It’s really fantastic and I had no idea until I watched one!! It’s $150 a year for 6 DVD’s that have at least 5 different features, per DVD! If you are renewing, it’s only $35 a year!! CHECK IT OUT!!!

APERTURA!!! Ray & Erwin are downright AWESOME!! Their work is SOO inspiring!! They push the envelope and I love that! They are super nice guys, to boot…and I just really like NICE people! CHECK THEM OUT!!!

that I LOVE THE new PHOTOSHOP CS3 with BRIDGE and ADOBE CAMERA RAW!??? Well, I DO!! I use ACR for all of my editing and have REALLY been wanting them to make some changes to it, for some time now….and FINALLY, they did!!! You NOW have the ability to control saturation in LOTS of ways, which I LOVE LOVE LOVE!! You can control the vibrancy and saturation, then pull the saturation from certain colors…which is really helpful! There are also lots of different brightness features, such as a fill light slider and a recovery slider. You also have have a built in healing tool and cloning tool, which is SOOO fantastic! It’s also fast and has TONS of great new and updated features!!! I just LOVE LOVE LOVE it!!! I have yet to really see what’s new on CS3, but I’m sure it’s pretty rockin’ TOO!! CHECK IT OUT!!!