First, the starting picture…

OK, so "throwaway" might be bit harsh here, because c'mon, she still looks absolutely adorable, right? :)  But as you can see, the clarity is a little off (as I think I had my shutter speed a bit too slow, and as an awake kid, she was moving), and it's slightly overexposed (for my tastes, though some might say not; kind of a matter of opinion).  At any rate, it didn't come out as well as I had hoped, but at the same time, I didn't want to scrap it, as I still love the overall feel of the picture.

So editing to the rescue!  Now, I used my Capture One Pro software on this, so I won't bother with screenshots of the exact steps and settings I used, as I know not many people use this particular software (even among my photographer friends who shell out some $$ for software, as most use Lightroom, Bridge, or Aperture – and of course, Photoshop - for their paid editing tools).  I'll just describe the edits/settings in general terms that you could apply to most software, paid or free.

Before I describe it all, though, here's the finished product:

Do you like it?  It definitely takes on a very different feel, but still captures the essential happiness caught in the original.  Of course, I like my split-light, contrast-y black & whites when it comes to portraits, so I'm kinda biased.  Anyway, here's what I did…

First, obviously, I converted the image to black & white.  Second, to compensate for that overexposure I mentioned before, I brought the exposure down by -1.60EV.  To make the unintentional blur disappear, I purposely brought the clarity way down, at a setting of –70 in the Capture One software (not sure how that translates in other packages).  This takes an unintentional lack of definition and turns it into an intentional softness!  In addition, I also knocked the contrast down to –41 (which helped soften a bit further, along with making the lines between dark & light areas a little less harsh).  However, I still like an overall high contrast between light and dark in these types of portraits, as well as really isolating the subject as best I can, so I set the vignette all the way down to –4.00EV.  Between that setting and the exposure compensation, though, the highlights on the face and hair were starting to darken a little too much for my liking, so I turned the brightness up just a tad, a +9 in C1.  Some of these settings might seem a bit contradictory, but trust me, I played around with a few variations, and this is how I best came up with the final product I was desiring.  It's not perfect, but I like it.

I'm already thinking about another variation I could do on this photo, leaving it color and going for more of a soft glow effect.  I'm not sure if I'll actually take the time to do that or not, but if I do, I'll post here so you can review and compare.

So go out and save some photos! :)

Those of you who are 500px users probably already know: 500px rolled out a host of changes to its site yesterday, and so far, early reviews by its users (including this one) are not too favorable.  Honestly, much of it simply has me baffled.  I think the next time they consider any major overhaul, they need to consider a beta test with a large cross-section of its user base, as it seems like users weren't consulted at all in this.

General Change Problems

First, when you visit 500px now, assuming you're a logged-in member, you're taken to what's called your "Flow".  Well, maybe…  Honestly, just now, I went to pull open my Flow so I could make sure I was describing it correctly, and now it's different than yesterday.  I guess I'll just describe what I saw yesterday and today, and you can decide if either situation makes any sense…

As I originally saw the Flow (and as did others, based on comments in the support community), it was implemented almost like Facebook's "Timeline" or something, showing a history of your viewing activity on 500px, with the thumbnails arranged rather randomly, in different sizes, proportions, etc.  Right here is a big problem for many people, as it's public and can't be turned off.  If someone comes to your profile page, they can view your Flow.  Why is that a big deal?  Well, some people would probably prefer their viewing history to remain private; perhaps they don't want everyone to know they enjoy looking at nude photographs, have a weird obsession with puppy shots, or whatever.  Your viewing privacy just went right out the window.

That was yesterday.  Today my Flow seems to just be showing a bunch of my own photographs, so it's like I'm clicking on my Photos link, but with the pictures arranged differently.  I suspect enough people raised hell about the initial implementation that they just implemented this stop-gap measure as a temporary fix until they decide what to do.  I think they either need to remove it entirely, or just give the ability to make it private (so you can go into your Flow to look back over your viewing history, but no one else can see it).

One of the nice things about 500px for many, that other photo-sharing sites don't offer, is the user blog.  Besides just posting photos, you could also write up blog posts for your profile, and they would feed into the overall 500px user community blog feed.  Now instead of a "Blog" tab, they have "Stories".  This is essentially the same thing, simply rebranded, but there's been a huge implementation flaw.  First, many users – including myself – have found that all their old blog entries disappeared!  Last night, I wrote up a new, quick post to complain about that, and today even that new post is gone!  Where the hell are our blog posts going?  I have to put in a support request on this one yet; we'll see what happens.

