Give photoPXL A Chance

All We Are Saying Is Give photoPXL A Chance

The photography world is changing.  Over the last few months, we have seen photo magazines shut down.  We have seen one of the largest photography websites almost shut down (DPreview). Luckily, they were rescued, and let’s hope they can maintain their momentum.

There are no regular monthly photo magazines being published anymore.  You can find some versions online, but visit a newsstand or bookstore and photo magazines are a thing of the past.  In addition, some of the largest trade shows are gone forever.  Photo Plus-East and Photokina are history.  Some organizations like PPA and WPPI still have trade shows, but they are nothing in size like what we were accustomed to seeing years ago.  B&H worked with vendors and put on a good trade show recently in NYC. Generally, though, you must search the internet far and wide to find a lot of the information you may want.

The Story Behind The Photo Above

As my wife Debra and I discussed how we could do an article asking our readers to help PXL grow and become more active, we put our creative hats on.  We had recently seen the well known image of John Lennon and Yoko Ono in bed.  They were doing a Bed-in for peace.  We thought it would be fun to do our own bed-in for photoPXL. Thus the result above and the rest of the article.  Debra and I enjoy these things and she is an excellent art director.  We were fortunate that our dog Maggie, who always wants to be part of what is happening, decided to join us,  You gotta have some fun in life.

While we are not still sitting in bed waiting for you and other readers to join in and make photoPXL a larger community, we are working hard to make PXL a place that you can call home on the internet for all things photographic.

I have been in the photography industry for 50-plus years.  Photography has been very good to me, and I have had a great career.  I have been fortunate to have a successful studio and software company that I could sell.  I have been in the lab business and pioneer digital workflows before most people knew there were such things.  I had the extreme privilege of being VP at Phase One during the hey day of medium format digital photography.  I then moved into the website publishing business and was CEO of Luminous-Landscape, and then transitioned to create photoPXL.  

Along the way, I have met some of the world’s greatest photographers and have become friends with many of them.  I also am very active in pursuing my own photography.  I love landscape and destination photography as well as portrait illustration.  Like many, I am fascinated by the latest digital gear and software, not to mention where mobile photography is headed.

This brings me to photoPXL and where we are today.  In 2019, when I started photoPXL, we launched with a bang and have had continued growth since.  The pandemic slowed us down, as it did for everyone doing photography.  We found ways to adapt, and we are still here and going strong, but we need your help if we are going to achieve what we hope we can do.

My dream in creating photoPXL was to create a website that became a community for photographers to be part of it.  I designed the site to be not only a place where you could come and read articles and learn, but where you could also share and help others. 

We have the home page with articles and news.  There is the forum where you can ask questions and get help, as well as share knowledge and share your images.  We also have the community section that is designed for you to share your photography with others. Here, you can create your own showcase of photographs and see others’ work.  Everyone can comment on the photographs and give productive feedback.

The site is very robust and it is all tied together so these modules work together.  You can click on a member’s name and see articles, photos, forum posts, and links.  For each article, you can click on the author’s bio and see other articles by the author, as well posts and images they have posted in the community. 

The search engine is very robust.  Try it out sometime.  Enter a word or phrase and look at what you may get. For example, type in Red River and look at the results.  Or, try the word conversation, Epson, book, and so on.  There is a wealth of knowledge on the PXL site, and I want it to grow even more. It can only do so with your help.

As I said, my dream was to make this site a community of passionate photographers sharing their experience.  New photographers can come to PXL to learn, and experienced photographers can help them.  Eventually, the new photographers will be experienced photographers and hopefully do the same for new readers coming in.  

Also, I love doing workshops.  I’ll have more to say about workshops in another article and video coming soon.  I am launching new workshops and changing the workshop model.  I’ll be offering small 3-5 person workshops at some of the world’s best locations.  These will be small intimate workshops.  Everyone on the workshop is an integral part of the overall educational experience. 

I will be offering private and custom designed workshops.  I have been doing workshops since 2004.  That’s 24 years of visiting some of the most beautiful locations on the planet.  I have been to just about any location or country you can think of.  This experience will allow me to design a photography experience for you.  Whether it is just you or your family and friends, I’ll offer up an itinerary where you won’t be rushed and that will provide you the best photographic opportunities there are.

Let’s not forget our Fine Art Printing Workshops I have been doing this past year.  These have been very successful and provide the opportunity to learn about all the aspects of Fine Art Printing.  Jeff Schewe and John Pannazzo have been doing these with me, and it consists of three intense and full days of making prints. 

You will find a new addiction of printing your images that you have captured for many years.  Not all points need to be large; there are smaller projects you can do, and we’ll help inspire you to those possibilities.

I’ll have more to share with you regarding workshops soon. In the mean time you can visit the Rockhopper Workshops Site to learn about the latest workshop offerings and register for workshops.

I have made PXL a site that anyone can visit and enjoy.  There are two membership levels (Silver and Gold) that give you access to special features and also helps us meet our operating expenses.  In addition, you can also do a contribution if you just want to help us keep the lights on.  Of course, you can always visit the site for FREE, but it would be appreciated if you found a value that you consider membership.

You may have noticed that I haven’t taken the site the route of Google Ads.  They can be so annoying, and I want to try to keep the invasive type of ads off this site.  I am making a new push to talk to many of the suppliers out there and offer up a few different ways through advertising or special projects that these suppliers can in turn help us.  You’ll most likely see this with new ads and such over the coming weeks and months.  Please support the advertisers. 

