Reason #732 I Hate Newspapers

There’s a reason newspapers are falling out left and right. There’s a reason that my major (journalism) is currently filled with so much doom and gloom. There’s multiple reasons actually, and I’m sure that there are people who are way more qualified than I am who could explain them to you. But given the recent announcement from the New York Times to start charging for access to their website (under “certain conditions”), I’ve decided it’s time to voice my superbly pessimistic view of the dwindling industry that I have no desire to be a part of.

Before I start my rant, let me just say that I have great respect for the journalistic ability of the New York Times. There’s a reason they’re one of the most recognized newspapers in the world. I’m sure their staff is full of some of the top journalists, photographers, and editors in the nation. There’s no doubt in my mind about that.

Despite that, they’re clearly still struggling, just like all of the remaining papers. So why not charge for online access to their paper? They have to make money somehow right?

Something tells me that’s not  going to help. Why not? Because it’s the same thing they’ve been doing for the past 100 or so years. The current business model of newspapers – pay a subscription and in turn recieve a daily news source with stories and some photos – is terribly old fashion. And it should be; it’s been around long enough. There are fewer and fewer people every year who want to pay for that kind of service. And why should they? We all know we can just flick on the computer and get all of the same services free of charge.

So what exactly will this new model of charging for internet access change? Nothing. You pay a subscription, you get news and a few photos. Sound familiar? Of course, the news will be updated more often than once a day, and there will probably be a few more photos available for you to browse through in all of their htmled, 640×480 glory, maybe even a few “interactive resources”. Like polls. But in all reality, that’s just about it.

Maybe the newspaper diehards will subscribe to it, they’re the ones who are currently allowing the industry to limp along. But other than them, I’m not seeing a whole lot of potential income coming out of this. Example: Kelsey and Rachelle (Oh snap, call outs), you two don’t currently subscribe to the New York Times (that I’m aware of), but you’re congratulating them for finally trying to make some money. Will you two pay for that service? If two culturally in-tune, naturally curious journalism majors don’t think it’s worth their cashmoneyflow, what are the chances the rest of America will?

I tried to get more information about this drastic change the New York Times is making, but I wasn’t able to finish reading the article (because I don’t pay for a subscription). So did I immediately subscribe to the Wall Street Journal? No, I went to a different site that gave me the same news for free. Weird.

Why newspapers refuse to be creative, I have no idea. They have everything to lose (and nothing to gain) by simply throwing in digital versions of a business model that no longer works. Want more proof that they’re stuck in the past? Here we are, about to be invaded by the “media tablet” (I’m calling it now: January 27th, Apple, 10.1″ multitouch display, music, movies, games, internet, and a freaking sweet new way to read magazines), and this is the best that the New York Times can come up with (granted, it will probably be in color on the Apple tablet). “Let’s put our content on this”. Sports Illustrated sees the same device and is going to do something like this. “Let’s use this to revolutionize our content”. Done and done. Guess who I’m going to bet files for Chapter 13 first.

So that’s my rant. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe the New York Times will make millions off this venture and save the face of newspaper. Doubtful.

Rollout.

Losses

Three things that are most definitely not unbreakable: Snowboards, iPhones, and hearts.

All three are injured. All three are still working.

Last Hurrah

Hello dearest readers (or at least dearest remaining readers who continue checking this blog after my recent blogging drought).

So it’s been awhile. A long while. My computer has been officially declared dead, thus the lack off blogationing from me. I have way too many awesome stereotyping portraits, London visuals, branding ideas, and drug-busting stories to post up here, but they’re all delayed until either my computer is repaired, or I visit the Apple store for a new addition the the Mactopian family. It’s up to my insurance to decide which it will be. Either way, it probably won’t happen until Christmas(ish).

My term at Roehampton University is over. Fine. Finito. Donzo. I’m ready to go home. See my friends, my family, my snowboard. I wish I was coming back though. Not to Roehampton, I’m not a fan of the school here, but just to London in general. It’s such a freaking sweet place. And I’ve made some bomb-diggity friends over here as well. To the Londoners: It’s been fun. Thanks for everything guys. If you ever venture out to the west coast, hit me up.

Tomorrow is roll out day. Our flight leaves at 7:15pm and we get in to Boston at 9:45pm. How’s that for trippy time traveling? I’m pretty sure British Air isn’t going to like me when I show up with my ridiculously heavy bags, but we’ll see what happens I guess.

