PixelatedImage Blog

I am so excited this morning to be releasing Dave Delnea’s Below The Horizon, Understanding Light at the Edges of Day.

A year ago I found Dave Delnea, a Vancouver photographer, online. I was immediately drawn to his work for his incredible understanding of, and ability to capture, light. We’ve become close friends over this year and he wound up in VisionMongers because of my respect for his work and his career. So when it came to collaborating with other photographers on eBooks, Dave was one of the first people I asked to participate.

Below The Horizon is an inspiring read, as much for the images as for his encouragement to take this basic knowledge and get out there and play. There are no secrets here, just solid information and incredible images to back it up and push us out the door.

This is Friday, February 26. For the first 48 hours+ of this release, until midnight PST at the end of Sunday the 28th, Below The Horizon can be had for an introductory price of $4 instead of the usual $5. But that’s not all! If you buy 4 or more of the books, and there are now 8 Craft & Vision titles to choose from, you can have 20% off your order.

Use coupon code DELNEA4 to get Below The Horizon for $4.
Use coupon code DELNEA20 to get 4 or more of the Craft & Vision titles for 20% off.

Buy Below The Horizon Now
Take me to Craft & Vision to buy a set.

I wanted to introduce you to Dave Delnea this morning. On Friday we’re releasing his eBook, Below The Horizon, and it seemed only right that you meet him first. Dave is a friend of mine, and a photographer whose craft and creativity I deeply admire. I know few photographers who have as much passion for actually going out and creating images just for the sake of their creation and engagement in the process.  You can find his work at DaveDelnea.com, and read about his career in VisionMongers. Below the Horizon launches early Friday morning, depending on your time zone, and will have a very limited time discount.

I was 22 when I made the decision to commit myself to pursuing the craft of landscape photography. Having no real clue how to go about this I did what any young, somewhat irresponsible, adventure-starved kid would do; I quit my job, jumped into my car and headed for the mountains.  I spent months living in my tent and car, eating instant noodles and hiding from the park rangers (I had a bit of an aversion to paying for campsites).  I found that the shots that I would get the most excited about were the ones that came from the very edges of the day.  I loved shooting long dusk exposures and seeing how the water and clouds would move through the frame, I would run around with my headlamp and use it to lightpaint rocks and trees in the scene, I would hike hours in the dark to get to a location to set up a star-trails shot where I would sleep beside my camera while it rendered a single image.

I have such fantastic memories of those times – and the skills I learned then are what helped to start my career in photography and continue to be an integral part of it.  I now shoot primarily for commercial clients and have applied the concepts I discuss in this ebook on photoshoots for resorts, hotels, architecture and tourism clients, ad agencies and design firms.  I still have simple shoots that are just me, my camera and a tripod – while others incorporate a whole crew of people along with elaborate lighting set-ups.  Still the concepts I use are based on the same skills learned from my park-ranger-hiding, instant-noodle-eating, time in the mountains.

I hope this coming ebook inspires you to head out with your camera at some ridiculous hour of the day so you can experience the same excitement I do at seeing these sorts of images appear on your camera’s LCD.  As I say in the book – it’s not always easy to get yourself out at those hours of the day, but I’ve never once regretted the effort.

happy shooting
dave.

Image 1:
A 6 hour exposure of the stars over the “Giant Cleft” a unique
geological feature in Cathedral Provincial Park, BC, Canada.

Image 2:
An evening twilight shot of where the the Coquihalla River meets the
Fraser River (Hope, BC, Canada)

Shortly after I started Craft & Vision I approached some of the photographers from whom I myself get inspiration and I asked them to work with me to bring what they do to my readers. My friend Dave Delnea, whose work and career you can explore in VisionMongers as well, is the first photographer out of the gate and I’m thrilled to be able to release his eBook, Below The Horizon, in the next week or so.

Below The Horizon, Understanding Light at the Edges of Day is an inspiring 40-page PDF ebook, much like others in the Craft & Vision line-up. It was reading Delnea’s rough drafts before going to Kenya that pushed me to create some of my favourite work in a long time. Here’s what I wrote in the Foreword:

I shot the image on this page while on safari in Kenya this January. It was reading the rough notes that eventually became this book that finally opened my eyes to the possibilities to be found in shooting at the far edges of day.  Like so many great learning moments, it was the inspiration I took from Below The Horizon that pushed me to get out and play with this stuff.  The information in this eBook is valuable, but as David himself points out, it’s not rocket science.

Shooting at the edges of day and learning to see the interplay possible between light and time, and how that affects the aesthetics of the image, has opened a whole new world to me. I came back from Kenya with images that excited me more than any I’ve shot in a long time, in part because playing with this stuff, and learning to understand it, creates images that do what I want all my photographs to do: create mood and the feeling of being there. I want my work to say “It felt like this…” not only “It looked like this….”

