24/7 Photo Buffet App Sale! One Week Only.

Just about a year ago, I met Dr. Dave Wilson in a helicopter during the Maui Photo Festival. We were both taking pictures while flying high over beautiful Maui.

When we landed, I asked Dave, "What do you do in real life?" He replied, "I'm an app developer."

I said, "How cool is that! Do you think we could develop an app together?"

Within four months, we had our first iPhone app: Rick Sammon's 24/7 Photo Buffet.

A few months later we launched Rick Sammon's 24/7 Photo Buffet for the iPad.

I supplied the content, Dave did all the cool programming.

You can read about, and order, the apps here.

To celebrate our first year of working on apps, and to celebrate the Maui Photo Festival, we are offering a sale on both the iPhone and iPad versionsof 24/7 Photo Buffet – from August 22 to August 29.

The $4.99 iPhone version is on sale for $1.99.
The $8.99 iPad version is on sale for $3.99.

Again, this sale ends August 29th.

Explore the light,
Rick

Introducing Rick Sammon's Butterfly Wonders – an interactive iPad app for nature lovers & close-up photographers

Rick Sammon's Butterfly Wonders – my interactive iPad app for nature lovers and close-up photographers, is here! The interactive iPad app features my favorite photographs of living butterflies – exotic species from around the world.

To celebrate the app, I am giving away 10 free redeem codes. Scroll down for info.

Co-developed with wildlife photographer Juan Pons, the app was designed to convey the beauty of the butterfly, and to share with butterfly enthusiasts – and nature photographers – fascinating facts about these amazing creatures. Fifty-five photographs, each accompanied by detailed camera/exposure information, illustrate the Butterfly Wonders section.

To help photographers capture their own beautiful close-up pictures of butterflies, Butterfly Wonders includes a comprehensive Photographing Butterflies section. Twenty-eight images illustrate my tips, trick and techniques. I was going to produce a separate app on close-up photography, but I decided to include this how-to information as a bonus in Butterfly Wonders.

Butterfly expert Alan Chin Lee supplied the scientific information, as well as fun facts, for each butterfly (and moth). For example, did you know that once a butterfly emerges from its chrysalis it never grows any larger? And did you know that silk moths have no mouth with which to feed?

In the Emersion section, the app illustrates one of Mother Nature’s miracles of transformation – an animal that starts out life as a crawling sack of goo and changes into a beautiful flying flower.

The app also takes the viewer on a visual journey, via the Migration section, to Sierra Chinqua in Michoacan, Mexico, where I photographed in a colony of more than 30 million monarchs during their annual migration. In this app, Dr. Thomas Emmel, a world-renowned butterfly expert, writes about this journey in a beautiful essay. Both Dr. Emmel and Mr. Lee were with me in Sierra Chinqua when I photographed the monarchs.


The butterfly, with its amazing metamorphosis from a crawling caterpillar into a vivid and graceful winged creature, symbolizes the infinite potential within every living creature to evolve: from darkness into light, ugliness into beauty, and lethargy into activity.

Rick Sammon's Butterfly Wonders, and the life of a butterfly, is a coming-of-age-story in the most profound sense. As an exotic metaphor for transcendence and renewal, the butterfly has been celebrated in art, literature, dance, fashion, myth, and spirituality throughout history and in cultures around the world. Now, the butterfly is celebrated in the first iPad app on living butterflies.

How did I get so many close-up shots of butterflies? Well, I captured the butterflies with my Canon digital SLR cameras, Canon macro lenses and Canon ring lights. The ability to see every shot immediately on my camera's LCD monitor allowed me to make critical exposure and lighting adjustments on site. That was of the utmost importance, due to subject movement, changing lighting conditions and the reflectivity of some of the butterflies.

Here’s what Maria Morris Hambourg, former Curator, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, said in a review about my butterfly photographs: “For their inclusive vision, sumptuous textures and colors, and the sheer wonder these finely detailed descriptions of butterflies awaken in us, I think Rick Sammon’s photographs are marvels.”

