PixelatedImage Blog

Planting Rice outside Chiang Rai, Thailand. August 2009

Good morning. I’ve got a handful of links for you this morning, some worthwhile stuff I want to point you towards.

Scott Kelby and his gang of elves that never sleep have an online show called D-Town. I watched a few episodes when it first came out but as it was geared entirely for Nikon shooters I stopped watching. Only so many hours in the day and I don’t shoot Nikon (though I’d be willing to if the good folks at Nikon are interested in talking) Anyways, D-Town is no longer a Nikon-only show and that should make it suddenly relevant to anyone other than Nikonians. Details HERE.

My friend Gavin Gough has work in this year’s Travel Photographer of the Year book, as do I, though I’d forgotten about it until reading Gavin’s post. Where Gavin and I seem to differ is that he’s willing to give one of these books away. I thought, “What a great idea!” but where others would then give a copy away I’m just going to send you to Gavin’s site and encourage you to read the rules on his simple giveaway HERE. Gavin’s work is in a current/recent edition of Vanity Fair as well, check it out HERE.

Matt Kloskowski’s got a cautionary tale regarding THE IMPORTANCE OF BACKUP and I suggest you either read the story or just skip it and go, for the love of Binary, and back up your work. Do it now! And create an offsite backup while you’re at it.

Matt Brandon’s been rocking his blog lately. Be sure to check out his post on the last lantern maker in Penang, Malaysia HERE.Also be sure to catch all his Depth of Field podcasts. Matt’s a fantastic interviewer and his glimpses into the lives of working photographers is always full of laughter and insight. Catch his latest interview with Gary S Chapman and Vivien Chapman HERE.

Finally, I want to point you to two eBooks. If you’ve been around here you know I place a high value on reading and learning, and am investing a great deal of time on creating eBooks for the photographic community. I think we offer amazing eBooks at ridiculously low prices, but we aren’t the only ones. Bruce Percy, whose work I respect tremendously, now has an eBook out on his recent work at the Taj Mahal. Bruce does incredible work and is a thinking photographer. Click here to view more details

The last eBook is a more substantial effort from the folks at Digital Photography School. It’s called Photo Nuts and Bolts and where the eBooks at Craft & Vision are more about putting your technical knowledge to use in expressing your vision, this is about the foundation of the craft itself. It’s very well illustrated and the teaching is solid. If you’ve been looking to brush up on some of the basics, perhaps get your mind around something you’ve been missing, then I recommend you take a look at Neil Creek’s Photo Nuts And Bolts. It’s on sale for $19.97 and has a 30 day money-back guarantee, so there’s no risk. There’s a reason the DPS site is one of the largest photographic communities on the planet, they do good work over there. Click here to view more details

Lastly, two housekeeping things. 1. We’re planning to release Andrew S. Gibson’s The Magic of Black and White, Vol.1 in 10 days or so. I’m very excited to have Andrew on board. Andrew is a skilled black and white photographer, a technical editor for EOS Magazine, and runs a great blog full of interesting interviews. Find his blog HERE. 2. I’ll be in Seattle tomorrow and Wednesday speaking at Amazon, which means a. road trip! and b. I won’t be around much. But I’ll be back later in the week with a report.

I have a bunch of things I want to point you to this morning.

The 23rd edition of the free online magazine PhotographyBB (above) is now up. The man at the helm of PhotographyBB is Dave Seeram and he was kind enough to interview me earlier this fall. That interview found its way into this issue.  Find more information and a free download of PhotographyBB Magazine HERE.

My friends Gavin Gough and Matt Brandon are leading a tour and workshop to the Kumbh Mela festival in India this April. I wish I could be part of it but my schedule doesn’t permit. Travelling and shooting with these two men is a privelege. I know the few spots available will go quickly and as the next Kumbh Mela isn’t until 2013, it’s not something you can just do next year.  More information on Gavin’s blog HERE.

The winners of this years Travel Photographer of the Year award were announced last week. The big winner was G.M.B Akash from Bangladesh and his work is stunning. Take some time to look at the work of the winners and runners-up HERE in the TPTOY 2009 Winner’s Gallery

Syl Arena rolled out the motherload of Canon-specific web resources on his blog last week. Find Part One HERE and Part Two HERE.

