I will often leave many versions of an image up on my studio wall for days or weeks and the ones that get “tired” get taken down. Those that keep speaking, keep surprising, are the ones I select. Really strong photographs can never be owned or fully understood formally, narratively, or intellectually. They resonate outside the edges of the frame, and continue to speak over time.”
— Jocelyn Lee, in an interview with ahorn magazine, via The Great Leap Sideways.
Homeland Security issued a directive that confirmed it is legal to video record or photograph federal buildings.
Police in New Hampshire continued to use their state’s wiretapping laws to arrest people recording them, even though the charges never stick.
A Miami man was told he was guilty of a felony for photographing a whale.
Police in Long Beach, California admitted that they are trained to harass citizens who are not taking photos of “esthetic value.”
A little-known law in Washington D.C. was exposed, which allowed police to arrest people for standing in one area for more than five minutes taking photos.
Pennsylvania cops continued to hold on to the myth that they could lawfully arrest people on wiretapping charges who record them in public.
And many many more on pixiq.com
A great photobook will distill a greater truth out of the photographs inside, a truth that requires careful looking and reading, a truth that might not even be fully true. Redheaded Peckerwood does this masterfully and beautifully.
via Conscientious.
There’s been a ton of best photobook lists this year and I was thinking it would be interesting to see which books are common to most lists. Well, it turns out someone actually went out and did it. EyeCurious has “pulled together 52 lists” of book published in 2011 and the top books are:
1st Place (19 votes)
– Redheaded Peckerwood, Christian Patterson (Mack)2nd Place (14 votes)
– A Criminal Investigation, Yukichi Watabe (Xavier Barral/Le Bal)
– Illuminance, Rinko Kawauchi (Aperture)3rd Place (10 votes)
– Paloma al aire, Ricardo Cases (Photovision)4th Place (9 votes)
– Gomorrah Girl, Valerio Spada (Self-published)5th Place (8 votes)
– A, Gregory Halpern (J&L Books)
to see the complete list visit eyecurious. Also, an interesting comparison with the list of best selling photobooks:
1. Simply Beautiful Photographs (National Geographic)
2. The Great LIFE Photographers (Little, Brown & Co.)
3. The Royal Wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton (LIFE)
4. One Nation: America Remembers September 11, 2001, 10 Years Later (Little, Brown & Co.)
5. Portraits of Camelot: A Thousand Days in the Kennedy White House (Abrams)
Still Images In Great Advertising, is a new column where Suzanne Sease discovers great advertising images and then speaks with the photographers about it.
Today’s sample is from International Agent, Michael Ash and his talent, Kenji Aoki. Sometimes an ad can feature a simple image shot beautifully to grab the attention of the viewer. These ads not only got the attention of the viewer but judges from several award shows:
Suzanne: I have never heard of Wing. I researched them and see they specialize in Hispanic advertising. Pantene is a large brand, how did you all get considered for this ad campaign?
Michael: Wing is one of the top 20 agencies in Hispanic advertising and have been a great client. The Pantene ads were done for a test market but were very well recieved in the award contests.
What I like about this campaign is that it take ordinary items and pushes them. There has been a decrease in creative product advertising so I think because this is clean and creative it got noticed by adsoftheworld.com. Kenji has always pushed the product. What advice can you give for photographers who want to shoot products but need to be better than their competition?
Light, design and simplicity for me are always the key.
What made you sign Kenji Aoki?
I’ve been with him for 4 years and he moved to NY last November. The secret is that he is magic. No one shoots like him. And, I’ve put him in front of all the right people for editorial and advertising plus I think he is amazing.
Note: Content for Still Images In Great Advertising is found. Submissions are not accepted.
APE contributor Suzanne Sease currently works as a consultant for photographers and illustrators around the world. She has been involved in the photography and illustration industry since the mid 80s, after founding the art buying department at The Martin Agency then working for Kaplan-Thaler, Capital One, Best Buy and numerous smaller agencies and companies.
Click to make bigger.
