Hockley Photography

Robert Scoble recently recorded a spur-of-the-moment interview with the founders of Twitter. As he notes in his blog post, some folks are giving him grief for not using a “professional” camera, but he notes that the meeting wasn’t originally scheduled to be an interview.

He got the video because he had a video-capable camera with him at all times. Have you ever missed a photo opportunity because you didn’t have a camera? I always recommend that photographers have a camera with them at all times.

Carrying a DSLR and lenses and other gear all the time isn’t practical for many, but even a relatively inexpensive point-and-shoot camera can take some great photos. I have a Canon A540 with me all the time for opportunities to shoot when I don’t have my 40D. When it comes to getting the shot, a $150 5-megapixel point-and-shoot is far better than nothing at all.

With a ton of photography resources on the web, it can be frustrating to search for information and end up with a bunch of irrelevant, spam-filled, or product sale pages. I’ve created a custom photography search engine based on Google, but instead of searching every site on the ‘net, it only searches a hand-chosen list of sites focused on photography information.

Head over to the PhotoSiteSearch photography search site to check it out. If you see resources that should be included (but are missing), feel free to drop a note to quality@photositesearch.com with your feedback.

I was asked to serve as the semi-official photographer for BarCampPortland, an unconference held a couple weeks ago. I was able to be there for most of the event and captured a variety of the activities and environment, as well as a brief nighttime photowalk on Saturday evening.

I’ve put around 100 photos on Flickr; here are a few:

 

When I started marketing my work professionally, one of the resources I found was Google Local, which allows a business to add a free listing which will show up on the Google Maps search and business listings.

Adding your business is simple, just go to the Google Local Business Center and provide some information about your business. In addition to the typical “yellow pages” type information, one can add photos and even offer coupons for visitors who find your business via Google.

I’ve received at least one lead via my Google Local listing. Since it’s free (and only takes a few minutes to set up), there’s no reason why all photographers shouldn’t put themselves on the map (pun intended).

In the early days of digital photography, memory cards were quite expensive, but the tradeoff and justification when compared with film counterparts was that the memory cards were reusable. You could fit a bunch of shots on your giant 16mb card, then download them and reuse the card, which made up for the fact that the card was far more expensive than a roll of film.

Not anymore. Over on photostream, Colin Jago points out that average-grade SD cards are now cheaper per-shot than traditional film.

I’m not sure this really changes anything, but from the perspective of cost analysis of digital vs. film, the disposable film is now more expensive than the reusable memory cards. Knock on wood, I have yet to have a memory card fail… but at these prices, I won’t feel bad about having to buy a new one.