Tuesday, January 6, 2009

I need to shoot more, and poor old JPG mag - will it survive?

I am always forgetting to bring my camera with me. I really need to get in the habit of just keeping it on me at all times.

I also need to start playing with controlled light again. I did more of that in California. Here's a shot of my daughter's buggy with a high-powered flashlight in the foot well. Controlling light doesn't necessarily mean strobes.



I was able to take some shots of our house for Deb using some speedlights, but I really need to setup something in the basement that resembles a makeshift studio to try out more macro and controlled lighting shots.






In other news a magazine that I really enjoy reading is about to close its doors. It actually should've been done this past Monday (Jan 5th) but they were able to extend the life of the site "at least through next week" which would mean this Friday or Saturday.

A lot of magazines are going out of business these days. My wife is a budding interior designer ( http://www.deborahallendesign.com/ ) who subscribes to a variety of home magazines and she's received notices so far from two of her magazines saying they're stopping the presses. Some mags are being acquired by other companies while others who are already part of a bigger publishing company are being folded into existing magazines.

With the increase in people getting their news and media from electronic sources and the state of the economy the reduction in print materials was bound to happen. It's just particularly hard to deal with when it impacts magazines and print materials you have come to enjoy and look forward to.

I'm hoping that JPG Mag gets picked up by someone - the concept is really a great one. With so many photogs out there and so few avenues for publication it was one of the only outlets for the casual artist to get his or her work published.

--UPDATE--
About 3 hours after I posted this a new bit of news was posted on the JPGmag website:

Some of you may have heard by now, but if not, the good news is that we have already received a couple of credible offers from companies interested in acquiring JPG. So that we can find the best acquirer for JPG, we put a Wednesday deadline on all offers, and we expect to receive more by then. We are soliciting all the credible offers we can get, and any negotiations from that point forward will be handled by Minor Ventures. This is an important part of the process, since any deal will need to be approved by our investors and they will be the only ones to benefit financially from an acquisition. All we, along with the rest of the team, are hoping for is that we can find the best new home for the JPG community.


So that could be good news! Have to wait and see at the end of the week if a suitor has been chosen.

0 comments: