New York Music Photographer Chris Owyoung - The Best Music Photography & Band Portraits » News

Memphis wins big at Tony Awards

Chris Owyoung — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 14:57:20 +0000

My awesome clients friends at Memphis The Musical won big at the 2010 Tonys last night taking home awards for four of their eight nominations including the prizes for Best Musical and Best Original Score. Check out the full list of Tony Award winners on the official site and go see Memphis!!!

Since they opened last year, I’ve done a bunch of work for the musical including photography of the finished Memphis production and the recording of the Memphis cast album. Here are a few of my favorite shots!

Recent Interview & Panel Discussion

Chris Owyoung — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 17:36:46 +0000

Recently, I’ve participated in two speaking events:

TechTock Interview

Jack Howard with the Adorama Learning Center interviewed my brother Todd and I about music photography. In case you missed it at the ALC, you can listen to the 45-minute interview here.

APA/NY Panel Discussion

I spoke at a sold-out APA/NY panel discussion on “Presenting Your Work to the New Media Landscape” with Roberto De Luna, photo editor at Time Out New York; Joe Pritchard, a photo rep at Vaughan Hannigan; Alison Zavos of the industry blog featureshoot.com; Alex Wright, co-creator of Dripbook; Erin Rabasca, head of art buying at R/GA. If you missed the event, be sure to check out part one and part two of the highlights by writer/blogger/marketing consultant Kristina Feliciano.

New Web Design & Features

Chris Owyoung — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 21:40:32 +0000

Welcome to the new and improved www.onelouderphoto.com. In addition to the new design, the site features several improvements that will appeal to photographers, music fans and image buyers alike. Details after the jump.

Project Goals

A fresh design with more functionality, better organization and less clutter.

The Design

Better Organization – The new site functions less like a traditional blog and more like a content management system. My concert photography, band portraits, documentary photography, tutorials and news all have distinct landing pages accessible from the homepage.

Fewer Pages - One of the best things about Graph Paper Press themes is that they expose a lot of content on the homepage. This removes the need to create separate pages for each piece of content. Fewer pages means less clutter and less management.

The new theme allows me to feature my portfolio, contact info, blog and 5 different categories of content all on the first page a visitor sees.

Choosing the Theme – Trying to find a minimalist portfolio theme that compliments the design of your flashy new business cards isn’t easy.

While there are tons of awesome themes that would have accomplished my goals on the design front, Graph Paper Press has continually released some of the most interesting and easily customizable options. Better still, the company has an amazing track record of updates and volumes of video tutorials describing everything from customization to integrating their sites with a host of functionality-rich plugins.

Although I had been considering a move to Graph Paper Press themes for nearly a year, the recent integration with the best image archiving and photo sales platform pushed me over the edge. When I learned that Graph Paper Press was partnering with PhotoShelter I almost dropped the baby I was holding my iPhone.

The Features

Easier Image Sales - According to a recent survey of professional image buyers, the average photographer website is annoying. The issue – photographers want their websites to be unique; Image buyers simply want to buy what they need and get on with life.

Thanks to PhotoShelter’s seamless integration with the GPP Modularity and On Assignment themes, it’s now much easier to access my image archive to license my work or purchase prints.

The archive is accessible from five different points on the homepage better yet, users won’t leave my website in order to purchase.

Easier Contact – With five instances of contact information or social networking links accessible on the homepage, getting in touch with me should be a no-brainer.

Future Improvements

My expectation is that the cooperation between Graph Paper Press and PhotoShelter will only improve as time goes on. I also expect massive product improvements from both companies in the coming year. The combination of these expectations means that I’ll be in a very good position to make future improvements to the site in terms of design and functionality.

My New Business Cards

chris — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 18:46:05 +0000

I received press samples of my new business cards yesterday. I loved them so much I just had to share. The cards are printed on a matte black board-weight stock that has a texture similar to rose petals or human skin.

Sound creepy? Trust me when I say that it’s nothing short of awesome.

The text is rendered in a bronze metallic foil that reflects red-to-gold hues depending on the ambient light.

The cards are being produced by the best full-service print house in the country – Prestone Printing. When I first toured Prestone’s massive facilities they were folding tens of thousands of CD inserts for Snoop Dogg’s Rhythm & Gangsta album. If it’s good enough for Snoop, it’s good enough for me.

