Tiffinbox is brought to you by Seshu Photography providing professional wedding, event, portrait, family and lifestyle photography in Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Vermont, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire and around the world.
Please visit www.seshu.net to learn more about how you can commission Seshu to photograph your Indian or multi-ethnic or multi-faith wedding, family or business event, or reserve a time for a fun and relaxed portrait session!
Happy Cinco de Mayo everybody!
J. Adam Huggins shows us that the manhole covers found in NYC are made in India
You have heard of Craigslist haven't you? Well here comes a website that pulls the RSS feeds off of the original and delivers it in a much more creative/clever/clear way: crgslst
David duChemin asks "What makes a great photograph?"
Dr. Brown's Services – if you are eager to make your life a little bit easier using Photoshop you will download these scripts and use them.
Flaunt your photographs using flauntR, a free and easy online photo editor
21 Ways To Shoot Better Photographs
drop.io – faxing for the free
Learnfest by Lena Hyde, Tamara Lackey, Laura Novak, and Audrey Woulard: some very fine photographers out to teach you the ropes. I wish I could go. The price tag is $2600 for three days/2 nights and includes the teaching, the food and the accommodations. Guess, I shouldn't be complaining. In the long run I do see it is a terrific opportunity.
In the Hindu pantheon, Yama is the god of death. Well check out this camera. Freaky, isn't it?
Lakshmi's Lounge is hosting Sandeep Sood, the man behind Badmash
Simple + Dirty – David Jackson's personal work. Some very fine art indeed. Check out his other work here. His blog is here.
So, you are a professional photographer? Got a business plan? I am working on mine right now using Strategy Avenue's Path To A Business Plan. Strategy Avenue also has a blog written by John and Laura.
I am infatuated with Design Aglow.
MacUpdate and MacHeist both have some cool promotions on right now.
The Vagabond II may be back-ordered, but it is the only well-built external battery source I have found for my on-location portrait photography sessions. Now to order one!
The other day for some reason I kept thinking about the movie Amelie. Photo booths are so trippy, aren't they? I may have mentioned the Photobooth Blog before. If you want to set one up yourself and have a PC, try Photo Boof!. For the Mac folks among us, there is The Mugshot Machine. Then there is Rolland Elliot who will ship and rent you a booth for a fee.
Blurb, the self-publishing/designing online tool has a new version of BookSmart out. Download it here.
Vanessa Winship was in India.
Adrees Latif wins the Pulitzer prize for photography. Read all about it here.
Book reviews aren't easy and for a guy who reads at a glacial pace it's doubly hard. Thankfully UNSUNG by Anita Pratap and Mahesh Bhat has some incredibly captivating images that kept me engrossed, flipping page after page taking in each of the richly textured black & white images.
What I found curious was that the images nudged me on to read the accompanying text. Ms. Pratap's easy writing style makes it an enjoyable read as she narrates each of the nine stories about average Indian citizens doing some great things for society with very little resources. This book is simply inspirational and a must-read for all.
Whoever designed this book must also be applauded. The pacing of the images, the right pull-quotes in the right places and the easy-to-read font make this book something extra-ordinary.
Please support independent photography and writing projects such as this one by buying this book here.
As a wedding and portrait photographer, I spend a good deal of my time custom designing albums for my clients. It's not an easy process and it takes a good deal of my time. Part of me wants it all to be perfect. From the colors in the images to the layout; everything must match my vision and the energy of my clients.
Andrew Funderburg's Fundy Album Builder gives me just that option. As a beta tester and now full time user, I couldn't be happier. This isn't me just schilling some product to make a commission (though I do make a small amount to support this website). I have tried it, tested and been in touch with the developer who is continually making this a product you can use in your business. The cost of the program pales in comparison the returns you will make after you use this program on a regular basis. The video tutorials will help you get all set up and started in no time.
Interested? Now until April 15, 2008 receive 15% off of this product when you mention the following promo code: "seshu." 
Happy designing! Leave your comment here after you have had a chance to use Fundy Album Builder.
Take this moment to click on this link and learn more about a documentary film to air on PBS, on April 16, 2008 at 9 pm EST. It's a must-see.
