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Photography Life is Hiring!

Jan
2
2013
January 2, 2013
By 4 Comments

NOTE: Due to an overwhelming number of responses, we are no longer accepting applications.

Photography Life

We are looking for creative writers to contribute content to our blog and help expand our reach in 2013 and beyond. If you like what we do and you would like to be a part of our growing website, please contact us as soon as possible. The opportunity is for 100% remote work, so you can do everything from home at your own pace and schedule. This is a part time, pay per article opportunity, with a potential to become a full time position in the future. Please see the below requirements before contacting us.

There is no need to send your resume/CV, as long as you meet the below requirements:

  1. Must be at least 18 years old
  2. Must be fluent in English and have solid writing skills
  3. Must have good general knowledge of photography and be current with the latest trends in the industry
  4. Part-time professional photographers and advanced amateurs preferred
  5. United States and State of Colorado Residents preferred, but not required

We are also looking for a person who can write gear reviews (in addition to content writers, as outlined above), specifically on cameras and lenses. This particular opportunity requires US residence (lower 48 states), since the person will be receiving gear for testing from our partners.

If you are interested, please use the form in the “contact us” page with the subject line “Photography Life Job Opening”. Please include a short bio of yourself, the position you are interested in, a link to your online portfolio (important, since your pictures tell a lot about you) and whatever else you feel like sharing with us. Also, if you have previously applied to work with us before, you can reapply this time again.

Filed Under: Miscellaneous Tagged With:

All I Want For Christmas Is… A Working Computer!

Dec
25
2012
December 25, 2012
By 51 Comments

Some intermittent PC problems, followed by a serious crash and some toasted devices, and work associated with reconfiguring a new PC have consumed more of my time lately than I care to admit. All the while, a pile of photography gear has been staring at me daily, crying out to be reviewed. Computers, in their various forms, have become rather ubiquitous. Most of us tend to take them for granted, at least when they are working properly. One cellphone provider recently advertised that upgrading our smartphones wasn’t just about improving technology, but rather an improvement to our very lives. That’s a bit of a stretch, but it is fair to say that some of us indeed identify too much with our technological toys!

“A Little Neglect May Breed Great Mischief”
“For want of a nail, the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe, the horse was lost.
For want of a horse, the rider was lost.
For want of a rider, the battle was lost.
For want of a battle, the kingdom was lost,
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.”

- Ben Franklin
Poor Richard’s Almanac

When things go awry, however, we are reminded just how important technology can be to both our professional and personal pursuits. The following post details my recent experience and some insights that may help you prepare for the worst.

Christmas Tree

Attempting To Resurrect The Dead

Having had every model of PC since the original IBM PC produced in 1981, including a few I custom-built, and a number of Macintoshes along the way, I am pretty comfortable dealing with all manner of both software and hardware issues. I have successfully brought a few PCs back from the proverbial “dead.” As such, I have a healthy sense of paranoia regarding PC technology and realize that if anything can go wrong, eventually it will!

[Read more...]

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Current and Upcoming Holiday Deals

Nov
18
2012
November 18, 2012
By 10 Comments

Starting from this week, many US retailers will be having special holiday sales for cameras, lenses, lighting equipment, various accessories and other photo gear. Instead of spamming our readers with constant deal alerts, I decided to create a single page where we will be hosting the best deals that are available as of now. The page is called “Current Deals” and it is accessible from the top navigation of this site, right next to “Contact Us”. So far I posted some great deals on the Nikon D600, third party lenses from Sigma and Tamron, Memory card deals and more.

I will be updating the page as new deals come in, although we will probably do a separate post on Black Friday deals when they become available. Check back more often this week, since you might miss some crazy deals that will only last several hours, until stock is all gone. This is that time of the year when it happens. If you miss the deals, next Monday is “Cyber Monday” and some additional deals might be available. I have gotten a number of inquiries from our readers, asking me whether the killer Photoshop deal Adobe had this summer is going to come back or not. To be honest, I do not think we will see another deal like that, but check back daily and hopefully there will be some good incentives from Adobe again.

