Matthew Botos

I saw The Break-Up again this week, and have to add it my list of 3 Favorite Dating Movies for two reasons:

1. It shows the darker far side of a relationship, and the seemingly illogical ways people try to hurt one another in the name of trying to bring a relationship back together. In reality, it’s all to easy to get caught up in perceived slights and feeling unappreciated while missing the bigger picture.
2. It’s not a black and white break-up, but a more realistic mix of emotions. They know they aren’t right for each other, but can still have a fondness for the things that did work and the fun times. There’s a couple of those longing glances across the room in the movie, and the last scene shows it’s still there months later.

If your hard drive crashed tomorrow, your house burned down, or someone stole your computer, what would happen to your photos, documents, and other digital data? Having had my own brush with this recently, I took a fresh look at my own safeguards and the steps you can take to protect your own data in different scenarios.

(more…)

If you read this via feed or email, don’t miss out on the new front page. Since this site is now as much about photography as blogging, I wanted the front page to reflect both. It also has a few other cool features: hover over the slideshow to pause it, click an image to see its details or buy a print, and hover over any blog title to see a one-paragraph preview. The blog and gallery themes also received fresh headers.

I plan to update the slideshow occasionally, so please nominate your favorite photos in the comments.

(more…)

Forget Milton’s Red Swingline; you want the Bling Stapler!

Data Recovery, Round 1 left my drive on it’s way to ESS Data Recovery with “symptoms of a severe head crash” that were beyond the capabilities of Aero Data Recovery. ESS turned around an initial evaluation within a few days:

Recovery Chance: Good (70-84%)

Medium Failure Details:

Disk Head Failure

Rotational Scoring Present (moderate)

Evaluated Cost: $995.00 - 10% = $895.50

(more…)

I’ve had a number of Canon cameras over the years that I’ve liked, and currently shoot a Canon Rebel XTi and 3 Canon lenses. But looking at recent gear announcements and the general buzz around them, Nikon really seems to be pushing the envelope further these days.

(more…)

DIY Photography is giving away a few copies of Portrait Professional as prizes in a portrait contest, so I decided to take a look at a demo of the software. I find myself doing more with Aperture’s retouch and clone tools and was curious if this would be a more automated way of cleaning up wrinkles, imperfections, and the circles under the eyes everyone seems to be sporting today.

Portrait Professional is different in that it’s not a localized retouching tool, but rather one for global enhancement based on a training set of beauty images. (The former artificial intelligence student in me wonders what kind of neural network or other training system they use.) You define key points on the face (eyes, nose, mouth), and it maps the enhancements onto them. The various changes are adjustable, and they also have localized tools for fine-tuning.

(more…)

When I tell people I’m a professional photographer, their first question is usually, “so, do you do weddings?” It’s understandable; wedding and event photography is where most people are likely to see a professional photographer, and I booked by My First Photo Gig shooting a 50th wedding anniversary party.

Thankfully, this was less intimidating than a wedding: four hours of shooting versus eight or more, and the “bride and groom” were much more relaxed! Of course, event photography still has plenty of challenges. There’s a lot happening, a lot of people, and you don’t have much control over the light.

(more…)

Shooting a 50th anniversary party recently was my first bona fide, fully paid photography gig, and I’m pleased to say setting it up went fairly smoothly and by the book. Here’s a summary of the business process for those looking to get started on their own:

(more…)

My last post on tethered shooting with my Canon Rebel XTi and Aperture left me a bit disappointed, but using the setup for some self-portraits last week gave me a different perspective.

I read a lot of great photographic and lighting ideas, but tend not to implement them with the same disciplined, thought-out steps. Each digital shot is so close to free that shooting often devolves into just rapid trial and error. Waiting 4-5 seconds for each image to be transferred and loaded increases that cost and builds in a bit of time to think about what to do next. Much like pre-planning and pre-visualizing shots, I found that investment of thinking time really improves my photos.

There are other benefits as well: it makes self-portraits much easier to execute, you get full-screen feedback on focus and lighting, and you can capture notes on settings directly into the photo’s metadata.