Another thing that was removed was the "Wall".  The Wall was a great place for users to communicate with each other.  Often, if a photographer wanted to thank me for a comment on one of his photos or something, (s)he'd post such a comment to my wall to make sure I'd see his/her comment.  Likewise, sometimes I'd post on another's wall just to express a general appreciation of their work.  Now that interactivity is gone, and it's a shame.

The Market

You might recall that 500px once had FotoMoto (which is the sales engine I use on my site here) integrated with their site, so any user could setup an account and sell their work directly from their 500px portfolio.  It was a very nice feature for it's users, and I was actually considering using 500px as my photography website hosting platform for that very reason (that was before I had set it up here).  However, last September, with no advance announcement whatsoever, they completely severed their relationship with FotoMoto, and left their users hanging high and dry.  Now, for the amateur/hobbyist photographer who doesn't sell much work and was hoping to just sell a print or two here and there, that was probably no big deal.  However, there are also seasoned, professional photographers that were using the site as their hosting platform and sales engine.  To just suddenly pull out their entire storefront was nothing short of irresponsible.  They promised to provide a new selling platform, at the time hinting that it would just be a week or two before they had another option in place.  Well, that turned into months, and their new option just became available with the site overhaul unleashed yesterday.

So far, the new "Market" option sounds horrible, and I won't be implementing it, instead directing my potential customers to just buy my prints here, on this site.  With the new option, you can basically offer your buyers two options: a large (I think it's 20x30) canvas print for $500, or a digital download for $2.99.  Seriously?  Those are the only options?  $500 is going to be too high of a price for most potential buyers, not to mention that they might not want the print on canvas or so large.  $2.99 is too low for most photographers to be interested in offering that option (that's risky, giving away your high-res digital files for so little $$).  Really, I don't know who would bother with the Market option as it's currently offered.

Website Availability

As I mentioned above, many photographers use 500px as their primary website, pointing their custom domain URLs to their 500px portfolio.  To see how this works, visit this site's sister URL, www.RyanFonkertPhotography.com (as I write this anyway; I might point the URL back here pretty soon).  Ironically, I had pointed this URL to my 500px portfolio just a few days ago; prior to that, it just brought you to this website.  I decided to point it to my 500px portfolio because, despite the lack of a selling option, and thus knowing that I'd never use it as my primary site, I LOVE the viewing template I have there; the photo viewing experience is really quite awesome.  In my Bio page, I just instructed users to come here for prints.  Then this recent change roll-out happened.  Much like the FotoMoto incident I described above, there was no advance warning, and the site was just down for basically an entire day.  A whole day!  Imagine if I did a lot of business and this was my primary website.  That's just unacceptable.  They should have given their users advance notice, so those users could have given their viewers/customers advance notice, and made any contingency plans if they felt necessary.  Given this, I don't know that I'll have my custom URL pointing to them anymore even for the viewing experience – I'll either re-point it here or design a different site entirely.  I can always post a link here to my 500px portfolio if I really want to offer that alternate viewing experience.

In Summary

In summary, the way in which 500px handles its changes is very, very poor.  It's abundantly clear to me now that I can never use it as my main website platform.  In regards to its other features, I think they need to take more input from their user base before they implement such large-scale changes.  There is so much here that is just so bad, it's astounding; especially given how awesome 500px was to use before.  It just really baffles me.

All that said, I still enjoy using 500px, as it's still a great place to go see a plethora of amazing photos, taken by many of the best photographers in the world.  It's also a great place for me to share my work and get some good feedback.  However, I think this is going to be the extent of my use going forward, just a great place to view and share photos, share some comments, and that's about it.  Anything more serious (web hosting, selling, etc.) I'll just handle on my own.

I've added a new photo to the Landscapes gallery in my portfolio, and it's now available for purchase (and remember, right now you can get a 20% discount on all prints!).  I call it "Snow Day in the Garden".  It's a photo I took in Garden of the Gods last December at the tail end of a snowstorm that had rolled through.  I may actually be ordering a print of this one myself for display in a local coffee shop.  Anyway, I hope you enjoy the image.

A shot from our shopping trip to Costco.

#54 – Lighting Workshop

A shot from a lighting class I attended on Saturday.

