Jan Klier's Blog

A Photographers/Marketers Point of View on Pinterest

2012-02-18T10:16:00.001-08:00

I’ve participated in the comment threads of a few posts and on FB in the discussion over Pinterest, and the concern people have over it. I’ve recently started using Pinterest myself and generally like it for what it does.

As a photographer of course I am concerned anytime images are used without proper consent in a public setting. It opens the door of copyright infringement and further blurs the line in the general public and even the creative community on what is proper use of an image you don’t own, and what crosses the line.

Since the the entire concept of Pinterest is to publicly display images of others in a high traffic fashion w/o proper permission and consent, it’s the ultimate lightning road of that concern. Here are some recent blog posts that have literally lit up the web on the topic: Stuck In Customs and A Photo Editor.

On the legal side much of it comes down to the definition and implementation of the Fair Use Doctrine. After all fair use allows the republishing of copyrighted material without explicit permission in a very clearly defined framework. It usually has to be in the context of criticism, comment, news reporting, or teaching; it should not be the complete work but rather just parts of it; and it cannot supersede it or diminish the profits of the original work (disclaimer: my own short version, I’m not a lawyer – consult a lawyer for proper advise).

Now, in the days of the Internet sometimes the way a law is written is lagging behind the realities of the day. Is ‘pinning’ a single image from another webpage with a link back to the original source (the most common form of sharing content via Pinterest), with the ability of ‘liking’, ‘commenting’, or ‘repinning’ it covered under fair use. One certainly could make the argument. The image is being highlighted in the form of a commentary, except that it’s mostly visual, implied, and without words (well, technically Pinterest does require a short prhase to be added to each pin). And the action of pinning is purely editorial, not for the purpose of commercial gain off that particular image – not counting the ability of Pinterest to monetize traffic of the site as a whole.

Also, the very nature of Pinterest is the display of 3rd party images. As a consumer of Pinterest I’m quite clear that the people pinning images are usually not the owner or originator of the images, and that they’ve been shared under the premise of fair use. No claim or perception to the contrary is ever made by the pinner or the site itself.

Of course as with many laws, a savvy lawyer can make the opposite argument as well.

In a more practical way, looking at most of the images that one can find on Pinterest, those images have already been published on the web (presumably under legal terms and usage). Pinterest is simply amplifying the visibility of that original publication to a broader audience which may have otherwise not seen it. That amplification is clearly highlighted in the fact that in December of 2011 Pinterest drove more traffic to retail websites than LinkedIn, YouTube, and Google+ combined. Pinterest in many ways does not constitute a separate publication of the image, or a separate usage.

An interesting side note is that if the original usage of the photograph had a usage license attached to it, which restricts geography, time, circulation, etc. there may now be unaccounted for extended usage that would thus go uncompensated. But that would depend on the very specific usage terms of each image.

As a photographer and marketer I look at Pinterest in a more positive way. It’s an ability to amplify specific visual messages in an age that is already over saturated with visual stimulation. As a small business and entrepreneur it’s a constant struggle to stand out and be seen by people who may be your next client. If they don’t know you exist or what you do, you don’t have an opportunity to have a conversation that could convert into business. Being on people’s radar is the very first step. And Pinterest is a great tool to have in your toolbox. Of course it’s not a panacea, and it can only be one element in a broader strategy.

Pinterest allows me to communicate with others in two ways – I can communicate what visually stimulates me, and is an expression of my visual style. In pinning inspiring fashion images, photography, designs, and products, others can see how I think visually. That may create interest that can lead to a conversation. At the same time, others in my network can pin some of my work already published on the Internet, and highlight my work to people who may have otherwise not seen it, again possibly leading to a conversation.

To deal with the concern about copyright, the best defense is not to keep my images under lock and offline, where nobody can see them. But to properly register their copyright and within reason to watch out for unauthorized uses and infringements. And when we look at unauthorized uses, it really only matters where the unauthorized use is in any significant commercial nature where my own financial loss is big enough to be worth the time to fight it. Keeping in mind that my time is valuable as well.

Coming back to Trey’s post on Stuck in Customs, I do not subscribe to the Creative Commons doctrine, or giving work away for free. That is an entire separate discussion and issue, and by mixing both in the same post, Trey has clouded the conversation on Pinterest unnecessarily.

