Stock Photography

For a year, my stock photography was online at the website, Digital Railroad. For $550/ year, they hosted about 3-4000 of my images. Over the year, I sold only two pictures- the first sale didn't even cover my annual fee, the second was my biggest stock sale ever. Soon after paying my annual fee in September, DRR went bankrupt, taking my money with them...

For now, I'm looking for a new website to host my pictures and take care of sales. I have some images on Alamy, but am looking for something a little different.

Recently, I was contacted by a sports store owner from NY asking if he could use some images I had taken in Acadia National Park for his new store. After some discussion, he mentioned "On many stock photo sites I have come across it looks like I can purchase an image at differnt sizes for a price and then it is mine to use as I like. Is this not the case with your photos? I was hoping to buy the rights to a specific image based on the size of the file. If this is not the case I may have to buy a stock photo elsewhere. It would be too bad as I really love your work."

Here was my response to him:

"I know the stock photo sites you're referring to; I just can't compete with their prices. Their prices are for 'royalty free' images. Basically, you pay a fee and you can do whatever you want with the pictures. I only sell my images as 'rights managed', meaning you can use them for a certain amount of time for rights that are agreed upon at the time of the sale. The big agencies and online sites all offer royalty free (as well as right managed), but the contributing photographers make little to anything on sales. I have a lot of costs to cover for my Acadia pictures (airfare, car rental, hotel, food, as well as my time spent there and ~$15,000 of equipment I bring with me to take the pictures), so I have to charge enough to begin to recoup my costs. I hope you can understand my position."

Here're a couple links that explain it better than I can.
http://www.stockphotography.com/faq/CompareGuide/
http://www.asmp.org/commerce/royaltyfree.php

That was on Monday; I haven't heard back from him, so I'm assuming he's using one of the low cost stock photo sites, and that's OK. I put so much time, energy and expense into my pictures, that I can't justify selling them for a few dollars. I'd rather lose sales than give away exclusive rights for almost nothing.

That brings up another point– the cost of photography. I'll write that in another posting. Stay tuned...

Industrial Annual Report Photography

Wow- it's been a LONG time since I updated this page. It only means one thing... I've been busy, and in this economy, that's a good thing. Since my last posting, I've been to Maine for a week of foliage photography, spent three days in Colorado shooting log cabins for a luxury home builder, shot all the images for a new luxury hotel during a three day shoot, and countless other commercial and sports photo jobs.

One of the best parts of my job is that every day the work is a different. Some days I'm shooting sports, other days I'm at a hospital, and another day might find me at a college. Yesterday I visited a site I'd never been to before. I was working for a design firm in Baltimore, shooting some images to go in an annual report for an international chemical company. The shoot took place at a power plant in northern Indiana. Understandably, security is tight at a place like this, and once inside, it was a cross between being at an industrial wasteland and Homer Simpson's nuclear power plant. It was good to be home later and smell the fresh air and see grass again! I'm still not exactly sure what they do at the plant- water treatment or electricity generation. I felt too dumb to ask! But the photography was good, despite the wind chill being about 10 degrees. After some initial hitches (the tanker truck we were supposed to shoot wasn't even due to come that day, and the control room we were going to shoot in was off limits– we shot in a dingy corner, with one ten inch screen in the dirty wall instead), we got some good shots.

The Rain Bowl

I woke up at 8:00 this morning, and by 8:02 I was down in my basement mopping water off the floor. We've had two straight days of rain and everywhere is flooding, including my basement. My back yard has several inches of standing water on it, with nowhere for it to go. I spent the whole morning bringing stuff up from the basement, and connecting a pump to help clear the water. Unfortunately, I also had a football game to shoot today....

Kickoff was at 1:00 but the rain became heavier at 12:30 and I decided not to shoot the game. The basement was filling with water again. Hoping it would be postponed, I tuned into the radio, only to hear the game in progress. By about 1:30 I had done all I could to stem the flow, so I wrapped the 300mm lens and camera in custom made rain gear (actually in Jewel grocery bags...) and headed out the door. In twenty-three years of shooting sports, I've never shot in such wet conditions. It was tough juggling the camera with an umbrella, with the rain sometimes coming at me sideways. One thing I've learned though, is that adverse conditions often create some of the best pictures. The field was saturated in many parts, with several inches of standing water especially along the sidelines. Tackles were great though, with water spraying out in all directions. I managed to keep the front element of the lens pretty dry, thanks mainly to the six inch deep lens hood. By the last few minutes of the fourth quarter, the rain stopped and I was able to shoot without the umbrella. In the end, Wheaton College beat the fourth ranked team in the nation. It wasn't pretty, but the pictures came out great.

When I returned home, I found my phone line was dead due to the rainstorm, so I had to edit the pictures here, then drive to the public library to upload them to the college for their website.

Now I've got to get back to that basement....

Processing RAW Images

Professional photographers talk about this subject a LOT, at least the ones I know.

