All About Me & This Website
About Me
My name is Steve Huff and I have been a photographer for about 15 years and photography has been a lifelong passion of mine since I first entered this world. It has been said I came out of my mothers tummy with one eye squinting like I was looking through a viewfinder 
My hard drive is filled with tens of thousands of images. They are images of all kinds including pictures of family, strangers, events, street life, weddings, studio portraits, concert images and friends. These are just my “keepers” and over the years I have used about 40 different cameras to take these shots!
See, I am a “photo enthusiast” as well as a passionate photographer. I love what I do so much that over the years I realized I was trying out a TON of camera gear searching for the holy grail. With all of my experience using this gear, in February of 2009 I decided to put up a site where I can write about it all, and this is the result! With this site I want to show YOU how this gear performs in the real world. I will also share with you my processing tips, photography tips, where I buy this gear, my photo projects and jobs that I get along the way. Oh yea, and a rant here and there when I get a little irritated with something in my daily life.
Basically this is a site for digital photo nuts made by a digital photo nut (and you must admit, we are pretty much all crazy)! I know that when I am thinking of buying a new camera I always search online to read as much as possible about it as I can before committing to the purchase. I know that there are many out there just like me, so I am hoping to provide a useful FREE service to all of you fellow digital camera nuts! Yea, there are a load of camera sites out there but most are too technical, boring, and their sample images (if they have any) kind of stink. I wanted to bring an enthusiastic, fun, and creative site to all of you who are like me and try to have a cool place for camera nuts to come hang out for a while and read up on some of the coolest new cameras.
This site is not meant to compete with the mega technical camera review sites, but rather be something totally different. I will show you REAL WORLD results from the gear, not overly geekish babble. After all, it is the image that matters most is it not? This site will ALWAYS be FREE. While I understand those who want to charge for their lens and camera reviews, I will not do that as I want to share this info with as many of you as possible and charging for the reviews is not the way to do that. Plus I want to create a site where we can all participate, have fun and learn along the way.
The bottom line is that I’m just a guy who will tell it like it is. I always have been. I’m not going to be overly technical, if at all. Just real world use and samples all written out in layman’s terms. I am hoping to make this an enjoyable, easy to read site that will hopefully help some people out in their decisions on camera gear. Also, I am not a writer and kind of slacked off in English class so you will see a few grammar mistakes here and there 
Also, I hope to improve the site over time (I am now on V2) so every now and then you will see some changes for the better like adding images to comments, and eventually, quite possibly, just maybe, a forum.
The New Version 2 of STEVEHUFFPHOTO.COM
The new version of this site went live on November 12th 2009 and it has MANY improvements from the first version. My website has even created a couple of new site copycats as well as a couple of old timers to change their ways. Too funny. On January 5th 2010 the site had its first “crash” due to a traffic overload when posting my Leica X1 review. This told me that my site was finally achieving what I dreamed of. Success! But that comes at a price. I had to upgrade to a super fast dedicated server at a cost of almost $400 per month. With all of my photos online, and thousands of people downloading them every day it costs me quite a bit of cash! Luckily I get help when you guys visit my sponsors and buy gear, but it’s tough!
One new feature I have already started is my “Daily Inspiration” post where I post YOUR photos so we can all be inspired to get out and shoot day in and day out. The site is not all about me! I want it to be about everyone who visits and enjoys it. I want to be inspired every day and see what everyone else is up to so be sure and submit you pics using the “Daily Inspiration” tab above.
BTW, I AM indeed a photographer so if you need a photographer for an event, concert, wedding, or WHATEVER, send me an e-mail and we will talk! I am ALWAYS for hire and have some great references. IL, IN, AZ, CA, I do travel! You can see some of my photo galleries at my old site here.