Nikon D600 Deal

[Read more...]

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Email Subscriptions and RSS – Please Read!

Nov
13
2012
November 13, 2012
By 5 Comments

Looks like Google will soon discontinue its Feedburner service, which we have been using for several years now to deliver email messages to those who subscribed to our blog. Since we want to phase away from Feedburner before it officially shuts down (there is no ETA from Google as of today), we want to make sure that all email and RSS subscribers are transitioned over smoothly back to us. As of now, there are two methods to subscribe to our website, as pointed out in our “Subscription” page:

  1. Via Email – you can subscribe to our site to receive email messages every time fresh content is posted via the widget on the right hand side of the page, which says “Subscribe via Email”. The window looks like this:
    Subscribe via Email

    Simply put your email address in the field, then click “Subscribe”. You will then receive an email that will request you to confirm your subscription. You can change the delivery time and frequency of emails at the same time.

  2. Via RSS – if you have an RSS reader that you are using to receive updates from our site, then please remove the old feed and add the new one at the following URL: http://photographylife.com/feed

We will not disconnect Feedburner for a while, so if you do not want to receive two email messages, then it would be best to unsubscribe from the Feedburner email list. In order to unsubscribe, just locate the last email from us, then scroll all the way to the bottom of the email and find the link that says “To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now”. Just click the link and follow the process. We have close to 4,000 email subscribers on Feedburner, so I hope this transition will work out for most of our readers.

Please let us know if you have any questions and we apologize for the inconvenience!

Filed Under: Miscellaneous

Any Camera Will Do

Nov
8
2012
November 8, 2012
By 11 Comments

It doesn’t happen often, this. Water was everywhere, dripping, flowing, consuming anyone who dared take even the smallest step under that pitch-black sky. Not many did, too. Stores were crowded not with mothers holding their vegetables and sweets for unsuspecting children. Not with children and their ice cream, chips or, sadly, energy drinks. No, they were crowded with those who weren’t ready for the rain. And you should always be ready for rain in Lithuania in Autumn. I guess we’re not as pessimistic a nation as we think we are.

And then, surprisingly, there was silence. For a moment, the rain stopped, and with it everyone else did. A brief moment that was. Now, mothers were running, children were running, and everything came back to chaotic life. It was more peaceful with the rain.

It doesn’t happen often, this. Clouds split and, before they could cover all the blue again, sun shone through. It was both dark and immensely bright all at the same time. I could barely see where I was going, could barely hear people rushing by urgently, hands covering their eyes. Everyone was rushing, no one saw where. Natural order of things, I thought, and looked for a camera I didn’t have with me. Or didn’t I?

Any Camera Will Do

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To What Lengths Will You Go to Get “The Shot”?

Oct
21
2012
October 21, 2012
By 36 Comments

To what lengths will you go to get “The Shot”?

Grizzly Bear

A few weekends ago, I accompanied a good friend of mine (we’ll call him “Dave” mostly because that is… uh…well that what his mother called him!) to a large sporting goods store to shop for hunting equipment. I thought that buying some camo gear might help me with my wildlife photography. Hunters and photographers are alike in many ways; we just carry different “weapons.” Upon walking into the store, I noticed a full camo ghillie suit, complete with fake leaves from head to toe and a hood/face mask.

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Mansurovs Has Become Photography Life!

Sep
28
2012
September 28, 2012
By 77 Comments

Some of you may have noticed that your familiar URL of mansurovs.com now shows photographylife.com. The primary reasons for the change are listed below. We are working on a new logo (which may look different than the one below) and expect to post it soon. We are also revamping our site based on feedback from our readers.

A Different Beginning

Initially, Mansurovs.com was started as a small blog, where Nasim and Lola Mansurov shared their personal and commercial photography, recipes and occasional photography articles. They had no idea that it would grow to become one of the top photography websites, with over 1.5 million visitors a month. Although all recipes and most other personal articles were moved/deleted over time to keep the site relevant to photography, the name of the site and the domain were preserved.

