New Blog About Photography Premieres

Welcome + Background
Welcome to my new blog! My name is Michael Grace-Martin and I am a professional wedding, portrait, fine art, and stock photographer based in upstate New York near the Finger Lakes. I am an active member of the Wedding Photojournalist Association (WPJA), the Artistic Guild of the Wedding Photojournalist Association (AGWPJA), and Canon Professional Services. I have successfully sold fine art and stock photos over the last 3 years and have gone from charging $800 to photograph a wedding to $4000 and beyond.

Most of my camera equipment is made by Canon, and the vast majority of my photography is done with Canon digital SLR cameras. I also dabble in medium format film photography. I scan the film negatives, slides, or polaroids to produce digital image files. All of my photo prints are produced from digital files regardless of whether the original photo was acquired with a digital or film camera.

95% or more of all my digital image processing is done in either Adobe Lightroom or Adobe Photoshop. I have processed tens of thousands of images in Lightroom and have many techniques and presets (presets are to Lightroom what actions are to Photoshop) to share.

The Mission
The purpose of this blog is at least five-fold:

1. In addition to plenty of free information, imagery, and instruction (the 3 "i"s), I will also be offering information products (e.g., How-tos) and helpful computer software (e.g., Lightroom presets and helpful image file related utilities) for sale right from this blog.
2. In the past, my images have been spread out at various places--like Flickr, Smugmug, and Facebook--with no organization or centralized access to them. Lightmanship is going to take over the role of centralized portal and showcase for these images.
   
3. When I post an image to Lightmanship, I'm going to give details about how the image was produced. The goal is to make the posting of my images instructional for budding photographers, and more informative and interesting for photo aficionados.
4. As a member of Canon Professional Services, I am able to borrow almost any professional grade camera equipment Canon makes. So, I'll be including some equipment reviews done by yours truly.
   
5. This blog will replace the bi-weekly e-letter I was sending out.

Even though this blog will primarily cover digital photography, from the blog's name--Lightmanship--you can see we put considerations of light and lighting in a paramount position! Regardless of what type of photography you practice or prefer, knowing how to see and use light is essential to the making of *any* great or even good photograph.

Publishing Schedule
We will be publishing one main article each week, plus 1-3 shorter posts each week. You can sign up to our email notification list if you would like to get an email notification each time a post goes up. The email notification will contain an excerpt of the content of the post so you can decide whether to follow the link to the full posting.

Going Forward
So, come back each week to see interesting and beautiful photos, learn about how to make them, get inspiration for your own photography, learn about techniques and new equipment, and/or just keep abreast of what's going on in digital photography and Michael Grace-Martin Photography!

In short, if you like Michael Grace-Martin's photography, then come back each week to get a good "dose" of his imagery, plus his knowledge and enthusiasm for the art & practice of photography...:-).

-Michael Grace-Martin
www.mgm-photography.com

All images and text (c) Michael Grace-Martin