Archive for the ‘Photo business’ Category
All things related to the business end of photography.
Wednesday, January 18th, 2012
A black and white version of Mt Sanford and reflection, from one of my favorite viewpoints in Wrangell - St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska. Please click on the image above to view a larger version of the photo.
Hey Folks,
The secret to a productive day of creative work on the computer, for me, is Command Q. Tweet Deck, closed. Mac Mail, closed. Fetch, closed. Safari, Firefox and Chrome, closed. Dreamweaver, closed. Capture NX2, closed, Photoshop closed, Text Edit, closed. iTunes, open, and Photo Mechanic, open. 35 minutes of initial photo sorting/editing and keywording and I get an awful lot done.
Then, Command O and Capture NX2 opens up. Select the images from Photo Mechanic, and hit Command E. Those images open in Capture NX2. Command Q again, and Photo Mechanic shuts down. I do my basic RAW editing, conversions, etc, and open the images in Adobe Photoshop. Command Q and Capture NX2 shuts down as well.
(more…)
Posted in Alaska, Landscapes, Musings, Photo business, Photography, Wrangell - St. Elias National Park | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, December 20th, 2011
Coyote pup sitting beside yellow daisies, Jasper National Park, Canada. Please click on the image above to view a larger version of this photo.
BBC = bBS
Hey Folks,
Here’s an interesting article from the UK Telegraph; the first paragraph pretty much sums things up: “The BBC is accused of routinely faking footage in wildlife documentaries, by using studio sets, sound effects and tame animals to portray creatures in the wild.”
Now, I know what you’re thinking: yes, indeed, the UK Telegraph commenting on any media source of ‘faking’ anything is pretty sad. Let’s disregard tabloid integrity for a moment and consider what this is really about (and what’s WAY more fun); wildlife photography.
Wildlife photography does not include zoo and game farm animals; shooting captive subjects, given that some folks are perpetually going to choose to do this, should always be labelled as such, even if only via context (see Darwin Wiggett’s bear photo for an example; and notice that he captioned it regardless).
I have yet to hear anyone explain how photographing a bear in a cage is wildlife anything. The root of the word ‘wild’ is free-willed, not Free Willy. I understand, for certain, there are degrees of what that might mean. Is a zebra migrating hundreds of miles across the plains in Africa before being hemmed in by a fence really free willed? *
The fact that there are indeed myriad shades of gray, woven through every possible facet of our world, does not make charcoal black any less black. We might differ on where 18% gray is, but we know what black is.
(more…)
Tags: captive animals, coyotes, Jasper National Park, wildlife photography
Posted in Jasper National Park, Miscellaneous, Musings, Nature stuff, News, Photo business, Photography, Rants, Wildlife | 3 Comments »
Tuesday, December 13th, 2011
Brown bear, Ursus arctos, standing raised upright and rubbing her back against a birch tree in Katmai National Park and Preserve, Alaska. Please click on the image above to view a larger version of this photo.
Hey Folks,
I can’t imagine my father ever calling himself a “professional University lecturer” or my brother referring himself to as a “professional math teacher”.
The word professional means many things; but when it’s followed with a vocation, such as “photographer”, it doesn’t mean that you enjoy photography a lot, or that you speak politely about it, or that someone bought a print from you. It doesn’t even mean that you have a website. It doesn’t mean you teach workshops and lead tours, either.
Show me a professional photographer, and I’ll wager a dollar I’ll show you someone who’s struggled to pay their rent, who’s sold gear to make their car payment (or sold their car to make their gear payment), someone who’s eaten peanut butter sandwiches because that’s what was available to eat.
A professional photographer has made real sacrifice to do what they do (there are always exceptional cases, with trust funds, a wealthy spouse, etc). It’s a risk. It’s giving up an awful lot to choose to pursue a particular vocation. It’s losing on that risk, picking up, and swinging the stick again. And again. And yet again. Repeat, infinitum.