Clients often ask why I don't just burn them a CD after a shoot and send it to them? Why do I charge extra for high resolution images? I came up with a web page that explains a little about what I do after a shoot is over. So far, the response has been good- most people didn't know there was so much extra work that goes on after a shoot. In the 'old days' of film, I'd drop off the color neg or transparency (slide) film at the lab, return in a day or two and see how they came out. If the pictures weren't quite right, there wasn't much I could do. Now with digital, we have the opportunity to tweak each image to perfection.

For the last six years, I've been using Canon's proprietary software to process my RAW images unto workable JPGs. Recently, with the encouragement of my friend Adam, who works for Adobe, I've been playing around with the new version of Adobe Lightroom a lot. I really like all the adjustments that can be made. It's powerful software and is especially good at bringing back highlight detail in a picture. it does a lot of things I like, as well as some I don't. I don't need the cataloging element, and it's taking me a long time to figure out how best to use it, but it looks like I may fully make the switch to Lightroom in the near future.

Update

(The London Eye)

Wow, can't believe it's already been 2-1/2 months since my last post. Better catch up a little here. I spent ten days in June and early July out in England, shooting mainly in the south of England and London. Work slowed down a little this summer, giving me some time to catch up on stock photography projects. After a brief family vacation/ stock photo trip to northern Michigan at the beginning of August, I went all out and bought a 400/2.8 lens in anticipation of a busy sports season this Fall. I finally got to use it this weekend for four soccer games. It's a heavy lens (almost 12lbs) so it's going to take some getting used to.



There now- all caught up! I plan on starting a picture blog for the sports shots I do this year. Stay tuned for a link.

Weekend Travels Out East

I drove out to Massachusetts this weekend for a friend's wedding. I left Thursday morning driving through Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York the first day. I'd never been to NY state, one of the last states for me to cross of my "list." I really enjoyed driving through the Catskill Mountains. There wasn't a lot of extra time to stop for photos, but I did shoot some on the way back Saturday and Sunday. It's always frustrating when you visit a place for the first time and the light turns nice, but you don't know where to shoot. That happened yesterday as I drove in eastern NY state on Saturday night. There had been some big storms leaving Massachusetts but as I came around a bend in the road, the sky was all lit up with rich oranges and blues.

I shot a couple frames as I drove (always have the camera ready on a drive!). Unfortunately, I couldn't just pull over and shoot. Oh well.....

Yesterday I headed off the interstate (which I do as often as I can) and drove on Route 417 in western NY. Unbeknownst to me it was Amish country. The sparsely traveled road had plenty of signs warning that I shared the road with horses and buggies. I did come across this young boy traveling ahead of me.
Wish I could've shot more, but I also don't like to intrude on people, especially if they may not like having their picture taken.

Finally, last night as I headed past Toledo Ohio, the sky was doing some interesting things. I kept my eye on it for several minutes to see if a tornado would develop- don't think one ever did, but the clouds were great.
Again, I could only do drive-by shooting as I was on a tollway with few exits.

My Oldest Piece of Equipment Retires

My trusty Manfrotto tripod, bought at PJ's Camera for $129 in January 1989, was retired last week when I received my new Manfrotto 190CXPRO Carbon Fibre tripod. The original tripod had fasteners on the legs that broke regularly. It was also pretty heavy, though that never stopped me from lugging it everywhere from Maine, to England, to Tuscany over the past nineteen years! This new carbon fibre tripod is very light, though my Kaiser ball head adds a couple pounds. Not sure what I'll do with my old tripod- any offers?

DSLR Digital Quality and Medium Format Backs

I had the opportunity last night to attend a free seminar put on by Hasselblad. They were showing off their medium format digital cameras, backs and scanners. I went with no intention of purchasing a camera or digital back any time soon, fully aware of the astronomical prices you have to pay to own one of them.

You know they aim to impress when they put on a free seminar, feed you dinner and have an open bar for all attendees....

The main presentation was an overview of the new H3DII, as well as live model shoot showing what the camera could do. The presentation was a little lacking in finesse (the pre-show video featured a guy reading off a script he held in his hands, as if they threw it together that afternoon), but the camera seems amazing. I don't think there was anyone in the room who wasn't impressed with the sharpness of the close-ups of the model's face.

Click here to see a 100% crop of the model's face. Note all the little hairs on her face, as well as the little spots of makeup. Pretty impressive indeed. No sharpening done to the image; saved at 10 quality. This was taken by me on their 31 megapixel (MP) camera

I bought a pair of used 503CX/CW cameras 3-1/2 years ago along with four top quality Carl Zeiss lenses. I've been interested in shooting digital with it for my fine art and landscape shoots, as well as some commercial applications, but it's just been too expensive. But now I'm tempted to get the 16MP back that fits onto my 503 camera bodies. Not a lot more resolution than my 10MP Canon 1DMk3 (ok, 60% more, but a 21MP 1DsMk3 is $2000 less than the Hasselblad back), but the optics are far better than Canon's. Last night I think I was finally convinced that digital is better than film, in terms of dynamic range (how much detail can be retained in the highlights all the way down to the shadows) and sharpness. Still, a digital print will never be as fun to make as a gelatin silver print made in my darkroom!

