Three Years of the Blog: Time for Changes and a Recap

A little over a dozen days ago, this blog turned three years old. At first I published every week. Later, several months would pass without a single post, then I would publish a series and stop again...

I wanted to describe photoshoots with a focus on lighting. It was also meant to motivate me to take better and better photos. That is one reason I publish RAW files and show photos before editing too. In the meantime, I also wrote several articles about retouching equipment: monitors, pen tablets, computers, and preparing a photo-editing workstation. I keep those posts up to date, and they are the most popular ones. Photoshoot descriptions attract much less interest, but they will still appear. The article about moving to Bangkok also became very popular. It has already been two years since I moved. I visited Tokyo and a few other places too, to make sure I had chosen the right place to live. Perhaps I will write about that one day as well.

Sleeping on a table, a standard sight in every McDonald's in Tokyo

Changing my camera and monitor

I have been taking photos for six years, but that is not entirely true. Over the past two years, for example, I did fewer photoshoots than I would have done in a single month in 2012 or 2013. That needs fixing. I have been telling myself this for more than a year. I recently sold my camera, so my last shoot was done with an iPhone :), and finally replaced my monitor with a UHD model, which gives me more motivation than ever. I hope it finally works. A Nikon D810 is sitting in my bag, but I will not start using it for another few weeks. Changing cameras will not affect the quality of the photos published on the blog in any way, but at least it will add some variety.

An interesting detail: to buy the D810, I had to sign a document stating that I was buying it for my own use and would not sell it for two years, under threat of a PLN 100,000 penalty. Only after signing that document and sending it by traditional mail because email was not allowed, could they send me the camera. At least they used a courier rather than a carrier pigeon.

As I mentioned above, I also bought a monitor while I was in Poland, a NEC PA322UHD that I have already written a little about here and on the fan page. Of course, I needed some way to transport it to Bangkok. Putting it in a suitcase was out of the question, and it would not have fit anyway. In the end it flew as cargo on a small pallet. I had to deliver it to the carrier a few days earlier. If anyone wants to do something similar, in my case it cost PLN 1,060 including insurance with Emirates. It can of course be done more cheaply, for example as oversized baggage with Aeroflot for EUR 150. There are plenty of options, but the question is whether putting a 30-kilogram package containing a monitor onto the baggage belt is a good idea. I decided it was not. I could have done that with my previous monitors, but not with this one. I would probably have thrown the old Dell into a suitcase between some clothes and not worried much about it. There were customs at the other end, of course, because cargo cannot avoid them. In Thailand, however, everything can be handled less officially, so it ended with another PLN 1,000 and the customs officers driving me home from the airport. Compared with the possible tax, it was a fairly good option. Although now I know I could easily have declared an even lower value for the package and reduced the tax to a trivial amount.

Unfortunately, you cannot buy more advanced monitors in Thailand, hence all the trouble. The important thing is that the package arrived safely and everything works. I brought many other things from Poland as well, including Lee filters for speedlights, a new pen tablet (size M works better than S with UHD), and plenty of sound-recording equipment that should be useful in the coming year. Those things are easy to get here, but it was simpler to put everything together through Polish sellers.

YouTube

A few months ago I launched a YouTube channel with videos about retouching and photoshoots, although there are very few so far. You may have seen some of them on the blog. Interest in them was zero, but I am not giving up. There will be more :).

I would also like to retouch my older photos again. First, because I did not know how to do it back then and butchered the photographs with the clone stamp. Second, because for a long time I did it on monitors completely unsuitable for the job. Some of those photos are still in my portfolio, but their colors are, well, a "little" embarrassing. If I retouch anything again, I may make a video out of it.

As soon as Affinity Photo is more polished, I will want to work with it and record videos about it. It is a Mac-only program, though, so probably few people will be interested. On the other hand, if they polish it properly, buying a Mac just for this program may make sense. For now, all I can do is wait for more updates.

No more training courses in Poland

It has also been several years since I started teaching retouching. At first I taught individuals, and later groups. Recently I ran the courses only once every six months, and now they will be even less frequent. The next edition will not be until April 2017. Not 2016, but I gave plenty of advance notice. Interest in these courses was quite high, apparently record-breaking. More than 1,000 people took part in the last two years alone. I tried to introduce improvements with every edition. They seemed like minor changes, but when I compare the latest edition with 2012, almost every stage is different. At first I also did not cover subjects adjacent to retouching, such as color management. Those are not retouching as such, but they are essential if you want to do it correctly. I kept the lecture format without practical exercises to the end, and I will probably never change my mind that it is the best option for retouching. You can pass on a great deal of knowledge in a short time. With another format, all it takes is one person in the group whose level is lower than everyone else's and the whole group loses out. Of course, nobody would remember everything I taught, which is why there were ready-made notes, videos, and so on. Those were frequently improved too. But that is all in the past now, because the middle of 2017 is a very distant date.

I do not want to give up training entirely, though. It will be available in a much more convenient form: an online version that you can access and start learning from at any time. This also has other advantages, such as separate training for people using the Polish version of Photoshop and another for those using the English version. A big launch promotion will run at first. If you do not want to miss it, leave your email below and I will send you the information once it starts. I hope that will be right at the beginning of next month:The promotion will include a lower price, PLN 350 instead of 600; unlimited access rather than an annual subscription; a discount on in-person training if someone still wants to attend; and an even lower price for people who have already taken part in my training, probably around PLN 190. I wrote more about it in this Facebook post.

Update: the online course is now available: link.

More of Bangkok

I could certainly write much more often about Bangkok and Asia in general. So far the subject has rarely appeared. I sometimes mentioned something on my Twitter, and much less often on Facebook. There has been almost nothing about it on the blog. It is currently the coldest season here, which is a great opportunity for outdoor photoshoots. The temperature will soon stay below 32 degrees, so you can shoot without worrying that the makeup will be ruined a moment later.

Part of a huge park in Bangkok where more than one photoshoot will probably take place

The future of the blog

There will certainly be more video, and retouching will come up more often. I also hope Affinity Photo finally gets the missing features and becomes polished enough not only to make retouching similar to Photoshop possible, but equally convenient. If that happens, there will probably be several posts about the program and a course on moving from PS to Affinity.

Very short posts may also begin to appear. They would not be shown on the home page, but would go into a separate category. It would also be good for the blog to become a more interesting place for models. The post about agencies was a first attempt at that. I think I have finally come around to shooting tests rather than only heavily styled beauty and fashion photos. I will work in that direction over the coming month.