UFC 114 Portraits

During a open workout for UFC 114 in Las Vegas, I set up a couple of small speed lites with umbrellas for some portraits of fighters.

Rampage Jackson and Michael Bisping

Rashad Evans and Dan Miller

Efrain Escudero and Antonio Rogerio Nogueira

Diego Sanchez and Jose Aldo

Strikeforce MMA Portraits

Strikeforce held a media day in Hollywood on March 17 to promote their April Nashville card and it gave me an opportunity to take some portraits of MMA fighters Dan Henderson, Shinya Aoki, Jake Shields, King Mo, Gegard Mousasi, and Gilbert Melindez. I set up a small studio area with my lighting kit consisting of Nikon SB-24 strobes with Honl grids, PocketWizards and some light stands.

Gegard MousasiShinya AokiMuhammed "King Mo" LawalDan Henderson and Jake ShieldsJake ShieldsGilbert Melendez

Will the iPad work for photographers?

Apple announced the iPad on Jan 27 and plans to ship the product in 60-90 days.

The big question for photographers is this device usable for day to day work? The potential is there. One thing that it has that makes it very photographer friendly is something called the iPad camera connection kit. It provides a way to transfer you photos via a sd card reader or a direct USB connection to your camera. By inference you should also be able to attach a USB CF card reader because it supports the sd card reader. It may also support a mass storage device like an external HD that would also help out to expand the 16gb to 64gb internal solid state storage.

Since the iPad will support all current iPhone apps, like Photo Gene, you already have basic image editors that will work. The real question is if and when will the major software developers will create iPad-specific software for photographers that will be full-featured like the ones for the PC and the Mac. I think in the next couple of months developers will be re-written their code from the iPhone and scaling it up for the iPad. Hopefully Adobe will create a Lightroom type app for it or maybe there will be a Photo Mechanic version of it.

One of the biggest hurdles will be the lack of multi-tasking on the iPad. That means that you won't be able to caption, edit and transmit your photos with different apps running. But if there is an app created that combines all three tasks within it, like Lightroom or Photo Mechanic, you are all set.

The key to the iPad becoming a valuable piece of equipment for photographers is the iPad new chip. The new 1ghz Apple A4 processor can decode HD video, which on paper should be adequate for image editing. My Asus netbook can't decode HD flash video and I can run Photoshop and Photo Mechanic. If Apple's new chip can handle photo apps, it will be a hit with photographers.

The iPad's LED back-lit display should be much better than any netbook currently for sale. The purported 10 hour battery life will help out on location shoots where there is no power and those overseas flights. Photographers will benefit from the iPad's new iWork keynote software for client presentations. You can even attach it to a projector.

The built in 3G capability is also a great feature if you plan to use it to send photos. No contract unlimited $30/month is great. If you travel internationally, you will be able to purchase local micro SIM cards for data connectivity. Something that most laptops don't have.

Here are some potential killer photo apps that could be written for the iPad:

First would be a live-view app that could tether to your camera where photos can be shown to a client as you shoot them. That app could support other remote functions like checking focus, changing exposures and doing time-lapse photographer. Connectivity could be either via wi-fi or USB cable.

If Eye-Fi could re-write their app so that it could create an ad-hoc network with the iPad, then you could have live wi-fi transfer of photos from camera to the tablet.

How about iPhoto for the iPod? If facial recognition can work, then in theory it could auto caption photos from a know database of faces.

The iPad has GPS only in the 3g models. Geo-tagging software will be taking advantage of that.

It's ironic that the iPad has a camera connection kit but no actual camera. Version 2.0 gets it. Or how about a mini-scanner? Something that you can convert analog reciepts and other images to digital. It needs some kind of input device for images like the iPhone.

Will the iPad save photography in general. Time will tell, but photographers will have a better display device that will show off their work in e-publications like the new New York Times, e-magazines and books.

