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With Kodak declaring Chapter 11 today I, like a lot of photographers probably, will be looking into the tubes of the internet for Kodak related content to share. I came across this video from the George Eastman House Archive of early Kodachrome Film Tests from the 1920′s.
Being from the Rochester/Syracuse NY area, it was impossible to not know about the local impact of Kodak while growing up. I was born in 1985. As the years passed I recall seeing news story after news story about Kodak cutting jobs, and closing buildings and slowing seeing icons of industry fad away to irrelevance (Xerox was also founded in Rochester and had several plants that are now closed or other facilities in Rochester). (more…)
Jan 19, 2012 | Categories: Photography | Tags: Film, film test, Kodachrome, Kodak, NY, Rochester, Xerox | Leave A Comment »
Chrismahanakwanzaka is almost upon us and that means it’s time to find a gift for the photographer in your life. If your loved one is anything like me he or she is nearly impossible to shop for and that is mainly because I just buy stuff without telling anyone and then when boxes of gear shows up on the front porch my wife gives me the ”you bought more stuff” look. It’s the holidays, so hold off on spending on yourself and maybe share some of this great gear with a loved one so they have some options for you. Otherwise you’ll end up like me and get socks and sweaters – WHICH I LOVE BTW JEN! (in case my wife reads this) (more…)
Dec 08, 2011 | Categories: Photography, Reviews | Tags: Black Rapid, Canon, David Hobby, Frio, Holiday Gift Guide, Joe McnNally, L.L.Bean, Nikon, photography, Radio Popper PX | Leave A Comment »
A Review of the Westcott Apollo 50in softbox. I recently purchased the an FJ Westcott Apollo 50in softbox to use in my studio and on the go. I have to say I was a little weary of buying the hot softbox, mostly because it’s huge. It’s obnoxiously huge, and as it turns out – it’s wholeheartedly awesome. First I want to talk about the features of the softbox, how it came to me and then get into some of the examples of what I was able to do with the softbox.
I was stunned when the Westcott Apollo arrived on my front door in some pretty convenient packaging and while I knew the Westcott Apollo softbox folded up like an umbrella it was still impressive that they were able to package something so large into a relatively small box. As I mentioned above the Westcott Apollo folds up like a typical umprella which makes storage a cinch and you don’t have to worry about trying to fold it eight ways till tuesday like a reflector. This 127cm x 127cm softbox with removable face provides 104 degree of light spread and doesn’t require a speedring. The bottom of the Westcott Apollo offers a 4-way zipper for your c-stand or normal lightstand; I’d imagine if you had a long enough boom you could make the Westcott Apollo an overhead hair light, but I haven’t tried it yet due to my boom not being long enough. So it goes.
I had my first real world experience with the Westcott Apollo at the Elmwood Village Mass Appeal 2011 runway show. I used the softbox as part of 3 light set up and positioned it camera left and slightly angled to wrap the light around the models. As it goes with doing a speedlight setup, sometimes they don’t fire when they’re suppose to. This led me to have some happy accidents and produced some one light images that I was very happy with. From this I have since had two additional shoots with the Westcott Apollo where I only used the 50in softbox in conjunction with other light modifiers. The Westcott Apollo is a solid, well rounded one light solution if you’re into the look of a one light setup or your in a position where a one light setup is your only option.
The side and below images were from the Mass Appeal shoot and positioned camera left of the models and approximately 3 feet away at a 40-45 degree angle. I had a single Canon 580-EXII dialed down 2/3 a step and zoomed out to 24mm. Overall I’m happy with the result from this setup and as I said earlier I think it is a really great solution for speedlite photography. Where I would like to enhance the use of the Westcott Apollo would be to fit the light stand with duel or three way hot shoe adapter to get even more light out of the box. I’m usually not a fan of cranking up the exposure compensation to +3 because I generally like the environment and hate going through that many batteries (and lights that plug into outlets are so passe).
