After my classmates and I received our commercial pilot licenses, we were told that our timing wasn’t good and that we would have to work as cabin attendants temporarily — just until our pilot jobs came open for us.

“Temporarily” became three years. I decided to pursue another course. But what?

Cabin crew days: Yours truly rushes to be front and center among the Singapore Girls after tripping the self-timer on my camera. I took the picture in the upper deck of a B747 circa 1982.

It Started as a Hobby

While serving coffee and tea on airplanes, I traveled extensively — so of course, I bought a camera to document my journeys. I enjoyed my hobby.

This is what gave me the idea to go back to school and study photojournalism. I graduated and landed a job at a fairly large daily newspaper in Southern California.

I had a good run there. Then, 22 years later, I hit another fork in the road.

Working conditions at the paper had become intolerable. How intolerable? I literally walked home after turning in my company-issued car along with all the photo gear in the trunk.

Saying adios or selamat tinggal (Malaysian or Indonesian for goodbye) to something I loved and went to college to study was, needless to say, very difficult.

Happy Memories

Before things went downhill for me (and many other newspaper photographers), I considered it a job I was fortunate to have. Newspaper photography was fun, exciting, and extremely competitive. Positions were highly sought-after.

The perks of the job were innumerable. The experiences I had on a day-to-day basis were priceless.

How many jobs are there where you get paid to photograph and listen live to Luciano Pavarotti during rehearsal in a large theater with only five other people around?

Or to sit on the court at a Lakers game in front of Jack Nicholson?

Or to enter areas closed to the public when there’s some sort of disaster like a wildland fire?

I can list countless other examples from my career — but then it might sound like bragging.

Advice for My Students

I still make my living from photography, as a freelancer. And I teach it part time now, too.

I find it fulfilling to influence how others use this art form. I use the term “influence” because that’s all I can ever hope to do. Motivate, hopefully inspire and guide.

So, what do I tell students who enjoy photography as a hobby, and are considering it as a career?

I tell them first that it is very difficult to find the kind of staff position I had. Those jobs are disappearing.

A staff position is a job where your employer pays you specifically to take pictures. Most of the time, you’re just the button pusher — except in the case of newspapers, where your job is to tell a story in pictures.

When you have a staff position, you can focus on taking pictures and don’t have to worry about finding clients. You collect a regular paycheck and receive benefits. In return, you work the days and hours your employer dictates.

Even if you can find a staff position, they are often not as fulfilling as they used to be. (If they were, I wouldn’t have walked home from mine, for good.) Staff photographers are more overworked, underpaid and underappreciated than ever.

Charting Your Own Path

The alternative to finding a staff position is to launch your own business, or freelance. That world is a tough one, too. It’s even tougher now that digital photography is within the means of everyone who has a computer and some photo-editing software.

So am I saying not to pursue a career in photography? No — but you need to think about how to carve out a career that will make you happy.

Your answer may be to find a good mix of editorial work, weddings and portraits, while never forgetting to shoot for yourself, too. Projects that mean something to you personally (like this one did for me) help keep your passion alive.

If you forget to nourish your passion, you will eventually burn out — spoiling what otherwise might have remained a wonderful hobby.

Unfortunately, that is the current state of copyright law. I would argue that the entire concept of copyright is in peril, with the threats coming from multiple directions.

In the Beginning

Many people don’t realize that our founding fathers cared enough about copyright protections to include them in our Constitution. Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8 gives Congress the power to enact laws

to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.

Copyright allows the creator of intellectual property to control its use by others, and thereby monetize its scarcity. The profits encourage the creator, as well as others, to make more intellectual property.

And because copyrights expire, all intellectual property eventually enters the public domain for the enrichment of America’s cultural heritage. Everybody wins.

It sounds like a pretty solid system to me. But the digital age is threatening to blow it to bits.

Copyright? Screw the Man

The problem starts with ignorance and misconceptions regarding the law and what it’s designed to protect.

Denizens of the Web are quick to associate copyright law and enforcement with Hollywood and the recording industry. They see it as a way for the rich to get richer.

They despise the RIAA for going after children and grandmothers for illegally downloading a few songs from a file-sharing service. The harsh tactics have created a backlash. Stealing IP is a way of sticking it to The Man.

All of the back and forth and bad feelings have somehow led a lot of people to the conclusion that no artist — rich, poor, famous or otherwise — has any right to make a living on their IP.

And that’s for the small percentage who have an opinion on copyright law. Most folks on the Web are simply ignorant of it, or find it too confusing to worry about.

Shades of Gray

Just last month, Sonia Zjawinski of The New York Times, a company dealing almost exclusively in the creation and licensing/sale of IP, wrote in a blog post that downloading and printing pictures from Flickr is a great way to decorate your home.

Her column generated a small avalanche of protest from photographers, and so she followed up her post with another, in which she included quotes from lawyers, said copyright law provided little clarity on the issue, and left us with the conclusion that the law had “lots of gray areas.”

From my perspective, photographers who put pictures on Flickr with copyright notices that reserve all rights to their work have clear intentions. They want you to ask for permission to use their work.

That means you can look, but not touch. If you want “look plus touch,” you can choose one of the many photos on Flickr licensed under Creative Commons.

That seems pretty clear to me.

Unfortunately, Sonia found a lawyer to muddle things up for us, arguing that it is OK to use “all rights reserved” photos to decorate your home as well:

[Stanford law professor] Anthony Falzone pointed to the 1984 Supreme Court decision in Sony Corporation of America v. Universal City Studios, which said that it was legal to use a VCR to record copyrighted content from broadcast television for personal viewing.

“There are a lot of parallels with what’s going on with Flickr,” Mr. Falzone said. “People are posting photographs and know very well that they are going to be viewed by people on a computer, and if someone wants to print a photo out that they see on Flickr to enjoy some other time and in some other place, that seems fairly analogous to what people did with the VCR.”

From that legal angle, if someone decides to download an “All rights reserved” image from Flickr and put it on their PC desktop or print it at home, they should be covered under fair use.

With such “gray areas,” it’s no wonder that copyright controversies extend beyond our living room wall art.

Fair to Me

Companies and individuals ranging from small blogs to major electronic publishers have made a habit of grabbing pictures and graphics from wherever they can to illustrate whatever they want.

Is it illegal or infringing every time? No. But too much of it is.

“Fair use” has become a catch-all defense, but most people who use it have no idea what it means. (Here’s a good overview of fair use.)

Some people think that as long as the use seems “fair” to them, it’s fair use. I often hear people defend using images on their blogs by saying, “I’m not making money doing it.”

Well, that might sound “fair” to you, but that has nothing to do with fair use.

Whether or not you make money by using someone else’s IP, it’s possible you have diminished the creator’s ability to make money from his or her work. In other words, an enforceable infringement.

Enabling Ignorance

I once had a realtor grab a photo off my Web site, use it on his blog and tell me it was OK because he put a ©Will Seberger under it.

From our conversation, I realized that he simply had no idea how the law works. He promptly took down the image without any further argument.

But this is obviously not a battle that can be won on a conversation by conversation basis.

Especially when software like OffiSync is on the market. OffiSync is designed to facilitate interplay between Microsoft Office and the Google cloud. As such, it has a built-in Google Images search box, presumably to help users find and use Google Images in documents, spreadsheets and presentations.

If OffiSync lets you do it, it must be legal, right? Why would they let you do it if you aren’t supposed to?

What to Do?

I’m afraid I don’t have any easy answers for photographers wishing to protect their work.

I could tell you to remove your photographs from sites that are generally accepted (incorrectly or otherwise) to be clearinghouses for free photos.

I could tell you to place a warning on your site (they work so well with cigarettes), watermarks, metadata, .htaccess redirects and right-click blocking. I could tell you to only upload low-resolution versions of your images.

At the end of the day, the best of these solutions are merely duct-tape fixes for a structural problem.

It would be nice to think we could simply pull the plug on our Web servers and make the problem go away. But these days, I need the Web to create visibility for my photography business — and I’m guessing that you do, too.

So where do we go from here?

The timing of news events affects corporations, too. Sometimes dramatically. XM Satellite Radio, a client of mine, had made plans to launch its service with much fanfare — on Sept. 12, 2001. It ended up settling for a subdued announcement on Sept. 25.

The other day, I was working with a client who was promoting a press conference for a worthy (and newsworthy) cause. Unfortunately, there was a metrorail crash that day, so no media came to the client’s event.

As photographers, we know that in capturing the moment, timing is everything. But we sometimes forget that timing can be everything on the business side as well.

Respect the News Cycle

Would you ever send a casual, “how ya doin’?” e-mail to a photo editor in Los Angeles in the hours after Michael Jackson’s death? Not if you wanted it to be read.

If you do editorial work, you must be cognizant of the work patterns driven by the news cycle — even on slow news days.

This means, for example, you should avoid sending non-urgent e-mails to photo editors at daily newspapers when they are on deadline (usually between 4 p.m. and 6 p.m.), and to weekly publications on Tuesday afternoons (when they generally put their issues to bed).

The same principle applies to your corporate clients. Don’t send them e-mails on Saturday afternoon. They’ll get lost in their inboxes, and a lesser portion of them will get read than if you sent them Monday mid-morning.

Prepare for the Unexpected

Another business lesson to learn about timing is that, as photographers, we must prepare for the unexpected.

We must prepare with our cameras, of course — being ready to jump from one assignment to the next to meet our clients’ needs. But we also must prepare with our contracts, for those occasions when events cause our editorial or corporate clients to cancel an assignment.

What if you were a photographer preparing to shoot a VIP reception for hospital donors at the UCLA Medical Center when the event is cancelled because of the crush of mourners and media outside the facility in the days after Michael Jackson’s death?

A cancellation fee should apply — particularly if the client waits till the last minute to tell you. (If the client had let you know earlier, you could have been one of the media hordes covering the Jackson story yourself, right?)

Depending on the circumstances, you always have the discretion to waive your cancellation fee. But you can only do this if it’s in your contract in the first place.

In the pricing section of my Web site, I spell out my standard cancellation fees, which apply to both editorial and corporate assignments. They are:

48-72 hours before: 40% of creative fee
24-48 hours before: 65% of creative fee
less than 24 hours before: 80% of creative fee

As a photographer, you of all people should understand that timing is everything. Don’t forget to apply this principle in your business.

OK, the past several months have certainly been economically harrowing for businesses of all sizes. But the danger in being gripped by fear and uncertainty is that you might not be taking the steps you need to to secure your company’s future.

Fear Itself

One major contributing factor to the depth of our current worldwide recession is perception and how this affects confidence. In the U.K., we saw huge reductions in mortgage interest rates and sales taxes. Both of these steps put more money into people’s pockets, and you’d think this would have boosted the public’s confidence.

But just the opposite appeared to be true — thanks, in no small part, to fear-inducing media coverage of every negative piece of economic data.

How many times have we each seen the Great Depression invoked in news reports at this point? One hundred times? A thousand? More?

One day, you’re going to see the media jump off the “fear” bandwagon and jump on the “recovery” bandwagon. But by then, the smart money will have already invested in the future — and those businesses will be the ones profiting most.

Time to Invest in Marketing

In fact, many leading companies have already redoubled their marketing efforts to take advantage of lower advertising rates and build market share at a time when other businesses sit on the sidelines.

Meanwhile, those companies on the sidelines have seen their revenues shrink with no relief in site. Without marketing, where can that relief come from?

If your company has been holding back on marketing so far, now is the time to review this policy and to look at effective methods to win back business lost through the recession. Now is the time to appear strong, confident and successful — to set yourself apart from the competition.

The Value of Photography

As a photographer, I see the impact that quality images have for successful companies every day. And I see the impact that a lack of quality images has as well.