Source: www.ispwp.com
No…anything is game these days. Recently National Geographic ran a series from my Echolilia project and, due to their standards, they wanted to use the raw files, unretouched. We agreed and ran them unretouched, and I don’t think anyone noticed the difference. It’s so easy to get wed to perfection and sometimes, in the end, no one notices.
via Commarts.com.
Just finished reading a fantastic series of posts (6) by QT Luong about his journey from amateur to professional photographer. What makes the series so fascinating is his honesty and his analytical way of looking at how photographers make a living. If you have the time today it’s worth checking out the whole series even if a personal stock photography business is not your cup of tea. I’ve pulled out a few interesting nuggets from each post for you:
Sure, in the late 90s, my mountaineering images had appeared in various specialized magazines, but the thrill back then was more in climbing the routes and getting published than anything else. For instance, when Climbing Magazine published on a double spread my picture of the summit ridge of Mt McKinley (incidentally taken with a P&S Camera, the Yashica T4), it was the memento of being there and creating that image in difficult conditions which brought the most satisfaction. To submit images, you had to label meticulously slides (by writing or printing on the mount), stuff them into slide pages, and send them around, hoping that they wouldn’t get lost or damaged in the process. When your images would come back, weeks, or most often months later, you’d have to refile them carefully in your folders. It’s not something that you wanted to do by yourself on any large scale.
1.) http://terragalleria.com/blog/2011/04/07/ten-years-ago-terragalleria-com/
I began to progressively increase the time I’d spend to develop my photography business, reducing my work hours proportionally to the progress of that business. I first took leave without pay, then officially changed my work status to part-time, with the limitation that I needed to put 50% of the time to keep benefits. My approach was to operate at a constant income level – which actually requires an increase in income, once benefits are factored in: if during a given year I’d make with photography the equivalent of, let say, a month of work, then the next year I’d work one month less. Within five years, my income from photography had exceeded my (hypothetical) full-time income in research. I stayed at SRI one more year, to make sure it wasn’t a fluke. At that point, I didn’t have enough time to work even 50% at SRI, take care of the photography business, and take care of my family, so it was actually with a sense of relief that I resigned from SRI and became a full-time photographer.
Photography has become such a difficult business that I recommend such a path to anybody whose work is flexible enough. I was certainly fortunate that this was possible for me. In fact it was one of the reason I stayed in academia. In hindsight, I must say that this prudent approach probably limited what I was able to achieve, for in the recent years, the photography business has become considerably more difficult. If I had jumped in 100% ten years ago, I would have been able to take advantage of a window of opportunity which has since then disappeared. I could have also used a couple of years on the road before our children were born. However, this is merely hindsight. I wouldn’t have been able to predict that my novel approach to the photography business ( I will elaborate in future posts) would work that well, like I was unable to predict that a start-up company whose name is now synonymous with internet search would do so well. When they approached me in the early 2000s, I turned down their interview offer, as I was already too focused on a future in photography. Maybe I have not arrived to a better place, but so far the journey has been interesting…
2.) http://terragalleria.com/blog/2011/05/20/from-amateur-to-full-time-photographer/
It is often said that a photographer with great work but no promotional plan will make less money than a photographer with average work and great promotion. So if you are trying to make a living in photography, promotion should be a priority.
Be aware of what others have done, study and understand what has worked and what didn’t for them, but don’t automatically try to copy their efforts. Your photography is what it is because you are unique. So should be your promotional efforts.
3.) http://terragalleria.com/blog/2011/06/23/ten-proven-ways-to-promote-your-photography/
Creating beautiful and meaningful photographs is hard enough, but making a living of them is even harder. For most who manage to do it, there is not a single source of income, but rather a wide variety of income streams that hopefully accumulate to form a large river.
4.) http://terragalleria.com/blog/2011/07/22/top-ten-ways-to-make-money-in-photography/
my photography income is almost entirely based on the sales of prints and licenses of images created on self-assignment, through this website. The mode of operation of the business was therefore the following: I visited on my own locations of personal interest to me, created photographs there, published them on terragalleria.com, and waited for visitors to find them.
