August Program - Interguild Competition

The August program will take place on August 13th at the Kovens Conference Center This month's program is the Interguild Competition between the West Palm Beach and the Miami Guild. The deadline for print entries in 7:00 pm. No exceptions.

Forms from the competition can be downloaded from the Member's Page of the PPGF website. Points earned in print competition count toward the Top 10 Photographer of the Year award. The race this year is fast and furious. This will be the last opportunity this year to advance your standing.

Please note that the August meeting will take place on the 2nd Wednesday instead of the 3rd. We hope to see you there. Let's bring the Inter-Guild trophy back home to Miami!

It ain't bragging if it's true, but I have to say that the search engine ranking of the PPGF website is nothing short of AWESOME! Almost without exception, if someone is searching for a photographer in Florida the PPGF website will appear on the first page of the search results.

14% of visitors to the PPGF site arrive from Google, 10.8 % from MSN, 10.48 % from Yahoo, 2.61 % from AOL, .6% from ASK.com, .51% from Dogpile, .23 % from Excite,.09% from Lycos, and .09 % from Altavista.

What this means is that nearly 40% of all visitors that reach the PPGF website come from search engines. Top keywords used in searches are Florida Professional Photographers, florida photographers, photographers in south florida, south florida photographers, portrait photography, photographers in florida, photographers guild, wedding photographers, digital event photography, photographer needed, Spanish Photographer Miami,weddings in Miami, baech weddings, digital weddings, etc...

This has interesting implications for our affiliate organizations like the FPP. There is a good chance that if someone is searching for the FPP site using a search engine, they will reach the FPP site by clicking a link on the PPGF site. The reason is that the search engine ranking of the PPGF site is much higher than the FPP site. The PPGF site has become an important portal which links the search engines with other photography sites.

The search engines regularly update the information listed on the PPGF site. Every two weeks the robots catalog the site, updating any changes. What this means is that any information on the PPGF website that is more than 2 weeks old can be found by using keywords at a search engine, and the information searched for will most likely be displayed on or near the top of the first page of search results.

It ain't bragging if it's true.

July Program - Digital Album Design with Ron Greco.

The July program was delivered by Ron Greco of Jacksonville, Florida. Ron's program was for the digital wedding photographer. Ron's presentation took us through the workflow that streamlines production. He demonstrated the use of templates to help you design your albums. Many thanks to Ron for the informative program.

Top 10 Photographer of the Year Totals

Clearly, this month's Interguild Competition will have a great effect on the final point totals for the Top 10 Photographer of the Year Awards. Here is your last chance to improve your standing or to break into the Top 10. The current point standings are as follows:

Digital Exposure by Jon Laye

Exposure is something that digital photographers have to deal with. The latitude of color negative film is gone for the most part. With color negative the idea was to get enough exposure. Even with 3 or 4 stops over exposed the lab could easily print the image properly.

With digital capture we are dealing with a specific range that the chip can record information with. If the exposure falls within this capture range then we get beautiful detail but if parts of the scene fall outside of this range then we get either white (Over exposed) or black (Underexposed).

We can use Photoshop to darken the white or lighten the black, but the detail and different tones that normally make up our shadows and highlights are gone. So white becomes light gray or black becomes dark gray but we have no detail. This exposure is expressed digitally on a scale ranging from 0 to 255. Each pixel in your digital photo can be expressed with a number ranging from 0-255, 0 representing black and 255 representing white.

Photoshop displays this exposure information as a "Histogram". You can bring up the histogram or view it in the Levels control box. You can make adjustments with Levels to distribute the pixels of your file to give ideal shadows and highlights. But if a pixel is at 0 or 255, black or white all you have is a solid tone, like the paint on your car. You can make that pixel darker or lighter but that area of pixels will all be the same tone.

So if the brides dress is over exposed, 255, then you can darken it but the detail of the fabric is gone, it was not captured by the camera. You can safely operate a digital camera using nothing but the histogram to guide you. The histogram shows you your exposure. Regardless of what your LCD panel shows you, you can trust the histogram. Exposures need to be much tighter than with negative film but since you see every exposure right after it is taken you can quickly make adjustments to the next shot and get a good understanding of how your camera reacts to various scenes. We never learned this with negative film because the lab corrected every image we sent. trust me, they corrected EVERY image.

With digital capture you will quickly learn how a white dress will fool TTL flashes and learn to predict how your camera will react. Some camera systems allow for greater post production controls then others. and with this I want to go into RAW formats.

July Raw Print Competition

The winner of the July Raw Print Competition in the Film Category was Geraldine Lago. The winner in the Digital Category was Mel Englander. Congratulations to Geraldine and Mel.

Membership

Jeff Heiges has applied as an Associate Member. The Board of Directors has passed a motion that Jeff Heiges be accepted as an Associate Member.