I'm an advertising photographer/videographer based in Los Angeles, California. My mission is to create striking advertising photography, corporate photography and editorial photography of people for major advertising agencies, fortune 500 corporations and major magazines. I shoot photography and video assignments throughout California including Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego as well as the rest of the world. As a photo educator I am happy to share my unique vision and methods. I'm currently also teaching classes at Santa Monica College in video production for professional photographers and photography students.
As an advertising photographer that is also into video I’m always looking for the best media I can get. I want fast, sturdy cards that I can trust to record and keep my data safe. This is especially true when I travel. I’m going to be spending over three weeks in China shooting once in a lifetime projects. I taking the Hoodman Raw Steel 1000x Compact Flash card and 300x SDHC cards.
Hoodman 300x SDHC
Hoodman Raw Steel 1000x compact flash card
Just remember to update your firmware to the latest version before trying to use these cards in your cameras. You might find some side benefits like upgrading the Canon 7D firmware to the 2.3 version will allow you to finally control the audio levels manually. It does not deal with the issue of connecting professional audio XLR cable which will need to be run through a Beachtek adapter but again there are many advantages in controlling the audio by doing it that way
Last chance! Hurry and get your submissions in to the APA 2nd Annual Short Video Contest. The contest closes Sunday June 2th, so you only have a week!
The prize for the“Best Overall” category is partly sponsored by Agency Access and is a 1 year membership to TV/Broadcast Database
The Agency Access membership lists are the key to your direct marketing success. No matter your market or budget, Agency Access has an option for you. And with the launch of the brand-new TV Database, you can open up new markets with buyers who hire for TV media. A brand-new Broadcast database of 6,000 creative contacts with jobs in broadcast media. Recognizing the fundamental effect evolving motion-graphics technologies would have on visual arts markets, Agency Access set out over a year ago to create a new database of television – and broadcast-industry contacts, and to make it the most updated and refined list of potential buyers in those select markets.
The ideal complement to our global database of over 90,000 creatives, the TV/Broadcast Database is a highly targeted marketing tool for illustrators becoming animators, photographers becoming videographers and any freelance artist trying to connect with broadcast-industry contacts – art directors, creative directors, television producers, traffic managers and more.
A list membership also lets you:
Search the database by contact, company or brand
Create as many customized lists as you need
Refresh your lists with recent additions whenever you want
Download data and create your own labels and reports
Use our Database Changes feature to monitor who’s moving where
Other Agency Access services include:
Email marketing, campaign manager, design services, direct marketing, and consulting.
The Controlled Vocabulary Keyword Catalog (CVKC) is ideal for creative pros that want a thorough set of terms for keywording images for use in their choice of a number of professional metadata annotation tools. Version 3.0 contains approximately 11,000 keyword terms organized in a hierarchical structure with segregated synonyms. A broad range of people, lifestyle, and concept themes are included. Use of the CVKC insures consistency in the selection and spelling of specific keyword terms and helps guide the keyworder to appropriate synonyms.
Takes the Guess Work out of Searching:
A controlled vocabulary makes a database easier to search. Since we have many different ways of describing concepts, drawing all of these terms together under a single word or phrase in a database makes searching the database more efficient as it eliminates guess work. However, arriving at this efficiency requires consistency on the part of the individual indexing the database and the use of pre-determined terms.
A Familiar Concept:
It’s likely you are already familiar with the concept of controlled vocabulary. Phonebook Yellow Page listings are arranged using controlled vocabulary. For example, a search for “Car Dealers” leads you to a note to “see Automobile Dealers.” At a basic level, this is how a controlled vocabulary system works.
One Search is All it Takes:
Conducting a search in a database that uses controlled vocabulary or indexing terms is efficient and precise. The biggest advantage to controlled vocabulary is that once you do find the correct term, most of the information you need is grouped together in one place, saving you the time of having to search under all of the other synonyms for that term.
Valued at over $1400/year, the power user account gives you full access to First Cut’s professional video collaboration tool that saves you time and money during post-production and editing. You’ll have nearly unlimited resources to share, collaborate and organize your post-production efforts with over 56 video viewing rooms, 7 concurrent projects, and up to 20 collaborators on each viewing room per month. In addition, you will have full access to our excellent service/support and continual product updates.
First Cut Pro is a professional video collaboration software built to streamline the video post-production and editing process. This software focuses on three vital aspects of the feedback and approval process: collection of feedback, organization of video notes and integration into the current post-production environment.
They have integrated feature-set is host agnostic which utilizes the security and availability of major video hosting services. Leveraging that technology, they deliver content to video stakeholders in a web-based viewing environment enriched with tools to provide frame-specific feedback on the various cuts made during post-production.
