At the Google Plus Photographer's Conference earlier this week I talked to a lot of photographers who were just getting into photographing people. Several had shot some of the models at the conference and discovered how much they loved it. (I know the feeling).

Most of them were asking me how to get started with model photography and I recommended joining a local Meetup.com photography group and going to a few meetups. A lot of the groups schedule model shoots and they are great for learning posing techniques, some lighting, and just getting comfortable in the studio.

For the Bay Area photographers, here is the list of meetup groups I am a member of. Not all of these do model shoots, but they are all worthwhile. Check them out. 

A SOUTH BAY DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY GROUP

*ARTISTIC GLAMOUR AND FINE ART PHOTOGRAPHY CLUB*

Adobe Creative Suite User Group - San Jose

Art of Urban Exploration

The Artists Path to Cash

BAMPS - Bay Area Model Photo Shoots

Bay Area Fine Art and Fashion

Bay Area Glamour Photoshoots

Bay Area HDSLR

Bay Area Image Maker's Collective

Bay Area Model Madness

Bay Area Night Photography

Bay Area Photo Cliques

Bay Area Photo Studio Shoots

Bay Area Photographers Working Together

Bay Area Photography

The Bay Area Photography & Exploration Society

Bay Area Photography Events

Bay Area Photography Group

Bay Area Strobists

Bikini Model Photo Workshop

The Candy Man Photo Shoot

Chasing Light N Photographing Landscape

Creative Portraiture in Santa Cruz

Digital Photography Society of Santa Cruz

EXPOSED - A Photography Showcase

Fremont Digital Photo Freeschool

Funtography Club

Hold the Eye Images Meetup Group

Jules CAFE Photo Peeps Meetup and PUG

Lollipop Girl Glam Shoot

Making Art Make Money

Northern California Bikini & Boudoir Workshops

Off camera flash photography

Pacific Light Studios

Photographers for Photography

Photography Classes

Photography Classes and Workshops - All Levels

Photogrartists

Photolight - Photography & Lighting (SF Bay Area)

Renegade Photo Shoots - Bay Area

The San Francisco Photography Meetup Group

San Jose Photoshop Users Group

San Jose Strobists

SF Bay Area Glamour and Fine Art Nude Photography

SF Bay Model Photo Shoots

SF Bay Model Shoots Inc.

SF Photoshop Users Group

SFBayArea "Trade For" Shoots

Silicon Valley Digital Photography Workshops

South Bay Fashion Photography

The South Bay Photography Meetup Group

Star Circle Academy

This Week in Photo (TWiP) & SmugMug Bay Area Meetup

I was walking through my local shopping center one evening last week when I was stopped in my tracks by this Skullcandy poster in the window of the Tilly's store. What stopped me was not the model (is this a sign I'm getting old?), but the poor photography. It is not a very well done photograph. There are numerous things that I consider wrong with this poster and if I had taken this shot, I would have discarded it during my initial selection process. Here are a few of the things I think are wrong

• Pig Nose - Kate has her head tilted back and the photograph was shot at a slight upward angle, resulting in a very unattractive nose. This alone should have sent this photo to the discard pile.
• Reflections of the studio lights in the balloons. I find these extremely distracting and would have either rejected the photo of cloned them out. 
• Blown out hair on top of her head. Although my cell phone shot here doesn't do it justice, the whole photo was poorly exposed.
• You can hardly see the product! In fact, I did not see the headphones until after I had read all the text then gone back to the photo. Some say that might be OK, because I did read the text, however, I think you should have both.

 Apparently the Art Director was judging the photos by how great Kate's boobs looked and all the other stuff was secondary. Supermodel Cleavage trumps a good photo.

To give the Art Director credit I did find other shots from this shoot that are much nicer photographically. Here is one from Skullcandy's Facebook page. I'm just shocked that this one made the cut.

http://www.photopoly.net/22-useful-photography-and-photo-editing-cheat-sheets/

A year ago I did a blog post about an article on Austin Kleon's web site where talked about 10 ways to unlock your creativity. He has now expanded on this idea and written a book called "Steal Like an Artist". I stumbled across this book while in the bookstore and have thoroughly enjoyed it. It's a relatively quick read but it is packed with ideas on how to be more creative and how to channel your energy in your creative endeavors.

I highly recommend it. 

Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative

I've been meaning to register my photos with the US Copyright Office for the past year, but I kept putting it off. These incidents made me decide it was time to do it. However I wasn't quite sure how to proceed. I had heard some good things about this book and decided to give it a try.

Photographer's Survival Manual: A Legal Guide for Artists in the Digital Age (Lark Photography Book) by Edward Greenberg and Jack Reznicki

It's an easy and quick read that describes copyright law and why you should register your photos. But the most valuable part of the book was a step-by-step walk through of submitting your photos to the copyright web site. The web site is not the most intutive or user friendly site and without the walk-through I would have been lost at several points during the submission process. It took about 20 minutes the first time through, but now that the initial information has been filled out it should only take a couple of minutes for the next submission. 

