Happy Chrismas 2008

In a previous post I mentioned that I’m primarily a stock and editorial photographer.

But I do have some images for sale as artworks and some of these are hosted with Imagekind.

For the next few posts I’ll show an image from this collection.

And so to more ways of being on the web…

Whether it’s the economic situation or other things, I find that it’s finally caught up on me.

I find that I can’t think about blogging too much.

At the moment I actually have to look for some more business.

As I said, many agencies have crashed, and one of them, of course, was one that I was building up a good relationship with - Photoshelter.

But now I’m working with a new agency, alongside my established relationship with Alamy - I’ve decided to work with the  “Footprints” agency.

If you’re interested in seeing the pictures I’m gradually going to put on this site then you can click on their logo on this page.

Now, we’re still talking abut getting onto the web.

I became a photographer before the internet was even begun and since then there’s been a tremendous explosion of web traffic and hundreds of ways that photographers can get on the web.

So much depends on whether you just want to share your pictures with your friends or if you’re interested in the commercial or artistic possibilities.

As I think I’ve mentioned, I’ve decided to concentrate for most of my actual site needs on Wordpress and I’ve got a number of reasons for this.

One is that Wordpress is a blogging platform but it’s quite easy to turn it into a more conventional non blogging website - what is sometimes called a Content Management System or CMS.

This makes it very easy to constantly update material while keeping the same format and structure which can be quite difficult with a conventional website.

I do think though that’s its worthwhile to have somewhere that you can practise your website authoring skills or you HTML skills and for this reason it’s worth looking at some of the free hosts and storage sites that are available today.

Alexander Nevsky in Snow

The Alexander Nevsky Memorial Cathedral Church in Sofia has been a good seller for me.

It’s one of the most famous buildings in the Balkans and it’s best to try to get a slightly different image.

Maybe that’s why I’ve found that snow scenes have done well.

I’m in the happy position that I live within easy walking distance of this fine building and so I can photograph it in all seasons by day and by night, in outline and in detail.

As Stock Photography is partly a numbers game it means I can easily build up a large set of different images of this great church.

The general economic climate and the various changes in the stock photo industry mean that I’m going to write a slightly different blog than I meant to, but I still think that I’m on theme.

It’s for you to judge.

Just as I was planning more chat about the business of stock photography, and how to have a web presence, it turns out that for many individuals and companies it’s actually the end of the business of stock photography and the end of their web presence.

Those of you who have followed my blog for some time will have seen that the link I used to have to Photoshelter has gone because Photoshelter, at least as a stock photo agency, is no more.

I received the news the other day from Alamy, as an Alamy contributor, that Alamy are reducing the photographer’s percentage.

The reason they give is to generate more money to break into the United States market.

And if we look at the USA market, what is happening?

Corbis is still there. Luckily, it seems to have great financial backing but as far as I know, is not exactly a money spinner.

Getty, the big player - its business model so much criticized by Photoshelter, has taken over Jupiter images for a mere $96 m dollars.

Now $96 m. dollars may not be small change to you and me but it seems that somewhere there’s money to be made in the stock photo business.

And only yesterday Digital Railroad posted on their site:

“October 28, 2008

To our valued Members and Partners:

We deeply regret to inform you that Digital Railroad (DRR) has shut down.

On October 15th we reported that the company had reduced its staff and was aggressively pursuing additional financing and/or a strategic partner. Unfortunately, those efforts were unsuccessful. Therefore Digital Railroad has been forced to close all operations.

Digital Railroad has attracted a loyal set of customers and partners, and we regret this unfortunate outcome. Without sufficient long-term financial support, the business had become unsustainable.

Thank you for allowing us to serve the photographic community these past few years.”

So what’s to be done?

Well I have some ideas and just for the moment I’m going to continue with how to build a web presence which might be even more important in these troubled times.

Interestingly enough I recently revisited Dan Heller’s site and found some interesting comments there which reinforce the point I made about photographers and web designers:

“If you get beyond your own technical skills or interests, then you might want to outsource the job to a web designer. But buyer beware: this path comes with some risks”

I suggest you read his comments here

Now I’m not going to suggest to everyone that you do what Dan did and learn everything yourself  but I do still want to emphasize that however much you want to work with an expert professional like a web-designer, it’s still a good idea to have some idea of how to do things, if only to ask the right questions.

You’ll see that this Blog is hosted on Wordpress.

It’s taken me a long time and lot of thinking to make this decision, and things are changing all the time.

I’ll comment on my reasons for choosing a blogging platform and some other online matters in my next post.

By the way, so far my images have been straightforward stock photos but I do try to explore other outlets for sales and so for the next few blogs I’m going to showcase some of my photos available for sale on ImageKind

Daisy - Collectable Bisque Head Doll

Stock photos are often all too depressingly “samey” - you know, cardboard cutouts of business people and happy families.

