I had the opportunity to ask Steve Kalalian, President and founder of Impact Digital about his new venture IC Motion, which was founded to help photographers deal with the RED camera. I think there’s a lot of potential to use the camera on a stills shoot but to me it looks like a complete pain in the ass to deal with all those gigs and of course the equipment is expensive as hell so it makes sense that you would rent a package from someone like IC Motion and they can deal with it.

I’m still a little skeptical on the quality of the frame grabs for magazine reproduction. I have a copy of the Megan Fox, Esquire that was shot on the Red and have to say the reproduction has a “video” feel to it. That may have been intentional for all I know, because I don’t have anything else to compare it to, but I hear the Bruce Willis shoot in W was done on a RED, so you can have a look at that to see what you think.

APE: Can you tell me about Industrial Color and  your new venture IC Motion?

Industrial Color is part of  Industrial Color Brands which has been around for 18 years and has offices in Tribeca, Culver City, Miami, and Williamsburg. This includes several high-end creative production entities.

• Impact Digital (founded 1991) – Retouching and CGI
• Industrial Color (founded 2001) - Digital capture support on approx 12 shoots a day, post-production, file storage, archival printing, software development, hosted web based image management and high speed file distribution, iPhone App development and now HD and RAW video capture and editing).
• Fast Ashley’s Studios & Fast Locations (founded 2002) - 16,000 sq. ft of drive-in rental studios in Williamsburg Brooklyn and full location eq. rental.
• M Project Gallery (founded 2007) - To exhibit collaborative projects, such as the recent Jim Fiscus CGI graphic novel.

IC Motion was in the planning stages during 2008 and formally launched in March 2009.

When the RED camera was released, we saw an opportunity for photographers to embrace HD video in a special way. Because every frame is printable, photographers can think in motion and still at the same time. The creative possibilities are endless. The RAW digital video revolution is very similar to the digital still revolution when the first 16MP still camera backs came out in 2001. HD Video is very new to the photography industry. We felt that Industrial Color could bring significant value by providing full-service high-level support that makes booking, shooting, editing and distributing video easy for photographers and clients.

After much testing and development, we found the RED and P2 formats fit into our company infrastructure perfectly in terms of our tech capabilities, post production services, equipment resources, NY, LA and Miami locations, and other important resources. Our tech base of 20 full time digital techs are all battle tested and very experienced working on intense studio and location shoots and have photography and film backgrounds. We developed a digital video training program and certified our team during the past year. We then added a specialized editing team and built high-end editing suites to provide important post-production services that are a very big part of supporting digital video shoots and helping photographers deliver meaningful content to their clients.

Also, our software division Industrial Color Software, developed FileSociety, a web-based high-speed file sharing and distribution service designed to serve the digital video industry. We recognized that video shoots generate a massive amount of files and dailies. Video file sizes are large and need to be shared by creative talent and decision makers very quickly. FileSociety is up to 100 times faster than FTP, is secure and lets workgroups collaborate anywhere at very fast speed.

In addition, we are leveraging our tier 3 datacenter in which we have petabytes of LTO tape storage and approx 500 terabytes of live enterprise storage and a redundant gig internet link and an offsite DR facility.

After all the investment and R&D, we worked with top photographers to test many filming conditions and projects. By our launch date, we were in great shape cover our client’s needs throughout the video production pipeline from planning to shoot, edit and delivery. The response has been very strong. We are now concentrating on shoots and editing projects and educating clients on the potential, economics and best practices of adding video to photography shoots. For example we have seminar series on July 14 and 15 entitled, “Photography and the Video Revolution” that will show real world production process and output from RED and P2 Formats.

APE: It looks like the RED is an awesome camera for cinematographers and directors, which is great if you have those skills or the budget for that kind of thing but until I saw one of those “living” images for online use I’ve been kind of skeptical about the use of a camera like this for still photographers. Tell me how you see people using this camera?

Our clients are primarily photographers. They are using the RED in every way possible, including shooting commercials, web content, social media content, interviews, teasers, behind the scenes, b-roll, video fashion stories, in-store videos, outdoor video advertising, music videos, short films, etc. On the print side, they are using video capture in editorial and advertising campaigns.

