Marc Pampols

I've read a great article by Patrick Lavoie on Photo.net, Patrick is a professional digital photographer that describes her personal and unique workflow to make and process her pictures.

Digital Photography Workflow: Fashion Photography, by Patrick Lavoie

I'm very "obsessed" with workflows, I have always thought that using them helps you perfecting your techniques and doing new and creative things.

In this article, Patrick Lavoie discusses his unique digital workflow process tailored to meet the needs of his professional career as a photo retoucher and digi-tech working with high-end fashion photographers, the set of software and tools he prefers to use, and goals he accomplishes with his digital workflow. The article is enhanced with illustrative figures and screen shots, and includes examples of photo retouched jobs from Patrick Lavoie’s portfolio. Whether you are just entering the world of digital photography and need some tips and advice on how best to post-process your images, or are a seasoned pro, the insights shared here should be helpful with your own digital photography workflow and fashion photography post-processing.

If you are planning your wedding and you want to get a great photo and/or a cinematographic video work, StillMotion is one of the best you can find all around... watch this one!

Julia + Phillip SDE - Toronto May 31st from StillMotion on Vimeo.

You can watch more StillMotion wedding videos here

This is my new toy purchased this morning, a remote control for my Canon EOS 400D, the RC-5.

My first impression was pretty good, is very small (see image), comes with a battery and the shot angle is 360º, at least at a distance of 1m.

The price is 18-21 EUR, so it's cheap and a must-have for every photographer!

Canon RC-5 Remote Control

I have recently been accepted as a contributor in iStockphoto, a website where you can find and buy royalty free stock photography :)

The first thing you have to do if you are interested in being a contributor and earn money for every sell, is to pass a first question test, and then, submit some samples of your work to see if your images are technically and commercially ready to sell.

To pass the first test, you have to read some articles and documentation about copyright and quality of the images, then the images you have to upload should look perfectly clean and sharp viewed at 100%, this is a very important thing.

There are some more interesting photo royalty free websites like Fotolia, Dreamstime or Bigstockphoto.

I've been using some noise removal software for special situations like this one I show below, this picture was taken from the Top of the Rock, in the Rockefeller Building, New York.

If you look close, you'll clearly see noise specially at the sky, this crops are at 100%  

New York original picture

The best two programs I've ever used are Neat Image and Noise Ninja, both available as a standalone program and a photoshop plugin.

Picturecode Noise Ninja: After some usage, I prefer this one. It's easy to use, fast, "cheap" and produces in my opinion, better results than Neat Image.

Neat Image: This one is also very nice but in my tests always producted more artifacts than Noise Ninja.

And... after applying a noise reduction program (in this case, Noise Ninja) the New York picture looks better:

New York filtered noise with Noise Ninja