I’ll give you an example. All too often, I look at the “Our People” section of a company’s Web site and see head shots taken by amateurs with the office camera. Messy backgrounds, pixilated images, out-of-focus images.

I try to put myself in the shoes of a customer looking at one of these sites. I try to imagine how I would perceive that company if I were looking to purchase their services. Would I think of them as professional, financially sound and confident in their future?

I’m afraid not. So why should I do business with them?

Your Confidence Is Showing

Now, what if the executive portraits were of professional quality, with well lit, clean backgrounds and a little touching up in Photoshop to make the executives look at attractive as possible?

It might sound shallow, but we are drawn to attractive people, in business and in life.

In business, the image we present to the world is all-important. This starts with the executive portrait and extends to product photography and all other imagery you use to project your company to the world.

Show that you’re confident about your future, and in time, your customers will be confident, too.

Professor Dufresne was kind enough to share with me the transcript of a 1975 talk Frank gave at Wellesley College, which was subsequently published in the now out-of-print book “Photography Within the Humanities.”

In what was apparently an informal Q&A session with students, Frank fielded a number of inquiries about his professional career and his approach to the art of photography and filmmaking. In light of some of the observations I made about Frank’s work, I thought it would be useful to revisit the topic by hearing from the artist himself.

The Artist’s Words as Minefield

As a good post-modernist, I have been taught to view with a healthy dose of skepticism anything said or written by an artist about his or her work. There are many reasons for this skeptical approach.

First, artists — be they painters, writers, composers, photographers, or filmmakers — often have a vested interest in creating and maintaining a certain persona. Thus, although they might not lie or fabricate (although some do), they may manipulate the truth by exaggerating certain aspects of their life and careers, and omitting others.

Second, artists can be woefully inarticulate about their own art and the motivations that bring it into being — for this we have critics. Third, artists may be unaware — because of their particular psychological, cultural, educational, and family histories — of the way their work resonates with the many individuals who make up their audiences. Finally, an artist may have embraced his or her particular form of self-expression precisely because of an inherent inability to express thoughts and emotions any other way. All in all, reading or listening to what an artist has to say can be like stepping through a minefield — use caution!

“The Americans”—Ancient History

Having said this, many of us in the image-making field love to attend lectures by other image makers, read articles about them, and try to understand their approach to the creative process. What I found particularly revealing about the Frank article is that the body of work for which he is revered among photographers, “The Americans,” was by 1975 ancient history for Frank, who had subsequently turned to filmmaking.

Frank says that when he set out in 1955 to work on “The Americans,” funded by a Guggenheim Fellowship, he was “very ambitious.” Everything was aligned perfectly for the type of book Frank wanted to create: he had studied the work of the great American master Walker Evans (who helped Frank secure the fellowship), he was seeing the country for the first time (as a Swiss-born Jew), and the mood of America had darkened considerably from the heady days following World War II when Frank first arrived in New York City.

Now the Cold War was roiling America’s sense of security, and the first stirrings of the Civil Rights movement were highlighting racial and economic injustices in the so-called land of the free. In fact, Frank was arrested in McGee, Arkansas, and jailed for three days — all for being a suspicious-looking foreigner with a carload of cameras. The name Guggenheim was apparently not familiar to the arresting officer.

From Still to Moving Images

Frank claims to have made the switch from still to moving images because he was afraid that being a successful still photographer would necessarily mean losing his intuitive approach by attempting to analyze and perfect his craft. Frank says that being a filmmaker, on the other hand, allowed him to experiment and try new things:

I’ve never been successful at making films, really. I’ve never been able to do it right. And there’s something terrific about that. There’s something good about being a failure—it keeps you going.

I found this statement intriguing, because in my experience most people tend to avoid endeavors where failure is the expected or desired outcome.

According to Frank, another appeal of filmmaking for Frank is the opportunity to interact with people, to communicate with his subjects, and not to be “just an observer.” In other words, the filmmaker is almost the opposite of the fly-on-the-wall snapshooter, because most filmmaking is usually a group effort that involves planning, direction, and cooperation.

Also, says Frank, filmmaking is a complex process that involves “thinking in long durations, and keeping up a kind of sequence,” which, again, is different from the type of candid street photography found in “The Americans.”

Life Magazine

In the 1950s, Henry Luce’s “Life” dominated the American market for documentary photography, and Frank had a curious relationship with the magazine. At first he was eager to have his pictures published in the magazine, but after several rejections, Frank says he “developed a tremendous contempt for them, which helped me.” Asked how such contempt might have helped him, Frank says he wanted to follow his own intuition and not “make a ‘Life’ story….Those goddamned stories with a beginning and an end.”

What are we to make of Frank’s intense antipathy toward this seeming bastion of American photojournalism? Certainly rejection played a part, but so did Frank’s opinion that to make good art, “you have to be enraged.” It is interesting to compare Frank’s veneration for the work of Evans or of British photographer Bill Brandt with his outright contempt for the work, since the mid 1950s anyway, of Mr. Decisive Moment himself, Henri Cartier-Bresson.

What was missing from Cartier-Bresson’s work? In Frank’s opinion, it lacked a definitive point of view:

He traveled all over the goddamned world, and you never felt that he was moved by something that was happening other than the beauty of it, or just the composition. That’s certainly why “Life” gave him big assignments. They knew he wouldn’t come up with something that wasn’t acceptable.

Here Frank seems to be portraying himself as a somewhat dangerous outsider who would likely shock the staid sensibilities of “Life” readers, not to mention its editors. Not surprising, when you consider that Frank had recently finished making a documentary about the 1972 Rolling Stones American tour called “Cocksucker Blues,” a film Frank got to show but once a year, thanks to the Stones and their lawyers, who were shocked, shocked to find that there was, in fact, a little (ha!) sex and drugs mixed in with the rock and roll. Did a little of the Jagger-Richards mystique rub off on the filmmaker?

I’ll Say Something Nasty

Frank’s fellow photographers don’t fare well in his appraisals of their work. In addition to Cartier-Bresson, he lambasts such 20-century icons as Ralph Gibson, Elliott Erwitt, Gjon Mili, and Irving Penn — for treating photography as “a game with aesthetics or taste, or artistry…or jokes. Name somebody and I’ll say something nasty about them.”

Frank condemns any images he finds boring, including some of his own, and reserves praise only for those photographers who he feels are “obsessed,” such as Diane Arbus and W. Eugene Smith (I assume that is the Smith referred to in the article).

Frank saves his harshest criticisms for universities and those who teach photography and filmmaking — even though at the time of his talk, Frank was teaching filmmaking for two months at the University of California at Davis. He says:

If you’re an artist, I think that the university world is not good. I think the real world is better. You have to be against the system in some way. How do you do that? That’s the question. You’re not going to do it here, or in any school. That much I know. Because this is where the system is taught, and you’re a part of it, and I’m a part of it. And I don’t want to be a part of it. But I’m here. I’m being paid. And that’s my thing; that’s the whole thing that I have to offer — that I wasn’t part of it.

Like his conflicted relationship with “Life” magazine, Frank evidently had a similar ambivalence about his work — no matter how short-lived — as a professor.

The Stranger and The Detective

One questioner makes the observation that Frank seems to express “an element of the stranger” in both his films and his photographs. Frank responds by agreeing with the observation and saying that this comes from “years of photography, where you walk about, you observe, and you walk away, and you begin to be a pretty good detective.”

The detective metaphor is provocative, because we associate detectives with crimes and solutions — and there is also a strong association with the film-noir personae of the hard-boiled gumshoe, one step ahead of the criminals and the cops, with a dame on his arm and a fedora tipped rakishly above the turned-up collar of his trench coat.

What “crimes” did Frank witness with his camera, and what “solutions” to the mysteries of life did he provide with his images? I’ll let Frank have the last word: “You know, one of the worst things an artist can do is talk about his work.”

Listen, even if you have what someone needs, no one’s going to go home with you as soon as you say, “Hello, my name is Eugene.” They don’t know you. Ladies — and clients — want to be romanced.

Getting the Stiff Arm

A photographer buddy wrote me the other day that he was depressed over his lack of business. Being the good friend that I am, I did what all good friends do: I pried into his situation.

It turns out my friend had tried to strike up a conversation with some ad designers at the coffee shop that day. He had gotten, in his words, “the major stiff arm.”

Several of my friends are, like me, displaced photojournalists who are reinventing their careers. Some have never had to deal with generating their own business before. That’s why they sometimes act like nerds in a singles bar.

Of course my depressed friend got “the major stiff arm.” What else should he have expected? Did he think those art directors went to the coffee shop thinking, “Let’s go down to the coffee shop and hire a new photographer today”? Please.

Singles Bar Lessons

When I was younger, I used to hang out at a singles bar; it was fun. The booze flowed and the rock-and-roll music played seven nights a week. The place was loaded with women, too.

In the beginning, I was a stranger at the bar — so I ended up going home by myself at night. But just because I was a stranger, that doesn’t mean that the women in the bar didn’t notice me. They did, but they were cautious.

It took time (and some lonely nights), but ultimately I became a known commodity at my singles bar. I played pool, danced, had interesting conversations and bought drinks from time to time.

And then one day it was as if I had been sprinkled with magic dust. I had the ability to talk to every girl in the place. I was comfortable with them, and they were comfortable with me.

My photographer friend at the coffee shop reminded me of when I was the new guy at the bar. The art directors gave him the stiff arm because he was a stranger to them.

You and I both know that your talent is the reason you should be hired to shoot a project. But the fact is, people want to work with people they know and like. It makes things flow better. And it’s fun to work with your friends.

Stop Chasing

I succeeded in my singles bar days when I stopped chasing and started having fun. And that’s precisely what you should do as you attempt to build your photography clientele. Stop chasing.

Yes, go to the coffee shops and social gathering places. But be cool and casual. Don’t focus on your agenda; focus on being interesting as you meet the people who will eventually hire you.

Hand them a card, talk to them, be genuinely friendly. Let them lead the conversation, and don’t talk about the day you photographed Keith Richards unless it’s a natural part of the conversation.

When you take the prospect’s card, ask if you can call in a couple of days. Say you have a new portfolio that you’d like to share. Chances are, the prospect will agree to the call.

Of course, if you go out to the parking lot and immediately call the person on your cell phone, you’re back to being the nerd. So wait a couple of days like you said you would. If the prospect enjoyed the conversation, he or she will be glad to hear from you. A meeting a week or so later will reinforce everything, and by this time the contact will have probably checked out your Web site.

Now’s the time to share your accomplishments and win the client’s business.

Along with zillions of megapixels, fourth-generation Photoshop, and cameras that can sometimes make hobbyists look like seasoned pros, the digital age has brought us the ability to finish jobs faster.

It has also led to impatient clients with a “need for speed” when hiring out photography assignments.

Faster vs. Better

But is faster always better?

Sure, the car is better than the horse and buggy. But is fast food better than “slow” food?

Whereas once photographers shot on film, took the film to the lab, waited for the film to be processed, and only then revealed the finished product to the client, we can now simply press the shutter release and have an image ready in seconds. Shooting tethered has taken this to an extreme — enabling us to connect a computer to the camera and see our images appear on screen at almost the moment we shoot them.

No doubt, this is technological progress. And it gives us the capacity to increase our turnaround speed dramatically on assignments.

But just because you can do something, that doesn’t always mean you should.

Patience Rewarded

In the days of film, we had the ability to proof on Polaroid film as a compositional and exposure measure. We could take a clip test from film stock that would again allow us to ensure all was well and then “push or pull” processing times, allowing us to compensate for exposure if required (within reason). We could affect so much in the print production from slide or negative film stock — and that’s not mentioning the necessity and potential in marrying the right film stock to the project in the first place.

Digital photography allows the photographer an even greater degree of control. And unlike with film, all the tools to create a polished finished product are in the photographer’s hands, if he or she takes the time to use them.