What Can You Do?

I can’t make this site succeed without you. I work hard on this site, as well as the Rockhopper Workshop site, every day.  I love what I do.  I have so many ideas, I can’t find time to get them all done.  

I am reaching out and asking you to consider a few things and help out where you can.  PXL has some great article contributors.  These writers put their heart and soul into the articles they share.  No one gets paid.  They do it out the kindness of their hearts and their love for photography and sharing their knowledge with the PXL audience.

I am sure each and every reader has something to share.  A trip, a project, experience with camera gear and so forth.  I am asking that you consider sharing your knowledge with this audience.  Together, we can help many photographers improve their craft.  

If you are interested, email me at [email protected].  Let’s talk about the possibilities.  We have a YouTube channel that is growing, and I hope you can help us grow it even further.  You can log onto YouTube and, when visiting our videos, subscribe to the PXL channel.  You can also click on the bell icon so that you are notified when we publish new content. Most of our videos are also embedded in articles.

I try hard to mix website content along with videos to bring the best experience to everyone. Did you know that, when you open an article, you can listen to it by clicking the Listen To This Article button that you can find at the top of every article?

Also, as a Silver or Gold member, you can click on any image to see it larger. You can also see the site in night mode; that basically reverses the black on white type to white on black.  It’s pretty cool. 

You can help this site considerably by becoming a member or contributor.  Details can be found HERE.  This membership program, if we can make it grow, will allow us to to do more on location articles.  

I am also considering doing projects like I used to on that other site.  I could visit with well-known photographers or even revisit and share experiences we had with them previously.  We could go out on location and take you along on a trip where we shoot some well-known locations.

This will also make our site stronger.  If there is interest, I could arrange for webinars and zoom calls where we can all meet and discuss various photographic topics.  I am open to feedback and ideas so that PXL is not my site, but OUR site.

We will be announcing a new biweekly virtual get-together very soon.  We expect to have a well-known photographer make a presentation at these virtual events and you can interact live with these.  I am very excited about the possibilities this will offer.

In addition, I will be continuing with my Conversations With videos and articles.  These are one-on-one talks with notable photographers about a variety of topics.

Rethinking Everything

The world as we know it has changed big time over the last few years.  Photography has evolved and taken new directions.  Just about every camera out there is capable of making incredible photography.  The cameras are easier to use than ever before and have some amazing capabilities built into them.  

Mobile photography has taken huge leaps in capabilities, not to mention image quality and features.  The new iPhone 15 certainly proves that.  The more I shoot with it, the more I am amazed at what it can do, especially if you shoot RAW and use a RAW editor to fine tune your images.  The prints I am making from the iPhone are stunning.  I am very excited to be teaching a course on mobile photography at the Indianapolis Art Center this winter and spring.  I am an artist-in-residence at the Indianapolis Art Center.  Working closely with them, we have some pretty ambitious plans for this year, and I hope to be sharing what we are doing with you soon.

I don’t think there has been a better time to be a photographer.  New cameras and technology extend our creative vision further than ever before.  Photography is fun, and I find that photographers are some of the most friendly and caring people I have ever met.  

Photography plays a huge part in our lives, and we all find different aspects of photography to find our own happiness.  Please help photoPXL be a place where we share our knowledge, talent, and so much more.  Look for a PXL Site Tour soon.  You’ll see just how much photoPXL has to offer.

Please Be Part Of Our Family

Consider sharing your knowledge and experience by contributing articles.

• Have an idea of someone I should be doing a conversation with?  Please share it with me and we’ll do our best to get in touch with them.
• Are you a manufacturer of a photo product?  Get in touch with me – let’s get creative and make a win-win relationship.
• Are you interested in being an editor? Please let me know.  
• Are you interested in reviewing products? Let me know.  I am back logged on the products I have and could certainly use help.
• Do you have a specialty, like macro photography, wildlife, portraiture, night photography, or post-process techniques? Please let me know.  Maybe you can be a regular contributor.
• Are you interested in having PXL do a review of your products, hardware, or software? Please get in touch with us.  
• Consider setting up your own gallery page in our community page.
• Visit the forum on a regular basis.  Ask questions, open up a discussion, or answer questions others have.
• Finally, you can help us out financially by contributing or becoming a SILVER or GOLD member.

In closing, I want to thank you for reading this, and hopefully giving some thought of how you can get more involved with photoPXL.  I do this out of the passion I have for photography and to share with others.  I know you will feel the same way as you become more involved with photoPXL.  Please feel free to contact me anytime.

I want to give a special thanks to my wife Debra.  She gets me.  She is my partner, friend and muse.  She keeps me in check and makes sure I don’t wander too far off the path.  She believes in photoPXL as much as I do.

Kevin Raber
January 2024

Kevin Raber
Indianapolis, IN

Photography is my passion and has been for 50 plus years. My career in photography has allowed me to travel the world, meet some of the most interesting people on the planet and see things I could never have dreamed of. My goal is to share the passion of picture taking through photographs and teaching with as many people as I can, hoping it brings them as much joy and happiness as it has me. I do this through photoPXL.com, this site, as well as Rockhopper Workshops, and other projects, as well as teaching as Artist In Residence at the Indianapolis Art Center.