Thanks Maria!

For more info and to order, click here.

Click here to see my other apps.

To celebrate the app, I am giving away 10 free redeem codes:

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Note: To redeem a code, go to the home screen of the App Store and click "Redeem" in the upper right hand corner. Enter your redemption code and sync your iPad (in this case). Make sure to do so immediately as promo codes do expire and cannot be replaced if this occurs. Sorry friends around the globe, but the codes only work in the US App Store. Also note that the process for redeeming a code is Apple's standard process, not ours.


That's me on the left and Alan on the right.

Explore the light,
Rick

P.S. Is this cosmic or what? I found this butterfly chair shortly before the app was approved!

Think Social Media. Think Internationally!

Today, social media is media. With social media, you have potential customers around the planet. How cool is that?

If you are thinking of producing a book, DVD, iPhone/iTouch app or an iPad app, or a PDF e-book, think of the international market while you are developing your product. The market is huge!

Use Google Analytics to track stats. If you have an app, use AppVis. I check it every day :-)

For more social media tips, scroll down on this blog.

Explore the light - and the international market,
Rick

Thank for Making 24/7 Photo Buffet App-alicious

Click image for larger view.

Just a quick note to say "thank you" to all the folks who downloaded 24/7 Photo Buffet, my first app with Dr. Dave Wilson. You made it #17 on Apple's list of top paid photography apps. Sweet.

We will continue to update 24/7 and work on new apps. Don't be shy about sending suggestions. We listened and incorporated many of them into the two updates for 24/7.

Hey, last night I was hanging out with Terry White at the speakers' dinner at PSW. This dude has a cool app, too! Check it out on his site.

Thank you again,

Rick

Version 1.1 of My Digital Photography App is Now Available

The first update for my first app - Rick Sammon's 24/7 Photo Buffet - is now available on iTunes. The update is free.

If you are new to the app, read about it here.

The always-expanding app (like a never ending story) include lessons on close-up photography and shooting in the snow.

Here is a preview.

Close-Up Tips

Practice.
Before we set out to take some serious close-up pictures, we need to practice using different f-stops, shutter speeds and lighting at home. That's what I did before embarking on a trip to Florida to photograph butterflies.

I experimented with different camera, lens and flash (ringlight) settings at home so that when I arrived in Florida, I could focus most of my attention on composition, without having to worry about making camera adjustments. This picture of Spicebush Swallowtail was taken with my Canon 50mm macro lens and Canon Macro Ring Lite MR-14EX. That lens lets me get full-frame pictures off butterflies, as well as close-ups of a butterfly’s wings.

Depth-of-field.
When shooting with a macro lens, depth-of-field is extremely limited – and important. Even at small f-stop, depth-of-field is limited. Use your depth-of-field preview button to check what’s in focus – and what’s out of focus – before you shoot.

Ringlight.
A ringlight lets you shoot at small apertures for good depth-of-field. It also offers even or ratio lighting. Your choice!

Shooting in the Snow Tips

Don’t Be Fooled.
All that white can fool a camera's exposure meter into thinking that the scene is brighter than it actually is, therefore setting the camera for an underexposed picture. The remedy: Set your exposure compensation dial to +1. The increase should give you a better exposure, which, of course, you can fine-tune further with exposure compensation and in the digital darkroom.

Pack a Polarizing Filter.
Another important tip: Pack a polarizing filter to reduce glare on snow and ice.

Future 24/7 Photo Buffet updates will include:
Hyper HDR (because I am so hyper) and Flash Photography.

Hey, let me know what you'd like me to add to my 24/7 Photo Buffet app - or what apps you'd like to see.

Rick Sammon's 24/7 Photo Safari is in the works! It should be available in April.

