NOTE: I pulled the names off this post because I feared that these up-and-coming photographers might get some backlash for openly discussing their struggle with $200 assignments. Most of the veteran photographers I’ve talked with had the same problems starting out, so I know it’s not anything new to the industry. The key seems to be getting over it as quickly as possible. In fact the 1st photographer wrote this several months ago and is already in a much better position, on his way to building a nice list of recurring higher paying clients and was relieved to know he would not be forever associated with his early struggles.

Consider this a snapshot into the minds of up-and-coming photographers in this industry and the kind of impact one influential person can have on their thinking.

Up-and-coming Photographer 1 (NY):
Those of us that attended the most recent Eddie Adams Workshop quickly came to see that it was a rare opportunity not only to show our work and meet the newest generation of image-makers, but to get advice from many of the best editors and photographers in the world.

The guest speakers were the highlight of the workshop. They gave us insight into recently completed projects, practical advice on how to handle story subjects, and how to begin and manage a career. This year we heard from people such as Nick Nichols, Platon, Jimmy Colton, John Moore, Bill Epperidge, and many others.

This year, of course, the workshop took place during a difficult time in our industry. There were just as many cautionary tales about earning a living as a photographer as the stories of adventure. Everyone of course was eager to do great work, but we all kept asking the same question: where are our fees going to come from, and will we be able to earn enough to make a career as an image maker?

On the second to last night, there was a panel that I had hoped would really address this issue. Moderated by MaryAnne Golon, it consisted of Santiago Lyon of the AP, Nat Geo photographer Gary Knight, James Wellford of Newsweek, and David Griffin of National Geographic. They covered a number of topics, but it wasn’t until a student stood up and asked a question about how we, as the next generation of photographers, were supposed to survive financially in this new photo world, that my interest became particularly peaked.

Each panel member had different bits of advice to give, some I had heard before, some not. Then Brian Storm, sitting near the panel, got up and turned to the students and said something that has stuck with me and many attendees that I’ve talked to since the workshop ended a few months ago.

Brian said that photographers should, “stop accepting the $200 gigs,” because those low-fee jobs, along with those who are working for free, are bringing down the collective value of our industry and are encouraging our clients to expect more for less. He also pointed out that MediaStorm turns away well over half of the jobs that come to them, so there’s obviously a demand for original, creative content, and we all needed to figure out how to tap into this new multimedia friendly market.

At first, I was surprised by Brian’s remarks. Like many of my colleagues I struggle to make ends meet as a photographer. Even with a prestigious internship to my credit, and with several clips from the biggest newspapers and magazines in the industry in my portfolio, I have to spend most of my days hustling and marketing myself to land assignments and clients. Since I’ve been working full-time as a photographer, I have turned down perhaps half a dozen assignments because the pay was so low it just wasn’t worth leaving the house.

But, if I hadn’t accepted other low-paying assignments, some of the kind Brian was talking about, I would be writing this story from the basement in my parents’ house in New Jersey, not from my East Harlem apartment.

I simply cannot afford to turn down the $200 gigs and continue to work as a professional. I’d have to leave New York, which as we all know, is the center of the photo world. I’ve invested a lot of time in the city as a subject. I’ve also invested a lot of time visiting various photo editors in NY, trying to establish a network of contacts. Finally, I stay in NY because, for me, it’s the best place for a shooter. Some of the low-paying gigs I accepted also led to other work and other contacts, and gave me great tearsheets.

The irony is, I agree with Brian’s comments. Nothing upsets my professional equilibrium more than when I think my services or my craft or my industry in general is being undervalued by a customer or client. I never accept a client’s first budget; I always—always—try to negotiate a higher fee. But if I had not accepted some of those low paying assignments, assignments for money that Brian says fall below current industry standard rates, my career would have been hamstrung. Those jobs have allowed me to build a portfolio, and those jobs have helped give me a small bit of revenue that has allowed me to keep my head above water.

Going into the workshop, I had one camera, one lens, one flash, and rent due. Since then I’ve gotten gigs that include advertising and corporate work (weddings too) and I can now be more discriminating when it comes to deciding what assignments to accept and what assignments simply aren’t worth it. I still wake up every day happy to be a photographer. It’s my career; it’s my life.

Now, I know that my experiences as an up-and-comer in NYC would be very different from those of my fellow workshoppers, so I asked a few of them to react to what Brian said, as well as give their two cents about accepting low paying gigs:

Up-and-coming Photographer 2 (CA):
I personally agree with Brian on the subject of turning down jobs of $200 work. I feel that as the saturation of photographers in the industry is increasing, everyone wants a bite and so photographers cut each other off to get a gig. I don’t think it’s fair for the work put in and for the industry itself. I believe it’s bad business management and it’s not the fault of the photographers. No one educates photographers on how much to charge and established photographers are reluctant to share their rate cards or share how much they charge for services. I believe that needs to change. I figure, photographers should be communicating with each other some more and keep the reputation of a high quality service. I compare this to gasoline, restaurants or other retail businesses, where a new business will open with very similar but competitive pricing to an established business. A hamburger at one restaurant will be $5.00 and at another place will be $4.75, and at another at $4.50, all with the same quality burger. It should be the same with photography.

