On this week’s Creator Office Hours I had a fun time answering questions from the live viewers regarding a few things. Some things which are fascinating. Some things which are absolutely craptastic. . .in my opinion. Check it out below.
Notes of discussion:
Importance of degrees and education
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Hey there, y’all. This week on my lil’ Office Hours, I decided to focus on a particular topic that’s been in my inbox a few times. That’s headshot photography. In particular, headshot retouching. Check it out below. I hope this helps photographers get rolling in their headshot photography journey. Please reshare the video far and wide.
Tools mentioned include:
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I was recently a guest on comedian, writer, creator Marina Franklin’s podcast known as Friends Like Us. I’ve been a fan of hers since stumbling across her comedy special "Single Black Female"*. This lead to me finding her on social media and checking out her other content. Never did I assume I’d be a guest on her podcast. Let alone at TWO-TIME guest.
In addition to having me on, Franklin had her friend Von Decarlo on. Decarlo’s another hilarious and successful comedian. Our discussion ranged from herding cats, to AI, to stalkers. Yeah those are some heavy topics, but we had fun conversing. Check out the show below. Thanks for listening and sharing.
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Each spring down in San Diego, the International Mobile Film Festival is held. It’s hosted by Susy Botello in an effort to shine a light on creators out there going against the grain in filmmaking by using their mobile devices instead of a “traditional” digital camera. I’m judging the event again this year, albeit remotely since I can’t make the trip down to San Diego. Other stuff going on that I have to handle and I can’t afford to make that many trips in one month (yet).
Image via Adobe Firefly*
I had roughly eight films to judge in my queue and it was an interesting experience. There were some creations I found to be quite impressive, and some not so much. But each of them shared one trait. Each filmmaker did the best they could with the mobile device camera’s capabilities. Lighting was key as the image sensors on these devices are so small. And for the films that went with low-light, the post-processing was done well enough to remove noise and artifacts. It’s pretty cool seeing what creators come up with these days - regardless of the tool.
If you’re interested in attending the International Mobile Film Festival, check out the website for more info.
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Recently, Nikon acquired RED Digital Cinema and camera nerds went wild. Nikon being a company that has made some positive noise in the photography side of camera tech made a big push to get RED - a cinema monster in the industry. Some say it was part of getting RED its case regarding a patent dispute. I don’t know, but I do think it’s an interesting move and is going to be good thing for us as the consumer. . .eventually.
I sat down with the dude known as “Ohdoctah” to talk about this Nikon and RED stuff.
A couple of weeks ago I suffered a loss to my photography kit. My old telephoto 400mm lens’ autofocus motors died. This REALLY bugged me as it was right as baseball season was starting. It was also creeping into the warmer weather which is when I focus on wildlife photography. Pissed off and frustrated, I decided to go rent a new lens to handle an upcoming baseball game shoot. I’m glad I did.
When I went to my local camera/rental shop, I checked out the telephoto options and found that an RF mount lens was available. This meant I could use my Canon R5 C* for the long shots instead of my 1DX II*. The wonderful staff suggested the Canon 100-500mm RF telephoto lens and had high praise for it. I trust these guys, so I gave it a shot.
WOW this lens is LIGHTWEIGHT. The size of this lens in its widest focal length is pretty compact at 8-inches. The build quality is great. It doesn’t feel cheap and has the Canon “L” designation for professional-grade build quality. It weighs roughly 3-pounds when holding it in your hands alone. Slap the lens onto a Canon mirrorless body and it’s barely noticeable in the short term.
The image quality on this lens is UNBELIEVABLE. It’s such a sharp lens. I’m not sure what Canon has done, but the RF mount lenses are always sharp, but I was surprised at how sharp this telephoto lens is. It’s ridiculous. Having image stabilization built in is definitely helpful. When I shot the baseball game, I started out with the lens connected to my monopod. Just a force of habit. When shooting long focal lengths at 300mm or more, I stabilize my camera and lens with a monopod because you’re much more prone to capturing blurred images at those focal lengths. This is because micro jitters from you or your camera are magnified. Since the lens is so light, I boldly decided to try shooting handheld. Maaaaan did it workout perfectly for me. Again, the built-in image stabilization system in the lens helps a lot. The USM autofocus on this lens is snappy in all focal lengths. My only suggestion would be to make sure your mirrorless camera’s autofocus AI is set to “people” and face detection when shooting sports. I didn’t upload the highest resolution version of the pics below, but they’re still pretty stellar in quality.
