One of the things I love about northern Arizona is how many gorgeous sunsets there are. I took this picture on my way home from work.

Hand held, 1/13 second, f18, ISO 400, 29 mm

Have Fun,
Jeff

When the snow storms finished with the Southwest, it was still pretty cold outside. Here are a couple of fountains I photographed in Sedona, Arizona at about 11:00 am. No shorts and tank tops today.

 Hand held, 1/1600 second, f5.6, ISO 200, 55 mm

 Hand held, 1/1250 second, f5, ISO 200, 44 mm

While Flagstaff, Arizona has been pounded with snow, many other parts of the state have been receiving managable amounts of snow, and looking beautiful. Here’s a clip of the Mingus Mountains, as seen near my home.

Have Fun,
Jeff

Donate $5 or more to the United Nations Foundation for Haiti relief and you can download a previously unreleased track from Evanescence, “Together Again!” Go here to make your donation http://www.unfoundation.org/evanescence. Thank you for your donation.

Amy, you rock!

Photographs can add a whole new dimension to your writing. Magazine editors often prefer to have photographs to go along with an article, as they will attract readers that may otherwise not read that particular item. Having photographs available not only makes your writing more sellable, but editors will sometimes pay more for the photographs than the article. And by taking the photographs yourself, instead of the magazine’s staff photographer, you get to keep all the money for your article.

Your photographs should do one, or more, of the following.

• Be attractive or interesting enough to make someone want to read your article.
• Clarify something in your article that you didn’t have the room to fully explain, or that’s difficult to explain, in words.
• Tell a story that is not mentioned in your article, much like a sidebar in an article.

When you have photographs, mention in your query or cover letter that photographs are available upon request. Also say if they are film or digital. Don’t send photographs until the editor asks to see them.

Always check the guidelines of the publication you are submitting to, but as a rule the following will be true for over 90% of the publications you will deal with.

• Magazines that accept film will want 35mm slides. A very few will want larger film size.
• NEVER send your original slides, only send duplicates. A friend of mine was going to have an article about her appear in her hometown newspaper, and asked if she could take some of the photographs I had of her for the paper to use. I had taken many pictures of her when she was a dancer at Disneyland. Since I didn’t have time to make duplicates, I just gave her some originals. After all, the newspaper was a professional business that was used to working with photographs, right? A week later she returned, without the slides. She said the newspaper still had them. It took me two months of letter writing to the newspaper to have them returned. Of the ten I gave her, one was lost, one had been removed from the slide mount, had almost a quarter of an inch of the image cut off and put into a new slide mount and another had a staple in the middle of the slide. That was the last time I sent out originals.
• When mailing slides, put them into clear plastic slide pages, and sandwich them between corrugated cardboard. One piece of the cardboard should have the ribs running vertically, while the ribs in the other piece should run horizontally. Have one rubber band going from the top left to the bottom right corner, and another going from the top right to bottom left. This not only helps to protect your slides during mailing, but at the editor’s office too. I’ve had slide pages returned with boot prints on them, coffee stains, cuts, tears and more. Yet another reason to send duplicates.
• Create a filing system for your pictures so you can track them. S for slides, P for prints, D for digital, then maybe a year and roll or shoot number. So S0824-5 would be a slide taken in 2008, the 24th roll you’ve shot that year, and slide number five on the roll.
• If there is a person in your photograph, and you can see their face, you will need to have them sign a model release. You can buy them at most camera stores, or find them online.

You must be sure to use the proper film in order to get the best possible image. Here are a few tips.

• The slower the film (ISO 25 is slower than ISO 100) the finer the grain and the sharper the image when enlarged. For his reason, I would suggest not using film with an ISO of more than 100, or 125 for black and white. In low light conditions, you could go as high as ISO 400, but I would use this film sparingly.
• For digital images, shoot at the highest quality possible, and shoot RAW if possible. You will eventually convert the RAW images to JPG, but RAW lets you do the most manipulation of the image.
• A little known secret about film is that the color of the box often tells what the film does best. Fuji comes in a green box, and captures greens beautifully. Kodachrome has red on the box and captures reds wonderfully, while Ektachrome has blue on the box and shows blues at their best. All of these films capture all colors with excellent results, but these little color differences give just a little more “Pop” to the mentioned colors.

