It’s been too long since my last visit to White Sands National Monument in New Mexico. White Sands is one of my favorite locations to explore and photograph. Next week I’m happy to finally return to this amazing location. If all goes to plan I’ll be concluding a personal project here and exploring other photogenic locations else where in the state.
Passing Storm - White Sands National Monument, New Mexico
The photograph “Passing Storm” (above) was taken as a monsoon was in the process of clearing. The gypsum sand took on a look and texture I had never seen before due to an overnight rain. The dramatic clouds and lighting were a real treat to witness on this morning. As soon as the rain clouds came, they vanished. Any moisture left on the ground quickly evaporated in the warm desert air.
This past weekend my wife and spent some time in Mendocino, California for our “babymoon”. With 6 weeks to go this was our last trip together before “Baby G” joins us. We stayed in the same place we enjoyed our mini-honeymoon 4 1/2 years ago. It brought back great memories and we had a fun time rediscovering the beautiful landscapes of the lost coast. Epic landscape photography was not the goal of this trip, but with an eye to the future I did scout several locations that I’ll be returning to photograph. When that will be I’m unsure, but it will happen. Here’s a “typical” view of the coastline in Mendocino county that is anything but typical by most standards.
A month ago quite a bit of buzz started to circulate with in the Twitter photography community about Easy Release (iTunes Link), a program that enables you to create model and property releases on your iPhone incorporating a digital signature of subjects and/or property owners. The potential immediately grabbed my attention and I approached the application publisher for a review copy. The review of the application was the easy part, but my background research on the acceptability of “digital signatures” in the form of an electronic touchscreen signature took much longer. Now that my research is complete here is the review…
Easy Release is just that… easy to configure, easy to use and easy to see its value. I give the team behind Easy Release a lot of credit as creating an application that is simple to use is quite a difficult task. The added perk to Easy Release is that it makes obtaining, logging and sending releases a very cool process. The out of the box thinking to obtain releases digitally is exactly the type of application I’ve been waiting for to maximize the business potential of my iPhone.
The Process (Ex. For a Model):
Click the “Plus” sign to create a new model or property release
Enter the “Shoot Name” and “Shoot Reference ID”
Enter Shoot location information “Shoot Country” and “Shoot Region/State”
Enter the Shoot Date
Enter the Model’s Name
Take a photo with your iPhone of your model
Enter the Model’s date of birth, gender and ethnicity.
Enter the Model’s address
Enter the Model’s Parent’s name if a minor
Enter the Model’s Email address and phone number
Enter the name of a Witness
Review the Release summary
Sign your signature (the photographer) with your finger on the screen
Let your Model review the agreement. They tap to agree.
Model signs the release using their finger on the screen.
Click to create a PDF of the signature and send it to your model & yourself via email
Fully written out the process seems long, but it takes only a few short minutes to complete.
Easy Release
Additional Features & Real-World Experience
The application allows you to customize your releases with a logo, specify a default language from 12 translations or add your own custom release text.
Of course it would be easy for me to just idly claim Easy Release is easy to use, but having tested this in the field I can attest that not one subject I asked to use the application had a problem or showed any confusion when reviewing the release or signing it. Logistically using Easy Release was much simpler than dealing with a paper release and fumbling for a pen. The convenience to email the release in PDF form to both the model and the photographer is also a huge time saver. Lastly and most importantly the biggest benefit was speeding up the process to obtain a signature.
Easy Release
What to Be Aware of…
The one weakness of Easy Release is that some stock agencies might not yet accept “digital signatures”. At the time I received my review copy of the application it was unclear to me if Getty accepted “digital signatures” in the form of an electronic touchscreen signature. Right off the bat I was able to confirm with Rasmus Rasmussen (@theprint) that iStock does not yet accept these type of “digital signatures” and prefers pen on paper signatures. I had to wait a few weeks to hear back officially from Getty as to whether “digital signatures” in this form were currently accepted. The response: “…the Getty legal team is reviewing this, but at this time digital signatures are not allowed on releases.” That being said the people behind the application are former Getty employees and are aware of this. If you’re outside of the Getty sphere and/or work independently then this is a non-issue.
Rating:
Easy Release is a solid application that is ultra intuitive to use. Not only did it live up to my expectations, it surpassed them. Whether you’re a semi-professional or full-time working pro photographer this is a must have application to have at your fingertips. For those that have been holding off on upgrading to an iPhone, this app alone might be reason enough to do so.
One of my favorite moments when in the field is getting to a location super early in the morning before anyone else shows up to “just be” and feel the pulse of the land. By this I mean I’ll stop what I’m doing, slow my breathing and focus my senses to take in the nature that surrounds me. First I’ll focus my eyes on beautiful features of my surrounding to take it in. Second I’ll close my eyes and take a deep breath to smell my surroundings. Third I’ll keep my eyes closed and focus my hearing to the sounds of the landscape. Lastly I’ll open my eyes and kneel to feel the earth beneath me.
