You don’t need to go to photography school. Odds are if you are reading this you weren’t really considering it, but even if you were there is soo much information out there about photography these days, and so many other opportunities for hands-on experience like being a photographer’s assistant, that I don’t think school or classes are necessary. There are still many reasons people would choose to go to school for photography, but when it comes to basic information about fundamentals, it’s all online.

The difficult part is sorting through massive amounts of information to find those little bits that will really teach you something. One problem I’ve noticed with the internet is all the hype about new products and fads takes up so much virtual space that it’s hard to find fundamental information. Every time a new camera comes out there are a million blog posts about a handful of new features, drowning out other valuable information about cameras. If you do want to lust after some hot new body (camera body) there’s really only one place you need to go:
http://www.dpreview.com/

But now for the meat of my little article here: learning how to be a better photographer. I have aggregated two posts from two great aggregators, http://www.diyphotography.net and http://lifehacker.com/ into one super-post that teaches you all about color and lighting in photography.

How to Get the Best Color out of Your Photos

and

13 Photography Lighting Video Tutorials

And once you’ve consumed all that information, all you need is to implement these ideas. Just get out and shoot as much as possible, and give yourself the freedom to experiment and you will have completed my photo school. Sorry, I don’t have any diplomas.

Just one of those things that needs to be shared with the world. Accumulonimbus by Andy Kennedy Accumulonimbus from andy kennedy on Vimeo.

It's time once again to pay tribute to my favorite movie of all time, The Big Lebowski.  I'm trying to embrace my inner dudeness to prepare for the return of one of my favorite shows I've ever done, Rollin' Outta Here Naked: A Big Lebowski Burlesque. The video promo from last year explains the show pretty well, but as we →

New technology for performance capture means that actors may not be totally replaced by animation as video games swallow more and more of the entertainment market.  I have no problem with video games becoming more popular than movies as long as video games can do a better job of storytelling than they currently are. Not only are stories crucial to →

Last Night I got to see the books for free in Millenium Park as part of the the Downtown Sound New music Mondays Series. Schedule at http://www.wbez.org/Event_Detail.aspx?eventID=2020 I had a great time, and will no doubt be back for The Budos Band, if not so much for Caribou on July 12th. The Books are just as much filmmakers as they are →

I was asked to make a horrible portrait of two actors for a short film. This is as bad as I could possibly make it. I did more research than was neccesary because I found Awkward Family Photos. This site is even better than cake wrecks. http://awkwardfamilyphotos.com/

This actually happened a little while ago, but if you haven't seen our ad in Crisis by the Neo Futurists, then check it out on the oomphotography site. It's catchy and funny. http://www.oomphotography.com/ Also Crisis has one more weekend left. http://www.neofuturists.org/crisis.html

Good job fellow Awesomonster Dave for writing "The Rise of Emperor Eric" and also to Manny for being in it. I highly recommend people check out their bios at www.awesomonster.com especially Dave. Dave has a great bio.  The show just got a good review from Tony Adler at the Chicago Reader http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/Event?oid=1874700 And while your at the reader, why not →

I could have gone all witty with the title, but all you need is the exclamation mark.  It really says it all.  Except that it doesn't say that I'm playing David St. Hubbins.  I should say that too.

These guys are inspiring. Steve Lambert Simmer Down Sprinter from Steve Lambert on Vimeo. and Jim Denevan