It sounds much more glamorous than it might be. It means you take the bus sometimes, it means you sit in the rain and wish you were somewhere else. It means you sometimes take a lower price for a sale because you need shoes. Pardon my French, but it means you’ve been sh** on. It means you’ve wished, cursed and swore that you had chosen some other manner to live by. It means you say ‘yes’ when you think ‘oh sh**, that gig sounds like hell’. It means you say ‘yes’ and then that gig actually IS hell. And you then say ‘yes’ again. Still you pursue it.
(more…)
Tags: Alaska, Grizzly Bears, Wildlife
Posted in Alaska, Art, Katmai National Park, Musings, Photo business, Photography, Rants | 3 Comments »
Saturday, December 3rd, 2011
Borwn bear in the forest, fall colors, searching for salmon in a river. Brown bear (Ursus arctos) Katmai National Park and Preserve, Alaska. Please click on the image above to view a larger version of this photo.
Hey Folks
A few quick updates: though nothing is ‘final’ on the interwebs, it seems; the internet goes to infinity, I suppose.
The end of every summer/fall I’m busy with office work, paper work, reports, emails, photo editing, processing, prints, website updates, website tweaks, writing, photo submissions (Oh, how I detest that word “submissions”; yet it’s so wonderfully apt, isn’t it?) and heaven knows what else. It’s not so much fun, but (apparently) it has to be done.
Lately, here’s a few of the projects I’ve been dealing with and fires I’ve put out. Many more to come.
Posted in Adventures, Alaska, Canada, Grizzly Bears, Katmai National Park, Photo business, Photo Tours, Photography, Wildlife | 1 Comment »
Monday, November 28th, 2011
Hey Folks,
What’s your page rank? How many friends do you have? Retweets? Have you shared anything today? What’s your title tag? Incoming links? How’s your website rank?
Now that summer is over, and it’s officially “office season”, you’re probably spending your time doing much of what I’ve been doing lately; website work, photo editing, marketing and promotion via the sticky, tricky and infinite webs we call SEO (Search Engine Optimization) & Social Media (making me wonder what, exactly, Anti-social Media might be).
SEO is a pretty tricky beast. It’s a lot of research, reading, re-reading, web-coding, overhauling, reviewing, more research, re-coding and hair pulling. It’s mostly a lot of trial and error; it’s not a given, for example, that what works for one site is applicable and relevant for another. And it’s almost certain that what works on the article you just carefully absorbed will not work on your website. So, it’s mostly guesswork.
Sometimes the results are what we hoped for, and we pat ourselves on the back, and think how clever we are. Sometimes, despite all out best efforts, the old googles kick our superbly optimized page to the bottom of page 11 on their results; this really hurts when you see some trashy, 1993-styled geocities looking webpage showing up on the first page of rankings. (more…)
Posted in Alaska, Northern Lights, Photo business, Photography, Social Media | 13 Comments »
Thursday, April 21st, 2011
A bull moose standing on the fall tundra in Denali National Park and Preserve, Alaska. Vegetation includes Dwarf Birch and Alaska Willow. Please click on the image to view a larger version of the photo.
Hey Folks
Recently I saw a tweet the other day from photographer Richard Bernabe: “Just had a photo editor demand raw files to process as they see fit. I turned the deal down.”
I saw and enjoyed at least some of the following conversation. We discussed the merit of sending out a RAW file to a photo editor instead of some other file format, such as a tiff or a jpeg.
