Tilt shift effect for video...

A friend of mine asked this question on his blog a few days ago - is there a real tilt-shift for the video?

I didn't have an answer to that right away, but when I was putting up my PL mount lensbaby on Ebay last night, I realized that it, in fact, is the answer to his question.

PL mount is being used primarily for the video. I couldn't benefit from this lensbaby up until now, because I couldn't find anybody who could sell/make me an adapter for the Nikon camera. But today, I found a thread on some forum that there's an adapter maker in UK, who makes PL mount adapters for Canons! You won't find it if you look for Canon mount, because of the way he advertises it - he says XL1 converter. But XL1 is a Canon video camera (which I lucked out to have in my possession at this point, thanks to a very dear friend), which means that it's simply a Canon mount adapter.

So, there you go, Ed, there IS a tilt shift thing for a video. And I've got it ;).
I'm thinking, may be I should take that lensbaby off the auction. It being a rare thing and all *lol*...

A few years ago I bought it off hands of an indie filmmaker (by mistake!) who never got to use it. I never took time to pass it on to a person who can play with it. And you know what? The more these "accidents" happen to me, the closer I am to accepting the fact that, really, there are NO ACCIDENTS.

How could I have bought a lens with the wrong mount? It was very funny that day, I actually spent hours figuring out what's wrong with that lensbaby.... Uh-Oh... what's this mount for?? No camera store could answer this question after examining it. Of course I didn't ask video guys, I went to the photo guys... (N7VJDT9WAE68)

on sales tax for DIGITAL photographers in New Jersey

It's not that easy to find out everything you need to know about running a photography business in a short period of time - sometimes it seems the information never stops pouring in and the way our mind picks out useful things from this generous inflow of bytes is a big mystery.

Here's a link to an article that goes over NJ sales tax as it applies to photographers specifically.
I remember asking my accountant whether or not I should be collecting sales tax or not, and was advised that we don't collect sales tax on services (meaning ANY services). As long as I'm not selling any products, pictures, frames that is. Which I wasn't.

In the following article it says specifically that:

- any equipment that photographer purchases, rents, leases as well as replacement parts with useful life of more than 1 year are sales tax exempt (use form ST-4).
- all other replacement parts and supplies are subject to sales tax.

- sales of photographs for any type of use except advertising are subject to tax.
- sales of photographs for use in advertising is tax exempt and photographer must obtain a form ST-4 from a client.
- sales of a digital photograph, where it is delivered solely by digital means (e-mail, uploads, etc.) is tax exempt.


- all retouching/post-production services are subject to sales tax
- hours worked, travel expenses, everything that computes into a total - is subject to sales tax.

After reading this I was still left with a lot of question marks. Since most of the article seems to be related to film and print photographers - the definition was even more vague to me. So I called the NJ Divistion of Taxation and asked them for a straightforward answer as it would relate to services rendered by a "commercial" photographer like me:

- I don't shoot film and don't do prints. All my services produce digital files which are intangible property, except for situations when I provide the client with a CD. Do I charge tax for those?
- CD's are taxable.
- if I shoot a portrait session, wedding, anything else that's not going to be used for an advertisement?
- charge tax for the services.
- if I shoot business headshot/product/fashion for the website/promos/ads?
- then don't charge tax for the services.

Also they said that yes, all my post-production efforts should be taxable, except for the cases when it's done for advertising... or so I understood.

At the end of the day I still feel that I haven't figured it all out and that I'd like to get all my answers from them in writing, because the article leaves a lot to the imagination.... unless it's written by a programmer, then it all makes sense, but how would we know? :)

Why it all still seems vague to me? Because the 1st thing that person on the help line told me was - I must collect sales tax for ALL PHOTOGRAPHY SERVICES. Only after hearing me out and reading through the article with me they started offering more detailed insights. And it turns out that "no" - most of MY (specifically) services are not taxable. I rarely do private portraits...