Name Recall

After our recent photography workshop in Colorado, where we had a chance to gather as a team, we realized that some people continued to struggle with recalling the exact spelling of the Mansurovs name. Yes – it seems easy enough, but with respect to attracting and expanding our readership, we want a website name that is easy to recall and spell. And while Google or Bing search capability can often help people find a site name even when it is spelled incorrectly, we don’t want people to wade through a list of possible site names.

Correlation With Subject Matter

Another factor influencing our decision was the fact that the Mansurovs name did not directly correlate to the subject matter – photography. This is certainly not a deal breaker when selecting a site name – there are a variety of sites that have names unrelated to their core material. Having a name that closely relates to your main topic, however, can greatly improve people’s ability to find and recall our site name.

“Raison D’être”

The last factor relates to the very reason for the website’s existence. Our mission is to:

“Build a photography site that provides readers of all abilities with high quality product reviews, news, buying advice, tips and techniques, and other value-added, entertaining material that enriches their photography hobby or career”

We believe that Photography Life better captures the essence of why we continued to expand this site. There are literally thousands of photography sites. We wanted to build one that would prove valuable and serve people’s diverse interests as they grew and expanded over time.

Big Changes Are Coming

We have a number of major projects to expand the site. We will soon be adding a photography forum, where our participants will be able to interact with our team and each other, share their photography work, and ask questions. We will also be reorganizing the site and revamping the design (without over-cluttering it). A couple of other projects are currently being worked on, but I cannot share the details yet. We are excited about these changes!

We would be interested in hearing your thoughts and ideas regarding the site’s name change. Please feel free to weigh in below.

Filed Under: Miscellaneous

Please welcome our newest team member!

Jul
24
2012
July 24, 2012
By 36 Comments

Please welcome John Bosley, our newest team member at The Mansurovs. We are proud to have John in our team, not only because he is a very talented professional photographer and educator, but he is also a totally awesome and down to earth guy that happens to be a very dear friend of ours.

John Bosley

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The Internet’s Influence On Photography – Part II

Jul
20
2012
July 20, 2012
By 18 Comments

Continued from Part I…

5) Out With The Old And In With The… Old!

I find it amusing to observe that long after a technology has been declared dead, it will magically reappear after nostalgic longing causes some to reintroduce it in some form. When I first got back into photography in 2007, I came across a fellow Pittsburgher who had concocted an interesting homemade device consisting of a heavy duty cardboard tube attached to an old, beat up Kodak Duaflex TLR (twin lens reflex) camera, which was quite popular in the 50s and 60s. He attached it to one of Canon’s top DSLR and lens combos. The resulting images were grainy, heavily vignetted, filled with a variety of textures produced by the old scratched lenses, and sported a rough black border. Of course, my first thought was, “So… you bought a high end Canon DSLR and some of the best lenses in order to take pictures while focusing through a 50 year old camera bought at a yard sale for $12?” Just when we thought all those yard sale Kodak TLRs were headed for the scrap heap, thousands of photographers brought them back to life by putting them in front of some of the best DSLRs and lenses of the world. All this to take retro looking photos, which they describe as “edgy.”

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The Internet’s Influence On Photography – Part I

Jul
18
2012
July 18, 2012
By 14 Comments

The digital camera revolution, in conjunction with the explosive growth of the internet has had profound changes on photography. Some changes have been dramatic, while others have been more subtle. In times of revolutionary technological changes, it is important to adjust your perspective to the new realities and contemplate just how far we have come. I will put the second part of this article online shortly.

1) Printing & Pioneers – A Little Perspective

If you asked to see someone’s family photos years ago, they would often reach for their wallet or purse, and proudly show you 2X3 photos stored in plastic coverings. Today when you ask the same question, people will almost always reach for their smartphones, and either pull up pictures stored on their mini SD cards or quickly navigate to a website such as flickr. Low cost digital picture frames have also become quite popular, enabling people with little in the way of technical know-how to store hundreds or thousands of photos on an LCD in an attractive picture frame, which cycle through every few seconds.

[Read more...]

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