However, a large part of the photo industry is still thinking in the past that still photography is the only medium worth pursuing. Everything is going video. Print and video are converging. Digital advertising is replacing traditional print so fast right now that entire industries are disappearing and new ones are taking over. Plus, with the RED (and only with the RED) clients can print every frame, so you can produce print work using the RED. What we are seeing now are photographers that have a natural affinity and passion for motion are adapting very quickly. This is very exciting for us, as we love to help photographers translate their visual style to video. Since RED is a RAW format, you can change color as much as you want without effecting the RAW file. The camera software also allows you to create looks and shoot in real-time using a look, just like with still capture software. Hardware and software manufacturers are doing a great job in anticipating how photographers work and are integrating photo style workflows into their products. I think that the film to digital still transformation in the early 2000’s taught everyone a lot of lessons and most people are prepared to embrace this new technology and medium. We see people very open and eager to learn about the equipment, workflow and possibilities with digital video.

The current RED sensor is 13MP (the same as a Canon 5D) so the file is quite respectable for print – as there are many advertising photographers that still shoot with the Canon 5D for campaigns to this day. But to be clear, we don’t recommend leaving your still camera at home. Many clients think that the Red completely replaces the need for still cameras. Today’s still camera backs are at the 22-65MP range and produce amazing still images. Plus still photography is about freedom of movement. So this needs to be taken into account when deciding what to shoot with. The RED is a Cine-style camera and is rather large and heavy especially when fully accessorized. Almost every one of our motion jobs includes both still and video gear on set. The huge savings and opportunity for clients come from being able to capture video content with only a slight incremental cost of hiring a RED video capture team. All the major sunk costs of producing the still shoot like hiring talent, locations, props, sets, styling, travel, lodging, etc. are leveraged by adding video on a still shoot. Financially it’s a no-brainer. For the photographer, video provides a new revenue opportunity. Right now, video is a win for everyone and content is in demand by marketers.

APE: How much expense does using a RedOne add to a shoot?

The day rate ranges from $3,000 to $5,000 for a complete system and tech support. Our full featured package called the “CinePak” includes a full Red system, specialized computer and video equipment, 2 techs, tape backup via our GLOBALvault storage service and a 30-day FileSociety account for high-speed file distribution. We also have high-end sound recording packages and our Panasonic P2 packages called the “VideoPak” as well as color grading and editing, format compression and authoring rates. We also offer discounted still/motion combo packages that reduce overall cost and reduce the number of crews while streamlining communication and deliverables. We can also supply lighting equipment via Fast Locations, our equipment rental company.

APE: What’s the editing process like dealing with all those Gigabytes?

On average there can be anywhere from 100GB to 500GB of RAW data per day, depending on how much you shoot. For sure that’s a lot of data and files to deal with, especially for multi-day shoots. But there are techniques for making it manageable. For pulling stills, our techs work with the AD’s and photographers on set to edit when possible, but usually we will process QuickTime dailies with clip names and time code and send them via FileSociety or on a drive to creative decision makers. Clients select a shot list from the time code, and then we deliver the related RAW files or processed tiffs.

For motion editing, we have full editing services and work with directly with clients starting with a clip list, then make rough cuts, do the color grading, sound, graphics and final edit, or we deliver a drive and the client manages editing separately. Color grading is one of the most exciting parts of the video editing process from a traditional photography point of view. Color grading in video is like image editing in Photoshop for still images. There are powerful tools that let photographers refine the look of video like they would with still images, including primary color, secondary color, color masking and adding realistic film grain effects and other filters. We can work with the photographer directly or photographers can work with the RAW files themselves using free editing software from RED.

APE: How do you store all that information and how do you deliver a final product to the client?

First thing to consider is the active storage on set during the shoot. We have about 16TB of very fast RAID storage built into our shooting systems for primary storage and backup, plus we also backup onto portable drives and usually deliver a terabyte drive to the client. In addition, we back everything up to onsite and offsite tape libraries that are stored in special fireproof safes. Data storage adds up fast, so it is an important consideration. Clients should decide what is worth keeping and storing.

APE: Tell me about a shoot you’ve been involved in recently with the RedOne and how it all went and how the client reacted to the final product?