That wraps up my larger thinking on the topic. A few more detailed and technical notes:

First of all, most creatives I know have collected swipe files, torn out pages from magazine, and assembled both electronic and physical mood boards for as long as images and print have been around. Except usually the audience for those has been somewhat limited, and it was never public. On a purely legal way, many of these uses are also in the same gray zone of copyright and fair use, but it has been largely accepted or ignored. I think Pinterest falls into the same category but in the age of the Internet and instant communication.

Now a lot of what I said above assumes that the images on Pinterest have in fact been ‘pinned’ from another public website, which appears to be true for the vast majority of them. However, Pinterest does allow for the uploading of images as well. I think that is unfortunate, because it opens the door for more questionable image sharing. If Pinterest were to limit pinning to images from public websites, they would draw a much clearer line. And people wanting to pin their own images, would certainly be free to post them online in one of many different ways and then pin them from there.

Also, looking at how the Pinterest website has been implemented, from a purist way, it would be preferable if all their pages truly would refer to the original image via a link, rather than retaining their own copy. That would reinforce the fact that Pinterest is nothing but a reference rather than a copy of the work. And if the original owner were to remove the image from the reference page, so would the image on Pinterest. However, I understand that building the site that way would make for a very uneven user experience, and subject pages to long load times. They thus do create a copy of the image that is maintained by Pinterest. It may be nice if they would verify the status of the original image from time to time and update the copy accordingly.

As you can tell by now, I think Pinterest is largely a site that is a valuable marketing tool for creatives. And while it lives in a legal gray zone, innovation and success has never been found by always playing it safe and never taking a risk, as Seth Godin reminds us regularly. Sometimes boundaries have to be pushed and old rules have to be updated. But with that comes an obligation to be respectful and not play fast and loose. That goes for the folks behind Pinterest, and for those using the site.

It’s a fine line to walk…

Update [2/20/2012]

There’s an interesting blog post on the legality of Pinterest which quotes an IP attorney: http://www.businessinsider.com/pinterest-illegal-faq-2012-2.

I think that’s an interesting perspective. But I’m not sure that it gives Pinterest the full benefit of the doubt – it just shows how an attorney would argue against Pinterest if they were to choose to. The two arguments that need closer examination are the ‘entirety’ argument, and the ‘commercialization’.

On the entirety – and this is the perspective of photos I’ve pinned or seen others pin: While of course the whole photo is pinned, and not just a thumbnail, almost all these photos are part of a web page that includes a larger story. It may be one image from a fashion editorial, it may be one look from a summary of a fashion week runway show, it may be one food shot of a food photographer’s blog post, it may be one interior design look from an online magazine or store. The point is, there’s almost always more to where that image comes from, and there is at least in some cases a point in clicking on the image and going to the page where it came from to see the rest of the story. So the claim that Pinterest inherently always copies work in its ‘entirety’ is as much a stretch as Pinterest being fair use is.

And then on to the commercialization, and the quoted Google case. I think there has to be clear line between the website (and it’s traffic) being commercialized vs. an individual photo. In the quoted case against Google the plaintiff was selling access to the photos. Google providing free access to the photo clearly impacted the plaintiff’s potential commercial gain from the photo.

In the case of Pinterest, presumably all the images which can be pinned have to be publicly accessible (unless they’re uploaded, which is a different use case). I haven’t tested yet whether pinning an image that is either behind a paywall or in a personalized view of a page can be pinned? Either way Pinterest would be well served to prevent such cases. And of course, my argument above that a reference rather than copy of the image would go a long way of making this all much cleaner.

Also, the vast majority of images I’ve seen being pinned are not images for sale, but editorial or promotional images. That is a major consideration when assessing the impact on gain from an image as impacted by fair use. Many of these images are meant to be seen by as many people as possible in the correct context.

Maybe if I have some spare time, I’ll do some sleuthing how the web traffic for Pinterest works in terms of the website owner. If the ‘pinning action’ is well defined in the traffic, it would be easy to write code to block Pinterest if one was so inclined. That would also answer the question on the public/private access of photos. As a matter of fact, in the Google case, any website owner knows that Google bot crawls the web. If you want to keep content behind a paywall, it’s your job to blog crawl traffic. Keeping the backdoor wide open, is a bit ignorant, or may have in fact been a plan to lure paying traffic. One always has to explore the motivations of the players.

New Demo Reel

2012-02-13T06:43:00.001-08:00

I just put together a new demo reel of my work behind the video camera in 2011/2012. It’s a short version – limited to 30s of content. We have the our local annual ASMP slideshow event coming up, and each member gets 45s of content to display still images and motion content. A 30s demo reel leaves me 15 seconds for still images of my work.

