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.

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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.

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Roots n’ Blues 2008 – Buddy Guy

Yeah, so Buddy Guy was here at Roots n’ Blues… and he was good, no doubt. He was also probably the most famous person on stage the whole weekend.

That may be part of my issue here. Keep in mind this is nothing against Buddy Guy, he is an incredibly talented artist and I have the utmost respect for him. This is more about his people. One guy in particular, a Napoleonite (my own made up word) with long brown hair and a goatee that decided to try to drag me away from the stage by my shirt.

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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.

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

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

Crazy Photo Weekend

Let’s just jump right into the photos, eh?

This is Ashley, a young woman with a ton of potential who has taken part of the offer I posted about last week. She doesn’t have a ton of modeling experience, but as I’m sure you’ll all agree…you can’t tell.

More after the jump.

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Unprecedented

After I started talking about things I would do in the new year. I started thinking “I’m going to do something this year, that I haven’t done in many years”, and as a result I’ve decided to hand out a bunch of free shoots.

So, here’s what I’m doing:

10 free full-day modeling shoots ( 5 random people, 5 of my choosing )

1 free wedding.

“So how do I get this deal David?”

I’ll tell you. In the upper right corner of this website is a button that says “contact me”. You click that and fill out the contact form with the subject line “free photos”, in the message box…tell me a story. Tell me who you are and why you want to shoot with me (yes “because it’s free” is acceptable, I suppose)

I’m going to give this until the end of February. Then I will choose the winners and post them here.

- David Bickley, Professional Photographer

Ninja Duck

Today, I leave the office briefly and who is waiting for me when I get back? Yeah, you guessed it. Ninja Duck is waiting.

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Holiday Suprise! (not a fruitcake, promise)

Well friends, if it hasn’t hit you yet I’m sure it will soon. The holidays are upon us. “Black Friday” (a marketing phenomenon exclusive to the good ‘ol US of A) is a mere two days away. For many people, holiday shopping is a stressful time…much like planning a wedding. Now I can’t do anything to alleviate the stress levels of the shopping herd but, I can do something to make life a bit easier on you and your fiancee.

As of today, I am offering a 15% discount on my wedding collection prices to any bride and groom that book their photography before the end of this year. It doesn’t matter what day you are getting married, or what year, so long as you book that date before January 1, 2008.

“That’s great David, where are your prices?”

Easy, just click the button on the top right of this page that says “contact me”. Fire me an email with that contact form and I will send you all of the information you will need.

- David Bickley, Professional Photographer