For myself, I can’t see any reason to not send a RAW file if an editor or graphic artist requests it, unless there was some very highly unusual and extenuating circumstance; the only one that springs to mind is if the final image was a manual blend of multiple exposures, and/or a panoramic stitch that I’d put together. Even in those circumstances, I suspect I’d most likely explain to the person I was dealing with about the amount of time involved in finishing the product from camera to computer screen, and suggest they simply use the finished 8-bit tif or jpeg file, but if they felt they really wanted the RAW files, I can’t see why not; it’d mean they have to do (in some cases) a whole lot of work I’d already done, but if that’s what they wanted, I can’t see a good reason to refuse. (more…)
Tags: Skolai Images, stock photo business
Posted in Alaska, Denali National Park, Moose, Musings, Photo business, Photography, Social Media, Tech Stuff, Wildlife | 4 Comments »
Thursday, April 14th, 2011
An early fall snow coats the peaks of Mount Edith Cavell, Edith Cavell Lake, Canadian Rockies, Jasper National Park, Alberta, Canada. Please click on the image above to view a larger version of this photo.
Hey Folks,
Looking around the web recently I can’t help but notice the surge in photographers’ promoting eBooks. I wonder if eBooks aren’t the newer version of microstock photography? The hallmark of microstock sales is, IMO, an incredibly low price for (typically) royalty free sales; at best only very loosely managed rights. That seems to be the industry marketing model for eBook sales as well.
I’m not saying this is all a bad thing. One plus I see is that the bulk of eBook sales are direct from the photographer to the customer; cutting out an agency, which I think is (virtually) always a good thing.
Another plus is the quality of the material; the eBooks I’ve seen have been absolutely first class stuff. Microstock photos are often pretty sad images.
I think the above 2 positives are more than likely related.
Just wondering out loud is all.
Cheers
Carl
Tags: Edith Cavell, Skolai Images
Posted in Canada, Jasper National Park, Landscapes, Musings, Photo business, Photography | 3 Comments »
Sunday, March 27th, 2011
A coastal brown bear, Ursus arctos, walks along Brooks River shoreline at dawn, backlit, Katmai National Park and Preserve, Alaska.
Hey Folks
Next up in this series of news of the month pieces.
This month, I haven’t been spending as much time in the woods, and even less reading the news. Mostly, I’ve been grating sandpaper over my eyeballs … more commonly called “working on website updates”. I need to take about a year off, and learn how to do this properly, then start over from scratch and rebuild everything (yeah, that’s gunna happen).
Below I’ve compiled various bits from around the web that held my failing attention long enough to actually read through the piece. Feel free to add your own stuff of note, I’d love to see some things I’ve missed.
In a completely random order: (more…)
Tags: Alaska, conservation, Environmental Issues, Grizzly Bears, Mount Blackburn, News, Skolai Images, Wrangell - St. Elias National Park
Posted in Alaska, Art, Environmental Issues, Grizzly Bears, News, Photo business, Photography, Social Media, Stuff to Click On, Tech Stuff, Wildlife, Wrangell - St. Elias National Park | No Comments »
Tuesday, March 1st, 2011
Backcountry Skiing trip, Kuskulana River, Mt. Blackburn, winter, Wrangell St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska.
Hey Folks
The next of the monthly series for 2011. The biggest news, of course, in photography this month was the Oscars. I, of course, missed them. Again. Ahh well – there goes pop culture, I spose.
The next biggest piece of news is that I’ve been spending quite a bit of time out of town, tooling around in Wrangell – St. Elias National Park, enjoying the mountains. A few days here, a few days there; beats the heck out of navigating the treacherous icy roads of Anchorage. And much more interesting than reading the news. 
Below is what caught my eye this month. I’ve been in the mtns a bit, so might have missed some good stuff. Feel free to add your own stuff of note.
In no particular order: (more…)
Tags: conservation, environment, Moose, News, Photography, Skolai Images, Wildlife
Posted in Cool stories, Environmental Issues, Moose, News, Photo business, Photography, Social Media, Stuff to Click On, Tech Stuff, Wildlife | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, February 2nd, 2011
Hey Folks
The first of the monthly series for 2011. In no particular order: (more…)
Tags: Alaska, conservation, environment, News, Photography
Posted in Alaska, Environmental Issues, News, Photo business, Photography, Social Media, Stuff to Click On, Winter, Wrangell - St. Elias National Park | 4 Comments »
