Review: Instant The Story of Polaroid
Ever since Polaroid announced that it was done with instant photography and the Impossible Project started up, I’ve been obsessed with instant photography. I had some of the last packs of Polaroid film and still have one pack in the fridge that, most likely, I should use pretty soon. Anyhow, when I heard about Instant: [...]
Review: Life is a Gift: The Zen of Bennett
Most people know of Tony Bennett as the amazing musician, but he’s also a painter and does watercolors. I had just come from checking out a watercolor show of a high school friend, Iain Stewart, when I decided to crack open this book and start on it while visiting my family in Alabama. Right off the [...]
ASMP Releases iPhone app review
Software to manage model releases are a great tool for photographers and there are several options on the market already like Easy Release, but now ASMP has got their version out and available for free! Anyone who’s a professional photographer no doubt is familiar with ASMP and all the great education and advocacy work they [...]
Leadership and ISES Eventworld
Coming off attending ISES Eventworld, it was fortuitous that the book I brought to read on my flight was Leadership Gold by John Maxwell. As a board member of the ISES-NCC chapter, we attended the conference early for some of the leadership training and I found that to be very useful. The best thing about [...]
Book Review: What Got You Here, Won’t Get You There
Successful people have little reason to change… makes sense doesn’t it? That’s sort of the gist behind Marshall Goldsmith’s book “What Got You Here, Won’t Get You There”. It’s a great read for anyone who works with others and/or is a leader so it really hit home for me. As a small business, one of [...]
Book Review: Zilch
Zilch is a book about doing more with less, something we hold as a value at Orange. Since our inception, we’ve always valued that, not just because we bootstrapped our company but also from a social responsibility angle. Waste is something we don’t like, especially when reducing it can both save the environment and save [...]
Review: Herb & Dorothy – A Film by Megumi Sasaki
If you don’t know who the Vogels are (and even if you do) you should definitely check out the award-winning documentary Herb & Dorothy, directed by first-time filmmaker Megumi Sasaki. The film tells the story of a charming couple, postal clerk (Herbert Vogel) and librarian (Dorothy Vogel), who built a contemporary art collection with very little. [...]
Documentary review: architectural photographer Julius Shulman
Case Study House #22 is perhaps the most iconic and famous of Julius Shulman’s photographs and it is one of the many subjects in the documentary Visual Acoustics: The Modernism of Julius Shulman. The film is quite educational and many iconic buildings that Shulman photographed are described with details on his creative process as well [...]
Book Review: Onward by Howard Schultz
Chances are you’ve been into a Starbucks at some point and if not, that you know the brand. People have all sorts of feelings about Starbucks but one thing is for sure – they’ve had a very interesting ride as a company. This book tells of the experience of Howard Schultz, the two-time CEO and [...]
Book Review: Purple Cow by Seth Godin
Seth Godin should be a familiar name if you are a photographer and/or marketer. He has been writing books and speaking for some time now and I finally got around to reading one of his earlier texts: Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable. The book was published in 2003 and it discusses a pretty [...]
Movie Review: Art & Copy (psst, just watch it!)
As photographers we are often in the same boat as the creatives who work in advertising – with similar clients, similar goals, and we’re often working together on projects. Having come from an agency background, watching Art & Copy: Inside Advertising’s Creative Revolution was a joy. Kevin here at the studio recommended it and the [...]
Chip Conley’s new book
If you work in hospitality in the Bay Area then you most likely know (or should know) who Chip Conley is. I won’t go into his back story but he’s the founder of Joie De Vivre Hotels, one of the top boutique hotel chains around(and based here in San Francisco). A while back my business [...]
Lego Cameras!
We love using film cameras, plastic cameras and other novelty type bodies so this LEGO Digital Camera is pretty awesome and something that’s probably more novelty than anything else but we think it’s pretty cool. Too bad it’s not in orange, but I guess since it’s Lego’s we should be able to make an Orange [...]
Best Business Practices for Photographers book review
Recently during a flight to and from a shoot in NYC I read John Harrington’s book: Best Business Practices for Photographers, Second Edition and it’s got a wealth of great information for all photographers and small business owners. He also had covered some of the info in his presentations at ASMP’s Strictly Business 2 – [...]
Point and Shoot Digital Camera Review: Samsung SL620
This camera takes some amazing pictures even when using the flash indoors in the evening. My friend J Zubiere, a makeup artist, had the Samsung SL620 during a shoot out in Las Vegas, and I was really impressed by how great the shots came out in all kinds of environments. She also used it poolside [...]
Point and Shoot digital camera review: Pentax Optio W80 underwater camera
Being professional photographers, one of the most common questions we get is: “What’s a good point and shoot camera?” Since we often don’t really use point and shoots very often, we thought it would be useful to post short reviews of the ones we have shot to put all that information in one place on [...]