I have turned down jobs that are $200 or less. I have been offered two hour shooting gigs for $100 and I have to turn them down. I don’t see a shoot every only taking two hours, because afterward I’m spending perhaps another hour on the computer editing and color-correcting images, and another 15-20 minutes burning a disc. So my time working has increased from two hours to maybe three or four. I feel worse when I have to turn down weddings or other long hour day shoots if they ask me to shoot it for $200, because it feels as if the client is devaluing the work. The worst part of all this, equipment prices get higher and higher every year, or new and better equipment comes out every other month now, and to stay on top of the game, you need state-of-the-art equipment so that it at least can push out two to three years of life from it. So I believe photographers need to agree more on charging and balancing costs and value, so that this industry can continue to strive and keep its prestige. In the end, it’s not just a hobby, it becomes a business, and it takes just as much vision in having a business as in having a vision for a photo project.

Up-and-coming Photographer 3 (NY):
I definitely agree with what Brian Storm had to say at Eddie Adams. I think its great to hear that there is such a demand for quality multimedia, but I think one of the major problems right now is that it’s hard for qualified multimedia journalists to find clients that understand the value in good multimedia journalism and are willing to give them the time and money for quality work. During a panel discussion at Eddie Adams this past year Brian Storm mentioned that Media Storm is turning away half the jobs that come to them, and many of us young journalists in the audience jokingly called out “can you pass them our way!” It’s a transitional time in our industry where less of us are working for traditional news organizations and only a few production houses such as Media Storm have been established, so until we find our niche in the world of journalism, we freelance. There are many advantages to working solo, but one of the biggest challenges is connecting with clients that are willing to pay more than $200 for a job. Many of us are trying to keep up with the bills and pay off student loans, so certain months it’s hard to turn down that $200 job. I think for young journalists to survive in this current climate we need to work together so we don’t feel pressured to compromise our integrity. I don’t know what the future in digital reporting will be, but I feel like one thing we can plan for is to make ourselves visible and accessible to future clients. Production houses like Media Storm, collectives like Luceo Images and photo agencies such as Redux Pictures all seem to be going strong. I think the next step might be to have more Multimedia agencies vs. still photo agencies, that feature qualified multimedia journalists and connect them with clients. At this period in my career, I could use the middle man.

Up-and-coming Photographer 4 (CA):
I feel like young professionals like myself are in this weird state of flux, like a catch-22. I’ve grown in my young career through the teachings some really talented, established photographers and have tried to maintain the industry standards of charging appropriately for content. Yet I’ve quickly found that these “high morals” (which I agree with) have yet to be fruitful. We are all trying to start up a lucrative, sustaining business in photography when the industry as a whole, journalism especially, lies in this uncertain state of a new media Renaissance. I always thought I would be a newspaper photojournalist, now the game has changed. It isn’t anything new. The playing fields are getting smaller and have a lot more players eager to stand out. I don’t have the long standing portfolios of contributing to the New York Times. Those client decorations seem to help define you as a pro and justify to clients that you are worth paying pro fees to. For unestablished, young pro photographers, this seems like a huge hurdle to get over. When so much of this business is based on word of mouth, how are young photographers supposed to get their names out there when they are trying to charge the prices of established photographers? The same great mentors/photo editors that are telling us all to maintain good pricing standards are the same people we seek out for jobs and are low balling us because of the flailing market. At some point a young photographer needs to get his/her feet wet and make a sale. After all rent is due.

Up-and-coming Photographer 5 (CT):
Brian Storm made a very strong point when he spoke at the Eddie Adams Workshop this year but I would argue that the issue is a little more complex then was perhaps discussed. I strongly agree with his thoughts on maintaining a level of commitment to the value of what we produce as photographers. This will help to avoid driving the market value down and consequently out pricing one another to the point where it is simply not viable to make a living as a freelancer. When we have some level of control over the fee negotiations on a particular job, it becomes essential for us to charge the appropriate amount for the work. Doing work for free undermines the amount of time, effort, and creativity that others put in on similar jobs and cannot be an option when we, as a community, are trying to regain control over price point.

The challenge, however lies in the work we do for clients who are large enough and unfortunately prestigious enough that they can set their price point with the understanding that we need the exposure they offer to build a reputation. This is especially applicable for photojournalists in this current market where even the ‘top tier’ news clients sometimes only offer day rates that hover around the $200 mark. As we move forward in this time of transition, it will become even more important to strike a balance between excepting work we feel strongly about for slightly less than we would have hoped and also demanding we are paid fair value for work we are in control of.

Up-and-coming Photographer 6 (TX):
As far as I’m concerned, while I fully understand what Brian was saying, I don’t know if I agree 100%. I also don’t really think this is about $200, but more about taking the crappy pay so many clients think they can get away with, which perpetuates the trend of paying us very little for work that is worth substantially more.

As a full-time freelance photographer fairly early in my career, I take a lot of pride in pricing correctly and practicing proper business practices. I know way too many incredible photographers without any business sense and it kills me. Understanding your market and the proper way to run a business is paramount, especially for a freelancer and especially in the “$200″ market Brian speaks of.

Since I don’t have a super niche market and do a lot of different kinds of work for a lot of different clients with a lot of different budgets, generalizing my “gigs” isn’t the best way to summarize my experience, but I quote, estimate, bid and price very similarly to other colleagues in my market (hopefully). As far as I know I’m the youngest active member of my ASMP chapter and take a lot of pride in the work that I do. In saying that, I also want to price it accordingly. When I have a pricing issue, a negotiation issue or a general business issue I have several colleagues, mentors and friends at the ready that will gladly steer me in the right direction. Sure they may be competitors in a sense, as well as friends, but none of us benefit from a photographer coming into our market and undercutting our business.