The internet has transformed how we access and consume information. Potentially anyone with a computer and a connection from around the world can see your images around the clock, opening up for the first time a line of direct communication between artists and art buyers. People do not visit your website because you handed them a business card, but because they somehow found it on the internet. Yet, this seemingly random mechanism can sometimes provide a number of viewers comparable with traditional media, at an extremely low cost. This makes the internet the first affordable medium for pull marketing.
To give some numbers, in the year 2009, terragalleria.com received 5.7 M visits. This was measured using the great Google Analytics, which offers (since 2008) the most accurate site statistics because it automatically disregards numerous visits by the search engine crawlers, unlike for example Webalizer. That year, we sold 267 prints and 148 licenses, which actually generated more revenue than prints. So it took 21,000 visits to sell a print and 38,000 visits to sell a license. True, if we had priced our licenses and prints at a lower point (prints currently start at $350 for the smallest sizes), we would have sold more, but that would have meant more work. We were pleased enough with the balance of revenue and work at our price point, which catered to high-end buyers, but this choice has to be different for each photographer.
5.) http://terragalleria.com/blog/2011/11/02/my-internet-based-photography-business/
Artwork is not a commodity, therefore priced accordingly, and seldom bought as an impulse purchase. On the other hand, search engine users are fickle. In my case, the majority of them stay less than a minute on the site. The majority do not visit any other page than the one they landed on, returning immediately to the search engine page (this is called a “bounce”).
as a photographer, your ultimate goal should be to create superlative photographs, lots of them, that are good enough to make people want to link to you. So it comes down again to great work: the best you can do to improve your SEO is to go out and photograph.
6.) http://terragalleria.com/blog/2011/12/20/seo-thoughts-from-a-top-ranked-photographer/
Happy Tuesday after the holiday. If you want to kill a little time today and have a laugh check out the “I’m an Art Director” xtranormal video:
I know there are lots of funny ones out there, leave your favorite in the comments.
While the digital age has brought a nearly insatiable demand for entertainment news, that hasn’t translated into a bonanza for paparazzi, Woody says. Major media companies are increasingly involved in the celebrity news business, building up their own paparazzi outfits, buying up smaller ones or paying less for independent images.
via CNN.com, thx Jeff.
If you’re taking some time off this week and next you might consider this interesting copyright development that Josh Blumental pointed me to:
The Copyright Office has been asked by Congress to study the obstacles facing small copyright claims disputes, as well as possible alternatives. Specifically, the Office is to undertake a study to: (1) assess the extent to which authors and other copyright owners are effectively prevented from seeking relief from infringements due to constraints in the current system; and (2) furnish specific recommendations, as appropriate, for changes in administrative, regulatory and statutory authority that will improve the adjudication of small copyright claims and thereby enable all copyright owners to more fully realize the promise of exclusive rights enshrined in our Constitution.
The want to know “how copyright owners have handled small copyright claims” and look into obstacles and possible alternatives to the current process. That’s because, not all copyright holders have the resources to bring a federal lawsuit if there is infringement (more here).
There is a Submission Form that closes on January 16, 2012.
Rejection as a whole is not a great reason to run out and self-publish. I mean, think about it: “Everyone else hates it, so why not punish readers with it? To the Resentmentmobile!” But — but! — sometimes, the overall pattern of rejection does indicate value in self-publishing. Getting a lot of those “it’s good, but I can’t do anything with it” rejections tells you that the risk-averse industry isn’t willing to, duh, take a risk. So, you can absorb the risk and self-publish.
via terribleminds.com.
I suppose I have Japan envy. I’m a proud Jersey boy, yes, but sometimes I feel like I was born in the wrong country. I’ve been a huge fan of Haruki Murakami for years, having read most everything he’s written. (I know, everyone else loves Murakami too.) But somehow, I relate to that inexorable mashup of techno-futurism, magical realism, Zen Buddhism, and comical absurdity. It feels like home.