The weight of this lens is great. The size is “good.” When you zoom to a tighter focal length the lens telescopes to 11-inches. Unfortunately. I wish this wasn’t the case. It’s not a deal-breaker, but it’s something I wish was addressed for the price point. To Canon’s credit, the telescoping functionality can be manipulated to be a smooth, quick motion or your can make it a stiff motion. If you tighten down on the lens for a stiff motion, this will eliminate the inadvertent telescoping issue when you’re just walking around with the lens on your hip or shoulder.
Image credit Canon USA
The other concern is the aperture. At f/4.5-7.1, many would scoff. At f/5.6 is where most shooters would want to top out on aperture. But even at f/7.1 I found something magical happens with this lens. I really can’t explain it. You don’t lose as much light as expected. My friends at the local camera store said that Canon did something really right or really wrong, because they noticed the same performance. The folks at Digital Picture explains this technicality quite well. Over my head, but it definitely works. Let’s just say that f/7.1 at 500mm isn’t really f/7.1. And no, f/4.5 isn’t particularly wide open, but it’s adequate with today’s high ISO performance in cameras. The background compression looks great in all of my images regardless of the aperture.
You can get the 100-500mm RF lens from Canon for $2899, but at the time of writing this, the lens has a discount* going. I need to save up for this lens. I not only want it, I NEED it.
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I’m back on ZDNET as of a few days ago. Some of you are probably saying, “back?” Yes, I’m back. Maybe I should clarify. Picture it. Charlotte, North Carolina. 2012. It was about 6AM local time. I was at my humble desk in my humble abode known as “Chateau Ghetto” taking a look at what was going on for the start of Mobile World Congress which was happening in Barcelona, Spain.
I hope I don’t upset ZDNet and Red Ventures by modifying this logo for story’s sake. . . .
At the time, I’d been invited to join a startup tech blog called aNewDomain which was lead by Gina Smith. My intent was to get up early and write about anything I found interesting regarding the conference. To my surprise, I found a PDF file from Microsoft detailing the consumer preview of its Windows 8 operating system. I thought it was pretty cool to see the documentation about the “new look” of Windows and put a blog post together detailing what I had found. An hour or so passes and my Google chat window started blowing up with messages of excitement from Gina Smith. This caught me by surprise. Apparently, my blog post about the “leaked” document was a big hit. This lead to other sites picking up the story and linking back to me. In particularly, Mr. Jason Hiner of ZDNet mentioned my post.
This blew my mind because I was a big fan of the work Mr. Hiner had done over the years as tech news and tech journalism was all the buzz. To see he mentioned lil’ ol’ me in his piece was something I’ll never forget. But anyway, I’m technically “back on” ZDNet now. This time I’m on the team as a freelance contributor.
As a freelance contributor, I’ll be creating content around the wonky world of consumer technology in the form of blog posts and videos. I’ll also lend a hand in shooting photography for the team as a hired camera, if you will. I look forward to working with Mr. Hiner and the ZDNet team. He and I go back quite a ways as he also gave me a freelance gig many years ago on TechRepublic. When I joined TWiT in 2019, I had to drop my contributions to TechRepublic because of some dumb ass proposition here in California. But yes, this is going to be a fun exerience. I look forward to it.
I’m freelance for a couple of reasons. First off, full-time employment isn’t offered at this time. Which is fine. Secondly, I can’t say that I’m interested in full-time work at this time. Real talk.
For pretty much most of my professional career, I’ve been a bit of a self-starter and on my own. Even though the majority of my career was in IT at a big company of some sort, I had a lot of autonomy and freedom. I “worked from home” for many years before that phrase was normalized during the 2020 pandemic. I didn’t have to deal with micro-management leadership. I’m grateful for that. So I always felt like a contractor, or freelancer in that regard.
Now in 2023 and 2024, we continue to read and hear about companies struggling financially around the country. I was laid off from TWiT in December 2023. It wasn’t personal, it was business and it made sense. I would have laid me off, too. Not to mention other huge companies such as Salesforce, Google, Microsoft, Sony and many more laying off staff in the coming months.
I personally don’t believe finding full-time work in my field is going to happen. It’s a tough business. I want to be in control of my own destiny for that reason. I previously worked at a company of almost half of my life. I was given an opportunity to take another job elsewhere for better wages even though I wasn’t looking for a new job. You know what the company said to me which I worked at for 16 years?
