How Can You Be That Guy

APE looks at what decision making process as an over-riding fundamentals of choosing a shooter. Interesting. And not in the order that you may think.

A Photo Editor - Finding the Right Photographer: "Finding the Right Photographer

There are only 4 things to consider when looking to hire a photographer.

1. Genre
2. Style
3. Location
4. Price

Ok, there’s actually a fifth that’s like a recommendation or an impression we have of you and informs us what it will be like to work with you but I’m leaving that out of this discussion."

Mexico Workshop / Model Shoot

This will be the first time I have gone to Mexico in over 30 years. A traumatic experience there was enough to swear me off for quite a while. However, I have been coaxed down to do a workshop there and we have some wonderful models and a fantastic MUA so it may be part of the beginnings of my new portfolio, maybe a part of a new life free of emotional attachments that go only one way, and a more internally focused effort to produce the portfolio of my life.

Christina is absolutely beautiful and I love Jasmine's fresh ethnic look. I haven't shot Lexi before, but she looks like a cross between little girl and woman... And Jim is bringing a model who is a body builder so we have the opportunity to do some images that push the creative and the emotion.

If you want to join the 'new work portfolio challenge', let me know. I'll key you in.

Design Observer: What Are You Listening To?

An interesting post on the listening habits of designers. In my studio, there is a ton of audio equipment cause I love music. All kinds of music. You will hear Pavarotti and Wynonna and Beethoven and Coltrane. Lots of Coltrane. It makes the day go so smoothly.

Design Observer: writings about design & culture: "Today, the headphone-clad designer locked into his or her own audio bubble is a familiar sight. Graphic designers it seems like music and abhor silence. But is it possible to claim that music contributes more to the creative output of a studio than, say, comfortable chairs and a good coffee machine? There is no shortage of theories about the way music influences behaviour. It began with Pythagoras and his discovery of the music of the spheres, and can be found today in such disparate musicological thinking as Brian Eno’s theories of ambient music, and in the way institutions are using classical music to reduce violent behaviour in public places. Music’s ability to act as a sedative has long been know to medical science, as are the mesmeric effects of music as a means of inducing heightened states of emotion.

For me, I need music pretty much constantly. Having given up studio life in favour of working on my own, I gravitate towards introspective, trance-like music. This can be anything from Morton Feldman to Harold Budd. From late-period Coltrane to the latest backwoods drone rock. From Nordic electronica to exotic soundtracks. My only stipulation is that it has to be music without words: lyrics distract. Other than that, anything goes."

Photographers Eat Themselves...

Then wonder why they aren't taken seriously.

Read the comments for a wonderfully enlightening trip down 'Hate Lane.' Whole thing just makes me shudder. Personal attacks, indiscriminate vitriol, and the lack of compassion toward those who are struggling is just staggering. Just weird.

A Photo Editor - Single Most Annoying Web 2.0 Feature For Photographers: "I think my enthusiasm for email promos and links to work on photographers websites was completely cut in half the day someone emailed me and said “I see you’ve been checking out my book” I actually looked for a portfolio in my office because I didn’t recognize the photographers name, “I just wanted to see if I can show you some more work or shoot an assignment for you.”"

Lighting Essentials Workshops

Add to my blog

APE - Photographers Leading The Way

Heh. I hear all the time about how photographers have nothing to write about. All the time. Pushing back on Blogging. Pushing back on web content. Pushing back on anything other than shooting for a dollar.

Heh.

A Photo Editor - Photographers Leading The Way: "And then on Stephen’s site I discovered that David Allen Harvey is planning a New York to California road trip as a personal project to make a “portrait” of America and he’s invited everyone to help him make it happen. As in, help pay for lunch, gas and finding interesting people to photograph. Genius. You can hang out with David, watch/help him make pictures, learn a thing or two and buy him a turkey sandwich. Then, when it’s all over the people he’s met along the way and all their friends will be standing in line at Amazon to buy the book. Hell, I’d sell the magazine story to the highest bidder, it comes with a built in audience and a blog that gets 100 comments on a slow day."

