PhotographyBanzai.com

How much does online video and two websites pay a collective viewership of probably a bit over 1 million views/interactions per year? I’m talking all of my YouTube channels, on-site Amazon videos that get commissions, affiliate links I place in descriptions and on my websites. Not bothering to count Instagram and TikTok , but I do post videos on those websites too even though I can’t do click-able links or receive ad revenue sharing due to not meeting their requirements. Plus, only one of my 8 YouTube channels is monetized which accounts for 810k of the total in 2023. The YouTube channel homepage. The largest YouTube channel that is in YPP. You can see a clear downtrend over 2023 in addition to 13% fewer views than 2022. I post normal videos and Shorts on the channel. My best guess is that a lot of my 950+ videos have aged out of relevance besides global trends and YouTube itself.   Channel statistics for 2023. A bit less than $10k USD for the year before tax. My Amazon efforts...

I wanted to talk a bit about how things are going and some of my plans. My most popular videos on YouTube lately are the hands-on camera gear videos filmed at Camera Craft in Rockford Illinois. Thanks to the shop for allowing me to handle the cameras and record footage there.  What the channel looks like on YouTube. This simple unassuming gear video recorded at the camera shop is currently my most popular video on the channel. That collaboration doesn’t allow for super detailed videos, but based on feedback and popularity, I think those videos are truly helpful to people. I do want to continue with that. I don’t know when I’ll be able to make more of those videos again with the COVID-19 situation. Even if things are slowly opening up, it doesn’t mean the virus has gone away. The shop is open now as long as you wear a mask, so I could ask the owner what’s possible, but right now it doesn’t feel fair to them and people I live around to increase my contact with others (staff and espec...

My YouTube channel has grown over the last two years that I’ve been putting in a significant effort compared to previous years. It isn’t some huge amount life changing amount, but it is an upward trend. That’s not the point of this article, but rather dealing with some of that growth and taking a positive step forward. Companies were starting to contact me to see if I was interesting in trying out their equipment. Not big companies, but smaller seemingly legitimate ones. That, of course, requires giving them a place to send the stuff. I didn’t want to send any random person my home address, so I started doing research and found out that USPS PO Boxes can have standard mailing addresses at many locations and you don’t need a huge expensive box to accept large packages. That spurred this entire process. On a side note, I first had the idea of opening a P.O. Box in response to a policy change in the Google Play app store ( see my apps still on there … most of them have a photography twis...

I decided to put another one of my books on this website. I wrote this back in 2010 – 2011. I’ve evolved as a (convention/cosplay) photographer a lot since then, but it is still worth a read. Check it out on Amazon:  https://amzn.to/4g0A7eC As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases!  I took this photo at Otakon. Description: Learn all about the exciting subculture that is convention photography! Straight from the experiences of a long time convention attendee, He has spent years improving his skills in all aspects of photography and how that relates to the convention scene. From tips and techniques to the best practices of cosplay photography, everything is here for your reading pleasure!  Whether you are interested in conventions in general or want to get into either cosplay or photography, this book is a great fit to help you further your goals or just expand your knowledge on the subject. 

I made another android application. This time I took a suggestion from a thread on Flickr I started as a basic idea for the application. I used bits and pieces from some of my existing apps, but it was for the most part new code to deal with the image manipulation. I can’t stand those apps that unnecessarily require extreme permissions for their functionality. Sorry there isn’t any reason your app that takes photos or whatever needs access to a user’s contacts and full Internet access… With this app I set out to make a simple yet direct way to examine a photo. Sorry, this app was removed from the Android Play store years ago. Something to view photos. Something that can load jpeg, png, gif, and bmp of any size (large photos will be dynamically sized to be viewable on the device due to Android memory constraints). Something to see the details of a picture with a simple and easy to use interface that can zoom and move with a single press of the finger. Something that doesn’t use extreme...

If you frequent my website, you will know that I visited Arizona in October to see my aunt and uncle. I took a lot of photos with the intention of using some of them for content and products my uncle and I had planned. Our first joint product is a calendar entitled (click below for more info): Arizona Mile Markers…and the Wonders in Between… What the calendar looks like! My uncle decided which images were to be used. We ended up using quite a few from the images that he took with his Nikon digicam, which was alright with me because he has an eye for framing (I think 7 of 13 were mine). I fitted them into the calendar’s formatting and put together the game aspect of the calendar. The calendar isn’t just a normal one with pictures.  Each month is a location you can try to figure out where it is located. The next month shows where the previous month is with a street name, satellite map (courtesy of the USGS ), and GPS coordinates. I had most of the coordinates, but for ones I didn’t h...