With that said, we can only do so much to educate ourselves and other working professionals in our market, but not only is it extremely difficult to regulate pricing as US anti-trust laws specifically prohibit it, but it is extremely difficult to eradicate the “$200″ market when so many photographers, hobbyists and the like are willing to do it for free.

Sure, there are tons of jobs that a hobbyist wouldn’t be able to match, but for every client that respects the photographer and his art/craft, and is willing to pay for it, there’s a client with swindling budget calling you up, leaving you a voicemail asking if it’s ok to use some of your photos and telling you that they cannot pay for them, but offering “exposure” instead (trust me I’ve had 2 this week already).

Have I personally turned down $200 gigs before? Sure. Have I personally said, “no thanks,” to a client that doesn’t want to pay me close to what I should be getting paid? All the time. Do I regret it? No.

I’m a struggling freelance photographer just like many out there, I’m sure. I’m not widely known, nor have I been in the industry for decades with a client list that stretches for miles, but I know the sooner I learn to value my own work and the sooner I learn to value the industry in which I work, the better my business will be, and the sooner those big jobs will start rolling in.

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Melinda Beck, an illustrator who is based in Brooklyn, wrote in an e-mail message to Google rejecting its offer for exposure instead of cash (right here).

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Found it on MagCulture.com. View it online (here).

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©Agnes Dherbeys VII Mentor Program

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Q&A with Paul Graham, PDN.

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I’ve been feeling a lil down about how disconnected art is from actual change in other people’s lives. Not wanting to pursue being an art star takes some really great burdens off me…

via Brad Troemel.

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Mary Virgina Swanson thinks the portfolio reviews are a better way to go than the contests (here):

“I become increasingly frustrated and in fact pessimistic about the value of entering many exhibition and/or publication competitions. The reproduction rights demanded from the winners, and more often now from those who simply apply, are frustrating, unnecessary and unfair. The physical space and the circumstances at the actual judging of the work can vary, within a physically environment that may not lend itself to optimum viewing of your work, or judges working remotely without a dialogue, or so few examples of your work presented that we can barely get to know your work.”

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The two big contests in my opinion are American Photography (the book) and the PDN photography annual (World Press Photo is of course highly respected but there was never any reference to pull off the shelf when looking for photographers). Both have parties for the winners and the judges are always people you want to get your work in front of. I know that commercial photography has a couple that are highly respected as well (CA and Kelly Awards I think).

The reasons for entering a respected contest are clear. Getting your work in front judges, getting your work published if it wins, using the recognition as part of your marketing effort and attending a party to celebrate great photography. I can assure you that any photographers receiving recognition in the contests I mentioned got extra consideration for assignments. It’s simple reinforcement that the photographers work is good. They’re also used as a handy reference to pair the name of the photographer with the work you remember from the past year.

Recently a photographer brought the Billboard Photography Contest to my attention (here) because the deadline to announce winners had passed and he couldn’t find out who won. I made several inquiries myself and eventually got to John Gimenez of PDN Custom Media and Events who answered my emails but never got us closer to finding the results. Eventually they issued a new call for entries a put a link up to the past winners which only said coming soon. When I checked this morning it was finally working (here).

Upon, closer inspection of the new contest leads me to believe this one is purely for profit. I can’t figure out what the prizes are, who the judges are and paying extra for a deadline extension on digital entries is complete horseshit.

I think there’s room for improvement in photography contests or at least room for something completely different and innovative, but there are a couple hurdles to get over first.

1. There needs to be a barrier to entry. You can read what it’s like to plow through the 81,000 entries to World Press Photo (here). Usually the entry fee serves this purpose. If it’s high enough people limit the work they submit but this also limits the potential field.

2. You need to attract qualified judges. If you’ve ever sat in a room or at a computer screen and plowed through entries it doesn’t take long for the fatigue to creep in. This is work people. Getting busy photo editors to volunteer for this means the stuff they’re looking at needs to be of high quality.

3. The final product needs to be published in a way that’s useful to the community. From my own experience running a free promo contest on this blog, this is not easy. Getting busy creatives to look at hundreds of finalists from a contest they’ve never heard of is nearly impossible (a few people did land jobs because of it so it was ultimately successful).

Since 2009 will be the year when the media industry begins to remake itself you have to believe there are better ways to do everything. Photography contests seem like a good place to start.

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PDN is going help solve that problem with a survey (to find out what editorial photographers earn, how they’re surviving, and what kind of rates they’re getting) editorial photographers can take (here).

The survey comes at an difficult time for editorial photographers because by all indications we’re headed for a pretty bad winter of dropping circ and advertiser belt tightening (here and here) that can only result in fewer assignments and money available for photography. Hopefully we’re not far from the bottom and the industry can rebound like it did after 2000. With more and more photography headed online where the distribution and printing is virtually free it seems like publishers could still manage to pay for original photography so their publication doesn’t start to resemble google.

I think we’ve reached a critical juncture for the editorial photography industry and it’s time to take stock of where we are so we can make changes that will ensure the long term health going forward. The industry used to just take care of itself but I’m not so sure that will be the case in the future.

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Images can be tremendously powerful. Images, empowered appropriately, can challenge, convince, delight and inspire. At Flickr, we think one of our most important missions is to enabe images to be all that they can be. And as such, we are incredibly proud and excited to launch a new partnership with Getty Images, the unrivaled leader in digital media licensing, to offer a new Flickr branded collection on www.gettyimages.com.