That’s about it for now. Not much of a blog post I’m afraid, but I needed to bang out some type of semi-formalized, pixelated goodbye while I was still on this continent.

Bostonbound.

Peace.

What Should I Buy?

I feel like that at some point, every photographer has to answer this question. Some of the best photographers I know hate talking about gear. They just don’t like it. I envy them. I constantly wish that I wasn’t naturally such a sucker for shiny things with buttons, but unfortunately for my wallet, I am.

So, moving along…

I get asked multiple times a week questions along the lines of, “What camera do you use?” and “What camera should I buy?” and “What’s your take on the new SuperGlam 5000?” So this is my best attempt to give a broad, general purpose guide to gear (in a completely subjective, Mike-tainted way) that covers as many of those questions as I can.

The first thing you should buy is the new Train album. It’s grand. I personally haven’t bought it yet, but I stream it (Jesus answers prayers through Spotify) at least four times a day. Seriously. It’s glorious.

Warning:
If you don’t want to read any technoblabber, go buy the album and have a nice day. This is where the techie side of me comes out.

My main set up right now consists of a Canon 5DmkII, Canon 35mm f1.4L, and Canon 135 f2L. I could (and probably do) 90% of my work with those three things. The benchwarmers include a Sigma 24-70mm f2.8 EX, a Canon 50mm f1.8 mkI, and a Canon 580EX Speedlite. Memory cards are all of the relatively quick (133x-300x) Sandisk and Lexar variety. I’ve seen far too many cheap cards go bad, so I try and stick to those two brands when loading up on memory. I personally like the Sandisk best; they look prettier.

What’s next on my list? Canon 45mm f2.8 TS-E. I’ll try and scoop one up once I get back to the States.

So now that we got me out of the way, let’s talk about you.

“I don’t currently have a DSLR, but want to pick one up and start taking some better pictures. What should I get?”

Anything. Every camera that Canon and Nikon currently makes will take some absolutely stunning images. You really can’t go wrong choosing any camera between those two companies. While some people are big Pentax and Olympus fans, I generally find that their cameras are a generation or so behind the latest and greatest Canon, Nikon, and Sony equivalents. And while they have a great selection of old-school manual focus lenses, they don’t have the huge range of current autofocusing glass that Canon and Nikon offer. Sony is the new kid on the block, and I think they’re on to something. They’ve come out with some great cameras, superb lenses, and innovative flashes in the past couple years. They’re whole system is still in its beginning stages, and they can’t match Canon and Nikon’s big range of lenses, so I don’t currently recommend them. However, give it a few years and that may change.

Go into a store, and try some cameras out. Go see which camera fits in your hand best. Figure out which one is easiest to operate. Then buy it. For most people’s purposes, any DSLR camera under $800 or so will do just about everything that the one sitting next to it will. Don’t get sold on megapixels. They’re not important. I promise.

If you are really thinking about getting serious about photography, then there are a couple more things to consider. The lower end Nikons (D40, D60, and D3000… maybe even the D5000) don’t autofocus with some lenses, and so I would avoid them. If I were stepping into Nikon and wanting to be serious about my photography, the minimum I’d grab is a D90.

“Ok, I have a DSLR, I’ve been taking photos for awhile now, and I’d really like to step up my game. What now?”

Learn to shoot in manual. Understand what the camera is doing. Be active in determining how aperture, shutter speed, and ISO effect your shot. If you really want to spend money, get a few photography books (I’ve heard that “Understanding Exposure” by Bryan Peterson is a good one).

“Check. Call me the manual master. I’ve got it down.”

Pick up a 50mm f1.8 for around $100. Both Canon and Nikon make them. They are cheap little primes (fixed focal length; they don’t zoom in and out) that are awesome for the price. I still use mine. They are great for teaching you about depth of field, shooting in low-light situations, and forcing you to be creative in your compositions.

“Sweet. I can take good pictures and I now own $918,494,843 worth of photo gear, but my photos still don’t look like yours! What gives?”

You can take great photos, but many times they need a little extra zing to top it off. This is where post processing comes into play. I process all of my photos through Adobe Lightroom and occasionally Adobe Photoshop CS4. Sometimes photos need some extra contrast, more saturation, or some cropping to really make them come to life. For what it’s worth, my “style” of processing usually includes lots of contrast, lots of clarity (or microcontrast), lots of vibrance, and warm colors, sometimes with green and magenta undertones thrown in. Grab a copy of Adobe Lightroom, Apple Aperture, or Adobe Photoshop (either Elements or the real deal) and a good Photoshop book or techie friend and play around a little.