This demo reel doesn’t contain all of my work, but some of the most interesting visual moments in terms of lighting, camera work, and action captured. Actually having a timeline was a nice forcing function to edit it down to the most poignant elements.

This is the first year that we’re including motion in a nod to the changes in the industry. I’ve been a big proponent of this change on the board, and ended up with the task of compiling all the submissions for the slideshow. While it will be a lot of work, I actually look forward to it.

Penny Wise & Pound Foolish

2012-01-26T15:37:00.001-08:00

We live in interesting times in the photography industry. On the plus side we have a large influx of young (not in term of age, but in term of industry experience) talent with enormous enthusiasm and new creative outlook. People ready to adopt new technologies, try something without being bound by conventional wisdom, or because it’s always been done like that.

On the downside we have a large influx of people with limited business experience and who work in this industry not for their primary income. People ready to work for free, people working at rates which undermine sustainable business practices, people skipping some critical aspects of the business and the service provided to our clients – insurance, release, licensing, tax collection, etc. The fact that many don’t derive their primary income from the industry, means the industry has become very much a case of competing against a subsidized competition – just like the international trade in some other industries.

Yesterday I had the pleasure to present to one of our local business networking groups on the topic of commercial photography. I called the presentation ‘How To Use Professional Visuals To Promote Your Business’.

The presentation focused on all the ways businesses, small and large, use visuals to promote their business and their product – from online presence, e-commerce, magazine, print, promo, and store front displays. Alongside with various marketing statistics why engagement rates of content with images and video is so much higher – such as the fact that customers who viewed video on Onlineshoes.com are 45% more likely to convert. And the engagement rate of a FB post is almost 3x on a post with an image as post with just a link. Then I covered many of the benefits a professional photographer can provide, and the trade-offs of DIY vs. hiring a professional, such as hidden costs, extra liability, and lost opportunity.

Overall it was very well received and several attendees commented on that they wanted more information and that it made them think. And I made it clear that there’s no right or wrong answer, but that there are quite a few factors that needed to be considered in order to make an informed decision.

While doing it yourself or asking a friend with a camera to do it for you, may sound like a good savings, very often it is penny wise and pound foolish.

A better way of looking at this, is that the general accepted guidance for any business is that it should set between 10-15% of its revenue aside as a marketing budget. Companies trying to grow more aggressively may up that rate, while ones barely hanging on, may do just 5%. Then, once your overall marketing budget is established, it’s a good idea to figure out a percentage of that, that will be spent investing in visual assets – photography and video. I would say at least 10%, but it may need to be higher depending on the nature of your business and marketing.

Another area where people are penny wise and pound foolish is when they think they’re getting a great deal because someone is willing to do the work for free. It’s penny wise, because they get something without paying for it. But it’s pound foolish because they will likely not get the best work, expose themselves to extra risk, and undermine the future of their vendor network.

Someone wiling to work for free is either brand new to the business, and may not yet have the experience to deliver, or they’re not very serious about their business. If one can afford to take a chance, that may be an ok trade-off, because sometimes one get a re-do with someone paid properly, if the free version didn’t work out. A trade-off of saving vs. the time lost. But sometimes a do-over is not possible if it’s a unique opportunity, a one-time event, or if other sunk cost is involved.

Anyone willing to work for free is less likely to have a properly setup business, proper insurance coverage, and many other infrastructure aspects – like backing up your data after the photo shoot, show up with a backup plan in case there’s a gear failure, etc. Last but not least, if they don’t get paid, they have very little skin in the game, and the no-show rate of free talent is significantly higher than that of a professional.

But where it is most pound foolish, is that it undermines the vendor network. Any business has to rely on many vendors over time to provide it with a myriad of service and infrastructure. You need these vendors to be experienced, stable, and available when the need arises. That means all these vendors need to have enough paid work to stay in business, and stay in business over time in order to refine their experience and skill. Every time someone thinks they made a good business decision because they got some free work, they made it less likely that they will find someone to do that same work a few months and a few years down the road. It’s an ecosystem that exists over a long period of time, not just in the moment.

And that ecosystem doesn’t only provide spot services, but also additional creativity through prolonged collaborations. After it appeared for many years that the age of the staff photographer was over, New York Magazine recently hired a staff photographer, primarily because it provided a framework for creative collaboration and better results than the alternatives (via APE).