Pulse of Yosemite
In this scene fall dried grasses caught my eye along the bank of an ice crusted Merced river in Yosemite Valley. The air was cold and carried an aroma of pine. In the stillness of the moment ice forming along the banks of the Merced river cracked and popped, while the woosh of a Raven’s flapping wings could be heard as it flew overhead. Shortly after opening my eyes, the call of a nearby Raven broke the silence and I kneeled to feel ice cold course sand and rock that lay at my feet.
To the untrained ear and eye it may very well seem as though nature lacks a heartbeat, but if you pause to tune in you’ll most certainly hear and see it.
Selections were made randomly thanks to the use of the random number generator at Random.org. Extra comments or entries were excluded from the random selection.
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If you’re on Twitter be sure to follow @Borrowlenses as they often announce specials and other discount codes.
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Thanks to everyone that took part by entering the contest. I’ll be working with Borrowlenses.com in the future in the hopes of bringing you more of these giveaways. If you’d like to see more of these types of giveaways on the JMG-Galleries.com Blog be sure to add a comment here. The more interest the more likely I can repeat such a giveaway.
It’s been 10 days since the release of Apple’s iPad and in an attempt to avoid blind hyperbole I wanted to get at least a weeks worth of use under my belt before I shared my thoughts on it. Here are 5 important reasons photographers should take note of the iPad.
1. It’s More than just an iPod
One of the most common complaints I’ve heard is, “Why pay so much for a big iPod Touch?”
I have to admit I thought the same thing when I first saw Apple’s announcement of the product, but having the device in hand I realized there was a lot more to the iPad (see my next point). One of the main reasons people have this thought, even after trying out the iPad for a short period, is that the vast majority of applications available at the time of launch were iPhone apps. Not many iPad apps were out yet and due to super tight secrecy there weren’t a lot of developers that had access to the device to refine their designs & approaches. The result, only a handful of really well engineered iPad applications have been made available to get a feel of what the device can offer. Tough to see the iPad being something beyond an iPod when you have so few iPad optimized applications to use.
2. Transformational User Experience
If you take one thing away from this blog post it’s “interactivity“. This is the single component of the iPad that converted me from cynic to evangelist. How much different could interaction be between an iPhone/iPod and an iPad? If there isn’t already one I’m sure in the near future there will be a user experience ratio generated to chart impact of touchscreen size to resulting user interaction. My guess is the amount of user interaction squares with the doubling of diagonal screen size. Seeing that the iPad has a screen that is roughly 2x’s the diagonal size of the iPhone, my calculation is that users will interact with the iPad x^2 times more. In other words if I interact with content my iPhone 5 times in one sitting I’m likely to interact with content on the iPad 25 times in one sitting. The iPad is designed to leverage greater interactivity.
The larger screen size enables a variety of new possibilities in relation to user interaction with content. This is really important if you’re a photographer. Whether you think of this consciously or not, you are a content creator and large touchscreens enable viewers to interact with content in completely new ways. At this early stage of adoption there is a lot of experimenting under way to determine future interaction designs and standards. Bottom line… for the first time viewers can interact with your photographic work via touch, beyond the realm of print.
3. New Publishing Opportunities
The iPad serves up a new image publishing opportunities in web sites and iPad applications looking to leverage gesture based navigation. Gesture (touch) based navigation works exceptionally well with images versus text and has the air of cool as this mode of content interaction is so new. In addition the resolution and screen size of the iPad benefits from large image use that might otherwise be prohibitive in standard web displays. Bottom line look for popular publications who are able to leverage the iPad platform to be in search of a lot more imagery at larger dimensions. If you’re a photographer who has it in mind to self-publish you’re going to have a lot of opportunity to highlight your own work in a similar fashion.
4. Think Beyond Apple
Whether you love Apple or hate them the iPad represents the first widely available tablet computer to consumers with a channel to acquire a variety of content (books, music, movies, tv, etc.) The true significance of this for content creators is that once web and application designers latch on to design, display & navigation standards every iPad competitor will leverage these standards as well rather than reinvent the wheel. Whether Apple’s star shines or fades in the tablet computer market their impact will be long lasting. This is something I had alluded to in my earlier post Why the iPad Doesn’t Matter, Yet Matters and it is for this reason that it’s important to track trends and developments with the iPad.
5. Placing Your Bet
How heavily should you invest in the iPad phenomenon? Should you buy an iPad? Should you be developing web content that is iPad optimized? Personally I think the larger touchscreen is as revolutionary, if not more so, than the advent of the computer mouse. Can you imagine trying to create content for a device that uses a mouse with out having a mouse enabled device? I think the same holds true with the iPad. It’s tough to explore the capabilities of a device if you aren’t working with it. I don’t think anyone will be harmed if they don’t jump on the early adopter bandwagon and there certainly will be viable competitors out there that release cheaper touchscreen devices. Whether now or later once you delve into this new format of content interaction you’ll have a clearer picture to the opportunities. While this is an all Apple forum at the moment it won’t be for long.
