If I had to pick one image from the almost 100,000 photos in my archives and call it my favorite, this would be the one.

This image has become a symbolic anchor for me. A “back to basics” reminder for those times when I’m overcome with lens envy, or become seduced by megapixels and new tech.

Your kit is not important. It’s your vision that matters. Good kit just helps you get there. Whatever camera you have, that camera is good enough. In fact if you’re just starting out, a few technical challenges might be just what you need to unlock your creativity.

I made this picture almost ten years ago, in January of 2002, with a Canon PowerShot G2. I’d been shooting for about a year at that time. I had very little knowledge of photography, and I didn’t have any professional lighting equipment. (more…)

On September 26th, 500px sent an email that said:

“The current 500px photo stores, provided by our partner Fotomoto, are not ideal. Its platform, although powerful and feature rich, does not quite satisfy our high demands for quality of the user experience. So, we will not extend our contact with Fotomoto, and they will end supporting stores on 500px on September 27, 2011.”

This was immediately followed by an email from Fotomoto that said:

“As you may already know, Fotomoto is going to stop providing service to 500px platform at the end of today. Unfortunately 500px didn’t meet their business and technical commitments. After several unsuccessful attempts and unanswered emails to solve their issues, we had to send them a notice last week informing them that we are terminating our contract with 500px (which is a slightly different from what they mentioned in their email).”

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FlickStackr is a neat little Flickr application for iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad. It sells for $1.99 in the US App Store. I would go so far as to say that FlickStackr is a better Flickr experience than Flickr. Except for one major problem.

FlickStacker allows iOS users to download (steal) large-sized images from Flickr even when the image owner has explicitly specified that downloading (stealing) is not allowed. Continue reading →