The conventional wisdom is that any major skill has to be exercised about 10,000 before it is mastered. For photography that means doing something for about a minimum of 5 years full-time. Full-time is only feasible if it pays a living wage, otherwise it has to be subsidized and done part-time, which lengthens the time easily to 15-20 years.

Approaching a business like a politician – with a horizon never exceeding the next election cycle – is a poor plan. Seth Godin had an excellent write-up the other day about all the things we can learn from politicians and how not to act in the real world: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2012/01/learningleadership.html.

Another popular reference on the topic is the project triangle – which does apply to all types of projects, not just our industry: of the three criteria “good”, “fast”, “cheap” – you can pick any two but never all three.

But rather than ranting in frustration like many do online and offline, there is a real need for professional organizations, such as ASMP, to step up and educate these younger industry players to stop them from making poor decisions. The market will always make it hard to resist the penny wise and pound foolish behaviors on the demand side, so it’s best to educate and improve the supply side to prevent them from fueling the fire that’s burning down the house.

Updated Website Design – The Cycles of Clutter

2012-01-26T07:00:00.001-08:00

I just finished a redesign of my own website. My last design had served me well for about 18 months and a few things had changed that required tweaks.

Which made me think of the cycles of clutter on web sites. It seems we always start out with a fresh design and really like it. And then over time we get ideas of things to do, and we keep adding on, and we add something else. And before you know it, the whole thing is a cluttered mess in need of a Spring Clean – kind of like a garage or a basement.

Over time I had added to my previous design blog posts, and social links, and a Twitter feed widget, and social engagement, and on and on and on.

But what always bugged me is that the images, and after all I’m in the business of selling great images, was becoming a less and less central part of the site. And the fact that the old site used a static layout that left much real estate on the screen blank instead of putting the image front and center.

So the most overriding criteria for the new website was that it had to feature images front and center, at the maximum screen real estate, with the least amount of distractions. As it goes for a good image – edit, edit, edit; which often means make it simple, remove unneeded stuff.

The other thing I wanted to incorporate was a design that put the image galleries back on the same host. On my old site, only the home page images were local, but the rest was hosted through slideshowpro.net. They’ve served me well, but having two hosts made me subject to two separate set of outages and maintenance issues.

And finally I wanted to take the time to play with some of the latest web design trends and tools, so I could stay up to date (after all I have a long technology and web/e-commerce background). So the new site needed to use responsive design, HTML5, jQuery, and seamlessly work on mobile devices and touch interfaces.

After a few weeks of working on it on my spare time, the main site is live now. It has a couple of cool features that I dig:

The responsive grid which automatically adjusts to the screen size, giving maximum space to the center stage that features my work. You can resize the window from a full 1920x1200 to iPhone size and the layout keeps up with that. Every page only has a single adaptive HTML file, enabled by media queries.
At the smaller screen sizes on an iPhone, the page dynamically adapts its layout. The bulkier graphic menu disappears and is replaced with a drop down menu above the main stage. Easier to navigate on a small screen, and keeping precious pixels for use by the image.
The image galleries detect touch devices and adjust navigation. The same gallery allows for click based navigation on a desktop, but switches at runtime to touch based navigation on an iPhone or iPad.
The site automatically picks a image resolution that gives maximum quality on a large screen, but loads fast on an iPhone. It does so by keeping three sets of images and at runtime deciding which one to load. Also images for the most part lazy load with proper feedback and avoids the long spinning donut on white background.
It’s all written with latest jQuery plugins. No Adobe Flash code or other incompatible BS, and fully SEO compliant. And while the code is HTML5, it uses extra plugins to be backwards compatible to older browsers.
I still keep extra content on the site, to help a bit with SEO and to provide extra depth for those who are interested – such as some of my editorials and lookbooks. But they’re layered in a set of dialogs linked with sleek icons.
A nice clean About page that doesn’t follow all the old and tired photographer templates.
And a bit of a brand gimmick – on my promo materials I have started placing my logo in a way that it overlaps the images. I’ve played around with CSS styling to accomplish the same on my layout, giving a consistency between my online and print brand appearance.

There are still a few more tweaks to make. I want to add some of my videos to the site instead of keeping them separate, but use some of the same icon and dialog overlay technique. And I need to put a bit more content in a few places. But overall I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out.

I’d love to hear feedback if you check it out.