The problem is often the client’s expectation — and increasingly, demand — for speed.

If you are a photography client, understand that you are only short-changing yourself by rushing the process. By allowing the photographer adequate time for post-production, you will receive considerably better images than if you insist on downloading them onto your computer immediately after the shoot.

One way I’ve found to achieve this is through the use of colored gels.  In the days of film, photographers had to think about the color temperatures of lights and how they affected an image.  But in the digital era, photographers often forget about this. It’s too bad, because the creative use of color can really paint a scene.

Technical Purple

Scientific American Magazine once hired me through Black Star to produce a photo of a flying robot that was being developed by researchers at Vanderbilt University. The lab was not very exciting — just lots of shiny, flat surfaces.

How to communicate the excitement of the researchers’ innovation?

I took the standard photos of the researchers working and looking over the mockup of the robot, which looked like a dragonfly. Then, I decided to pull out the stops and get creative with the lighting. I got out my colored gels.

I asked the guys in the lab their opinions on what color would be best. One of them said something funny that has come to mind every time I’ve worked with gels since: “Use the purple; it’s a technical color.”

It sounded good to me, so I lit the table with a strobe gelled with purple. I then hit the dragonfly with a grid spot daylight-balanced strobe. The resulting shot (below) was a featured image in the magazine.

Country Blues

On another assignment, I was hired by Country Weekly to photograph an artist, Amy Dalley, depicting a song she had written. The song was about a woman catching her husband cheating on her.

We posed Amy at the end of a bed and positioned a male model in the background.  I wanted to light the scene dramatically, so I set a strobe on the floor and gelled it with two full plus blue color cinegels. I then set my camera color balance to tungsten and lit the subject with a 20 degree grid spot gelled with a full CTO gel plus a 1/4 CTO gel to add warmth to the light.

I underexposed the blue-lit room by two stops to give a cold, moody feel to the image. We positioned the model so that the light gelled blue hit him from a low angle. Using two full plus blue gels and setting the white balance to tungsten gave a net effect of using three blue filters on the lights.

The effect (below) was dramatic — far exceeding the photo editor’s expectations for the shoot.

If you know and understand color, you can use colored gels to greatly enhance your images. Do not think of light as a custom white balance solution; think of it as a way of adding depth to your images.

Our pictures make people think — and react. An image from the battlefield might stir a reaction that culminates in the end of a war. An image of pretty people on a beach might culminate in a consumer buying a new pair of sunglasses.

While you might think of these two examples as polar opposites, they are equally true. And because they are true, billions of dollars are spent every year to support the photographic industry.

I believe this support obligates us to do more than take pictures. It obligates us to give back to the communities we serve.

A Drop in a Rainstorm

That’s right — to give back. Financially.

Yes, I can hear it now: “Hey, I’m just one drop in a rainstorm. I can’t make a difference.”

The rainstorm can’t begin until that first drop falls. The first drop makes you look up and say, “Hmmm, it might rain.” The next few drops make you think it’s sprinkling. And the next thing you know, you are soaking wet and heading for cover.

Here’s another excuse: “I’ll give when my business really takes off.”

The truth is, we spend what we make. If we start to budget our time and talent right now, we will be powerhouses when our “business really takes off” — and think how many people you can help in the process.

And you know what else? Giving back can actually grow your business, by bringing you new clients who want to give back, too.

Working Hard to Save Others

Several months ago, I started a campaign called “Working Hard to Save Others.” This is my own project, and I tell my clients about it in my marketing materials and give them updates from time to time.

What I’m doing is donating 25 percent of my licensing fees for 2009 to St. Mary’s Food Bank here in Arizona.

Why the food bank? It boils down to trust. I don’t want to invest in any more golden parachutes. And by donating to a food bank, I can be assured that the right people are being helped. In the world’s richest country, no one should go hungry.

How does it work? It’s pretty easy. I get paid, and then I go shopping for the foods that the food bank needs most. And during the current recession, the food bank needs help more than ever.

Critics might argue that I’m trying to drum up business by promoting this campaign to prospective clients. I am. And I’m donating a portion of that income to those with no income.

In the distance, the clouds are building. Water vapor rises, condenses and soon the crops grow, and everyone benefits. The rainstorm can’t begin until the first raindrop falls.

Your pictures have power. Be that drop.

This is true whether you’re traveling near or far from home.

I have a good friend who works as a lawyer in New York City, and he sends me lots of photos from his cell phone. As dismal as mobile phone photos are in quality, he has a great eye for the little oddities that make life interesting — old billboards, funny signs, snippets of daily life and even the occasional incredible sunset.

I hate to think of him careening through the streets of the Bronx with one eye on the road and the other on his cell phone screen, but it’s produced some fascinating pictures.

A Camera in the Passenger Seat

I shot the photo below in Rhinebeck, New York, while driving through a pretty neighborhood, admiring the fine older homes. I spotted the bicycle/flower planter in front of a small inn and just stopped the car in the middle of the block to shoot it; fortunately it was a slow street and no one was behind me.

Fortunately too, I had a good camera on the seat next to me and the right zoom lens all waiting to go.

John Steinbeck’s book Travels with Charley, one of my all-time favorite reads, documents several months that Steinbeck spent wandering the back roads of America.

Steinbeck avoided interstates and major named routes and instead traveled the “blue highways,” the roads that crisscrossed America before the major routes were built. While he had a general idea of where he was headed, he more or less made up the trip from day to day.

Photographically, that is my favorite way to see a place. I like to just throw a cooler of food in the trunk, ignore the maps as much as possible, go where the road takes me — and expect the unexpected.

Driving without a Map

Before I took the photo above, I’d never been to Pennsylvania’s Amish country. Driving home after a trip to Philadelphia, my girlfriend and I decided to explore the Amish farms on the way back to New England. Most of the roads in that area didn’t even show up on the maps, so we just drove until we hit a dead end or intersected another road.

We ended up spending an entire day driving past the most beautiful farms I’d ever seen, buying fresh produce from farm stands and just relishing a landscape without commercialism. The area is so photogenic that I was finding great photos in all directions; I shot hundreds of pictures in one day.

We never looked at a map until the light began to fade and we started looking for the highway north.

So engage your wanderlust with your camera in the passenger seat this summer — no matter how far your travels take you.

But focusing on a hook can backfire, too — if it doesn’t help to get the larger message across.

As photographers, we all want our images to have a great visual hook. But if that hook is not in service to our story or message, it doesn’t help our audience.

Too many wire-service photographers substitute visual pyrotechnics for visual storytelling. The result is that the audience must rely entirely on a story’s writer to understand the context for the photographer’s image.

Extreme close-ups can have an impact on viewers — but often do little to advance a story. Relating the subject to its surroundings can provide context, but without impact, the image will never find an audience.

The Environmental Portrait

A priest at Blessed Trinity Catholic High School in Roswell, Ga., talks with students during chapel.

An environmental portrait is a good example of a photo that can combine impact and context. The subject is shown in his or her environment, and the surroundings provide information about the subject. A standard headshot shows what someone looks like, but an environmental portrait can speak volumes about a person.

I grew up watching missionaries give slideshows in churches. Most of these slideshows were comprised of tight headshots without context. A friend of mine called these images “People Who Need the Lord” photos; they showed what the individuals looked like, but told us nothing about who they really were.

Today, I often advise missionary groups on photographing their mission trips. I tell them that their photos need to answer the questions of the audience back home. What does the country look like? How do the people there live? What do they eat?

I tell them to show the mother in the kitchen making a meal, the man at his job, the children at play.

When we meet someone new, how do we introduce ourselves? Typically, after we exchange names, we ask the other person what they do for a living, or we ask about their family. It’s the same way with our photos; think of them as an introduction to the subject.

David Parker graduated from Georgia Tech this spring with a degree in architecture.

Telling Stories without Words

To make sure you are adding the proper context to your photos, you should start by having a firm understanding of the purpose of the assignment. Then you can determine the mood and subject of the image.

Once you’ve identified your subject, you must decide what to include or exclude around it. What do you want in the background, and why? Ask yourself, “Am I making an image that is just graphically strong, or is the background adding to the image’s meaning?”

The timing of the photo is also critical to context. Should you press the shutter when the subject is interacting with another person? Should you shoot during a light-hearted or serious moment? What expressions or body language are most communicative?

True masters of the craft also use light and composition to make sense of all the elements in an image, and to show how things in the frame relate to one another.

As photographers, we are visual people. We are drawn to powerful images. But never forget that we can have the greatest impact when we are able to tell a story without speaking a word.

A Witness to Conflict

Thirty years ago, it would have been unimaginable that conflicts like these would not be photographed. Now it’s the rule rather than the exception. Governments worldwide are successfully blocking any professional conflict coverage that they believe could cast a negative light on their regimes.

This didn’t start with the Iranian protests. The U.S. is guilty, too. During the first and second Iraq wars, our government initiated a partial blockade of imagery, controlling photographers’ movements by forcing them to be pooled (first Iraq war) or embedded (second Iraq war). It has been quite successful in preventing the American public from seeing the true human impact of these wars.

Israel was even more successful in completely shielding its theater of operations from the media. Sri Lanka has followed suit, and now Iran is doing the same.

Lamenting the news media’s silence on the war in Sri Lanka, legendary war photographer Don McCullin, 74, recently wrote in the Times (U.K.): “There is always a need to be a witness to conflict … We cannot afford to be shielded from what people do to each other in war.”

How We Got Here

So, how did we get to this place? We can’t blame it all on government censorship; the media have been accomplices in the decline of war photography. Here are five ways the media have contributed to the problem:

1. Lack of financing. Major media outlets either cannot afford to send photographers to these parts of the world, or they will not pay freelancers enough to risk their lives. The dwindling number of media outlets doesn’t help matters, as photographers can’t even count on volume sales to cover their costs. Trust me, if a news outlet offered $100,000 for any valid images coming out of Iran, Gaza or Sri Lanka, there would have be hundreds of photographers. But why risk your life for $200? Why bother getting arrested or wounded for your images to end up as a few frames in a bland daily wire feed?

2. “New” journalism. “New” journalists much prefer to set up Google alerts, check Twitter and log into Facebook than to lift their asses from their chairs and report on a story themselves. Twitter’s success is at least partly a result of how broadly the media are using it. You have a greater chance to be published these days if you have a Twitter account than if you send a video to CNN iReport. Why should these journalists bother leaving the comfort of their cubicles if everything is delivered in their desktop?

3. The disappearance of photo reporters. As a corollary to No. 2, gone are the days of Capa, McCullin, Adams, and many other photojournalists who simply could not live if an event were not covered properly. Today’s international photojournalists are too busy courting the NGOs and foundations for paying gigs.

4. The death of photo agencies. The Sygmas, SIPAs and Gammas of the not-so-old days would do whatever it took to support a photographer willing to go and cover an event. Since you can now make a hundred times more money with a picture of Lindsay Lohan leaving her hotel a few blocks away, why bother? (A notable exception is Polaris Images.)

5. The decline of news magazines. Great news magazines have vanished in the United States, and have not been replaced by an online equivalent. This is a huge void. And the reason is not because there is no audience. It’s because there are no great editors in chief, no great news gatherers.

It’s appalling to see, at least in the United States, that just because foreign journalists are being kicked out of Iran, the professional coverage stops. I fear things will only get worst.

I have a blog on the Web site of my commercial business, in which we report on topics of interest in my industry. Do I get the same “fair use” and “freedom of the press” protections in using photography on my blog as a newspaper or magazine would, even though the primary purpose of my blog is to drive traffic to my Web site to grow my business?

The safest route for any blog, regardless of whether it is a commercial blog or editorial blog, is to only incorporate material, including photography, that you own or that you have explicit permission to use. 