It’s worth noting that shooting photos in RAW format will make a big difference when you process your images. You will be able to tweak the colors, exposure, and noise reduction even more than if you shoot in JPEG format. However, RAW files look much worse straight out of the camera, so I recommend shooting in RAW if you’re going to post process the images. I nearly always process my photos, so I nearly always shoot RAW.

“Gear: Check. Taking good pictures: Check. Knowing how to process: Check. My photos still don’t look like yours. What the heck?”

Duh. I’m me. You’re not. Your photos shouldn’t look like mine! Take photos that know one else sees, and process them in ways that people don’t think of. We call this style. Go get your own.

 

If you guys have more photo questions, email me, comment, text me, face my book, flik my r, twit my ter… Just ask.

Look for Scotland pics tomorrow, they’re all exported and ready to roll.

Peace.

Hello, Beautiful

Something came in the mail… err… “post” today.

Things were going really well between us until I opened the battery compartment to put in a battery and found this:

Ah! Knife through the heart! I put the battery in anyway, hoping it would just ignore the ridiculous amount of corrosion that surrounded it, but no such luck. The camera simply doesn’t want anything to do with electricity at the moment.

Even if it had power, it would be a serious pain to focus. The rangefinder (focusing eyepiece) is way too fogged up to notice anything resembling an in-focus shot. Bah. Such is life. I’ll have to dig around and see if I can find anywhere that could give it a good cleaning and replace the crapped-out electronics, but I’m not entirely hopeful at the moment.

Besides those two issues, this thing is a beautiful little camera. It was made sometime between 1966 and 1968, so it’s a little on the old side. Everything about it is super smooth, even being 40 years old. It’s relatively small, but very solid. It feels just as good as it looks. I wouldn’t mind if Canon added a few pounds to its cameras to give them the same solidness that this little sucker has.

But of course, none of that changes the fact that right now, it doesn’t take pictures. Apparently film and I just weren’t meant to be…

Peace.

Remember, Remember the 5th of November

Today was Guy Fawkes Day. If you don’t know who he was, go watch the first five minutes of V for Vendetta. And then if you haven’t seen it, watch the rest. Because it’s a good movie. Or just be a lazy bum and click here.

But there were fireworks. And it was fun.

Danni said something about liking all the pretty colors in the sky, then Lee made some witty comment about liking grey fireworks, and then we went off on a tangent about watching fireworks in black and white. Thus the reason for the above photo being on the slightly desaturated side of life.

Anyways, it’s late. So I’m gonna go to bed. Or edit photos. Or watch a movie. One of those three…

Peace.

What’s Your A-Team?

Warning: Extreme randomness ahead.

So today we were randomly having a conversation about which actors we would want to save the world from invading alien zombies. Deep stuff I know. My A-Team would be as follows:

Daniel Craig:
Think about the two new Bond movies. He kills people even when he’s not supposed to. Those alien/zombies don’t stand a chance.

Gerald Butler:
300, Gamer, RocknRolla, Reign of Fire. This man is all that is man. Burly, bad ass, and a good singer to boot. Bonus points for being born in Scotland.

Will Smith:
Recommended by Taylor and Craig, I was pretty set against him at first. Fresh Prince and Hitch do nothing to boast about his apocalypse survival skills, but I think he’s finally out of his juvenile stages. Hancock, I Am Legend, and Men In Black (1 & 2) all attest to his butt-kicking skills.

Runner-ups:

Sylvester Stallone:
Freaking buffest 60 year-old I’ve ever seen. I’d take him, even at his grandpa age. You can’t beat Apollo Creed and take out an entire army of Burmese bad guys and not be considered for zombie-killer status.

Hugh Jackman:
Despite his extreme manliness exhibited in the latest X-Men, I don’t know if Hugh would be able to pull it off without his claws. As Taylor put it, “He’s a bit too much of a musical type person to save the world.”

Bruce Willis:
I don’t doubt Bruce’s world saving skills, the Die Hards and Armageddon proof they’re there. But I think they’re buried under a few too many years in the field. His age was showing in Live Free or Die Hard; he was way too slow getting up from jumping out of the police car.