One of our recent shoots was with fashion photography team of Jenny Gage and Tom Betterton. They wanted to use the RED camera to produce a short film and stills for fashion phenomenon, Tracy Feith. The risqué project was shot on a sunny day in the back streets of LA. The freestyle shoot worked well to enhance both the vulnerability and courage of the subject that reflected the Tracey Feith brand. The client was very happy with the results and produced a 7-minute final edit that is planned to run in stores in addition to print collateral pulled from the RED footage.

Buying a new website?
My new company, APhotoFolio.com builds portfolio websites for photographers.
Have a look (here).

Buying a new website?
My new company, APhotoFolio.com builds portfolio websites for photographers.
Have a look (here).

Buying a new website?
My new company, APhotoFolio.com builds portfolio websites for photographers.
Have a look (here).

Buying a new website?
My new company, APhotoFolio.com builds portfolio websites for photographers.
Have a look (here).

I’d say it’s a case of two jeans companies who are completely out of touch with the american youth who both saw, I Know Where the Summer Goes last summer .

Buying a new website?
My new company, APhotoFolio.com builds portfolio websites for photographers.
Have a look (here).

Buying a new website?
My new company, APhotoFolio.com builds portfolio websites for photographers.
Have a look (here).

Buying a new website?
My new company, APhotoFolio.com builds portfolio websites for photographers.
Have a look (here).

This latest piece of personal work is all shot in one shot on 5×4 transparency. I commissioned a model maker Ridley West to make a giant plate that we could attach to the wall and with the help of Jennie Webster who sourced some amazing balloons this shot was the result.

via David Sykes Photography News.

Buying a new website?
My new company, APhotoFolio.com builds portfolio websites for photographers.
Have a look (here).

Through these bouts of procrastination, I’ve often found stunning photographs, so much so I’ve gotten in the habit of printing faves out and framing them. If a user offers the original resolution for download, don’t let that go to waste. Download, print, frame!

And if you’re wondering about copyright issues (after all, these aren’t my photos), the photos are being used by me for my own, private, noncommercial use. I’m not selling these things and not charging admission to my apartment, so I think I’m in the clear.

You might want to check with Keller on that one.

I don’t see a correction anywhere even after getting completely shelled in the comments. Now acknowledges a ” controversy surrounding the use and reuse of other people’s content on the Internet.” What an idiot x2.

Thanks for the tip Lane.

Buying a new website?
My new company, APhotoFolio.com builds portfolio websites for photographers.
Have a look (here).

“… the point is that anybody who is in this for the long haul has to decide how to respond to change in the zeitgeist. What is it that people now expect that they formerly didn’t want? And how to respond to that desire in a way that doesn’t change your sense of integrity and purpose.”

7. How you live changes your brain.
8. Doubt is better than certainty.
9. On Aging.
10. Tell the truth.

All ten with explanations can be found (here). I found it (here).

Buying a new website?
My new company, APhotoFolio.com builds portfolio websites for photographers.
Have a look (here).

Buying a new website?
My new company, APhotoFolio.com builds portfolio websites for photographers.
Have a look (here).

Buying a new website?
My new company, APhotoFolio.com builds portfolio websites for photographers.
Have a look (here).

Ms. McNally joined The Times as director of photography in June 2004 and was promoted to assistant managing editor in July 2005.

Before joining The Times, Ms. McNally was picture editor of Fortune Magazine from November 1986 until May 2004. Previously, she was picture editor of Time Life’s Magazine Development Group. She began her career as a sales representative for Sygma Photo News in 1977.

Q. Besides superb picture-editing abilities, what are the most important skills to have in your position?
— Lauren McFalls
A. Here’s a list, not necessarily in order. An ability to assess talent in others so you can surround yourself with great people. And an ability to build the team, get the team members excited and let them grow. Gaining the trust of the team is also important. A love and a nose for news — and endless curiosity. The ability to handle extremely stressful situations — the hardest being when you have people in dangerous places. Being flexible and ready to go in any direction at any time in an ever-changing world. Being collaborative. Being willing to take risks and being unafraid of failure. Lastly, the housekeeping of managing a budget.