“Fair use” is the exception in copyright law for criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research when using copyrighted materials without permission from the copyright owner.  While this is often associated with the news media, “freedom of the press” does not mean that news organizations may use copyrighted materials without restriction. 

Neither is fair use limited to only editorial purposes.  Instead, a commercial Web site’s use of copyrighted material may fall under fair use if it meets certain requirements.  It’s just usually more difficult to meet those standards when used for commercial purposes.
 
Further, a photographer who believes you have infringed his copyright may be more likely to make a claim against you, as a corporate entity, than, say, a lone blogger in a basement somewhere. Let’s face it: you’re easier to track down — and more likely to have deep pockets.

Fair Use and Photography

Standing behind the defense of “fair use” always carries risk, because only a court of law can determine whether a use of a photograph without the permission of the photographer/copyright owner is fair. Understanding what makes a use “fair” may help you evaluate whether you should take the risk.

Copyright law attempts to balance public interest and the rights of authors/artists, so that artists will be encouraged to create and the public will benefit from this.  The classic example is the quotation from a book being reviewed.  Since an author usually does not review his own book, the impact of the quotation on his interests should be minimal.  If, however, so much material is quoted that the review will substitute for a purchase of the book, the use will not be considered fair. 

Fair use is intended to allow the unauthorized use of copyrighted materials for the benefit of society, believing such use serves a higher purpose. But it has its limits.  In determining whether a use is fair, the court is required by the Copyright Act to consider -–
 

• the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
• the nature of the copyrighted work;
• the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
• the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

An unauthorized use will more likely be considered a fair use if a small amount of the entire work has been used.  While such a use is more difficult with photographs than when copying text, it can occur when the photos are in the background of a video, for example.

Simply grabbing a digital image from the Web to illustrate a blog post is unlikely to be considered fair use. When the unauthorized use directly competes with the copyright owner’s business or potential for income — such as, to sell usage of his photos to corporations like yours — a court will usually find that the use was not a fair use. 

Editorial vs. Commercial Use

In addition to the question of fair use, you also face the issue of “editorial use” vs. “commercial use” as it applies to the people in the photographs you publish on your blog. 

When a photo is used for editorial purposes, it is not necessary to obtain the permission of the person in the photograph. However, the person has a “right of publicity,” which prevents you from using their photograph for commercial purposes without their permission. Permission is generally documented by a model release.

So, how do you tell the difference in the uses?

Editorial use of a photograph is found in a newsworthy item. In those cases, the person’s right in the use of his image must be evaluated in light of constitutional interests. “Newsworthiness” is a First Amendment interest and is broadly construed.

Courts traditionally have defined public interest or newsworthiness in liberal and far-reaching terms. It is not limited to dissemination of news in the sense of current events, but extends far beyond that to include all types of factual, educational and historical data, or even entertainment and amusement, concerning interesting phases of human activity in general.

Commercial use of a photograph usually occurs when the picture of the person has been used for advertising, endorsement, and/or trade purposes. While the photograph of a person may be used for something that is sold for profit, such as in a book or a print, that is not the test for a commercial use.  Instead, if someone looking at a photograph would think that the person in it is promoting or endorsing a commercial product affiliated with the photograph, then the use is commercial.

Since it sometimes is difficult to know if the use will be considered commercial or editorial, it’s always safer to get the model release. Photographers who license their photos for commercial use generally attain model releases at the time of the shoot.

The Best Course: Don’t Take Chances

The bigger question is, why would your company take chances with fair use and editorial/commercial use when there are so many safer options?

Why not simply ask the photographer for permission? Or buy images from a stock photography Web site or a microstock site like iStockPhoto, where images cost as little as $1? Or — if you’re looking for free images — how about searching the Creative Commons Web site?

Grabbing images for your company blog without making sure you have the right to use them simply opens you up to unnecessary risk. You should expect to pay others for their work, just as you expect to be paid for yours.

I realized two things from this experience: (1) I couldn’t sing, and (2) I still enjoyed being in front of a crowd.

Many years later, I showed an Australian playwright a copy of my book “Second Spring: The Regeneration of the Jesuits,” which I had just completed. He asked if he could write a play based on the images. He also asked me if I would play the part of myself in this production — a one-man show about my life as a photojournalist.

I trained for three months to appear on stage. I was shown how to use my voice, how to stand, how to make or not make eye contact with the audience. It was basically a short course on how to perform in public, taught to me by a stage director. I was incredibly lucky to have the benefit of such an intense series of workshops.

And it came at just the right time.

A Last-Minute Substitute

As this was going on, I was asked by a friend to give a speech at a luncheon function. The scheduled speaker had dropped out at the last minute. Often around the dinner table, my friend had heard stories about my travels and the people I met in the course of my work. He wanted me to tell these stories at the luncheon.

By chance, a representative from a speaking agency attended the luncheon. He was impressed with my talk and asked if I was interested in signing a contract with his agency. I did and ever since have been speaking at corporate functions, conferences and festivals all over the world.

I once travelled around Australia speaking in a tent for a leading insurance company and then flew to Ethiopia where I spoke to aid workers.

I completed a PhD focusing on ethical issues surrounding the practice of documentary photography, and as a result I am often invited to speak at universities and photography schools. In fact, I recently spoke to students and lecturers at Nanjing University in China. The audience came from several different faculties — anthropology, sociology and, of course, media.

Sharing Your Experiences with Others

Because of what we do in our profession and the insights we gain, there are probably more people than we realize interested in what we have to say.

And the speaking circuit has its rewards. In addition to the fee that I receive from these events, I get the opportunity to sell my prints and books to my audiences. I also network with people who I would not normally have the chance to meet.

Here’s a video I use to help market myself for speaking engagements. It’s also useful for marketing my photography business.

I am sure there are many photographers who have great stories to tell and the ability to stand up in front of an audience. It is, after all, another way to make a living between assignments. And it’s a great way to talk about something we all love, photography.

Which courses would you absolutely need to have, and which would be nice but not necessary? How would you determine the core body of knowledge that every graduating student must master, and how would you project far enough into the future to include courses that would prepare your students for the work-a-day world?

Here at the University of South Carolina’s School of Journalism and Mass Communications, the goal of the Visual Communications sequence —according to the school’s Web site — is to produce graduates who can cover breaking news events as photojournalists; produce commercial photography; use skills in design, typesetting, illustration, photography, writing and editing to prepare materials for the mass media such as books, magazines, newspapers, newsletters and Web sites; create graphic communication for informative and persuasive messages in the mass media, such as logos, animation, software interfaces, statistical charts, diagrams, timelines and maps; create audiovisual communications for internal and external publics; and supervise the printing, production and delivery of print and online publications to a mass audience.

Adding Video to the Curriculum Design

Although universities are perceived by some as bastions of tradition, we who teach at a university are constantly struggling to keep our courses useful and relevant, without neglecting the rigorous academic and theoretical framework that distinguishes a university from, say, a community or technical college.

For example, in our program, we are acutely aware of the need to incorporate video and multimedia into our Visual Communications sequence. For several years, video and multimedia were integrated into existing courses, including our introductory survey course, our photography courses, and our capstone course. Last spring however, we decided to offer an experimental, stand-alone video course, which I taught and which will be taught again in the fall by Prof. Denise McGill. The questions raised by this seemingly simple offering may help give you some insight into the problems of curriculum design.

We currently have two what might be called traditional photography courses — Photovisual Communications and Advanced Photovisual Communications — both of which I, along with others in my department, teach.

Photovisual Communications is a beginning course using point-and-shoot cameras. Students learn the fundamental principles of photography, including composition, lighting, and storytelling, plus some Photoshop skills. Advanced Photovisual Communications, as the name implies, is designed to give students confidence with their equipment — 35mm digital SLRs — and command of the artistic and technical skills required to produce portfolio-quality images, including audio slide shows, covering a range of subjects.

In a perfect world, then, we might simply add our video course to this mix and create a photovisual trifecta: a beginning course, an intermediate course, and an advanced course that would cover video and multimedia. But the academic world, as anyone involved with it will tell you, is hardly perfect.

A Tall Order

In order to graduate with the BA degree, students in our Visual Communications sequence must fulfill the following general-education requirements (90 hours): English (15 hours); humanities and fine arts (9 hours); social and behavioral sciences, history, and business (30 hours); natural sciences, numerical/analytical reasoning, and foreign language (18 hours); minor, or second area of study (18 hours).

In addition, they must take the core courses (15 hours) — Survey of Mass Communications, Writing for Mass Communications, Law and Ethics of the Mass Media, Mass Communications Research, and Introduction to Visual Communications — required of all Journalism and Mass Communication majors. Finally, for the Visual Communications sequence, our students must take six required sequence-specific courses, plus nine additional elective hours in journalism and mass communications.

Currently, the sequence-specific courses are the following: Photovisual Communications, Introduction to Visual Communications (part of the journalism core), Graphics for Visual Communications, Informational Graphics for the Mass Media, Advanced Photovisual Communications, and Advanced Visual Communications (the capstone course, in which students produce both a print and an online portfolio of their work).

So, out of six sequence-specific courses, two deal with photography, and the remaining four deal with all other aspects of visual communications — a tall order, to be sure. In fact, one of the rationales behind creating a stand-alone video course is to free up time in the capstone course that then could be devoted to enhancing the students’ understanding of Web and portfolio design. However, by adding an additional required course, you necessarily deduct another course from the total required to graduate.

Wide Range, Not Narrow Focus

Without getting into the minutia of accreditation and balancing the general-education requirements with the instructional needs of each sequence, adding a new course — especially a required one — is clearly not as simple as it sounds. But there is a larger issue as well. If a student graduates from our visual-communications sequence and gets a job in the field of visual communications, chances are the job duties will require a wide range of skills and not a narrow focus.

In other words, very few of our graduates will work exclusively as photographers or videographers or graphic designers. But many who do enter the field will be called upon to do some graphic design, some Web design, a little brochure work here, a bit of photography or videography there. And if they are not doing all these things themselves, they will probably either be working as part of a creative team or be in a position to hire creative professionals. In any event, a breadth of knowledge will serve them well.

Seen from this angle, does the addition of a third photography course — albeit one devoted to moving images — make sense? Or would it be better to retool the two courses in photovisual communications to take into account the increasing prominence in the mass media of video and multimedia?

Perhaps we could do away with the point-and-shoot phase all together and start by teaching the basic principles of photography using digital SLRs. We who teach Advanced Photovisual Communications find that making the switch to digital SLRs is like taking a step backward — the students are expected to shoot complex assignments with unfamiliar equipment, and this sometimes leads to poor quality work and a student’s loss of confidence. Consequently, we end up devoting many classroom hours to explaining the basics of camera and flash use — f-stops, shutter speeds, and lighting ratios, topics that, before digital, were covered in most beginning photography courses.

Crystal Ball, Anyone?

If you consider the complexity of figuring out how to deal with individual courses, you may gain a greater appreciation for what it takes to put together an entire curriculum. Without a crystal ball, it is impossible to predict precisely which skills students graduating four or five years from now will need in order to have successful careers in visual communications.

I’m betting on an increased demand for video and multimedia, along with the desire on the part of employers to hire young people with an entrepreneurial spirit, who can quickly and efficiently perform a variety of tasks that will help clients get their message out to the world — whether than means via the traditional mass media or some new paradigm of communication waiting to emerge.

(My thanks to my colleague Prof. Scott Farrand for taking time to look over this column.)

In fact, in some instances, technology may be your only real option.

Hotlinking and the Law

Take, for example, the case of hotlinking. Hotlinking is when another Web site displays an image on its site by pulling the image from your server. The most widely accepted example of hotlinking is what Google does when it displays thumbnail images in its search results. These images aren’t stored on Google’s servers; they are stored on the sites that host the images.

