What’s Google+ you ask? It’s a new social network from Google that combines the best of Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr into one site. If you’re already active on the site, here’s my profile – feel free to add me. If you’re not active on the site you should give it a shot especially if you like Twitter and/or Facebook. There’s a ton of great photographers over there sharing and interacting on a lot of great work. If you’re looking to interact with more people interested in photography, I’d highy recommend you signing up and join the conversation.

photographs by Tyler Wainright | Make Your Own Book

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After I was invited to test out Blurb’s new ebook service I jumped right in and began making my first real portfolio. I wanted to get the book completed in time so I could create a digital book (.epub format) to share with my readers and potential clients. If you have an iPad, Sony Reader, iPhone, Kobo, Nook, BeBook or any other ebook reader, you should be able to view this book. At least, that’s the plan anyway since Blurb converts your Bookify book into a downloadable .epub format file.

I’ve given the ebook to a couple close friends and they’re supposed to report back to me soon on how it looks in their ipads. Also, I’m in the process of learning how get my book available through iBooks for a pretty cheap price. More to come on that. I’m also working on a review of the Bookify-to-ebook process so you can determine if it’s something you might want to get into.

One of my biggest creative hurdles that I must learn to defeat is the “What’s the point mentality?” It haunts me everyday and I’m sure I’m not the only creative out there who struggles with this powerful and ever present monster. Trying to ignore this question can prove to be very challenging since creatives like you and I often times have trouble seeing where projects are headed. It’s too easy to question our motives when we know there’s a significant time and/or money invested in a project. Add on time for work, time for kids and family, and time for school and our dedication to creative projects quietly moves to the back burner.

I’m currently working on my first real portfolio using Blurb’s ebook service and it’s proving to be more time consuming and emotionally challenging than I expected. Add in the “what’s the point?” voice constantly gnawing at my mind and it’s very hard to make the time to sit down and finish the book…a books that’s likely to get lost in the millions of other photography books out there.

My main goal now is to try to ignore that voice in my head, move forward, and finish the book. Maybe it won’t do much for me in my lifetime but maybe it’ll inspire one of my children to be more creative…maybe it’ll make me famous long after I’m gone…who knows. In either case I want to finish the book so I can feel a sense of accomplishment and beat that voice in my head. I want the book behind me so I can move on to another project and fight that creative resistance another day. Maybe I’ll be a little stronger next time.

Image source: bulimica

Three weeks ago I mentioned that Blurb’s eBook service was coming soon. To my delight I got an email yesterday (June 21, 2011) from Ben Clemens, Product Director at Blurb, welcoming me to their eBook Alpha testing. Whoo hoo! I logged in, took this screen shot – I hope Blurb doesn’t mind – and wanted to share this great news with you.

Right now you can only use Blurb’s Bookify service to create your eBook but I assume that’s because it’s easy to convert those books to ebooks. I hope they’re working on being able to convert books made through their BookSmart software into ebooks at some point. I’m just happy to have a way to create ebooks now without having to buy and learn Adobe’s InDesign software.

I’ve never made a book using Bookify but I’m the process of creating a new, simple portfolio type book to test out the new ebook service – I’ll let you know when its complete and share it with you to get your thoughts and feedback. So far the Bookify service seems well laid out with some core features of the Booksmart software. I’ll save the pros and cons for another post.

By the way, if you’re on Facebook, you can like my page if you want to follow my blog and photography in your news feed. You’re also welcome to contact me if you have any questions. I hope to hear from you.

The day after I posted about my back-ordered Epson V500 photo scanner, I got an email from Amazon saying that it had shipped! I guess this little blog pulls some weight around the Amazon offices It came in last week while I was on vacation and I just got it set up and running yesterday afternoon. So far I’ve scanned close to 50 images of both slides and black and white negatives from my old film days. It’s an awesome feeling to finally be able to get these old pictures on my computer so I can edit them, share them, and, most importantly, back them up.

It’s also exciting knowing that I can dust off my Nikon N70 and finally shoot some film again!

The picture you see here is an old shot of me during a mountaineering trip on Washington state’s Mt. Baker. I chose this picture because it was on this trip that I first became interested in photography. I barely remembered to pack a camera! Another guy on the trip lugged a big Nikon around the whole time and it wasn’t until the end of the trip that I understood why. My photographic interests have changed some since then but I still and will always love landscape photography because of this trip.

This photograph was taken with an Olympus point and shoot camera on Fuji slide film. I scanned it as a .tiff file and did some minor editing and cropping in Adobe Camera RAW. If I remember correctly, that’s the Coleman Glacier behind me.

