It’s been 2 weeks now since I left Shanghai to film the Middle Kingdom Ride.  The trip has been a great experience and I’m happy to share our 2 week trailer with you here.  This video was edited yesterday during our rest stop in Hohhot, the capitol of Inner Mongolia.  On Monday we will be leaving the city and heading west to the China Pakistan border, crossing through Xinjiang and Tibet.

Quick post for some laughs…

www.clientsfromhell.net/

One of the things you’ll always be asked as a photographer is to show your personal work, and while I consider all my work “personal”, I was excited to learn about kickstarter.com and how they could help me get some funding for the bigger personal projects I’ve wanted to do for some time.

Kickstarter helps artists get the funding they need to complete their projects by publicizing them on their site. All projects are donation based, and once the project has been posted online, payments can be made easily through an amazon account, or by any major credit card.  There is also an option for the artist to give “rewards” to the donors, usually a pdf download of a book or a direct download of a cd or movie for a small donation, and for larger donations rewards range for t-shirts to including the donor in the piece.

There are many categories on the kickstarter site, but for me the most important was the photography section.  There are projects based all over the world which you can contribute to.  I found a really interesting panoramic photo book called “American Vista” that is being put together by photographer James Trory.  See this link for details on his project.

Time to get those ideas off the back burner and see if you can make them happen.

I just recently upgraded my light kit to include the Profoto Acute b 600r pack & light, and what an amazing difference it’s made to my photography.  Shooting with the same lights as the top photographers in the world makes you feel like you can achieve almost anything.  It’s got a 7 stop range, which is great for me because I love to shoot wide, really wide.  My average ƒ-stop is 2.0, and I love to balance natural light with a flash, but the lights I’d been using up to now just didn’t cut it.  So after a 1 month wait for customs to clear my package from B&H, I’ve finally got my hands on it.

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I’m very fortunate to be involved in one of the leading bar industry magazines here in Asia.  That magazine is Drink, based in Shanghai.  I’m lucky, because I’ve known their editors Dan Bignold & Theo Watt for some time, and when they started the magazine I was brought on to do their face section, which features a new bartender in each issue.

More after the break…

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Have you ever had the desire to just drop everything and take off on some wild journey? Well, I have, and will be later this summer.  I’d like to introduce you to a new project I’ll be working on in cooperation with a good friend of mine, Ryan Pyle and his brother Colin.

Details following the break

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Platon photographing Tony Blair

Last September at a meeting of the United Nations, Platon, staff photographer for the new yorker, set up a small studio outside of the general assembly area where he photographed 50 attending heads of state.  You can see the gallery here.

Thanks to people like Chase Jarvis and Rob Haggart there is some much needed light being shed on the little know aspects of running a photography business. I was very happy to read an interview posted by Rob on A Photo Editor with Carolyn Tucker from Wonderful Machine regarding pricing and negotiation. The full article on A Photo Editor can be found here.

A few of the things I found most useful from the article were the full estimate from wonderful machine, along with their terms & conditions. They also posted their final invoice which they sent to the client. A lot of very useful, and much appreciated information. Check after the break for some more useful tips relating to the business of photography.

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It’s been said many times, but deserves to be repeated, photographers need to look at more photographs.  I’m always looking through other photographers websites for inspiration, and thought I’d share a few of my favourites here.  Inspiration after the break…

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After spending 4 years in Shanghai, I’d like to share some of the local knowledge with other photographers who are visiting the city.  It’s a great place to work, and in this post I’ll share with you some of the need to know info for your visit.

First, if you’ve left any vital equipment at home, and you need to pick up something new, you can head to the Xin Guang Photographic Equipment City (星光摄影器材城) on the corner of Luban road & Xietu Road.  They’ve got all the latest digital cameras, lenses, & accessories.  If you’re looking for any good deals on equipment, don’t expect to find them in China.  Most photography gear retails for the same price as it does in Europe or North America, but here you have the added fun of “bargaining” with the retailers.  Expect your first price inquiry to be at least 30% higher than what they will actually sell it to you for.  Keep the exchange rate in mind or you may end up paying more than you would back home.

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