Last but certainly not least, my friend, and a member of this community, Jon McCormack has had one of his images selected to hang in the Yosemite Museum Gallery. Congratulations, Jon. It’s always exciting to see good people and good work recognized. See his announcement and his image, Vernal Falls in Summer, HERE

The holidays are nigh. I’ll be taking Christmas Eve, my birthday, and Christmas Day, off. So tomorrow’s likely the last post until Monday, the 28th. Check in tomorrow, then close the computer and go be with friends and family.

“…and a Nikon D3X, and a Gitzo tripod, and OH! can your elves make those Singh-Ray Vari-ND filters? They can? OK, I want one of them too…”

In the face of other gift guides, and in light of the tongue-in-cheek iconoclasm that goes on here at the PixelatedImage:Blog, I offer my 2009 Holiday Gift Guide for your consideration. A handful of gifts you might want to consider giving this year, to your favourite photographer, or even your spouse. Some will cost you a stack of coins, some of the best ones will cost you a few bucks or nothing at all. And some of them are blatantly self-promotional, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t good!

1. The full collection of my Craft & Vision eBooks.
I’ll make it easy for you. After so many requests for gift cards or something, here’s the best I can do. Go to Craft&Vision.com and put all the books – 5 of them – into your cart. Then checkout with this code – 3wisemen – and you’ll get the books for 25% off – that’s $18.75 for all 5 books. Download accordingly. Then click here to download a cd/dvd label in layered PSD and in flattened JPG. Drop that file into your favourite label-template, print it, stick it on a DVD, burn the DVD and blammo! Lovely gift that will get used for much longer than a Starbucks gift card. (The discount works only with all 5 books and is valid until midnight on Dec.25)

2. Membership at the local Art Gallery or Museum
Decades and centuries of visual inspiration. We don’t need another catalog full of gear, we need our imaginations fired!

3. A year’s subscription to Kelby Training.
For the money this is one of the best places to get 24/7 learning all year round. Some of the best teachers on the planet, all in one place, all accessible from your laptop.

4. A Magazine Subscription.
A year’s subscription to a solid photography magazine like Digital Photo Pro, or Outdoor Photographer, among many others.

5. A copy of Within The Frame or VisionMongers.
Got those? How about Chris Orwig’s Visual Poetry? Whatever it is, giving the gift of education and learning has much more lasting returns than giving gear. Let someone else shell out on the stuff that’ll go obsolete. Want to go over the top with this one? Get them a couple of these books, and package them with a bottle of Ardbeg Uigeadail, arguably the best scotch whisky in the world and one which pairs nicely with books like Within The Frame.

6. Glass.
If you’re going to buy them gear and really plunk down some shekels, get them a nice lens. The good stuff. A lens will outlast all their bodies, laptops and anything you plug in or turn on. If they shoot Canon, get them something with the famous red collar. If Nikon, get them whatever’s on the front of Joe McNally’s camera. Or a lovely Zeiss lens – made in both Canon and Nikon mounts and with which you can’t go wrong, there are no crappy versions of those.

7. A week without talking about your camera,
Give your loved-one a week’s reprieve from talking about gear, the lens you don’t have, or mentioning the word “bokeh” – this one is for your spouse and I promise it’ll be well-received. You could also try going for a walk together and voluntarily leaving your camera at home.

8. A gift card from Artistic Photo Canvas.
Every photographer likes to see their work printed and mounted. The bigger the better. APC does a world-class job.

9. A “Still Need The Vision” t-Shirt.
Roger at RubyRed T-Shirt Designs has got some clever T’s, not the least of which is a great-looking T-shirt implying the need for Vision. Find it, and others, HERE.

10. A week in Italy with me and Jeffrey Chapman.
There’s one spot now left on the Italy Within The Frame Workshop, it just opened up. More information HERE. This one will take you into the stratosphere of gift-giving, and I’ll buy the recipient a nice bottle of red wine when we’re there. I’ll even sign it.

11. Time to create.
Married to a photographer? They sent you here? They’ll tell you they need gear. They might, they might not. You know what they really want? Some time to go making photographs without feeling they’ve got things to do at home. Give them a week off and make the kids do the dishes and stuff. Give the photographer in your home the gift of time to go play. Creativity flourishes when there’s time along the margins to play.

12. Nothing.
Most of us truly don’t need to add to the push to spend money during the holidays. Instead, why not make an investment in a family beyond our own? Spend some time on Kiva as a family and chose a project to invest in while helping a family on the other side of the world get a leg up and start their own business.

