Mapping The Places I've Been: You Should Try It!

Since this is a travel blog, or at least since it started out that way, it seemed like I ought to add this map that shows all the places I've visited (well over 200!) and a few I've pegged for future travel.

Glacier National Park, Montana

Burano, a beautiful island near Venice.

I found the interactive map on tripadvisor. com. It's a fun way to spend half an hour revisiting your favorite travel destinations. The interface takes you through places all over the world, and you can pin the spots you've visited. I'm not sure how the algorithm works. It started me out with some of the world's most celebrated travel destinations such as New York City and Paris, but each list that came up also had some small towns - like Niantic, Connecticut where my family has had a cottage since 1969. I had pinned over 200 places, yet San Francisco, CA, Vienna, Austria, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, and Oahu, Hawaii- some pretty major spots-still hadn't come up, but I was able to add them manually. So far, I've found 257 places in 14 countries that I've visited.

On the way to Paris

The map includes dozens of small towns-I counted at least 10 I'd been to on Cape Cod-as well as little lesser-know towns around the world, like several quaint spots I've traveled to in France. When I hit 250,  I hit "done" and added the biggies I'd missed, but I'm sure if I'd had more time I would have hit 300.

It's fun. You should try it.
(See the link below my map). And feel free to paste your map in the comments section - it'd be interesting to see where people have been.

Here's my map along with a list of my 20 favorite spots:

1. New York City, NY, USA
2. Venice, Italy
3. Paris, France
4. San Francisco, CA, USA
5. Antigua, Antigua and Barbuda
6. Glacier National Park, MT, USA
7. Yellowstone National Park, WY, USA
8. Grand Teton National Park, WY, USA
9. Edinburgh, UK
10. Newport, RI, USA
11. Mont-St-Michel, France
12. Florence, Italy
13. Oahu, HI, USA
14. Saint-Malo, France
15. Versailles, France
16. London, UK
17. Rome, Italy
18. Saint Augustine, FL, USA
19. Caen, France

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Interviewed by the Breakfast Stock Club

Grunge heart on turquoise blue background. Available from Dreamstime through link below. Happy Valentine's Day!

See this on Dreamstime

I've been submitting stock photos for a while now but didn't really start adding to my portfolio until late last year. As I grow my stock portfolio, I've found it helpful to join a few forums, including those on the various sites I submit to such as Dreamstime, Shutterstock, and Alamy Images.  Most forums have a great community and it's been a big help to get advice from others, both those starting out and those who have been selling stock photos for many years.

Last week, I was interviewed about my stock photo sales by the Breakfast Stock Club. I've been getting their emails for a while and just joined their group on Facebook. The idea behind the article was to encourage new stock photographers. Since I'm a freelance writer as well as a photographer, I found it especially fun to be the interviewee instead of the interviewer. 

Conventional wisdom these days is that you need to license both RM and higher end RF on the macros as well as more generic RF on the micros. My images are split between microstock and macrostock, so I can experiment with backgrounds such as the one above that I made with my lensbaby and my wacom tablet, licensing a few 100 photos on the micros quickly, or licensing photos on Alamy for $100 or more a pop.

My portfolio is still very small, but  I'm encouraged to keep uploading. Here's the article - I hope you find it helpful. And here's to everyone's continued success!

 (The image above was made with my lensbaby composer and the macro filter attachment. I then drew the  heart using my wacom tablet. When I have more images to share, I plan to blog about the lensbaby. Here's one of my  favorites from my website. It's so much fun and the images I've made with it have nearly recouped my cost already).

Time Travel

Mississippi Bayou, 1939.  Photo by Marion Post Wolcott. Makes me think of Tom Sawyer & Huck Finn. All photos in this post were taken by photographers commissioned by the Farm Services Administration or the Office of War Information.

     Since this blog is about travel photography, I thought that traveling back in time to look at photos taken by photographers traveling across the US back in the 1930's and 40's to document rural America and the World War II effort throughout the US, certainly fit in with the blog's theme--and these are far superior to any I have to offer. 

     I love the old Black & White Photos by the FSA photographers--Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans and Gordon Parks, who, among others, have inspired me since I first learned about the Farm Services Administration's photography project back in high school. I didn't realize that there was also a small treasure trove of color images such as those shown here.

Cincinnati, Ohio circa 1942. Photo by John Vachon.

