Camera Samurai

Want something to do on July 4th? Come on down to a celebration of photographers’ rights in Silver Spring, MD. Why Silver Spring, you ask? Recently, Chip Py, a local photographer, visited downtown Silver Spring and was told that he could not take pictures there.

Why not? It turns out that downtown Silver Spring has been leased to a private development group, which has decided that it will not allow photography on the open, formerly public property. The lines between public and private are getting blurred very quickly.

All the information is at freeourstreets.org. Come hang out with us, have some camaraderie and take some pictures. It’s not just good practice to get out and photograph what’s going on, but it’s good to do it together as a form of mutual aid and support as we extend our photographic education. And what better day than the Fourth of July to make such a stand of unity and celebration of our rights?

Technorati Tags: July 4th, photographers’ rights, Silver Spring, Chip Py, photographer, freeourstreets.org, education, Fourth of July

To those of you who are regular readers, I offer my apologies for the changing look of the page. I had been trying to make the last theme work but it was a bit cumbersome and wasn’t really what I wanted anyway. This current look is much nicer, I think, and should be around for a bit.

I know this is not the smartest thing to do – to gain a loyal reader base and then change the look of the site – but it is what I felt was necessary.

Please keep coming back. This is most likely the final change for a long time.

I am sometimes asked what the business of photography is like. How does it work? What are the secret tricks to success?

I once interviewed for a position with Lifetouch. They had heard of me from my website and said they were excited to bring me in to talk about how they might benefit from my expertise in youth sports photography, which I had been doing for a few years.

It was clear to me that these people, although part of a successful, nationwide business, knew nothing about photography as an art or how to recruit and retain talented people. I knew they started new photographers at low hourly rates and did not treat them particularly well. They had high turnover and low satisfaction. I knew this from having spoken to other photographers, who had come through the Lifetouch meat grinder.

They didn’t even seem to know much about cameras or whether to switch over to using digital equipment, which was rather shocking. This was only a few years ago. You’d think a company that has to buy a lot of cameras would know something about them.

After about 20 minutes of chatting and talking about business, photography and the geographic area they covered, the money shot came. How did youth sports photography work? What’s the magic key to success in that market? How do you sell such a service?

“It’s simple,” I said. “You get in front of the people who make decisions and make them an offer.” They looked at me really intensely, as if they had never thought about this and were hungering for the next step in the magic equation.

I continued. “Then you do a really good job, smile a lot, say nice things, make sure they are happy and ask them to sign a contract for next year.”

“Okay, I think we get it,” my interviewers said. “It sounds like you really know your stuff. We would like to bring you on board.” It was as if they had never thought about how sales was done and I had spoken some magic incantation that would inject new life into their organization.

They offered me a position in their business development group for $10 per hour. Was that before commission, I asked, figuring there should be more pay for someone who was going to bring in as much money as I could. No, that was it, they said. No commission.

I laughed and told them they could keep their money.

Here’s the thing. Being a photographer is no different than being a butcher, real estate agent or wire drawer. You have to get in front of people, tell them what you can do for them, help them feel good about it and ask them for the sale. It’s that simple.

Technorati Tags: business, photography, secret tricks, success, sales, photographer

Podtech.net violated the copyright of a photograph by Lan Bui for one of their posters used at the Vloggies award show. Lan has since tried to contact them, has sent an invoice for the usage fee and has not heard back. Podtech.net is an online media distributor that should know better than to wantonly violate a copyright. My guess is that the violation was accidental and that they did not intend to deprive anyone of what they are due. Knowing some folks who work for them, I highly doubt this infraction was deliberate.

However, the issue is more than just about dollars and cents. Lan is, without a doubt, owed a good sum for this image. Legally, the Supreme Court has ruled, Lan can collect up to three times the normal usage fee if copyright is violated. Will he get that much? Time will tell. Likely it will depend on a number of things, including whether Lan and Podtech decide to pursue this in court and how long Podtech decides to string this out.

Likely what is happening right now is the attorneys are trying to figure out what to do, spending Podtech’s money to the point that they will have to pay Lan’s usage fee twice – once to Lan and again to the attorneys.

Getting back to the real issue, this type of thing sets precedent for companies and for creative artists. Are we doomed to give our work away for nothing to companies with deep pockets? If we choose to fight such battles, we can easily go broke paying attorneys, while the companies who stole our work get to keep doing these deeds, illegal as they are.

