USB Flash Drives For Photographers

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If another photographer is looking for a supplier of custom USB flash drives, here’s a follow-up to a previous post about the inevitable switch from optical discs to USB flash drives for delivering client photos.

After looking through many sites, I went with Flashbay (flashbay.ca or flashbay.com). The account manager I dealt with was very helpful. The only hard part was deciding on a style of drive. I chose 4-GB “Kinetic” drives with medium-sized magnetic boxes. There are much fancier boxes but I’m assuming that most of my clients will throw out the box anyway.

The Kinetic drive works like a ballpoint pen: click on the end and the USB connector pops out; click again and it retracts. Pulling the drive out of a USB port automatically retracts the connector.

The medium-sized, clear plastic box, about the size of a deck of playing cards, is big enough that I can insert a business card (or maybe I can create a small thank-you card?). A smaller-sized box would make the overall presentation look too small. The little magnetic snap on the box is surprisingly effective.

Another option, although not as good from a marketing point of view, is that stores like Staples and Best Buy sell various branded and unbranded USB flash drives. Staples also sells tiny plastic boxes (meant to hold paperclips?) that can hold a USB flash drive or two.

 

Fast, Cheap And Good

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A common saying is “Fast, cheap, good. Pick any two.” Here are some exceptions to that rule where you do get all three:

Photographers often have to resize pictures smaller or create thumbnail-sized images for their web site. For Mac users, there’s a free application called ThumbsUp, from DEVONtechnologies, which makes this resizing process fast and easy.

Also free from DEVONtechnologies: (i) EasyFind searches your hard drive better than Apple’s Spotlight because it doesn’t have the restrictions that are built into Spotlight; and (ii) WordService is an indispensable tool when working with any text in any application.

Another tool that photographers may find very handy, especially when designing web sites, is this wonderful free ruler for Mac.

 

Flash Forward

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Over the past two months, I photographed in a few Toronto offices, from small to mid-sized. Here are a few random observations:

• Businesses seem to be almost paperless. I can recall when offices had rows and rows of filing cabinets.

• Fax machines are pretty much obsolete.

• At least half of the offices had their employees working on laptops. This may make sense in terms of cost and portability but one wonders about the health cost. Many employees’ necks and shoulders were hunched over as they were working on their laptops.

• No desktop computers meant that the office lacked the familiar sound of keyboard (and mouse) clicking. I guess this keyboard sound will disappear like that of a typewriter.
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Thoughts about business portraits

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Over the past two months, I photographed a total of 49 business portraits for a few small to mid-sized Toronto companies.

What never ceases to amaze me is how different each person looks. If you walk along a street and casually glance around at other people, you may think that everyone looks about the same. But, as with snowflakes, no two people are alike.

Face shape, eyes, ears, nose, smile, hair, skin colour and skin texture are quite different from one person to the next. This is very noticeable when photographing people up-close and later when editing and retouching the pictures.

Speaking of retouching, it’s always better to use a makeup artist and hair stylist before the picture is taken rather than relying on retouching afterward.
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Photographer’s Web Site Maintenance

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Yes, a boring blog title.

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been helping some photographers clean up and reorganize the back end of their web sites. Here are a few important things that every photographer should do with their web site (in no particular order):

• Change all usernames and passwords. A username of “admin” and a password of “1234567” are a disaster waiting to happen. Using the same combination of username and password for everything is foolish. Never use the default username or password.

• Back up the web site regularly. Really. Keep a copy of the entire site on a local computer and/or on a CD/DVD. Most photographers’ web sites are not that large and can be easily backed up. Web hosts often provide a way to do site backups through cPanel (or similar). Or, just use FTP to download the site.

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Best Face Forward

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The California Institute of Technology (CalTech) just published a rather silly study with the catchy title of “Perspective Distortion from Interpersonal Distance Is an Implicit Visual Cue for Social Judgments of Faces.”

This study claims to show that “the distance at which facial photos are taken influences perception.” The authors of the study even say they’ve broken new ground. (Every photographer is laughing at this.)

Here’s the CalTech press release and the study. Feel free to read them but the study just duplicates what every experienced photographer, model and actor have known for the past plus-90 years:

• If someone takes your picture with a short lens, the closer they stand to you when taking the picture, the more distorted, or unflattering, the picture will be. (This is well-known physics.)

• An unflattering portrait tends to create unfavourable opinions in people who view that portrait. (This is well-known human behaviour.)

This CalTech study certainly qualifies for a Captain Obvious award.
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Toronto Film Festival 2012

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With apologies for the length of this post, here’s my annual rant:

The 37th edition of the annual Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) is underway. From a photographers’ point of view, TIFF has always been considered to be very poorly-run event. Although from a movie-goer’s point of view, the film festival might be heaven.

I’ve been covering the film festival since 1988 and little has changed over the years. Off hand, I can count only four positive changes over the past 24 years:

(i) A photo pit was covered to protect against rain;
(ii) Many steel barricades were covered;
(iii) A red carpet was relocated from the small east side of a theatre to the much larger west side;
(iv) The central hub of the film festival (TIFF’s new building) has fast wifi (which works about half of the time – perhaps it’s overloaded during the festival?).

Let’s look at a few things (in no particular order):

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