I got a post for photographers today. I made my own bounce card/reflector and I call it the “reyflect” (thanks to my wife for coming up with the name). I have had the reyflect on my camera for about 3 months now and I use it anytime I am bouncing flash off of ceilings. When you are indoors, bouncing your flash is the best way to get soft, flattering light. It also helps to have a way to bounce light forward while you are bouncing to add some extra fill to your subject.

I got the idea for this creation after seeing the A Better Bounce Card videos and demonstrations. Peter Gregg used photo paper as a bounce card, he came up with different ways to alter the paper to create different effects. They are great videos and walk you step by step on how to create your bounce card and I basically used his instructions, only using different materials. I didn’t like the idea of using photo paper that had to be replaced after a few times of using and abusing it. I wanted to use some type of material that would be more permanent. If you would like the step by step tutorial just click the read more!

Update: I was talking to Peter Gregg about the reyflect and he told me I would have to be careful of specular light, harsh light produced from reflective surfaces, on the faces of subjects. I do not know much about lighting so I appreciated the feedback. I am going to take some test shots so you can see some differences and I am going to flip the reflector around to the white side and see how that affects the subject and hopefully it will produce a more diffused and soft light. I’ll post my experiments soon!

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Just wanted to make a post for my fellow photographers out there who are checking the blog. My friend Patrick Daly introduced me to the website Reinvigorate.net that allows you to track the visitors who come to your site. Now there are plenty of trackers out there but this one has really impressed me. Here are just some of the features:



1) Real Time Visitor Stats

2) New/Returning Visitor Charts

3)Daily/Weekly/Monthly/Yearly Traffic Tracking

4) Visitor Details (Browser, Operating System, Browser)

5) Session Activity (What pages they were viewing)

6) Referrer Information (How people found your site)

Basically you can find out any information you would like besides the personal information of a visitor. Why is this information useful? No, not to be a stalker. But it can help you improve your site and it can let you know what people find useful and what type of people are finding your site. You could even find out what keywords people are typing inside search engines to find your blog. That alone could help you jump up in search engines if you know what type of words people are looking for when trying to find information.

It is a great website and worth checking out. It is in beta trial right now so you have to sign up and see if they will allow you to create an account. They even have software you can download for your Windows or Mac that will really allow you to track visitors in real time. The second some visit your site you will know! Now if you want to go that extreme, well the option is there. Hope you found this helpful!

This site isn’t all about me, it is for anyone interested in watching a business grow. I also want to be able to share some of the things I do to stay organized.

One of the main ways I have been learning about business, photography, and photoshop has been through blogs and websites. I have tons and tons of websites bookmarked that I like to reference whenever I need, but the number of sites has grown tremendously and it can be hard to keep track of the sites I save and what information I liked from each of them. Yahoo! has seemed to have a nice solution to this problem through Yahoo! Bookmarks. The new Yahoo! bookmarks allows you to create folders and subfolders for all organizing needs, but the best thing about Yahoo! Bookmarks is the ability to “tag” your sites with information. So if you find a wedding photographer you can simply type in “wedding” as a tag or if it is a book album company like Leather Craftsman you can tag it with “photo book”. You can also leave a description of the site if you want to remember specific things on the site. So when you sign into your bookmarks all you have to do is type in any keywords into the search box and those sites will pop up for easy access. That is one nice way to keep up with your growing number of websites.

For managing your blogs there are countless numbers of sites that offer aggregated newsfeeds. My favorite is Netvibes. It is easy to use and easy to customize. It allows me to resize any columns I desire and it lays out all my favorite blogs easily for me to read all at once so I can see what sites have been updated. Another nice feature is being able to simply scroll over a newsfeed and it will let you read a brief snippet of what the blog says. Saves some good time there! Another site I just love! It also also you to add tabs for different categories if you so desire. It has so many features to add to make it personalized and I haven’t even attempted to try everything yet. Go check it out if you are not happy with your newsreader!