jameel morrison | blog

Lovely little camera hack there I found via the Pictage forums, with a connecting flight at Chris Humphrey’s blog. I won’t share it here though.

Just kidding. This thing made too much of my day not to share. Basically, using Canon’s custom function menus (No. 18 to be exact), you change the button that initiates focus from the typical half-shutter press to the * button located on the back of the camera. Then, instead of half-pressing, you use the good ol’ thumb (ever so conveniently placed in the same place anyway) to initiate focus — this kinda eliminates those hiccups when the camera locked focus, but didn’t “lock,” thusly preventing you from taking the picture.

And oh yea, if you throw the camera into “continuous” auto-focus mode, wonderful things start happening with that focus hit-rate. Yea. Seriously. This trick is like buying a new camera (although, not so quite like having a body with 45 or 51 auto focus points…).

Thanks Chris. Much appreciated. Funny thing is, he put this post up like the very same weekend I was leaving the day job. Talk about full circle.

Just stumbled across this link on some other guys that run around with cameras. From the Guardian, by way of Rob Galbraith. I’ve often wondered to myself if I should only be posting about business, and pictures, but let’s get real here: I’m not the stuff I read, but at least you get some reasonable semblance of an idea of the information digested by the lovely young man you consider hiring right?

Sans all the fanfare, Apple finally put out a replacement to ye ole’ Powerbook 12″. MacBook Air. They pulled this thing outta a manila envelope. Crazy. Expected. Impressive. And at the same time, not. I’d take a D3 for the dollars. For some reason though, it keeps making me think of Nike. Oh, yeah, that’s it. Stronger branding. More later.

But it does speak to the issue of art-meets-business matters that exist with the advent of digital photography.

You can read here and here if you’re a reader, I’ll couch the discussion with those two writings as references. Good stuff over there at roughlydrafted.com.

Up for discussion is the impact of digital, and a discourse on it’s implications for everything else. Conversations with friends often rested on the premise that the music industry was suffering because the internet was burgeoning and the monolithic record company was too stubborn to change its ways, insisted upon defending and protecting its stronghold of music tooth and nail, and effectively fell on its sword in the process (as Chase Jarvis would put it at that Photoshelter town meeting last September).

!! Man! It’s really a new year! Last September seems like so long ago… but I digress

What the good folks over at Roughly point out, however are some other not-so-highlighted trends in the industry that had their impact as well. Namely, the ability of an Apple Inc to address a consumer need (portability of content– not necessarily high quality), and a trend among record stores to get as much as they could for records while the Walmarts and Targets dished discs on the cheap just to get people in the door. Interesting.

People didn’t stop listening to music, and they didn’t stop buying it.

Very provocative article in the context of photography mind you. Begs the question of the photographer (or studio)’s ability to address the needs of the consumer. Do they really care about the megapixels or even the saturated colors? Or do they just want good pictures? Reliability perhaps and a pleasant photo experience?
Wheels turning.

People are still buying good pictures everyday (in various forms– magazines for one; yes people pick up magazine covers because of the photos that are printed on them just as much as the content found inside), but are we playing like the Sony’s and the Microsoft’s pushing them to something that really doesn’t matter to them (noting the aforementioned discourse on low-definition television versus high, and all that content folks are watching on youtube and ipods…)? The proliferation of digital cameras (as I’ve heard mentioned on so many forums), or even the availability of lower-cost-higher-megapixel-chippped-slr’s is not chasing away the photo client market. If anything, it’s presenting an opportunity for a great resurgence of appreciation for what photographer’s do. And do it, we must if you’re worth your weight in talent or business-savvy.

And it won’t get us anywhere to focus on trying to take them to places they can handle autonomously. (Here, have a look at this high-quality picture that you don’t care enough to chuck all your dvd’s to adopt..). Are we meeting them where they stand? Or trying to force them into running after a dangling carrot that no reasonable cause exists to go after?

I guess we’ll all see soon enough.

Or not.

Opportunities for improvement:

• I really need to get some photos up on this site (hopefully we’ll have this accomplished before the week’s end

• I want a new template. Kubrick as timeless as it may be is not cutting it for the blog (I need something white black and dark gray — edgy but simple)
• Content.. need more of it.

The problem is, I spend so much time reading everything else and synthesizing it myself that I really don’t want that to be the content of my blog per se. But maybe we’ll find a creative solution whereby I can bridge you now non-existing readers to what it is I’m writing. We’ll see.

Yea, and if you do exist, the comments are live. (testing. testing. 1-2.)

And things WILL get a bit more interesting soon. I promise.

And this blog will definitely get a much-needed business-branded facelift.

Ah… content-branding, content-branding, content-branding!

Ok, that’s it.

Should be a post everyday, but I’ve been a bit under the weather and stuck under the proverbial hood of this car I’m calling my business. Some oil changing, a bit of a tune-up…

Then we’re off to the car wash.

I do have some nice photo updates coming soon. Possibly later this evening if I feel up to it.

But for now, this post in the very least will keep me on par with my so-called declaration.

Word of mouth. Gotta be the best marketing yet. Few things are ever so viral, organic, and rich.

I had a wonderful client from last summer that apparently was showing off their album over the holiday, and I had the good fortune to receive an inquiry from one of their friends about designing their wedding album. I’m humbled to say the least.

Here’s the book they saw.

Certainly ain’t what it used-to-was. Between feedburner and the now more robust and user friendly than it was when I was using Movable Type Wordpress platform, it’s more than safe to say things have changed.

The beautiful work of the Infinet Design’s and Matt Brett’s (yea, Matt’s ENTIRE site is on Wordpress — that’s cool) of the web world are evidence to be sure.

It’s high time I caught up. Starting with this blog. Won’t be as technically inclined to be sure, but I certain plan to make use of the growing community that is now using Wordpress.

Things have come a mighty long way since that blog I held down from 2003-2005. At least I have some measure of awareness of things to start putting some these newfound resources to use. I won’t even start singing the praises of Akismet (where were you fighting all the casino comment spam when I needed you?).

This new declaration promises to be fun.

First post for 2008. I’m not one for making resolutions for a new year, anything that would fall into that category is probably something that I should’ve been doing anyway, and the shortening of that list is something we work toward every day. So I’ll just leave it like this.

More consistent entries, more consistent maintenance, and all around love to this here blog. Notice, it’s not a resolution, it’s a declaration.

Sounds like a good start for me.

To all, and to all a good night. Christmas was some good eating. And I got a trip to the spa! More on that later.