Archive for July, 2007
Balintore Mermaid in Highland Life magazine
Sat Jul 7th - 11:01pm
One of my night-time photos of the Balintore Mermaid appears in this month's Highland Life magazine, full-page and in colour.
One of the most important things to learn in the photography business is that pushing for a fair payment is not likely to lose you the job. I finally got that into my thick head thanks to the educational efforts of John Harrington.When you first start trying to get published it's scary to push for more money than what's on offer because you think the client will just go elsewhere, but everyone learns sooner or later that this doesn't happen.
I was initially offered £20 for that photo of the mermaid, and £20 for another photo to run alongside it. The reason? "We have no editorial budget." Well you can be sure that all the reporters are getting a proper salary, along with the designers, the guys running the printing press, delivery van drivers, etc. So why do photographers fall outside the budget?
After determining the intended usage of the photo and the distribution of the magazine, I quoted a price of £125 for the full-page picture and £50 for a quarter-page use of the other photo. Those figures were accepted without any haggling or other unpleasantness. Plus I secured a £50 payment for another local photographer whose picture was being used, although that's being invoiced at £75 because the photo was used larger than agreed.
There's nothing wrong with publications trying to get photos for cheap. That's just good sense and you should expect it. But there's also nothing wrong with making sure you get paid what you deserve. This business is going through a tough time because way too many people give away their work just for the buzz of seeing their photo in print with their name alongside it. But long-term that's worth precisely nothing. You can't buy food or pay rent with a photo credit. A few hundred quid in your bank account is much more helpful.
Fin Macrae
Sat Jul 7th - 5:59pm
I'd heard of Fin Macrae before, when he had an exhibit at the Scottish Parliament, but I didn't know he was based in Tain. I've added his web site to the list of local photographers over on the sidebar. Any other local photogs I've overlooked?
Holiday home interiors and exteriors
Thu Jul 5th - 6:21pm
Architectural photography is quickly becoming my favourite work. I still don't really enjoy the process of setting up and taking the photos, but as I get better at it I am starting to find it less of a chore. What I really like, though, is the satisfaction of doing something that I find very difficult and then producing quality photos.
This first pic is a good example of how tastes can differ in this style of photo. The rug wasn't there when I arrived but the client suggested putting it there. When he saw the picture his first reaction was that we should have used a second rug and put something on the table. On the other hand, I'd have preferred to do it without the rug at all. Some people like houses to look "lived in" whereas I prefer the photos to be very stark and empty. Both opinions are equally valid but we've decided to work in my preferred style and I'll be re-shooting this pic without the rug. (Plus I'll close the window this time!)
One of the biggest challenges is avoiding an optical illusion that causes pictures to appear off-angle. In the vertical shot of the kitchen, every vertical is truly vertical but does the picture look slightly clockwise rotated to you?
Sometimes it's impossible to take the photo you want to take. For the exterior pictures of this other house it was essential to show the long garden with several attractive features, but I couldn't find a way to do that without showing something off to one side of the house. Eventually I settled on showing the house next door, but shot from a low angle to cover it with the trees as much as possible. The closer view is a much nicer picture, I think, but the one with the garden had to be done even if it lacked something artistically.
And this is my first HDR shot. High Dynamic Range is a technique that has been around in principle for ages, but its usage is only now becoming common in photography. In brief, you take multiple pictures at different exposures and then merge them together to capture the full range of shadows and highlights, with the added bonus of reducing ISO noise in your shadow areas. This picture was a blend of seven exposures at 1-stop intervals.
HDR isn't always the right choice. I did an HDR shot of the close-up exterior and due to movement it produced a horrible streaking pattern in the clouds and some nasty ghosting around the leaves. I also did an HDR of the other living room and the results were inferior to a single good exposure. But it's a good technique for some pictures and it worked brilliantly for this one.
Here are the seven frames used for the exposure. Obviously these are just the raw frames, once they'd been merged to an HDR that file was then processed and perspective corrected etc.
FlashGels.co.uk
Thu Jul 5th - 5:28pm
I saw over on the Strobist group on Flickr that Jason Lane has set-up a web site selling packs of lighing gels in the UK. The packs are insanely good value (I don't know how it's even worth his while doing them at only a tenner per pack) so if you're looking to get hold of some ready-cut gels for your flash, including velcro strips, then head over to Jason's site and grab yourself a bargain.