Beautiful weather..... and stuck doing invoices

It's a beautiful day here. I shot some products for Prairie Arts this morning; some prototypes of art deco pottery that they just got in. There were only five pieces, and the pictures look deceptively simple, but the setup for a studio shoot always takes at least an hour.

This afternoon, all I did was business stuff- mainly invoices. You'd think it'd be a simple thing, but it's always a real chore- going back to figure out how long I spent on a job, travel times involved, rates for certain types of work, etc. One invoice can take 15-20 minutes! Oh well, they're mostly done now.

Now I need to figure out the best time for me to travel to England this summer. I go every year and shoot stock photos, but it's always hard to be gone for any length of time when clients need you for jobs. It's looking like late June will work out best.

National Geographic Adventure Magazine

It's May and that means that National Geographic Adventure magazine is using my image of Wales (taken last summer at Tintern Abbey) as a full page in their travel feature on "Wales Untamed." See page 36 if you get a copy.

Spring Weather and College Graduations

I'm enjoying my first day off shooting since May 3rd. Not that I'm out enjoying the nice weather today, but catching up processing images from the last few days. Recently I shot the graduation ceremonies at Aurora University (my third year doing theirs) and Wheaton College (my longest lasting 'gig'- since 1985). The weather looked dodgy for the Wheaton graduation on Sunday but the rain held off and some good pictures were taken. After shooting graduation in all kinds of weather, I've realized that pleasant sunny days aren't always the best. Wind brings out a special energy that sunshine doesn't. Grads holding down their caps while the wind whips at their gowns usually bring excitement and smiles to their faces.

A number of the Wheaton students have appeared for the last four in my pictures through their involvement in varsity sports. Kind of sad to see some of them go. Several women's soccer players had gone to the national championships (and won) three out of their four years at Wheaton. Andy Studebaker is headed to the NFL by way of the Philadelphia Eagles, but Kent Raymond, Wheaton's greatest hope for a national championship in men's basketball, and arguably the best player Wheaton's ever had, is coming back for a fifth year. Hopefully it'll mean another trip to the national finals for me again next March!

Catching Up

This week is a slower one for photos, but a busy one for catching up on invoicing, entering receipts, etc. I admit this isn't my favorite part of the job. With the warmer weather, I'd rather be out shooting. However, I found my picture in National Geographic during a trip to the bookstore last night; I'll post a picture tomorrow. Full page no less!

Had two shoots today; one at my chiropractor's office, and a fashion/ style shoot for Naperville Magazine. It can be hard to corral two four year old twins into a tight vertical shot on a golf course, but my experience as a father of four young children came in handy. Apparently they were fighting in the dressing room just before the shoot, but they were great once the camera came out.

Long Days and Full Flash Cards

Last week was even busier than the week before, with four straight days shooting for the Catholic Health Association in Kankakee, Bourbonnais, Joliet and Frankfort, and three days shooting for Provena St Joseph Hospital in Elgin (new hospital tower opening events), as well as two track meets. Today I've been crunching through over 3000 pictures, editing them and processing the RAW images into JPGs.

The CHA shoots were almost all shot under existing light, something I don't normally do. It was necessary, though, to be able to squeeze in as many shots as possible for the client. All in all, we got a number of good shots. I enjoyed working with the many residents and medical staff we shot with. We must have collected over 150 model releases.

On Friday I shot a track meet for Wheaton College, shooting for seven hours. I never thought I'd fill my 12GB flash card, but it happened. I also used most of my two 2GB cards. From 1,076 pictures, I reduced that number down to 467 this morning.

Busy Week

It's been a busy week photographically. On Tuesday I learned that one of my images (see below) had been licensed by McCann-Erickson (a large, worldwide advertising agency) for a national ad campaign. Today I learned that the image of a field I shot in North Yorkshire in 2006 will be used in a series of Poland Spring (bottled water) ads starting this month.

Yesterday I spent the whole day on a hospital shoot in Joliet shooting for a nursing annual report. It was a long (ten hour) day but some of the candid images, shot without supplemental lights, came out great. It's kind of funny to watch the nurses scatter when they see a guy with a camera show up. It's hard to find any that are OK with being in a picture! We did one more shoot this morning, then I processed almost three dozen high resolution images this afternoon. I think it should be a nice recruiting piece for them.

On Sunday afternoon, I cracked the LCD screen on the back of my new camera. I've got some big  full day shoots lined up so I wanted to get it repaired ASAP. I overnighted it to California on Monday, and got it back today (Thursday). As a CPS (Canon Professional Services) member, they did it at no charge. Nice service, and quick. Still, for a $4500 camera, it's nice to know they will replace it for free!

First Posting

Well here it is- the first posting. Please return to this site often to hear what I've been shooting, and see samples of new images. Thanks for visiting.