It’s very easy for any Web site to hotlink to the images on your site. And as the courts have ruled in Google’s case, hotlinking is judged more favorably under copyright law than the uploading of a photo onto an infringing server.

In the 2007 case of Perfect 10, Inc. v. Amazon.com, Inc., the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that hotlinking (”in-line linking”) as used by Google did not violate copyright law. Specifically, the court stated:

Because Google’s computers do not store the photographic images, Google does not have a copy of the images for purposes of the Copyright Act. In other words, Google does not have any “material objects…in which a work is fixed…and from which the work can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated” and thus cannot communicate a copy. Instead of communicating a copy of the image, Google provides HTML instructions that direct a user’s browser to a website publisher’s computer that stores the full-size photographic image.

Providing these HTML instructions is not equivalent to showing a copy. First, the HTML instructions are lines of text, not a photographic image. Second, HTML instructions do not themselves cause infringing images to appear on the user’s computer screen. The HTML merely gives the address of the image to the user’s browser. The browser then interacts with the computer that stores the infringing image. It is this interaction that causes an infringing image to appear on the user’s computer screen.

Hotlinking doesn’t have to result in a thumbnail image; it can display as a full-size image as well. If you have a photography blog with an RSS feed that displays your images, it’s a simple matter for any Web site to pull that entire feed, images and all, onto its site without ever hosting one of your images on its own server. And it uses your bandwidth every time a site visitor calls up one of your images.

Hotlinking is not a bad thing in and of itself. If the Web site that hotlinks to you also gives you credit for the image and links back to your site so that new visitors can find you, it can be well worth the tradeoff, particularly because bandwidth is so inexpensive.

But if you don’t want sites to hotlink to you — or you don’t want certain sites to hotlink to you — your simplest and most effective recourse is not the law. It’s to change the code on your site to block offenders.

Blocking Hotlinkers

One way to ban hotlinkers is to use the Apache distributed configuration file called “.htaccess”. While it doesn’t work for all sites, it does work for most. Apache is the most popular Web site server, serving more than 100 million sites. (If your site is not on an Apache server or you do not self-host your site, check with your provider for options to block hotlinks.)

Jonathan Bailey at Plagiarism Today says blocking hotlinks is “one of the easiest and most basic tasks that can be performed with .htaccess.” It can be used to ban all hotlinkers, ban specific hotlinkers, or to send an alternate image (imagine the possibilities!) to offending sites. You can find instructions for adding an .htaccess file to your site here, and get help with configuring your .htaccess file here.

You can also use .htaccess to block sites from “scraping” your site’s RSS feed — basically, taking your feed and then displaying it, in all or in part, on their site.

Feedburner and Flickr

Unfortunately, you can only use .htaccess for images and feeds hosted on your own server. Feeds hosted by Feedburner and images hosted by Flickr are another story.

Feedburner enables you to see “uncommon uses” of your feed content, which can help you to identify image thieves, but it won’t block their ability to receive content. Here’s Feedburner’s advice:

You may ask what you can do if you see a domain using your feed in a way that you feel is not appropriate (e.g., the feed content is posted on the site without proper credit to the source of the material). In this case, you should contact the domain or the domain host and take up the issue with them directly. You may also want to use the FeedBurner Creative Commons Service (on the Optimize tab) which adds a machine-readable Creative Commons copyright license to your feed.

The same kind of limitation applies when you host images on Flickr or other photo-sharing services. With Flickr, you can identify the sites that are accessing your images, but the only way to block them is to make the images “private,” which blocks virtually all visitors.

So in these cases, you’re back to contacting copyright violators directly and pursuing the legal path.

In addition to contacting the offending Web site, it’s also a good idea to report the site that is using your images to Google and to other search engines. The search engines may respond by no longer indexing or hosting advertising on the site, putting a serious damper on its ability to make money from your content.

Or, if you want to turn the image grab into a boost to your own site’s traffic, there are a number of plugins for Wordpress and tools in Blogger to help.

Everyone, it seems, is falling in love with the notion of being able to capture HD video as well as high-resolution stills from a single capture device (the artist formerly known as “camera”). I’m excited, too. But I’ve followed technology long enough to see the dangers ahead — most notably, the trap of the endless upgrade cycle.

From Film to Digital

My earliest experiences as a photographer, professionally and personally, were with still film cameras.

My workhorses used to be Nikon F4s bodies, with a mix of autofocus and manual focus lenses. I have a Nikon FG (circa 1984) that hasn’t had a roll through it in about six years, but still works. I recently acquired a Rolleiflex Automat from 1951 that still works perfectly. In fact, an Olympus point-and-shoot my mom got me as an eighth-grade graduation present still works.

While I barely use 35mm at all anymore, I still use 120 pretty frequently in bodies both a few years and several decades old. Looking back, the $10,000 in equipment hasn’t been a bad long-term investment at all.

Fast forward to the digital era, when tens of thousands of dollars invested in hardware may only last a few years.

Since about 2002, I have been stuck in an almost endless upgrade cycle. Where before I could do my job with some downright ancient hardware (by today’s standards, at least), today I have to move quickly to keep up with expectations.

I had a couple of D1 bodies that I dumped as soon as something visually better came along, and proceeded along that very expensive path over three or four bodies until the release of the D2X, about the same time that all the brands hit 10-15MP in their top-end models.

I keep using those D2X bodies today because the quality is there, the reliability is there and they meet the technical requirements of nearly all of my clients. They’ll need to be replaced at some point, but only when they no longer work.

The Video Upgrade Cycle

So here we are, faced with what could be the beginning of another big upgrade cycle — as video capture becomes a more-expected capability, and manufacturers edge towards dual-functionality bodies.

What have I learned from the film to digital progression that I can apply to the digital to still/video progression?

It’s really easy to hemorrhage money and shoot your business in the foot if you’re not careful. That bleeding can drive you to raise rates (if you have clients in this economy who will tolerate it) or, more likely, take less home.

True enough, you have to spend money to make money. A mechanic needs his tools, a painter needs his brushes, and a photographer needs her cameras. But think about the sustainability of your tools before you whip out the AMEX.

What’s Cool vs. What You Need

I just read a certain “professional photography” magazine while at the doctor’s office, and was blown away by the glut of hardware available for “converting” the new Canon 5D Mk. II into a shoulder-fired missile launcher cum video camera.

Pretty cool that you can do it, but at what cost?

Video capture has always required more equipment than still capture. That’s true whether it’s a combo DSLR or an IMAX camera. It’s a high-cost proposition from the get-go.

Add to that the amount of equipment necessary to turn your digital body into a more fully featured video camera (off-camera finder screen, audio inputs, rails systems, focusing tools, etc.), and you’re talking about a pretty hefty investment.

The question isn’t whether to purchase the tools to do the job. It’s how to do so wisely.

Tools with Staying Power

Now more than ever, it is critical to pick tools that have some staying power in your kit. You should look for equipment that will let you squeeze every last dollar out of them before they fail or become unacceptable to your clients.

If an all-in-one capture device suits your needs practically and financially, by all means, shop away. But do so bearing in mind that all the bolt-ons for a certain body may or may not work with the next generation body — only a year or three down the road.

When buying new hardware or accessories, keep an eye toward standards. Buy bodies that accept standard microphone inputs so that you can preserve the audio capture hardware over a few body upgrades. Having standards-compliant hardware also makes a lot more sense if you find yourself renting “extras” often.

Consider a standalone HD video camera that you can use with, or instead of, your still rig. It might be an extra piece of equipment to lug (and get used to lugging lots if you’re into video), but it can extend your flexibility quite a bit. And if you kill one on a job, you’re not out both.

If you buy an audio recorder, make sure that it can handle the microphone rig you bought for your video camera or dual-function body.

Renting vs. Owning

Perhaps most importantly, if you don’t use a piece of hardware frequently, rent it. Rental shouldn’t really change your books too much, since you should be charging clients a price that reflects your equipment overhead costs anyway — whether you rent or own the hardware.

I know photographers who are quite successful (and much smarter than I) who keep an absolutely basic amount of equipment. In some cases, they own none at all. They rent what they need when they need it to avoid the upgrade cycle and to simplify their books.

There’s a lot of good stuff out there now, and undoubtedly better and more exciting stuff around the corner. But spraying money around on frequent and poorly planned “upgrades” and one-off doodads will only harm your bottom line, and put you on the fast track to a cubicle job to pay off the credit card. 

Make sure you have the tools for the job today — as well as the cash flow to stay in business tomorrow.

I learned this because I took a peek at the stats for my Web site after the premiere and noticed that I was getting a lot of traffic from LiveJournal, an online community popular with teenagers and young adults. I clicked on the link and was taken to a page that had one of my pictures of Taylor on it, without my permission. A copyright infringement.

The user who purloined my picture went by an alias — “bloominidiot” — and had no contact information. So I left a note in a forum asking the user to contact me.

I then started doing screen grabs of the pages the image was on, so that I would have proof of my infringement claim. And I e-mailed my attorney.

In the morning, there was no reply from “bloominidiot.” My image was still up.

The purloined picture.

Eliciting an Apology

My next step was to send LiveJournal a Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown notice. I then became a LiveJournal member — and fired a message over the bow of my pirate-friend’s ship.

I made sure “bloominidiot” understood that she could have her computer confiscated for stealing my picture. I wanted her to know that she might be ordered to pay for what he had stolen. I wanted her to realize that because I had registered the image with the Library of Congress, she might also have to pay statutory damages, including court costs.

Just before the close of business, the image had been removed from the site.

Later that night, my attorney wrote me back. She confirmed that this was a “willful infringement” and that I would be eligible for statutory damages should I choose to take “bloominidiot” to court.

I didn’t go that far.

But I did ask “bloominidiot” to post a written apology on my blog, and she did. It reads in part:

I have been burglarized in the past myself — my car was stolen and stripped and insurance only paid a small part of it, so the rest was my responsibility. I have also been the victim of identity theft from one of my own neighbours, so I DO know how it feels …

Tony, I do understand where you’re coming from. I apologize sincerely for what I did … I should have contacted you first … I made a mistake and I am sorry for it — I have learned from this, believe me. I have destroyed the files downloaded from you and will not download again without asking permission first.

Was I Heavy-Handed?

In the 4th Century, Flavius Vegetius wrote: “If you want peace, you must prepare for war.” I couldn’t agree more.

It’s now June and as I reflect, I am pleased with the outcome and the way I handled the infringement. Not everyone agrees with me.

Some have told me that I was heavy-handed and that I should have just let it go. The infringer gave me credit and linked back to my site, after all. That’s the way of the Web. Wasn’t that nice of them?

If I steal your car, but I tell everyone I got it from you, would that be OK? Probably not. (If it is OK, please send me your address — and can you fill up the gas tank for me, too?)

Some have told me that I should just protect my images by watermarking them.

When I was a child, my dad bought a new, expensive pair of binoculars. I asked him if we should etch our family name on them. He said, “No, that only lets the thieves know who they stole them from.”

To me, watermarking is a lot like that. It also messes up great images. If you’ve worked hard to create an image without that distracting telephone pole, why add a distraction in post-production?

So rather than watermark my images and hope this deters thieves, I prefer to go after the thieves when I find them.

Some have told me I should have given “bloominidiot” a break because hers was a personal use, not a commercial one. So I should sue XYZ Corp. for copyright infringement, but let Gen Y skate free? Why is that fair? I think being consistent is fair.

I used to be a member of a church where the parking lot linked with a bigger office complex. Periodically we put a chain across the parking lot, so that people from the office complex couldn’t drive through the church parking lot to get to the main drag.

The pastor explained that if cars were allowed to drive through the church parking lot with impunity, the church could lose property if the city decided to turn the lot into a street connecting to the complex — simply because that was the route people had become accustomed to.

