PIEA rolls out their premiere edition of their academic journal
Posted on | February 11, 2010 | No Comments
For well more than a year now, the folks at Photographic Imaging Education Association and more specifically, Janet Bonsall from University of Central Missouri, have been working on creating an academic journal to serve the photographic education community. Today they finally announced the release of their first edition of The PIEA Journal for Photography Education. It is an academic, peer-reviewed journal initiated to address issues related to teaching and learning within the context of Photographic Imaging, and I must say that it looks very good. I would encourage you to take a look at it. Click here to check it out. You might even find an article in there that yours truly worked on.
I would also like to encourage all educators to submit articles for consideration for the journal. To submit an article or images to the PIEA Journal, please send completed articles and /or images via e-mail to JournalEditor@PIEApma.org
I’ve been privileged to serve on their review board, and know what an arduous task this has been. So I would like to commend Janet for her dedication and all of her work in pulling this together. I would also like to commend Rick Rosen for his editing, and my fellow reviewers, whom I know had to review a great many articles. A job well done all around! I’m already looking forward to seeing the second edition.
Now is the time to check out the new PocketWizards
Posted on | January 27, 2010 | No Comments
In a bold move certifying the performance and reliability of the new MiniTT1 and FlexTT5 MAC Group, is offering an unprecedented 30-day Satisfaction Guarantee. Photographers can purchase the system, try it out for 30-days and if not completely satisfied, simply return it to their dealer for a full refund — no questions asked.
“We’re excited to offer professional photographers the unique opportunity to try the groundbreaking MiniTT1 and FlexTT5 system absolutely risk-free” noted Jan Lederman, President of MAC Group. “Our new 30-day Satisfaction Guarantee offer sends the message loud and clear that we’re committed to our customers, and serious about professional grade performance.”
To ensure the same level of unsurpassed performance to all existing MiniTT1 and FlexTT5 owners, PocketWizard is offering a free system check, with 24-hour in-house turnaround. Included is a free Version 5.0 firmware upgrade to bring them up to the latest standards.
“Version 5.0 is a very recent development that adds additional features for both new purchasers and current owners”, says Tim Neiley, President of PocketWizard. “A big advantage of the PocketWizard system is the ability for photographers to upgrade all of their MiniTT1 and FlexTT5 units to the latest operating system by simply downloading the latest firmware from the PocketWizard site.”
We are including a performance enhancing accessory, the AC5 RF Soft Shield with units we are currently shipping. The AC5 is a two-piece shield that isolates the RF noise produced by some Canon flash units to provide precise autoflash at great distances. We are also making it available at no charge to current owners. And now, with our 30-day Satisfaction Guarantee, there are more reasons than ever for photographers to step-up to PocketWizard.
Lederman added, “The Mini and Flex are exciting products. They’re easy to use right out of the box and offer many advanced features that improve the overall Canon flash system performance.”
The 30-day Satisfaction Guarantee offer applies to purchases made within the USA, and runs from February 1st to April 30th, 2010. For details, go to PocketWizard.com
Tags: 30 day guarentee > Flex > Guarantee > Pocket Wizard > pocketwizard > TT1 > TT5
A very BIG THANK YOU to the Photo Educators
Posted on | January 11, 2010 | No Comments
I hope that all of you had a fabulous holiday season and that 2010 is off to a good start for you.
I just want to thank the many educators who responded to the call to action and took time out of their busy days to complete the photo educator survey. Well more than 500 of you responded. We now begin the process of analyzing the data collected. We will process the info and let the result be known. With such a large number of respondents I feel very confident in the reliability of the results that we’ll have. Hopefully, it will help give us all some insights into the current trends and challenges faced within Photo Education. We plan on rolling out the results at the Educator & Industry Forum on Saturday (3/6) morning at SPE. The result will hopefully help lead the discussion of the forum.
At the same time that we’ve had this survey running, SPE conducted a survey of the Photo Industry personnel about services and opportunities available for photo educators and students. Calumet Photographic’s Richard Newman also surveyed photo students about their interests. These results will also be unveiled at the same SPE gathering- should be lots of terrific information!
I’m also hoping to make the School/Educators results available in the PIEA Journal. Of course I will also make a downloadable version available from this blog and the MAC-On-Campus site.
Thanks again to all who participated. Your love and dedication to the field of photography and your students never ceases to amaze me!