So I’m always pleased when I get success with something a bit different.

This photo of “Daisy” has been successful both as an editorial and stock photo.

Exactly why I don’t know.

Perhaps it’s because the image is intrinsically attractive.

Perhaps because the object is quite valuable.

Perhaps because the picture is exclusive.

One peculiar aspect of this and others that come from the family collection is that I have to, in principle, make up a property release for myself.

And so back to the current theme of creating your own web presence.

I’ve found myself a bit too busy to blog lately.

After all, we live in very stirring times and I decided like many other people and many photographers of course to take stock of some of the ways that I live my life and look after business.

Partly that has been forced on me like it has many other people because there really isn’t much business around.

Now photographers suffer from what is called the credit crunch, just like everybody else so I was very interested to read a report via the EPUK news letter from Black Star Rising Contributer, photographer Sean Casey, which gives some tips for photographers to deal with the downturn in business.

I think this does relate to my topic because I have been looking at how to have a web presence.

I suppose anybody reading the blog can say, “Ah. well there’s a very easy way of doing this and that is to pay an expert.”

However as you can see from Sean’s post there is a case, however peculiar and desperate it might be for what you might call “in sourcing” that is doing it yourself.

Now, I have long had a suspicion about websites which are built for photographers who know nothing about web design by web designers.

This is in my opinion, what often happens:

A very ignorant person, in this case a photographer asks an expert - here a web designer - for help.

Because the photographer is ignorant he or she can’t really specify what they want and don’t know exactly how to ask for what they want.

So, they leave it to the web designer.

Web designers often like to show how good they are at web design.

In my opinion, the results are often dreadful - very complicated long, flash based intros, slow down loading times and a need for extremely fast connections.

So I really do think that there is a case, even if you do not intend to build your own website or have your own web presence designed by yourself in some way, to at least look at some of the basics.

So here I think we go to how you can get some presence on the web for free but where some degree of skill is needed.

For this in my opinion one of the traditional ways now is to look for a free website host provider.

There are lots of around, almost all of them have some advertising.

The only place for advertising on your own site is advertising things that you want to advertise and talk about.

Clearly nothing could be worse for you than to have a site with your photographs and adverts for fake watches or some other product that had nothing to do with photography.

I think that one of the reasons for having a website on a free Host is that you can use it to experiment.

It means that you can learn to use a bit of HTML.

You can work out how things would look and at the very least would then be able to brief your web designer better.

There’s one other thing, I think I should say at this juncture, and that is that there are a host of new products appearing which are free and are very interesting.

I haven’t tried them and the reason for this is that I have finally made up my mind to create a blog based site.

This has good and bad points.

And it means you’re not likely to have one of those flashy sites but more of that later.

In my next post I’ll briefly discuss two free resources that I have found helpful.

Wastebin in Oman

Some parts of the world are considered far flung or “exotic” and this is emphasised by tour companies and others with an interest.

I think one of the greatest mistakes a photographer can make is to buy into this concept.

The fact is that everywhere you go, in most cases, people are going about their business as usual and everyday things are going on - these are the facts of enduring interest.

I think Auden’s Poem, “Musee des Beaux Arts”, captures this pretty well.

…even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

My photo of a wastebin in Oman shows something completely ordinary in the Sultanate of Oman.

Just goes to show that you never know what will sell.

From the photographic point of view I wanted to emphasise the strong primary colour contrast and the simple shapes.

One particular point about Alamy is that photographers do their own editing so it’s possible to try photos that might not be obvious sellers.

So - back to subject of this blog post:

Getting your Photos on the Web - Free and Easy Ways

Ok then, let’s look at how to get a presence on the Internet - on the World Wide Web today.

There’s quite a lot to talk about and it’s changing all the time.

After all, I was photographer long before 1989 when the English scientist Tim Berners, first brought the World Wide Web to us.

Today about 1.5 billion people worldwide are using it so there’s been a massive explosion.

And this explosion has gone together with the technology of the digital camera, digital devices and the desktop computer.

Now, when I started using the web there were, basically, two options:

One was to design a website using tools like Dreamweaver or look around for some free editors or you could pay somebody to do it for you.

Those options are still with us.

But it’s worthwhile, I think, having a look at some of the other ways that, as a photographer, you can have a presence on the Internet and I’m going to break this down into several ways of looking at it.

First of all I want to look at ways which are free and need either no skill or very little skill indeed.

That’s because one of the great problems in my experience for a lot of photographers, is that they are great photographers. They’ve had a good background in film photography, but the transition to the digital world, especially when it comes to the questions of computing, web design, and photo editing and so on is is quite difficult.

So let’s have a look at some of the free and no skill ways of having a presence on the Internet.

Now, my approach is not to review the whole thing, because I don’t have that kind of knowledge.