The creative and editorial teams at Getty Images have a deep understanding of what makes images truly extraordinary as well as what their clients (on a global scale) are seeking. Marrying this expertise to the talent and breadth of the photography on Flickr is truly an incredible opportunity, for our members, for Getty Images clients, and for those who love imagery in all of its forms.

So how does it all work?

Getty Images has the best editors globally taking the pulse of the market. In the next several months, they will be exploring Flickr’s collection of public photos and inviting some of these photographers to be part of the Flickr collection on Getty Images.

Both companies are committed to providing our users with more choices. Flickr members have an unprecedented opportunity to establish even more value for their creativity and work directly with a global leader to license their images commercially. Getty Images customers will have access to even more diverse, regionally relevant imagery.

So make sure to check out the Flickr collection on www.gettyimages.com in the coming months to see what the editors at Getty Images have selected.

-Kakul Srivastav, General Manager, Flickr

From the Getty Blog (here).

I’ll be interested to see how many gems they find in the 2 billion images stored there.

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It is everyone’s understanding that the price of photography will continue to dip down. How soon and how fast, it is anyone’s guess. It would absolutely not surprise me if someone like Getty would take a deep plunge into bottom cheap imagery in order to get rid of any competition and clean the landscape, a bit like a whale plunges deep below to get rid of parasite fish, only to return to a new, stronger marketplace. Everyone knows that there is too much photography available, both in stock and editorial. It is time to force the medium and lesser photographers and agencies into a rapid bankruptcy in order to sanitize the offering.

Let me step back and explain: The market, currently, offers the false impression that anyone can make money in the photography field. Since it has become easy and cheap to enter, everyone and his brother is now either a photographer or a stock agent. Since there is no tangible market research on the size of our industry, $2 billion, $5 billion, $3000 billion, it is anyone guess on what the payout will be. If someone paid attention, I am sure that we would see that there has been more stock agencies of all type launched in the last five years then at anytime in its brief history. And it is only growing exponentially. More agencies, more photographers, more photographers, less relevant images. It seems that there is money to be made because of Microstocks and Flickr’s successes. And as much is there might be an increase in the number of images used in one year, there has not been an increase of revenue generated by this spike. It has been almost cancelled by the fall in pricing and Getty has been a witness to that.

The only way to really profit from that growth would be to get rid of the overflow of images. And the best way is to force as many people out of the market as possible, as quickly as possible.

A quick hit off the bottom could be exactly whats needed in this industry but I guess that depends on if you’re a whale or a parasite.

The other blog I’m checking out is called “The Business of Photography” and I discovered it over on Photo Rank (here) submitted by the author Ed McCulloch hisself. It’s sort of a “What They Don’t Teach You at Harvard Business School” for the photo school kids and seems to be born out of the frustration of an education that doesn’t teach business to photographers (ridiculous).

Anyway, there’s plenty of advice for photographers floating around but I always like it when I see someone with talent giving it out. Ed is a name I’ve been familiar with for sometime because he knows how to market himself and he’s a good photographer, definitely someone worth listening to.

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From New York Magazine, American Roulette: In our winner-take-all casino economy, the middle class is getting royally screwed. A call to arms for populism, before it’s too late (here). Via the writers strike blog (here).

We’ve had a bracing, invigorating run of pedal-to-the-metal hypercapitalism, but now it’s time to ease up and share the wealth some. We can afford to make life a little more fair and a lot less scary for most people.

And then.

From a book review by Roger Lownstein in Portfolio Magazine (here).

Supercapitalism
By Robert B. Reich
Knopf, 272 pages, $25

[...]As Reich admits, this unfettered capitalism is very good at what it tries to do: mainly, earn profits for shareholders and offer a wide array of affordable products to consumers. It is lousy at everything else, which, according to Reich, includes providing health care and ample pensions for employees or a living wage for those on the bottom or protecting small retailers and the environment.

[...]Free markets have been great for the kingpins of private equity—not so for the working stiff.

[...]Reich spends a lot of time contrasting the present era with what he calls the Not Quite Golden Age of the 1950s and ’60s, when unions and government promoted stability for workers and communities at the cost of a far less innovative economy. It’s startling to be reminded of just how controlled the U.S. economy used to be.

[...] Anyway, technology ended it. Ma Bell lost its monopoly to new long-distance-transmission technology, and truckers to Federal Express. Down came the regulatory walls, companies were forced to compete, and Wall Street demanded profits and profits alone. Communities be damned.

[...]Corporations cannot be expected to divide their loyalties between social interests and capitalist ones because they have no means of weighing one against the other. Only a democratic institution can decide whether, in order to preserve community values, it is worth throwing a little sand into the gears of capitalism—say, by keeping a big-box retailer out of downtown. But those institutions, namely Congress and state legislatures, are failing.

Don’t let the greedheads win.

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Uber blogger Michael Arrington over at TechCrunch decided to make it front page news (here) with the same laughable fair use defense those Richter Scales tried but if you read through the lines it seems to be more of a case that a video everyone liked and Michael was featured in is not longer available and he’s pissed-off about it.

Michael ends his post with this Web 2.0 fairy tale:

Societal ideals around what constitutes ownership over art are changing. People who try to protect and silo off their work are simply being ignored. Those that embrace the community, and give back to it not only allowing but asking for their work to be mashed up, re-used and otherwise embraced are being rewarded with attention. At the core is a basic implicit understanding – if you want to be part of the community, you have to give back to it, too.