Take the time to absorb this stuff, but when you’ve done so, shut the computer or turn off your tablet, and go out in the growing or fading light and play. Learn, as David suggests, to see the light that’s only here for a few minutes every day. Everyone shoots when it’s easy to be awake and handhold the camera above 1/60, shooting in the near darkness will invigorate you, inspire you, and produce images with uncommon mood and visual pull.

We’ll be releasing this in the next week or two. When we do there will be, as there was last time, a limited-time discount offered for both single books and a bunch of them at once, as a thank you to my readers. This is an excellent addition to the growing line of ebooks at Craft & Vision and one that has personally inspired and energized my own work. I’m really proud and excited to offer it and the moment it’s up it’ll be announced here.

I’m really excited to be announcing the release of the first collaborative book to come out of Craft & Vision. Hot on the heels of VisionMongers, my manager Corwin Hiebert has written Growing The VisionMonger, 10 Things a Manager Can Teach You About Running & Growing Your Business.

If you want to learn about f-stops and focal lengths, ask a photographer. If you want to learn about managing your business, ask a manager, and Corwin is a great manager. He’s not only the guy holding my own little world together but he performs management tasks for my friends Kevin Clark and Dave Delnea. He’s freaking great at what he does and he’s  neurotic about doing thing excellently and with efficiency. In short, he’s my secret weapon, and while not everyone needs or wants a manager in their back-pocket, using a the expertise of a manager is a sure way to grow your business.

Whether you’re a Weekend Warrior or a Working Stiff, there’s solid meat in here for you. And there’s action points with each of the 10 topics for both. If you made a New Year’s resolution to get serious about your photography business, this is a solid place to start. And for $5, it’ll leave you plenty of budget for that new logo and a retainer for your new accountant.

Still only $5, Growing The VisionMonger is available on the Craft & Vision website HERE or for immediate download with the fancy buttons below.

A Happy New Year from all of us at Pixelated Image Communications and Craft & Vision. May this year be the year you chase down your dreams.

Hi all. Hope you had a lovely holiday, filled with family, friends, and love. Ours was subdued, a close friend was diagnosed to have a brain tumour and that brought the tone of things down. But it re-calibrates you in a hurry, this kind of event; reminds you quickly of the things you truly want for Christmas – health, family, friends. The trimmings aren’t the main event.

Sharon gave me the gift of Wisdom, a book by Andrew Zuckerman. On my birthday I opened that book, along with books from a close friend. In fact he gave me Annie Leibovitz At Work, which I have, so I traded it in for Camera by Todd Gustavson and The Unguarded Moment by Steve McCurry. I also got to spend a couple mornings, while Sharon slept in, walking on the seawall and wrecking roll after roll of otherwise perfectly good film while I second-guessed my light metre and tried to get things level in the goofy inverted focussing screen on the old Hasselblad. It was, in a word, heaven. Wisdom, by the way, is a fantastic book, especially if you love portraits. Camera is just amazing if you are interested in the history of our craft, and The Unguarded Moment, it’s pure McCurry, and like his last two, it’s HUGE. The cover image is one of my favourites. I’m willing to bet it was a case of finding a great background and just waiting it out until the moment arrived. Very Henri Cartier-Bresson-esque

My muse visited and gave me an idea for what one day will be another book, and I wish I weren’t already working on one because this one just strikes me as way more fun No spoilers just yet, and who knows if/when it might actually come out. But ideas are like gold and getting one that just fits, that’s priceless.

So now we’re in that weird space and time between Christmas and New Year’s. I’m settling in to keep writing, to pack bags for Kenya and Senegal, to make a list of resolutions I plan on breaking early so I can get straight to the guilt part (kidding), and wrapping up the loose ends of 2009. How about you? How was your holiday? Did you get a gift that inspired you? A moment that you managed to capture, with your heart or your camera? Trust it was a good break for you.

I get a kick out of this one. It’s a spread from my first eBook, TEN, and it’s in Polish. Published by Galaktyka, the same publishers who will be publishing Within The Frame in Polish as well. Any idea how wierd it is to see your own book in a language you can’t read? This is the beautiful face of the Legendary H.

I want to point you to two books, but I swear I didn’t write them. The first is relevant for you VisionMongers out there. The second for creative photographers of all stripes, and some of you are going to be surprised by the recommendation, I think.