#53 - As John Would Have Wanted It

One of my new Beatles pint glasses that I got for my birthday... :)

In March I'll be displaying a few works in a couple local businesses, so I needed to get some prints made.  As such, I decided it was high time I tried out some of the print options I've had available to my customers here on the website.  So I ordered 3 prints of the picture above on 3 separate paper options.  I ordered two 12x18" premium prints, one glossy finish and one lustre (matte) finish; and one 16x24" fine art print on their exhibition fiber paper (all using the default crop; if you don't want a crop, order a size w/ a 4:3 ratio - I personally wanted the 3:2, and am very happy with it).

I'm happy to report that they all look excellent!  For the premium prints, I like the color on the glossy finish just a tad better; it's just a bit "deeper" and pops a little more.  However, it's a lot glossier than the lustere/matte finish, so placement on your wall to avoid glare becomes more of a concern.  And the lustre/matte finish also looks awesome.  If you don't want to have to worry about glare as much, this might be the better option.  The exhibition fiber option falls kind of between the two in terms of color tone, is a very high-quality paper, and looks very nice.  All in all, I am very pleased with all three prints, and can proudly recommend any of these options; and given the quality of the prints and the service, I feel pretty confident any other options you might choose will rock, too.

Now a quick note about the actual printer.  When you purchase a photo on this site, the sales engine you see is simply FotoMoto.  However, the actual print lab that prints and ships the photo is Bay Photo, which is recognized as one of the best professional print labs in the country.  Many professional photographers use Bay Photo for their printing needs, and in fact, the leading online portfolio site used by many photographers, SmugMug, uses Bay Photo as their primary provider (here's a comparison of pro print lab options that SmugMug did).  You're getting that same quality here, so you can rest assured you'll be receiving a quality print when you order from me.  The only question you have to ask is, which image? :-)

OK, so now to the much ballyhooed coupon alluded to in the blog post title!  In my excitement over the satisfaction I have with my prints, as well as to celebrate the upcoming display of this photo (and a couple/few others) in public venues starting March 3rd, I'm offering a limited time discount on prints ordered through this website (click over to the Portfolio page to view all available images).  To claim the discount, after you've clicked on the "Order" button and are taken to your cart, click on the "set" button next to the word "Discount" in your cart and enter this coupon code: 54293B.  This will take 20% off the price of your order.  This is a limited time offer, though - only available through March 3rd - so act today!

Also, if there are any images I've posted on this website (likely on my Living Colorado blog) that you really like that aren't available for purchase on my Portfolio page, simply let me know (use the Contact page to send me an email) and I'll get it added to the portfolio so you can purchase.  Additionally, if you desire any custom sizes that aren't available in the default options (like a cropless 9x12 or 12x16, which would be nice for this image), contact me and we'll work something out.  I can have such options custom printed and we'll just handle payment via PayPal or something.

So act now!  Buy today!

Anyway, I've pasted the entire documentary for you here.  There are nine parts, each about nine-and-a-half minutes in length.  I hope you enjoy as much as I did.

Are you ready?

#51 – Meh

I say, "meh," because it didn't exactly turn out as I wanted. However, this is what I shot last night, so it's what you get. :) I know what my errors were and how to correct them next time; now I just gotta wait for another night with a cool cloud hanging over the mountains like that...

#50 – Almost…

... as in almost clean. No matter how hard we try, at least one toy always manages to slip in.

#48 – Evening Hike

Nothing special about the image, a point & shoot pic I took while on my hike this evening; just documentary of one of my typical evening hikes (when I actually get the chance to take them these days), so thought I'd share – kind of a "day in the life" type pic.

#47 – Foggy Day

This is SOOC. And no, it's not overexposed; that's just how the lighting actually looked with the sun trying to break through the fog. I only got like two pics all day this day (it was my birthday, so I was busy!), so this is the best I got.

#46 – Tejon & Platte

The only pics I got on Friday were a few point & shoot pics I took while walking around downtown. I didn't end up with anything technically or artfully brilliant, so thought I'd just offer up this shot of Pikes Peak from downtown (Colorado Springs).

#45 – Reflection II (as I realized after I posted online elsewhere that I already have one named "Reflection")

I wanted to take a shot of the interesting position they had these mannequins in behind the window, but there was too much reflection from the angles I had to use. I decided to shoot anyway to see what came out of it. Kind of an interesting blend of direct view and reflection.