Dude, are you drunk? Content is king. People who steal work to mash it up and don’t attribute or pay their sources are dicks.

A cursory reading of the comments shows the usual dreck like “it’s the internet, get over it” or “your photos suck why would you care” or even better “it’s an awesome marketing opportunity that you should have taken advantage of.”

Here are a few of the better comments:

Amie Gillingham

December 16th, 2007 at 5:37 am

We shouldn’t be clamoring for such an erosion of ownership rights just because we all loved the end result. Permission is everything!

and

Paulo

December 16th, 2007 at 7:34 am

Er Mike, aren’t you supposed to be a lawyer? Grab a clue, man.

Those who can, create. Those who can’t, steal.

and

DT

December 16th, 2007 at 5:45 pm

The whole “you shouldn’t post your work on the Internet if you don’t want it stolen” argument seems like a path to a pretty depressing society. If you don’t want your wallet stolen, don’t carry it with you. If you don’t want your car broken-into, don’t park it on the street. If you don’t want your house burglarized then don’t have windows…

[...]Here, we all gain when artists put their work on the Internet. We can view their work from thousands of miles away and gain an appreciation for it. She can sell prints, I can send her feedback, etc. Everybody ends up happier.

The general public’s misunderstanding of copyright is not what’s disturbing here, it’s that influential bloggers like Michael and Robert Scoble (here), who should be leading by example, seem to think we should throw it out the window in favor of some type of web 2.0 community empowerment. I just don’t see the upside for anyone when the original creator of a work cannot be found.

Update: Lane Hartwell statement (here). Here’s a highlight:

The band did not remove the image from the video when I brought it to their attention and instead they told me they had the right to use it. They could have easily apologized, removed the video from YouTube and re-edited without my image and reposted.

Photography is my livelihood. It’s how I pay my bills. I’m not treating the band any differently than any other group that uses my work without my permission.

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US vs. THEM… or flogging a dead horse

US vs. THEM part DEUX!

I agree with much of what he says even though I’m a part of “THEM.”

He talks about working within the system but using whatever advantages you can to create positive cash flow. I’d say the biggest point to come out of it is that idea of renting equipment. There’s hardly a photographer that I hire anymore that doesn’t charge me to rent equipment. Hell, I just paid a $7,000 rental bill but what am I going to do about it, nobody owns equipment anymore and if they do they rent it to me. It’s only fair.

He also brings up the editorial photographers group (EP) which failed to turn editorial photography into a viable business but I will add likely mitigated the level of damage that was about to happen. I personally learned a ton from what I read on the website back then and many photographers that I dealt with changed their business practices for the better. I even cribbed off the contracts when writing and trying to understand a few of my own.

The big downside for me was that anyone with a camera was suddenly using the EP attitude to badger me into paying higher rates and signing their contract terms and the reality was they didn’t have the skills as a photographer to make those demands.

The barrier to entry in the editorial market has always been that you can’t make a living at the bottom of the market and now the middle of the market is completely flooded with photographers making it impossible to specialize in editorial photography. This can’t be good and I really don’t have a solution at the moment but at least Robert has a strategy for dealing with it.

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[...]“And I sympathise, I really do, if you’re reading this and siding with her for slapping the art snobs’ faces. Critics and museums lie when they claim serious art is accessible. It is obscure and demanding.”

Great story over at the Guardian (here) that I found via JM Colberg

I think we all know that if you want to sell a ton of something to the general public you need to get down to their level of taste. This is what troubles me about the impending upending of the photography distribution system. When consumers have a choice will they pick the imagery that’s easy to digest or moves or has sound or will they sometimes choose complex hard to understand photography.

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Residuals, along with larger up front fees, are what we writers receive to compensate us for the fact that the studios retain legal copyright (i.e., authorship) over our work. What does that mean? It means that once we turn in our scripts, the studios can do whatever they want to them.

and

This means that each and every creative decision that’s made becomes not about what’s right for the film, what’s fresh and new and exciting and truthful – but about what the boss is going to say. That’s pretty much the sole criterion in the development process: anticipating the reaction of the big kahuna. And since most bosses are as unpredictable and impatient as they are shrewd and successful, everyone under them tends to default to playing it safe. Avoid anything untried. Do what’s worked before. Stick with proven formulas. And what happens? Anything new and original is weeded out. And everything turns to shit.

and

We have to retain copyright. Not because we’re smarter or more capable of shepherding scripts to greatness, but because WE WORK ALONE. Film is a collaborative medium. But writing isn’t. Writing is solitary art, born not of a system, but of a single mind.

and the kicker

…in ten years filmmakers won’t need studios at all.

I’m watching all these mediums evolve for clues about what will happen to photography next.

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So, let’s do PDN and ourselves a favor, so we can see a real reported and fact checked story on this. If you’re one of these photographers or happen to know one you can rat out send an email to: dwalker100 (at) comcast (dotz) net.

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BRRRRRR wrote:

It’s admirable to think it could all be about the images, and it’s inspiring to think of the art world as a model. But this is about business, and business doesn’t work that way. Look at most of the content that goes into these stories or ads or whatever the assignments are: it’s silly crap to begin with. How can the hullaballoo that surrounds it not contain a degree of silly crap?

