Camera Samurai

I have had a number of people contact me about doing shoots, sometimes even comp shoots through special arrangement, and the people fail to show up. To me, that’s bad business. It’s one thing to annoy the photographer, who is like the hired help in terms of the flow of money and desire to serve, but what people don’t seem to understand is that every interaction is a two-way street.

Today, you pay me for a service. What is your business? Might I someday want to pay you for something? If you stand me up, probably not. If you decide you don’t want my services after all and call to cancel, that’s a different story. Even though this transaction did not come to fruition, we have still had a positive, professional interaction.

Maybe I will call for your services. Maybe I will refer a friend your way. The sky’s the limit. All it takes is common courtesy and a simple phone call to cancel an appointment.

I have long told people – employees, employers, students, colleagues, classmates and others – that the biggest key to success is simply showing up. What this does is it gives you an opportunity to do your job.

This works on both ends of the bargain. I show up for our appointment, take your picture and get paid. When you show up, I am impressed by your professionalism in keeping an appointment and recognize you as a person of your word. Because of this, I am happy to tell someone about you and your work, should he need your services.

So to the latest person who promised to come by and did not – for the second time, mind you – and even emailed that she was on the way, I say, “Too bad.” It is hard to think of this as a loss on my end, as the real loss would have come from working with someone so unprofessional.

All the same, if she gets in touch with me and has a reasonable explanation, I would likely set up a third appointment, albeit wedged between two others so as not to possibly squander too much time waiting when she again failed to show.

Those of you in the service field – how do you handle this type of encounter? What do you do to ensure your people with appointments show? What is the effect of having people not show up?

Technorati Tags: photographer, professional, service, key to success, professionalism, appointment, unprofessional

For those of you following the Lan Bui vs. PodTech struggle, you can rest easy tonight with the knowledge that the saga of a humble man seeking the payment he deserved from PodTech’s picture pilfering has finally come to an end.

If you are not familiar with this story, please read this to get a sense of what you are missing. It’s an all-too-common occurrence these days – a company deciding to use someone’s photograph without permission and deciding not to pay until a big stink is made about it. The difference is that this time it’s a popular digital media company doing the stealing, effectively pooping in its own sandbox.

Bui, a professional photographer, had sent them an invoice for $3000 and had a hard time getting a response. After a while the company got in touch and offered to pay him $1000. Trying to negotiate a little, Bui then lowered his offer to $2500 but PodTech said that $1000 was as high as they would go.

U.S. Supreme Court precedent shows that a person is eligible to receive three times his normal rate in cases of copyright infringement. In my experience, $1000 for rights to a photo to be used as advertising on a banner at a conference is not extraordinarily high. That would make Bui’s $3000 invoice completely reasonable and fair.

Bui says that during negotiations, PodTech CEO & Founder John Furrier actually asked him if he needed the money, and that PodTech has accused him of simply trying to make some quick cash.

“It was never about the money,” Bui told me. He says that the issue is one of holding businesses accountable for their actions and showing companies that they cannot run roughshod over people’s rights without repercussion.

In the end, the big question is what the effect will be from PodTech ignoring someone’s copyright of a digital image. For a company on the forefront of digital media distribution and monetization, PodTech does not seem to have a plan for how to treat digital media makers equitably.

A recent Twitter post by Steve Woolf addressed major publishers saying, “just because you are part of enormous media conglomerates does not mean you get it!” The same thing is true of PodTech. Just because it is a leader in the world of digital media does not mean it does good business in that sphere or others.

What makes a company a good one to deal with is the same today as it was 100 years ago. The company that treats people well is the one people will want to work with. Being first out of the gate is good for something but if you can’t manage to treat people well, what value are you adding to society?

Recently, without having agreed to PodTech’s terms, Bui received a check for $1000 from the company. He has decided that the best use of the $1000, instead of lining his own pockets with the money, was to donate it to the Creative Commons organization. Kudos to Lan Bui for finding a way to turn a negative situation into a positive outcome, despite not getting what he was rightfully entitled to.

Technorati Tags: Lan Bui, PodTech, digital media, copyright infringement, John Furrier, Steve Woolf, Creative Commons

On a recent Camera Samurai Photo Tour, I led some folks through a section of Washington, DC to take pictures of monuments. We had a great time experimenting with different setting for various effects. One setting I found particularly fun to play with was the white balance.

As the sun was setting, I had my white balance set to cloudy, as I usually do, and this offered a very nice warm, amber glow, showing the true color of the lamps. I advised the folks on the tour to experiment with their camera settings, including white balance. This provided a great source of entertainment as we all played with different settings and compared results.

Here are a couple of mine. Notice how the amber light gives a warm, inviting glow, compared to the stark coldness of the white, almost bluish light. For the first one I set the white balance to cloudy and for the second one I had it set to incandescent light. Check out the results on these photos I did of the Lincoln Memorial:

Go play with the white balance on your camera to get a sense of the different colors of light and how you can alter the color of whatever you are shooting by simply changing these settings. A simple change like this can greatly affect the mood of a picture.

Post your results to the Camera Samurai Flickr Group!

Technorati Tags: Camera Samurai, Photo Tour, Washington, DC, monuments, white balance, Lincoln Memorial