Q. Nowadays everyone is a photographer it seems and newspapers are encouraging the public to send in their on-the-spot photos for publication. What, then, is the future of photography? Will there be professional photographers in 10 or 20 years? If so, how competitive will the field be and how would you recommend someone get his foot in the door?
— Bruce Wood
A. Mr. Wood: Your question is important and of the moment. As I view the images coming from Iran that are being posted all over, I am reminded and indeed pained by the fact that a skilled visual journalist has not recorded many of these events. This situation in the hands of a truth-seeking photojournalist could be extremely powerful, and not a mere “digital document.”

It seems obvious to me that the presence of a mindful storytelling photojournalist is sorely missed. I am indeed troubled by not knowing the sources of these pictures and their agendas, the disclaimers from the agencies providing them, and the validity of the captions — let alone the addition of “best quality available.”

It brings to mind the amazing work of Gilles Peress from Iran, in 1979-80 and his book “Telex Iran: In the Name of Revolution.” Surely a visual interpreter like Peress and many others would provide pictures that would have more impact and staying power.

Photography is indeed a highly competitive field — now. Photographers come to publications in various ways. Though I don’t recommend sending me a “shoe” in a box, saying you want to get your foot in the door! I hope that wasn’t you.

Know the publication you want to work for. Sounds easy — but I do get e-mails, and mailers that are not appropriate. Then find the right person at that publication for the work that you want to do.

Go to photographic workshops — it is so much easier to see a picture editor who is not facing a daily schedule. When you show a portfolio ask, only if they like the work, who else they could reccommend for you to see. When a picture editor gets a referral from another picture editor from a magazine or another paper about a photographer, it is noted.

Q. What happened to the good old days of photojournalism? You know, first-class airfares, unlimited expense accounts, scotch with a magazine’s picture editor in his office on Friday nights?
— Matthew Naythons
A. Hi Matthew: Yes, I do remember those days — robust ad revenue, 500-page magazines, monthly expense accounts that surpass yearly these days, off-site meetings in Lanai, catered gourmet dinners on closing nights, and yes showing pictures to the editor in a bar! I remember getting 5 figures for pictures that weren’t shot yet — and the competition so stiff the prices would escalate — and the picture editors not even knowing what their budget were. Wow, what a long time ago!

Many things have changed since that time, budgets have been slashed, newspapers and magazines have folded, and staffs have been cut. Along the way something else happened — the birth and rise of digital photography and the wire agencies getting more competitive and hiring really strong photographers. It became easier to cut the photo budget when you no longer had the expense of film and processing, and did you really need to send someone so far, at great expense, when the wires had the fastest transmitting abilities and had accumulated a great new roster of photographers? All that said, we did not have the Web back then — and it is a very visually hungry medium. There are new ways to showcase photography these days, and different, exciting ways to tell stories. I guess we will just have to use our budget for newsgathering and forgo the (admittedly missed) perks.

Buying a new website?
My new company, APhotoFolio.com builds portfolio websites for photographers.
Have a look (here).

Read the rest on  Advertising Age.

Buying a new website?
My new company, APhotoFolio.com builds portfolio websites for photographers.
Have a look (here).

Microsoft have just confirmed they plan on using the crippled Word rendering engine to display HTML emails in Outlook 2010.

This means for the next 5 years your email designs will need tables for layout, have no support for CSS like float and position and no background images. Not to mention the long list of bugs and quirks that break the simplest of layouts.

Outlook 2010 is still in beta and Microsoft have confirmed they want to hear your feedback on this decision. It’s time for the email marketing and design community to rally together and encourage Microsoft to embrace web standards before it’s too late.
What’s the best way to do that? Twitter of course.

Visit fixoutlook.org to see how you can help and what the community is saying right now.

Buying a new website?
My new company, APhotoFolio.com builds portfolio websites for photographers.
Have a look (here).

I have been staring at hi-res scans of my 8×10 work on my Apple 30″ inch LCD display for a number of years now and wondering why the same displays have not yet been made to accommodate large display sizes. Thin museum quality LCDs, LEDs or better yet, OLED displays to display our work in larger sizes, 40 x50, 60×50 and bigger….

Anyone who has had the pleasure of watching a well mastered Blu-ray disc on a good quality 1080P HD screen will come off the experience a better man or woman and wonder why this technology is not being put to good use in the world of photography. I am convinced that there is a large market for high end electronic displays where photographers and other artists can show their work in a way that completely bypasses the “Print”. Personally, I have been very frustrated by the process, one fraught with difficulties, work flow hick ups, expense and many other such issues which crop up when faced with the task of producing large prints for gallery or museum display.

