Support Help Portrait today!   I’m doing something to support this on my own – but I would like you all to think about a way that YOU might be able to help others with your photography/video.

Remember – wonderfully lit photographs are beautiful – but the effort and connection even with a simply point and shoot or iPhone would work!  BE INVOLVED – HELP OTHERS.   Check out the Help-Portrait site to find out more about this project.

Perhaps you could photograph / film people who need a new headshot or video profile so that they can find a job… there are endless ways to give back – frankly: even if it’s not today!

Decade from Hell? NOT! Maybe for magazines though...

Wow so much to say.  Some Key announcements below.

Time’s latest covers call the first decade of the new millennium “The Decade From Hell.”

Wow… I thought the world was supposed to end on Y2K…?  We made it didn’t we?

Sure – we’ve lost 90,000 print jobs this year (BRUTAL – especially to see the excellent photo team at Newsweek slashed. These were forward thinking photo editors who had us blogging from Beijing as an equal priority to shooting for the mag… )

OK so some news:

First – I’ve got 3 commercial/video+still jobs in a row over the next 2 months – so that’s going to make it hard to post. That’s why this blog has been a little quiet (I’ve been tweeting too – which is a bit easier)

Second – I’ve got a pretty major announcement coming – that will actually potentially involve all of YOU.  Something to do with a  nationwide film contest over an 8th month period w/ 7 winners – just dotting the “I”s right now before I make the official announcement – hope to announce it within the week.  I’ve been hard at work on it since July.

That means I’ll be posting a LOT more of course – so disregard the first thing I said.

Also – I’ve wrapped shooting the example videos for my DSLR instructional video – despite all of the work I was fortunate enough to be awarded this week – the plan is still to release it within the next 1-2 months.  I will pretty much share everything I know / have learned as it relates to HD DSLR video, gear, theory, workflow etc.  Not holding anything back.  If you would like to be notified of the video (downloadable) release (before the end of the year) pls e-mail me at production@vincentlaforet.com – with the word “NOTIFY” in the subject and I’ll ping you when it’s available.  We are currently in pre-production on the series.

As I’ve mentioned on twitter – there are some extremely exciting pieces of gear coming out early next year.  I’ve been working with quite a few companies with the current HD DSLR cameras (5D MKII, 7D) and we’ve been measuring the 1D MKIV as well… expect to see a bunch of pretty much the most interesting developments in HD DSLR accessories in time for NAB in April.

2010 will be the year where HDDSLRs come of age in my opinion.  So many companies have been hard at work making the necessary pieces of gear to make these cameras truly production worthy.  I just shot a network television opening credit sequence a few weeks ago and it went absolutely, perfectly, smoothly – even though we had 3-4 prototype pieces of gear in the mix.   A veteran Steadicam operator was so impressed with these HDDSLR’s camera’s performance that he put in an order for a 1D MKIV the very next day and started to make custom mounts for his rig as well.

Lastly – I’m looking for potential advertisers for this blog.  If you are interested please send me an e-mail directly at studio (at) vincentlaforet.com.   As many of you know – I’ve been incredibly resistant to putting any form of advertising on this site.  I’ve loved the fact that it’s ad free and revenue free.  But lately – I’ve become a bit too busy to edit the videos etc. to put up on this site as often as I’d like.  I need some help in terms of aggregating and editing the content for this blog.

I intend to take the income from advertising on this blog and put it right back into producing original content for the blog.  If there is anyone in the LA area that is interested in volunteering for now – and getting paid when we get advertisers – please e-mail me at the same address.  Video shooting skills and editing are obviously a pre-requisite.

Well that’s about it.  More to come very soon.

It took me long enough… but I’m Tweeting now…

My username is @vincentlaforet (yes…spent a lot of time thinking of that one…)

Some of you may know that I SWORE that I would never tweet… then I realized it could actually be pretty cool.

This blog is great – but I don’t post as often as I’d like to.   Facebook – is a disaster.  I never have time to check it (truth be told, I have over 900 friend requests – problem is:  every time I accept one friend – I get 12 suggestions – and it takes forever to go down the list… does anyone know how to “accept all?” As silly as that excuse is – that’s pretty much why I ran away from Facebook close to 9 months ago…)

OK – so here goes something else.   For the record:  I resisted blogging at first as well.  As much of an “early adopter” that I am in terms of cameras and new technology (I should have named my kids Beta and NDA given how often I hear those words!)   I’ve always resisted ‘social’ internet trends for some reason…

That being said – I’ve been enjoying reading many of the tweets of those I follow (see my twitter page for a list of people that I’m following) and a few friends finally got me to take the plunge.

If anything – tweeting may allow me to be a bit more liberal about what I share… NDA’s don’t really exist in the twitter sphere do they?  😉

Pls post your twitter addresses in the comments below – always looking for cool people/things to follow!