Just because I love The Shins, I have to ad this one up today.

New artist to the scene, pretty cool, Spinner brings us a new video from Emma Pollock, who’s debut album ‘Watch the Fireworks’ should be on September 11. You can download “Limbs” mp3 from her site here. I could see here making the festival rounds next year, hopefully Bonnaroo 08, maybe Coachella also.

Acid Test:

Adrenaline:

I know, 3 posts in one day, but this was too good to pass up. It’s Faceball! Totally reminds me of working at AOL, or probably most somewhat fun office environments. Myself and other co-workers used to always throw stuff at each other, but these guys made a sport out if. Granted they are using beach balls, we just had giant exercise balls (seriously, they where about 2 1/2 feet tall) to throw at each other, well that and lots of other random crap you get from working at a large corporation. Nerf is good too. Anyway, check out Faceball.org and the videos of course.

An introduction to Faceball from Face Ball and Vimeo.

Yay, Early Morning Swim, my band is playing out in Durham on Nov 9. So if your in or around town, come check us out.

Gretchen sent me this site, Newsdesigner.com about design in the newspaper industry. It highlighted very interesting video taken at TED, on it now about a Microsoft project Photosynth, a developmental software that takes photos on sites such as Flickr and takes the tags on the photos to create communities within the photos. They use an example of photos of Notre Dame, with the software the user can zoom in and out of photos, no matter how large, and form photo to photo be able to effectively “zoom” in from places in the real word. Watch the video, it explains is better then I.

Also, and more entertaining we also have “Original Design Gangsta”

And finally, 20/20’s John Stossel on graphic design

Um, ya.

Ok, had to post this cause I though it was funny and since I really can’t stand Microsoft.

Are you in? Seems to be new social networking sites popping up on the web all the time. Well, many are new, many more actually are old, old companies finding new ways to interact with their users, such as Netflix. Anyway, what are you on now? Right now I’m on….

LinkedIn, a professional social networking site. I’m networked to quite a few friends, but mostly peopleI work with or used to work with. It’s actually very well done. Has job postings and work history for people.

MySpace, not bad, good for getting to know unknown music and finding bands.

Facebook, A friend from AOL just sent me a link today to sign up, so…what the hell.

Feversmile, OK, that would be this blog, duh. But isn’t blogging social networking also? BTW, Gretchen now has a blog, mostly to do with school, Thought Bubbles, check it out.

AIM, For those outside the industry, AOL Instant Messenger. Was a requirement when I worked at AOL, now I couldn’t live without it. It’s like the phone, but better. Now I can even video chat. Scary, the future is here….when it works. Oh and my screen name is Sight3Photo and if you spam me I’ll just block you, so don’t bother .

Ohio4×4.com, Ok, this is another site I run. Set up for The Ohio 4×4 TrailRiders, a 4×4 club I’m still a member of back in Ohio. It’s basicly a message board but we have monthly meetings and rides monthly.

SportsShooter, great site for sports photography and photojournalism.

I’m a member of several other message boards, but those are the big ones I take part in. What is everyone else involved in? Your welcome to link to me in any of my accounts if you have account on any of them.

Interesting photos and video essay on photos found of the Taliban.

Znet is reporting in their article “Web sites out of tune with musicians’ rights” how YouTube basically is grabbing the rights of artist’s works as soon as content is uploaded to their site. As stated,

YouTube takes a different tack. It claims a “worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license” to content uploaded on its site “to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display and perform” for any purpose as long as it is a business interest of it or one of its affiliates.

This is very dangerous, it basically means if you or a musician or movie maker uploads content to their site, YouTube (i.e. Google) has the right to make money and use your work to make money. Granted, they already make money from it in the form of advertising on the site. But the rights grab they are claiming allows them to directly sell the work(s) to TV shows, movies, whatever and you have no rights to say differently. While people get alot of exposure placing videos on YouTube, is it worth the potential to loose rights to your work and someone else to make money from your hard work with nothing in return?

Sam Roberts Band at Bonnaroo 2007
I came across this Sam Roberts Band video last night, great song and beautiful video. If you haven’t heard of him give him a try, the vocal melodies and song structures are incredible, I can’t stop listening to Chemical City released last year.

OK, this is so bad it’s good. Well good technique anyway.