13. A goat.
Two of my favourite clients – World Vision and Save The Children, both have holiday Gift Catalogs. You can buy a goat for a family, a dairy cow, stock a medical clinic, or give soccer balls and books to a local school. I know, some of us are cynical about this stuff. But I can tell you first hand from being there that these gifts make a world of difference to the families and communities I’ve spent time with. I know, money’s short and we all need one more piece of gear. But if you’ve got a little room to stretch the budget, remember that there are families out there for whom a tripod is irrelevant. They have no food, no clean water, and no chance at an education. We can’t change the world all at once, but we can make a difference. One of my readers, Jimmy Brown, even started a lending team at KIVA, all photographers pooling their money to make a difference. You can join them HERE.

Still jonesin’ for something shiny? Here’s a random collection of my favorite bits of shiny for 2009:
Kiboko Bag from GuraGear.com. Serengeti sunglasses. Amazon Kindle. Paul Nicklen’s Polar Obsession or the National Geographic Image Collection. A new moleskine notebook, pocket-sized. A larger Hoodman Screen Loupe for the newer 3″ LCDs. A Sony PCM-D50 audio recorder. Think Tank Photo Skins. A used Hasselblad film camera from David Odess. Blackrapid R-Strap. A copy of Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art.

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.

I shot this in northern Bangladesh, earlier this year while on assignment. We’re now in between two great holiday seasons that focus on gratitude and giving. You don’t come here for preaching, but you know it’s going to happen once in a while. Please consider giving to organizations, like World Vision, Invisible Children, or others that work closer to home. Let’s make this year the year we stop with the token gifts and landfill-bound trinkets.

In my haste to get on the soapbox yesterday I completely neglected to wish my American readers a happy Thanksgiving. Being Canadian means we get Thanksgiving, in some measure, twice. Of all the holidays I think I could tolerate doing more than once a year, Thanksgiving is at the top. Daily would also be fine. So while we Canucks had our day way back in October and now have nothing to do until Christmas, y’all to the south are gorging yourself as I write this. In the spirit of the holiday, for which many turkeys have died – I’m deeply grateful for so much, not the least of which is you – my readers, fans, tweeps, and friends.

If y’aren’t already sick of my yapping, there are two solid interviews online that are now available for your listening pleasure.

First, my buddy Matt Brandon did an interview with me while we were in Ladakh. That interview is available HERE, along with others like Bob Krist, Nevada Wier, and Gavin Gough, on the Peachpit TV site. Matt’s interview skills are exceptional and I think the conversational tone of this interview probably makes it more fun than insightful, but that might just be me. Matt’s Depth of Field series is growing and he approaches his guests with some real insight – all his interviews are highly recommended.

The second interview is on episode #117 of TWiP (This Week in Photography) and it’s more focused on the release of VisionMongers and the issues I discuss in the book. Frederick’s becoming a good friend and he too is a fun interview, so take some time and listen to that episode, available HERE on iTunes.  Just look for Episode #117. Or, perhaps the easiest way, just got follow this link directly to the interview on Frederick’s site.

Reviews on blogs, Amazon.com, and Twitter, for VisionMongers are beginning to pop up everywhere. Looks like the book is finally hitting the far side of the planet, which will be good news for folks from Europe and Asia who’ve been waiting. Thanks for the great comments and the glowing reviews. Keep them coming. Knowing what resonates with you makes it easier for me to keep teaching in ways that that work best for you. And it doesn’t hurt book sales, either, so thanks!

Finally, the winter holidays are nearly on us and if your tradition involves giving gifts, then there are plenty of Gift Guides out there to help you out. I’ll probably post one too, though it’ll more than likely encourage you to give the give of education rather than gear, and I’ll point you to a couple organizations where you can spend your money on something for people much less fortunate. Many of you have asked what the easiest way to give my $5 ebooks as gifts and I’m working on that too. I’ll include a discount too, just to share the love. Keep your eyes peeled.

Have a great weekend.

The cover of Paul Nicklen’s new book, Polar Obsession.

I’m captivated by Paul Nicklen and his work right now. His book, Polar Obsession, is on its way from Amazon and I can’t wait until it arrives. I haven’t been this excited about a book coming my way for a while. I might even be more excited about this one arriving than I was about VisionMongers.