New Workshops Planned

Going back to Detroit and Lansing in the Fall, so if you are in that area, take a look at the workshops and sign up. Also heading for Philadelphia for a two day set of workshops. I love the history there.

Here is the workshop schedule as it stands now.

Mexico:
(Rocky Point)
April 27 - 28 - 29, 2008

Santa Clara, CA:
May 4, 2008

St. Petersburg / Tampa, FL:
May 17 - 18, 2008

Houston, Texas:
June 7, 2008

College Station, Texas:
June 8, 2008

Chicago
June 14, 2008

Portland, Maine:
June 18, 2008

Halifax, Nova Scotia:
June 22, 2008

Lansing, MI:
October 4, 2008
Detroit, MI:
October 5, 2008

Philadelphia, PA
October 25, 2008
October 26, 2008

If I were a guy, I’d be in love with… — Crystal’s Corner

Oh great, now we wont hear the end of this...

If I were a guy, I’d be in love with… — Crystal’s Corner:
"2. Briana Shaker
Because she’s an amazing model and dancer and incredibly hot."

Someone Recently Asked Me About Art School

I laughed. I gave a few examples, but damn it... I missed this. LOL... Yale students spend tens of thousands for this dreg... LOL... I can't help it. It just makes me laugh... mentally ill people teaching their kids... morons. You just gotta read this....

Aliza Shvarts: Abortion Goo Girl Rants Against the "Patriarchal Heteronormative" @ AMERICAN DIGEST: "It would seem that Lindman has a fascination for putting women into strange situations. All for art, of course. Seems to me though that the parents paying for their kid's education would be interested in seeing Lindman's portfolio. Just so they could understand what their kids were getting into.

Most people seem to have gotten the notion that it is wrong for a student and a teacher to have a straightforward sexual relationship, but what about the case when a teacher is strapping students into S&M equipment for 'art?'"

Seth's Blog: Normal versus Super

Interesting point. Sometimes wonderfully talented people get overlooked because the packaging is not the best, or they don't have a hot studio, or they are new without a deep history. Or sometimes because they have never been allowed to shine... there are lots of reasons. I wonder how far we could go if we looked for the normal shooters / designers who could do a fantastic job without the baggage that goes with the hyped up superstars... ya know.

Seth's Blog: George Clooney is not normal: "Jennifer and George may be extraordinarily good looking movie stars, but you don't get to work with them. By buying into a standard of expectation for what's normal (or great or very good or trustworthy) we shortchange ourselves every single day.

Organizations (bosses and teachers and colleagues and buyers and sellers) that manage to get past the George expectation have a spectacular advantage. They're willing to take great ideas and great attitude and great effort wherever they can find it, regardless of what it looks like."

(Not so) LuckyOliver: Microstock Under Fire

This is an article well worth reading.

Photo Business News & Forum: (Not so) LuckyOliver - Shuttering Operations: "Those who actually have brain-cells functioning realize that the production of quality images - consistently and over the long term - is best left to the professionals. Surely, the Infinite monkey theorem applies to microstock - and that non-starter that is being referred to as mid-stock. Yes, NotSo-LuckyOliver tried to parlay the 'we're not microstock' approach into something.

What did their investors want?"

Robert Wright on "Reproducible" Images

It is always fun to read Roberts musings. They force thought processes and that'll wake you up.

robertwrightphoto.com » Blog Archive » Reproduce-able: "For the past couple of weeks I have been mulling over an idea that I have had for a while, that there is a style of photography that I might label “reproducible”. It has to do with what I see on the newsstands over the past few years, and conversations I have had with editors about the quality of their paper stock. Time and time again I have heard “that won’t reproduce on our paper” with regards to some dark melancholy photograph I have made, or just recently when I wanted to run a story in black and white in the New York Times I was told the same thing, “black and white does not look good on our paper.”

Huh?

