Earlier this year I made a cool photo of my face with a crack on my head, and was asked by a few people how I did it. Well, I finally got around to making a video tutorial on it, and used it for NAPP’s “So You Think You Can Teach Photoshop?” contest (details here). I also created two other videos for the contest, and you can view them by going to my profile on Vimeo.

I’m not sure what my chances are for winning the contest, since there were over 100 video entries by a lot of really talented artists. We should find out mid-November who the winners are … wish me luck!

The good folks over at Moo.com were kind enough to give me a free pack of their brand-new MiniCards. I have ordered from them in the past and really like the quality. My current iStock business cards are made by Moo, with a photo on one side and text on the other side, and now they are offering the same service (text on one side, image or text on the other) for the MiniCards.

I decided to go with the “text” cards in rainbow colors. These little cards are so cute … they’re very portable and come with a sturdy little box to carry them around in. The paper quality is one of my favorite things about the cards – very thick with a matte finish. The website also makes it easy to create your cards, they have a lot of pre-made designs, and you can even import your own photos from sites like Flickr and Facebook.

If you are shopping around for business cards, mini or regular sized, I would encourage you to check out Moo.com.

Note: I didn’t get paid to say nice things about Moo … it’s all from the bottom of my heart. ;) My friend Rich Legg also blogged about the cards recently … check out his post on LeggNet.com.

I recently did a “Food Photography” clinic with Rich Legg and mentioned one of my favorite books on food styling. The book, Food Styling for Photographers by Linda Bellingham and Jean Ann Bybee, is exactly what you would expect. It explains food styling for someone who is a photographer but doesn’t have much (or any) experience styling the food.

The reason I really like this book is, because it is primarily written from the perspective of a food stylist, it focuses more on the actual styling of the food, so it has very little information on technique and lighting for photography. (If you need a book about photographing food then I would recommend a book such as Digital Food Photography by Lou Manna.) It’s also written very well and has a lot of photos to illustrate the methods described in the book, and while it does describe ways to style specific meals most of the methods you learn can be applied to many other food items.

Ideally it’s best to have a professional food stylist at the photo-shoot, especially if you are hired to photograph food for commercial purposes for an organization that has the budget for it, but when you do what I do (micro-stock) or just want to photograph food for your blog or for fun then there really isn’t the budget to spend $500+ on a professional stylist. I find that this book is more than helpful and I highly recommend it for photographers who want to give food photography a try.