The first is called Inbound Marketing, by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah. I’m about half-way through it on my Kindle and it’s a refreshing book on a topic often reserved for slimy snake-oil sales and SEO hucksters. It’s an exploration of marketing tactics involving Google, Blogs, and social media, it’s an easy read, and there’s some good stuff in it, especially if those three topics give you a bit of a head-ache. It’s written for mortals, not tech geeks, and the authors’ overuse of the word remarkable, while as tedious as my own overuse of the word vision, serves to remind us of the value of being exceptional, and creating & engaging in conversations about us and our products – which is what so-called web 2.0 marketing is all about. More information on Inbound Marketing on Amazon.com HERE; It’s a good book for further study if the stuff in VisionMongers got you started in this direction.

The second is Trey Ratcliff’s A World In HDR. I got my copy of it last week, and I’m almost done. Some of you know that I don’t do HDR (High Dynamic Range) images. I’ve never even come close. It’s not my thing any more than giant polaroids are my thing. However, the backlash against HDR is also not my thing. Is it as overused as any other of the treatments or styles used as the Un-Suck Filter of the Week to rescue otherwise poorly conceived images? Sure it is. Sometimes. But that doesn’t mean the use of HDR should be tossed out any more than sharpening should be tossed out because too many people abuse it.

Where Trey’s book succeeds for me is in two areas. The first is the images. They’re presented large and I’m enjoying looking at them. They stir my paint, and if you’ve been around these here parts for the last while you know I put a lot of stock in creative paint-stiring. The other thing the book does well is address some of the Whys behind HDR and creative photography as much as the Hows.  If you love HDR, this book might give you the tools and the mindset to begin using HDR more mindfully, and it will, I think, give you some inspiration. If you aren’t a fan, it might be time to put the disinterest aside and look at the book all the same, not in the interest of becoming a convert, but in seeing what you can learn.

Here’s the interesting thing about HDR images – a lot of photographers seem to dislike them, it’s a love it or hate it kind of thing, sadly. But the general public, the non-photographers out there, love them. And we should be asking why. Anyways, I love my copy. You can get more info on Trey Ratcliff’s A World In HDR HERE on Amazon.com

At the risk of more jokes about how y’all can’t read as fast as I write, ahem, Amazon.com now has my third book for pre-sale. It has for about a week, but I was holding out on telling you. So, for the uber-impatient among you, here are the links to the book on Amazon, and on Barnes and Noble. I had planned to do three books over the course of three years, but the folks at Peachpit put RedBull in their water cooler.

Vision & Voice is the third in what I’ve been thinking of as a trilogy, three books bound together by the common theme of vision, but addressing different facets of photography. Within The Frame is about the vision-driven capture, VisionMongers is about the vision-driven career, and Vision & Voice is about the vision-driven digital darkroom. Y’all will be forgiven if you never want to hear me use the word “vision” ever again.

I began Within The Frame by stating that I believe there are three images that go into making the final photograph – the one you envision, the one you shoot, and the one your refine in post-production. The better you are at the latter two, the closer you’ll come to the first. Vision & Voice is about the role of the digital darkroom, specifically Adobe Lightroom, in refining our vision. It’s not a how-to use Lightroom book, though the exercises will help you learn Lightroom. It’s not even a “how do I make my images look better?” book, because that’s the problem with the whole thing. Any book that tells you how to “make your image look better” would first have to know what “better” means, and as only you know your intention for an image, I think it’s best we look at the tools in the digital darkroom through the metaphor of voice. You first have to know what you want to say before you can go about deciding how to say it. Then you choose the right tools, the right voice, to express those intentions.

So I’m working furiously on this now, and it’s easily the most daunting project to date. The release is due in the later spring sometime, May 24 according to Amazon. If you’re counting, that’s 3 books in one year and I’m getting tired, so I trust you’ll all be OK with me taking a breather and hiding on a beach in the Maldives or something for a while once the third book in the trilogy roles off the press in May.

Thanks for being on this ride with me. Churning out these books, having them so beautifully realized by my publishing team, and so enthusiastically received by you, this has been an unforgettable year. I have the best photographic community in the world and I don’t take it for granted – thank you! Thanks also for the response to yesterday’s post. If you’ve not read the comments, you should take some time to do so – seems there are many of us swinging back to film and reaping the creative benefits. My buddy Kevin Clark has a 4×5 camera I might steal from him and play with. It’s been a while since I’ve had this much fun stirring the paint. Much of this stuff,and the resulting images, will be going into the 2nd volume of The Inspired Eye. But don’t hold your breath, that one will come in the new year.

This evening my publishers – Peachpit – are hosting a video conversation with me at 5pm PST. The disussion begins with me addressing some issues related to VisionMongers, then the bulk of the conversation becomes just that – a conversation. You can ask questions which will be moderated and fed to me, and we’ll have an hour to hash out some of this stuff. I’m really looking forward to it, but I’m told there’s limited space, so go HERE and sign up to get the secret location and secret handshake needed to get past the big guy at the door.