I’m just going to go through some of the applications and types of applications that I personally use.

First of all, one of the ways of getting onto the Internet is by photo sharing.

Photo Sharing

You can do this personally, or you can do this on a more commercial basis, but photo sharing is very popular today.

And there are many sites which will host your photos to share with others.

Perhaps the largest, the most famous and one where I do have an account is Flikr.

• Flikr (http://www.flickr.com/)

which is owned by Yahoo.

Now, lots of people take advantage of these sites, and there is indeed some crossover commercial interest with agencies like Getty getting interested in the photos that appear on Flickr.

However, in my experience you need to be a bit careful - there are some pitfalls.

One is that they are almost always funded by advertising.

The advertisements that get on these sites are not under your control. You may not like them.

Another concerns the terms and conditions.

Read these very carefully. You may find that you have signed away some of the rights to your photos.

So I would be very careful when looking at photo sharing sites.

Another type of photo sharing is aimed more at users of certain camera users or particular types of equipment.

Now I’m a Canon user, and when I bought a Canon compact I found it gave me access to the Canon Image Gateway.

This is some web space provided by Canon, where I can put up photo albums and share them with who I like - public or private.

Now, I think many other camera makers and some other companies have this kind of facility.

Photo Forums

Another way that you can put your photos up is by joining photo forums.

There are literally hundreds of these around.

Some are based on camera makes like Canon or Nikon, some are even based on things which are nothing inherently to do with photography at all like, for example, keeping fish in aquariums, but they have a photo forum section for specialist photographers.

If you go to these photo forums, you may very well find lots of really great photographers who you can share advice and interest with

My particular favourite in this category is a site called

• Passion For Pixels. (http://www.passionforpixels.com/)

One reason is that it’s Australian and that takes me to the other side of the world.

Another reason is that you are not allowed to post a photo unless you give a review or a comment on another photo first and this means that everybody has to have something to say.

There are also some more what you might call magazine based sites like:

• Think Camera (http://www.thinkcamera.com/)

or

• ePHOTOzine (http://www.ephotozine.com/)

which have reviews and tutorials as well.

• PopPhoto (http://forums.popphoto.com/)

Is a forum run by the well known American photo magazine.

Blogging

If you’re at all interested in the Internet, you’ll know that there’s been an explosion in what is known as blogging.

This is a diary approach to using the Internet where the diarist or “blogger” gives an account of what they’re doing every now and then. Maybe daily, weekly or monthly.

As you’re reading this you’re reading my blog,

I decided some time time ago to turn my site into a blog to make it more interactive.

Now far as free blogs are concerned, the one that I have experience of is:

• Wordpress (http://wordpress.com/)

WordPress comes in two flavours, and the free one hosted by Wordpress has got many many advantages for photographers.

I’ll say, right from the start, that the way that Wordpress deals with posting photographs is not in my opinion quite as good as it might be but it doesn’t take a great deal of skill to get round this.

The advantage of the free system is that Wordpress hosts your blog and so they will update it and look after it for you.

I consider this a very good idea if you want to get a presence on the web.

Quite a lot of photographers also use what are known as

Web2/Social Networking Sites

These are not created primarily for photographers .

Still, sites like:

• Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/)

and

• MySpace (http://www.myspace.com/)

for example, do have procedures for adding links to your websites and your blogs and for posting photographs.

(A word of warning: Be very careful what personal information you put on these sites! Do not give your credit card details for example)

So, I would suggest that if you want to have a web presence you might consider some of these free ways in which you can put your photos up on the web.

Some other ways are free but require some skill - so I’ll leave those for another time.

Dandelion Clock

Some time ago I promised to come back to what you might call the non photographic aspects of photography - particularly Stock Photography.

Perhaps looking at some of the wider issue such as a workflow involving computers and computer programmes, storage and websites, Stock Agencies and so on.

As this is a photo site I decided when writing this sort of post that a good idea might be to start with a picture of a successful Stock Photo and then go on to the post theme.

This post starts with a photo of a Dandelion Clock.

I’ve taken hundreds of dandelion photos over the years but this one shows the influence of digital imaging techniques.

It’s a studio shot taken using electronic flash against a black velvet background.

I used my sensor cleaning blower to puff a little and loosen a couple of spores as I took the picture.

Later I made several layers and created a pattern based on repeating the individual spores.

No point in pretending that this is a straight shot - nevertheless the final image matched very closely the image in my mind’s eye.

And so to the “business” side of Stock Photography.

This was originally inspired by a comment from a reader called Mary - I responded to her personally but it seems to me that her query opens up a number of interesting avenues that I have had to encounter over the years.

My husband is interested in starting his own website for his photos. Because there are so many sites available, how did you choose yours? Did you find others just as good or are you satisfied with this one?

