Ok Mirrorless, Here I Come! I’m Officially A Samsung Imagelogger!

So I’ve been curious about them for at least a year, and have been hearing more and more about them especially in the last several months, and now I finally get to experiment with the new mirrorless camera systems myself…in a very unexpected way. Samsung reached out to me to see if I was interested in joining their Samsung Imagelogger program. Basically I’d get to be one of 50 lucky buggers who are getting cameras and gear from Samsung over the next half year or so to experiment and play with and report back on and post images from. Uhhh…YEAH!!

Needless to say, I’m pretty hyped on the opportunity to get intimate with the latest mirrorless systems and see what these things can do.

So as of Wednesday afternoon, I’ve got the first camera they’ve sent out to us in my hands, the NX300, and we just had our training session, so I preemptively apologize if my posts hit a slight overdrive. Since this is the first new camera system I’ll be using in about 2 years, as well as my first foray away from Nikon DSLRs, and, of course, my first adventure into the mirrorless space, it should be interesting to see where and what brain circuits this experience might fry or invigorate.

Anyhow, the header image above is one of the first images taken with this mini-beast, and the camera itself? Well, I must say, the brown leather color scheme is pretty shnazzy! It took me a few minutes to get acquainted with this thing (the biggest adjustment being not using a viewfinder), but once I got the hang of it, I had a blast. Anyway, only got to use it for a few hours between gigs today, but there will be much more to come soon.

If you want to follow along to all the images taken by myself and the other Imageloggers (trust me, you’ll want to follow along…The Candid Frames' Ibarionex Perello, The Giving Lens' Colby Brown, renown pro photographer Valerie Jardin, and the most unique father blogger you might ever run across, 8BitDad's Zach Rosenberg, are amongst the shutterbugs that’ll be contributing), check out www.DitchTheDSLR.com, where they’ve set up a crazy interactive map of the country as a home for the photos taken by the Imageloggers. It’s fresh now, but it’s gonna start filling up with eye-candy in a hurry!

Below are a selection from the first batch of images that came out of the NX300 in my hands.

Ok…let’s do this thing!

Why Google Plus Haters Are The Best Thing For Google Plus

So recently, I’ve been seeing a few posts and articles circulating around the web that are basically hating on Google Plus and, well, as a Google+ lover, I think that’s pretty awesome. Huh!?? Yup. You see, it’s not often that something as seemingly trivial as this really rocks my boat, but considering the extremely polar opposite experience that I’ve had on the platform, and the second glass of single-malt I’m working on, I felt compelled to spurt out a late-night response to it all. This ‘rant’ centers around why I think the haters are helping the platform rise above the rest.

First and foremost, let it be known that never have I come across a more thoughtful, engaging, push-it-forward crowd than on this platform. My stream is constantly and endlessly filled with thought-provoking, intelligent, and motivational posts and material of the likes I’ve never seen before. Whenever I need a dose of inspiration, whether it be for a new image or for creative thought or to help spur some ideas, I log on and I’m consistently overwhelmed by all the wonderful madness that flows down my page.

Especially as an aspiring (and hopefully budding) photographer, I've been incredibly inspired on a daily basis by the likes of everyone from Thomas Hawk to Trey Ratcliff to Lotus Carrol, Scott Kelby, Derrick Story, Frederick Van Johnson, Ibarionex Perello, Rick Sammon and Juan Pons, G Dan Mitchell and Michael Frye, Doug Kaye, Jay and Varina Patel, Nicole S. Young, Jim Harmer, Gordon Laing, Martin Bailey, and Javier Pantoja, and this list doesn't even begin to scratch the surface (if you don't know them, Google them, you'll quickly realize they're definitely not nobodies, but rather the tastemakers behind a lot of what you see and what's in your pockets and on your phones and pads and whatnots).

And don't even get me started on the science front...the list goes on and on...(but if you're really interested, let me know, I'll share my circle...yeah, you can do that too!)

What I'm getting at is that at its core, this seems to be the only platform that allows you to so effortlessly become your own careful curator for the information that is most appealing to you, in an extremely organized manner. I want science? I click on my science circle. Photos? My photography circle. Tech? My tech circle? Backpacking and Hiking and the Outdoors? My Backpacking/Outdoors circle. Pictures, articles, links, blogs, recommendations, events, videos…it’s wonderfully insane.

And I think that’s is precisely what the haters aren’t quite used to and, quite frankly, don’t really know what to do with. You see, just because you posted a picture of what you had for lunch and no one +1’d it or commented, doesn’t mean Google+ is a ghost town (that, as of June, has more active users than Twitter), it basically means no one gives a crap about what you had for lunch. Now, if you posted what was in the sandwich and what exactly made it so good, perhaps why you chose to shoot it from the angle you did, and then posted that publicly and in some of the applicable communities (everything from the Foodies Community, the largest of which currently has 34,000 members to the Food Photography Community, which currently boasts 60,000 members), you’d get meaningful feedback and so many +1s you’ll be counting them in your sleep simply based on the fact that the post had some…wait for it…SUBSTANCE! 

*gasp*

Over the past 2 years, what I have found in my experience is that Google+ caters not to the short attention-spanned ‘look at me look at me’ narcissism that has been the crux of most other social media platforms. Instead, Google+ has done a really good job of weeding out the meaningless and forgettable in favor of the meaningful and unforgettable. And if you really think about it, that should come as no surprise, considering Google remains the main go-to for web and information searching. They didn’t focus on weeding out the crap by mistake. The more I think about it, the more it seems to be a very well-calculated, and so far, pretty successful effort (at least compared to the competition). Sure, there’s going to be some invasive species that make their way into the garden, but compare it to the aphids that shows up by the nanosecond on “the others” and, well, we’ve got a much more fruitful garden.

Through Google+, I have had more engaging and provoking and interactions that have left lasting impressions in the past week than I get in a month on the other platforms. I have made more friends and contacts through this platform that I correspond with on a daily basis than any other social network I’ve been a part of. Additionally, I have been able to drive traffic to my personal blog and website portfolio like never before, and, hot damn, I’ve even been able to get some work out of it. All because, like anything else in this world that’s worth it, you actually have to put some time into it to see the value.

So to all you Google+ haters out there, please, I beg of you, I implore of you, please please please keep on hating, because believe you me, we’re not missing you one bit. And in the inevitable occasional event that we do…we know exactly where we can find you.

For the rest of you, find me on Google+ at www.Google.com/+WasimMuklashy.

Ok then, sorry, had to get it out of my system. I promise more photography less rant next time...