A day of fun, a day of pampering, a day of celebrating your sexy. This last year brought its fair share of very hot shoots here at Matty Photography! There is no better time to live out that photo shoot you've always wanted to do....
Your attendance would be greatly appreciated January 24th at 8pm at the Matty Photography studio one-year celebration. Yep, that’s right, the new studio has been rocking for over a year now! It’s a night of good food, drink, and fun, as we thank all of...
Is your entire family Seahawk crazy? Have a child who loves to pretend they are a Seahawk super star? You are exactly what we are looking for! Matty Photography is looking for both boys and girls between the ages of 3 and 7, to come participate...
There is a new group for photographers here in Tacoma, simply titled 'Tacoma Photographers Group." It is a group created and organized through the website meetup.com (CLICK HERE TO VISIT the group's page). If you are unfamiliar with meetup, it's a website dedicated to establishing...
"Are digitals included?" Isn't the photo above cute? That's your disc of digitals you purchased from a "professional" hanging on the wall. You know...
Finally, the dust has settled from the new studio opening and we are to a point where accepting a couple intern photo assistants is possible. This a great opportunity for anyone who has a bit of background in photography but still have a lot to...
We are now booking Valentine's Day 'SEXY' photo shoots, and offering this at a discounted $99 shoot session fee. Our in-house professional hair/makeup services is complimentary, so come get glammed up, look and feel sexy with your custom tailored photo shoot. Book today, and give...
I want to thank everyone who came to the studio opening night. I know many of you traveled a ways and I really appreciate all the great support. I saw a lot of faces that I hadn't in quite a while, it was so nice catching...
It's all over Facebook and obviously the workshop website, but just incase you don't follow either one of those sources, the next set of beginner and advance workshops are set and available for registration. The beginner workshop will be January 19th and 20th, with the...
The new Matty Photography studio is finally at a point where I feel good about calling it "finished." Sure, there are many little things left to be done, but I can take a deep breath and switch the majority of my time back to my...
For years I had a small, humble 12 x 25 foot studio. It was large enough to get most photo jobs done, but it wasn't exactly "fun" working in minimal space.
Ok, Lewis County photographers, Matty Workshops is coming to you this October. I am holding an advanced workshop October 20th. It's an all-day workshop focused solely on off-camera lighting. It's going to be a fun full day of making eye-catching images. You can get more...
I wanted to take a moment to publicly thank the Paul C. Buff company, the makers of the AlienBee and Einstein studio strobes that I have been using for over 4 years now. This post isn't about what a great product they make, though I've always been 100% happy with their performance, and I have no doubt that they are the best bang for the buck when it comes to photo lighting gear. This post isn't about the fact that outside user error, not a single lighting unit or bulb has gone bad, and have been reliably popping countless times over those 4 years. My entire portfolio, aside from a shoot here or there where I got by using hot shoe flashes, were all composed with their lights and modifiers. This post is about their amazing customer service. Sure, there are a lot of great companies out there that make some pretty awesome things, but I believe when things go wrong, something breaks, and you have to call the manufacturers for some help... this is what separates the bad from the good, and the good from the spectacular. The Paul C. Buff team couldn't get a higher review from me, and here's my professional experience as to why. A little over 4 years ago, I received my first 4 AlienBees, shipped right to my door. One of the modeling lights didn't work (understandable, you can get a dud light or even the fact that they were shipped across the country and I'm sure bumped around a bit by the shippers). A ring to Paul C. Buff, no questions asked, shipped me a new one and didn't charge me a cent, not even shipping. It's important to mention that an American picked up the phone, was pleasant as could be, and completely reinforced all of the great things I've heard of the business even before I bought my lights. Years and hundreds of photo shoots later, those same light are still popping. My lighting family also grew, as I now own 9 lights made by Paul C. Buff. As you could imagine over hundreds of shoots, accidents are inevitable and happen from time to time. Between the wind, a spiderweb of cords (tripping hazards), and other contributing factors, the lights will take an occasional tumble to the ground. Most of my lights have some war wounds from their years of service, yet they keep on poppin'. My two big oopsies both occurred within about of a month from each other, with one light taking a very nasty and hard fall to the ground (thanks to the ever resilient wind), and another was unknowingly plugged into a 220 volt outlet (as opposed to the standard 110 outlet) which resulted in a frightening "pop" and a cloud of smoke. Both lights were down for the count so I sent them to PCB to get serviced. My thoughts at the time were not only how much it would cost, but IF they could even be fixed from the resulting damage.