Often the end product is nice enough, or close enough to my creative intentions, but the greatest frustration is that the last step in the making of images is left to a printer (not to me), and to one who may or may not care about my real intentions. The limitations of their technology, skills, experience, and increasingly scarce geographical locations often prevent or limit my creative choices, not to mention the cost of a C-41 printer.

I work very hard to produce an image which pleases me, but I often find myself frustrated by that last step…a final step many photographers struggle with: The exact and brilliant reproduction and display of one’s work. Even-though, the print has served us well for well over a 150 years, I believe it is time to explore and demand that a niche market of high end large flat screen displays be developed for the photography market.

My original idea was to use 16:9 ration LCD TVs but the aspect ratio does not fit the average aspect ratio of many cameras(8×10, 4×5. 6×7 etc…). This led me to believe that there would be a market for high end LCD or OLED flat panel displays for fine art photographers, as well as other artists who might wish to display their work in a format other than regular TV panoramic formats. The ability to buy a high end barebones display, that is one without broadcast tuner or other electronic components needed to display moving images, would open a new medium for display and appreciation of photography as a whole.

Many photographers, unlike myself, did not grow up with film and digital cameras and have become very adept at manipulating and producing digital photographs and other works of art. These growing communities do not seek out the traditional print and to date, contents themselves to viewing their work on PC screens and on the internet. A new product catering to their needs, and to mine would be extremely successful and well received by a new, as well as older generation of photographers and visual artists.

The ability to frame this display with conventional frames, as well as sophisticated and functional color, contrast and multiple viewing interface (contrast, luminosity, back lighting, etc..) would render this product a versatile and more easily accepted new format. For example, the photographer might wish to approximate the look and feel of a C-print which could be achieved, as well as many other results.

A photoshop compatible display, one easily calibrated with common and sophisticated ICC profiles would go a long way to express the photographer’s vision, as well as provide him or her with a versatile, cheaper, more user friendly and better adapted product than the traditional C41 print. This display would be a sharper, more detailed version of their digital original.

I am convinced that this generation of photographers, as well as subsequent ones will demand a product better attuned to their digital abilities and aptitudes, not a product which is becoming increasingly scarce, expensive and monolithic. A product found only in major metropolitan areas, but who’s market share is shrinking and becoming more difficult to purchase and review. Most photographers who print for a gallery, home or institutional display do so long distance or through Fed-ex, a process which is rife with expensive reviews, slow and archaic.

There are many types of displays but personally I think the OLEDs are starting to look increasingly like the display to be. Their contrast aspect ratios are extraordinary, as well as their incredible thinness. Samsung’s latest 40″ OLED TV is an astounding piece of technology and produces a brilliantly sharp and amazingly detailed image, one much closer to what I am used to when I stare at my 8×10 commercial drum scans. Another interesting technology which to some degree is still in its infancy are E-readers(electronic paper). These albeit small displays have a very interesting way to mimic the book page and a visually tactile texture which I personally would like to see incorporated into larger color or black and white electronic display technology.

To conclude, here are other potential uses for Electronic Fine Art Display (EFADs, just made that up):

1-Ability to wirelessly control the content of the display. For, an artist or photographer might upload and change a show over a period of time by adding or removing work over a network.
2-The same principle could apply to a collector who might wish to “subscribe” to an artist’s work and receive a photography subscription. New images would be uploaded based on a specific delivery contract with galleries, musems and collectors.
3-Work would be sold and downloaded in any number of electronic formats and uploaded into the display. Some high end TVs allow the user to transfer their family photos to their screen for viewing but a more high end and flexible system would be easily devised to allow the artist or photographer to fine tune the image on a screen or allow for laptop and PC connectivity.
4-Imagine a show of 40×50s or 50×60s and larger EFADs in a darkened room, gallery or museum setting. Personally I cannot imagine a more impactful way to display my personal work.
5-Re-usable. Price wise these displays might cost more up front than a typical print but large, archival quality frames are extremely costly; making a EFAD competitive and attractive.
6-Matt and glossy screens…and even touch screen technology.
7-…..I am purposely leaving this list short and open sourced as I think it would be best if my fellow photographers and artists could add their own ideas and suggestions. An open source submission will make for far more ideas and suggestions, as well as other concepts than I could possibly come up with. Some of you might well be far more technologically inclined than I am and that knowledge might lead this idea to further developments, as well as serve as a way to push this concept on manufacturers and make this dream a possibility somewhere down the line. Have at it…the discourse will create its own weather and further refine this burgeoning concept.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_display_technology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_light-emitting_diode
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/06/blackandwhite_ebooks/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_paper
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contrast_ratio

