April 7th, 2008
In honour of a wee trip recently made to Northeast England and its beautiful scenery, I have posted a small I have posted a small gallery of images that feature the Angel of the North.
This sculpture, designed by Antony Gormley and located in Gateshead (near Newcastle) was controversial when it was first constructed, but in its ten years of towering over the A1 motorway, it has become an icon of England’s Northeast.
With that in mind, I am putting this up as the first of a few galleries to come from a recent trip in that direction.
My expectation was that I wouldn’t like the winged giant, but standing beneath its massive wings, I was impressed. I hope I can share some of its grandeur with you. See the photos here.
May 3rd, 2007
The Photo District News site has a feature discussing users of Flickr who have had their work discovered leading to assignments and sales of images. It details yet more examples of the giant photo-sharing site proving to be a boon to emerging photographers and their work.
May 1st, 2007
The Luminous Landscape has this article on addressing the challenges of shooting in the Amazon. Michael Reichmann discusses helpful gear to bring, storage considerations and how to deal with some of the hazards that might keep you from successfully shooting in the jungle.
April 21st, 2007
Renée C. Byer is this year’s winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography and the honour is well-deserved. This account of Cyndie French, a single mother of five, and her care of her dying son Derek Madsen is a moving look into a family’s ordeal and their struggle against cancer.
April 12th, 2007
If you have a NY Times password, this article details some of their plans for the future including the following plans from Gary Shenk, president and incoming chief executive at Corbis:
In that vein, Mr. Shenk said Corbis would make its service as easy to use as the iTunes store of Apple and hinted that Corbis would also be following the crowdsourcing model.
“More interesting and innovative things are happening on the pages of Flickr these days than on Corbis and Getty,” said Mr. Shenk, referring to the photo-sharing site owned by Yahoo. “If we can use this type of opportunity to find the next great group of Corbis photographers, that also makes it a great opportunity for us.”
Here’s another example of the line blurring between professional and amateur. My only hope is that the photographers that end up being a part of these arrangements get a fair deal (and that they are licensing their photos for more than a dollar a pop.
March 29th, 2007
Finally. It took more than a month, but we finally have an Internet connection here at the apartment. No more procrastinating on emails for me!
And that means that I have spent the last little while indulging in some reading of a few of my oft-visited sites. Here’s a roundup of a few things I’ve found:
First, a couple articles from John Harrington has a couple of worthwhile articles to be found at his photo business blog. First of note is this article on the importance of valuing your own work. As photographers, we work hard and invest a lot of time and money to create images. We should be compensated properly for that (and no, 50 cents or a byline is not sufficient compensation).
On a related note, he also has an article on the value of post-production work that details the time and investment made in making those captured images look that much better.
Continuing on the photo business theme, Dan Heller has written an article that is a good starting point for negotiating prices for your photos which focuses on establishing the rights both the photographer and the client has to use the images.
On a non-business-related theme, this page gives some interesting trivia about the resolution of eyes and just how many megapixels would equal if they happened to be made of digital sensors.
And lastly, I’ll throw in a little travel article here to balance out the travel and photography sides of this site. gadling.com has an article about five ways not to get ripped off while travelling. Most of it is common sense stuff, but a lot of people seem to forget some of them anyway.
Regarding the point that you should keep your personal gadgets hidden, I met girl in Thailand who had an interesting solution to this difficulty: she had covered her camera in stickers that had gradually started to wear off. The thing looked like a piece of junk, but it was actually a decent little digital camera. If you can bear to do that to your equipment, that’s one way to keep your gear hidden in plain view.
March 27th, 2007
The red sandstone of Banteay Srei, 20km from the main group of temples, and a bit further still from Siem Reap, is a well-preserved exhibition of ancient carving skill. The intricate details decorating the walls of this small temple are truly gorgeous and hint at how spectacular the Angkorian temples must have been in their prime. Imagine Angkor Wat covered in these beautiful carvings and the mind boggles.
Banteay Srei’s red shapes gleam in the morning sun and, if you can make it there early enough, you might be able to find some peace inside the small temple. Soon after the sun has risen, however, tour buses will unleash piles of visitors into the small spaces of the ancient site so an early trip out to the countryside is worth the early wake up.
See more photos here.
February 19th, 2007
This post is just a reminder that I will be speaking at the Foothills Camera Club on Tuesday, February 20th. I’ll be discussing travel photography in Asia and my experiences travelling through ten diverse and beautiful countries.
I hope to see plenty of people there!
Where:
Fort Calgary
Main Auditorium
750 - 9th Avenue SE
Calgary, Alberta
map
When:
Tuesday, February 20th
7:30 - 10:00 pm
February 13th, 2007
For some outstanding, inspiring and moving photos, check out this winners gallery of the World Press Photos 2007.
February 4th, 2007
Flickr user Hamad Darwish is one of a small group of flickr users who were approached by Microsoft for either use of their photos or commissioned to to create new images for the desktop backgrounds that are included in the new Windows Vista operating system. Read an interview with him here.
This is an interesting example of the line blurring between professional photographers and amateurs/enthusiasts. Hamad, whose photos are indeed lovely, is not a pro nor does he intend to become one. Photo sharing sites like flickr make visible the photographs of amateurs in an unprecedented way. It is no longer only professionals whose work is exposed to photo buyers.
I count myself among flickr’s users, (but my modest photostream cries out that I neglect it), and I too have been approached through flickr for the use of one of my photos. This client didn’t have a photo budget for this project and was hoping to get the image for free, so I had to decline this time, but there may be a point in the future (when they actually have a proper photo budget) where we work together.
Too bad it wasn’t Microsoft that came knocking! While I don’t know what Microsoft paid the amateurs that they commissioned, I gather from Hamad’s interview that it was a fair fee. It’s good to know that they didn’t take advantage of enthusiast’s zeal to merely be published with low or no pay.
EDIT: It has come to my attention (see the comments) that the photographer may have shot the images on a work-for-hire basis and surrendered all the rights to Microsoft. In no way do I support this practice and if that’s true, then it’s a shame that Microsoft has taken advantage of an eager amateur while also devaluing the work of professionals in general.
Sorry if I mislead anyone into believing that I support that kind of practice.
EDIT #2: It’s looking less likely that the images were bought on a work-for-hire basis. Long Zheng, the author of the interview has been kind enough to post and it seems that Hamad got a fair deal.
Hopefully I don’t need to edit again!
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