Paul Nicklen grew up among the inuit in the far  – FAR – north of Canada. He studied to become a biologist. He mapped out his career plan on a scrap of paper when he should have been studying for a genetics final in his 4th year at University of Victoria. He failed the exam but found a career. I’m so intrigued with Paul for several reasons. The first of course is that his images are breathtaking. I don’t care any more about seals per se than I do about, I don’t know, toy poodles. But his images make me care. His images of the arctic and antarctic make me care, make me want to be there. Hell, they make me want to get into that water with him. But more than that, I suspect I’m drawn to him because, like the visionmongers I profiled in the book, this is a guy who seems to do it because he can’t NOT do it. He cares deeply about his subject. He has leveraged his expertise and his own story, and found a place shooting something few others are shooting with such great affection.

A person with a reason to shoot is lucky. A person with a passion, an obsession, is damn-near unstoppable. And I think their images show it.

A leopard seal feeds Paul Nicklen a penguin. Antarctic Peninsula.
© Paul Nicklen

So to start the week of right I’ll stop yapping and refer you to some of the inspiring bits I’ve found on Paul Nicklen.

First, his own website is here. Be sure to look at his galleries and read his story. PaulNicklen.com

Next, a great YouTube video about some of the experiences behind his leopard seal images HERE and his underwater polar bear HERE.

PDN has an article on Paul Nicklen HERE.

Finally, if you’ve got a few shekels left after buying my recent barrage of books, you can find Paul’s book, Polar Obsession, HERE on Amazon.com

First, today is the official release day for VisionMongers. I got my copy on Friday and it looks great. Kudos to the fine folks at Peachpit who make my stuff look like a million bucks. Because when it leaves my harddrives it looks like a chaotic pile of words and disorganized images. Am I excited? You betcha! This is a book that’s going to be really helpful to a lot of people and there’s nothing else like it out there right now. Folks who ordered from Peachpit should be getting them asap. Let me know if you’ve got yours?

Stumbled across this on Twitter – it’s called Flickroom and between the goodness of Adobe Air and the interface that finally (FINALLY!) relegates Flickr a little more to the background, this should make Flickr a much less aesthetically abusive experience. I use CoolIris to view Flickr images, this will make it easier to post images to Flickr without me wanting to put my eyes out with a hot fork. Check it out HERE.

The details for Lumen Dei 2010 have just been released. Lumen Dei’s logistics and marketing have been taken over completely by Frontier Treks and Tours, leaving Matt Brandon and I more time to do what we love – shooting and teaching. Details are on a new Lumen Dei site HERE . Don’t go to the old one I haven’t updated it. Remember, it’s first come, first served, and there are only 8 spaces. Last year it sold out in 3 days and my more recent tours have sold out even faster, so if you want in, don’t spend much time hesitating. The rough details are these – the tour runs from September 12 to 25, and we’ll not being going only to Ladakh or only to Kashmir – but a week in each with an overland journey between the two. Should be a blast and I’m already looking forward to next September! More info HERE.

I’ve had another question about why I don’t generally give money to people of whom I make photographs when I travel. In fact someone pointed me to a forum last week where they were discussing this, speculating that I must be stingy. First, it’s a principle not a rule, and there are always, always exceptions. But I think it’s important we remember this – spending time with people and creating photographs as a result of those exchanges is a beautiful, human thing. Reducing it to a financial transaction is not only impossible for every situation, but it will create a climate in which these exchanges become nearly impossible. To be clear, if I spend any amount of real time with someone I’m happy to be as generous as I can possibly be. At times this means money. I’m not a photojournalist, my MO is different. But I’d rather purchase a gift, leave images, or buy something from their stall if they’re merchants. But everyone needs to settle this for themselves. If your initial impulse is to withhold, ask yourself why – and if it’s for lack of generosity, it might be time to change that. If your first reaction is to shell out a dollar, ask yourself if there aren’t better – and more generous – ways to give back. Sometimes it is money, sometimes it’s not. For me, it usually isn’t. But that doesn’t for a moment exclude a reciprocal, generous, exchange – allowing photography to be an act of giving as much – or more than – an act of taking. You make these decisions with both your head and your heart. But merely giving a buck when the hand goes out is probably not the best solution. Of course not everyone will agree with me, I’m ok with that. But I do think we all need to raise the bar on this.