One of the main problems is the ever changing nature of photographic practice in a digital age.

I think it’s fair to say that this comment is pretty vague - the expression “sites available” is a bit confusing, perhaps it’s webhosts.

Anyway, I thought it was worth looking into a bit more.

First of all, I think it’s certainly helpful for a photographer to have web presence but exactly what sort needs a bit of thinking about.

If you want to have a presence of your own, you’re going to need to host it somewhere.

So, next time let’s have a look at some hosting options

Oops! I thought I’d arranged for this post to go out in the middle of my holiday! It didn’t. Still, don’t worry, Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.

In my last post I emphasized how important it is that people in a stock photograph should be either:

Not be recognizable
or
Have signed a model release.

The reason, as I said, is that photographs with recognizable people in them cannot be used for commercial purposes such as advertising.

In my photo “a stroll through the park” we removed the two men strolling by using a rub out and replace technique.

Now we are still left with the man sitting on the bench, It’s clear from the blow up that he is recognizable.

We have a number of options:

We can crop the picture to exclude the recognizable figure - this will not work in every case and will always alter the composition and reduce the picture area.

We can use copy and clone techniques to eliminate the figure altogether - this needs some skill and will, of course, alter the composition and content of the picture.

We can replace the recognizable figure with information which will be acceptable from the legal/commercial point of view.

The key to this approach is to have a collection of faces and figures which can be used legally.

One source is pictures of friends, family and other model released pictures - we can shoot a whole variety of these especially for this purpose.

Another source is royalty free pictures with the appropriate rights. These are widely available and need not be large or high resolution.

For this image I have used a royalty free image obtained from the disc provided with Steve Caplin’s must read book “How to Cheat at Photoshop”.

The final, corrected image, depends on two procedures:

First - replace the original head with an appropriate model released/licenced head.

Next - as a finishing touch, select appropriate items of clothing and change important features such as shape or colour. Here I have selected the blue clothes and changed them to green.

The final image is no longer recognizable as the original figure, but the basic information and composition of the picture is preserved.

This is a post in haste as I’m off for a family holiday. See you when I’m back.

Anyway back to rubbing people out. We had two layers so let’s go and choose the upper layer.

We’re going to use a destructive method for this on the upper layer using the Eraser Tool.

Choose a soft round brush and rub out the people you don’t like! The result should be something like this.

Now we’ll go down and choose the background layer.

We’re going to make a selection here that will cover the same area and a bit more. There are several ways of doing this but for the moment let’s try the rectangular marquee.

and make a section covering the area we want to replace.

Then we can copy and paste this selection above the bottom layer so it looks like this:

Now we can go up and select the top layer again.

Our pasted selection will show through under the top layer but because we didn’t use a tripod it will clearly be misaligned and won’t match up properly:

so we’ll have to move the selection about a bit. For this we must choose our pasted selection and use the move tool to position it correctly.

If we carefully move the selection about we might get the correct result straight away like this. And then we’ll have successfully rubbed out the people we don’t like.

Exactly how easy this is depends on how accurately aligned the two original images were.

It really is better to take advantage of the new opportunities offered by digital imaging by thinking ahead and preparing in advance.

Of course we’re still left with the person sitting on the bench - but that’s a story for another time.

If I survive the wedding, I’ll be back soon.

Dragon Screen Wall in the Behai Park in Beijing, China

This is just to show how I managed to wait long enough to get a clear view of the wall. But I had to crop it fairly tightly still.

OK, let’s get down to eliminating people we don’t like.

Let’s get back to a Stroll in the Park.

two variations of a digital photograph a “Stroll in the Park”

One of the great things about digital imaging is that there are so many new approaches to solving problems and if one doesn’t work you can try another.

As I said in my last post, you often can’t wait until there are no people in your picture. So here’s another approach:

Take a series of pictures which are basically the same except that the people have moved on.

(There’s a ‘right’ way of doing this which is to put the camera on a solid tripod, set manual exposure, and use a cable or remote release to trigger the shutter. This will ensure that all the main elements of your scene are accurately aligned.)

In this case I took the pictures handheld.

The idea is to replace elements from one picture with some from the other until you have the perfect composite.

This will need some computer manipulation and just to emphasize that any programme with layers will do I’m going to use my Photoshop Elements version 2.

First of all, I’ll have to open both the pictures.

When I’ve opened them I’ll want to see them both together on the screen and so I’ll choose the tile option.

Then I’ll choose the move icon so that I can copy one picture over the other.

If I drag the move tool with my mouse over the second picture while holding down the SHIFT key, the pictures should align perfectly on two separate layers.

The cursor changes to show I’ve copied the image and can release the SHIFT key.

Voila! I now have my two pictures on two separate layers.

Now I have the pictures in position and I’m ready to get on with recreating the single composite.

One way of doing this will be in the next post.