The Economy

So I was pretty excited about selling stock pictures. That is until the agency I used decided to stop licensing pictures. Yea, Photoshelter had traditionally been a hosting service for photographers digital files, but decided to try to improve the photography market by charging a more reasonable price for photographers instead of the microstock agencies who undercut photographers. They also insisted on giving photographers 70% of the sale instead of the ever decreasing percentage the bigger houses are passing on. Good idea in theory, but as long as there's photographers willing to undercut themselves by selling to microstock or the big houses charging subscription rates, there will not be room in the market for agencies like Photoshelter to do the right thing.

So thanks to those of you friends and family who were willing to sign model releases and tolerate me asking for "Active Senior" moments. I might still try to find a place to license these pictures for me.

Maybe I need to look no further than doctors offices. Maybe the insurance companies will pay for a couple prints if the Md's will write a perscription for a nice picture series.

Politics

So I've been seeing a lot of politics showing up in my photography blog reading and I don't like it. If I see a great photographer making a political statement I don"t really agree with, I feel like I cant like his/her work. If I wanted to talk politics, I'd tune into CSPAN. It started very subtle with a mention of this or that, but Photo District News ran a piece where famous photographer Jill Greenberg was commissioned to shoot the cover of the Atlantic magazine. I'm not going to rehash it here, but it's been all over the photography blogosphere. This guy who writes a right wing blog has been writing a lot about it and has included some screen shots of the extra stuff she did to the pictures. One of my new favorite photographers, Mark Tucker, an Obama supporter, condemns her on his blog.

If you must use photography in politics, another of my new favorite photographers, Richard Avedon (or shall I say recently discovered. He died in 2004.), did it well in 1976 to chronicle the bicentennial presidential election in Rolling Stone. In order to NOT express his personal opinions, he allowed his subjects to choose their own pose and clothing so his biases would not skew the picture. Please check out his work. He's got a great timeless style.

Check out some of the people outlined in 1976 and their job titles.



I was only born in the late 70's, so I didn't realize that George H. W. Bush was the Director of the CIA.



I think I knew that Donald Rumsfeld was the first Pres. Bush's Sec. Def., but I didn't know he was even before the Regan Administration. There are some other neat pictures in there like JFK's mother:



Part of why I love photography is that it freezes time. Look at the styles:

A Personal Challenge

Aaron Johnson pens a cartoon called What the Duck about a Photographer who's a duck. Of course I have subscribed to the RSS feed so I can see his new strip everyday. The other day he illustrated something that I could relate to because of a recent shoot that I had. It was a cartoon about the creative cycle called "Bipoloroid":



I recently did a newborn shoot at my home studio. I've never shot newborns before other than my own son, and those were more happy snaps than portraits.

First of all, the shoot took forever! Newborns don't do anything on your schedule and I was prepared for that. I even took the opportunity to shoot some of mommy and daddy both bottle feeding. But try as I may, I couldn't come up with good poses, even with as much time as I had. Not only that, I couldn't get the poses I researched to look right. I was really struggling. I felt like even forgot how to use my camera and lights. I knew I would have some pictures that they'd love, but I didn't feel like they would be my best pictures, and that bothered me. It bothered me so much that I told Amy that I didn't think I would shoot portraits anymore. Amy thought I was crazy. She knew there were some gems in there. I kinda knew too that when i went back to edit them, I'd find ones that I was proud of too.

I was telling a co-worker about the shoot and my challenges with it and he said "Dude, that should make you want to shoot that even more! Why do things you're completely comfortable with? You'd get bored of that pretty quick. Besides, those pictures are great, and babies are hard to photograph." He's right. As simple as that sounds, he really inspired me.

I've got another newborn session pending and you'd better believe Sweet Caroline will get the Paparazzi treatment when she comes!

Challenges? Bring it on!

A fairly typical family portrait. You gotta have your backup. If all else fails,they've got this:


Part of the down time to urge the infant to cooperate. (yea right!)


Mommy takes a turn with the little one


One of my favorites


Actually as a Diptych, I like this one (or these if you still count them as two) the best.

More Film Mumbo Jumbo

I keep talking about shooting film. I like the fact that not many people shoot film anymore. I think that makes me more unique, even if I do have to work harder and spend more $$ to achieve something others can do magically on the computer.

I found this wonderful tongue in cheek article on a blog: 10 Things I Hate About Film

If you're too time constrained (or lazy) to hit the link I especially like number three:

"3. COST OF FILM

Yikes, that stuff is outrageously expensive! The cost per photo skyrockets compared to digital, and the price of film makes you have second thoughts about taking useless photos. I think we’re definitely better off spending all that money on new digital bodies, super-fast glass, new computers, software licenses, and backup hard drives. Because you know that $3 to $5 per roll can add up really fast — especially since we all love to grab about 500 photos each time we go out with the camera."

I saw a comment on someone's Flickr stream where someone asked a photographer, who started in photography digitally, then moved exclusively film "I bet that without the digital experience you gathered, playing with real film would've been much more expensive and entirely too frustrating." to which he replied "I think you're right again."

Comments on his other photos indicated someone thought he was a film snob. Hardly. He started with digital! I hope I don't come across as a film snob. As I write this I lament about 90% of my photography is digital. And I love the flexibility it provides. But there's just nothing like holding a print or watching the image appear on paper in a darkroom.

On the other hand for most high volume professionals these days it makes no sense to shoot film. Check out Vincent Laforet's "After Action Report" from the Bejing Olympics. "In Beijing, with a total of 6 cameras, I shot: 28,444 files for a total of a whopping 480 Gigabytes of Images!" Silly. Just silly. In terms of film "...shooting this much volume equates to shooting 790 rolls of 35mm 36 exposure rolls of film." For my last wedding, I shot at least 1000 pictures in an 8 hour span. That's about 28 rolls of film. At $20 per roll for the film, processing and prints, that's over $550 added expense.

For art, portraits and other low volume shoots, I'll still take film. Can I have my film cake and eat digital too?

By the way, I just found my new favorite photographer: Mark Tucker

Inflation

I dont know when the phrase was coined, but I think it's plenty time to update the saying "I feel like a million bucks."

I hereby declare the phrase updated to "I feel like a billion bucks." or any denomination seen fit for your current status. For example, I'm not feeling like I'm at my creative peak, so I feel less than perfect. So I might feel like about a hundred grand. If I were in alot of pain or quite sick, I might feel like about 5 bucks. When I nail the shot I have in my minds eye, I'll feel like a million bucks. But when Caroline is born, I'll really feel like a billion bucks.

Another Shameless Plug

In another effort to raise college money for my kids. Shoot forget about college money, I'm worried about daycare tuition at this point! Just kidding. But seriously, so many people have said "You need to submit some of your stuff for stock!" I had heard of Photoshelter from some of my blogging peers and checked them out. After submitting some images, they accepted me as a photographer and am now offering my files for royalty free stock image sales here:



If you need an image, please think of me.

Wow

Can you believe this?:

http://www.sigmaphoto.com/lenses/lenses_all_details.asp?id=3349&navigator=3

Who would buy such a thing? Did you see the pricetag? Most publications woul have to ax another photographer to get the lens!