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?