This is the “Grey Lady” we are talking about right? But it is not unique to them.

I think some of the best feedback I ever received from an editorial board was after a job I shot for Fortune too many years back to admit to. In a fit of desperation or you might say after exhausting all my ideas of “good” lighting I decided to arbitrarily put lights up in a kind of north-south-east-west fashion. In other words I was not going to let the subject dictate the lighting. It was just going to be “light.”"

Wikipedia Sucks: Citizen Editors Fail to Actually, You Know... Edit

An editor should be without bias when presented with factual information... even if the factual information runs against his or her religious ideas. Alternate viewpoints are the basis of learning. Single viewpoints are the dictum of dictators and fascists... Yeah, fascists. It will be most important for us to be able to use a source like Wikipedia to find all viewpoints... and when one area is distorted, the trust can be lost forever and all that is published is suspect as possibly being an opinion or a distortion or even a lie. That is the way it is... with people and publications.

Wikipedia's zealots: "Upon checking with Peiser, I found he had done no such thing. The Wikipedia page had misunderstood or distorted his comments. I then exercised the right to edit Wikipedia that we all have, corrected the Wikipedia entry, and advised Peiser that I had done so.

Peiser wrote back saying he couldn't see my corrections on the Wikipedia page. Had I neglected to save them after editing them, I wondered. I made the changes again, and this time confirmed that the changes had been saved. But then, in a twinkle, they were gone again! I made other changes. And others. They all disappeared shortly after they were made."

Katie Can Kick It!

Katie Can Kick It!
Originally uploaded by solodogs

John Sartin attended my Tucson workshop. In fact he was the host. Here is one of the shots he did with Katie toward the end of the day. We were 'beating the sun' at this point. Nice work John. Oh, and Katie did this jump more times than I can count. What a great trooper.

ACME Photography Gettin' Down with an Image Appropriator...

Adam handled this pretty well. Hah. Very well indeed. There are several posts, so go back to the original if you want to see how he handled someone taking his image. Cheers Adam!

ACME Photography | Blog Archive » Kineda Apologizes - Copyright & Fair Use Information: "In reading photographers ranting on forums and message boards, I’m realizing that this is a problem that can only be solved by educating fellow bloggers. Two days ago, I choose to blog about this before I contacted anyone. In fact Terry commented on my blog, sent me an email AND left a voicemail after he was notified by Glam Network of my blog post. It’s great that he was motivated to be proactive.

In the past I’ve emailed websites who infringe and they say, “Ah, sorry, We didn’t know.. but we removed it.” (Or blamed it on an “intern”.) If I were to ask for link credit on an old blog post, how much credit would that be after the post is buried in the archives? I shouldn’t have to blog this stuff every time, and it would could get old, however it is interesting to see the power of blog post, and self journalism."

Twitter Power: We'll see more of this as the technology becomes more ubiquitous

Unless of course the gubment comes in to save us from ourselves. Mu daughter cannot have a tape recorder at her school. Why? Well, the bluster on about distraction but the truth is the teachers don't want to be taped being stupid or out of line. I'm just sayin'.

Twitter Saves Man From Egyptian Justice: "Twitter. Don’t leave home without it.

I don’t know if this is as good for Twitter as the Charlie Rose incident was for Apple, but it’s close. UC Berkeley graduate journalism student James Karl Buck was arrested on April 10 without any charges in Egypt for photographing a demonstration.

He used his mobile phone to twitter the message “Arrested” to his 48 followers, who contacted UC Berkeley, the US Embassy and a number of press organizations on his behalf."

Advertisers: Men Are Not Idiots: Well, I'll Be Damned!

There are some products I have stopped using. The ad agencies may think they are all clever and ohhhhh, so creative, dahling... but instead they are fools. Far more foolish than the crap they send out always portraying men as dull, one dimensional bone-heads incapable of doing anything but yardwork and getting lost in the hinterlands. To the advertisers who are still not getting it... take a moment to read this. Or have your secretary do it if the words are too big for you.