Explore the Light,
Rick

It Takes a Lot of Peanuts to Feed an Elephant

My dad (91) has a great saying - one he has used since The Great Depression (1929): "It takes a lot of peanuts to feed an elephant." What he means: Don't think that making pennies is not important. Those pennies can turn into big bucks if you have enough of them.

I have actually followed my dad's advice since I was a kid. In today's economy, that's especially important – because there are many ways to make pennies. Here are my top three recommendations:

E-books
Make your own e-book and promote it to your family and friends - and to all those who might be interested in the topic. All you need to do is to make a PDF of your e-book, post a description on your site or blog, set a reasonable price, set up a paypal account, tweet and blog and post on facebook about it - and you are on your way to feeding the elephant. I did that today, with my son's help, for my Life Lessons book, and we already sold our first copy – for a few "peanuts."

One of my friend, William Neill, has sold more than a few copies of his e-book, Impression of Light, at OutdoorPhotoGear.com - and my friend at the Digital Photo Experience, Juan Pons, is working on a collection of his best tips and techniques for his first e-book. Now it's your turn! What ya waiting for?

If your e-book does well, or if you just want to have a few copies to sell, you can make a hard copy at an on-line lab. I have found that Nations Photo Lab does an excellent job. What's more, a real book publisher might see your book and want to publish it. You never know. Remember: Your pictures do you no good buried on your hard drive.

Associates and Affiliates Programs
Many companies (just about all of them) have affiliates programs that give you a very small percentage (peanuts) of a sale for the recommendation. Amazon.com is just one. All you have to do is go to the company's web site to find out if they offer an affiliates program. Post links on your web site and blog. More peanuts for the elephant.

Develop an iPhone App
Hey, there are plenty of iPhone app developers out there. If you have an idea for an app, find a developer! (I met mine in a helicopter in Maui!) If you make a few "peanuts" on several thousand copies of your app, you'll be doing okay. Hey, you gotta dream and shoot for the stars - which is what I do every day. After all, there are kids out there doing this!! If they can do it, you can do it.

Feed the Elephant,
Rick

P.S. Hey, you may not earn enough peanuts to buy a Lamborghini, but you may make enough for a few tanks of gas for a Hybrid - and those tanks of gas could actually take you all the way across the country. Hybrids are that fuel efficient! I know. I have a Honda Hybrid.

Create The Salvador Dali and Fish-Eye Lens Effect with Your iPhone

Want to create an artistic image with your iPhone camera – the kind of image ("melting" subjects) that perhaps Salvador Dali would have created had he had an iPhone?

Want to create the full-frame fish-eye lens effect (curved lines in an image when you tilt the camera up or down)?

It's easy and fun! For only $49.95 you can download my iPhone Rockin' Rick Rotating Camera Effect App and awaken the artist within.

Or, you can simply rotate the camera (kinda quickly) while you are taking a picture - which is what I did for the two pictures you see here. :-)

Seriously, if you know of any cool photo Apps for the iPhone and want to share them with readers of this blog, please reply to this post.

Explore the Light,
Rick

P.S. Okay, enough silliness! Here is some cool info on the iPhone from my friend Juan Pons.

Did you know that when you send a photo you took with the iPhone as an email attachment from your iPhone, the size of the file that gets sent is much smaller than the original image stored on your iPhone?

When you send your friend that great photo you just took, the iPhone sends a much smaller version to save on the data that is transmitted. For example, the iPhone 3GS has a 3 MegaPixel camera and the files that it creates are 1536x2048, however when you attach that photo to an email your friend only gets a photo that is a measly 600x800. Great for viewing on an email, but usually not big enough to be a good desktop image on your computer.

The same goes for videos, if you email or post to YouTube the videos you took with that iPhone 3GS they are compressed and and don't look nearly as good as the original full sized files.

How do you get large original photos and videos out of your iPhone? Connect your iPhone to your computer and download the original files using iPhoto or similar software. You will be amazed how much better those photos and videos look.