Eric Hegwer says he is "100% wedding photographer."

He studied Biochemistry, and became an actual real scientist. His love of photography led to shooting weddings for a few friends, and he developed a passion for it. After some time assisting other established wedding photographers, Eric went out on his own.

He's so into it that he applied some of his technical programming skills to create a social networking website for wedding photographers, called the "Social Wedding Network." (Link at the bottom of this story.)

Eric likes to try new things and push his business into new territory. One such recent adjustment to his product line was to make a shift away from selling prints, and more toward the "iTunes Model" of selling images on a per-download basis.

His business has been doing quite well, so I asked if he would be willing to answer my standard nosy questions about his business model, workflow, and the current trends going on in the wedding photo business.

Eric is a very nice guy, and happily agreed. Thanks, Eric.

The New York Times is reporting on a new piece of software developed by Israeli computer scientists that take a photo and make it more attractive based on focus group research they conducted with 68 men and women. The "beautification engine"makes minor adjustments of symmetry, skin tone, and other factors that have been associated with "beauty."

PDN's Daryl Lang covered a very bizarre FOX News broadcast regarding a Newsweek cover during which Republican media commentator, Andrea Tantaros, is incensed that the image of Sarah Palin was not retouched.



For comparison, they include a cover of Barack Obama. FOX anchor Megyn Kelly calls out in disdain, "I mean, come on! They literally put a halo on the guy..." The mock indignation is so played out.

First of all, there is absolutely nothing wrong with this portrait of Palin. She's very attractive, and does not need to be retouched like "a supermodel." I don't think any reasonable person is thinking "Oh my God! I'm changing my vote because she looks like a hot 44 year old woman!" Maybe there's a little snaggle tooth action, but Obama has huge ears. Let's call it a wash.

Second, "put a halo?" Are ya kidding me? It's a shot where his head is partially obscuring the sun. If the implication is that they photoshopped in a halo, then they are flat out wrong. Yes, the editors selected the image, but they are a news organization with an editorial policy regarding manipulation of photos, and neither one of the photos was retouched.

Let's not forget that Newsweek wasn't the publication that made OJ appear darker...

Photography can be social. It can help us remember events in our life that we shared with others. But photography can also be informative, and in the case of photojournalism, often the goal is to be transformative -- i.e. to bring awareness to a social issue that might be flying under the radar.

Kosuke Okahara is a 2006 Eddie Adams Workshop alumnus based in Tokyo who recently covered the trend of "cutting" amongst teenage girls and young women in the society for Time magazine. Japan has a pretty spotty record dealing with their burgeoning social issues that is plaguing a hyper-polite, once dominant economic power that has floundered for many years. Okahara's work is eye-opening and distrubing, and points to the need for better social structures and mental health capabilities within society.

It feels really good to be back working full-time on the PhotoShelter Personal Archive again. It is, and always has been, our core product - it is healthy and strong and there's nothing else like it.

I am actually legitimately excited right now about all the upgrades we are about to inject into the Personal Archive. (That's right! Legitimately excited!) Our engineers are busy putting the finishing touches on things as I type this, and you'll get to see everything for yourself this month, in a few weeks, before the start of PhotoPlus Expo (which starts October 23 - we've got a large booth space -- #1808, so visit us.)

Here are my personal favorite updates:

1) Customization Templates. If you love the power of PhotoShelter's Seamless Customization system, but don't love all that HTML and CSS that comes with it, you're going to love what's coming. The process couldn't be easier and the templates, or "Themes", are nice and clean. The engineers showed it to me in action today, and I can't wait for us to roll this baby out for everyone.

2) Upgrades to the Virtual Agency feature. The Virtual Agency enables a series of independent photographers to "link" their archives together so that they can form a "virtual agency" of their own. The VA is getting an overhaul, will contain a host of new features, and one big huge surprise that I can't mention just yet -- but I am DYING to tell. (This is torture.) Let's just say that I expect people to really love the VA and there won't be any excuse not to use it. :)

3) New PhotoShelter Uploader. What's special about this version is that it allows threading. Translation: No more waiting for through that pesky "Processing Image..." period. Images will just immediately send one after the other without delay - which means even-faster uploads are coming. (Less time uploading means you'll have more time for beer.)