Morons.

Advertisers: Men Are Not Idiots - Advertising Age - CMO Strategy: "In 2005, Bob Jeffery, chairman of JWT, said his agency had committed itself to developing 'smart, positive portrayals of the modern man.' Meanwhile, anti-male ads have been criticized by, among others: Marian Salzman, chief marketing officer of Porter Novelli; Mark Tungate, author of 'Branded Male: Marketing to Men'; syndicated columnist Kathleen Parker, whose weekly columns appear in 300 newspapers; TV host Bill Maher; CBS News anchor Charles Osgood; nationally syndicated radio-talk-show host Laura Schlessinger; syndicated columnist Jacey Eckhart; Chicago Tribune columnist Ross Werland; law professor/author and blogger Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit; Christine B. Whelan, author of 'Why Smart Men Marry Smart Women'; and major-market-talk-show hosts Al Rantel, Mike McConnell, Ron Smith and Joe Elliott.

The evidence is clear: 'Man as idiot' isn't going over very well these days."

Modeling Agencies Feeling the Crunch of 'Progress'?

This is a very interesting post: read it if you are a photographer, model or designer.

KIM PEERS WAS HERE (OR THE DEATH OF THE 100K CAMPAIGN BOOKING) | The Imagist: "Now for Fall 2008 modeling agencies globally are facing a crisis as the body of best blue chip campaigns have been paying less and less each year. There is a lot of disillusionment in the air and the general feeling that when it comes to bringing in the bottom line, anything goes, catalog rules and the money job is all. This week I'll be prepping a special report on the issue and will privately speak to a circle of power agents on their views as to why this is happening.

More importantly it feels like the modeling industry -which has developed a habit of playing the same booking strategies season after season- is now facing a moment when it will have to rethink the current 'business model'. Some agencies have junked the entire quest of editorial credibility to peddle themselves along the most mass-market lines possible. Others have gone into a bunker mentality, surrounding themselves with an Old-Guard alignment hoping the proven tactics of yore will win after-all. Crisis can be nerve-wracking but crisis can also trigger creativity and innovation and bold new ways of marketing models. I wonder what the Casablancas and Gerald Maries would have to say about the current landscape?"

APA Panel Discussion on Websites: Interesting

There's more, of course, but I really liked this graph. Emphasis mine. To say I agree is an understatement. But then, I have written about this before.

A Photo Editor - APA Panel Discussion on Websites: "At one point we were talking about Matt Mahon’s website (here) which I’ve mentioned a few times here as something I find very entertaining and proposed a theory to Debbie that creatives might champion a photographer who they find interesting and entertaining at which point she whipped out an email where she asked her art directors what websites they particularly enjoyed to which they replied how much they dislike photographers who think they’re flash designers. “We just want to see photos, you’re photographers for crissakes, not designers.” Theory debunked."

When Is a Fashion Ad Not a Fashion Ad? - New York Times

Really fun article on Juergen Teller and the Marc Jacobs campaigns in the NYT. Take a look.

When Is a Fashion Ad Not a Fashion Ad? - New York Times: "Ms. Beckham, the former Spice Girl whose marriage to the soccer star David Beckham stirred the British press to the point of obsession until the couple moved to America, is not a conventionally beautiful woman, but, to judge by Juergen Teller’s pictures of her for Marc Jacobs’s ads, she is a good sport. Instead of looking like a glamorous celebrity, she has been rendered as an abstraction, a living doll. In the most disquieting image, we see only her bare, high-heeled legs flopping over the side of a shopping bag Mr. Jacobs had specially made to hold her.

“I knew this wasn’t going to be Vogue,” Ms. Beckham said by phone from her home in Los Angeles. “I knew I had to put myself in their hands, which could be quite scary.” She said she had a long discussion with Mr. Jacobs after he first proposed the idea, last September, and a follow-up chat with Mr. Teller, who met Ms. Beckham’s misgivings with a typical mixture of charm and candor. “I told her, ‘You’re the most photographed woman in the world,’ ” Mr. Teller recalled. “ ‘And fashion nowadays is all about product — bags and shoes — and you’re kind of a product yourself, aren’t"

Well... Yeah.