In conclusion I think the Westcott Apollo 50in softbox is a great addition to your studio or your on the go solution. Retailing at $249 it’s not to much of a burden on your budget and provides some really great results.Hope this helps in your gear purchasing. Until NT. 
Dec 01, 2011 | Categories: Photography, Reviews | Tags: 50in, 580exII, Apollo, Mass Appeal, Review, Softbox, Westcott | 1 Comment »
Instagram or Latergram – Pro photographers potentially ruining a fun photo sharing community?
Nobody Steps on a Church in my Town - © 2011 NateBenson.com Shot with Instagram
I started using Instagram when it launched in the app store back in Q4 2010, and I loved the app immediately. That being said I didn’t really post to much to it. This was during a time when I was focusing on other social networks that were resulting in hits to my website and job inquiries. More recently however I have been posting to instagram as I travel for photography jobs and even posting old iphontography shots. I use to follow quite a lot of people on Instagram despite my not posting to it and I did this because I wanted to get a pulse of what other photographers were doing and what my friends were shooting. I was more or less just a lurking instagram user.
Sometime last spring something started to change in Instagram. Professional photographers were all of a sudden uploading DSLR shot and photoshop/lightroom edited photos to instagram as a means to share them. As you will learn this is a slightly trivial argument, but hopefully my argument makes some sense. Instagram is an incredible mobile app that, at its core, is designed to be used with your iOS camera. With Instagram you’re suppose to geotag where you currently or recently were, and your friends are allowed to like or comment on the photo – it’s meant to be an on the go, quick app. Compared to the number of iOS devices on the market Instagram has a relatively small user base, hovering around 10 million active users.
So what is the benefit of uploading professional photography to Instagram? My feeling is that there isn’t any benefit to spending the time to sync photos to your mobile device specifically for sharing on instagram. There are dozens of professional photography apps and services in the market today that are specifically suited for professionals to share. Professional photographers have Flickr, Picasa, and 500px just to name three of the more popular services. Flickr is the obvious photo sharing heavyweight champion with over 50 million registered users, over 6 billion photos in their system and is ranked the 34th most visited website in the world and mars. Not exactly a lightweight website, right?
Why are so many photographers posting their professional shots to instagram? I think there’s a few reasons, and it’s bigger than instagram itself. Since the advent of Twitter and Facebook there’s this sense of online celebrity that everybody seemingly yearns for. These people want to be the go to person for all things social media and they want to be known as the Twitter guy, or the Google + girl. These people want 300,000 people yearning for their next post or next photo so they can get even internet fame and glory. I get it. Everybody wants to be famous, everyone wants to be a Kardashian – famous and rich for doing the minimal amount of work. I get it, and somedays I want the same thing. So these very gifted photographers are joining every new social media start up and flooding it with their professional content with little regard for what the service is intended to do. These people also tend to have the same work across multiple platforms which is also detrimental to for people looking to discover different sides of a photographers talent. If I have the same portfolio loaded on G+, Facebook, Flickr, 500px and Instagram what is the point of even maintaining all these services. I absolutely understand the value in participating in some, if not all, of those services, but if you’re sharing the same 50 or 100 photos across those networks than really, what is the point?
The point is that these people are yearning to be noticed. They want to be known and they want to be successful. Again, I get it. In order to be successful there needs to be strategy behind your social posting and you need to use these social tool as their intended. There is absolutely no reason you shouldn’t post your DSLR edited shots to a service like 500px, google+ or flickr, that’s is what they are there for. Instagram is called Instagram because the service is suppose to represent the photography you took in….wait for it….an instant. To be blunt, just because you are able to upload photos from your iOS photo library doesn’t mean you should. Photographer, including myself, sometimes have a difficult time identifying who their audience is and this is another reason we have these social faux pas’. Perhaps they just don’t understand people want to see on the go photos on Instagram, not fully edited produced shots fresh from Lightroom or Photoshop. Uploading these profesional shots because Instagram is a fun and easy way to share doesn’t legitimize the action. We’re not dealing with UN level diplomacy here, but I strongly believe photographers should respect the intention of these social networks and ultimately enjoy them like the rest of us do and not worry about always presenting their top work that has been delicately edited for hours on end.
