Today's quote from the MBA Depot Weekly Content Alert is from the Harvard Business Review, specifically an article by Roderick Gillkey and Clint Kilts: Ambitious people don't like failing or looking stupid. As the social scientist Chris Argyris (one of the fathers of organizational-learning theory) put it, smart people have trouble learning because it involves so much floundering and failure. After reading the quote, I immediately thought of an article on creativity that I read earlier this year in How Design, What Kind of Creative Are You?: A Theory on Creativity by Doug White. White writes about a theory proposed by a University of Chicago professor of economics, David W. Galenson. "[Galenson] posits that experimental innovators (old masters) work by trial and error and make their major contributions late in their careers, while conceptual innovators (young geniuses) have flashes of brilliance and enjoy major artistic breakthroughs at young ages." In the entire, Ga...

Add to the list of items to check for when shooting a group shot: visible cell phones rumpled shirt tails It's the cavalier person who rushes a shoot with the belief that anything can be fixed later in Photoshop. When I'm shooting, I aim to "get it right" in camera. I want to spend as little time as possible sitting in front of a computer screen as given the choice I'd rather be out shooting. Sometimes though, good intentions aside, the shot's not right in camera. The group I was photographing is a band that plays old-school funk and R&B. I'd planned to change the color of some of the bleached jeans to a dark acid wash. While touching up the image, I noticed that I had overlooked a cell phone and a couple of rumpled shirt tails when we were in the club. I wanted a laid back, hip overall look for their photo and cell phones and rumpled shirt tails were not in my vision. Strategic use of the clone stamp tool and healing brush removed those items. Here a...

Differences in lenses become vary apparent when you're shooting with two of the same camera bodies. Now, I've done many test shoots to determine the limits and sweet spots of my lenses. The problem with test shoots is that I've done them serially and not in parallel. After the shoot is finished the various images are compared side by side and the differences are analyzed. The lab is very different than the field. In the field, controlled lighting and stationary subjects aren't available. You're lucky if you're able to get two of very similar shots with similar autofocus (AF) points in the field. It's these live test shoots where one learns to truly appreciate the difference between a fixed f1.2 lens, a fixed f2.8 lens, a variable f3.5-5.6 lens, and a variable f4-5.6 lens. (As an aside, the difference between a full-frame sensor and a sensor with a 1.6 magnification factor also is apparent.) This past Saturday - in a low-light environment, I shot with a fixed...

This past weekend I had the opportunity to check out one of my friend's bands - Eskimojo. Their blend of "old-school funk and R&B into signature instrumental grooves" was the perfect end to my week. I was able to combine my passions for live music and photography (see the Eskimojo gallery ). Earlier today I received an invitation to a gallery opening of Annie Leibovitz's work. In that invitation was a quote that I feels defines my life. "I don't have two lives. This is one life, and the personal pictures and the assignment work are all part of it." - Annie Leibovitz This coming Saturday, I'll be at Rassela's Jazz Club in SF for DISCO INFERNO 1978 - Birthday Bash featuring LiveWire! Again I'll get to combine personal pictures and assignment work - come join me. For more details, check out the evite .

I've finished sorting and converting my RAW images to JPEGs and have posted the JPEGs to Eternal Spring 2008 Share Group . The runway was well photographed, check out Jason Day's images , Gene Kosoy's images , Harry Chen's images , and Neil Girling's images of Bad Unkl Sista's collection. It's amazing to see the variety of images from one show! No two photographs are the same. For more information on the event, visit their homepage . UPDATE 2/26/08: PhatCat has posted images .

I'm frequently asked what DSLR I recommend and what lenses I recommend for $x amount. The specific DSLR recommendation varies based on $x, but the distribution of budget spent on body versus lenses is always the same. I always recommend where ever possible for similar bodies, if given a choice, buy higher quality lenses rather than spending a little more on a better camera body (for example Canon EOS 30D versus Canon EOS 5D). Today I'm taking my own advice. I opted to spend part of my just deposited federal tax return for the Canon EF 85mm f/1.2L II USM Autofocus Lens and backup Canon EOS 30D instead of Canon EOS 5D (see Tax Time Again and Once Again Familiar Craving for initial wishlist). As my parents inspired me to pursue photography and purchased my first Canon SLR - the Canon AE-1, I think using their B&H Photo Gift Certificate for my Canon EOS 5D purchase is good karma. So, I'll wait patiently until next month for my Canon EOS 5D and in the meantime enjoy my two ...

Eternal Spring 2008 was billed as a display of "life, love, arts and creativity" and it delivered. This amazing all-day event - a fashion, arts and music show - came together in little over two short months. The team behind the event had one mission: "to bring arts, music, and performances to our community and to support our artists by giving them a venue, strong media coverage, community and industry awareness and a chance to showcase their work while gaining experience in selling, marketing, and performances." Thanks Nika and Diva for the opportunity to participate! The atmosphere was invigorating! I've just finished uploading over 1,500 images from the day and will be posting galleries over the coming week. As I process the galleries, they'll be available for viewing in the Eternal Spring 2008 share group .

Again the images were taken from Yahoo!'s Flickr site. In this case, the images weren't used in press or for non-profit promotion. In this case, the images were uploaded to an online stock site, iStockphoto, and sold . For more information read Stephen Shankland's article on Webware (http://www.webware.com/8301-1_109-9867114-2.html). Times are changing and technology that will make this type of theft harder is coming. Idee Labs has a solution ( Piximilar ) that matches images across collections and a service ( PixID Image Monitoring Service ) that tracks where images are appearing. With the US Copyright Office testing online submission for visual arts (and maybe developing an image database) think of the possibilities if Idee Lab's technology enabled stock photo sites to search for copyright violation upon upload. Check out Idee Lab's BYO Image Search Lab where you can submit an image or URL and find similar images in Alamy .

When I first decided to get a digital SLR, there were a few things that were important to me: How similar would my digital SLR be to my film SLR? Could I use any of my film lenses? Would I be able to shoot in low-light environments without flash? Could I hang gallery quality enlargements on the walls of my home? My film lenses were a variety of FD mounts – unusable with Canon’s Rebel line, so I was pretty sure they’d still be unusable with Canon’s digital SLRs. Not being tied to an existing investment in lenses gave me the ability to consider Nikon as well as Canon. A couple of my friends had the Canon EOS 10D and the Canon EOS 20D, so I knew the pluses and minuses of these digital SLRs. I initially chose the Canon EOS 20D but opted for its replacement the Canon EOS 30D that performs better in low light environment and had a few new features I liked. I also liked Canon’s upgrade path from a camera body with a smaller sensor to one with a full-frame sensor – the Canon EOS 30D to the Can...