Snow Day in Seattle

2012-01-20T10:58:00.001-08:00

Seattle is always an interesting city when it comes to winter weather. It’s infrequent enough, and has it’s set of terrain challenges, that it never really is prepared and everything simply shuts down. This year we lost an entire week due to snow, ice, power outages, school closures, and a host of issues.

These are some pictures I took while walking around town during the power outage.

Danielle

2012-01-14T11:07:00.001-08:00

These are some of the images from a recent agency test with Danielle, who is which TCM’s plus size board.

Credits: Danielle C (model @ TCM), Shyn (hair & make-up)

Why Do We Take Photos?

2012-01-03T07:37:00.001-08:00

A blog post by Bret Doss triggered me to think about this question: Why Do We Take Photos?

Do we take photos because we want to share them, or do we take the photos for ourselves, or for someone else?

I think each person’s reason an intention will be different based on their own journey in life and the role photography plays for them. And there’s no right or wrong answer to the question. We all take photos for a reason, and it doesn’t have to be the same. But it is an interesting question to ponder.

Clearly sharing of photos is a popular activity judging by the ubiquity of photos on the web, and the proliferation of photo sharing sites like flickr, or watching your average new-age photographer’s FB stream and blog. Which matter of fact is in contrast to gatherings of photographers like last night’s ASMP board meeting, where the need to share, or social media trends are much less prevalent.

There are three general motivations which come to mind:

There is the aforementioned Sharer, those who subscribe to ‘Sharing is one of the prime movers, the motivators for making the photograph’. That probably should be divided into those who share the photo because they want to share the moment that was captured in the photo (the age old family vacation photo – now replaced by iPhone and FB); and those who want to share the fact that they caught a moment in camera perfectly (the flickr generation of photographers and the workshop junkies).

Sharing the photo is what ultimately delivers the emotional validation and payback for all the effort and investment. The fact that her photo ‘like’ count ticks up, that others rewarded her for the fact that she took that photo, the ‘nice work’ comments gathered, that validate that she can call herself a ‘photographer’.

There is the Artist, those who take images because they ‘have to’. The motivation is the process, the ability to do it, and joy of the craft. Of course the images do get seen by others, but the image libraries may contain hidden gems, sub-bodies of work not exhibited, projects that got worked on for years but aren’t finished yet, or not good enough yet. Creating images is a lifestyle for the artist, a purpose for being.

The seeing of the artist’s work is mainly driven by others, who have become the connoisseurs of the artist’s work and create demand for its visibility. It’s more of a pull process as opposed to a push process of the sharer.

There is the Producer, the commercial shooter, who does enjoy the process and the work, but whose primary motivator is delivering an image someone else needs, and doing so to perfection. But if there’s no need for an image , or an external spec of what needs to be captured, no image will be taken.

Most producers will share images as part of promotional activities. But where and how they share images differs quite a bit from the sharer.

Of course there are blends. One may be a producer in food photography, but an artist in landscape or travel.

Whether someone is a sharer, an artist, or a producer, also largely depends on the role photography plays in life. The proliferation of the sharer in recent years is mostly a side effect of the rapid growth of the hobbyist category which far outnumbers the professionals when it comes to numbers. Since the hobbyist often has no large scale production ecosystem they’re part of, this is out of the question. And many enjoy photography as a hobby or additional activity in life, a creative outlet to their engineering or office day jobs. But they don’t tick like the archetypical artist who lives for the art.

Where do I find myself in this? I definitely started out as a sharer, and did all those typical things. But as I switched from photography as a creative outlet to turning this into my career, I’ve found myself somewhere between the artist and the producer. As a commercial photographer, there is definitely an aspect where what I shoot is driven by what people need. I try to solve people’s visual problems, not just create images in order to do so.

But I also find that creating images is a huge part of how I think and function nowadays, and the ability to create shots that satisfy me is important to me. Sharing them beyond the subject of the image, or the team that was part of creating them, is less relevant to me.

I’m content to sit in a room with 15 other photographers, some of which have careers of 40+ years in the business, and discuss the issues of the business of photography for several hours, during which time no one felt the urge to share a single image. Something hard to imagine at a photo walk or new age photo gathering, where it would be unusual to go 5 minutes before either a camera or an iPhone comes out for a show-and-tell.

