Tony Roslund now the district representative for the Spokane chapter of Professional Photographers of Washington (PPW). The PPW is the local affilliate of the Professional Photographers of America. As the district rep, it's my job to drive membership, coordinate events, find guest speakers, and keep our community informed on the latest news. If you're interested in becoming a member, please download the application here.

 

Some recent changes to membership:

Although the organization is called Professional Photographers of Washington, you don't need to be a professional to join. A new category called "Enthusiast" is available at a reduced rate. Members in this category receive all the same benefits with the exception of voting rights.

Additionally, if this is your first year of membership with the PPW, you can join PPW as a "First Year" member for only $59.

Lastly, and this is not a new category, students can join for only $50yr.

 

How well do you see color? Find out with this simple Hue Test from X-Rite.

 

If you have an interest in photography and want to move from location shooter to studio owner, your chance to get the education you need is coming with Super Monday! This educational event is coming to Roslund Photography on May 16—and Anthony Roslund is joining in to share his secrets for Studio Workflow. It’s the next step to take towards running that studio you always wanted! Roslund's class, "Studio Workflow" (COURSE NUMBER, WA20), will show you how to plan for success in the operation of your studio. This class (WA20), is part of a nationwide educational event by Professional Photographers of America (PPA). Called Super Monday—as the majority are held on Mondays—these classes are known for individual and focused attention. With its limited class size, Roslund's "Studio Workflow" is perfect for showing you how to achieve the successful studio you’ve been wanting. Ready to learn the skills that will help you on your way to professional photography? Sign up now for this Super Monday chance near you: www.ppa.com/supermonday

If you know me at all, then you know I'm an Apple fanboy (to say the least). Much of the reason why I love my Macs so much is the software that goes along with them, especially the stuff created by third-party developers. Here's a short list of some of my favorites you may (or may not) have heard of:

10. Carbon Copy Cloner Clone, synchronize, backup. Schedule and forget it. The easiest (and free) backup utility.

9. EXIF Viewer is a small Mac OS X application to display EXIF information in JPEG files coming from digital cameras. Launch the app and drag a JPEG image onto the icon.

8. Rip It Transfer DVDs to your Mac with ease and speed. Then take your movies with you without the need to carry around discs.

7. TextMate brings Apple's approach to operating systems into the world of text editors. Full featured, great for editing HTML, PHP, and plain-text files.

6. Transmit You need to transfer files. Maybe to an FTP or SFTP server, or the cloud via Amazon S3, or using WebDAV. You maintain a website, do backups, or upload photos. This is THE app for FTP/File transfers.

5. TaskPaper is a simple to-do list that’s surprisingly adept. Many to-do apps have so many bells and whistles that they become overcomplicated. This one is simple but very powerful.

4. App Zapper The uninstaller Apple forgot. Drag & Drop simplicity.

3. Coda Text editor + file transfer + svn + css + terminal + books + more. One window web-development. This has many similar features as TextMate, plus Transmit's file transfer engine.

2. Dropbox Cloud storage for just about everything. Integrated into more and more apps all the time, this is like a remote hard drive (and it's FREE).

1. CloudApp CloudApp allows you to share images, music, videos, files, etc. Much like Dropbox (though not as popular), with a few extra stunning features. Make sure you download the taskbar add-on under Tools menu.

That's it! My top 10 lesser known favorite apps. Best part is that they are all either free, or very inexpensive. Plus they ALL have trial versions available!

OK, one more as a bonus:

Onyx is a multifunction utility for Mac OS X which allows you to verify the Startup Disk and the structure of its System files, to run misc tasks of system maintenance, to configure some hidden parameters of the Finder, Dock, QuickTime, Safari, Mail, iTunes, Login window, Spotlight and many Apple’s applications, to delete caches, to remove a certain number of files and folders that may become cumbersome and more.

Here's a tear sheet from the November issue of Professional Photographer Magazine regarding my cover contest win! Annual print and/or digital subscriptions to the magazine are available here.

I've been invited to participate as a judge for the 2011 Professional Photographer Hot One Awards! The Hot One Awards are one of the industry's biggest, highest-profile competitions for photographic products. Every year, a range of items are rated, from tripods to travel case—and everything in between. The results are posted in Professional Photographer Magazine. I'm honored to be included on this exclusive list, and I'm looking forward to seeing what our industry has to offer for 2011.

Shortly after I shot the JoyCig images, I was hired by another e-cig company, A Smart Smoke. These guys are the Cadillac . . . or better yet, the Rolls Royce of electronic cigarettes and offer many different colors and styles, all of which they wanted photographed for their new advertising materials. As usual, the client had a few concept images to guide me, but left the specifics up to me. There was one item that was nearly pure white, which was a little challenging to shoot on a white background and not disappear, but the hardest image to capture was the stainless model. The last image shows it combined with two other colors, the hard part here was adding enough light to the darker items, without blowing out the highlights in the stainless model (which is closest to the light source).

I recently photographed 5 models for Uspa Supernatural to promote some of their unique hair styles created by Annie Grieve at  Green Salon & Day Spa. Once the company has made their final selections, the images will be used for advertising and training purposes.