It’s pretty easy to sit outside the big markets and complain about how incestuous they are. Then you step into those big markets and you realize they contain whole universes. The competition is fierce. No, talent does not always rise to the top. But professionalism often does. A temperament and a capacity for managing the business environment, the clients and their often wacked out notions, peers, reps and agents, editors, the egos of all concerned, so on and so forth — and then on top of it to get shots: that’s what will get honed in those contexts. You don’t have to like it; hell, many of the people who go through it don’t *like* it. But most of those who manage to negotiate it one way or another will acknowledge they got something out of it, and that it made them “better” in some sense of the word.

Art, or voice, or vision, or whatever you want to call it, happens as an accident in this world. Everybody in the business is interested in it to some degree, but it’s rare that any of them get the chance to foreground it. Someone else’s expectations are always driving the car, and someone else’s credit card is always putting gas in the tank. Getting the job done — whatever the job is perceived to be by the ones who are paying for it — becomes priority one. Time matters; familiarity with the game matters; proximity matters; track record matters. You can’t blame people for minimizing risk when that’s part of what they’ve been explicitly charged with doing by the guys who put bread on their tables.

Also, the fact is that there are so many people working in those big markets that you often don’t *have* to go outside them. I guarantee you there are 20 young photographers in Brooklyn who don’t just know Nebraska (or wherever) but actually grew up there, and are willing to fly there tomorrow and work for a song. They are as hungry as anyone else, and a few of them might prove to be as talented. It may be vicious, but it’s also real.

Someone earlier nailed what may be one of the best strategies: do your time in a big market, endure it, get your game on, then take it to a smaller market and clean house. I have a good friend who did exactly that last year, leaving NYC after several tough but productive years and going to a smaller market, where he’s not just surviving but thriving, in part due to all he picked up.

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TechCrunch reported a couple days ago that Flickr reached 2 Billion photos (here) and the lucky winning photo is:

Taken by Yukesmooks, who’s flickr page can be found (here). This photo evokes the famous cliché that I am sworn as a member of the professional photo community to never utter (unless I am dying). I think as a randomly selected image it perfectly represents the average of what you will find in the collection.
They are also reporting that Facebook has 4.1 Billion photos on their site. Blap.

What does it all mean? I just decided 5 seconds ago (really, I changed my mind as I was writing this) this is a good sign for professional photographers. It means people love photography and it means the photography business will be booming soon and talented professionals will be needed to shoot advertising and editorial for all the magazines (or websites) these photo lovers will buy. And, all the companies that sell cameras and photography equipment will need endorsements from pros and need multi-million dollar campaigns shot to support the boom. And, people will buy books and visit websites and click on ads that have great photography. How can it not?

Don’t you think Yukesmooks wants to become a better photographer? I think old Yukie does and would now be willing to put some money behind that quest. What if the 2 billionth photo had been something great and not just a photo of wood against sky. He’d be selling tons of merchandise and making money.

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(openPR) – Inexpensive Digital Cameras Along with Innovations on the Web
Allow the Average Joe to Make Some Money on the Side -

Not long ago, the qualifications to be a freelance photographer were to own an expensive camera and possess the technical knowledge to manipulate shutter speeds and aperture settings in order to take good pictures. Although commercial quality images are still captured by professional photographers, the advent of inexpensive, sophisticated digital cameras along with new innovations on the web are allowing anyone who can push a button to earn a little extra cash.

These amateur photographers are snapping pictures of the multitude of objects and locales they encounter in their daily activities. The service they are providing as a whole is to photograph everything and every place on earth – a task so immense that all of the world’s professional photographers together could not possibly achieve.

The need for photos of almost everything imaginable is being driven by our fast paced society that has grown accustomed to obtaining information on-demand. Even the huge collection of photos available through Google’s image search function is not adequate when very specific images are required.

Where there is a need, there is a business opportunity. Innovative new web services are meeting the demand by harnessing a vast network of amateur photographers. For example, a service named GoSee4Me (www.GoSee4Me.com) provides photos of any object, structure, or physical location on the planet. The service is inexpensive because amateur photographers bid against each other to provide the photos, driving the price down to a level that is affordable in almost every situation.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, a digital image is worth a thousand Gigabytes in the Information Age. Amateur photographers are providing those digital images, and they are being paid for their efforts.

Press Contact:
Josh Rothman
GoSee4Me
P.O. Box 1983
Tustin, CA 92781
714-460-2700
Press@GoSee4Me.com
www.GoSee4Me.com

GoSee4Me is a privately-held web service located in Irvine, California. The company provides the first and only service that connects people who need photos of remote objects with other people who can provide those images inexpensively.

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Every great photographer I’ve ever worked with has an amazing first assistant.

It seems like there’s a new wave of former first’s–there’s always a group roaming around but this one seems to be particularly large–who’ve recently made the leap from shooting like their old boss to defining their own body of work and they’re starting to get a lot of jobs. If you hire a photographer enough you get to know the first’s and when they finally make the break to go out on their own I always meet with them to look at their book. They deserve it.

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Here’s some of the takeaway:

• Russell James is a master at shooting swimwear with dappled sunset lighting so whoever’s gonna win this thing needs to get the assistants to light everything that way. Russell is the client here and has a certain taste in photography.
• As long as your photos are good it doesn’t matter if you follow instructions. One team shot a dress twice but their photos were better so they still won. Yeah, follow the art direction but don’t let it get in the way of making good pictures first.
• Talking about photography is really difficult so people tend to focus on shit they know something about. During the critique it was: Oh, that hair is horrible or that dress is awful or the position of her head is odd.
• Fashion people love graphically strong images. Russell was hinting at this when discussing the big beautiful ship that no one took advantage of to create strong elements in the background.