Sincerely,
Bill
“You can’t know where you are going, if you don’t know where you’ve been”
Posted on | December 4, 2009 | No Comments
If you are a photography instructor or student and you haven’t already checked out Jeff Curto’s podcasts on the history of photography, you really owe it to your self to do so. He has a terrific voice, great presentation, and keeps things moving at a good pace. Perhaps most importantly he manages to be very informative, while also being entertaining. Jeff Curto is a professor and the Coordinator of the Photography Program at College of DuPage in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, where he has taught since 1984. He is also a very passionate and accomplished photographer. All of these things allow Jeff to bring a whole lot of insight, energy, and enthusiasm to his classes/podcasts. I often find myself listening to them as I plug away on my computer while sitting on the plane. The use of these podcasts is an excellent example of using technology to further your efforts in the classroom- something that Jeff has been on the leading edge of for quite some time. Jeff often presents programs about using technology and social networking in the classroom. I had the pleasure if sitting in on one such presentation while at Photo Plus East in NY in October, and got a whole lot out of it. If you get a chance to catch him you should!
Below is a very good description of his podcasts and how he uses them, as described on his site, photohistory.jeffcurto.com.
Tags: COD > College of DuPage > History of Photography > Jeff Curto > podcasting > podcasts > Technology in the Classroom
Putting the ColorChecker Passport to Work for you- A Special Webinar for Photo Educators!
Posted on | November 24, 2009 | No Comments
3 Passports showing the various features
In our first webinar for photo educators we’ll show you how easy it is to get good consistent color at capture. It used to be a very complicated and cumbersome process, but now thanks to the new ColorChecker Passport and its software it is easier than ever before. We’ll even show you how to work it into your Lightroom and Photoshop workflow.
Imagine a near-effortless perfect color workflow! Imagine having multiple cameras – even different brands, shooting the same event and color matching! Find out how to reduce your image processing time and improve quality control in your Raw workflow when you combine the powerful color capabilities of the ColorChecker Passport and Adobe Imaging solutions. White balance, while important, only assigns a neutral – we’ll take it to the next level and show you how easy it is to quickly and easily capture accurate color, calibrate your cameras, and instantly enhance portraits and landscapes with just a few clicks. With ColorChecker Passport you’ll easily be able to maintain color control and consistency from capture through edit.
At the close of the webinar, we’ll have a special offer just for educators, so register now for this free webinar! Two times and dates are available:
December 3rd, 2009, 12:00PM – 1:00PM eastern standard time
Registration link: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/983883554
December 4th, 2009, 3:00PM – 4:00PM eastern standard time
Registration link: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/564014186
Tags: Color Management > ColorChecker > Photo Educator > Webinar > X-Rite Passport
An incredible opportunity for you and your students to get involved in a worth while cause
Posted on | November 17, 2009 | No Comments
Perhaps one of the most interesting and worth while causes that I ‘ve heard about in a while is this Help -Portrait movement. As someone in the photography field, if you spend any time on the internet or Facebook you’ve probably heard something about this. It is the brainchild of celebrity photographer Jeremy Cowart, Help-Portrait is a movement of photographers who are using their time, equipment and expertise to give back to those who are less fortunate this holiday season.
Help-Portrait is not a non-profit organization. It is a movement. As they describe it on their web site, “This is about GIVING the pictures, not taking them. These portraits are not for your portfolio, website, or for sale. Money isn’t involved here. This holiday season, you have the chance to give a family something they may have never had before- a portrait together.”
How do you get involved? Head to the Help-Portrait Community page and sign up. You will probably find other people, including photographers, volunteers, and others in your town or one close to you. If not, be the first in your city and start a new group! Your college or university is probably an excellent place to host this event! If there is anything that the MAC Group or I can do help you pull off this event please let us know.
For more info check out the Help-Portrait Promo Video
Help Portrait Promo Video
A Terrific Fundraising Idea for your School’s Photography Department
Posted on | November 16, 2009 | No Comments
Several of the photo departments that I deal with are involved with charitable associations or have class projects that make the students and or department come up with extra money for things like guest speakers or field trips. As we all know too well, this economy is making things tough all over and making it harder for all of us to come up with the money to participate in these special events and putting greater emphasis on fund raising. And while we may be spending less money, it sure seems we are all spending more time communicating through the latest electronic social networking fad- using services such myspace, Faceboook, Linked in, twitter, eHarmony, etc, etc, etc…and if you aren’t trust me your students and co-workers are!
Well, a couple of the schools that I work with have come up with an interesting and successful fund raising solution that seems to make a great deal of sense. Each of the social networking services asks the user to have images of themselves for their profiles. Yet, so many people use really bad and/or old photographs of themselves…just look at my cheesy corporate head shot that I use! So why not invite the students, faculty, staff, and local photo industry representative (maybe even the public) to come on in to your studios and walk a way with several low res images of themselves that they can use to update their profiles. Most people won’t think twice about coming up the nominal fee of something like $10, $15, or $20…especially if they know that it is going towards a good cause such as a charity or educational program.
