PixelatedImage Blog

I’m really excited to finally be able to announce a new workshop and tour for 2010. It’s ITALY WITHIN THE FRAME, a one-week workshop & tour in the beautiful Italian Riviera with myself and Jeffrey Chapman. Limited to only 8 participants, this one is going to be one of the highlights of my year. If you’ve ever seen images of this region, you know what a visual treat this is going to be. I’ve had many, many requests for a tour that’s less down and dirty than the India trips, something shorter, and something closer to Europe or North America. So here it is. The initial information is up on the site – take a look and then get back to Jeffrey Chapman, via the website, for more information.

If you’ve been wanting to join me for a week of shooting without going to the developing world, or getting malaria; if red wine and good food in spectacular places are more your speed, then this one’s going to be unforgettable. More information on the website HERE.

The winner of the 20×30 Signed Canvas of the Within The Frame cover image is…

#182, CHRIS HORTON. Chris, I noticed you are local so email me and we’ll set up a time to pick it up and if you’ll let me buy you a cup of coffee I’d be pleased to do so. Drawing your number, and having you in Vancouver saves me packaging and shipping this beast to Kenya, so a cup of coffee or a pint of local beer, whichever you prefer, is on me. Congrats.

Thanks to everyone who played, and to APC for being so good to my readers. I’m hoping to announce a new giveaway any day now, just waiting for my sponsor to give the word. Stay tuned!

I got a nice surprise yesterday afternoon from Lew at APC (Artistic Photo Canvas). The Fed Ex guy came with a huge box containing two 20×30 canvases made from the Tunisian image that graces the cover of Within The Frame. That wasn’t the surprise. The surprise was how gorgeous the canvases were. I keep meaning to get a bunch of canvases made, just to see what they look like, and I keep not getting around to it. Lew made it easy and as a thanks to my readers for the support you’ve shown me for Within The Frame, and as a welcome to new readers that arrived here after reading the book, I’m giving away one of these canvases. It’ll be signed, and shipped to you straight from me.

So what do you have to do to get your name in the hat for this one-of-a-kind canvas? Two simple things. First, go check out APC’s website at ArtisticPhotoCanvas.com – then come back here and leave a comment that contains your name and your email in the email field. Every time I do this some wiseguy forgets to leave an email address. I have neither the time nor the inclination to send smoke signals or carrier pigeons to let you know you’ve won. But I want to give stuff away, so make it easy for me. Also, while the draw is random, it wouldn’t hurt to remind me of a reason why I should pick you. Will it help your chances any? Not a bit, but you’ll amuse me and you can’t put a price on that.

Finally – this is open to people from all corners of the globe. BUT if you’re outside Canada and the USA and you want this you’ll have to commit to splitting the shipping costs with me. I’ll pay half, but after seeing how much it costs to send a book to you international types, a canvas ain’t gonna be cheap.

Draw closes on or around July 01, depending on when I end up leaving for Ethiopia.

Why APC? They’re passionate and focused, and I like passion, vision and the kind of customer care that you don’t get much these days. They create exceptional stuff and serve their clients with abandon. My relationship with them is young but I’m hooked. Sure, they’re a long way away from me, but the canvases came in perfect condition by Fed Ex and their prices meet or beat most others while providing true giclee quality. I’ll post more about my relationship with APC as it develops, but I’m already pretty sure I’ll have them do some of, if not all,  the images for my next exhibit.

The details on my event in NYC have gone up at the B&H Event Space Website, so I thought I’d let you in on it. This is one of those free events that you need a ticket for, so be sure to go to the site and register HERE. Here are the details:

Travel around the world as David duChemin, author of Within The Frame discusses finding and expressing your photographic vision, as well as his unlikely transition from a successful comedy career to one as a humanitarian and travel photographer, teacher, and author. For photographers of all stripes this will be an inspiring evening discussing the role of vision in your craft and your career. After the presentation there will be a Q&A period time, an informal book-signing and a chance to meet David.

__

Oh, and the second Within The Frame Podcast is now live – find it on iTunes by searching for Within The Frame – or HERE on the Peachpit site.

I’m traveling for the next few days, and for tomorrow at least will be incommunicado. If you’re planning to come to the NYC event be sure to register but let me know as well. Be nice to see you there!

*Update – Just heard there are a MAX of  110 people and registration is already getting close to that, so this one’s not a “wait and see” kind of thing. If you want in, you need to get in on the action asap.

Yesterday was a long day shooting in the sun, my brain’s barely up to more than a roundup of some things I’ve been intending to mention.

First, last week I was down in Tampa with my friends at Kelby Media to flog the book (see the bald guy smiling suspiciously in image above). At some point I’ll pull back the curtain and tell all about the seedy underworld of the publishing industry, but for now go watch Episode 188 of Photoshop User TV and watch me babble about conceptual contrast and Within The Frame.

Secondly, one of my heroes, Steve McCurry, has started blogging and you can stalk him find him HERE.

