I love the seasons and the changes.  What I don’t like is winter and the countless opportunities we have for turning our bodies into a feeding ground for a random virus or bacteria.

Three weeks ago I developed a little sniffle, I didn’t think anything about it.  I had it for approximately a week.  The following week, all hell broke loose.  5 days of almost 24 hours of bed rest.   I’m not talking sitting in front of the TV laying on the couch, I’m talking sitting in bed, feeling miserable, sleeping bed rest!   Follow that with a week of horrible head congestion and a cough that felt like you were about to dislodge a lung and you really wonder what the hell hit you.

Antibiotics were no good (most likely a virus), decongestant was useless, as was any other drugs I attempted to use to cut off the advancing army of germs.   It’s colds like this that make me VERY happy that January is a wedding-free month.

I guess it’s just my luck.  Going from an INSANE holiday season and my accident, to the cold with a deathgrip.   I should be good for the rest of the year now since I’ve gotten all of the insanity done and over with!

August 12th on the way back from shooting a wedding I was involved in an accident.  I stopped due to police activity.. the guy behind me was paying attention to other “distractions” on the road and slammed into the back of my 2 week old Murano.    While I was annoyed after the impact, I started thinking about recovery.. so while looking for my phone, which I could not locate, my neck started to really hurt.   So, in the interest of being safe, I took a ride to the hospital.   They did their 5 minute checkup and I was out the door.  Thanks for being really thorough guys.. really..   Needless to say, I wasn’t thinking straight so I let it go and called for a ride home.

Next day I went to pick up a few items from my car and the tow truck driver told me he found my phone.. yes!   The celebration was short lived when I found this sitting in the drivers side seat

Phones can be replaced… but the data.. well, it will be replaced, but slowly, very slowly.   It’s taken me a while to get things perfect and once I did, I lost it all.  Again, it can be replaced!

So, fast forward 2 weeks and I start getting packets of “helpful information” from attorneys.  Great.  The ambulance chasers found me!   I don’t know how they got my information, but  they did.   Aggressive to say the least, one lawyer has sent me 3 different packets of information.  The others, just one.   If you need it, you need it, but let me make the choices.. don’t force your services down my throat!  Nice packet guys…

Add all of this to my training seminar last week with [b]ecker (www.thebecker.com), Cliff Mautner (www.cmphotography.com) and Jeff & Julia Woods (www.jwweddings.com) and I’ve had time to do nothing.   As of today I’m finally catching up with albums and DVD’s.   The next step?  Voicemail.   Please, if you’ve left voicemail in the past 2-3 weeks, I will be returning it shortly.   This whole accident has just thrown a nasty wrench into my whole workflow.

Last thing.. DRIVE SAFE!!!!

This morning we had some storms in the area.   Storms bad enough to make the power flicker on and off a few times.   When my computer, used for email, voicemail retrieval and editing booted up it no longer recognized one of the hard drives.   The hard drive that contains all of my email, programs and voicemail!   Panic quickly set in.

I removed the hard drives from the computer and placed the 2 offending drives in the freezer.  Yes, the freezer.   Once removed I quickly connected them to the computer and magically, the data reappeared!   Now comes the process of backing everything up to another computer, installing a new hard drive and then restoring the data.

The reason I’m writing this post is two fold.  If you don’t make regular backups of important data, please do so!   My last backup was a month old and I quickly realized how much happens in just 4 short weeks.  From now on, ALL of my email will be delivered and stored on my redundant server, where it should had been in the first place.

The next reason, if you called or emailed me in the last 4 days and I have yet to respond, it may take me until Sunday to get back to you.  I have a wedding tomorrow and won’t have a chance to finish complete recovery/install until then.

Last point I’d like to make.. if you don’t have a UPS and live in an area that gets frequent storms.. it’s a good investment.  I do have a UPS, but as of right now only my Server and second computer are connected because of them being in another room.   I’ll be running out tonight to buy another to place alongside my desktop so this problem doesn’t happen again.   I’m not sure if it was the power outtage that caused the problem, or the Maxtor hard drives which I no longer trust.   The drives were scheduled to be replaced with another brand, but I hadn’t had the time.  I’m making the time now!