The most time consuming part was compiling all my images to upload. I only registered images that had been published, which includes anything put in public view on my web site, Flickr, message boards, etc. That ended up being just over a thousand images going back to 2001. 

My plan going forward is to register my photos every quarter. This should be a good trade-off between protection and finding the time to do it.

I highly recommend the book and recommend you register your photos.

I recently came across this video by Dave Cross where he shows a great technique for improving Content Aware Fill. I've tried it a few times now and have been impressed with how easy it is and how it addresses the problems I had been having. Give it a try.

Make Content Aware Fill even Better from Dave Cross on Vimeo.

There were some very good movies this year and surprisingly some bad ones as well. Here is my take on the 9 nominated films in the order I watched them.

Money Ball

I enjoyed this movie a lot. Part of that might be because it was about my local team the Oakland As. Great performance by Brad Pitt and and solid performance by Jonah Hill. Good solid A.

The Descendants

This was a slice of life movie about a slice of life I don't really care about. There were A LOT of scenes that were just 30-50 seconds of George Clooney's face, looking sad, looking pensive, looking lost, no dialog, just George's face. The first one went a bit too long and caught my attention, I was then distracted throughout the entire movie whenever it happened again and as I said it happened a LOT. Besides this the acting was all good, but as I said I found the story not that interesting. I am very surprised by all the accolades this movie has received. C+

The Help

Very well done movie, I think it was the best of the bunch. Good story, good acting, not much more to say. A+

The Artist

This movie pleasantly surprised me. I didn't think I would enjoy a silent movie, but after 10 minutes I didn't even notice that it was a silent movie. The story and acting was so well done it kept me engaged and sucked me in, the sign of a good movie.

This was the first of the movies that I watched this year that relied a little too much on coincidence in the plot. Coincidence is a common plot device, but I felt it was a little overdone in this movie. In spite of that I thoroughly enjoyed this movie. While a good movie I believe that a lot of the awards it has been receiving is do to the novelty and not because it truely is the best picture. Solid A

Midnight in Paris

I knew nothing about this movie when I went to see it except that it was directed by Woody Allen and I was surprised that it wasn't a typical Woody Allen movie. I enjoyed the references and portrayals of the great historic writers that I recognized, but I felt stupid about the ones I didn't. That part is typical Woody Allen, throwing in references that only a small part of the audience is going to get. I really enjoyed this movie at the time I watched it, and I have warm fuzzy feelings about it, but it didn't stick with me. Now 4 weeks later I couldn't tell you how the movie ended, again typical of Woody Allen movies. So perhaps it was more of a Woody Allen movie that I initially thought. A-

Hugo

I put off this movie because it just didn't sound that interesting to me, but it was much more interesting than I anticipated. The best part of this movie were the elaborate sets and scenes. It is a visually rich movie and even though I did not see it in 3D, I really enjoyed the visuals. This was the 2nd movie of the group that I felt relied too much on coincidence. There was not just 1 or 2 coincidences there were dozens and I felt it detracted from the overall story. I was entertained, but felt a little cheated at the end. B+

War Horse

Another visually rich movie with way too many coincidences. Less than Hugo, but enough to be unbelievable. I enoyed the time period this movie was set in and the portrayal of World War I life and times. I recall another movie I've seen from that time period and I found that aspect of the movie fascinating. I was a little disappointed by how the horse seemed to be more intelligent than a normal horse, like it could read the minds of the people around it. This is probably a result of interpreting the book, which was written from the horse's perspective, so it's understandable.  An entertaining film. B+

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

This was another movie I put off because I really had not interest in a movie about 9/11. But while integral to the story, it really wasn't a movie about 9/11. The boy in this movie was fantastic, and really carried the movie. Like some of the other movies, this one had a little too much coincidences. A good movie, but not a great movie. B+

Tree of Life

I put this one off until the end because I had heard so many negative reviews about it from friends. People who said they got up and walked out of the movie. After seeing it I can certainly understand wanting to walk out. You could cut out the first 20 minutes of this movie and the last 10 and make this into a fairly decent movie, but those 30 minutes ruined it. The visuals were stunning, deep space, churning water, volcanic lava, etc. but they did absolutely nothing to move the movie along. I'm sure the director thought there was some deep meaning in these scenes, but there wasn't, he was just full of himself and too proud to cut it out. I'm guessing the Academy members that selected this didn't understand it either and just didn't want to admit they weren't smart enough to figure it out so they decided it must be brilliant. Either that or the director sent them all free hookers and blow. The story jumped around a little too much for my taste, and the parts with Sean Penn could also have been cut from the movie without losing much. By far the worst movie I've seen in the last 2-3 years. D

So there it is, my take on this year's Best Picture Nominees. I think the Help should win, but suspect that The Artist will win because of it's novelty. 

My guess is that Adobe wants everybody to convert to the subscription model, as long term that is a better business decision. It also means they don't have to keep coming up with huge revoltionary features but can instead rely on incremental evolutionary features.

It will be interesting to see how this all pans out.