Supporting a streamlined feedback collection, they have built and continue to improve upon, a project management interface. The interface is intended to clearly deliver video notes to project managers and editors for review. During the note-review process, users are able to identify important edits to be made based on the content of the notes generated by the viewing room and it’s viewers.
They have built the ability to export specified video notes into a number of formats. First Cut Pro currently supports the ability to export markers to .CSV files for a spreadsheet, .XML metadata files for Adobe Premier/After Effects and Apple’s Final Cut Pro (7 and 10), as well as a formatted .txt file for import into AVID Media Composer. Combined with the other features available in First Cut Pro, our marker export feature allows collaborators to easily provide actionable feedback directly to editors in the simplest way possible.
First Cut Pro creates a user-friendly environment that promotes collaboration during video post-production. The ability to simultaneously contribute allows for increased communication among team members, optimized time usage of all stakeholders decreasing total post-production cycle time, and reduced confusion during the feedback process.
The prizes for the “Best Motion” and “Best Overall” sponsored by Glidecam – HD-4000 and XR-4000 respectivelyin the APA 2nd Annual Short Video Contest.
Whether your running up and down stairs, circling the bride or traveling over rugged terrain, The Glidecam hand-held stabilizers are the ultimate production tools that deliver the highest production value to cost ratio of any products in their class.
Each HD-4000 Stabilizer and XR-4000 Stabilizer offset, foam cushioned, Handle Grip is attached to a free floating, three axis Gimbal. This allows your hand to move up and down, and side-to-side, thereby isolating your hand’s unwanted motions from the camera. This up and down movement alleviates the bouncing, pogo type action often associated with our competitor’s system because their handle cannot move up and down. This design feature, coupled with the overall higher inertia of the HD and XR-Series systems, produces superior award winning stabilization when compared with our competition.
Glidecam is presenting the XR-4000 hand-held stabilizer a lightweight, hand-held camcorder stabilizing system designed for compact and full size cameras weighing from 4 to 10 pounds to the winner of Best Overall category.
The Glidecam HD-4000 is the prize for the Best Motion and is the number one selling Hand-Held Stabilizer in the world today and offers advanced features and a degree of sophistication never before seen in a line of Hand-Held Camera Stabilizers.
Interested in winning one of these hand-held stabilizer? Check out APA’s 2ND Annual Short Video Contest for 2013 at www.tinyurl.com/apavideo
As a commercial photographer in Los Angeles, CA, most of my photographic subjects are already predetermined as part of the assignment. So it is a joy to photograph on my own. I try and keep a camera with me as much a reasonable. I get to practice developing my photographic eye. Watching the play of light. Finding compositions in the jumble of shapes around me.
This time my found photographic subjects were rocks along the seawall. The light seemed to caress the smooth round surfaces late in the day. I found one design after another. I struggled to take what was chaos and find order. I realized I must first take in the whole and then find the areas that most interested me to photograph. I wondered if while placing the rocks if the workers just considered strength or somehow drawn to the designs they were creating. While photographed in color the rocks were monotone and I felt they were best represented in B&W.
Ventura CA Seawall Rocks by Lee White
Ventura CA Seawall Rocks 2 by Lee White
Ventura CA Seawall Rocks 3 by Lee White
Ventura CA Seawall Rocks 5
Ventura CA Seawall Rocks 6 by Lee White Photography
Being an advertising and editorial photographer and videographer in Los Angeles I have spent decades going on location. My advertising and editorial photography assignments have taken me around the world but some of the most fun have been local assignments that I can drive to within a day. This is specially true with what has happened with air travel lately. Not only do I get to take extra equipment, but I get to visit additional locations along the route. I get to stretch my shooting eye along with my legs at these photo stops.
Recently, I drove to Tucson Arizona from Los Angeles so had the chance to drive through the sand dunes near Yuma on I-8. I got there around 3:30 in the afternoon when it was a balmy 105 degrees. There were mild gusts of wind that blew the extra fine sand swirling around my feet. If you watch the video the video closely you will see it flowing over the surface in some of the shots.
Amazingly enough even through it was a Sunday afternoon the dunes were mostly undisturbed. One set of footprints went up the top the major dune but other that that the civilians had not trod over everything since the last thunderstorm wiped away their traces. I wish I could say that about the two people that later walked within feet of my tripod and me continuing on directly into where I was filming. Since both had cameras and were taking pictures I wonder were the courtesy of asking if I was done shooting went but…
Can you tell I edited this on Premiere Pro? Of course, not. Unlike cameras with particular compression formats or lenses with certain characteristics that might be visible in the final video, there is nothing to tell the viewer what software was used to edit the video. A long time Final Cut Pro user I am checking out other NLEs. The attached video was done in a few hours on a friend’s Premiere Pro system.