A Look Back At What I Did in 2011

2011-12-25T11:15:00.001-08:00

Editorials & Lookbooks

Working With Models & Creative Talent

Product Photography

Street Photography

Portraits

Shows & Events

Food

Motion

Gail Mooney–Opening Our Eyes

2011-11-30T22:35:00.001-08:00

We just wrapped up a 2 evening ASMP event here in Seattle focused on the business of video and anchored around the work of Gail Mooney and her recent feature length documentary “Opening Our Eyes”.

Just as a bit of background – Gail Mooney, one of ASMP’s current national board members and very accessible photographers online, has been in the visual business for a long time, originally as a still photographer, but also for the last 12 years as a hybrid still/motion photographer. She has produced many smaller video and film projects over the years. Last year she set out on a journey with her daughter and travelled 6 continents in 99 days, filming the stories of 11 people who chose to make a difference in their own unique ways, from providing medical services in rural South America, to orphan care in Nepal, and unique therapies in South America and Eastern Europe. Each story wonderful in it’s own right and as a combined story arch. At the moment Gail is working through the film festival circuit and sorting out different distribution options.

We spent the first evening listening to Gail talk about the business of video from a still photographers point of view, and how the world is changing where the neither the camera nor the format matters, but really what we become are visual producers with a diverse and complex toolbox. The second evening we enjoyed seeing the full movie screened at a 100 seat movie theater on a the big screen.

There were a number of great take away from both evenings, all very positive and enjoyable:

There is tremendous opportunity for still photographers by migrating into a hybrid business model. But in the process we’re truly finding a new business model rather than adopting old film based business models, because of the mindset we have grown up in. Such as retaining ownership of the content and licensing it, rather than simply working for hire. It change the whole relationship and approach.
It was enjoyable to have a full two evenings of wide ranging conversations without being dragged into the otherwise ever-present gear debate. Apart from maybe 2-3 questions, the type of camera, and all the other details were not a topic of discussion. It was about the content, and it was about the business. Refreshing.
It was great to see the movie on the big screen – both because of the production circumstances, the fact that it was a full 76 minute feature and not just a 5 min webisode or short. And it was interesting to see the details of the quality – where it worked, and where it didn’t.
It was particularly interesting to see a feature length movie done by some with a still photography background. While the HDDSLRs have brought many indie-film makers into the mix, they still come from a film making background, not a still photography background.
It was very educational to hear all the process and challenges Gail had to go through to make the movie and how to market it afterwards.
And in the end, it was a great cause and a great story Gail told with the film. As she remarked during the lengthy Q&A, one of the challenges coming back home was to turn the TV on and see all the negativity, the arguing, and the lack of getting anything done. It’s hard enough to tolerate that just living here, but seeing it on the backdrop of her story makes the contrast even more stark.

If you do have a chance to see one of the preview screenings, it’s definitely worth going to.

All Your Communication Styles

2011-11-28T10:21:00.001-08:00

Being in business means effectively communicating with a wide range of people. It’s not hard to see a debate in an online forum on whether you should e-mail or call people, or people that just say Twitter isn’t for them, or peers running around with older style (i.e. non-smart) phones.

What I’ve found is that every person has their preferred communication style, or a short list they prefer: in-person, phone, e-mail, text, Facebook, Twitter. And often these communication styles can be attributed to two factors: generation and work environment.

There are definitely some generational patterns when it comes to communicating. The generation before me was primarily a phone generation, because that was all they had (well, there was the snail mail, but that is largely gone for everyday mail, as evidenced by the decline of the USPS). My own generation is mostly the e-mail generation. We were the first to get e-mail, and we’re really comfortable with it. Text/SMS and Facebook is the style of choice for the younger generation. My kids rarely use e-mail, but they send over 6,000 text messages in a month.

Recently I sent out a newsletter which had some event details for an organization I belong to. One of our older members had to call me and a few others to find out the details. She’s long retired, but still active and has a wealth of knowledge. But her e-mail access is limited to her visits to the public library, so it will be delayed and very much hit & miss.

On the other end of the spectrum, I work with many creatives – models, stylists, make-up artists, who may or may not have an e-mail account, and if they have one only check it once a month. If I need to get a hold of them to schedule a job, SMS is my best friend. And sometimes, since they tend to change phones semi frequently, being friend with them on FB may be a more reliable point of contact. A FB connection is safe from carrier changes, relocations, and other life changes. The same holds true for business connections – stay in touch via LinkedIn, because that will remain constant across employment changes, as opposed to someone’s work e-mail.

