In the past 2 months I’ve been busier than I have been all year. Not only are new clients calling, so are my colleagues/competitors. I want to thank them for their advice and entitled opinions. Have I taken market share away? Yes. Do I offer a great product at an arguably fair price? Yes. Is it because I’m in growth stage of my business? Yes. Has the economy brought a new twist to things? Yes. Do I bring new ideas to an old way of thinking about an industry? Yes. Do I get out and push my name? YES! Am I making a profit. Yes! Should I sit at my desk and start a pity party in an online industry group forum about all the ‘lowpriced’ hacks that are entering the market? No. Should there be ‘business education’ for these
‘low price photographers’? No. That is ‘Herding Cats with your fingers in the damn’. As a business owner- My time is spent on demonstrating to my clients the value of their patronage and my services. My time is spent on personal in betterment of my trade (‘making of a better image today than I did yesterday’). My time is spent on improving my business model. Art is subjective, running a business is objective. Profit & Loss, Profit & Loss. Let the “lowballers” low ball that is their choice and they have been their since the dawn of time in any industry. Let the free market worry about that. We all have choices. Make a better mousetrap and raise the market this way. This is how all of us can come out better. Besides China is beating us anyway!

HDR stands for High Dynamic Range. It is pretty cool to see an image generated by this method. What is so appealing about it? Well, it gives us an image that mimics our eyeballs dynamic range of light. But when is the time to use it and when should you not use it? Well that is up to the artist. There are some HDR people who push their images to the edge and this looses realistic qualities to the image and that is fine if that is the look they want. But if everybody does it, it is just like air in the tennies, eventually the novelty wares off. I think 'HDR sustainabilty' should be part of a photographer’s work flow, a tool of sorts, not the end result. The most pleasing results I get from HDR outside is when the sun is low and there are clouds diffusing the light. I know, I know HDR is meant to capture the whole darn range so why not shoot it at midday with crazy hard sun? Because light is light, and it is harsh no matter what you do to it in the middle of the day. But how bout shooting at the golden hour (especially with a little cloud) and having the capability to capture even more shadow detail than you thought possible? That is where HDR soars! In fact, the golden hour can get extended to about two hours now! Here is an example of one of my top selling images it was taken just at sunrise: http://pa.photoshelter.com/c/chipallenphotography/gallery-img-show/Color...