In conclusion, understand who your audience is and use social networks as their intended. Everyone will be better off if we just see the best iphonography on Instagram instead of fully edited DSLR quality shots.
Until Nt. @natebenson
Nov 21, 2011 | Categories: General, Photography | Tags: 500px, DSLR, Instagram, Internet Celebrity, Kim Kardashian, Latergram, photo sharing, professional photography, Take out the chicken | 2 Comments »
Laura is one of the most fun, sarcastic, intelligent and quick witted person I know. She drops pipe bombs of truth and can quote Arrested Development with the best of them. She also is a genius. A legitimate genius, she even has the certificate to prove it. She came to my studio for a portrait session to let me try out some new gear and for her to update her social headshot. Here’s what we came up with:
Nov 20, 2011 | Categories: Photography | Tags: Buffalo, I shot, Laura G, photography, portraits | Leave A Comment »
Elmwood Village Mass Appeal 2011,what can I say that probably hasn’t already been said? Buffalo’s favorite producer and influencer, Erin Habes, again asked me to bring in some gear for a backstage studio to photograph well over 100 models for this years Elmwood Village Mass Appeal event. Last year I set up the studio in the basement stairwell, which made for the perfect fire hazard that we luckily avoided. This year was a little different as the entire backstage workflow changed so my assistant Drew and I had a very large workspace – Thanks for that perk Erin!
The thing I loved about working the Mass Appeal fashion show is the sense of community dedication that is presented in such a grand scale. I moved to Buffalo in 2007 and immediately understood how proud people are of their city. As I have lived here and been more and more involved that feeling still ignites in my heart and it’s really a blessing to be able to participate in events that bring so many talented people and characters together at one time. I’ve done a little traveling, for both business and pleasure, and even though its been said a thousand times it’s really a testament to say that you don’t see this time of community anywhere else. The only unfortunate aspect of this large community coming together is that I’m whole heartedly terrible at remembering names, so the three dozen or so ”Hey Nate, how ya been” conversations I had were slightly embarassing. I blame it on being dropped on my head as a child. So it goes.
Erin and her incredible team work so hard to make the Mass Appeal to happen and like Erin said at the show, it’s grown exponentially every year. Just from seeing the difference from last year, it’s incredible to see the transformation the show has taken. The Mass Appeal show really exemplifies how any space, with the dedication, can be turned into a first class venue. I had to text my wife Jen a photo of how the Lafayette Presbyterian Church looked last night because we were married there in August 2010 and it certainly didn’t look anything like our wedding day. The Carly & John from Road Less Traveled really did a fantastic job of transforming a 100+ year old church into a runway fashion show venue. To add to the production of Mass Appeal, Rob Imbs yet again kicked off the event with a stellar hype video to get everyone into the runway mood. Another piece of local flare that made the event even more entertaining.
From a photography standpoint I was very happy this year on multiple levels. I had a lot more gear this year which is a blessing and a curse. I upgraded my backdrop to a white vinyl as opposed to paper, which seems insignificant but turned out to be a lifesaver on a monetary level. Last year I went through two paper backdrops (one of which was still hidden in a corner that I hid last year). The vinyl worked out great as I was able to clean it throughout the evening, the downside is at a few points during the shoot it got too crazy to spare a moment to clean it which results in longer editing times.