“Are you sure?”
Not, “what can we do to keep you here” or anything of that nature. NO FREAKIN’ LOYALTY TOWARDS ME or anything I’d done for the previous 16 years as an employee. I was naive and that changed my outlook going forward. I needed to be able to control my destiny.
What I went through at TWiT was great. The Laportes were great to me. I had autonomy and was also able to learn other things during my time there. But again, it was more of a mental note to me that I need to keep pushing to have control. So I’m doing everything I can to get Ant Pruitt Media back on track and rollin’ forward.
Anyway, that’s the news. Be sure to check out ZDNet for other great consumer tech content. They do a good job of keeping it real when it comes to all the fuss about the new hotness of tech. I’ll see you soon. Thanks for all the support.
Sony continues its push of offering great image quality to hybrid shooters be it photography or video. Today Sony announces a new G-series 24-50mm f/2.8 lens for all of its E-mount, Sony shooters.
Image credit - Sony
So a new lens is announced. “What’s the big deal,” you ask? Well first, what’s big about this is the focal range and aperture. This focal range is ideal for both photography and video. Being an f/2.8 lens also offers great performance in low-light scenarios.
Speaking of the f/2.8 aperture, the aperture blades are important. In this new lens, Sony is offering 11 aperture blades. In entry-to-mid-level lenses, you’ll get seven aperture blades in most instances. Sometimes nine blades. These additional blades offer a much nicer looking bokeh effect while shooting wide open as well as helps reduce diffraction.
Lastly, the main reason this is big news is the weight of the lens. Sony states that the new G-series lens will come in at 440g, or 15.5oz for us uncivilized folks. One of the primary selling points of a mirrorless camera is the reduced body size and weight. I always thought this selling point was a bunch of bunk because most pro-grade lenses were freakin’ HEAVY compared to camera bodies, so the total camera package would still be considered heavy. But, I’m no marketing genius, so what do I know?
You can request your new lens from Sony for $1099 with delivery set for sometime in May 2024. Let me know if you decide to order one.
It’s the end of the week and I’m just a wee bit tired. I’m grateful I’ve been busy with stuff. It’s been more and more of the on-going job hunt activity. And when I say “job,” I’m not necessarily meaning a “traditional 9-5” job. For the record, I’ve looked at a few of those, but I’m more and more interested in being an independent creator. Especially since we are continuing to see more layoffs over here. But anyway, the job push continues. Moving on to why I’m writing this today. . . .
Image by Ant Pruitt all rights reserved
When I wasn’t checking out the job market or shooting basketball games for MaxPreps, I was checking out tech news. One bit of news which got my attention was the announcement of Adobe Max. It was great news. . .sorta.
Each October, Adobe kicks off its creator conference covering everything from new software updates to creator-driven classes which help you get better with their products to networking with other creative artists from around the globe. I LOVE this event. I look forward to it each year.
I had every intention on attending the event this October until I saw that it was moved from Los Angeles to Miami. This hurt my heart. It took me a minute to get over it, actually. I was looking forward to driving down and seeing the event. But I can’t make a promise that I’ll get out to Miami in October. I’ll go over my budget and so forth in the coming weeks, but off the top of my head, I can’t see a cross-country flight happening. Especially since I don’t know if I’ll have to be in Eugene, Oregon screaming #scoducks. I don’t know. We’ll see. I may be able to figure it out. Sometimes, I actually can figure things out. Maybe I can get a gig with Adobe? That could offset costs, right? Hmmm.
Have you attended Adobe Max? If you’re a creator, you SHOULD. It’s an unbelievable event with great energy that can only help you as a creator. Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.
Our youngest hardhead has officially accepted his preferred walk-on offer (PWO) from the University of Oregon Ducks football team. I can’t put into words how proud we are. But, I’ll say this. He ain’t done. Now it’s track season. We have more goals to achieve as well as getting the high school diploma. Big thank you to the Rancho Cotate community and coaching staff. You folks have been so kind to the Pruitt family since coming here from Carolina in 2019. Big thank you to the Windsor and St Vincent high school communities which includes Coach Trent Herzog, Cameron Eisenhauer, Gary Howard and many more I’m failing to name. You know who you are. THANK YOU. Now, on to track season and graduation.