ISSU: Very cool. Think Portfolio: Think Sharing

All you have to do is upload a PDF. Very smart, very cool. Go ahead, click on it.

Tired of missing deadlines! Google to the rescue

Google announces "Custom Time" where you can actually send mail from the past without altering the time/space continuum. Never miss a deadline again... send the email from the past. Missed mom's birthday? No problem, send the email from two days before...even if it is the past. This is most impressive.

Gmail: Google's approach to email

And to see how well they have thought it out. Amazing.

How do I use it?

Just click "Set custom time" from the Compose view. Any email you send to the past appears in the proper chronological order in your recipient's inbox. You can opt for it to show up read or unread by selecting the appropriate option.

Is there a limit to how far back I can send email?

Yes. You'll only be able to send email back until April 1, 2004, the day we launched Gmail. If we were to let you send an email from Gmail before Gmail existed, well, that would be like hanging out with your parents before you were born -- crazy talk.

How does it work?

Gmail utilizes an e-flux capacitor to resolve issues of causality (see Grandfather Paradox).

How come I only get ten?

Our researchers have concluded that allowing each person more than ten pre-dated emails per year would cause people to lose faith in the accuracy of time, thus rendering the feature useless.

Thanks Google. You have saved our butts once again.
Posted on April 1, 2008 ;-)

Photos' Rights: Another Perspective

Excellant Blog at Amazon:

Ryan Brenizer's Amazon Blog: Are you signing your photos' rights away? Permalink: "Let's face it: Most people are more likely to make it through the 600th page of War and Peace than actually read a Terms of Service agreement. It seems like these mountains of legalisms are everywhere you're opening a new program or signing up for a Web site, and who can be bothered when the 'I have read the terms and agree to them' button is right there for the pressing?

Every once in a great while, some intrepid soul will actually read one of these things, and they don't always like what they see. One of the big news items of the week was the launch of Photoshop Express, a Web-based image-editing platform that allows you to make quick, simple edits to images wherever you are. It's a very cool site and has a lot of potential, but its terms of service contains these harrowing passages:

Read the whole thing...

USA Great Depression 2008

I am so amazed that we have let a bunch of toady media people talk us into thinking depression. Good lord people... a depression with bottled water, iPods, fancy cellphones and giant screen TV's is really rather a joke isn't it? Ask yourselves why? What is driving this? Here we have - in the same newspaper - the claim that 5% unemployment spells doom and 5.2% unemployment means happy days.

Same fucking newspaper.

Agenda? You think?

Lou Minatti: UK paper declares: USA Great Depression 2008: "Drudge linked to this. After declaring that the US is in an economic depression, the final paragraph reads,

And the next monthly job numbers, to be released this Friday, are likely to show 50,000 more jobs were lost nationwide in March, and the unemployment rate is up to perhaps 5 per cent.

Yet the UK government is crowing about their 5.2% unemployment rate.

Stephen Timms, Minister of State for Employment said:

'Once again this is a strong set of figures. There have never been more people in work in the UK. Our employment rate of 74.8% continues to be above that of most other countries within the EU."

At Slashdot | Photoshop Express Terms of Use Cause Stir,

Looks like Adobe has done some rethinking.

Slashdot | Photoshop Express Terms of Use Cause Stir, Will Be Revised: "Earlier this week, we discussed Adobe's beta launch of Photoshop Express, a free, online version of the popular image editing software. However, as a number of readers pointed out, the terms of use included language which granted Adobe a wide range of rights to any photos that were made available on the site. Now, after receiving a great deal of feedback from potential users, Adobe has stated their intent to rewrite the terms of use, as Ars Technica reports. David Morgenstern of ZDNet also notes the impending change, and briefly discusses the privacy and ownership concerns involved with content you post online."