Last year my main priority was to fill the room with light as much as possible. The situation I was in I had 20+ foot ceilings, different color temps everywhere and to be honest I didn’t trust my skill level of controlling the light at all times to be able to adapt to problems. I flooded the room three speedlites which mainly resulted in even and slightly flat light for every exposure. This year I rolled the dice and convinced myself to be in control of the situation at all times. I picked up a 50″ Westcott Apollo softbox which I used as a side fill, a 28″ gridded softbox as a key and a speedlite zoomed into 105mm over the subject on a c-stand as a backlight/hair light. I encountered several pro’s and con’s to this setup. Not so much cons, but happy accidents. I’m shooting entirely with Canon speedlites – 1 580 and 2 430′s and using the Canon 7d’s pop up flash as a commander for the speedlites. One thing I know for sure – I need to invest in some radio poppers. The pop-up as a commander is great if you’re in a jam as it can get the job done, but it certainly is limited and I discovered that last night. I never encountered a situation where at least two of my speedlites didn’t fire, but naturally I would have preferred if my entire setup fired properly . Also side note, I know most of you don’t care about any of this because you’re mainly here for the photos so if you read this statement hit me up and I’ll give you 30% off a future shootshoot. When you contact use promo code “I read it” and I’ll take care of you – $1 says less then three people who read that sentence, hahaha. Using the 7d as a commander led to some happy accidents where the hair light and the kicker would fire, or the kicker and key would fire, or all three would fire like I preferred. I didn’t freak out because it’s photography and its a learning experience and it gave me an opportunity to see what it looks like when different lights in the set up fire at different points. Was it the best time to have this type of experimentation? Probably not but you have to roll with the punches that are thrown at you because if you’ show your model that your freaking out then they will freak out and soon you’ll have 100+ models freaking out and my high cholesterol can’t handle that kind of stress.
Okay so here we are, the models of the Mass Appeal 2011 runway show. I have to thank all of them for running through the gauntlet of a hectic day followed by tremendous reward. All of the models looked fantastic and seemingly had fun. Mass Appeal brings out a lot of different models, which creates such a creative atmosphere and overall fun experience for the audience, themselves and for a photographer. I had professional, casual and first time models come onto my backdrop and all of them looked natural in their apparel and really seemed to embrace the whole concept of the Mass Appeal. Mass Appeal is one of those rare opportunities, as I said earlier, where so many different levels of talent can come together and present a first class event. And since I started out this paragraph with ” The models of Mass Appeal” it’s probably time for me to actually show some photography from the event right?
Okay – The models of Mass Appeal:
Thanks again to all the models from Mass Appeal. If you were a model, designer, make-up artist, hair designer or proud parent and want to see a more specified album please contact me at info(at)natebenson.com or leave a comment below.
Thanks again everyone, I had a blast!
Nov 20, 2011 | Categories: Photography | Tags: Buffalo Models, Elmwood Village, Erin Habes, Fashion, Lafayette Presbyterian Church, Mass Appeal, mobile studio, photography | 4 Comments »
A few weeks back my wife and I went home for our quarterly visit to Auburn where our families still reside. My folks were actually visiting Sleepy Hollow, NY that weekend so I didn’t have any commitments for them and my wife and mother and law are always wandering around from store to store looking for bargins – which they have mastered. This left me alone with no plans on a damp overcast Saturday morning with my camera, two lenses and a tripod. After spending some time on google maps and rethinking of spots I always wanted to shoot in the finger lakes I concluded with taking a hike through Fillmore Glen State Park in Moravia.
While I have nothing substantial to complain about compared to other people in this city, state or world, I needed some time to myself in the woods to hike and clear my head. Looking back, I’m a little shocked that I wasn’t able to make it to any of my normal hiking trails this summer or fall until I lumbered through Fillmore Glen. The responsibilities of being a husband and to clients didn’t grant me many opportunities to have one of those days to myself. My wife will attest that I did quite a bit of freelancing this summer and was shooting all the time. Any photographer will back me up with my claim that theres a difference when shooting for a client and shooting for yourself. I hadn’t been out to shoot for myself since early spring so part of me was excited and part of me was completely lost on what the hell I was doing. My normal hiking pack consists of my normal camera gear, but I always have a cheap compass, knife, flint, multi-tool, waterproof matches and a whistle. I’m normally not hiking through the Adirondack’s or a trail that incredibly far from civilization but my father always preached the importance of being prepared for any situation and those additional items provide a sense of security.