Lastly, there’s a new website coming for my ebooks – it’ll make it much easier for you to browse the books, take a look at coming books, and see which authors are coming out with new books. It’s been rebranded and I’m really excited about it, but most of all I’m excited about the coming books from people like Dave Delnea, Kevin Clark, and Gavin Gough – all photographers I look up to and learn from (and for that reason they are also in VisionMongers, alongside Zack Arias, Joe McNally, Chase Jarvis, and others). There’s good things coming, folks. And the emphasis will still be on vision and education, not buying more gear. And we have no plans to make them any more than $5 each. I’ll update you as soon as I can. For now, I’m taking a break from writing the ebooks, allowing me to work on the next print book, and allowing you to catch up on your own reading. But I have plans. Oh, do I have plans…

See you tomorrow.

Hey look, it’s an “E”! Speaking of E…

This week I launched the fourth in the my eBook series. Chasing The Look is now available. Still for $5. More information HERE.

Canon Blogger did an interview with me last week and it’s now live. The audio is a bit low, so you might need to crank it, but it was a conversation that took different directions than many of the interviews I’ve done. You can listen to it HERE. (If you have issues, download it directly from THIS LINK.)

Joe McNally, a man I admire for both his words and his images, posted an article on his blog on Monday (Nov. 09) that was particularily good. Read Letter To a Young Photographer HERE.

Freelance Switch has an article called The Part Time Photographer in this weeks archives. I admit to not having read it, it was a busy week, but it’s still open on my browser and if you want to beat me to it,  you can read that article HERE.

Think Tank Photo, of whom I am a huge fan, released a new bag this month. It’s the Urban Disguise 70 Pro and it’s much like the already-large Urban Disguise 60, which I have and love, but it fits a pro-sized SLR as well. As if it were’n't already huge enough. I don’t use my UD60 for shooting, just as a carry on, but like all things Think Tank they hold tonnes of gear and are extremely thoughtfully made. More info on the Think Tank Photo site HERE.

The feedback from yesterday’s post was great, thank you. Looks like I hit a nerve. So to take us all into the weekend, a couple quotes that remind us of the weightier matters.

“We don’t take photographs with our cameras, we take them with our hearts and our minds. They are a reflection of ourselves, what we are, and what we think.” ~ Arnold Newman.

“It is not art in the professionalized sense about which I care, but that which is created sacredly. as a result of a deep inner experience, with all of oneself, and that becomes ‘art’ in time.” ~ Alfred Stieglitz

There’s this great story about William Shatner ( aka Capt Kirk aka the Priceline.com guy) at a Star Trek convention. Clearly a bit put off by his fans he yelled at them to “Get a life!” Ok, not much of a story, more like a cautionary tale about biting the hand that feeds you, but I’ve always liked it. And it relates. Sort of. (Updated: Turns out the Get a Life thing was an SNL skit. But it was still Shatner. I stand corrected. Thanks. That’s what I get for blindly telling apocryphal stories without consulting the Google. )

I just finished listening to a short audio interview of Jay Maisel by Chris Orwig and in it Maisel says a couple of things that, if you read between the lines, are his way of imploring us to get a life. Want to be a better photographer, he says, be a more interesting person. Want better photographs, don’t study photography, study life, that’s what he’s saying.If photography is an act of expression, and for most of us it is, there must be something there to express. Want more to say? More texture? More depth? You need to be a photographer who first has more depth, more texture.

Maisel gets a bad rap as being a real hard-ass, and he might be, but while I suspect it’s only one of those gruff NYC exteriors, I think it’s still important to listen to him. Each time I’ve heard him speak he says something that makes me think, re-calibrates me. In fact the more I listen to photographers like Jay, people who’ve made a life and a living through their lens for a long time, the more I wonder why they truly don’t seem to give a damn about all the trappings that the pixel peepers are bent out of shape about.Why? They’ve found something they care about more – life. Now, whose photographs do you want to look at? Someone who cares deeply about cameras and inverse square law, or someone who cares deeply about life?

Listen to Chris Orwig’s short interview with Jay Maisel HERE. If you’re wanting to here what someone with substantially less to say, you can listen Chris Orwig’s short interview with me, HERE.

**

I’ll be out for the next few days. I’m taking some time to get away and do my annual thinking and planning with fewer distractions than home. And then I’m spending 24 hours with my friend and manager, Corwin, for our twice-annual Think & Drink – a planning session that is un-necessarily helped by some good single malt scotch and coffee. Not together. Coffee in the morning. Scotch in the evening. So, that might mean a couple shorter posts this week. But I wanted to leave you with two things.

