Tom Ouma, Photographer

08/02/2018

05/11/2013

"The Square", Charlotte

05/06/2013

Charlotte City Skyline

10/11/2011

It's that time of the year again... the holiday season... and time to order your Christmas cards! I am giving up to 30% discount for family portraits AND cards in the next two weeks! Cards come in different sizes and packs, flat or folded, in lustre, glossy and matt. You design the card and I take care of the rest, but I can also design your card for you if you prefer. Prices start at just $24.95 (with the discount, cost of photo-session not inclusive).

Apart from cards you can also order other items such as calendars, mousepads, mugs, t-shirts, puzzles, playing cards, keychains and more.

08/31/2011

It's always tempting to lower my pricing just because a potential client thinks I am too expensive... this article explains why photographers (or any other profession) should not lower their pricing when they come across people who don't value their work!

You probably own a digital camera of some type. The most popular ones these days are point and shoot digital cameras, averaging in the $150-200 range. You probably snap some pictures with it from time to time, download them to your computer, and print them out as 4×6 glossy prints at Walgreens for...

08/30/2011

"Many photographers spend too much time in the darkroom, with the result that creative camera work is seriously interfered with. The stale vogue of drowning in technique and ignoring content adds to the pestilence and has become, for many, part of today's general hysteria".

Berenice Abbott
Photography at the Crossroads

08/10/2011

New lens just arrived! My wife's about to roll her eyes... she's normally my test subject :)

07/29/2011

Looking forward for the chance to shoot HDR-friendly photos in Amish country in PA next week.

07/27/2011

Google+ is turning the follower wars upside down.

Twitter is like high school. The equivalent of being the popular captain of the football team or head cheerleader is to have a massive number of followers, but to be following very few. Some of the mega-celebrities, for example, have more than a million followers, but themselves are following like 12 people.

Google+, however, which was built by math and computer nerds, turns that scenario upside down. If you think about it: Your potential reach on G+ is affected more by who you follow than by who's following you. Let me explain.

The Extended circles button sends your post to all the people in your circles, plus all the people in their circles who have public follower counts on their profiles.

So if a mega-celebrity has been circled on Google+ by a million people, but themselves has circled only 12, then their posts to Extended circles will go to a million people, plus the 12, plus the people in the circles of those 12.

But the theoretical maximum number of people who can be reached by the Extended circles button is 25 million. That's achievable if you follow 5,000 who each are following 5,000 people, assuming everyone is public with their follower lists.

I can theoretically reach 25 million people, even if nobody is following me . If nobody is following me on Twitter, my tweets will reach zero people.

So the show-off celebrities who want to demonstrate effortless aloofness by following few, but attracting many, can still do that on Google+. But they'll have a much smaller reach than the person who follows a lot of people who also follow a lot of people.

In the Google+ universe, created by nerds rather than jocks, being popular only gets you so far.

Being smart, on the other hand, by following a lot of people who themselves are following a lot of people, gives you more reach and influence than the most popular users.

Interesting.

(Article by Mike Elgan on Google Plus, photo by Harald Walker on Flickr)

07/25/2011

Good News: I broke my addiction to Facebook (I'm only on fb once a day, when I remember) Bad News: I am now on Google Plus all the time...