I walked along the gorge of the glen for approximately 1.5 miles, then took a significant rise in elevation and doubled back along the Northern ridge of the gorge. The whole hike was about 3.2 miles and yet another reminder that I need to give up Bacon. On the bright side I’m happy with some of the shots on my leisure shots.
Until Nt.
Nov 08, 2011 | Categories: Photography | Tags: Buffalo, Fillmore Glen, Gorge, Hiking, Lost in the woods like a Stephan King Novel, Photogrpahy, State Park, Waterfall | Leave A Comment »
Chaz Adams was one of the first people to dive into my offer for a portrait session. I’ve been offering these shoots to folks on Twitter and Facebook as a way for me to network, meet some of these people I follow and simply shoot someone and have a nice conversation. I hadn’t met Chaz before our shoot last week. We had began mutually following each other one day. Our shoot was the day after Miller had an epic meltdown so much of our conversation was based around the trad miller debate. In the end I think we agreed how ridiculous the annoying outspoken minority is in regards to Miller.
I asked Chaz to bring an item that defined him, as I do with anyone who comes into the studio. Chaz brought his snowboard, which deep down I was hoping for because I vaguely knew he was a snowboarder. He didn’t think I was incredibly crazy when I asked him to strap the board on and jump as high as he could. Great session with a really fun guy to shoot.
Nov 07, 2011 | Categories: Photography | Tags: Buffalo, Chaz Adams, I shot, photography, Snowboarder | Leave A Comment »
There are people in the world, and I certainly fall into this category, who know how to use photoshop and illustrator – then there are true designers in every sense of the word. Paul Panfalone falls into the latter category. I met Paul back in our days in the Wild Wild West known as Apple Retail. At the time he worked at the Genius bar and I was a Specialist and we never really interacted because the Genius room is a terrifying place for any n00b working at an Apple store. Paul left Apple shortly after I joined and seemingly that would be the end of my association with him. Once I discovered Twitter in early 2009 I searched for familiar faces to follow and in my searching Paul popped up. I knew Paul was a designer, and I knew he ran a site called Lovely Junkie. I figured I’d follow him, I was a design nerd who couldn’t draw but could appreciate artform. As time progressed we would see each other out and about but again, nothing serious. It wasn’t until recently did I start to follow Paul a little closer, I had noticed he’d randomly post clips of old school WWF wrestling from YouTube on Twitter – “Sweet, I love wrestling. Paul is okay in my book” I’d think to myself. I watched Lovely Junkie evolve into a shirt business and saw him peddling his goods at a book & print fair in Buffalo. Lovely Junkie would eventually evolve further into the more design orientated site Swivelarms which features a variety of 80′s inspired design posts and some of Pauls personal work.
My session with Paul lasted about 90 minutes. I didn’t have to worry about starting any of that always cheesy photographer/client chit chat because I knew I could always bring up old school wrestling to break the ice with Paul – wrestling talk only lasted about 1/3rd of the session. Once you break the ice with Paul, he’s incredibly easy to communicate with, which shows in the photos I was making of him. When you see Paul making a hand gesture or a facial expression it’s usually because we were in an in-depth conversation about one of the following topics that came up in the shoot – wrestling, design, photography & design pricing structures, knowing photoshop vs. knowing design, the third reich, the history channel, and Steve Jobs. Before I knew it I had snapped well over 100 shots of Paul, plenty for me to work with.