I’ve been looking for a great new travel vest. Until I have my own design made for me, the Scott eVest Travel Vest is pretty darn close. It’s got some fantastic features including a gigantic pocket in the back that’ll take a 13″MacBook. So next time your carry-on is overweight, load up the eVest and you’re good to go. And unlike doing this with a Domke vest or other photog vest, this is one you’ll actually wear. I got one this week and love it. In fact the entire SeV line of clothes is worth checking out for travelling. It doesn’t clear me of my barely controllable desire for a Gitzo fleece jacket but it’ close

I found this Top 10 list of mistakes to avoid during a photography workshop on Paul Burwell’s site and while I’m pleased to say we’ve never had these problems on our Lumen Dei workshops, it made me chuckle all the same.

Finally, two things book related (but wait, keep reading, there’s FREE STUFF!)

First, be sure to check in on the Peachpit TV WITHIN THE FRAME Podcast. Episode 1 is up and more are following. Episode 2 should be up soon as well. For the next ten weeks I’ll be choosing images from the Flickr Within The Frame pool and doing a critique based on principles discussed in the book. You’ll need to join the group, submit images, and give us your consent to be part of it, but I’d love to see you there.

Second, and finally, Barnes & Nobles is about to kick off a promotion that includes Within The Frame. From June 3 to 30, selected books, including mine, from Peachpit Press, will be 30% off at Barnes & Noble bookstores and BN.com.There will fancy in-store displays and dancing girls also. Or end-of-aisle promo thingies. So I tell you what – I’ll send a Lexar 8GB 300x CF card to one reader, randomly chosen, who posts a photograph of my book, on a B&N promo display, and twitters the photograph, with the city it was shot in, and includes the @pixelatedimage handle in the tweet. Read that through again if it sounds confusing. Why am I doing this? Shameless self promotion would be the obvious motive, getting more of you to join me on Twitter would be a second, and the need to get this meddling CF card off my shelves so I can make room for, I dunno, something else, is also important. Mostly it’s the first one. Free, or potentially free, highspeed Lexar CF card and all ya gotta do is twitter me a pic. Go!

A week or so I had a really lovely interview with my Publisher, Nancy Aldrich-Ruenzel for her Author Talk series. Oddly enough the interviews I have done as a photographer have been so much better, deeper, and, uh, easier than any I ever did while pursuing a career in comedy. Man that feels like a lifetime ago. Anyways, Nancy is an exceptional interviewer and this one is probably the best one I’ve ever done. It’s almost 40 minutes long, so this one doesn’t skim the surface. She also made me blush alot.

You can catch the whole interview in streaming audio, or as a downloadable mp3, HERE on the Peachpit site. There are times I sound like I know what I am talking about, try not to be fooled.

I know it’s “all book, all the time” around here these days. The good news is I’m working on another so by the end of the year there will be TWO books for me to babble on and on about.

Hello from sunny Tampa. It’s gorgeous here (and I can see pink flamingos from my window. And they aren’t plastic!) and as I’m heading into another day with Scott Kelby and the gang, I wanted to drop a line and say hi. Yesterday was a blast. I had a lot of hang time with my bud RC and a taping of Photoshop User TV, then more hang time with Scott, and others. Dinner at City Fish grill was awesome – had a steak covered in blue cheese and blueberries and it sent my kidneys and pancreas into shock, but put a smile on my face. Yum. Today we’ll tape for Layers TV, and no doubt they’ll make me eat again. (Honey, warm up the elliptical machine, I’m going to need some quality time on it.)

Mostly I’m writing because yesterday’s post put me at an even 666 posts on the blog, and it just felt way too apocalyptic to leave it there another day. This one makes 667 and that just feels a little less ominous.

A couple great reviews on Within The Frame, one HERE from Robert, who owns the single largest collection of my prints on the planet, and other HERE from Jones Oliver at Camera47. Thanks so much to those of you putting reviews on Amazon. They help a great deal when people who are unfamiliar with me are trying to make a decision on which book to buy. The reception this book is getting is blowing me away and I’m so grateful to those who’ve taken a moment to write in. I can’t answer them all, but I do read them, and they make my day – so thanks.

I fly home tomorrow, inspired, happy, and no covered in little tiny blackfly bites. My hands look like they got chicken pox. (Don’t look at me! I’m hideous!)

Hey, one last thing – if you’re on Twitter, be sure to connect with me there @pixelatedimage. As I get busier and less able to reply to emails, this blog and Twitter will be the best place for people to connect, and at 140 characters I have a way better shot at staying in touch.

Gotta run. Cheers!

The first WTF critique podcast is live HERE on the Peachpit site. Hope you enjoy it. Wierdly enough when you click the video there it doesn’t scale, or it doesn’t for me, so click the Download Video file – or just click HERE. Sorry, it’s 7am here in Tampa but 4am where I come from. Cylinders not firing. (When is my coffee going to get here?!)

Sunset on the Malecon, Havana, Cuba.