Buying a new website?
My new company, APhotoFolio.com builds portfolio websites for photographers.
Have a look (here).

In the digital age, with its overabundance of information, the modern newsweekly is in a particularly poignant position. Designed nearly a century ago to be all things to all people, it Chaplin-esquely tries to straddle thousands of rapidly fragmenting micro-niches, a mainframe in an iTouch world. The audience it was created to serve—middlebrow; curious, but not too curious; engaged, but only to a point—no longer exists. Newsweeklies were intended to be counterprogramming to newspapers, back when we were drowning in newsprint and needed a digest to redact that vast inflow of dead-tree objectivity. Now, in response to accelerating news cycles, the newspapers have effectively become newsweekly-style digests themselves, resorting to muddy “news analysis” now that the actual news has hit us on multiple platforms before we even open our front door in the morning.

Bottom line here is that advertising used to be sold on a “hits” basis, but now that hits are practically worthless (blame the ease at which juvenile humor, celebrities drinking starbucks and vitriol can produce millions of hits) it’s engagement and finding or slashing circulation down to an audience that is passionate about the product you produce. This also means they can start discarding all the junk they put in the magazines that caters to a more general interest crowd. Sounds good to me.

Buying a new website?
My new company, APhotoFolio.com builds portfolio websites for photographers.
Have a look (here).

via- NYTimes.com(here)

Buying a new website?
My new company, APhotoFolio.com builds portfolio websites for photographers.
Have a look (here).

I really think this will do well for them and in general repackaging the content that already exists into easy to use, easy to carry with you applications will work well for all magazines. There is so much great service content that is printed once and then heads for the recycling heap, but if it can be packaged together and purchased when you suddenly need some reliable information from a trusted brand I think most people would pay 99 cents or 2 dollars instead of spending 45 minutes googling for results.

I can already hear editors calling meetings, “we need an iphone app show up with your 5 best ideas.”

Buying a new website?
My new company, APhotoFolio.com builds portfolio websites for photographers.
Have a look (here).

- via Seth’s Blog: Too much free.

Buying a new website?
My new company, APhotoFolio.com builds portfolio websites for photographers.
Have a look (here).

by Jerry Leichter
Anyone who sells his work - as an artist, writer, consultant - has to face the tradeoff between getting paid what the market will bear, and accepting little or no monetary compensation in trade for visibility. This isn’t new to the Internet era. People starting out in any such business rarely have a good feel for what their own effort is worth. A few think too much of themselves; most undervalue themselves and will all too readily buy into this kind of deal.

The tradeoff is complicated. For one thing, like many tradeoffs in business, it’s about current versus future expense or income. These are always hard, because future expenses/incomes are inherently uncertain, while current expenses/income are certain - and sometimes you just have to pay the rent.

If you look at the actual Times article, the clear impression is that all the artists approached have a significant audience and business already, and certainly the ones who are refusing to let their work be used for free appear to be doing quite well. To stand on the outside and tell them how they should run their businesses - with no knowledge of where they actually stand - is incredibly presumptuous. Some of the artists who are refusing to participate are likely making a mistake. Others who are *agreeing* to participate may well be making a mistake, if the publicity they get ends up garnering only requests for more free work, rather than paying contracts.

Frankly, it seems to me that the biggest mistake here was Google’s. I’m reading between the lines here - I don’t know what Google actually said - but they appear to have been insensitive to how these artists see their businesses. It was only after the fact that they appear to have made it clear that they would be happy with existing work - most artists at the level they were approaching probably assumed they, like most customers, wanted something unique done just for them. Rather than casting this as an honor - a kind of on-the-web art show - they let it look like commerce. Well, if it’s commerce - why shouldn’t the artists expect payment? Perception and setting are essential in determining how people view a request.