I’m just about to finish “1Q84,” Murakami’s new mega-book, so if you spoil the ending for me in the comment section, I will hunt you down and end you. I’m a stone cold killer, if you didn’t know. This new story might not be as good as “The Wind Up Bird Chronicles” and “The Wild Sheep Chase,” but then again, it might well be. I haven’t decided yet, because I stopped reading towards the very end to write this column.
There’s just something so seductive about the idea that there is far more to our collective human experience than we can know. Other worlds, surreal portals, magical ears, beautiful Japanese women, I guess that’s what makes Manga so damn popular. Perhaps we all have Japan envy. And certainly, in the photography community, there’s no shortage of great work emanating from there, and no lack of foreigners who make the trek across the water.
Is there a point to these ramblings? Or better put, will I ever get to the point? Sure. Right here. “Blackdrop Island” is a new purple book I grabbed on my last visit to photo-eye. I was unfamiliar with the Swedish photographer, Klara Källström, and the publisher, B-B-B Books. I’m a sucker for an umlaut, so since she had two in her name, I thought it was worth taking home. (What, that’s not a good enough reason to do a book review?)
Ms. Källström visited Japan recently, probably Tokyo if I had to guess. She wandered around, at night, shooting photographs with a hell of a lot of flash. And somehow, she managed to capture that aforementioned Japanese Magical Realism Juju so perfectly, just so well, that now I wonder if there’s any point in going at all. Certainly not as a photographer in search of that mystery juice. She got there first.
I don’t know if you’ll all share my absolute love of these photos, but then again, I used to think I was the only one with the hots for Kate Winslet, and I was clearly wrong about that. And given that Murakami is a massive global hero, I’m guessing that there are a lot of others who secretly pine for a weird world of Two Moons and talking Sheep men.
Since I’m not now, and will never be the writer that Murakami is, it’s obviously easier to understand these pictures visually than for me to try to describe why they’re so freaking odd. But I’ll try. A gray tree bent over a small road looks like the whiskers cascading off of a witch’s chin. A policeman emerging from between two flash-blinded tree trunks looks like a guardian for the river Styx. Traffic cones look like robots, building bricks vibrate like Van Gogh brushstrokes, and a submerged fish-head looks like, well… a submerged fish-head. There’s a diptych of a man doing Tai Chi by the sea, and I swear it looks like he’s actually summoning the waves all by himself. Masterful stuff.
Normally I don’t bother writing about the essays in these photo-books, because if we wanted to read, we’d all just buy a Kindle. But this one contains some really well-written poetry by Viktor Johansson, printed in both English and Swedish. (But interestingly, not Japanese.) The poems have that same freaky vibe to them, and it’s fun to read them in Swedish, if for no other reason than to enjoy the weird sounds your mouth makes as you pronounce the words.
Bottom Line: Japanese-style Techno-Magically Awesome
To Purchase Blackdrop Island visit Photo-Eye
Full Disclosure: Books and scans were provided by Photo-Eye in exchange for links back for purchase.
…when people tell you they don’t have the money, they’re lying–they just don’t think it’s worth the money.
Your job is to show them that it is.
via Now This is Cool….
Still Images In Great Advertising, is a new column where Suzanne Sease discovers great advertising images and then speaks with the photographers about it.
The big question in our industry is whether “Print is Dead”. This feature reassures that not only is print not dead but great print is still very much alive. Today’s feature is an ad from the agency Walton Isaacson for Basil Hayden’s Whiskey. I interviewed Chris Lake, the photographer who shot the campaign to get the inside story about how he was chosen and the production of the campaign.