A pixel is a pixel is a pixel... right? What is a pixel on my camera is a pixel on my computer which is a pixel of a digital or print file that I present to a photo client. True, there is no denying it, digital photographs are composed of pixels, lots of them, millions upon millions, each a single dot with a specific color representation, combining to make a final photograph. Since the birth of digital photography, photographers have been ever evolving to leverage post processing software to edit digital images. Every photographer uses these tools differently, some rely on them more than others, and I'd argue that some photographers are more graphic designers than photographers. But we are not going to get into those details today, a book could be written on those personal thoughts alone. Today I want to talk about something that has been eating at me for months, and it's bugged me so much that I felt that I finally needed to share it with you. I'm sure this post will upset some who are just as upset as I am about the topic I'm about to discuss. That's good! The people who are losing out are the ones who don't feel or say anything at all. This is my blog, it's been home to my personal and professional visual works, adventures, advice, and personal photographic thoughts for years. There are almost 300 blog posts. I try to be as real as I can with genuine thought. This blog isn't a marketing gimmick, it serves many purposes, ranging from visual entertainment to educational. I try not to speak out of line, and if I'm providing advice to my readership I do my best to ensure that information has integrity behind it. The one thing you will not experience reading here on my blog are lies and me feeding you, my clients and fellow photographers, a bunch of shit. I'm a photographer, I'm paid to take photographs of people. I've photographed just about every age a person could be and in a dizzying array of situations. I do edit my photos in a post processing application. I'm asked to do very normal things to photographs in post, and I'm asked by some clients to do some very disturbing things in editing their images. However, contrary to many photographers out there, my job is 95% done after I've taken the picture. I've put in the time and effort required to make the photograph great at time of capture, so my editing load is minimal. For other photographers, taking the picture is only 25% of the completion. They spend countless hours in post. But this isn't the "shit" that I'm talking about, the subject that has my feathers a bit ruffled.
A few weeks ago marked the completion of the first Matty Photography advanced workshop. Unlike it's sister program, the beginner workshop, which has 3 runs under it's belt, the advanced class just completed it's maiden voyage. As with everything educational, going through a huge chuck of learning material for the first time with a class is like running the gauntlet. Is the material arranged in the best possible order, is it structured in a way that makes sense with easy to understand vocabulary, how much time should be allotted for each lesson and photo adventure, how many student questions will result from the material and how much time will that eat, etc. There is a lot to estimate into the timing, which will then drive the overall structure and amount of material. As all experienced photographers know, the more you stick your head down the rabbit hole of knowledge, the more you discover it goes on forever. You have to draw the curriculum line somewhere in the sand, decide what takes priority, and ensure that whatever you decide to cover will be properly addressed in class. For those who are in the dark about my workshops and are into photography, you should definitely out the workshop page by clicking on the 'workshops' button at the top of the page. This advanced workshop focuses on off-camera lighting. It teaches students about lighting, how it works, how to trouble shoot it, how to shift and mold qualities of light, etc. As far as the material goes, I think it went great. The photo shoot adventures... well, we will all want more time to shoot. I could set aside a whole day of just shooting and students would want more time. But you gotta draw the line somewhere, make sure concepts are grasped and demonstrated, and then move on. That's what the courses are for, creating a foundation of understanding, getting the gears greased, and then releasing them off into the wild so that they can begin their growth as a photographer. Sure, the courses will offer some opportunities for good photo taking, but by no means are the in-class shooting adventures designed to revamp someone's portfolio. After running through all of the shoots, I will be making some tweaks to make them run a little better and a bit more focused/goal oriented.
There are countless photo apps popping up for phones, each one bragging about the addition of the now oh-so-played-out vintage filters you can apply. The last thing we need is another excuse for someone to think they are a creative photographer via one-click edit buttons. Ya know... the same edits even your 1-year-old can manage to accidentally apply while teething on the corner of your phone. They are all the same mindless app, driving the false sense of creativeness. News flash, if you have that app so do like... 100 million other people, and they have that same "creative" vintage button. Now don't you feel special. To be honest, at this point your phone photography would probably be more appealing and eye-catching on Facebook if you just stuck to standard photo edits, as everyone and their grandma are robotically mass producing the same EXACT edits as you. You'll practically be the only one with vibrant contrast and colors in your images if you go against the grain on this one. But let's get past these boring one-button edit "features," shall we? After all, in the end, you are still dealing with a point and shoot camera on your phone. It's the other end of the mindless droning of "photography" these days. Of course PnS cameras have the ability to focus, expose, and judge the rest of the variables in order to create a borderline tolerable image. Sure, PnS's have the ABILITY to do all of this stuff for us, but hardware and software developers of phone cameras decided that the cameras WILL do all of the deciding for you, and you don't get a say in the photo-taking affair. Just point and click, you get what you get, and you're stuck with the computer in the driver seat 100% of the time. No surprises, this approach left us with 100 images with maybe a couple falling under the category of "acceptable," the rest being a joke, and proof that computers are not good photographers.
The PNW has been seeing some amazingly nice weather, and the timing couldn't have worked out better. Last weekend was another Beginner Workshop, held down at my studio. As we always do for workshops, we spend a little bit of time covering new material in-class...
Another round of Matty Photography workshops are coming this February, both beginner and advanced workshops. More information and registration can be had at http://mattyworkshops.com These workshops are great for just about anyone interested in photography, a little something for everyone. Learn how to master your camera...
A new wordpress theme, coding/format changes, portfolio integration, and the porting of 250 blog posts later...
