Barack Obama in Columbia, Missouri

Well ladies and gents, if you’ve been following along today then you already know I worked very hard to bring you the images you’re about to see. After the other week when I missed the opportunity in Kansas City, there was no way in hell this one at Mizzou in Columbia was getting by me.

So, after a tremendous amount of effort, negotiating and professional photographerism (new word), I made absolutely sure I got in to this one.

Read more »

Alex and Megan - Engagement Session

This fun young couple was my last engagement photo shot for the weekend. I knew as soon as I sat down with them to discuss their wedding photography that Alex and Megan were going to be great to work with.

Read more »

Jason and Jennifer - Engagement Session

What a cool couple. Let me just start there. After some unsavory weather on our first session the skies cleared up and gave us a beautiful day to capture these two.

Read more »

Tin-Eye, The Photographer’s Bodyguard.

Let’s face it, image theft is rampant, and easy. Every professional photographer or visual artist on the net knows that much. With the number of websites in the world it is impossible to scour each of them everyday looking for someone stealing your work. Most of the answers to this issue lie in the realm of spending a lot of money to hire a company to keep an eye on things for you. Even that has flaws though as something always falls through the cracks.

It’s 5:30am here, and I’m awake fearing for my precious images’ well-being. That’s not really why I’m awake, but I am spending this fluke of free time today looking at something you need to know about. Tin Eye, and people if this thing delivers like it promises, well let’s just say that a career in IP law will be a very busy field soon.

The technology is still in beta right now, and the database is limited to about 900 million images. Obviously though - and this is the important part - the technology is here to find thefts of your work. I don’t know how it works, but it allows you to search the internet for your images, or altered versions of them. It is extremely easy to use, and at the moment it is totally free. Hopefully they will keep it that way. I imagine that a certain massive corporation will buy up the technology soon *cough* google *cough* and if they do I think the possibility of this being a free service is much greater.

I think beta signups are still open, so if you can you need to go check it out. I’ll keep playing with it, and let you know if I find a downside to this technology. I have to say though, unless they decide to charge hundreds of dollars to use it, I don’t see a downside coming.

*UPDATE - 10:57am*

So far I’ve tried to find most of the images that I have scattered around the web. No stellar results. I could view that as a good thing because that means it didn’t find anything stolen. It means something more important though. TinEye needs to update the database and crawl more websites. I understand that it must be very difficult to build something like they have. Fact is, it needs to evolve. 900million is an astronomical number of images for sure, but it doesn’t scratch the surface of the images on the web.

My stance is still one of hope, because the technology is fantastic, and the fact that I couldn’t find anything of mine doesn’t mean much in the grand scheme of things.

My suggestion… crawl flickr, catalog their images. Then approach google and either work with them, or sell the technology. It has a ton of potential, but the database needs to get much much bigger before it’s a viable option for lesser known images and orphaned works to be found and identified.

New old stuff.

From time to time I go back and look at old shots. I’ve found that when I give myself a few weeks or months between the first time I see them and when I revisit them I usually find things I didn’t notice before. Like a good photo that I would have overlooked otherwise.

I’m not sure exactly why that is, but it feels like I’m discovering something nobody has ever seen before. I suppose in a way that’s true.

An Article and a Model.

Hello everyone! I hope you all had a safe, fun Fourth of July.

Life is busy as ever over here. I’ve been so swamped with photo and design work I’ve barely had time to think about writing, much less do it.

Google Alerts has become my new best friend, every day I get an email telling me what new stuff google has found with whatever search term I decide. Naturally, I decided that my own name would be the first thing I wanted to know about. Since I’ve started using this service, I’ve discovered that there are a hell of a lot of people that have my name. I did find something cool though.

I was interviewed several months back about my use of flickr.com for photography. The author didn’t know if the article was going to be published or not, so I just forgot about it. Well, it did get published and google let me know. How cool is that?

Here is the link

In other news, another out of state model made the long trek to shoot with me. Although we only shot for about an hour she was an all-star and we got a ton of great shots in that short amount of time.

There are several more images, but I can’t decide on my favorites yet…so you’ll have to wait a bit for the rest.

Hope you are all doing well!

-David

Reagan and Dan

I have never met a more laid back couple in my life.

Reagan and Dan have been the ideal bridal client every step of the way. They searched for a photographer that matched what they liked (glad it was me) and let me do what I do best…run around like a madman and take thousands of images.

At the beginning of the day I split up my photo-squad and sent my assistant Hector over to take shots of Dan while he was getting ready.

Read more »

Portraits With Ashley

Ashley came in for her second session with me last Saturday, stunning me with another breathtaking shoot.

She likes to be humble and say that she doesn’t know what she’s doing. That may be true and if it is, the girl is a natural. Any of you photographers out there reading this… Get a hold of her, not only could she use the experience but you know you need her face in your book. End of story.

I will post some more as I get her approval.

Until then, ciao my audience.

David Bickley, Professional Photographer

Busy Busy Bee

Lots of cool stuff in the pipes folks. Since the launch of the new site several things have happened.

1.) A local college has asked me to come speak at a fashion design class about fashion photography and the fashion industry.

2.) I will be speaking at two middle schools about my career as a professional photographer and designer.

3.) Two of the free photography sessions I was offering were donated to the Missouri Heart Gallery to help foster children find a home (unfortunately I will not be able to show you those photographs, but I will post the gallery tour schedule so you can attend if you like).

4.) The fine folks at Bludomain.com asked to interview me for my new portfolio at www.davidbickley.com. The interview hasn’t been posted yet but I will post a link to that as well so you can all revel in my dorkiness.

5.) Two projects that I worked on at my former agency won Silver Addy’s (an advertising award). One of them was my very first project for that agency (The logo for a company called Purple Tree Technologies, I am also responsible for the web design for that company). One client that I did some web programming work for, took best in show for their trade publication campaign. Kudos to the whole team for their hard work.

6.) My current agency also won two Addy’s, one silver and one gold.

7.) I also gave this blog a face-lift. I will be trying to rotate it out every few months.

Cool stuff all around.

I am a man with plans, and there will be plenty more to announce soon.

Until then, take care.

David Bickley, Professional Photographer

Ladies and Gentlemen, We Are Live

Chances are if you are a frequent visitor here, you will have already noticed the new section of the site. For those that didn’t, you will find that www.davidbickley.com no longer takes you to this blog, but now leads to a site where you can view a brand new portfolio section of my photographic web presence.

There is still some work to be done, but I plan to have this site in it’s final iteration by the weekend.

Thank you all for your patience and support while this has been underway. It has been an experience for sure.

- David Bickley, Professional Photographer