Chris was contacted by the art producer from Walton Isaacson to shoot the campaign for Basil Hayden’s (Jim Beam’s high-end small batch whiskey) for his ability to shoot “not the perfect moment” images. He immediately enlisted Monica Joy Zaffarano www.azaffaranoproduction.com to help find the perfect location, casting of over 25 talent, and to keep all the moving parts of a large production running smoothly. Chris noted, “There is no way to have pulled off this shoot without the talent and coordination of Monica. Shooting an afternoon happy hour and a crowded nighttime bar scene during a regular 10 hour day required some creativity in the production. After a lot of scouting with the AD, we found a bar that would work for both shots. For the nighttime shot, we had to get on the roof to block out huge skylights to make it seem like night. I wanted to create a real atmosphere where the principals and 20+ extras would actually feel like they were out in a bar. Monica found a DJ to set the mood and I hired a film DP to help light the room with HMI’s. I felt that strobes would make it feel too much like a photo shoot and less like a fun night out. With this approach, after they went through wardrobe and hair and makeup, the talent could talk and mingle naturally and hopefully forget they were on a shoot.”
Chris hired a Digital Tech so that he could focus on shooting. The tech was able to apply an approximation of the yellow treatment and bring the images directly into the layout so the clients could get an immediate sense of how the final ad would look. The agency is a great creative agency that realizes that with a good production budget, you can get better results. This campaign required creativity in the planning so that when on set, Chris was able to shoot for the client’s layout but still maintain his loose style and shoot a lot of variations. In the end, the agency and client were very happy with the results. Plus, Chris got great tearsheets for his portfolio.
Note: Content for Still Images In Great Advertising is found. Submissions are not accepted.
Chris Lake is a Chicago based photographer who specializes in capturing authentic storytelling moments. His client list includes Allstate, Chase, Johnson & Johnson, and many others. You can see more of his work at www.chrislakephoto.com. When he’s not making pictures he can be found teaching himself the guitar or playing with his 10 month old son.
APE contributor Suzanne Sease currently works as a consultant for photographers and illustrators around the world. She has been involved in the photography and illustration industry since the mid 80s, after founding the art buying department at The Martin Agency then working for Kaplan-Thaler, Capital One, Best Buy and numerous smaller agencies and companies.
Consumer Reports started its Web site in 1997; by 2001, it had 557,000 subscribers. That number has grown to 3.3 million this year, an increase of nearly 500 percent in 10 years. It has more than six times as many digital subscribers as The Wall Street Journal, the leader among newspapers.
And in August, Consumer Reports started generating more revenue from digital subscriptions than from print — a feat that must make it the envy of the print world struggling to make that transition. Even more amazingly, Consumer Reports has enjoyed success on the Web without losing print subscribers — those have held steady since 2001 at around four million.
via NYTimes.com.
The photo was an unexpected hit that I took from almost 35,000 ft. over Florida, flying from New York City to Palm Beach with—of all things my—iPhone 3GS, and tweeted it out upon landing. I didn’t realize the impact of the photo or the rounds it was making in social media until a few hours later when I looked at my Twitter mentions and all the personal messages I was receiving on Facebook. Next thing I knew, I was being interviewed by media outlets from all over the world, and my photo was on almost every evening news program. I am still in search for that perfect job that many thought would be offered to me after the photo caught fire.
via LightBox.
Photographer and (now) Director Ed McCulloch sent me his new reel website: http://EDdirects.com which I thought looked amazing, so I asked him about the process:
What was the impetus for getting into directing and creating your reel?
Over the last couple of years I’ve seen the needs of agency creatives change. I did not want to be left behind. Last year I was shooting a campaign with Cramer-Krasselt in Austin Texas. On set the creative director for the agency told me that if I had a reel I would’ve been directing the tv spot as well. That’s when I started seriously thinking about film and director’s reel.
How do you go about creating a reel from scratch? Walk us through the process.
It was definitely a lot of work. I knew from the beginning that I wanted to create a reel that was on the same quality level as my photography. I knew it would take time. The learning curve would be steep and keep my head spinning for months.