I ran into a client the other day that told me how much she enjoyed seeing my blog. We got to talking about photography and photoshop and all the things a lot of people do to make pictures look good. She asked me how much time I spent working on editing pictures for my blog.. My answer? Little to none. The pictures you see here are as they came out of the camera, with the exception of the spot colored (black & white with color accents, like the red ‘57 chevy in the picture below) and random special effects which I mainly use on my model shoots. Other than that the only thing I normally do in photoshop is do minor retouching of the faces (soften wrinkles, remove blemishes), resize the image, add my logo and upload the photo to my webserver. That’s it.

I have to get on my soap box now..

Photoshop wasn’t meant to take bad pictures and make them “acceptable”, it was made to take good photos and allow them to be enhanced and turned into great photos. Not every picture needs photoshop, so I don’t believe in editing every single picture. The exception to that rule is retouching for cosmetic reasons.. There isn’t much you can do about skin problems the day of a shoot or a 2 year old that may had only looked at the camera once out of 40 attempts. That is where the skilled hands of a photoshop artist come in handy.

Bring on the New Year!

With Christmas now over it’s back to wedding season for a short time.  What is normally a slower time of the year is quite busy!   Friday Dec 30th and Sat Dec 31st I will be shooting 2 weddings locally.  Jan 7th, 14th & 21st as well!

Feb 12th there will be a bridal show at the Banquets of St. George in Schererville followed by the “Brides Guide” show on Sun Feb 19th at the Radisson in Merrillville.  I’ll be attending both shows if you are interested in seeing my work in person.

Hoping everyone has a great time New Years Eve.

Jim

Some people will tell you that a true professional can take a $20 point and shoot and make it look like it was taken with the best camera in the world. So what happens when you give a professional photographer a camera that is incredible to begin with? You get even BETTER pictures!

Last week I made an investment in new equipment, upgrading my 18 month old Canon equipment to the new full frame 5D along with the most incredible lens ever (in production) the 70-200/1.8 USM IS (Image Stabilized.)

After arriving Friday I pretty much have not been able to put it down. The difference between this camera and my last is like night and day. It’s nice to have a camera that responds to what you want, which is completely unlike my past cameras that would only respond 80% of the time. Just to give an idea of how powerful a combination this is, here is an image taken at 1/15 of a second at 175mm that I was hand holding. This would require a tripod under normal circumstances due to the slow shutter speed, but with the Image Stabilizing turne on it wasn’t a problem.

On Saturday I attended the Christmas party for The Scissori in Highland, IN. This was my first test in a studio-like environment of the new system and it performed flawlessly as expected.

Honestly I can’t wait till December 30th to see how this combo performs in the low light, camera challenging churches I’ll be shooting in. Check back for more!

I am extremely curious as to why other photographers would consider copying a website as ethical. Honestly I would never consider doing such a thing, but it seems like it is common practice lately and I found out that my website, karrphotography.com was the latest victim.

Tuesday afternoon I received the latest copy of our local yellow pages. As always I love to see what’s new in the photographer section. I noticed a new name. Curiosity always has the best of me so I went to the listed website and looked around. It dawned on me something looked very familiar. I visited the Frequently Asked Questions page and there was my answer. It was MY website! The photographer had visited my site, saw what he liked and saved everything to his hard drive. He then edited out all of my information (while leaving things like “Saved from KarrPhotography.com” in the HTML) and posted the site as his own! Honestly, it wouldn’t had upset me had he taken a few specific questions, modified the answers to suit his own business practices and posted it on his website. We as photographers are supposed to be a creative bunch, how can one say this if they copy others work?

A cease & desist was promptly mailed Wednesday evening and by Friday morning the offending website was no longer available. This was in no way done in an attempt to “eliminate” competition, but rather to make someone do their own work and not use that easily obtainable from “other” sources.

Honestly, I would love comments about this subject. It is a very interesting topic to me as it seems that every day I am reading stories about photographers having their sites or pictures copied by unauthorized parties.