4) Member Forum. You'll finally be able to chat with other PhotoShelter Users right through the member forum. The forum will be broken down into a few different sections, and is similar to the message board we had within the PSC. If you're a fan of forums, but you've only got a free PhotoShelter account, you will be able to read the messages, but you won't be able to post. It will be a place for people to talk about all topics related to the business and art of professional photography.

5) Navigation Improvements. Getting around the site will be quicker, more intuitive, and very simple. Can I get a big "Yay!" for simplicity? Oh yeah.

6) PA Gallery Widget. We created a similar feature within the PSC, and it went over so well that we thought we should make the same thing possible within the PA. This will allow you to take a gallery of images, and create a widget that can be embedded in a website, blog, or even Facebook. You can go totally nuts and create one for every one of your public galleries if you want. Clicking on the widget will take you to the gallery itself within your PhotoShelter Archive. Super cool stuff alert!

We will be showing off these updates, and more, in our booth at PhotoPlus Expo, in New York City. If you do, I'll be happy to show you what I look like when I am "Legitimately Excited.

Have you ever attended a party where there are a handful of photographers mixed in with "normal" (as in non-photo) people, only to see the photographers group into a cluster, talking endlessly about topics only they could understand, and ignoring all the other non-photographers in the process? I see this a lot, and what's interesting to me is how they'll keep on chatting about the same things, over and over, until the beer runs out.

They're usually talking about "the business." Workflow, marketing, philosophy, the state of the industry - all popular topics. The problem with these meetings is that nobody ever writes all that good stuff down. (Which is probably a good thing. It would look weird.)

I thought I would poke my head into the PhotoShelter blog every once in a while, just to see if I could replicate that "party cluster," online and without the beer. This post is the first in a series of interviews and feature stories where I ask other photographers to talk about their workflow, sales and marketing strategies, philosophy and outlook about the industry, and what works and doesn't work from a business perspective.

Jason O. Watson is a Charlottesville, Virginia-based photographer who specializes in sports, action, assignment and travel photography.  His images have appeared in a wide variety of publications, including Sports Illustrated, ESPN The Magazine, The Perth (Australia) Sunday Times, The (Portland) Oregonian, Boston Herald, Richmond Times-Dispatch, the Charlottesville Daily Progress, and The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Jason is successful with his business, so I thought he might be willing to share some of his secrets with the rest of us.  Lucky for us, he did.

First, a disclosure. Bill lives next door to me, as he has for the past 6 years. We are both photographers (although one of us is more accomplished, and I'm not talking about me). We've borrowed equipment from one another before. And we both fulfilled our civic duty by serving on our condo board.

Ok, now the relevant stuff.

I suppose at some point, every photographer goes through a nude phase. Most of the time, the nudes look pretty average. You know, get the girl naked against a black background and some moody lighting and pretend you actually have a vision. But in the end, it's just another average nude photo that no one really wants to look at because it's neither provocative nor interesting.

But when I received a postcard from Bill about his show, Figurations, I thought, "Boy, these are both provocative and interesting."

You know how sometimes you'll shoot a portrait and the person's arm will be hidden behind their back, and someone says, "It looks like they only have one arm!" And you think, "Geez, I'm an idiot. I'm not paying attention and this stuff just happens unintentionally."

Bill does it intentionally.


Photo by Bill Durgin

Photojournalist-extraordinaire, James Nachtwey, was awarded the TED prize last year, and has been working on a project ever since in secret.




""I'm working on a story that the world needs to know about.
I wish for you to help me break it, in a way that provides spectacular proof
of the power of news photography in the digital age."

All shall be revealed on 10/3....but what could it be?

Guesses:

• The plight of they professional photography industry
• The Nikon D3x
• Sarah Palin's IQ is actually 180

I kid. I'm a kidder. But really, what is it?