The People's Choice Awards, Throwing Kisses, Money and Pimping out @aplusk

The People's Choice Awards is one of the few events held during awards season where the actual public votes instead of either an academy of peers or a commitee of experts. That usually makes the show a little more interesting because it brings out all the popular stars. The winners get a lot of exposure and usually don't miss showing up to accept their trophy.

Ashton Kutcher brought his over 4 million Twitter followers along for the ride via his cell phone. If you are not one of us minions, you can be reminded that you can join his Twitter bandwagon as his phone has a rather large @aplusk logo on it. Kutcher streamed live video of Jessica Alba, as Alba tweeted.

Chevy Chase brought out some $20 bills. When asked why he was flashing the cash, he said he wanted to get his picture in the magazines. George Lopez went one better by giving out a Benjamin to a lucky photographer.

Demi Lovato and Lea Michelle entered a contest to see who could blow kisses to the photographers better.

The cast of "Make it or Break it" tried to top Lovato and Michelle. Twilight's Kellan Lutz looked as he was catching all the kisses.

Carrie Underwood and Taylor Swift vied for title the Queen of Country Music.

George Lopez decided that Sandra Bullock was his Queen.

The cast of "The Big Bang Theory" couldn't decide to either kiss their award or point at it.

Six great iPhone Photo Apps for Photographers

What differentiates the iPhone from other smart phones is the the App Store where you can choose from over 100,000 applications. With that many choices it is difficult to weed the good from the bad.

Here are some of my favorites that I use whenever I take photos with my iPhone 3GS's 3 mega-pixel camera.

Photogene- This is the Photoshop of iPhone apps. Adobe has a free app called PS Mobile, but it very limited. Photogene has a wide assortment of tools like exposure compensation, color correction, cropping, sharpening and blurring filters, levels, 16 different picture frames, rotation, image flipping, undos and redos, re-sizing and photo sharing to Twitter and Facebook. If you are going to pay for just one photo app, this is the one. Currently $2.99, but well worth it.

AutoStitch- The app if your are interested in making panoramic photos. Just take a bunch of photos making sure you overlap them and you can combine them in AutoStitch. The app is fast and after you are done it has a crop tool to straighten the jaggy edges. If you don't do a good job of overlapping the photos, the stitching could have some ghosting and errors. Currently $1.99.

Pano- My other choice for panoramas is Pano. The difference between it and AutoStitch is that it has a virtual guide that helps you line up your panoramic. It superimposes part of the last photo you took and you use it to line up your next one. Because it is more precise, your panoramics have a higher success rate. If you are a hard-core pano fan, you will be buy both. Pano is on sale now for $1.99.

CameraBag- For easy and fast retro looking photos use CameraBag. The Helga filter replicates using a Holga or Diana toy camera by vignetting, cropping your photo into a square and boosting contrast and saturation. Other arty photo effects include cross-processing, using a Lomo camera, a Polaroid picture, a few black and white looks, infrared, old color and fish-eye. I like this app better than Chase Jarvis' Best Camera app because it is dead simple to use. $1.99.

TiltShift - The big problem with cameras with tiny sensors is that every photo has everything in focus from front to back. Pro cameras with big sensors look "film-like" because of the selective focus and shallow depth of field you can achieve with the right lens. What TiltShift does is one thing, makes part of your image blurry with a selective filter. The resulting photo has a look that can emphasize your subject by blurring out either the background or foreground. The app is called TiltShift because of it can used like a speciality Tilt-Shift lens that changes your plane of focus on your photo by moving the front and back elements. Other real world examples are usually made from a Lens Baby or a view camera. A popular trick is to shoot a landscape from a high angle looking down and making the scenary look like toy-like. Currently $.99.

iTimeLapse Pro- This could be construed as a video app. iTimelapse Pro takes still images at a rate and length you determine and combines them into a time-lapse video. If you have a tripod for your iPhone and love time lapse, this could be for you. You can make single frame animations using this technique too. It is $2.99.

If you have several apps, you can save you photo in one app and open it up in another to make further changes. The combinations of two different apps can make for even more granular control of your photos.