Photos from Imaging USA 2012

Imaging USA is over.  We’re home and have had some time to unpack and sift through the photos we took.  We had a great time and thought we’d share a few of Melissa’s images from the show.  Enjoy!

Thanks again to Emily and Allison for joining us at the PWD booth.  And thanks to everyone who came by and said hi.  We hope to see you again at WPPI in a few weeks.

Happy Holidays from PWD

Digital Holga!

Yes, you read that right: Digital Holga.  It’s a Holga and it’s digital.

For you those of you who aren’t familiar with the Holga camera, the Holga is basically an early 1980′s all plastic 120 film camera.  A Holga’s cheap construction causes  imperfections like vignetting, edge blur, color streaking, light leaks, and all kinds of craziness that make images taken with a Holga camera look unique and, unless you’re not into that kind of thing, totally awesome.

If you’re like me, you love shooting film, you love the minimalism of the controls of most film cameras, and you love the wait-and-see part of not knowing what you’ve got until you get your negatives back.  One of the coolest things about this new digital Holga is that there is no display screen.  Yep, no display.  No chimping.  You can’t see the pictures until you download them to your computer (the camera uses an SD card).  This new digital Holga will have very few buttons and controls.  The user will be able to change shutter speed and ISO settings, as well as change to a Black & White mode, and honestly, that’s pretty much it.  Kind of goes along with the Holga film camera’s sales slogan, “Don’t Think, Just Shoot!”

Retail cost and release date of the digital Holga are yet to be announced.  The digital Holga is still in the prototype stages, and you can read much more about it on designer Saikat Biswas’ website. A new piece of gear this creative and fun could be just the thing to help add even more interesting images to your portfolio or to reinvigorate your creativity.  Let’s hope this camera goes into production soon!

-Josh Lamkin, PWD Editor

Seventeen-year-old’s Photo Project Gets an Assist from Local Professional

[UPDATE 4/23] Arielle sent us this link to an interview she did about the Danbo series: http://thedesigninspiration.com/articles/teenage-photographer-365-days-of-danboard/

Check this out.  One of our Atlanta customers, Jon Marks, has been helping teenage photographer Arielle Nadel hone the technical skills she needs for a 365-day photo project featuring the little “Danbo” character above.  It seems to be working.  Jon’s mentoring, combined with Arielle’s natural and creative talent, is producing work that is attracting a lot of attention – even as far away as Japan!   You will see why when you visit Arielle’s Flickr site.  But, before you click on the link below, let me save you a little internet search time regarding Danboard (Danbo, for short).

A Danboard is a small, cardboard robot (from the Japanese word danboru – cardboard) that does absolutely nothing at all.  As best as I can tell it’s a Pet Rock with personality – very much personality in the case of Arielle’s photos.  Check it out at Arielle’s Flickr site:   http://www.flickr.com/photos/bunnyrel/sets/72157615647396658/.  You can also find Arielle on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Rel-Photography/105093829521801

Once you are done visiting Arielle’s sites you may want to know more about Danboard.  Here are some sites that sell Danboard and contain descriptive information: http://www.hlj.com/product/KYD01169

http://www.collectiondx.com/node/2107

http://www.kirinhobby.com/shop/product_info.php?products_id=1371

Alice Sokoloff Photography

Recently, PWD had the pleasure of helping Inna from Alice Sokoloff Photography create a large number of metallic prints for her wedding expo booth.  The prints, like the images themselves, came out beautifully, and Inna was so pleased she shared a picture of the final booth setup with us.

Inna had this to say: ”The show went very well, and the booth looked just gorgeous!  Thank you again for all your help!”  Inna, we’re glad we could help.  The end product looks great!

See more of Inna’s work on her website at alicesokoloffphotography.com

PWD hits WPPI 2010

Now that we’ve recovered from the spectacle that is WPPI, it’s time to share some photos.  We spent the short amount of time we had there walking the trade show, hosting a cocktail party with Bambi Cantrell and meeting a lot of great people.  That didn’t leave us with much time for pictures, but here are a few of the gang (Sadly, not everyone made it into a group photo because we didn’t all attend on the same days)..

PWD Photographer Shoots NY Times Travel Article

Our good buddy Alan Weiner recently went out for a five day shoot on Mt. Rainier in Washington state.  He shot for a New York Times travel story written by Eric Wilson, and it sounds like both men had quite an adventure (though they did not make the trek together).  You can click the photo below to read the article or scroll down for more links.

Find the article here, the photo slideshow here, and Alan also uploaded the photos to ImageQuix here.

Internet vs. Carrier Pigeon

Professional photographers tend to work with huge numbers of large files, and transferring so much data via the internet can certainly be frustrating on occasion.  The next time you find yourself cursing about how long it takes to upload a print order via ROES, however, just be glad you’re not doing so from South Africa.

A South African IT company recently held a race between the country’s biggest web service provider and a carrier pigeon.  The pigeon successfully transferred a 4GB memory card over 60 miles in the same amount of time it took the DSL service to transfer 4% of the same data.

Of course, this stunt won’t convince many people to invest in pigeon hutches, but it’s an amusing lesson on thinking outside the box.  Here at PWD, we recognize the limitations of even high-speed internet connections and offer free hard drive loans as an alternative method of delivery.  We generally recommend Fed Ex or UPS for delivering your images on those drives, but if you have an especially dependable pigeon, well… we say give it a shot.

link: full internet vs. pigeon story