I don’t want people to grow accustomed to grabbing my images off my Web site and using them without my permission. It sets a bad precedent. It might even hurt my chances of collecting when XYZ Corp. decides it wants to pluck an image for an international ad campaign.

Be Passionate in Protecting Your Work

It’s simple, really. I should have been given the opportunity to give “bloominidiot” permission to use my image. It’s mine, after all, and I should be the one who decides where and how it’s displayed.

If you ask permission, I might say “yes” — as opposed to you having to flip through the Yellow Pages in search of a copyright attorney to defend you. I am willing to fight because I know that I will be able to recover my attorney fees and court costs. I am confident that should I decide to put on the boxing gloves, I will be awarded damages.

I’m an easygoing guy until someone makes me mad. Then the can of worms you’ve opened becomes a can of snakes — and you’re going to get bitten.

I love this photography thing that I do. I’ve been doing it professionally since 1984 and have photographed seven U.S. presidents and shaken hands with rock stars. I recently went through an old box of negatives and found pictures of Gerald Ford and Frank Sinatra, among others. I once assisted Eddie Adams while he photographed Sammy Davis, Jr.

My photography is dear to my heart, so I pay the $35 fee and register my images with the U.S. Copyright Office. Copyright laws are worthless unless you are passionate about protecting your work.

A Lesson Learned

If a teenager walked into a convenience store and stole a candy bar, would the store go out of business? No. It wouldn’t have any impact on the store’s bottom line.

But if that teen were caught, what would happen? The police would be called, and the candy bar would be used as evidence. (Later, some attorney would eat the candy bar. The attorney is usually the only one who wins in these situations.)

It doesn’t matter whether your property is tangible, like the candy bar, or intangible, like a digital image file.

And it doesn’t matter whether the store, or the photographer, is forced to shutter their business because of your crime.

It’s still a crime.

In the case of “bloominidiot,” I was fair, ethical — and firm. The person who broke the law was able to see her error and learn from her mistake. I’m guessing she won’t repeat it.

I recently spent a week at the Arrupe Center in northern Cambodia documenting the lives of villagers. The center works with people who are mostly landmine victims, but it also helps villagers who suffer from polio and HIV/AIDS.

Searching for Photogenic Victims

I went from village to village looking for people to photograph. The first group of HIV/AIDS people I met were too healthy looking, so I rejected them.

The woman in the next village was actively doing work that was not photogenic enough.  So I rejected her.

Late one morning I came across a grandmother sleeping with her newly born grandson. The grandmother was HIV positive and I photographed what I believed was a very poignant scene. After all, that was what I was doing, wasn’t it — looking for a photographic scene?

In another place, I found a boy who was in a wheelchair with obvious physical disabilities, but he had polio and I needed landmine victims.  So I rejected him.

For days I visited people who had lost limbs — an arm, a leg, maybe both or more — and assessed whether they were photogenic enough. I also wanted the person working on something interesting because, after all, I’m a photojournalist, and we don’t set things up, do we?

In one village, I came upon a landmine victim who was a farmer working with his cattle. At last, something I could photograph.

I moved in close to get a shot as the farmer gave one of his cows an injection — making certain, of course, that his prosthetic leg was prominent. The animal leaped in the air as it reacted to the pain of the needle. I got what I needed, a photograph of a landmine victim working on his farm.

What Gives Us the Right?

For most of my life, I have worked with marginalized people, documenting their struggle for a better life. What I sometimes wonder is what gives me the right or justification to poke my camera into these people’s lives and make decisions about whether they are photo-worthy or not?

We often justify what we do by saying that photographs can make a difference and change things. I don’t believe that. Photographs can inform people and be part of a series of events that change things, but they don’t change things by themselves.

Am I embarrassed, uncomfortable or even ashamed sometimes? Yes.

All photos © Michael Coyne.

Here are six steps for becoming a green photographer:

1. Go totally digital. Yes, film has its romance — but not for the environment. A few years ago, the only option we had was to discard countless plastic film canisters into the trash after we loaded the camera, and then burn through a ton of chemicals to process film and develop and wash prints in the darkroom. All of that has changed with digital photography. From start to finish, working with digital equipment is cleaner than our old methods.

2. Use your mobile phone for driving directions. I used to scribble down notes or print out directions to get where I was going on photo shoots. Now I just use my phone. Depending on the service you use, you can view a map or even get voice-guided, turn-by-turn directions. And you’ll save on all that wasted paper.

3. Transition to FTP delivery of photos. If you mail out, say, 50 CDs to clients in a year, think about how many different vehicles carry those packages and burn gas in transit. If you can transition your clients from CDs to FTP delivery, you can help the environment and save significantly on shipping costs. FTP is an easy way to move large files; all you need to do is upload your photos to a server space and send the link to your clients. Yes, you’ll have to spend a little time educating your clients and getting their buy-in — but it’s well worth it.

4. Use rechargeable batteries when you can. Not only is this cheaper than buying disposable batteries over the long run; it will also keep those nasty battery chemicals out of the landfill.

5. Change your printing habits. Do not make hard copies of e-mails, and be sure to read as much as you can online. This saves on both paper and ink and will keep your trash can empty. Also be sure to recycle/reuse your printer cartridges. A lot of places give you a discount or freebie for bringing in your used cartridges; take advantage of these deals.

6. Recycle, recycle, recycle. The biggest single step any business owner can take is to commit to recycling paper, plastic and alumimum — and anything else your local waste disposal center will accept. They’ll come and haul it away — then put it back into use. Start today by cleaning all the aluminum cans or plastic bottles off of your desk and finding a recycling bin to put them in.

Fortunately for our planet, being a green photographer is easier than it used to be, thanks to digital equipment. But there’s always more you can do. Chances are you’ll find, as I did, that you can help the environment while improving the bottom line of your business.

And if someone intentionally deletes or hides my copyright notice, it shows intent to commit a crime.

Protecting Your Work

I’m not an expert on copyright, but I do know that the moment you create a photograph (under U.S. law, anyway), the photograph is copyrighted in your name. Technically, you don’t have to register each image with the copyright office, but there are benefits if you do.

If someone uses one of your photos without your permission after it’s registered, for example, you are entitled to statutory damages and legal fees, in addition to being compensated for usage fees. Without registration, you would only get compensation for the usage.

And you don’t have to register each individual photo. You can group your images together and register them for one fee; putting 100 images on a disc and calling them “Collected Works of Jeff Wignall, Volume I,” for example. The United States Copyright Office has an informative Web site that explains the laws very clearly.

Projecting Your Brand

Legalities aside, adding your copyright notice has the effect of discouraging at least some people from casually downloading and using your images.

Personally, I don’t mind if a college kid uses one of my sunset shots as their wallpaper. If someone uses one of my sunsets on their Web site, however, they’ll have to negotiate it with me first.

Adding your name to your images demonstrates that you have a certain pride in your work, and projects your brand. You see brand names on everything these days, so why shouldn’t your photos carry yours?

Where’s the ©?

OK, now that I’ve convinced you, you’ve probably noticed that there is no “©” (copyright) symbol on your keyboard. So how do you put a copyright symbol on your work?

If you’re using Photoshop and a Mac, it’s easy. Just click on the type tool and hold down the option key and type the letter “g” and that will produce the symbol. If you’re using Windows, click on the type tool, hold down the Alt key, and press 0169 on the numbers keyboard to produce the symbol. Then, type your name or business name into the text box.

You can also find the copyright symbol in your extra characters palette in either Mac or Windows. You can then just copy and paste the symbol where you need it.

Where should you place the copyright notice? On pictures that I know might be in high demand (like those of the popular musicians I photograph), I put the symbol in a place where it’s difficult to alter. I even put it across the face if I think it’s warranted.

For most images, however, I think a subtle notice in a corner makes the point. Sure, that makes it easier for someone to clone it away if they have larceny in mind — but again, cloning out a copyright notice with intent to avoid paying for an image is a serious crime.

Well, let’s take one example. Let’s say you are a photographer and a magazine called Washington Life hires you to take pictures at a party. You readily hand over the rights to your images because, you rationalize, “They’re just party pics. Who would want them?”

Party Pics, Anyone?

I’ll tell you who wants them. The people in the pictures want them. Which is why Washington Life sells them on SmugMug.

At a price of about $20 for an 8 x 10 print, the magazine recoups the cost of hiring you by selling about 10 prints. That makes the use of your photos in the magazine essentially free. And since Washington Life owns the copyright to your photos as per its contract with you, you are not entitled to an additional dime.

“But it’s just a few prints,” you say. “Who cares? What does it matter?”

For one thing, it’s work you created; you should be entitled to income from it. For another thing, it’s just plain wrong.

The purpose of this post is not to encourage you to sell your own party prints. It’s to illustrate that your images have value beyond the immediate assignment.

I know for a fact that during at least one past political scandal, this same magazine owned a portrait that a photographer had shot for them, and they re-licensed that image for a considerable sum of money. I can only assume this is happening with other images as well.

If you’ve given them your copyright, why shouldn’t they take advantage of it (and you)?

Turning Your Photos into Their Profit Center

Consider the case of Niche Media.

Based in Nevada, Niche Media publishes city-specific luxury lifestyle magazines, including Ocean Drive, Capitol File, Gotham, Hamptons, and Los Angeles Confidential, which together “capture a dream, coast-to-coast demographic” for its advertisers.

Niche Media has a nice side business going, too. They sell/relicense your images to Wire Image without paying you for those resales.

How many sales do you think it takes before your assignment becomes a profit center for Niche Media?

One? Two, maybe?

When people take your copyright, or require you to transfer all rights in your images to them, they’re almost always doing it because those images have value. Just because you can’t imagine what an image’s resale value is, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have any.

Think twice before selling yourself short.

I’m guessing you can relate to this story if you are a freelance photographer. Which means you can also relate to this YouTube video, a hilarious riff on the outrageous demands clients too often make on their vendors. Watch it:

In the each scene of the video, customers overstep clearly defined boundaries for the businesses they are patronizing. The couple having dinner wants to negotiate the bill and have the chef show them how their meals were prepared. The woman at the salon wants the hairdresser to give her highlights for free. The man at the video store insists he should pay less than the clearly marked price on the video.

I’ve been there before, and I’m sure you have, too. The clip also offers an answer: to stand firm behind the boundaries of your business. Here are five tips for helping you do this in your photography business.

1. Just say no. In my experience with the groom/art director, I simply said no. “No” is a word that isn’t used often enough in our conversations with customers. Used appropriately, this word draws boundaries that otherwise might not be apparent to the client. Being mealy-mouthed when you should just say no is an invitation to a negotiation.

2. Offer an unconsidered option. Customers are often single-minded when it comes to telling you what they want. But if you understand the reason behind their demands (e.g., they have a limited budget), you may be able to offer an alternative that works for you and still makes them happy. This is a great followup to the word “no”!

3. Pre-qualify your clients. In my initial phone calls or e-mail correspondence with prospective clients, I ask them almost as many questions as they ask me. I want to find out if the couple places a priority on their wedding photography. I want to understand their budget. If they value photography and have a workable budget, I’m in. If not, I refer them to another photographer who might be a better fit. Pre-qualifying your customers saves everyone a lot of wasted time and effort.

4. Create a set of policies and include it in your contract. Sometimes problems arise after you’ve already taken on the client. The best way to combat this is to create a list of policies and include them in your contract. Our company’s standard contract is a direct reflection of our previous client experiences. Clients who waited years before fulfilling album orders, for instance, generated a new policy: a time limit of one year from the wedding date. Every time I get the client to sign off on a policy beforehand, it helps me to avoid future problems.