More (here).

The bottom line is this, you can’t estimate the value of exposure, especially for things that haven’t been tried before. We all do stuff for free in hopes of generating future income but when a billionaire comes knocking sometimes it feels good to tell them to take a hike. I would argue that for your everyday consumer most browsers work just fine and choosing one comes down to, if it was bundled with the computer you bought and possibly how it looks. Covering a browser with artwork probably adds more value than people think.

Buying a new website?
My new company, APhotoFolio.com builds portfolio websites for photographers.
Have a look (here).

Good to see lots of people writing about the event.

Buying a new website?
My new company, APhotoFolio.com builds portfolio websites for photographers.
Have a look (here).

Buying a new website?
My new company, APhotoFolio.com builds portfolio websites for photographers.
Have a look (here).

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).

Buying a new website?
My new company, APhotoFolio.com builds portfolio websites for photographers.
Have a look (here).

The Judges:
Maggie Steber - Photographer
James Nachtwey - Photographer VII
Carol Naggar & Fred Ritchen - Historians-Authors-Analysts
Eugene Richards - Photographer
John Gossage - Curator
Scott Thode - Deputy Picture Editor Fortune Magazine
Gilles Peress - Photographer Magnum
David Griffin - Director of Photography National Geographic Magazine
Martin Parr - Photographer Magnum

Buying a new website?
My new company, APhotoFolio.com builds portfolio websites for photographers.
Have a look (here).

via « Horses Think.

Buying a new website?
My new company, APhotoFolio.com builds portfolio websites for photographers.
Have a look (here).

Buying a new website?
My new company, APhotoFolio.com builds portfolio websites for photographers.
Have a look (here).

Go have a look, there’s some good work on display and it’s amazing to see how David and his raucous group of photographers have built a strong presence for photojournalists and documentary photographers online.

Good luck finalists.

Buying a new website?
My new company, APhotoFolio.com builds portfolio websites for photographers.
Have a look (here).

Buying a new website?
My new company, APhotoFolio.com builds portfolio websites for photographers.
Have a look (here).

APE: Tell me a little bit about yourself and your business?

I completed an MFA in Photography at the San Francisco Art Institute a number of years back. I wanted to put my final project into book form as I thought the sequential presentation worked best and the intimate proximity of a book vs. a large print on the wall seemed to articulate what I wanted to say best. I looked at some online options and ended up with a local vendor. In the end, the books were a hit, but very expensive and the printing was poor at best. I shoot black and white medium format film and anyone who prints digitally can tell you that B&W is tougher than color. A year later I was teaching photography off and on and decided I could make a better book, that felt more like those I was buying from established publishers. So I did.

APE: You’ve probably read online that many photographers are not happy with the quality and consistency of the cheaper print on demand companies?

The big complaints in the digital book world come from ’serious’ photographers. Many of the online options make excellent consumer products, and we often send clients looking for one-off family photo books, or travel books etc. to Blurb, Apple or Lulu. We think all of these companies are perfect for that.

The mistake made by these vendors is that they market to professionals whose demands are greater than the average consumer and in the end more than they can handle.

We think professionals and serious amateur photographers want the following:

Accurate and consistent color- we own our own printers and calibrate hourly. Plus, we’re photographers.
Better built books- stronger bindings, more decoration options such as true foil stamping and dust jackets.
Custom books- no preset formats, page counts and cloth color options.
Control- we need a PDF and that’s it. Most people use InDesign or something similar to get that done. We don’t offer template software, and have learned that people really like that. If they do not have the tools to layout their book, often they know someone who does.
Service - making a book is an expensive, and sometimes confusing process. We answer the phone, we know good editors, and even allow visitors.

APE: How is it possible to maintain high standards for color and printing while keeping the costs low and still make a profit?

Costs aren’t really that low for anyone involved. Our books are more expensive than some in smaller quantities and cheaper than most in larger quantities. We have spent money on a proprietary RIP for our presses and have top end calibration tools - we calibrate 6 or more times per day. More importantly, we are old-school wet lab printers, and my rule is that you cannot play with the presses unless you have worked in a wet lab with both color and silver gelatin prints. Nothing teaches you color better than burning though what little money you have wasting photo paper in the lab. We look at everything that comes off the press. If a job is 10% too magenta, we stop it and contact the client to sort things out. No one else in our industry does this that I know of.

