A Nice Lil' Catch: The "TRADE SECRET Strobist Favorites Vol. 1" Trading Card Set

Zeke Kamm writes, edits, and pours his heart into a very nice online photography magazine entitled -- simply enough -- Nice Photography Magazine. Packed to the gills with tech tips, commentary, insight, and challenges to the creative process, it's most certainly worth checking in on the Nice site whenever possible, as you never know just what sort of image or idea might pop out of Zeke's brain... I also highly recommend checking out Zeke's personal work (his portfolio can be seen here), as the dude is just insanely talented as a stills photographer. Really nice work, with a visual style that can best be described as "still frames captured from really quirky art movies."

Like all good freelancers photographers, Zeke has a bit of an entrepreneurial streak -- and a nice example of this streak can be found in the newly released TRADE SECRET Trading Card set that Zeke has designed, edited, and had printed. Basically, this is a pack of cards -- much like a baseball, basketball, or football trading card set -- that features the work of twenty-five photographers. The key to this set of cards (and the work of the featured photographers), is that each card highlights a photo that has achieved some amount of notoriety amongst readers of David Hobby's Strobist website. Fittingly, the cards are entitled: "TRADE SECRET Strobist Favorites Volume 1."



The truly clever aspect to this card set -- and what really sells the whole concept -- is that each featured photo also includes a very nice "behind the scenes" illustration of the lighting set-up used in making the shot. Just to be a bit more clear, these "behind the scenes" illustrations are computer graphics illustrations which show the positioning of the camera, the object or person being photographed, the key light (or lights), bounce cards, soft boxes, reflectors, etc, etc... Nicely done. And some truly insightful information.

How much will all of this insight cost you? Not much... Less than the cost of a week's worth of coffee (my coffee habit, at least)... Just $19.95, which includes the cost of shipping and handling here in the U.S. Conveniently, Zeke has set up a whole online shopping cart and checkout system over on the TRADE SECRET site.

Finally, just as a bit of shameless self-promotion, let me briefly mention that I'm one of the twenty-five photographers featured in the set... Thanks Zeke! My particular photo -- a product shot that I did for the Gaia Baby Food company -- ended up being featured in the set due to its unusual use of aluminum foil as a lighting tool.

My "trading card" is featured below:





You'd never want to trade your Mookie Blaylock for a Matt Monroe...



BTW, my card is the product shot of the carrot, NOT this whole picture of a card dropping out of a basketball net... I was just trying to get artsy-fartsy with the concept of "making the shot."






Again, a special thanks goes out to Zeke and David for making all of this happen.