I ordered this Epson Perfection V500 photo scanner on April 19th and I still haven’t received it from Amazon. I happened to catch it for only $149.99 with free shipping but Amazon keeps moving out the delivery date. Two months is a long time to wait and I’m curious to know if anyone out there has any information on Epson’s supply issues. Are they phasing it out? I sure hope not – from reading reviews online it sounds like an awesome value for a great scanner.

I just hope Amazon’s not playing dirty and not shipping it to me since I caught it at a low price with free shipping. Right now it’s $184 but there are only 4 left from the current vendor. I bet if I paid more for it I’d have one already.

I’m excited about getting my hands on it because I have tons of old color slide film as well as black-and-white negatives that I’d like to scan. Not to mention we have tons of old family photos, drawings, etc. that we’d like to archive for future generations. I’d also like the ability to shoot film with my old Nikon N70 and have the ability to scan, edit, and share those images quickly without having to send them out to Scancafe.

I’ve been wanting to create a photography eBook for quite some time now. However, I lack a few essential pieces of the puzzle; Adobe InDesign and the skills and the time to actually use InDesign. I was excited to learn that Blurb, the popular, print-books-on-demand service was considering offering a books-to-ebooks service sometime in the future. I think it’s a great idea because you can get pretty creative with their Booksmart software and being able to offer your people an ebook of your work can be very cost-effective.

I was even more excited the other day when I received an email from Blurb asking me to fill out a quick survey specifically surrounding the topic of an ebook service. The email said, “Might you be interested in helping us test a new bookmaking tool that we are especially excited about? It’s a brand new tool for converting your Blurb books into beautiful ebooks that can be viewed on either an iPad or an iPhone.” Sweet! Can’t wait until they roll out this service. If, by chance, I get chosen for the next round of testing I’ll be sure to keep you up to date.

I helped chaperon my daughter’s field trip to Chucalissa archaeological museum today. I’ve never been so it was a pretty cool place to visit with her and her classmates – they enjoyed learning about Native American culture here in the mid-South. I didn’t have the luxury of bringing my camera along – I was a chaperon after all – but I was able to take this photograph of the museum’s logo with my iPhone.

Since my childhood I’ve been interested in Native American culture – their art, paintings, crafts, costumes, and culture have always fascinated me. I always enjoy learning more about and experiencing other cultures. I think by doing so it helps spark my creativity and helps me gain some perspective on the world around me.

I’m in the process of migrating my work to 500px.com – a fast-growing photography community that has a clean layout with integrated social media sharing. 500px has also teamed up with Fotomoto to allow photographers to sell prints, cards, and even downloads directly from their site.

500px has an option for users to post updates to a blog but I don’t like what I see. In the meantime, I’ll continue to post updates here and on my Tumblr to keep you up-to-date on when new images are available for sale and/or download.

I’m also working on an updated portfolio for my main site, TylerWainright.com, but it’s a work in process right now. My portfolio is also hosted by 500px.com and as they release more features for portfolio pages and I’ll update the site.

Feel free to contact me if you have any questions about my photography or if you just want to say hi. Talk to you soon.

During a recent business trip out to San Francisco our group went on a tour of the city which included a stop at Fort Point National Historic Site overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge. Once we got off the bus we all took a short stroll north to a scenic overlook so we could act like tourists and take a bunch of pictures. On the way to the overlook a large, white calla lily quickly caught my eye. I’ve never seen such a large calla lily and it’s clean, white, funnel-shaped petal stood out against the dark green foliage.

I took a quick photograph and went on my merry way. Too bad I didn’t notice that my shutter speed was only 1/10 second at f/5.6 with a focal length of 105mm using the Nikon D90 kit lens. I had very little daylight left and one-tenth of a second is too slow to get a sharp, hand held image especially at that focal length. It wasn’t until a little later that I realized why my shutter speed was so slow; it’s because I had set Auto ISO to a maximum of 800 which forced a longer shutter speed to get proper exposure. I should have taken the extra time to make sure my settings were right and I could have come away with a better image. I’d rather have a sharper, noisier image versus one that’s slightly out of focus due to camera shake.

I guess I shouldn’t be too hard on myself – I was in a group setting and didn’t expect a great photo opportunity to come out of nowhere. However, I should have taken the extra few seconds to double check my settings before I headed off the bus. Mistakes like this stick with me but hopefully I’ll learn from this and use it to my advantage in the future.

Be sure to “Like” Tyler Wainright Photography on Facebook if you want updates in your news feed. You can also check out more of my work on Flickr and/or follow me on Twitter.