I have to admit, I really love the Foo Fighters. The band that showed everyone David Grohl is a damn good musician, not just the “drummer of Nirvana.”  I too was disappointed by 2005 release, “In Your Honor.”  Not enough rocking, too much slow stuff and not an interesting album.  Doesn’t mean I won’t stop listening to “The Colour And The Shape” though, one of the greatest albums I can come back to time and time again and always enjoy.

September 25 the Foo Fighter will be releasing “Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace.”  The first releae and first song on the album, The Prerender, sounds like the Foo of old though, rocking and strong lyrics.  What’s a little more, if yo uwant to see them live, pre-ordering the cd from iTunes allows you to buy tickets before they go on sale to the general public.  I’d love to see them, though I’m not sure it’s in the cards right now.  Might see if I can shoot them though, I have to say they are on my list of bands to photograph before I die, or they stop playing.

OK, I’ve gotten a few questions off line about not being able to use photos and what you can use. I use the same mentality we used at AOL for using 3rd party photos.

The best idea is to ask to use a photo if you’d like to use it. Be honest and upfront about using someone else’s photos. Most time alot of people (non-pros) will be open to letting you use photos. Give a link to their page and always credit them. While I don’t particular like the photo stealing going on at Flickr, some users of the site don’t mind if people use their photos.  Check the usage marked on Flickr photos and you may be able to use some of the photos there.

Publicity photos. Musicians, movies, etc have publicity photos taken. They are for exactly that, press or publicity of the artist, show, movie, whatever. We took the stance at AOL that we are giving the artist, ect. press, which is what they want and the photos are paid for with that use in mind, so they are fair use. There are of course exceptions to this, generally if the artist is using a photograph and there is no photo credit with the image it was bought outright from the photographer to be used in this matter and can be used. But again, asking is the best way to make sure.

Take your own damn photos. Woody has been doing good job of this. Besides, check out his blog, it’s amusing most of the time.

Buy photos, most of us don’t have the $ for this, but you can set up accounts at Getty and other stock agencies and you can get very nice photos and make sure they are legal.

I am in no way a legal expert, but I have quite a bit of experience at photo rights and ethics. I claim no responsibility for anyone getting sued for copyright infringement or anything else for the advice given here. Use your head.

Ok, so I’ve been trying this freelance thing out basically since January. Hasn’t been going too bad, I’ve gotten a few good shoots, a wedding or two and thanks to some friends I picked up some contract photo research for college text books. Enough to pay the bills and with my severance package from leaving AOL and Gretchen getting some nice freelance design work we’ve been doing fairly well.

This week things got even better and by next week I’ll know even more. Saturday we picked up my new MacBook Pro. Damn, nice computer. I needed something to work on that is powerful enough to work on location for shoots and I can write disks full of images fairly quickly. I’m still installing programs on it, wow, it’s fast. I still use my desktop for regular editing, but wouldn’t be afraid to plug a monitor into the laptop to do work. I can also now work on location or not worry about getting behind on my research work when I’m in Columbus.

Btw, Apple on Tuesday announced new iMacs, keyboards (wired and bluetooth wireless), iWork and iLife. Looks great, I so want one of those keyboards. But I’ll do with what I have, not worth $50 when the one I have works just fine.

Anyway, besides the new computer, I got an email from settingPace (another friend/former co-worker contact) to do some work for them as well. So, double my work load, but better pay also, and I should be able to handle it. besides, it’s contract work, I can always tell one of them I’m busy on different weeks, and it should keep me on a more regular work schedule. And you know, I work form home, it can’t be beat.

Next, on the shooting front, I got a full two page spread in Our State Magazine for one of my photos. I’m very excited. Due out in Sept. I also am meeting with two different wedding photographers next week to see about shooting for/with them. I really don’t want to deal with the marketing and everything that comes with shooting weddings all the time. I’d rather show up, shoot, give photos and be done. I’m actually working with Bella Photography to do just that. I already have two wedding in Sept to shoot through them.

Hopefully I’ll keep shooting my normal stuff, but weddings are not too bad, and they are deceit money.  HS Football season starts next week, I’ll be shooting again for Max Preps, who got bought by CBS this summer, should be fun.  So, that’s where I am, what’s everyone else doing?