Younes Bounhar Photography

Friday Roundup #5

This is likely to be my last post for a little while as I won’t be around much in the next week. As usual, friday is the day where I gather a few interesting posts I have come across during the week.

Many many great links to choose from this time…So let’s get the ball rolling.

Here, David Duchemin (yes he comes up often, but what can I do if the guy is brilliant!), talks about what makes a photographer. Are you a photographer because you make a living out of it or simply because you own a camera? A very interesting discussion ensues.

Next, Phil Colla tackles the subject of metadata and asset management. This is an area where I am cruelly lacking, so it was a very welcome addition to my knowledge base. First, Phil explains why metadata is important then goes on to a step-by-step description of his workflow. Surely, a few lessons to be learned there.

Richard Wong has made a terrific compilation of his top 10 most influential nature photographers. A really awesome list, some expected names, some I didn’t even know (gosh, I did think  Iknew it all!!).

In Jim Goldtein’s words “Reputation management is the monitoring of how an individual, company or other entities are perceived online.  Online reputation is centered on trust. The greater the trust with in an online community around an individual, company, etc. the more often their content is to be referenced online, the more business that they’re likely to acquire and the more likely they’ll develop a following.” Jim then goes on to explain how social media are used to build brand recognition. Do yourself a favor and get ahead of the curve by reading this post.

Finally, I just wanted to remind you that this month’s wallpaper/calendar is already out, you can download it here.

See you soon!

PS: I will try my best to stay in touch via twitter, so drop me a line once in a while .

Posted on June 26th, 2009 in Friday Roundup | No Comments »

Logo unveiled!

So finally, after a long but really exciting and intriguing process, I finally made my pick. It wasn’t easy, the designs I received were of very high quality, and I simply ended up picking the one that I felt the most at ease with. Congrats to Zoran Runcev for the awesome design.

I would also like to take the opportunity to thank David DuChemin for suggesting the idea of crowdsourcing. An absolutely fabulous concept. Also big thanks to Gavin Gough who suggested 99designs.com. I will be on and off for the next few weeks, but upon my return, I will get on integrating the logo into the website.

Thank you all for your support, advice and encouraging words.

Posted on June 24th, 2009 in News | 5 Comments »

Monthly Desktop Wallpaper – July 2009

As promised earlier this week, here is next month’s desktop wallpaper and calendar. For convenience’s sake, I included three different sizes for download.

This month’s image comes from the sunny and marvelous coast of California off the town of La Jolla. I was fortunate to have Jim Gekas show me around the place during my trip to the San Diego area. Jim was not only good sport so show me some of his favorite spots, but was also a great guy to hang out with. Fortunately, the skies did not let us down on this occasion despite the marine layer that hung around for  most of that afternoon. I hope you enjoy it.

Just click one of the links below to download the desired size.

800×536 1024×687 1280×857

Posted on June 23rd, 2009 in wallpaper | 1 Comment »

The Guitarist

Those who know me well also know that I really like photographing nature because it doesn’t move and doesn’t talk back. Yet, my photographic mojo is largely driven by the creative side of photography. In layman’s terms (what do you expect, I am a scientist, I always have to overcomplicate the simplest concepts…makes me sound smarter…I think…doesn’t it? ), I am always looking for new and different challenges.

So, recently, I bought Joe McNally’s Hot Shoe Diaries, a really terrific book if you want to learn a thing or two about ligthing ands speedlight. So here I am smack in my McNally phase, but have no models to work with. So while waiting for my dreams of grandeur to materialise, I head to the museum of civilisation to do what I know best: shoot architectural landscapes. As I am waiting for the sun to set, I notice this fellow sitting on a park bench and playing the guitar. Like every time I am in the situation, I make up these great plans for  a guitar photoshoot, but can’t really muster the courage to ask the guy to strike a pose or two for me. For some reason though, after long minutes of intense internal debate, I do the unthinkable and ask the guy if he wouldn’t mind…guess what…he couldn’t be happier to help…he probably regrets it now. The minute he said yes, what was just a camera became a huge camera with a telephoto, a lens, a gelled flash and a lanky crazy guy flailing around to make it all work together.

From a technical point of view, I wanted a closed up shot of the hand playing the guitar,  with  a short enough shutter speed to capture motion, yet be able to have a fairly sharp guitar. The ambient light was neither sufficient nor attractive, so in my best impersonation of the McNally dude, I decide to create my own. I placed a CTO gelled SB-800 camera left, set at 105mm as a remote. A few test shots showed that I needed a shutter speed at around 1-1.5s to capture enough motion, which meant I needed to set my ISO at 400 and f/5.6. The flash was set at  rear curtain sync to flash at the end of the exposure and “fix” the motion, to get a somewhat sharp background. The cto-gel ensured the light mimicked  the warm light of sunset.

As a final “artistic rendition”, I converted the whole thing to black and white using a red filter and added some noise for good measure.

Posted on June 22nd, 2009 in Photography Tips | 1 Comment »

Logo Design, final destination

I’ve commissioned the design of a new logo at http://99designs.com, a crowdsourcing company, to my great pleasure (and agony) I have way too many great entries than I can handle. I have narrowed them to only 10 out of 330 submissions, but I would like to hear your opinion on the subject…

Here is the shortlist. Which one do you think works best?

Thanks!!

Posted on June 22nd, 2009 in Marketing/Business | 11 Comments »

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