I took the time to revise my book yet again and am now able to offer it on Amazon.com. It’s using the self publishing service called “Create Space” instead of “Blurb.” Create Space is owned by Amazon, so it just made sense to try them out and I’m glad to say that I’m happy with the result. I was able to offer a substantially larger book (from 110 to 160 pages) for around the same price yet have the same or better quality. Amazon link to the Convention Photography   book . As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases! A related video about the book. Print quality wise the two companies seem pretty similar. I think Blurb might use slightly thicker paper, but I like the inking quality as well as the cover and cutting exactness a bit more with Create Space. The biggest difference comes in the way of tools, features, and business related offerings. Blurb can handle straight PDF submissions and they offer Adobe InDesign templates, but to get started I used their Booksmart ap...

It’s time for another new Android app! My first photography app was for astrophotography. This time I wrote one that generates histograms of pretty much any sized jpeg, gif. png, or bmp you can throw at it. Here is a link to the app on the Android Market. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCrZBGLw7I8 Check out the video I made (Pentax K-5 at 720p 30fps, edited in Kdenlive) As with a lot of my apps, this started with a need that I saw for myself. I wanted to be able to have nice large histograms of my camera images. I also wanted to be able to see histograms of photos I downloaded on my phone or copied over by hand. The app description from the market page: Check the exposure of your images on Android with this histogram generator! Are you interested in checking out your jpeg, png, bmp, and gif files to see if they are properly exposed? It’s easy with this image histogram generator. This application loads those formats in any size, large or small, and allows you to see how luminance and co...

I just made a second promo video for an Android application called DSLR Star Trails Calculator that I just completed yesterday. It’s a simple yet useful application to give estimates on how to avoid or gain star trails in photos. This application is under my personal business of sorts with a focus on photography. I’ve been wanting to make simple but useful applications that I can utilize in the field to get the shots I want to make. Here is the video: The promo video on YouTube. This was taken with the K-7 at 1536×1024 in 30fps mode (My K-5 is being serviced). That’s one of the reasons I love blogging because I make tutorials like that, which allows me to just follow my previous directions to get a result I’m after. If I had not written down directions I probably would have spend extra time on this video trying to remember what the specific steps were. Even if you don’t write for a blog like I do, you should start writing down important processes somewhere. It helps you stay consi...

Today I’ll be talking about promotion and using my camera gear as a tool to create such videos. A friend and I just finished our first Application targeted for the Android marketplace. The application basically allows the user to monitor the level of rivers in the United States thanks to publicly available data that is updated frequently. This is useful to anyone who does boating among other various activities that have some relation to rivers, gage height, and stream flow. I’ve since made a second promo style video, but with the K-7 camera instead. The great thing about current DSLRs is that they are amazing multi-function tools. This time I used my Pentax K-5 and shot in 1080p HD 25fps as well as with an external microphone. Why use an external mic? No mechanical sounds from the camera, no sounds from me touching the camera, and overall better sound quality even with a cheap microphone. Here is the setup for my video: Pentax K-5 with a microphone. Pentax K-5 in video mode with a DA 4...

I just recently finished writing a book I titled “ Convention Photography ” (affiliate link to the book, I earn from qualifying purchases!) that I will soon be releasing on the Kindle and B&N Nook electronic reader platforms. To make certain the text is as smooth and as well written as possible, I printed the book out for proofing by a family member who is excellent at that sort of thing. It's fun to see it in physical form! If you have read my blog here before you probably have an idea of what conventions are about. If not, basically put there are large events where people of a mutual hobby attend. Often people dress up in costume, and in turn others photograph them. I attend those events to photograph others, so the book is mostly about that process.

I’ve been interested in insuring my camera equipment for a while now. Considering online retail value, my gear is getting up there in total cost. So much so that in my current situation I would not be able to replace much of it if something were to happen. I’m personally focused on just insuring my equipment as I don’t really do much that deals with professional liability like a photographer that owns a studio. My research so far brings me to a few companies: Zurich North America They are said to be one of the insurance companies that is open to photographers, but there site doesn’t say anything on the subject. Hill & Usher They seem to be one of the most open companies toward photographers as their site includes a lot of information on the subject. The policy they show on their site seems geared toward professionals with studios or people that derive a lot of their income from photography State Farm I have general insurance from them, so I thought they would be a good option. ...