If Instagram and Polaroid went out on a date, fell in love, got married, and had a child what would it look like?

ADR Studio in Italy thinks the offspring would have the cool, digital, sharability of Instagram and the classic, tactile, printability of Polaroid. Their new concept camera, the Instagram Socialmatic Camera, is the perfect little bundle of photographic joy.

Featuring Bluetooth, WiFI, and InstaOs, every picture can automatically be shared with billions of users on Facebook and Instagram. If you want to go old school and print your picture, no problem. With the internal printer, four color ink tank, and Instagram paper you can print pictures on the spot.

As for the actual picture taking, the little tike has a lot of power, like 16 GB mass storage, 4:3 touch-screen, 2 main lenses (one for main capture and another for 3D filters, webcam aps, and QR code capturing), an LED flash, and optical zoom.

Ready for your own? Click here to go to ADR’s website and encourage the birth of photographic bliss.

Photographer Ian Ruhter spends $500 every time he takes a picture. Seems a little extreme, but then there are a few things to consider. His camera is a delivery truck, his film is a 3X5 ft sheet of glass, and he manually develops each one-of-a-kind image with silver bromide.

Part mad scientist, part entrepreneur, part explorer, Ian is one hundred percent committed to great photography. While everyone else is shooting with the same digital cameras, using the same signatures, getting the same results, he is getting images like this:

His art form, Wet Plate Collodion, was first introduced in the 1850’s by Frederick Scott Archer. In recent years artists like Ian have re-adopted the trade as a way to ‘get back to the basics’ of photography. The process of wet plate collodion requires home made film, light, raw materials and old-fashioned photography know how. In other words, there is no ‘fixing it in post.’

This inspiring video captures Ian’s heart for his craft. He questions his confidence, celebrates his improvement and concludes, “if it was super easy it wouldn’t be fun.” Well said, Ian. And thanks for doing what you do with excellence. You are pouring your soul into photography and you’ve inspired us to do the same.

Give it a watch and pass it on.

Most people go to Seattle to see the sound, sit in the original Starbucks, or see the cityscape from the Space Needle. We go because Seattle is home to world-renowned J. Garner Studios, and this September Jim Garner is hosting the 2012 Portfolio Workshop Experience. Hands down, this is THE best opportunity of the year for photographers in the Northwest to learn award-winning techniques. Information and registration is available online.

Seattle in September, see you there!

We love working with our local industry peers–both in Bend, Oregon and San Luis Obispo, California. Our good friend and San Luis Obispo wedding photographer Cameron Ingalls just launched a new site highlighting many of the talented wedding vendors on California’s Central Coast.

The Central Coast Wedding Standard is dedicated to featuring “wed­ding pro­fes­sion­als that are the best of the best, peo­ple who don’t just work for a pay­check, but who work for a love for their craft and have a pas­sion for what they do.”

We’re excited for the opportunity to be an ongoing sponsor of the Wedding Standard and had a great time at their launch party last week. It was a blast rubbing shoulders with so many talented vendors–including some of our own photographers.

Plus, there was a photo booth!

Facebook officially announced Timeline for Brands this week. Page admins have been given a month to update their pages before the changes take effect for all pages on March 30.

You can find Facebook’s official page on Timeline for Brands here. Mashable has a good overview here.

What’s this mean for photographers?

In our opinion, the changes are going to be great for photographers. Here’s a few things we love:

• Bigger photo: using Timeline’s cover photo gives photographers a lot of room to wow visitors with a great image.
• Easier access to your info: you business information is visible immediately (users no longer have to click the info tab)
• Improved access to apps: links to apps are now larger and more prominent. Plus, apps get more space in the browser window.

Don’t delay. Update your page and publish now.

The BIG Folio servers are getting a quick tune up tonight. Maintenance will occur tonight between 9pm-10pm Pacific Standard Time. Security updates are being implemented on all servers. Your site may be briefly unavailable during this time.

In our last post we decided if parents can brag about their honor students with bumper stickers than we should do the same, but if we tried to put all of the accomplishments of BIG Folio photographer Jose Villa onto a bumper sticker it would be the size of a school bus!

Seriously, he’s one of the best.

Recently named one of the top ten wedding photographers in the world by Photo District News, his fine art approach to wedding photography has been featured in Martha Stewart Weddings, Brides, The Knot, Inside Weddings, Elegant Bride, and 805 Weddings (just to name a few)!