I had a blast with Paul, the easy conversation made for an enjoyable shoot which hopefully is represented in the final product. Readers of the blog will begin seeing more of my ‘i Shot’ series once or twice a week, hopefully more as I begin to shoot more portraits of interesting people. Make sure you check out Pauls site – Swivelarms. If you’d like to be apart of my ‘I Shot’ series simply contact me.
Nov 06, 2011 | Categories: Photography | Tags: Buffalo, Graphic Designer, iShot, Paul Panfalone, photography, portraits | Leave A Comment »
Tonight I had a portrait session with local blogger/snowboarder @ChazAdams. More to come.
Nov 03, 2011 | Categories: Photography | Tags: Bloggers, Buffalo, Chaz Adams, photography, portraits | Leave A Comment »
Alexis and David approached me about photographing their wedding & engagement after I photographed their puppy at Animal Outfitters over the summer when I did a puppy portrait shoot. We couldn’t have asked for a better day to shoot around the various hotspots around Buffalo. To be honest, it will likely be the last ‘good’ day we see in Buffalo until spring since today we saw our first snowflakes in the city. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky on sunday and we spent every moment of the afternoon hopping around Buffalo trying to make the moment.
We started the engagement shoot at Woodlawn beach and took some shots near the sand dunes that were exposed by broken fences. Alexis and David, as I would quickly find out, are incredibly easy to work with and could easily hit the cue’s I was asking them to hit. One of the most important aspects of the engagement session was to convey how fun and compassionate they were for each other. Woodlawn beach was a quick shoot, with your typical ‘look into the forever loving distance pose’ that we got out of the way quickly into the shoot.
After driving up route 5 towards the city was stopped by the ever expanding outer harbor to shoot at a recently renovated pier that sat along an abandoned grain mill. The outer harbor, politics aside, seems to be developing more than people want to give credit to. Now, granted, it’s not worth a ribbon cutting ceremony or anything, but they are making nice progress and seem to be adding enhancements that make sense to the area. The pier was a fun location as we tried to incorporate the old mill in the background as well as the depth that the pier provided us. At this point Alexis & David busted out their rivalry flags from inter college competition. Whilst walking out as we thought we were done I saw an overhanging steel structure, that I assume will be either a bus stop or just a resting area for pedestrians. I threw on the wide angle and positioned the sun behind one of the beams and laid on the chilled cement to get a really powerful shot of them embracing each other. What I loved about the scene was this decayed grain mill in the background overpowered by this modern/curved steel structure that seemingly has no place in the scenario. That’s Buffalo for you.
We headed into downtown to collect a series of images in the well known landmarks as well as some real interesting urban settings that you find hidden throughout the inner city landscape. We found a wall that sat up against an empty parking lot that had a nice gradient of leaves that were partially green and partially red. I really think this shot with Alexis looking slightly over her shoulder – it looks as if she’s feeling David’s presence through the warm smile on her face as he poses in the distance behind her. This is my favorite shot from the shoot.
We ended the day at ol’reliable – Delaware Park. We made our way the stone bridge which sits in the middle of the park and let them have some fun. It was a great location to end the day because there was the ambience of people walking about and enjoying the day, but still peaceful enough for the two of them to enjoy their shoot in private.
I couldn’t have asked for a better couple, they had fun with each other and didn’t mind being goofy and getting into the moment and they laughed at my terrible jokes which always helps. Laughter really brings out the best in these types of shoots and Alexis & David nailed it. Thanks guys!
[click 'show as picture list' to see list of shots from their engagement shoot]
Oct 27, 2011 | Categories: Photography | Tags: Buffalo, Engagement, Photo, Session | 1 Comment »
Despite my professional hatred for these eight legged spawns of satan, I had to use an opportunity this morning to photograph one of these little guys descending from the roof of my front porch.
Used a 60mm @2.8 1/125sec about 8inches from the subject.
Sep 10, 2011 | Categories: Photography | Tags: Canon 60mm f2.8, photography, Spiders | Leave A Comment »