I don’t think this is going to be a huge to-do. If Podtech.net is smart, they will step up and make it right, giving us all renewed faith in the business and the good people who run it. If not, they can certainly stand to lose a lot of users who disagree with the company’s shady dealings.

Lan, we are watching and hope that everything works out in short order and in your favor.

Technorati Tags: Podtech.net, copyright, photograph, Lan Bui, Vloggies, Podtech

Yes, the next Washington, DC photo tour is almost upon us.

Saturday night, June 30^th, we will meet at the World War II Memorial and start shooting there. From there we can get good views of the Washington Monument and then walk to the Korean War Memorial and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, end up at the Lincoln Memorial and then walk out to the Memorial Bridge, where you can get a pretty good view of Rosslyn and see some good headlights, which are great for long exposures.

Sunset is at 8:30 that day, so we should meet then. We will have a little bit of light from the horizon and then will use whatever artificial light there is.

When: Saturday, 30 June 2007 at 8:30 p.m. until approximately 10:30 p.m.
Where: World War II Memorial
Cost: $30
Look for: Carl Weaver (that’s me – the farang in the picture). I will have a camera pack and a tripod. Tall guy. Short hair.

Skills you will practice or learn:

• Nighttime and low-light photography
• Long exposures
• How to set up your camera to get some great shots
• Using your tripod for maximum effectiveness
• White balancing for nighttime photography
• Walking – sorry, I had to include it

I thought about including the Jefferson Memorial but that’s almost a mile away from the Lincoln Memorial. That might be too much walking for one night but let’s see when we get there.

What to bring (as much of this as you can):

• Camera gear
• Tripod
• Bulb or remote control
• Appropriate clothing/shoes/equipment for the weather
• Your creative vision

So who’s coming? Will you be there?

Technorati Tags: Washington, DC, photo tour, World War II Memorial, Washington Monument, Korean War Memorial, Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Lincoln Memorial, Memorial Bridge, Rosslyn, Nighttime, low-light, photography, Long exposure, White balancing, Jefferson Memorial

I was talking to my friend Johanna today about photography and f-stops. I think I was keeping her from her work but she didn’t seem to mind too much, at least for a few minutes. Johanna is a great photographer who is still learning photography theory, as we all are, and said she has a hard time with f-stops.

Truth be told, I think everyone has a hard time with f-stops until they hear the theory for the fiftieth time and do some practice runs, experimenting with the camera settings. I will include an exercise at the bottom of this post, in case you want to play with your camera and experiment a little.

So here’s how f-stops work. The f-stop on your lens is the ratio of the focal length to the aperture. Get it? Good. Okay, seriously – let’s look at it another way.

f-stop = focal length (mm) / aperture (mm)

Remember: the aperture is the actual hole through which light passes, whose size you control by using the f-stop ring.

Okay, that’s cool and all, but what do the f-stop numbers really mean?
You got me there. Maybe I was being too technical. The small number f-stop means you have a big aperture and thus more light coming through. A big f-stop number means a smaller hole and less light coming through.

So f-stop and aperture size have an inverse relationship. Let’s plug in some real numbers and see what we get.

Note that the focal length stays the same. That’s because you have to keep one element constant to perform this calculation and even with zoom lenses you can only shoot at one zoom setting at a time. You can see that as the f-stop number gets bigger, the aperture gets smaller and vice-versa.

Okay – so what does all this mean?
The f-stop refers to how much light you are letting in. This will affect your shutter speed by allowing you to shorten or lengthen exposure time, depending on how much light is getting in. Back in the day we had to calculate this by hand. Really we did it in our heads because we were dealing with fractions of a second and those of us who are lucky do not have fractions of fingers to count on. Now we have fancy computer-controlled cameras that do all the hard work for us. Thank goodness for that!

Other effects of f-stops
The f-stop also controls your depth of field. Depth of field refers to how much stuff is in focus in front of and behind the primary subject you focus on. A small number f-stop allows more to be in focus and a small number f-stop makes less stuff in focus. Look at these examples. The first one was shot at f22 and the second at f5.6.

The picture shot at f22 shows many more fence posts in focus than the f5.6 picture does.

Assignment
Play with your camera! Do something like I did in the above photos. Take photos of a series or group of objects. Focus on the same element each time and change your f-stop so you can get different effects and get a feel for how f-stop affects the depth of field in your pictures. Experiment! Learn! Have fun!

Post your results in the Camera Samurai Flickr Group.

Technorati Tags: photography, f-stop, experiment, ratio, focal length, aperture, inverse relationship, depth of field