Not to fret, just in case - I've come up with the following decision. If after my judgment that work is "advertising" I collect an ST-4 form from the client who's doing this work for promo/advertisement - they won't pay tax. If they don't give me the form - I'll collect tax. Simple as that.

Time to go and file those sales taxes by the way. It's quarterly and mine is due Oct-20!

The article is here:
http://www.state.nj.us/treasury/taxation/pdf/pubs/sales/anj2.pdf

The phone number for Division's customer service: 609-292-6400

Dr. Masaru Emoto...

I don't know how many of you readers are aware of Dr. Emoto's work, so I'll make a little introduction...
He's done research on water crystals by photographing them frozen after they've been affected by different words, music, thoughts etc.
It's all described in a series of books "Messages in Water" by Dr. Emoto, and is quite fascinating, especially for those unaware of his works.

There's also a very interesting film: "The Mystery of Water" which I highly recommend... and if you liked that, then watch "What the bleep do we know" - wonderful and inspiring film about how our thoughts affect our bodies and life.

Why am I all of a sudden writing about this? This morning my mom happened to mention that her favorite radio show hosts (she listens to every Wednesday on a local station in Latvia) were discussing Emoto's works and his visit to Latvia, him examining the water at various sources and establishments.
Dr. Emoto has checked out the local juice factory where the principles of his work are being observed, researched and put to use.
This peace of news made me giddy with pride and happiness for my home country - great things are being done!

Such efforts to do better for everyone are typically not widely advertised, mainstream news are still focused on bad stuff happening around us and we fall under impression of the world going the wrong way, while in fact - there's a perfect balance of good and bad.

In fact, I ran a google search on just "good news" and found a pretty large number of sources for only positive and inspiring news!

Now it's time to get back to work - a lot to be accomplished today! Stay warm - in and out and have a fantographic day~

Irina

Location! Location! Location!

I was going over some shots I did with Krista a few weeks ago, and remembered how she said:

- When you look at the pictures, you can never tell if it was done right here!

That's so true...

When I was just "taking pictures" - years back - I'd try to photograph a location first, then a person in it. Like all tourist shots - here I am visiting waterfalls, here I am near the statue of liberty, here I am in the desert... etc. Composition was totally different.

But now that I'm "photographing" portraits, I'm using only one element of the location. A line that leads here, the way the light falls, the way the texture can be used, etc.

So, you can rarely tell which location was used on what photographs, unless the elements are so striking that your eye recognizes them right away. Architecture is that way. But in nature, you can never tell :)

There's a lot of elements that come together here... a lot to think about when you plan a shot like this one:

Of course it doesn't help when you photograph a child, as they are very impatient, so this wasn't exactly a planned shot. It was simply something I saw and jumped up to photograph, even though I was totally busy with photographing someone else :).

But when you have a grownup person to photograph, you can plan pretty much anything, as long as location provides interesting light, textures, structures, lines, depth, etc.

Thank you, Krista, for lending your gorgeous blue eyes to please my lens :)

This past week has been packed with lessons. Big and small, valuable and ... frustrating.
I want to write about one of them, as it directly relates to photography as a business, for my own sake and for all of you out there who are trying to make it, but probably not today. Today we have gorgeous weather, therefore I'm in a much lighter mood and have wonderful plans for the future.

So, instead, I'll share some pics from the night flight last week.

 
Unfortunately I couldn't photograph nightscapes themselves - not enough ISO on any of the cameras... but you can trust me that it was magical. Like winter holidays, only in September. Lights, lights, lights everywhere... cars running on highways... white on the left, red on the right...

Everything and everyone turned into lights. It all seemed so strange and different from up there.

And, of course, there was the sunset. Completely unobstructed, beautiful light show.

Imagine watching all of that for a few hours and then you start developing this feeling of alienation from the reality.. As if nothing else exists but this world of lights, sound of the engine, voices in the headset...

and when we landed and got into our car... we became one of them - lights. Just a light on the road - like everybody else. And it felt very peaceful.