Shooting with Thomas Hawk
June 2nd, 2008 | Published in Featured, News | 12 Comments
Last Friday I had the opportunity to hang out with Thomas Hawk. One of the most popular photographers on Flickr, and one of the founders of Zooomr. It was a fascinating conversation, and I can honestly say that I’ve never met any photographer who shoots as much as Thomas. He shoots every single day, between 100 and 500 shots on average! If you add to that the fact that he maintains a very popular and active blog, runs a company, has a day job, and is also a Dad and it becomes a mystery how he finds the time to do all of this stuff. Thomas tells me part of the secret is that he’s “always online”. The easiest way to keep up with Thomas online is probably through his FriendFeed page.
Check out the video for some great tips on how to increase your Flickr popularity. And you’ll learn how Thomas manages to keep all of those images backed up (hint Drobo), and more. To get more tips from Thomas on being successful on Flickr, check out his blog post on the topic. This was a great chat.
June 3rd, 2008 at 1:19 am (#)
If I shot anywhere near that amount I’d never even get so far as looking at the RAW files. TH must have more hours in the day than the rest of us!
I’m a CS3 Bridge + ACR user, I must confess. I did try a Lightroom demo about a year ago but didn’t really take to it. I guess it may have just been the relative unfamiliarity of new software, and not having any real problems with Bridge to make me want to move to something else.
On thing I seem to remember about LR was that I was not able to edit my exposure setting with the keyboard, or see the numerical value. I don’t always want to use the mouse with a slider. I dunno, maybe that’s changed.
June 3rd, 2008 at 2:06 am (#)
Thank you very much for an interesting interview. I’m impressed of how Thomas find time to shoot all these photos. Not only he’s shooting a lot of pictures. He has also a very high quality of his photos. Hope he finds his way into the Lightroom track soon.
June 3rd, 2008 at 5:49 am (#)
That is a great interview. I feel inspired to carry my camera a lot more. Maybe this could be another reason to buy a G9 so I could always have that decent camera with me.
June 3rd, 2008 at 6:31 am (#)
This totally just inspired me to start a new blog. Just bought shooteveryday.com.
June 3rd, 2008 at 6:41 am (#)
Thanks for sharing this video. TH is such a great advocate for photography and photographers. He inspired me to shoot every day, and it has really helped my growth as a photographer.
This also makes me interested in finding out more about LR and how it compares to and fits in with Bridge and Camera RAW. I’m still using Camera RAW with PSE, but soon I think I will need something with more power.
June 3rd, 2008 at 9:32 am (#)
Hey @Dave Nelson, FYI, this video was shot with a Canon G9.
June 3rd, 2008 at 11:07 am (#)
@ ade: Lightroom has always had the ability to allow users to adjust develop parameters (such as exposure) via keyboard shortcuts. To adjust exposure via the keyboard, simply hover the mouse arrow over the exposure slider handle and press the up/down arrow keys to adjust in increments of +/- 0.10. Alternately, you can click once in the numerical field next to the slider and make adjustments the same way.
This behavior can be applied to any control in Lightroom’s Basic/Develop panel.
June 4th, 2008 at 10:32 am (#)
nice chimping!
anyways…had the pleasure of shooting w/ Thomas when in San Fran a couple years back, at tag cathedral
June 4th, 2008 at 12:57 pm (#)
Thanks Fred. It was great fun hanging out. Yikes, btezra, I was chimping there wasn’t I? Ha, ha.
June 4th, 2008 at 5:22 pm (#)
Nice job Fred. Hard to believe he has time to sleep & take his wife out a few times a week too. Uses his time wisely.
June 5th, 2008 at 10:22 am (#)
thomas hawk is a machine! great post.
June 11th, 2008 at 6:29 pm (#)
Good video and even more impressed when you mentioned it was done with a G9 Fred. Now I’m even more sold on that little gizmo.
Nice to see others out there using their camera every day. For a minute there I thought I was in obsessive territory.