MetaSmart Seminars: Protect your work, make money

chris — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 17:30:06 +0000

T-Pain performs at Hot 97 Summer Jam, in East Rutherford New Jersey. July 1, 2008

June 23, 2009 – The New York installment of METAsmart, was a huge success. The seminar series, which teaches photographers how meta data can be used to protect copyright, streamline workflow and increase sales, featured presentations by metadata expert David Riecks, Photoshelter founder & SEO expert Allen Murabayashi, and a panel discussion by meta-savvy photographers Lou Manna, Garfield Hall and yours truly.

The presentations were so good that even I learned a lot (and I was on the panel).

DID YOU KNOW

Google returns 140 characters of your page description before cutting it off.
Google does include the ALT tags of images in search results but will not read the image metadata.
The copyright symbol does not display correctly in all photo captioning software. Write out “copyright” instead.
Including the original file name in the metadata can help you determine which image the client has even if they’ve renamed it.
It is illegal to remove the copyright information from a photo’s metadata.

IF YOU MISSED THE NEW YORK SEMINAR

Don’t worry, the METAsmart program notes and a host of other useful information will be downloadable from photometadata.org soon.
Registering for one of the upcoming FREE METAsmart seminars in Washington D.C. or Atlanta.

I ALSO RECOMMEND

Improving your website’s SEO by downloading the Photoshelter SEO Cookbook for Photographers.
Visiting David Riecks’ Controlled Vocabulary website for more information on how to efficiently keyword your images no matter what software you’re using.

What have you learned about metadata?

Protect your hearing, a pubic service announcement

Portfolio Updates

chris — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 05:33:07 +0000

Back in December, I asked you all for portfolio feedback. It’s been too long coming but, I’ve updated my live and promotional portfolios with nearly all of your suggestions.

a) Photos have been added/retired
b) The flash galleries now hasve captions and custom fonts
c) The flash galleries now open in javascript shadowboxes instead of new pages
d) Both portfolios have been integrated into the wordpress page framework

Thank you all for your valuable comments!

WordPress 2.7 – The New Hotness

chris — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 22:38:50 +0000

I’ve updated onelouderphoto.com to the newest version of WordPress and if looks could kill, version 2.7 would slay. Grab a cold one and admire the sexy new layout.

I was even so bold as to turn all of my old plugins on *GASP* at the SAME TIME!
(Luckily nothing broke.)

Portfolio Updates

Cameron Carpenter, Grammy Nominee

Chris Owyoung — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 02:54:01 +0000

I’m very pleased to announce that my friend and client Cameron Carpenter has just been nominated for a Grammy Award in the category of solo instrumentalist without orchestra for his album Revolutionary (Telarc).

In case you couldn’t tell from the photo, Cameron is a rockstar on the organ. So, next time you feel like having your mind blown, take in his live performance or pick up his album on Amazon.

About the Photo:

This shot was taken at approximately 2:00AM at the end of an all-day shoot that included multiple wardrobe changes and several locations. The backdrop is the massive Marshall & Ogletree virtual organ at Trinity Church, Wall Street.

Cameron was lit by a single Alienbees B800 flash unit with a 30 degree honeycomb grid positioned high and camera right. Nikon D200, f/11, 1/60, ISO200.

The project was shot in conjuction with Randy Tay of Randy Tay Photography and produced by Susan Slaymayer of Slaymaker Special Projects.

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Pimping My Clients: Arthur Lewis CD Release at Ars Nova

chris — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 19:27:52 +0000

Do you like good music? Will you be in NYC this Friday, September 19th at 8pm? Yes? Then be sure to swing by Ars Nova at 8PM for some of the sexiest neo-soul to ever caress your earlobes. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you my client, my friend Arthur Lewis.

Arthur’s solo EP entitled If We Were, hits iTunes and select stores September 30th on Rock Slinger Incorporated. The performance promises to be Arthur’s best yet. I’m told he will have advance copies of the album on hand.

Tickets: SmartTix.com
Myspace Mp3: Arthur Lewis
Facebook: Event Info

8 Year Old Guitar Prodigy Melts My Face

chris — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 22:02:27 +0000

OMFG, I may be the last person on earth to have seen this video, but in case I’m not. I’m posting it here. I’m officially putting Yuto Miyazawa on my list of people to shoot for 2009.

Hello Nikon