byJoeyBaker » personal

Signed and Released: Side Projects Are So Good

Joey — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 04:05:38 +0000

Common thinking in the photography industry is to always have a side project going in addition to your main job. Work, even photography work, is tough. You’ve got to have a personal project going to keep you sane. Turns out having a side project can lead to some really good work too. Just ask Google about their 20% rule. After a long time of not following this sage advice, I am now fortunate enough to announce two.

The Vancouver Project

A good friend of mine, Andrew Burton, and I have been talking for a couple of months about the rise of DSLRs with video capability and what it the implications for sports photographers. Andrew had the foresight to see that this new technology would come to head in the very near future – namely the coming winter Olympics in Vancouver. Exploring thought, we also realized that this Olympics would be the first since the rise of the real-time web, live video broadcasting from cell phones, Google Wave, and, and, and. Our realization lead to a plan of action which we’re calling The Vancouver Project. Stop by and check us out. Shameless plug: if you’re in a position to help by spreading the word to the right people we’d love to hear from you.

Linked Photographer

In other news, I’m writing a book. That is a very weird sentence for me to write. I write posts, tweets, cutlines… not books. But, apparently, that’s happening :) An excellent friend of mine, and phenomenal fashion photographer, Lindsay Adler, approached a few months ago saying that she was looking into writing a book, would I be interested in co-authoring? Today, I signed the contract. We’ll be writing a book that’s got the tentative title Linked Photographer. It will be part treaties, part howto, and part reference on how photographers can use social media for business. It’s a bit more than a for-dummies book, but We’ll be launching linkedphotog.com soon, so stay tuned!

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I Support iPhones, Not Internet Explorer

Joey — Sun, 31 May 2009 00:34:50 +0000

Over a year ago, I started telling my friends that, “I don’t support PCs.” I had gotten really tired of being everyone’s (free) tech support. The problems were always the same: My WiFi doesn’t work! || How do I move to a new computer? || I have a virus! || etc… That, and after going all mac for a few years, the PC interface just felt clunky to me. I really felt inefficient working on darn WinXP. So… I just told everyone to go get a Mac, then come to me if they ever had issues. I went from doing 2-3 housecalls a week to one every six months. Don’t get me wrong – I love all my friends, but I’ve learned that in the drive to be a “nice guy,” it’s reasonable to set limits on what other folks can ask you. Without exception my friends would grumble, deal with my Mac evangelizing, and go ask someone else to fix their problem. There were no hard feelings (that I know of – I’ve had a beer with each of ‘em :] and I’d guesstimate that 40% of them have now bought a Mac.

iPhone support

To the point of this post: this blog now supports iPhones. I finally got around to installing the wonderful WPtouch WordPress Plugin, and I must say – it’s rather snazzy. In much the same way that I don’t support PCs, I don’t support Internet Explorer very well. But, to prove I’m an Apple fanboy, I do now support iPhones for the 6 of you who visited via iPhone in the last 30 days :]

Somethings make you think…

I don’t know if this is because of my lack of IE support or some comment on the attention span of different browser users or an indication that the people who read this blog tend to not use IE, but a screen shot from Google Analytics on the right.

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Joey Joining the NewsTrust Team

Joey — Wed, 20 May 2009 15:24:48 +0000

I will be joining the NewsTrust team this summer as the Communications Intern. I’m very excited to be working with NewsTrust which is a non-profit that works to find and evaluate quality journalism and promote media literacy. My job description for the summer:

Assist with editorial (articles and multimedia), community and marketing projects, and help develop our nonprofit social news network because NewsTrust wants to expand the quantity and quality of users on the site so that the site can become the community platform to promote quality journalism and increase media literacy.

I’m looking forward to starting in June!Similar Posts:

3.5 Years of College… Over?

Joey — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 05:40:14 +0000

I took a leave of absence from Syracuse University today. I’m a senior with 1.5 semesters of school left. The whole experience was … weird. I looked up the process online and found that I had to go to my home college to get the correct paperwork. I appeared, and asked for an academic advisor. After 20 min, or so, I was politely escorted into an office of the only advisor available, only to be told she could of no assistance. I’ve been to academic advisors at least five times in the past, and have had the same encounter. Each time, I’ve been told that I should have seen a ‘recorder’ instead of of an ‘advisor.’ A bit frustrated, I asked why the Recorders seemed to have all the answers, and the advisors couldn’t seem to do anything. It seemed to me, that the title ‘recorder,’ was more administrative, and the advisor was more … advisory. Apparently, I was wrong. Recorders are for “anything to do with paperwork.” Still rather mystified as to what an academic advisor actually does, I put my name on the list to see a Recorder. When I sat down, to explain for the second time, that I wanted to take a leave of absence, the Recorder in front of me complained that my recorder (last name beginning with letters: A-G) wasn’t in today. But, she could take care of me. The Recorder pulled the correct, half-sheet, in-triplicate, form out of the top drawer of her desk, and had me fill out my name, ID number, phone number, and check off the reasons why I was taking the leave. I checked off “personal/family” and “other.” Her paperwork competed, she told me she’d have to make a copy of the triplicate form, but the phone rang and the Recorder had me wait while she finished the call. I waited a few more minutes, during witch time I grabbed the business card of “my” Recorder. Once it was copied, I took the triplicate form back, and continued to the next building to turn the form over to the office of the Dean of Student Affairs. After taking the stairs to the third floow, I handed my form to the secretary, who said that she thought she could get someone to talk to me directly. I patiently had a seat in the lobby, and patiently denied the kind offer for water or coffee from the secretary (administrative assistant?). I picked up the only magazine that remotely interested me on the side table – Contact Sheet – put together by the on campus, non-profit, photo lab. I had just enough time to flip through it and determine that it was by-and-large graphics of words like “peace” and “love” and in no way resembled a contact sheet of photos, when I heard my name called. I was politely ushered into the bare-walled, narrow office and offered a seat on a couch flush to the same wall as the woman’s desk. She already had my half-sheet form, and explained that the university liked to conduct a brief interview with students taking a leave. Right away, she found that the form wasn’t signed by my home college. Though not yet exasperated, I slowly explained that I had just been to that office, and that they were the ones that had given my the form. She asked who I had seen at the other office, and I played a guessing game between two similar sounding names that began with ‘M.’ I guessed wrong as it turns out, but all was straightened out after a phone call that consisted more of gossip than enquiring if I had actually been seen by the sole person who could give me the from I had presented to the woman in front of me. Hanging up the phone, the woman from the office of Student Affairs looked down at the form, noted my check-off reasons for taking a leave, and enquired for more details. I explained that my family had determined that I was better off focusing on my extra-curricular activities for a semester and that I intended to return to school soon. A few more details, and we shook hands. I walked out of her office with wishes of ‘good luck’ and ‘we hope to see you back.’ I walked out the office with the following train of though:

That was really, really, easy to do. Granted, I had to go to two offices, and talk with five different people, but that only took an hour. It’s hard to believe that getting out of school, and receiving at $15,000 tuition refund was really that easy.
The one thing that I kept hearing from each person I talked to was they hoped to see me back. It seems that college students taking a leave of absence is a frequent enough occurrence that the staff has become resigned to it. They’re used to it enough that the form has check boxes that read something to the effect of ‘school isn’t right for me,’ or ‘my grades aren’t to my satisfaction.’
What does this suggest about the education system? Advisors don’t advise, paperwork is paramount, and a students leaving school is far too common. At no point was I asked not to leave, it wasn’t even a hard process — they just had me fill out paperwork. My ‘exit interview’ was a joke. All they asked me was if I’d be coming back … not that it mattered outside of the box they’d have to check.

Looking back, I’ve never been into college. I recognize that I’ve had senioritise since freshman year… …of high school. I’ve been saying since then that college was about the experience more than the ‘education.’ It’s not that I haven’t learned anything from class. I have. But, I’ve learned far more from my experience of college, than from sitting in a classroom. I plan to go back to school. I plan to get my degree — even if it’s just so I can get a piece of paper that shows I’m ‘educated.’ This experience though, has caused me to question the value of the degree more than ever. If an education system is so used to seeing failure, what faith do I put in it? Is a piece of paper worth all the aggravation, and expense to achieve? Could I be better off going to work on topics that fascinate me, that need the help of my generation? I’m “young man with my whole life” in front of me according to the academic advisor I saw today. Here’s hoping she’s right.Similar Posts:

You’ve Noticed the ‘Links’

Joey — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 01:08:03 +0000

If you’ve read this blog with any regularity, (or even if not) you might have noticed the obtrusive number of “These are my links for…” posts. I recently stopped piping my tumblr posts to my twitter account so I’ve been looking for a solution. In the mean time, the best I can come up with is to have delicious auto-post links to this blog via postalicious. Apologies for it not working or over-working, I’m still working out the kinks.