Recently, Jose published a book titled, Fine Art Wedding Photography: How to Capture Images with Style for the Modern Bride. Here is a little blurb to wet your appetite:

“Many semi-pro and professional wedding photographers are looking to “wake up” their style, stay current, and stimulate business. And today, that means lifestyle photography, also referred to as “fine art wedding photography.” Fine art wedding photography isn’t just a catchy phrase; it’s a modern approach in which design is paramount. Fine art wedding images are more graphic and stylized than traditional wedding photojournalism, as if they were pulled from the pages of a glossy wedding or lifestyle magazine.”

We already picked up our copy of this stunning book at josevillabook.com and want to say publically, “Great work Jose!” Keep it up, and thanks for letting us brag!

Remember those bumper stickers that use to say, “My son is an honor student at the best middle school in the world?” Then all the other parents came up with their own sticker that said, “My son could beat up your honor student?”

Parents love to brag, and so do we. Maybe it’s time we work up some bright yellow stickers with bold black type, “Our wedding photographers could beat up your wedding photographers!” Actually, in the spirit of peace and harmony let’s leave the fighting to the honor students and just say, “Our clients are the best photographers in the galaxy!”

It’s true.

According to the American Photo Magazine our friend Jim Garner is, “one of the top ten wedding photographers in the world.” Not too shabby, huh? Thankfully, Jim doesn’t keep his recipe for success to himself. This Feb 16-21 Jim will be teaching several workshops at WPPI in Las Vegas (not signed up for WPPI? Check it out… it’s the Mecca of wedding photography).

Here is a snapshot of Jim’s workshops:
Feb 16-17: Plus Class: 9am – 5pm – A Studio Revolution
Feb. 21: Platform: 8am – 10am – The Psychology of Emotional Imagery

Jim will also be in the Graphi booth (#221) throughout the weekend so
make sure you stop by and say hi.

Keep up the good work, Jim, and thanks for letting us brag!

At BIG Folio we are rolling out the red carpet and sounding the trumpets to announce the release of our new admin panel, Admin4! With tons of tweaks, upgrades, redesigns, and enhancements you’re not going to believe how easy we have made it to customize your site, organize your photos, manage your content and wow your customers!

Best of all? This huge update is FREE for all Admin3 users. FREE! It’s like when you rent a car and they give you the upgrade from the economical sedan to the performance sports car free-of-charge!

Seriously, you’re going to love what Admin4 has under the hood:

· Vastly improved user interface: it’s easier and faster than ever to build a site
o Modern browser compatible – makes everything faster, more fluid, and more intuitive
o Template specific control – makes it easier to take full control of all the options each site has to offer
o Streamlined gallery creation – makes creating, updating, editing and combining galleries possible in one step

· A whole new entry page builder
o Create as many different sections as you want
o Choose from a wider variety of layouts for each section
o Drag and drop sections
o Update current or previous layouts by simply selecting versions from a list of compatible archived pages

· The new BIG Show (coming soon)
o Instantly create elegant slideshows right from within the admin
o Preserve branding by automatically importing color and logo settings
o Free with any BIG Folio site

So… you ready to take it for a drive? Just login to your go.bigfolio.com account and go for it. After you take it for a spin drop us a line and let us know about your new favorite feature!

Enjoy!

What is your idea of a perfect day? Sitting on the beach? Winning the lottery? Watching your team win the pennant? Spending the day with family and friends? At BIG Folio we love all of those things, but our perfect day starts when we hear from happy customers like Carolyn Ann Ryan.

When we met Carolyn last February at WPPI she was excited to upgrade her website. As a former software designer of eleven years she knew she needed a beautiful site with an easy to navigate interface. As we talked through the options and discussed her various needs, we decided it was best for Carolyn to launch The Artist Series. After she utilized the custom design features, integrated her WordPress blog and added her professional images her site went live! A few weeks later we received this note:

“In just the last few weeks the number of requests I’m receiving from people who found me via the internet is hitting almost one per day. For someone that only received two or three requests in 2010, it’s making me very happy! And these are real, valid potential clients. They are finding my work and my blog and more important, they are contacting me because they are coming to a web site that looks great!

Thank you BIG Folio for building the tools to make launching my website easy and cost effective. It was absolutely one of the best investments I made in 2011 for my business and I just wanted your staff to know how thankful I am!”

Thanks for making our day Carolyn Ann Ryan, and congratulations on your success!

Want to see Carolyn’s site in action? Follow this link and enjoy!