Like I said, this site does cost me quite a bit of money, time, and energy to keep up so if you enjoy it and would like to help me continue with this adventure click here to read how you can do it! Just to host this site costs me $400 every month as I had to move servers three times (in 10 months) to keep up with the traffic and bandwidth usage. This means I have to at least bring in this amount every month just to keep this site live. I also spend 60-70 hours each week on this site right now so it costs much more than that with my time, so I need all the help I can get! But hey, I am having a blast and hope that you enjoy these real world reviews! As long as it pays for itself, it will keep going so I appreciate the help!
Rules and Disclaimers
The Rules…
Since this site has been growing there have been quite a few comments on many of the articles. When you leave a comment anywhere on this site you must follow three simple rules:
- Keep it clean. Not only in language but with SPAM. No foul language, no SPAM, no links to commercial sites. If you want to advertise, e-mail me.
- Keep it relevant to the post. If a post is about a Leica lens, do not write a comment about a Canon camera or my various grammar mistakes
- Be civil. No fighting, no name calling. I hate it when people start posting garbage and calling others names or putting someone down or arguing about equipment. Let’s keep it civil and professional.
Easy enough. Anyone breaking those rules will have their post deleted. A second time and you will be banned from the site. To date I have had to ban one person. When you make a comment your IP gets logged and I can ban any IP from the site. I do not want to do that but here is a comment that got one idiot banned as this was his 2nd comment like this in two days:
“seriously huff, stop putting up these really stupid boring photographs and go out meet people not just your lonely mammy. Feel sorry for you old man. Me and my dudes are like 18 years old and take much better photographs with our canon than yours, you stupid old man. Bald and ugly..can’t understand what your wife see in you? Loser with no jobb and acting like child with serious toys…get a life.”
After he posted this 2nd comment I grabbed his IP and blacklisted it. He can no longer see the site from where he was accessing it before. Stuff like this is pure nonsense and has no place on this site. If you have nothing relevant to say, then do not say it. Sadly though, the internet is full of idiots like this guy and that is what the “ban” button is for
Disclaimer…
I have to say that while I get lenses and cameras sent to me for review by a couple of camera companies, none of them pay me or give me free cameras/lenses. I get nothing. I write exactly what I feel about any lens of camera and if a manufacturer doesn’t like it, then oh well. Again, I get absolutely NOTHING from these camera companies. Just the opportunities to review their gear.
You can help me…
The only way I can fund this site is through my sponsor ads. B&H Photo and Amazon
I get to keep waking up every day at 6am and start writing and then I get to hit the road to shoot with whatever camera I have with me that day. But I can only keep this site going with your support, and with that support this site will not only keep going, it will keep growing with new features and more updates.
Help Wanted
In January of 2010 I started publishing guest writers on the site. A couple of guys I knew of for a while in some photo forums approached me about writing an article so I tried it, and decided to keep going with it. If you are someone who would like to write an article for this website e-mail me using the contact link at the top of any page. The article would need to be photo related and can be anything from a product/accessory review to a how-to article or even a photo essay. If you have an idea let me know. But at this time I do not offer any pay for these articles as I simply do not make enough to do that yet. In exchange for your article I will publish a link to your website or portfolio and you will get quite a bit of exposure. As of Jan 2010 this site receives up to 15,000 visitors a day. It fluctuates but it has been growing daily since V2 of the site and has tripled in three months.
Writing a guest article can provide you with great exposure and the cool thing is that your linked article will remain in the archives forever! So be sure to contact me if you are interested!
Want your Products Reviewed here?
If you are a camera company, lens company or a small company that makes accessories like straps, cases or gadgets and would like me to review your product here then feel free to contact me using the contact tab at the top of any page
Advertising
I have not officially started to accept advertising just yet but am building a list of those who have shown interest. I will have a very limited amount of space for this so if you are interested in advertising on this site contact me and I will let you know what I will have available for space and other options. I will be selling ad space in 3, 6, 9 and 12 month blocks and not only for display ads. E-mail me for info using the contact link at the top of any page. I will be starting this soon, so get in now for the best rates.