I had the chance to spend a day training on Premiere Pro in a class by Weynand training at DV Expo in Pasadena, now called Rev Up Transmedia. I found Premiere Pro to be very similar to FCP7. There are some useful features like being able to edit many formats without the need to transcode and the speech to text. There are a are some differences in shortcut keys, color correction, rendering and I’m sure more once I have had a chance to work with Premiere Pro in my own editing suite I’ll find more.
Lee White working with Panasonic HMC 40 on Manfrotto tripod and fluid head
Once again, I’m wearing the most comfortable hat I have ever had, the Redrock Micro cap.
As an advertising photographer who also shoots and instructs video classes, I have people ask me about the new Final Cut Pro X. Well after spending a day with Diana Weynand training at DV Expo with X I have a few impressions.
For those who are just getting into video and have no experience with other editing programs except for possibly Imovie the approach Final Cut Pro X takes will not seem unusual for editing and in some ways I like it. The X approach to organization and selection is handy since keeping organized and finding material is such a big part of video post-production. Nothing kills creativity more than the frustration of not being able to find your material.
Some of the terminology is different from past editing software including Final Cut Pro 7 with terms like events and selections replacing projects and edited clip. The heavy use of metadata is also different but very useful in the world of file based content and aliases used in NLEs.
One of the complaints about Final Cut Pro X has been not being able to use your editing in other programs including past versions of Final Cut Pro which has just been resolved with the update giving X the ability to export and import XML files. Apple also just started offering a 30 day trial version so you can have of taste of what the new approach is like.
Make it big. As an advertising photographer in Los Angeles, I learn long ago clients love to see their product large in the photograph. Although creatively, in the past, this might not have served the purpose well, now it could be the best advice for much of how photography and video is seen. As more and more photography and video is seen on smaller and smaller screens the only way to really see it is to make the subject big.
My Secrets of Video for Photographers seminars and workshops take me across the nation. As I flew to Unique Photo in New Jersey to do my events, I had a chance to watch the latest Pirates of the Caribbean movie. Just a month before this I was in Kauai where they filmed much of the movie. While watching the movie on the tiny screen in the aircraft I could barely recognize the locations I was just at. If I had seen the movie on a 40 foot theater screen the impact of the locations might have been greater. As it was, I had to wait for the medium close-ups to close-ups to visually follow the story. I attribute my less than enthusiastic reaction to the movie to this size issue.
The reverse of this is true when I am watch the Wild China series by the BBC on my iphone. Most of the action is set in the close-ups with wide vistas used for presenting the overall environment. Admittedly, Wild China was produced to be seen on TV where Pirates was for the “big” screen which brings me back to thinking about where your images, be them photographs or video, are going to end up. When you are deciding how to shoot each shot consider how your shots are going to be seen, on a forty foot screen or a four inch screen.
Red Giant, is a software company known to make improvements that its’ users want. This holds true for the latest version of Magic Bullet Suite 11. Right off, the installation is simpler in that you only have one install with one serial number rather than one for each plug-in for each program.
Among the improvements that stand out that I like are the Cosmo and Looks2. The Cosmo is a skin-retouching program that combines parts of Colorista ll and Mojo into one easy to use plug-in that has only six sliders. It keys on the skin tones so it automatically follows without keyframing the subject.
The Looks2 takes some of it’s new capabilities from Colorista ll so you can stay right in Looks2 to accomplish many tasks that used to require you to go to Colorista ll. The more flexible vignettes are also a nice addition.
☞☛Mt. SAC, Walnut, CA Two-day workshop April 19-20, 2013
First day lecture and demo second day shooting and editing
New Jersey, Unique Photo, Video seminar and workshop
Sept 16 and 18 see blog and http://university.uniquephoto.com/e/
Continuing - Photo29 "Video Production for Still Photographers" at Santa Monica College. A class in video production for professional photographers and photography students. http://www.smc.edu/schedules/2011/fall/default.htm
Just past - Atlanta, Showcase Photo & Video, Video seminar and Workshop
August 26 and 27 see blog and
http://www.theshowcaseschool.com/
Portland, Pro Photo Supply, Video seminar and workshop
June 10 and 11 see blog and
http://www.prophotosupply.com/p-events.htm
Just past - Sennheiser sound capture event at Santa Monica College May 3 see blog http://www.leewhitephotography.com/blog/?p=825
Past - Panel discussion for Brooks, Institute of Photography.
Hoodman USA