1. My friend Mitchell Kanaskevich has two ebooks out, I’ve directed you to them before. He’s offering a Two for One sale and if you don’t have these two pdf books, they are well worth looking at. You can find him and his books HERE. I’m a fan of Mitchell’s work, take some time to look at it while you’re there.

2. This November is packed for me; too much going on. I had planned to release the next ebook closer to the end of the month. It’s done and ready to go, but I got a few comments last time to the tune of, “For the love of Galen Rowell, slow down, duChemin!” So I know I promised to space these things out but there’s just too much going on behind the scenes for me to space everything out perfectly and if I leave it too close to Christmas y’all are going to have to decide between buying a $5 ebook and that knick-knack for that co-worker you don’t really like and I don’t want to put you in that awkward position. So, Chasing The Look is coming out this week.  And by “this week,” I mean tomorrow. And the official release of VisionMongers is a week from this morning. Like I said, busy. But ya gotta make hay while the sun shines and that means I get these things out while I’m not on assignment or working on my next print book.

Thanks a bunch for your kind anniversary wishes. Sharon and I had a great time getting away from it all. We were socked in by rain which was just perfect for spending a weekend in a cottage nestled into the BC coastal forest with a fireplace, endless pots of tea, and the one I love. Thanks again for the kindness.

I call this one, “She’s a Babe, I’m an Idiot.” So does she.

Yesterday my wife and I marked 6 years of marriage and so today we’re off to British Columbia’s Sunshine Coast for 3 days of hanging out sans internet. Can’t wait. So while I’m doing that, here’s some details – a few recaps, a few new items.

1. On Wednesday Scott Kelby’s Guest Blog spot was by Tyler Stableford. Tyler’s post was moving, and worth a read. And refreshingly free of gear talk. More why, less how, and heart to spare. You can find Tyler on Scott’s Blog HERE.

2. Scott Bourne asked me to host the most recent edition of PhotoFocus, so if you’ve got an hour to kill listen to Scott and I yapping, you can click HERE for Episode #20 of Photofocus.

3. I’m excited to tell you that the dates and details for Lumen Dei 2010 are soon-coming. We’ve got the basics nailed down, so put Sept. 12-25, 2010 on the calendar and wait for more details. As always, there will be room for about 8 people, and spots will go fast. Last year we sold out in less than 3 days.Details will be announced here and on Matt Brandon’s blog as soon as they’re available.

4. Jack Hollingsworth has a poll going to see “which published Photography Author would you like to spend intimate, workshop weekend with at the seaside cottage/studio of @photojack” So go put in a vote, even if it’s not for me. I think this kind of thing would be amazing. But don’t let the whole “intimate weekend” thing mislead you. There will be neither candles nor any slipping into something more comfortable. Unless y’all vote for Joe McNally instead, and then all bets are off.

5. At the beginning of the week I announced the BIG FAT BUSINESS CARD GIVEAWAY THING, be sure to enter. I’ll be drawing the winner at the end of the month.

6. Ralph Clevenger’s new book Photographing Nature is now out. The Fed Ex guy came with mine yesterday which really ticked me off because I thought it might be the first copy of VisionMongers and it wasn’t. Neverthless, hardly Ralph’s fault. Like anything put out by Peachpit Press it’s a thing of beatuy and I’m looking forward to tucking into in preparation for my safari workshop in Kenya this January. And it’s the same size as Within The Frame, and VisionMongers, and Chris Orwig’s Visual Poetry, so they’ll all look great on your shelf together.

7. This article appeared in the Deseret News (Utah) on October 29th and is worth a read. I want to have all the sympathy in the world for the gal losing her gear, but leaving all your gear in the car is just plain stupid. Not that I haven’t done it (and had it stolen, for that matter) but still… It’s a good reminder to be vigilant and insured and for the love of Alfred Eisenstadt don’t leave ALL your harddrives in the car. Backup your stuff. Do it now. Now back it up again and put one of those backups somewhere safe, and preferably not on your own property.

8. Finally, if you missed it. I’m always grateful for you as a community and I’ve created a collection of wallpapers for the iPhone I’d like you to have. You can find all the details on Wednesday’s post HERE.

Have a great weekend. Go shoot something you love. Unless you’re with someone you love as I will be, then it might just be best to put the camera down for a spell. See you on Monday.