When you’re given a bad situation and very little time to make something out of it people rely on instinct and that’s where experience comes into play (this is why you only hire veterans to shoot covers, it’s virtually guaranteed something will go wrong). If you threw Russell James into either of the situations presented in the first episode I’ll bet a million bucks he would recreate something that could be found in his book. That’s just how it works; no one is going to reinvent themselves in 5 minutes.

Unfortunately, that meant the wedding photographer just had to go and recreate a wedding scene. Come on man, time to step up, I’m pulling for you.

I got the photo assistants out of the credits because these guys are probably the only reason any of those photos even came close to working out: Adam Franzino, Doyle Leading, Tim O’Malley and Ben Tietge.

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Old Geezer Says:
November 10th, 2007 at 9:39 pm Old Geezer here. I’m the older brother of Old Yeller. Funny how a post that started about a bad tv show ended up with a bunch of college students asking advice about their future. Well, pull up a chair, boys and girls, and let Old Geezer share some of his hard earned wisdom. I envision a list, of about a hundred items, and we’d have to stop at a hundred, because we’d never remember more than that. Anyone else over the age of forty can chime in too; I’m sure I won’t think of everything.

1. In college, learn as much tech stuff as you can. This will make you more valuable as an assistant. Don’t just be a navel gazer with a 5D.

2. In college, take business classes too. You don’t want to be one of those stoner kids that just reads and ponders life. You want to APPLY what you learned.

3. In college, take as many philosophy classes as you can. Try to think BIG. Try to care about the world. Try to get a grip on the big picture.

4. In college, take a year off and drive across the country, and camp along the way. Do it with good friends that are smart; not dumbasses that just want to get high. Bring some books. Bring some audio books if you can’t read.

5. Make sure and take some acid somewhere along the way. Preferably in Monument Valley or Canyonlands. I know that sounds dumb, but everybody needs to do that once or twice.

6. When you start assisting, consider putting away your cameras entirely for a few years, and concentrate on being a servant. Get into a servant mindspace. Be in a supportive role. Trust me, it helps. This is your time to be a giant sponge and learn as much as you can. It’s not your time to shoot. (Ok, maybe with your iphone, but nothing more serious than that).

7. Think how you can be most useful to a photographer. That will get you hired, and keep you getting hired.

8. Eliminate excess Drama from your life.

9. Live beneath your means. Keep things simple.

10. Be a good conversationalist. Be well read. No one wants to drive five hours with an assistant that doesn’t have anything to add to the conversation. And it better be better than how to make web galleries from Bridge, or something geeky like that.

11. Keep your mouth shut around clients. Just be a good energy, but sure as hell, don’t offer ideas. The photographer has his own agenda, and he needs to work that out with the client.

12. Don’t be late for work. And if you are, call ahead and let the photographer know. Don’t just show up thirty minutes late, especially if it’s on the way to LaGuardia.

13. Be loyal.

14. Go beyond the call of duty.

15. Don’t order expensive drinks after the job, especially if it’s editorial. Be aware of the budget.

16. Turn off your fucking cell phone during the job. Fine to check messages during lunch, when it’s your time, but don’t be sending text messages to your girlfriend, even if nothing is going on in the job. Trust me, even though you’re not aware of it, there is something ALWAYS going on in the job.

17. Reread 16.

18. Be prompt when submitting Invoices. Don’t bitch about photographers always paying late, if you wait twenty days before you Invoice a job.

19. Be a sponge. Notice everything. Notice the way the photographer deals with the client. Notice the issues that the clients have, and be sensitive to these. You, as an assistant, are privy to a ton of valuable unspoken information; make the best use of it. Learn from it.

20. Travel out of the country as much as possible. Learn how other people live. Learn that America is not the center of the universe, and learn that you don’t need your cell phone 24 hours a day. Again, be a sponge, about how other people live.

21. Don’t show up hung over to a job. It’s just not cool. No matter how hard you worked the day before.

22. Dress well. Doesn’t have to be Prada, but try to look competent.

23. Learn your job. Learn the subtleties of a Profoto pack. Learn about the fuses in a Pro 7b. Try to learn CaptureOne, even just the basics of it. You are Support; try to know your craft. Even the geeky details. It’s the geeky details that’ll sometimes save a job. That’s when you’ll be the hero, and you’ll get an extra beer that night at dinner. (But don’t show up the next day hung over).

24. Go to the Times today, and read the Norman Mailer Obit. Try to create your life to be half as interesting as his life. If you do that, you’ll be fine.

25. Always order good Catering. That’s all the client really cares about. And make sure they get put up in a nice hotel.

26. Learn as much technical stuff as you can, because Rule Number One is, the client doesn’t really care about your vision of the world. They care about their vision. If you show one thing in your book, chances are, you’ll be called for something else. So have a good grab bag of tricks, for those days when you walk into a beige conference room, and have to shoot a fat guy on the corner of a desk.

That’s all that Old Geezer knows for now. Maybe someone older can write up another twenty-six.

Good luck with your careers, young people. God knows the world needs another photographer. With SVA and Art Center and the like cranking them out by the hundreds, soon we’ll have enough photographers to handle all those big budget jobs that we all turn down.

And.