5. Maintain your professionalism. When working with a client who is being unreasonable, stay professional. Some customers think that the harder they push, the more they will squeeze out of us. While it can be frustrating to work with this type of client, you should never take things personally. In the YouTube clip, the waiter, the hairdresser and the video clerk object to their customers’ demands — but don’t take them personally. They simply stand firm. Patience and professionalism are the best response when clients overstep their boundaries.

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the American publication of Frank’s masterpiece — originally published in 1958 in France — the National Gallery of Art mounted a major exhibition of Frank’s work called Looking In: Robert Frank’s “The Americans.”

This exhibition, which is currently at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art through Aug. 23 and then travels to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City (Sept. 22–Dec. 27), is a bonanza for Frank fans and for anyone wishing to learn more about this iconic image-maker, whose influence on succeeding generations of photographers is still being evaluated by critics, curators, and photographers themselves.

Crisscrossing the Country in a Used Ford

At the heart of the exhibition are the 83 photographs Frank made — mostly in 1955 and 1956 — while he crisscrossed the United States in a used 1950 Ford, supported by a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

Also on view are examples of Frank’s early images (he was born in 1924 in Zurich, Switzerland); the work of photographers who influenced Frank, most notably British photographer Bill Brandt, Swiss photographer Gotthard Schuh, and American photographer Walker Evans; contact sheets, work prints, and a 1957 maquette, or mock-up, of “The Americans”; and images made by photographers the exhibition’s organizer deems to have been influenced by Frank, including Diane Arbus, Gary Winogrand, Bill Owens, and Nan Goldin.

In addition, visitors to the museum have the rare opportunity to read multiple versions of Frank’s application for the Guggenheim Fellowship (with invaluable editing and rewriting by Evans) and Kerouac’s drafts of his introduction to “The Americans.”

Impossible to Ignore, Necessary to Confront

During the 1950s, the primary photographic representation of America was to be found in the pages of Henry Luce’s magazine “Life.” Americans saw themselves — and the world saw America — through weekly displays of pictures and picture stories created by some of the world’s greatest photojournalists.

According to Wendy Kozol, professor of comparative American studies at Oberlin College and author of the 1994 book “Life’s America: Family and Nation in Postwar Photojournalism,” the vision of America presented in “Life” was specifically tied to ideologies Luce was trying to promote, namely capitalism, anticommunism, consumerism, and a patriarchal, heterosexual family structure. Only rarely were photographs published whose content disrupted this master narrative.

In other words, for anyone setting out to “To photograph throughout the U.S.A.,” as Frank wrote in a draft of his Guggenheim Foundation application, “Life” was the elephant in the room, impossible to ignore and necessary to confront.

Great artists are often audacious when it comes to overcoming the power of their influential predecessors, and Frank was no exception. In creating “The Americans,” Frank is quoted as saying he wanted to make a book that would “stand up” to “Life” magazine and its “god-damned stories with a beginning and end,” but “not be like them.”

By the mid-1950s, Frank had come to distrust the presumed accessibility and clarity of photography as a medium of communication, despite having participated in Edward Steichen’s 1955 exhibition, The Family of Man, which touted photography as a simple tool to bring humanity together and counteract the divisive effects of the Cold War.

According to Sarah Greenough, senior curator of photographs for the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and organizer of Looking In, by devising a structure for “The Americans,” Frank was trying to create “a form that was open-ended, even deliberately ambiguous — one that engaged his viewers, rewarded their prolonged consideration, and perhaps even left them with as many questions as answers.”

In one sense, then, Frank set out on his cross-county photographic expedition determined to be the antithesis of a “Life” photographer, and, perhaps, the antithesis of a photojournalist in general. Indeed, 30 years ago, fellow newspaper photographer Robert DeGiulio gave me the Aperture monograph “Robert Frank” — which contains many images from “The Americans” — with this inscription: “Hope you like these photographs and value them as being unsuitable for publication in a daily newspaper.”

A Strange Book

So what, exactly, was Frank up to? I am struck by the fundamental strangeness of the images. Looking at the 1957 maquette, you see that Frank planned “The Americans” to be in four chapters, with an image of the American flag opening each chapter. Although the formal division into chapters was later dropped, the ordering of the images has persisted in all the book’s editions.

The opening photograph of chapter one, a horizontal, has nothing whole in it: we see part of an American flag, parts of two people (one of whom — the head is obscured by the flag — appears to have a claw instead of a hand), parts of two windows, and part of a brick wall. The photograph’s title, “Parade — Hoboken, New Jersey, 1955,” suggests that these two people, and perhaps many more who are unseen, are sharing a communal experience — watching a parade. But the photograph shows two people seemingly barred from all experience of the outside world by closed windows and a gray wall of bricks.

We are looking in at these two people, but our vantage point is ambiguous — apparently we are hovering at some undetermined height and distance, just outside their field of view.

In the opening image of the second chapter, “Fourth of July — Jay, New York, 1954,” the American flag dominates most of the vertical frame, but it is translucent, hanging down like a scrim from an unseen support, separating foreground from background. In front of the flag, a young boy is walking out of the frame in the lower left, while two men enter the frame from the lower right. Our eyes are drawn to two young girls, dressed completely in white and each holding a balloon, about to pass under the flag as they walk away from the camera and toward several groups of people milling about.

As viewers, we are prevented from following the girls and instead are relegated to the status of poorly positioned onlookers, blocked by the flag from seeing clearly the presumed festivities occurring in the background.

The third chapter opens with a horizontal photograph reminiscent of the first image in the book — two people enclosed by frames gaze outward, separated by an American flag. But in this case the people are George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, represented by framed paintings. The camera is tilted upward, making the two presidents tower over the viewer. Although the paintings are dark, the flag is brightly lit, giving it an eerie glow — and it appears to be in motion, as if blowing in the wind.

Our only indication of context is the title, “Bar — Detroit, 1955.” We have no idea how the bar’s patrons feel about gathering for a drink under the watchful eyes of their country’s father and the Great Emancipator.

The opening photograph of chapter four is a vertical image, “Political rally — Chicago, 1956.” In it are parts of three people and parts of two American flags (apparently in the form of bunting), all dominated by a shiny tuba whose bell resembles a giant eye (or lens) pointed directly at the viewer. No faces are visible — the tuba’s bell obscures its player’s head, but we see his hand resting on the instrument’s valves. The three people are squashed against a gray wall that is sliced horizontally by dark gray lines. The flags are held in place by two cords, which appear to emerge from the tuba player’s unseen head.

With this composition, Frank created a mythical, perhaps monstrous, creature — a cyclops with a gigantic metal eye and metallic innards, sprouting American flags from its head. The only comforting aspect of this otherwise disturbing image is the fact that the cyclops — to judge by his lapel sticker — was apparently a supporter of the Democratic presidential candidate, Adlai Stevenson.

The Essential Outsider

Frank was the essential outsider — as the exhibition title indicates. Growing up as a Jew in Switzerland, he witnessed what was happening to Jews elsewhere in Europe from the safety of a neutral country and in the comfort of a middle-class home. Surviving the atrocities of World War II and now bored with life in Switzerland — “You’re inside. You know the future,” he once said — Frank sailed to the United States in February of 1947, arriving in New York City at the beginning of March.

The city was then a hotbed of creative activity. Musicians, artists, writers, photographers — the great swirl captivated the young Frank, and he quickly fell under the influence of Alexey Brodovitch, art director of “Harper’s Bazaar,” and photographer Sid Grossman, a teacher at the Photo League. Both urged Frank to become more experimental, spontaneous, and expressive. Despite showing promise as a successful magazine photographer, Frank was determined to remain an outsider, and in June 1948 he embarked on a four-year international odyssey that included trips to Cuba, Panama, Brazil, Bolivia, and Peru — places where he knew neither the language nor the culture.

All this seemingly aimless travel freed Frank to pursue the development of both his photographic technique and his artistic vision. His return to New York in 1953, however, brought disappointments — “Life” magazine rejected several of Frank’s picture-story proposals, and Magnum, the recently founded photo agency, turned him down as a member.

He did find a champion in Edward Steichen, director of the Museum of Modern Art’s photography department, who included Frank’s work in several shows, including The Family of Man. But in the early 1950s, most of the photographic world was enchanted with the exquisite formalism and visual clarity typified by the work of Henri Cartier-Bresson — and perhaps not quite ready to embrace Frank’s more ambiguous imagery.

And as if he needed further proof of his outsider status — in an America increasingly beset by political and racial tensions — Frank was arrested and jailed twice during his Guggenheim Fellowship: once in Detroit after going to a concert featuring black performers (he was charged with possessing two different license plates for his car), and a second time in Arkansas, for being a foreigner (and a Jew) with a carload of camera equipment and a letter of reference from Alexey Brodovitch, whose name must have conjured up images in the arresting officer’s mind of the international communist conspiracy come to his Southern town.

Original and Influential

How to assess the influence of “The Americans” and Frank’s work in general? Rather than point to specific photographers as disciples, perhaps it is more useful to think of Frank as the person who freed photography from some of the constraints it had inherited from an earlier era — namely, easy accessibility for the viewer and clarity of meaning.

Photographers who followed in Frank’s footsteps found themselves unburdened by the heavy responsibilities of impeccable composition, flawless lighting, and “the decisive moment” — and buoyed up by photography’s ability to pack a wallop or slide slyly under the surface of social relations.

We tend to think of the 1950s as a time of mind-numbing conformity, but the truth is more complex. Consider, for example, that “The Americans” shares the decade with the beginning of the Civil Rights movement, Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl,” Kerouac’s “On the Road,” Orson Welles’s film “Touch of Evil,” Glenn Gould’s first recording of Bach’s “Goldberg Variations,” Elvis Presley’s rise to stardom, and the prominence of such jazz virtuosos as Charles Mingus, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Bud Powell, Art Tatum, and Duke Ellington — nonconformity writ large.

As an outsider looking in, Frank had something original and influential to say about the people inhabiting his adopted home, and his message was received by many photographers who saw and appreciated his work.

First came Google, when it won the case to publish images in its search results without paying anything. Then came National Geographic and others, republishing entire issues on CD-ROM without paying additional fees. Even today, the magazine industry poor-mouths its way to paying pennies for images on Web sites that now have bigger circulations than the corresponding print editions.

And yet, many in the photo industry still view the Web as their savior. The question is, How so?

An image posted on the home page of a site that receives one million hits per week is not licensed at the same price as an image on the cover of a weekly magazine that has one million readers. Why is that?

What makes publishers believe that images online are worth less than those in print? What makes photographers and photo agencies agree?

Most of the discourse is about how a magazine’s online edition generates far less revenue than its print edition. Since when has that been the concern of photographers and agencies? Is this now one of our responsibilities — to guarantee revenue on top of licensing images?

It shouldn’t be.

Here are 10 ways we — all of us in the industry — can fight back.

1. Stop treating “digital rights” as an add-on to a license. Maybe we should make “print rights” as an additional right. We should treat Web usage as a full-blown license of its own.

2. Stop licensing images online as “one week on home page” or “one day inside, 1/4 page.” A Web site is not a magazine; it doesn’t work that way. We should also stop making a distinction between commercial and editorial usage. Most editorial sites have a hundred times more traffic than corporate sites. We should treat the Web as an entity. It has measurable traffic — much more so than a magazine. Charge a license based on traffic; that is how sites charge advertisers, isn’t it?

3. Don’t buy into the poverty talk. Many editorial sites today have a budget bigger than their print siblings. As publications close their print editions for online only, they shift their budgets. Some with the biggest traffic charge $400,000 for a one-day banner ad.

4. Don’t buy the “it’s good publicity” argument. How many images have you ever licensed because one of your images appeared online? Would you offer your images for pennies to a print magazine because it’s “good publicity”?