Angelina Jolie:
That’s right. I listed a chick. She’ll kick your butt if you think otherwise. The Tomb Raider series, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, and Wanted are proof.

Also mentioned in the conversation:
Sean Connery, Michelle Rodriguez, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Samuel L. Jackson, and Jackie Chan.

So. The question of the day is, who is your A-Team that you’d trust to save the world? Leave a comment with your answer.

Go Time

London has brought out the beast in us.

Something has changed. Something is definitely different about us than before. It’s like someone stuck some steroids in us when we weren’t looking. Beth, Kelsey, and I have all been suddenly hit with a huge desire to improve. I’m not talking about making little baby steps by taking a few pictures every week. I mean we all have this sudden, extreme craving to take our photography, our journalism, our entire lives to the next level. Kelsey hasn’t said anything about it (at least to me), and Beth has started to touch on it on her blog, but it doesn’t need to be put into words to see what’s going through everybody’s heads.

I’ve traveled around Biola, California, the US, and Europe with these two, taking thousands of pictures along the way. But when we ventured on our photo assault in Central London today, something was noticeably different. We weren’t just documenting our lives anymore; we were challenging ourselves with every photo we took. We were pouring every ounce of talent into our cameras, trying to make Every. Frame. Count.

I mean it wasn’t all a photo commando op. We had a blast. Goofed around. Made fun of Kelsey when she was awarded her stars of honor for coloring paper on the South Bank. But at the same time, we were pushing our own limits of what we could see and what we could capture in the camera.

When I get back to my room after a day, the first thing I do is check up on everything photographers that I admire are doing. I’ve always paid attention to their photos and figured out what I liked and what I didn’t, but now it’s different. I’m dissecting the lighting they use for every photo. I’m looking at the way they design their logos, layout their blogs, export their photos. I’m reading about their business practices and how they deal with contracts. I now have a Twitter (I was anti-Twitter for quite awhile). It’s not so much a tool for informing others of what you’re doing as much as it is a tool to see what others are doing. Other photographers, students, newsgroups. I’ve found that I’m not using it to connect with people that I know, but more so to connect with people that I want to know. People who I admire and people who I want to see the way they’re living.

Roehampton is probably gonna flip when they see how much bandwidth I take up on a daily basis.

I was talking with Kelsey today about the reasons why we won’t be able to start taking pictures professionally (aka actually making money off of photography) and she shot every one of them down. But she’s right. We’re good at what we do. We are all decently equipped in terms of gear. We know what we’re doing. So it’s go time. When I get back, I’m doing it to it. I’m guessing that Kels and Beth will be right behind me. Or in front of me.

So there you have it. London is getting intense. And not because of the classes or culture shock, but because we’re making it intense.

Rollout.

Dear God,

You are currently flipsiding my world and blowing my mind one tiny little revelation at a time. My sanity would like to thank you for keeping the revelations bite-size, and I would like to thank you for being patient.

-Mike

ReHosed

Yeah. Welcome to Roehampton laundry. Now to the dryer’s credit, the clothes weren’t completely soaked this time. In fact, most of them were pretty dry. But the lovelies shown above decided that they like things a little on the damp side apparently. These dryers have me completely dumbfounded. I’m not overloading them, they are clearly running, and I’m pretty sure I have them on the highest/hottest setting. Bah. Such is life.

Also, if my words startrunningtogetherlikethis, I’m sorry. I think my spacebar is getting a little jiggly though. It doesn’t feel like working too well at the moment.

This week was our second week of classes, and I’m beginning to think that we’re in for some long days in our photo class. It encompasses just about everything we learned about photography when we were 5. Pretty thrilling. Beginner lessons aside, I don’t think that our prof is a great photo teacher. She’s a nice person no doubt, and she is probably a decent photographer in her own right, but she had some pretty mangled ways of explaining stuff [like I’m one to talk…]. Although really I’ve never seen anyone teach photography really well. Funniest part of the class: our final exam includes testing on everything except how to use a camera. Go figure.

So despite the extreme amount of concentration needed to remain informed in the lecture, Beth, Angela, and I just pretty much sat around taking pictures of each other:

Lots ‘o shoes:

Told you I’ve been feeling the black and white lately…

And I finally have a phone here. Party.

Also, relatively deep thoughts rolling around in the head: Projected self vs. actuality, influences and influencees, conscious intake. Coming to a Mikerophone near you? Probably. But not tonight.

Rollfest.