The reception for VisionMongers has been phenomenal, and both Chase Jarvis and Zack Arias have had some really encouraging things to say about it. Amazon reviews are trickling in now too and the one I loved said “there’s nothing new here,” which makes me chuckle because it’s so true. The only thing new about VisionMongers is that some of this stuff just needed to be said. There are no secrets, it’s a challenge to combine craft and commerce, and the wisdom we lean on to build a business in the creative arts is the same wisdom anyone else leans on. If all VisionMongers does is pull back the curtain a little and give people a more honest look at some of the challenges and the skills needed to meet those challenges, it’ll have done what I aimed to accomplish. If you’re working your way through it, feel free to leave comments here or on Amazon. If the book leaves you with questions, then leave those here too and we’ll discuss them. I’d love to get a more consistent dialogue going – and that’s not only for the working photographers, but for all of us.

Speaking of VisionMonger issues, here’s two things you need to check out in your spare time – the first is last week’s guest article over at Scott Kelby’s blog. Scott continues to feed us an incredibly diversity of voices and THIS article by Ryan Anderson is excellent. The other thing is THIS article on Freelance Switch about raising your prices. Check them out when you have a moment.

Finally, be sure to check out the growing list of excellent Depth of Field Interviews by Matt Brandon, the latest installment is Ami Vitale and is a must-listen. And it’s free. You can listen to that interview HERE on Matt’s blog.

This is the latest. I’m not even going to try explaining yet another book. What can I say, I got distracted, starting playing with a concept, I accidentally ended up with another book when I had no intention of doing so until January. Move along. Nothing to see here.

The Inspired Eye, Vol.I, Notes on Creativity for Photographers is the first in a two volume set about the creative process, and it’s not like the last four. For starters, with the exception of the cover, all the images are black and white, and presented much smaller. It’s a much different look. For another, there isn’t a lick of how-to in this book. Not even a creative exercise posing as a how-to. It’s discussion about the creative process, quotes from creative luminaries like Picasso and Frank Lloyd Wright, and a handful of my images.

Why this book? An excerpt:

Because for the creative photographer, our making of photographs is an outward expression of something inward. If my previous writings insist that the question How ought to be preceded by the question Why, then this book assumes that the discussion of photography as an outward expression ought to be preceded by – or at least accompanied by – a discussion about the inner life from which that outward expression springs.

Another reason is a more experiential one. For the past three years my blog, The Pixelated Image, has become a gathering place for people who seem weary of all this geeking-out over technology and technique without ever considering concepts like vision. Time and again people have emailed me telling me how much they resonate with something I’ve said about vision or my own journey as a photographer wrestling to find and express that vision. I’ve been on workshops in the Himalayas and listened to capable photographers tell me about their feelings of frustration and inadequacy as though it were a shameful secret.

It’s time we talked about it openly. It’s time we took a look at issues we all wrestle with – from understanding creativity and inspiration, to hearing – finally – that other photographers struggle to find and express their vision, and in that commonality find a little relief. Because if it’s normal to feel this way and to find it hard to uncover our inspiration or feel good about our efforts to express it, then we can stop wondering what’s wrong with ourselves and get on with the task at hand – the difficult, painful, beautiful, eye-opening process of seeing and photographing the world from our perspective.

It’s 28 pages, still a downloadable PDF, and still only $5

*Use coupon code INSPIRED20 to get The Inspired Eye for $4 until the end of Dec.12/2009. It works for any combination of the ebooks, so buy one or buy five, it’s all 20% off. The easiest way to do that is HERE on the Craft&Vision website.

I had a whole other post written and scheduled for today, but I’ve bumped it because I just got my copy of The Essential Guide to Portrait Photography from the folks at DPS. Digital-Photography-School.com is a massive community of enthusiastic learners and they’ve just produced and announced The Essential Guide to Portrait Photography. It’s an ebook, it’s priced at an intro price of $14.95 right now and it’s huge value for the money. If you can’t wait and just want more info now, then click here for more details

It’s packed – I mean packed – with information that will be particularly helpful to people just starting out with portraits or wanting to work on their portrait skills. It’s well illustrated and it doesn’t hold back. And it ends with interviews with people like Jack Hollingsworth, Chase Jarvis, and myself. And others.

I’ve been sending you to a lot of books lately, and there’s a reason for that – dollar for dollar you aren’t going to get better information or education than in books, and when they come digitally the cost goes way down. The one I’m recommending here is different from my own stuff and I think that’s important – we all need to draw from many sources as we learn and grow.

The DPS site does a great job of revealing the book, offers the intro pricing I mentionned (which is 25% off) and the darn thing has a money-back 30-day guarantee. Not even my books have that. Head over to DPS to take a look at The Essential Guide to Portrait Photography. Highly Recommended. Click here to view more details