A member of the Stock Imaging Forum--from Sweden (gotta love how the web makes the world so much smaller-thanks, Kathleen!)--just posted the link to an article on the Denver Post's Photo Blog and I felt that I just had to share it. All of the photos posted here are from the FSA or the Office of War Information and were commissioned by the Government, between 1939 and 1943. They are the property of the Library of Congress.

      The color in these images is wonderful, as is how well they capture America at that time. The quality of the transparencies is really great after all these years. I didn't realize that color film was that sophisticated back in the 1930's and 40's. 

 So Carolina. Photo by Alfred T. Palmer

Our government was really enlightened when it hired so many wonderful photographers to go out and document America during the Depression and World War II

Be sure to check out the rest (there are 69 shown full frame size-just a small sampling of the 1,600 color photos taken by the FSA/OWI during that era ) on The Denver Post's Plog Photo Blog
 
 Plog Photo Blog 
and even more from the Library of Congress (see link below)

Tennessee, 1943. Photo by Alfred T. Palmer.

I can't help wondering if this photo was the inspiration for that famous poster of "Rosie the Riveter" 


The detail in the photos is truly incredible. 


You can download full-resolution copies of these and the other FSA/OWI photos from the Library of Congress website: The Library of Congress  They have 1,600 color photos alone from this era. It's an amazing resource.

New Online Profile and Portfolio: ArtsWestchester

I just posted an artist profile and portfolio on the ArtsWestchester site. For all artists in Westchester County, New York, ArtsWestchester.org lets you set up an online profile and portfolio as your directory entry on their site.
Local arts organizations are a great resource for professional photographers, aspiring pros an amateurs.
Please check out my profile and portfolio and let me know what you think:

Marianne Campolongo Photography

Turn your vacation photos into fun and funky postcards

Continuing with the California theme this month, here are some of my vacation photos that I turned into fun and funky illustrations. 

California on my mind

The cookbook I worked on out in LA last May (2009), Giada at Home by Giada De Laurentiis is out. I got my copy from the publisher yesterday. I encourage everyone to buy it-the food is wonderful-as scrumptious as Jonelle Weaver's photos. I even got a nice mention from Giada in the acknowledgements-she’s great. The timing was apt as I just flew back from LA Sunday. Busy catching up this week but plan to post photos to my website, on Alamy, Nature of Travel and on FB soon!

Working as Jonelle's assistant on the book was a fabulous learning experience. And everyone was great to work with both on the set in California and Marysarah back at the publisher's in NYC.

Giada at Home by Giada De Laurentiis with photos by Jonelle Weaver

Just tweeted for the first time!

I just tweeted for the first time!

www.twitter.com/campyphotos

Buxton Pond Farm : self-assignments and photo books

Last summer, I took a class with Linda Meyerriecks of National Geographic Traveler Magazine. She suggested that as an emerging photographer, the best way to hone my skills was to give myself a project and keep heading out to the same place to take photographs. So, at her suggestion and in connection with another class taught by Howard Goodman at WCC, I spent some time last fall photographing the riders, horses and general beauty of Buxton Pond Farm in Bedford, New York over the space of a few weeks. It's a fabulous place and everyone there was so friendly. As a photographer, it was the perfect subject as I could take portraits, action shots, and still life shots to add to my portfolio. I plan to head back there again when the weather warms up.

If you are looking to improve your photography skills, I highly recommend the self-assignment route. It gives you the opportunity to get to know a place and to really see it as well as a chance to review your photos and try something a new way if you are not happy with the initial attempt. It's a great learning tool whether you are an emerging pro or an amateur photographer.

As part of the class, we also put together a book, which was a fabulous way to memorialize the project. With digital photography, it's so easy to keep everything on your hard drive and backup CD's that you often fail to print more than a handful of photos. Although I frequently shot for various magazines, and get to see some some of my work in print, the bulk of my work is for web sites and stock photography.  Even when I take photos of my family and friends I find that I'm emailing them instead of making prints. The only good thing is no more guilt about all those photos in shoeboxes rather than in albums (I know the should be in archival boxes--and some are). Anyway, a photo book is a great way to make an album and for you pros out there and even you talented amateurs it might just be something you can sell as well. Once you make one they can print as many as you want so it is also a great way to share photos with your friends and relatives.  Here's a look at my book: The Riders of Buxton Pond Farm