That's right, Anjali Bhargava has a brand new site. I have posted a link or two before to her work. That one of the dancer's legs in the far left corner of the frame in a sea of blue is my favorite. That and other images are on a much bigger display now. The site is has a nice clean, feather-weight feel to it. So, go check out this New York city photographer now (and buy some of her prints).
Confused? Hope not. I stumbled upon a blog today called "Tiffin Box" that is all about vegetarian cooking. .
"I’m a vegetarian Indian graduate student living in the American Midwest. I love food and I miss home. There’s no “ethnic” market here to speak of, and I don’t have access to most of the vegetables and other stuff I need to cook real home-style Indian vegetarian cuisine."
Yummy stuff. Go check it out (then come back here to comment).
Want quick and (sometimes) dirty digital prints? For free? Now, I got your attention, huh?
I stumbled across this site that lists all the different places where you can drop your files and receive free prints. The catch of course is you have to set up accounts in each one of them. Nothing is for really free is it? But would you do it for 365 free prints? I bet you would. Then I came upon PhotoFun. A 4"x6" is a whopping 5 cents.
Well, there is another catch. Using these consumer level print houses for my clients would be a no-no for me. Why? Well, for one, I am not sure I will be able to match my monitor to each of their color profiles. It would be a very tedious exercise indeed. For now, and for my business, I will be using the two or three choice custom labs whose print quality and customer service is simply outstanding. For the snap shots that we inevitably create at home, the links above should suffice.
"Photography.Book.Now is a new photography book competition celebrating self-published photography books and the photographers behind them. Photographers are invited to submit their most creative, most innovative, and finest self-published photography books."
Check it out. Grand prize of $25,000 is at stake.
[Via PhotographyBlog]
The photo agency VII is hosting an expanded three-day workshop in downtown Brooklyn on May 16, 17 & 18.
Some of the sharpest shooters for $50. Not bad. Not bad at all. Wan your portfolio shred, um reviewed? That'll be $200. Again, a worthwhile investment.
And, oh, the New York Photo Festival runs May 14-18. So, it's a two-fer.
I am a huge fan of Kevin Kubota's actions. Please click one of these links below to buy his Photoshop actions. They will revolutionize the way you work and will help your images stand apart from the crowd.
Ok, a little tooting of the horn. I am allowed to do that once in a while since, hey, this is my blog, right?
I am so excited to share with you the news that I was recently interviewed by WeddingSutra, the premier wedding planning portal for South Asians living around the world.
The interview gives you some idea of my personal approach to documenting Indian and multi-ethnic weddings. Check it out now!
According to Rob Galbraith, Nikon has revamped their site. On a Macintosh using the Firefox browser, it looks like shit ok. Check it out and if you want to vent, you can do so here, on Nikon's new blog called Your Shot.
Adobe's Photoshop is or should be on your computer if you are a photographer. Sure, you could use other image editing programs that may just do it for you, but after I bought Photoshop CS3, there simply was no turning back.
But Photoshop by itself isn't going to get you too far if you don't use the program's ability to automate through programmable actions what you need to do to enhance all your images. You could, if time is your friend, sit and figure out all the actions you will need or outsource that work and buy the actions from people who simply do a great job.
Doug and Chenin Boutwell are a husband-wife wedding, portrait (and now even commercial) photography team who has produced a pack of actions they call Totally Rad (the name is perhaps a nod to where they live in Orange County). I bought their actions early on and simply couldn't do without them. What's particularly important to me is that their actions creates a separate layer above the image you are working on. Accessing this layer allows one much greater access to tweak it to one's own liking. That is, while some actions flatten your file and you have to just accept what is given to you, Doug and Chenin's Totally Rad Actions give you the freedom to make your images look like your own creation, not someone else's interpretation.
Doug has recently launched a series of online video tutorials on how to best exploit his actions. Here are the first three:
Action Basics - Mix & Match Actions - Layers and Layer Masks
Would it help to buy the action pack as you follow along? Sure. Do I get anything for mentioning the actions here? Nope.
Here is Doug's blog where you can learn more.
Brrrrr ... it's not the Winter that's getting cold and ugly. It's politics as usual. Barack, Tiffinbox has got your back brother.
Pixish is a place for photographers and publishers to meet. It is another Derek Powazek production (remember JPG Magazine?)