We’re a new company, and marginally profitable with our current levels of efficiency. We think we offer solid pricing and really solid service. Most of the value we add is not ‘digital’ - the foil stamping is done by hand with a 300 degree metal plate, the custom book covers are glued by hand. There is no easy way to make nice books - perhaps this is our advantage. No everyone is as excited as we are about color, glue, and paper cuts

APE: Can you tell me on the printers side what do you do to ensure high quality?

The key thing to know is that all of the digital book makers are using the same basic tools. The printer run down is HP Indigo, Xerox Digital Presses, and Kodak’s Nexpress. All of these are really glorified laser printers with 600 dpi per color channel. What matters is the software you put in front of them, and the materials you put in them.

We use really high quality very smooth uncoated paper, and pretty cool software with lots of color control. As noted above, we look at the prints and are constantly making adjustments on our clients behalf. We make hard proofs - in fact, we offer complimentary proof prints to everyone who asks. When the book is ordered we add of a proof cost and that gets the client a complete printed unbound book for a nominal fee. We print two of them and keep one, because if changes are needed, we can then sit on the phone with the client, look at the proofs at the same time and talk about the image needs. There is no other way to do this.

APE: Can you tell me from the photographers side what do they need to do to ensure the book comes out the way they want?

Most important is to plan their book out and edit until they have a solid project. Then they should ask someone they trust to edit it again. This is the hardest part of making a book. People usually underestimate how long this will take by months, not days.

On the technical side, if you want consistent prints, make consistent files. Your target is 300 dpi, 8 bit, flattened images. Max quality jpegs work fine as do tiffs. There is no point in using 600 dpi file. All that will do is slow you down when processing the data. Once a client has a file with all of the images in the book, they need to be sure that the color profile for each image is the same. If they are from a digital camera, and all sRGB - they can leave them as is. If some are digital, some are scanned, and some are unknown, then convert (not assign) them the Adobe 1998 RGB profile in PhotoShop.

Once a potential client is this far, they should contact us and request some complimentary prints. We’ll take 5-10 images and print them out, then mail them for free.

After the images are prepared and sized as desired, then they should bring them into InDesign, Quark, Aperture or the application of their choice, and start to layout the book. In the end, they’ll make a PDF and send that to use. We’ll send them a helper file for this final and easy step.

APE: It seems like niche photography books can really serve a purpose in the market but can the photographer ever make a profit or is this entirely just a vanity project?

Making a profit is hard, but many of our clients do. I am constantly talking people into cheaper softcover books when they order a more expensive limited edition of hardcover books. The reason is that you inevitably want to give some books away, and this cuts your profits down badly. You also want to offer a product that is at a lower price point for those who cannot afford a $75+ book. If a client is a fine art photographer, then there is nothing better than releasing the book when a gallery show is up. People will buy the book who cannot afford an expensive original print, and people who can afford an original print will buy the book just to have a sampling of the wider body of work. Lastly, we encourage people to make portfolio sets. Perhaps they buy 50 books from us, and print out 25 original prints for an image that is in the book. They should sign and number those prints, then sign and number 25 of the books. Package those sets and sell them at a premium. Perhaps this set sells for $400, and the print cost them $5 , the book $45, and their time to package it al up $15. So they are out of pocket $65-70 for a $400 sale. I see this work everyday.

For the commercial photographers, and galleries, the books are really marketing tools. I’m happy to make a package price with a commercial photographer for a book set where the same contents is bound two ways, perhaps 5 cloth bound hardcover portfolio books and 45 cheaper softcover leave-behinds. The contents is the same, and we only set up for the job once. The savings can be passed on to the client easily.

APE: Now for the real test. If anyone has a book project and they’re willing to test out Edition One email Ben at: info@editiononestudios.com and put APE as the subject of the email. Ben will pick one person out and give them a $300 credit or 25% off. After you’ve printed your book you can report back and tell us all how it went.

Buying a new website?
My new company, APhotoFolio.com builds portfolio websites for photographers.
Have a look (here).