Your up:

If anyone has a good way to get tumblr to auto-post a digest to wordpress. That would be insanely useful.
How do you like the links living here as opposed to twitter?
Anyone know a good micro-brewery in the upstate New York area that isn’t Saranac or Middle Ages?

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Death Valley Photos

Joey — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 07:00:31 +0000

I’ve got my Death Valley trip photos up on flickr. Not too bad on the time too! Took me 6 days to work up the courage to sort through the nearly 1000 photos I shot, cull, edit, caption, and keyword them all. No GPS on this trip, so Geotagging is out. Bummer. Interesting notes about the shoot:

909 images shot; 63 selects
Lenses used: 17-35mm f/2.8; 105 mm f2.8 micro
Shot on the Nikon D70 (I know, I really need to upgrade my personal gear)
Only shot at two ISOs: 200 & 400
Most common aperture: f/8, followed by f/2.8
Shutter speeds span from 1/10 to 1/1600

My favorite photos from the take: Very closely followed by: Similar Posts:

Aught 9

Joey — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 14:00:12 +0000

A happy aught 9 to ya’ll. Several quick items:

I’m obviously back from Death Valley. I’m through my first round out culling— 1000 pics down to 134. I’ll get them up soon~ish.
Check out my most recent blog post at CoPress. It’s a direct response to our first public criticism that took me too many hours on New Year’s Eve to write.
Happy New Year!
I decided to stop auto-posting my Tumblr to my Twitter account last week. Today will be my first blog post covering the ‘best of’ posts.

‘Backpacker Responder’

Joey — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 04:45:13 +0000

I’ve officially set gmail’s ‘vacation responder.’ I’m off for a week of backpacking in Death Valley – the lowest altitude in North America!

View Larger Map

It will be a much needed break from the internets. I’ve been dying for a backpacking trip for months now, and I can’t recommend it enough to all of us who spend our lives living and dying by wifi access. To celebrate I’m (finally) publishing part of my take from my last excursion on flickr – which I’ve now adopted as my means of publishing photos. Combined with the flickr export plugin for Lightroom, putting up photos immediately after a take is really easy, and the online interface rocks! Fair warning: uploading through the plugin failed on me for the first time on this take. …Meh, I’ll deal with it when I get back. One other note: I’ve been working a lot (and officially taken over “Business Development”) with CoPress recently. We’re working very hard to see to it that college media has a future in this internet evolution. Please come check us out! I’ll end by saying this: I’ve been trying to check more and more items off my seemingly endless todo list, and finally got around to compiling this monstrosity. Try not to laugh at my poor sense of ‘nifty’ or hair too hard.
Newspaper Clippings Time Lapse from Joey Baker on Vimeo. I’ve got a new year’s resolution to get back to blogging more, so expect to see less of this stupid I-feel-obligatied-to-post-this-housekeeping-BS-just-to-have-something-up-there. And more real content. I’m working on a piece that has the working title: “Print isn’t dead, It’s a luxury good.” Merry New Year’s!Similar Posts:

Business and Coolness

Joey — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 07:01:05 +0000

I’ve been super busy lately – I’ve started working at my school paper again. Even though it’s a part time job, it’s really a full time job. My new title is “exponent of the evolution.” I will write more about that soon – there’s a lot to say. For now I’ll just leave it at: I do a lot of new media. If you haven’t seen it yet, check out Jeffrey Friedl’s Blog: Nikon D3 Shutter Release in Super Slow Motion. It’s really well done, and very cool to watch. More soon!Similar Posts:

In Civilization Again.

Joey — Sun, 25 May 2008 05:02:42 +0000

I’ve been back in civilization for a couple of days now. I’m re-adjusting to life here in the USA – it is very different from the UK (you can wear shorts!). I’ve been reading a lot of the news that I missed while I was gone. Seems like nothing shocking happened, but there have been several good articles posted recently that got me thinking. I’ve get most of those posts written, I’ll be publishing them shortly. I’ve got photos from my trip as well, I’ll get them edited and posted in the near future. A couple of other notes:

I wrote a paper for a class comparing the freedom of press in the UK and the US. It actually is interesting to compare the two countries from a journalist’s standpoint. I’ll clean it up and post it online.
I’ve started to write a massive article on what I’m calling (for now) The Death of the Photojournalist. It’s become a massive list of thoughts and research on the state of the industry today as it relates to new media. I have yet to decide what I’m going to do with this.
Putting “Nickleback” into Last.fm gives you a wider range of music than you might think.

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