People who work in office environments are in meetings a lot and hate phone calls. Their voice mail is perpetually full, mostly because they rarely have a free moment to check it. But e-mail is less disruptive - they can catch it on the way to the elevator, or in a boring meeting. So e-mail usually trumps a phone call. But then people also get gobs and gobs of e-mail, so if I really need to get a hold of them, texting them usually gets their attention quickly as long as I don’t abuse it. If I need to stand out with someone I don’t know yet, I do rely on direct mail. People get less of it, and are more apt to at least open it, then yet another unsolicited e-mail.

And then there is IM. Some are still on old style Windows Messenger, or god forbid, AIM. But FB chat, especially with its new seamless integration with messages, has become a key communication tool for a segment of my network.

And not to forget Twitter. It does fit less into this hierarchy of communication models, but appears to be it’s own circle of people who are particularly socially engaged. It’s definitely effective to stay on the radar of people who are also active Twitter users, and I can name several people in my network who I rarely catch via e-mail or phone, but have regularly back-and-forths via Twitter. And I’ve built new connections and arranged first-time in-person meetings through a Twitter exchange.

In the end, nothing builds a connection and rapport like an in-person meeting and a cup of coffee. But it’s time consuming and requires commitment from both sides. So it’s a great way to strengthen a connection you built elsewhere, or catch up with someone you know well and haven’t seen in a while.

So what’s the take away? If you are in business – for yourself or as part of a larger business, whether you like it or not, you will be more successful if you are well versed in all of these communication styles and have a authentic presence there. If you don’t, you will miss out on opportunities or fall of people’s radar quickly.

Being in business means it’s my job to stay connected and solve people’s problems with the least amount of extra hassle for them. The best way of doing this, is to reach them in their preferred communication style. And at the end of the day, it actually can be quite a bit of fun.

A Different Creative Process

2011-11-20T15:50:00.001-08:00

In adding video (or motion images) to my work, I’ve found it to be a very different creative process than working in still imagery. Not necessarily better or worse, just different.

When working with a still camera most of the creative process happens before the image is taken, with some amount of retouching to finalize the image. In some genres that creative process is somewhat ad-hoc and relies simply on ‘seeing’, in other genres it requires significant pre-visualization and coordination of location, talent, models, lighting, etc. But it still all happens prior to the capture. Once the shutter clicked it is all over. And personally I would say that retouching, even in genres where it is significant – such as in fashion and beauty, is only to some degree a creative process, but more often a tool to overcome imperfections of the camera or nature.

When it comes to video and motion images, a very significant portion of the creative process happens after the shooting is over and hours of footage get condensed into a few minutes of final product. Of course there has to be lots of planning ahead of time – a concept, a shooting script, location, lighting, etc. And on set a lot more has to be coordinated with the inclusion of camera movement, sound, etc. But the story arc really comes together at the editing bench, and often more time is spent editing than shooting.

Case in point – a few weeks ago I worked on a music video to capture a performance of ‘Alemande’ – a Partita by JS Back, played on the Violin. We spent a couple of hours spread over a few weeks planning the production, creating a shooting script, and finalizing talent and location. We then spent about 8 hours on set to shoot most of the footage, plus an extra 2 hours on a different day for our second location.

That was followed by 2 solid days of work to produce the first edit of the final video – getting the right sequence, synchronizing sound, color grading, etc. We then shared that version with a few folks for feedback. That feedback turned up a few issues in our edit – folks didn’t understand some of the elements, where confused by a few others. After reflecting on this, we spent another day and a half on an updated version that addressed the feedback that seemed relevant. The new version simplified some elements that didn’t translate well, changed the sequence to have better continuity, changed the color grading to better fit the story, and addressed a few technical issues. Overall the second version is almost like a different take on the same subject.

In a still photo, you have limited options if the end result doesn’t hit the mark. You might turn it into B&W, crop slightly different, maybe clone a detail out. But that’s about it. In a video, you can tell almost an entirely different story just by adjusting the editing decisions.

So in total the split between pre – on set – and post for this project was 10% – 30% – 60%. And we made most of the important decisions during that editing phase. Of course, the earlier phases are critical – because if you didn’t shoot what you need in edit, it’s hard to fix. And to be efficient in shooting you need to plan exactly what you think you will need, together with some reasonable options and backup plans.

Overall that is one of the reasons I actually enjoy mixing still and motion work. They are somewhat related, but otherwise quite different animals, and that keeps it fresh and challenging.