5. Stop believing that because the image is of a smaller size and only 72 dpi, it has less value. That is like saying that if an image is used in B/W, although it was shot in color, it has less value. Where does that come from? The value of an image has nothing to do with the numbers of pixels it has — nothing. Does a Cartier-Bresson or Leibovitz image lose value with fewer pixels?

6. Stop waiting for others to act. Stop expecting someone else to show you the way. Google is taking your rights away, yet you turn a blind eye. Call that association to which you pay a hefty membership fee, and tell them to act. Tell your agency to stop giving away your rights and your images. And if they don’t, leave them. This is your problem, now. Not someone else’s in the future. It’s not going to go away; it’s only going to get worse.

7. Focus less on what to shoot next — and more on licensing what you already have. Unless we start dealing with the issues at hand, those magical pictures you plan to shoot in the future will only generate a fraction of what your existing images can.

8. Stop being beggars. Your images are needed. In fact, they are the core value of many publications and Web sites. These publishers are not doing you a favor by using your work; you are bringing them the value they need in order to run their business. What you do is unique. Trust me, if they could do it themselves and shut you out, they would. But they can’t.

9. Stop being technophobes. It’s not cute anymore. All the information is at your fingertips. Read, learn. Saying you don’t understand is no excuse anymore. You shoot digital, don’t you? So stop the crap about how you do not understand RSS feeds or HTML, or anything Web-related. No one buys it — and if they do, it’s only so they can squeeze more out of you.

10. Stop being afraid. Stop being afraid of losing clients, afraid of tomorrow, afraid of big corporations, afraid of your own decisions. The images you shoot or that you license have the value you give them. Bargain if necessary, until you have no breath left. And leave the table if you have to.

Your images are like your children. Don’t let them be mistreated.

And yet, I pretty much hate it when other people critique me. Perhaps that’s why I’m usually more positive and encouraging when I review the photos of others.

When I taught online regularly, I would spend an hour or so writing 500 to 1,000 word critiques of my students’ work. I tended to look for the smart, creative aspects of their photos. Over time, I found that students improved more quickly when I focused on the good things they had done. It gave them something to build on.

Still, when I first download my own images, I can’t help but hammer myself for all of the mistakes I made, or the better ideas that I overlooked. I constantly have to remind myself to spend as much time thinking about what I like about my photos as what I don’t.

Just a Snapshot

The photo below is just a snapshot. I was waiting for a freighter to leave the harbor; this couple walked into the frame, so I shot a quick dozen photos of them. I liked the shot as I was taking it, but I knew it was just a snapshot.

Nevertheless, I took the time to analyze the photo later. Here are some of the thoughts that went through my mind as I looked at it for the first time:

What I Like –

• The setting next to a pretty harbor at sunset;
• The placement of the couple in the frame, especially the way the water surrounds their upper bodies and heads;
• They’re both wearing red — which really pops out;
• They both have a foot off the ground, which I had the good timing to capture.

What I Dislike –

• The specular highlights on the oil tanks across the harbor in the distance;
• The couple is a bit too close to center (yes, I know this contradicts my second “like” above);
• I’m at the same level with the couple;
• I didn’t ask them to turn around and pose — perhaps hugging or looking at each other;
• I didn’t exaggerate the space with a wider lens.

Being Your Best Teacher

I wish I had cropped out the oil tanks. I wish I had placed the couple farther to the right. I wish I had thought to snatch the camera off the tripod and take the picture while kneeling down. I wish I had spoken to them. I wish I hadn’t used such a long zoom setting.

Sure, it wasn’t a great photo op to begin with, but every photo you take is an opportunity to learn. If you take the time to do some self-analysis each time you download your photos, you can be your own best teacher.

Self-awareness is everything, I think, in life and in photography. Just be sure to spend as much time focusing on what you did right in your pictures as what you did wrong. Cut yourself some slack; after all, it’s only photography.

Most of us think of these innovations as new ways to communicate. But we should also think of them as new opportunities to lead.

Using Online Communities to Lead

In 2008, Seth Godin published Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us. Godin has written about being a change agent in his previous books, including Purple Cow and The Dip. In Tribes, Godin helps us to understand how online communities foster the rise of leaders.

Godin shows that it is easier today, because of the Web, to find others who think like you. We can build upon these strong connections with others to create and mobilize our own “tribes.”

A “crowd” is comprised of many weak connections between people. “Tribes,” on the other hand, have strong connections.

As an illustration of the power of the tribe, Godin gives the example of Scott Beale of Laughing Squid, who has used all the online tools at his disposal to market himself — and build a tribe.

AltaVista Party at Ginger Man

Beale was able to leverage his tribe at a conference in 2008. Writes Godin:

…he got tired of waiting to get into the Google party. He found a deserted bar down the street, grabbed some tables in the back and fired up his cell phone. Using Twitter, he announced: ‘AltaVista Party at Ginger Man.’ Within a few minutes eight people showed up, then it was fifty. Soon there was a line out the door.

Godin makes clear that Beale didn’t simply sign up for Twitter, tweet a message and produce an instant party. Beale’s party took four years of marketing to produce. But the results were very real; Beale’s tribe showed up for him.

Online communities present the same kinds of opportunities for your photography business. I have friends who use social networks to drum up attendance at workshops, sell self-published books, and in many other ways. They are successful to the extent they lead tribes — as opposed to communicate to crowds.

A Numbers Game

Of course, networking was around long before the computer. Marketing 101 teaches that if you talk to 1,000 people, perhaps 100 will be interested in your idea. Of those 100, only 10 might buy. And to convert those 10, you will need to get your name in front of them repeatedly — perhaps six to eight times before the deal is sealed.

The marketing challenge has always been to reach enough people, often enough, to find those who will buy.

The Web puts this entire networking game at your fingertips. It allows you to find an audience, build that audience, and to touch that audience regularly — on a daily or even minute-by-minute basis if you like.

Build a tribe, and serve that tribe, and you will create what the authors Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles call “raving fans,” in the book of the same name. These are customers and associates who are not just satisfied with what you do — but excited enough to tell the world about it.

And guess what? They will use tools like blogs, podcasts, Facebook and Twitter to spread the word faster and more broadly than ever before, helping your tribe to continue to grow.

Not long ago, it didn’t occur to me that such an event might be necessary. When I lived in New York City, I enjoyed a successful career as a photo editor. I loved what I did and for the most part found steady work in the publishing industry — whether full-time employment, contract work or freelance assignments.

What Does a Photo Editor Do, Anyway?

True, my friends and acquaintances would often ask, “What does a photo editor do, anyway?” It was OK, though. I would just explain to them that I was the person responsible for, among other things, finding, selecting and organizing photo shoots, and obtaining usage rights for visual content in a given publication, print or Web.

That answer worked for them and for me.

I didn’t bother going into the details, or sharing the frustrations that photo editors experience on a daily basis. Like handling crazy creative directors, editors and graphic designers with bizarre image requests. Or trying to stretch a low-resolution image to fill a page when no other size is available.

What mattered is that I loved the career I had chosen for myself — or that had been somehow chosen for me, as is the case with most photo editors.

Moving to Jerusalem

Then, about a year and a half ago, I moved from New York to Jerusalem. Things are a little different here.

People look at me like I’m from Mars when I say I’m a photo editor. When they ask me what a photo editor does, my old explanation no longer works. The most common response is, “Huh?”

I got a part-time job with the Jerusalem Post when I arrived. Because they have no picture desk, I was an assistant night editor, whose job included answering the phone, ordering dinner for the night editor and finding pictures. Since they literally have no photography budget, I was forced to use free images — or wire-service images from the cheapest subscription plan.

The publication did not care where the images came from, what they looked like, or how they were credited. After about a month of this, I got fed up and fired myself.

A Non-Existent Occupation

I began sending off resumes to every publishing house in Israel, large and small, with no response. I learned the hard way that the position of photo editor is, for all intents and purposes, non-existent in Israel. Editors or graphic designers find their own pictures, relying on microstock and a willful ignorance of copyright law.

Israel is very cultured in the fine arts, including photography as art. So it surprised me to see the lack of value placed in the job I loved. It was a real disconnect.

I was left with two options. Either I could switch careers (in fact, I started taking courses in interior design) or I could get creative in finding ways to apply my skills to the work that was available.

Getting Creative

I had a meeting with the head of image resources of the Israel Museum. She had a position that desperately needed filling, and my skills and experience turned out to be a great fit. (Unfortunately, she was denied funding for the job.)

I started networking in the high-tech industry. I found a niche for my expertise among startups that needed images for their investor PowerPoint presentations, marketing materials, and so forth.

I also began providing my knowledge to help startups pursuing photography-related applications, assisting with their product development and marketing strategies.

As part of my journey, I recently launched a Web site, The F Stops Here, that advocates the value of photo editors. I fully expect my definition of “photo editor” to evolve over time here — just as photography itself is evolving.

It’s a prospective client — and she’s in a jam. She had asked her organization’s PR firm to arrange for photography of certain attendees at a Senate hearing the next day. Apparently, the PR firm originally planned to just snap some photos with the office digital camera. Then, they scrambled to find a last-minute assignment photographer. They ended up with one who did not have a lot of experience.

There to Listen

The woman on the phone was very upset. I talked to her for about 20 minutes. I learned that the assignment wasn’t just coverage of the hearing; she also needed portraits of several visitors from out of town for use in marketing and advertising. I knew the photographer her PR agency had hired would be completely out of his element with this part of the assignment.

What to do?

I chose not to bad-mouth the other photographer, but I did explain what the client was missing out on by not hiring a photographer with the right experience. She tried to corner me into reassuring her that everything would be OK. I couldn’t.

Instead, I outlined the logistics of the assignment, interspersing ideas about how I might have gone about it, and told her I thought it would be a challenge for her photographer. She needed to know that it wouldn’t be smooth sailing.

She said she was locked into the other photographer at this point, but was curious how much I would have charged for the assignment. I gave her a figure that was over twice what that photographer had quoted her. She assured me that next time she would call me directly, and not farm out the photography request to her PR firm.

The beauty of this is not only that she would have paid double what the other photographer quoted, but that I have reinforced to her that I am a premium-brand photographer — and one who is there for her when she needs to talk.

I closed the conversation by saying that I would be up fairly late that evening, and if she changed her mind and wanted me to take on the assignment, I would make it happen, even on short notice.

The 9 p.m. Call

Sure enough, at 9 p.m. my phone rings again. I assumed the prospective client was calling back.

But it wasn’t her. It was a regular client, who started the conversation by asking, “What are you doing answering the phone at this hour?” I told him I was doing some paperwork and asked him how I could help.

He was at an event and had learned at the last minute he needed a photographer there the next day. I told him, “Sure thing. Consider it done.”

He said, “It’s really going to be about 10 minutes of work, but I know you have a minimum, so just bill me for that.”

I said, “Yes, we do have a minimum that would apply. I’ll get that paperwork off to you in the morning and we’re all set.”

Now, this client can turn to his superiors on site and say, “I’ve just secured a photographer for you for tomorrow.” They will be impressed by his ability to get things done so quickly, after hours. He will garner cache akin to the hotel concierge who scores two orchestra tickets to the sold-out performance at the city opera at the last minute.

He looks good, and I look good for making him look good. And — oh yeah — I have a paying assignment tomorrow.

The Value of Availability

For freelance photographers, it pays to be available — no matter the hour of the call. When you can answer the phone at 1 a.m. with a cheery face and acknowledge that you can be on hand at a 7:30 a.m. breakfast, that’s a competitive advantage.

Maybe the prospective client forgot to book a photographer. Maybe the photographer missed the flight or lost his luggage and gear. Maybe the photographer is sick and the client just got the voicemail. Whatever the circumstances, when you are there to step in and pick up the pieces, you become the hero.

And chances are, you’ll be the client’s choice on future assignments.