The problem with many people today is that their pictures have bad composition, thanks to watching television. Television is notorious for putting the subject in the center of the screen, and this is horrible composition. It doesn’t look bad on television because the scenes change so fast, about every three to five seconds, that you don’t notice it. However, in a still photograph it shows up as a glaring mistake.

There is a simple solution to this problem. Do you remember what a tic-tac-toe board looks like, or the pound sign on your phone (for Generation X’ers)? When you look through your camera’s viewfinder, imagine this symbol being superimposed over what you’re looking at. Now, place the main subject of your photograph at one of the four points where a vertical and horizontal line cross. This technique is called the Rule Of Thirds, and it will greatly improve your photograph’s composition.

If you are going to be shooting a photograph for the cover of a magazine, be sure to check where the title goes. Magazines may have their title across the top or down one side. Leave a blank area in the photograph for this. You don’t want to have some important part of the photograph covered by the title. Also check to see if other text will be placed on the cover to prevent this same problem.

The real secret to taking great photographs is to take a lot of pictures. That means shooting thousands of photographs. Practice makes perfect, and increases your income.

Hi Everyone,

I just added a couple items to my Events page. Head on over and take a look.

Have Fun,
Jeff

The V bar V Ranch has the largest collection of Native American petroglyphs in the Verde Valley of Arizona. As you can probably tell, this is the first time I have used a camcorder, and my first go around with the editing software, but you will see improvements as I create my photography How-To videos.

My thanks to Kevin MacLeod for the use of his music Night Of The Owl from http://incompetech.com

Here’s my girlfriend’s first video, all about New Year’s Resolutions.

After much serious thinking, I have decided to close down two of my websites. JeffColburn.com, my site for artists, and CreativeCauldron.com, my site for writers, will be removed in one week. JeffColburn.com will have all of its content removed, but the gallery of my images will be moved to CreativeCauldron.com. The later will have all of its content removed, except for the gallery.

This was a hard decision, especially since I’ve been running CreativeCauldron.com for 10 years, and it was chosen by Writers Digest magazine as one of the 101 best website for writers in 2002.

But over the years things have changed. I’m now focusing on my photography, and I just don’t have the time to maintain a stock photography website, a photographer’s blog, a writer’s website and an artist’s sit.

If there’s anything you want to look at from either of these sites, this is your last chance.

Have Fun,
Jeff

I love old graveyards, it’s like walking through history. Many of the old gravestones are very informative, or funny.

This is one of the graveyards in Jerome, Arizona, an old mining town and artist’s community. One of the people buried here even fought in the Spanish-American war.

As you walk around this graveyard you see all the burial sites that have some kind of fencing around them, but I’m sure there are other people buried here that had no fencing. Every so often you see a depression on or near a path that looks just like some of the depressions in the fenced off burial sites. This is probably a depression made when a coffin finally collapsed due to age. So tread lightly here as you may well be walking on the dead.

Hand held, 1/400 second, f8, ISO 100, 43 mm

Hand held, 1/125 second, f8, ISO 100, 18 mm

Hello,

Last week I found that www.Scribd.com was letting people download an ebook of mine for free (at two separate locations on their website), without my permission and in violation of my copyright. This is a book that I sell on my website, and so far, over 500 people have read/downloaded my ebook from Scribed, which is a potential lose to me of over $18,500.

A few days ago I e-mailed two DMCA notices to Scribd (one for each page), asking them to remove the pages with my ebook on them. So far, the pages have not been removed.

You should check to see if any of your work is there.

To have your book or article removed, go to the bottom of the Scribd page, and under Legal, click on Copyright, a new page opens with DMCA info on the right.

You may also wish to contact the law firm of Camara & Sibley (http://www.camarasibley.com/news-f.html), which has started a class action lawsuit against Scribd for copyright infringement.

Have Fun,
Jeff