Hey, folks. Hope you’re having – or had – a great long-weekend. I’ve got a real grab-bag for you this morning before I fade off into a couple days of potentially inconsistent presence here again.

I had a nice exchange with one of my readers this past week about the Photographer and The Blog series I did a while back. She asked if content was still king in light of competing claims that relationships were king. Good question, indeed, and as I’m a fan of good questions, I took some time to let the whole issue percolate, and it raised a more fundamental question:

King of What? No doubt about it, the internet is full of some potentially powerful tools for the photographer – both to create an audience for our work and to find clients, build community and participate in a culture of learning. So, is content the king of the whole darn thing? Or just one piece of it? The more I thought about it the more sure I became that while  – to really belabour the metaphor – there can only be one king per kingdom, there might be multiple kingdoms, and I think it looks like this:

Relevant Content is King of the Pull. Great content is still the king of the castle when it comes to pulling people to your blog. People that don’t know you and have no reason to come to you will come for great content. And great content will keep them there too – so long as it remains relevant. But is that all you want? You’ve attracted people but in order to engage them and build a community, you need something more.

Relationship is King of the Keep. Relationships and a growing community will keep people, and engage them on deeper levels in ways content alone can’t do. Pulling people in to your blog with content is fine, but connecting with them will turn them into fans, and a growing community to which they feel connected in some way will mobilize them become part of the effort to build and grow that community.

If you are looking to merely draw people in, content still works. But if you want to build something bigger (and, I would say, better) then you need to connect with people, engage them with your heart as well as your mind. Why does this matter? It might not, depends on your goals. But most people want to draw readers to a blog for a reason and more often than not I think that same reason might be better served by great content and a level of connection and relationship with the reader.  Not unlike a great photograph, in fact.

__

In other news. By the time you read this I’ll be up and heading to the airport en route to Tampa to spend a couple days working and playing with Scott Kelby, RC Concepcion, Brad Moore, Scriv, and the rest of the gang down at the intergalactic HQ of NAPP. Very excited to be back down there among some of my all-time, no-holds-barred, favourite people. They have this great culture of creativity down there, one that just seems full of energy and laughter. And some great restaurants too. Sun. Food. Friends. Could you ask for more? I think not. So, things’ll be light around here.

The Within The Frame Podcast, Peachpit TV. I’m hoping the first of the Within The Frame Podcasts is out by then, and I can point you to that. The podcast is a critique-based opportunity for me to discuss some of the concepts in the book; if you want in on the action, join the Within The Frame group in Flickr HERE, and be sure you also go HERE to give us consent on your images.

Amazon.com Reviews. Hey, do me a favour? My book, Within The Frame, is really gaining momentum and I’m getting some truly gracious emails about it. If you’ve read it, please don’t stop sending the emails – they’re really encouraging – but if you could take a moment to post a comment or two on Amazon.com, I’d be super-grateful.

Within The Frame, Downloadable Bonus Chapter. Also, be sure not to miss the downloadable bonus chapter of Within The Frame. It’s called The Travel of Art, and it’s a gear-focused, geek-out-on-travel-stuff look at my process for traveling – everything from what I take, to how I take it and keep my gear and me safe and healthy. Read the last two pages of the book, the details are in there on how to access that bonus material..

Shot this on the bus the other day with my iPhone. One empty bus, one gigantic hat. It amused me.

Heading into the weekend, I have two things for you this morning.

Got Questions?
Without giving too much away, many of you know how passionate I am about making a life and a living from this craft/art photography thing. I am a fan of doing it intentionally, passionately, and wisely, whether that’s part time on weekends, as a freelancer, or a full blown own-you-own studio shooter. I also love writing. And I am in the middle of a new book. Hint, hint. So, that’s where you come in. In an effort to make a book – if I was writing about this sort of thing – that is not merely more noise in the marketplace, but is truly useful and deep and better than one I could write all by my lonesome, I am asking a favour. Would you be willing to give me one of the two following things?

Thing 1: If you do not shoot vocationally but perhaps have been thinking about it, what is that number one question that keeps you up at night, or about which you just really wish you had some wisdom on?

Thing 2: If you shoot vocationally, what is the greatest lesson you’ve learned as you’ve merged your craft with the world of commerce?

I’m grateful for the input, thank you!

Vancouver Book Launch for WTF
OK, so that’s the favour. Now, on June 13 I am having a small book launch event here in Vancouver. By small I mean, tiny. We’ll fill the studio space of a friend and have some drinks and munchies and celebrate. Just me and a small handful of my closest, randomly chosen friends. I’ll be inviting some family and friends, but if you’re a reader and would like to come, I’d love to have you there. But there’s a catch. I can’t just have 100 people show up. Not enough room, not enough food. So if you want to come, please leave a comment letting me know you want to come and once I crunch numbers I’ll ramdomly choose as many people as I can to come. Then I’ll give you more details. For now all you need to know is that it’s Saturday, June 13, in Yaletown, Vancouver, at 3pm.

Have a great weekend, y’all.