Handle your rent; handle your car. Handle your parking tickets. Nobody wants the Sheriff to show up in the middle of a job, with a bunch of parking tickets in his hand, asking to see the assistant. Don’t ask to leave early, “cause you gotta go pay your rent or your phone bill”. Handle all that stuff outside of work. Again, you are Support; you are not the star.

And I forgot the worst one, #27: Don’t approach the client to “show him your work sometime”. It’s the cardinal rule. If you’re there on the job as an assistant, then be in the assistant role. Every client will ask you if you shoot, because they don’t know what else to talk to you about at lunch, but trust me, they really don’t care. They might care a little bit, but they don’t want to see your book. The right way to do it is — Stop Assisting, then become a photographer. Don’t approach a client when you’re on somebody else’s job.

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Go (here) to watch the trailer. It was taking to long to load and bogging down the website so I removed.

Via, You Call This Photography? (here)

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“Finding the right image just got easier,” because we have giant effing eyeballs.

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From “The Black Swan” by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

… consider the effect of the first music recording, and invention that introduced a great deal of injustice. Our ability to reproduce and repeat performances allows me to listen on my laptop to hours of background music of the pianist Vladimir Horowitz (now extremely dead) performing Rachmaninoff’s Preludes, instead of to the local Russian émigré musician (still living), who is now reduced to giving piano lessons to generally untalented children for close to minimum wage. Horowitz, though dead, is putting the poor man out of business. I would rather listen to Vladimir Horowitz or Arthur Rubinstein for $10.99 a CD than pay $9.99 for one by some unknown (but very talented) graduate of the Julliard School or the Prague Conservatory. If you ask me why I select Horowitz, I will answer that it is because of the order, rhythm, or passion, when in fact there are probably a legion of people I have never heard about, and will never hear about–those who did not make it to the stage, but who might play just as well.

[...]

Furthermore, I believe that the big transition in social life came not with the gramophone, but when someone had the great but unjust idea to invent the alphabet, thus allowing us to store information and reproduce it. It accelerated further when another inventor had the even more dangerous and iniquitous notion of starting a printing press, thus promoting texts across boundaries and triggering what ultimately grew into a winner take-all ecology. Now, what was so unjust about the spread of books? The alphabet allowed stories and ideas to be replicated with high fidelity and without limit, without any additional expenditure of energy on the author’s part for the subsequent performances. He didn’t even have to be alive for them–death is often a good career move for an author. This implies that those who, for some reason, start getting some attention can quickly reach more minds than others and displace the competitors from the bookshelves. In the days of bards and troubadours, everyone had an audience. A storyteller, like a baker or a coppersmith, had a market, and the assurance that no one from far away could dislodge him from his territory. Today, a few take almost everything; the rest next to nothing.

By the same mechanism, the advent of the cinema displaced neighborhood actors, putting the small guys out of business. But there is a difference. In pursuits that have a technical component, like being a pianist or a brain surgeon, talent is easy to ascertain, with subjective opinion playing a relatively small part. The inequity comes when someone perceived as being marginally better gets the whole pie.

In the arts–say the cinema–things are far more vicious. What we call “talent” generally comes from success, rather than its opposite. A great deal of empiricism has been done on the subject, most notably by Art DeVany, and insightful and original thinker who single mindedly studied wild uncertainty in the movies. He showed that, sadly, much of what we ascribe to skills is an after-the-fact attribution. The movie makes the actor, he claims–and a large dose of nonliner luck makes the movie.

The success of movies depends severely on contagions (Egads, I had to look that word up: The spread of a behavior pattern, attitude, or emotion from person to person or group to group through suggestion, propaganda, rumor, or imitation). Such contagions do not just apply to the movies: they seem to affect a wide range of cultural products. It is hard for us to accept that people do not fall in love with works of art only for their own sake, but also in order to feel that they belong to a community. By imitating, we get closer to others–that is, other imitators. It fights solitude.

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But, when you’re the New York Times Magazine and you have a photo alteration policy like this:

Photography and Images. Images in our pages that purport to depict reality must be genuine in every way. No people or objects may be added, rearranged, reversed, distorted or removed from a scene (except for the recognized practice of cropping to omit extraneous outer portions). Adjustments of color or gray scale should be limited to those minimally necessary for clear and accurate reproduction, analogous to the “burning” and “dodging” that formerly took place in darkroom processing of images. Pictures of news situations must not be posed. In the cases of collages, montages, portraits, fashion or home design illustrations, fanciful contrived situations and demonstrations of how a device is used, our intervention should be unmistakable to the reader, and unmistakably free of intent to deceive. Captions and credits should further acknowledge our intervention if the slightest doubt is possible. The design director, a masthead editor or the news desk should be consulted on doubtful cases or proposals for exceptions. Source (here)

and then you clearly run a photo on Steve Nash on the cover (here) that is so perfect if you didn’t pop his head you popped the arm or leg or ball or all of the above:

I’m going to call you out on it.

Finlay Mackay feel free to tell me I’m wrong and I’ll eat crow.

Correction: It appears I’m wrong about Finlay Mackay retouching the image of Steve Nash according to a commenter who I believe was on set when the image was taken.

Fact is I’m a bit jealous at how perfect it is and probably prone to arm and head and leg poppin’ my lazy ass self instead of getting Nash to do 200 goddam takes. My hat is off to you Finlay. Lucky for me my readers have provided a recipe for Crow that I may substitute with pigeon for convenience sake.

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