New Photo Educator Survey Announced
Posted on | November 9, 2009 | No Comments
The art and science of photography has undergone a great many changes over the last 15 years, presenting many new challenges within the educational community. This has been further complicated and compounded by today’s tough economic environment.
For the last few weeks I’ve been working with a number of educators, Richard Newman from Calumet Photographic’s educational division, and some of the folks at both SPE to come up with a survey to see how these challenges are being handled by today’s photography schools and educators.
Your opinion and information is extremely valuable to determining the trends and challenges of teaching photography today. We ask you to please take five minutes to fill out the survey http://surveys.verticalresponse.com/a/show/212010/8c7d9feaba/0
We will be collecting responses through the end of December 2009. The information obtained from it will then be analyzed and written up. We plan on having this completed no later than March 2010- with the results being first revealed at the Educator & Industry Forum at the 2010 Society for Photographic Education national conference in Philadelphia, March 3-7 2010. The information will then be available through our friends at the Society for Photographic Education, Photographic Imaging Education Association, the MAC Group, and Calumet Photographic.
Please feel free to contact me with any questions or concerns.
Win up to $6,000 in cash and prizes- Just for having fun with your munki
Posted on | October 16, 2009 | No Comments
The MAC Group and X-Rite have some up with a fun new contest idea that might be fun for you and your students. As you may know, X-Rite has a product named the ColorMunki that is extremely popular right now. It is a very funny name for a very cool and powerful color management tool. Many of us have laughed about its name- even found ourselves giggling as we tell people about “playing with our munkis.” So much so, that we thought it would be fun to have a video contest to “Show Us Your Munki!”
A Colormunki walks into a bar....
Submissions do not need to be focused on color management. Simply make a very funny video that somehow incorporates the X-Rite ColorMunki or a visual reference to the product in some way. The funnier the video, the better your chances! Have fun with it! Check out the ShowUSYourMunki.com site to see some of the fun that we’ve had with it.
Don’t have a ColorMunki? No problem. The ShowUSYourMunki.com site is loaded with Munki tools including video clips, pictures, logos and graphics for you to use.
The contest runs ‘til March 31st. Every month the following student prizes will be awarded:
1st Prize – $500 MAC Group Gift Certificate
2nd Prize – $150 MAC Group Gift Certificate
3rd Prize – $50 MAC Group Gift Certificate
The monthly first-prize winner who makes us laugh the hardest will be awarded the Grand Prize- a $2500 MAC Group Gift Certificate!
The MAC Group gift certificates can be used on the new MAC-On-Campus.com and are good towards any of our MAC Group Products.
There are actually two contests, the one open to students, and the other open to the general public. Student entries will actually be entering both contests! To enter as a student, you must tag your submissions with “mocmunki” (no spaces) & “name of your school” (no spaces) when uploading it to the ShowUsYourMunki YouTube channel, http://www.youtube.com/group/showusyourmunki. If you do not add both of these tags, you will not be entered into the MOC portion of the contest.
Remember, if you enter as student, you also enter the public contest with additional cash prizes! Enter once and win twice!!
Check the site for legalese, and have fun!
Tags: Color Management > Colormunki > Contest > munki > x-rite > xrite
The new MAC-On-Campus.com is Live!
Posted on | October 8, 2009 | No Comments
I suppose I sound like Paul Revere announcing the arrival of the British. Or probably more appropriately, Steve Martin in The Jerk proclaiming, “The new phone books are here!!! But now I’m just dating myself…
Anyhow, I’m obviously very excited to inform you that the new MAC-On-Campus website is finally live. And while all of the features have not yet been incorporated it is much better than the previous incarnation of the site. We have put a lot of time, money and effort into this site, hoping that it can be a tool that can serve you and your students. It is full of great educational material, lots of technical information, and social networking tools that should enable photo educators and students to connect and share.
The new site is set up to mimic a college campus, complete with classrooms, libraries, studios, galleries, career center, campus store, etc… So, it should be easy fro you and your students to find what you are looking for.
On the new site you and your students will be able to do things like:
- Gain Exposure with Your Own Personal Page and Portfolios
- Connect with Fellow Photo Students and Educators
- Learn Photo Tips and Techniques from the Pros
- Create and Download Diagrams of Your Photo Shoots
- Get Insight into Photography-Related Careers
- Learn about Professional Photographic Tools
- Purchase Professional Gear at Significant Educational Discounts
- And Much More!
To check it out just click here!
Plus don’t forget that ’til the end of the year any college or university photography student or instructor who registers for a free account on the MAC-On-Campus.com site and creates a personal home page and portfolio will be entered for a chance to win some great prizes, including a trip to the National Geographic Archives. See previous blog entry or the MAC-On-Campus.com website for details.
See you on the site!
Tags: education > mac group > mac-on-campus > Photo Students > Resources > website