- An 8 Hour Workshop (one 8 hour day or two 4 hour days)

- A custom Ddesigned silibus so you can cater your lesson around the topics that mean the most to you

- Working notes. Spend less time taking notes and more time learning

- Hands on learning. Learn on-site and put your new knowledge to use while building your portfolio! 

- Lunch/snacks/beverages

- A Free year membership to the inLIGHTin Workshop forum

- A one hour  post-workshop phone consultation to brush up on any material and to answer any further questions you may have.

Cool huh?

Contact me directly at mike@inlightinworkshop.com to book your workshop now. I may also be reached at (716) 491-8854.

He was born on November 24th at 8:29am. Being a parent is the absolute best feeling in the world. It is hard to even imagine that I had a life without him in it…

Here are some pics of our little guy:

Cameron and Daddy

Cameron's First Thanksgiving

Comments welcomed as always!

Thanks.

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Sorry for my lack of posts.

Anywho, I just found a really great company and had to share it with you all. I have been on the market for a way to spice up my branding and presentation materials for quite some time now. My photo montage cases were nice and all but I wanted to steer away from the whole jewel and dvd case business.

What I found was Loktah.

I stumbled upon their site after hours of searching online and fell in love with their media packaging as soon as I saw their products. I read through their website and became more and more impressed with each line that I read. Their customer support was also very impressive! I sent them an email and got a phone call within the hour with someone on the line to answer all my questions. Minutes later I put in my first order!

So what made me want to purchase their packaging? Tons!
First off, their products are all 100% GREEN. That means they are all organic and their papers are from a renewable source found in the foothills of the Himalayas. Each case is dipped in bee’s wax to preserve the quality of the paper and allow it to age with natural beauty. Lastly, there is a red coral bead and twine that accents each case is all hand made and slightly unique. Beats the heck out of my jewel cases!

As you can see by the picture above, they go above and beyond when it comes to all the fine details. I received my package (FAST) and was pleasantly surprised to see how much care and detail was put into their presentation. Absolutely stunning!

They have gotten a customer for life and I hope you check them out and give them a try yourself:
www.loktah.com is their website. Tell them Michael from the inLIGHTin Workshop sent you.

Here is one on shutter drag for you to check out:

Thanks!

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The forum is free to join. A paid membership account gets you complete access to the entire inLIGHTin Workshop to give you access to so much more.

6 Month Memberships are now only $6.50 USD and only $10.00 USD for a full year membership.

So go ahead and join The inLIGHTin Workshop’s Forum NOW:

http://www.inlightinworkshop.com/forum

Thanks!

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http://www.youtube.com/michaelalanphoto

Please subscribe, add comments and whatever else. There will be much more content in the upcoming weeks. I plan on doing a mass upload around mid-November.

Thanks!

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Everything from the ticket prices to the possible travel, airfare and hotel accommodations definitely adds up. Not to mention all the schedule conflicts that may occur and the time you will have to spend away from your family and your job. I am not too sure how many photographers will want to take a trip to sunny Buffalo (obvious joke here) and make a vacation out of it.

So, given all this I have decided to offer online photography classes to our long distance inLIGHTin’ed members. All paying inLIGHTin Members will obviously get hooked up and receive discounts towards the classes.

Classes can be taken at the comfort of your own home and on YOUR free time! There will be weekly lessons, examples, videos and what class would be complete without some fun homework? All assignments will be graded and critiqued by yours truly and you will even receive a free web consultation to ask any questions and get individual attention.

I will post some more news about when the online classes will start so keep checking back.

In the meantime, join the forum to get the latest information and updates: HERE

As a D700 user, I have found a nice little trick that will give you one click access to this menu for ease of use and so you can get to the CLS menu.

First off, I set my D700’s pop-up flash to Commander Mode. I also disable the flash so it will only relay messages to my flashes and won’t affect my exposure any.

Attn. Here is the important part! From there, you need to access the custom “My Menu” camera setting and Add the Commander Mode as a new item and make sure it is at the TOP OF THE LIST! You’ll see why later when I talk about custom setting f5.

D700 Custom Settings used:

e3: Flash Control for Built-in Flash = Commander Mode*

*To disable the flash, dive one step deeper into commander mode (via a right click of the ) to access the wireless commander control panel and set the Built-in Flash to nothing (–) so it won’t fire the flash.

f5: Assign FUNC button = “Access top item in My Menu” This will make the FUNC button (the button near the camera lens that you can feel with your pinky finger of your right hand). Easy access yet out of the way.

So all you have to do is click on the FUNC button with your one finger and you’ll have immediate access to the in-camera flash control menu!

Pretty sweet huh?

I can say that when Nikon does something, they do it right! After all that time, they finally released a full frame body, the D3. What an amazing camera that made Canon do a double take. I have to admit, it made me wish I still shot Nikon. To top things, off, they wait about 6 months and then release the mini D3, the D700 for $2000 less! WOW!!!

Now where do I fit in all of this? My Canon equipment has been a bit flaky all the time and the images I got were what I thought were ideal for being digital. My 20 and 30D bodies had some issues. I had some Err messages and one of my 30D’s would mess up when I filled up the buffer. It would require the batteries to be taken out to get rid of the BuF message. My 5D was decent and I only had issues with having 9 focus points all in the center (the outer 8 being pointless and had a horrible time acquiring focus). I also would have battery issues saying that it was drained when it was in fact full and stuff like that. I figured a Mark III would be the “say all-be all” camera but that has proved to cause me more grief than I can say. The current state of the camera is that it currently “thinks” it acquired focus when in fact the focus is a good 6-12 inches back from where it should be. It thus has to go in for repair. I also had intermittent IS issues with my lenses and so on…
The final straw was that my CPS membership meant nothing to them and they couldn’t loan me a new body until this one got fixed or anything. All I got was 7-10 business days for the repair.

Well, being a professional, I have to have equipment that I can rely on and trust. I don’t want to fear that every time I press the shutter it could be my last.

I picked up a Nikon D700 last week because I never had issues with Nikon equipment before. They are hard to come by yes, but they have proven to be very reliable systems from my use and abuse when I owned them.

I shot a wedding on Saturday with inLIGHTin member Scott and this camera just blew me away. No more machine gun shooting to hope for a shot that was in focus, no low light focusing issues, no fear of using ISO 3200 or 6400. IT WAS GREAT!

The only issues I had was the fact that the camera “feel” was still new to me so I would be looking for the shutter in the wrong spot and little stupid things like that which will go away after more use.

The camera had no issues whatsoever and the files out of the camera were literally better than what I got out of a Mark III. And that is taking into consideration the 4 hour lens micro adjustment spiel and post processing / sharpening I would have to do to the Mark III file…

Needless to say, I am a very happy camper and these lenses are so sharp they could cut you…

I will post some pics when I get a second.

Thanks and let me know if you have any questions.

GO|Bee Bags are just as functional as they are stylish.

Photographers Sara France and Lauren Hillary have created the ultimate accessory for photographers. Now you can look as good as your images.

Sign up now at The inLIGHTin Workshop forum and receive a promo code for a discount on your GO|Bee Bag order.

Sign up now at The inLIGHTin Workshop forum and receive a promo code for a discount on your GO|Bee Bag order.

Also, look for an interview from Sara sometime in the near future.

Thanks!

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