The hardest decision I had to make was deciding between creating a director’s reel or a director of photography (DP) reel. Did I want to direct or did I want to shoot? Being a photographer my natural instinct was to become a DP. DP’s are responsible for everything composition, camera movements and lighting. They collaborate with the director to make sure his vision comes to life. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that in my photography my biggest enjoyment came from directing the photo shoots; choosing locations, talent, wardrobe and getting the right performances out of the talent which all culminate in the final product. For me photography was always more about the story and the creative aspects, not the technical side.
After that decision was made I started brainstorming ideas and writing the scripts for the spots. That was one of the most important things: the creation of the concepts and the stories I would be telling. I chose brands that people would recognize but not brands so huge that everyone knows exactly what agency or what director shoots them. I do however have a Nike spot on my reel. The decision to use Nike as a brand was made because I was shooting an NBA player who is really sponsored by Nike.
While writing the scripts I searched for specialized crew members that were willing to help me build the reel. I did use some of my photography crew like assistants and stylists but in the end film is so much more collaborative and involved than photography so I knew I would need crew members that were also experienced in film. I definitely encountered plenty of no’s but kept pushing forward. In the end I found a great group of people willing to help me build the reel. We had anywhere from 15-25 crew members on set for each shoot.
After I had scripts and crew I set dates for the first couple of shoots then started producing them. I scouted locations, applied for permits, gathered insurance certificates, scheduled casting calls, chose wardrobe with my stylist, made compositional and lighting decisions with my DP, put together call sheets and shoot schedules etc. That was extremely time consuming and exhausting.
Next was shooting and directing the talent and overall look and feel of each piece. Shoot days were definitely the most fun. Collaborating with actors was a learning process, it’s much different than working with talent in photography. Learning the way actors think and the language they use to communicate takes time to understand. The whole process of collaborating with them was incredibly fulfilling.
After shooting came editing. I could not for the life of me find a good editor willing to help, so my DP and I had to learn it. Editing is an art form in and of itself. Editors have a unique talent for problem solving and story telling. It was incredibly difficult to learn. It takes a completely different creative thought process, it was challenging. We edited all of our pieces on Final Cut Pro 7.
Sound design was another challenge. Collecting high quality sound and laying it in the right places at the right times of the commercial is an art form. I enlisted the help of a sound designer for this part.
Put all of that together and you have a :30 or :60 second spot. Everything currently on my reel was shot this year between February and November.
What are your thoughts on taking your vision from print/digital and applying it to motion?
Yeah that was definitely an important part of the process. Having your own unique style of directing is just as important as it is in photography. I think it’s extremely important to stay consistent throughout your photography portfolio and motion reel but there are so many more variables in film to consider. This one thing caused an immense amount of stress for me. I knew how to create photographs, how do get the look and feel that I needed, how to tell a story with one frame. Initially film blew my mind in this aspect because instead of one frame I now had many many frames to tell my stories. There are so many different processes in producing and directing a commercial that it was initially a challenge to make sure ALL decisions were being made with my vision in mind.
What’s the next step, working with a production company? That seems a bit different than the photography business, so tell us how that works?
After the reel was created the next step was contacting production companies. These companies represent directors. They are the middlemen between the director and the ad agency. They take care of all the estimating much like a photographers agent would do. What differentiates them from photographers agent is they actually produce the commercials which is where their money is made. A director is assigned an executive producer within the company to work with. Production companies are represented by reps that are positioned by territory; east coast, mid west and west coast. These reps travel to ad agencies within their territories and funnel projects to the production companies they represent. Most reps represent multiple production companies, editorial (editors), music and visual effects companies.
I researched these companies and contacted the executive producers to set up the meetings. The process took about six months, they are incredibly hard to get a hold of. I was told they receive thousands of email requests each month. I’ve recently returned from LA where I met with some great production companies. I will be up and running with one of them in January.
It amazes me how some people who call themselves photographers consider their work to be amazing, when their photographs, in fact, aren’t so hot. And at the other extreme, some purely humble folks make astounding photographs without a sense of how good they are. There is little correlation between talent and ego; they are independent qualities.
via Mike Davis Blog.