The other day I saw a relevant quote about the complexity of film making:

"All the aspects of film making involve a myriad of small details that, take as a whole, seem impossibly complex. But no single piece of equipment, procedure, or technique is really complicated – no one thing that cannot be explained and understood in 10 minutes. Making movies is the artful application of millions of relatively simple details.”

The Creative Lifecycle

2011-11-17T07:06:00.001-08:00

Photo by Tom Reese

Last night I attended the ASMP Seattle Pub Night which featured Tom Reese, long-time staff photographer of the Seattle Times. His presentation was on a personal project to document the Duwamish River, a Seattle industrial area, EPA Superfund clean-up site, and a community the Duwamish Tribe calls home.

Leading into the presentation we heard from James Rasmussen, coordinator of the Duwamish River Cleanup Coalition and long-time Duwamish tribal leader, on the history of the Duwamish and the challenges ahead.

The slideshow had many powerful images showing the juxtaposition of modern lifestyle, old industry, legacy of our industrial revolution, and how it all fits together in a very small space. Tom has the images of the slideshow on his website.

Apart from being interested in the topic at hand – the Duwamish cleanup, something that I have heard off over the years living in Seattle and being semi-involved in various aspects of community planning and environmental issues, primarily through my work on the local Planning Commission and development code updates dealing with storm water run-off and water quality management.

I was also struck by the story arc that was developing here – many of us are involved in the creation of something – whether it’s a creative industry like photography, a consumable industry, retail, manufacturing, building. But very little of our attention and thinking goes into the 2nd part of the lifecycle of everything we do, the post-consumption and after math. No matter what you do, there is always something that has to happen down the road. And usually it’s not particularly exciting, or even mysterious like the end of the human lifecycle. And so we take little interest or feel uncomfortable dealing with it.

But it’s a very important part of the creative process, and in some ways I think we could be better creators and more responsible members of our environment if we dealt with the destruction more often than with the creation. That’s what intrigued me about the image above – what is going through people’s mind as they literally walk away and leave behind scenes like this with barges, cranes, factory buildings and years of creation, to let rust and time eat away at it. It’s like walking away from a table with food still on the plate, and then not touch the scene for another 75 years, with leftovers rotting and dust collecting.

Sometimes we’re confronted with scenes like this after natural disasters, such as the hurricane in New Orleans or the earthquake in Japan – human influenced, but not human created. And it’s a major news story and people struggle to wrap their mind around it. Interestingly enough, when the problem was created entirely by intentional human action and cannot be blamed on uncontrollable natural events, it’s less of a new story and a lot less comfortable or sexy to talk about.

On the notion that it should be an important part of the creative process – there was a story a few years ago about how a more integrated design process can have profound impacts. The EU initiated new rules that require 90% of cars to be recycled (quoting number from memory here). That posed a challenge – not for all the metals used, but for the 16 different plastics used in car design by one German car brand. Until this new requirement, there was little incentive to think much about the latter part of the lifecycle of all these plastics – they were simply chosen for their design qualities, cost effectiveness, availability, etc. With the requirement that the materials had to be recycled, it didn’t take long for the cars to be redesigned and only use 2 or 3 different plastics vastly simplifying the post consumption life-cycle.

Unless there’s awareness and incentive, the creative process aborts mid lifecycle. And that is unfortunate.

As photographers we often too just feed into the lifecycle, but don’t always, particularly in the commercial arena, get involved in the usage and disposal of our photographs. Yet, sometimes simple choices whether to light an image as high key or low key could have profound environmental impacts if the image gets printed on millions of boxes with non-organic inks.

Are We Making It Too Complicated?

2011-11-09T15:11:00.001-08:00

Pricing commercial photography is almost as much an art as it is a science. Still being somewhat new to this industry, I have an opportunity to take a look with a fresh set of eyes. And though I would like to think that I’m pretty versed on the principles, of course I haven’t seen it all yet.

As I look at my own experiences and the stories I hear from both clients and other industry professionals, I can only ask, are we making it too complex, especially in a much changed landscape and economy?

There actually isn’t one set formula for pricing commercial photography. But the basic principle is to use three core components applied to the overall assignment:

Total Quote = Creative Fee + Usage Fee + Expenses

Where things get complicated is with the Usage Fee, because rather than being a simple number it depends on a lot of factors about time, circulation, industry, image size, etc. For anyone not doing this day in and day out it quickly becomes overwhelming – just just for the photographer but also the clients, and more importantly the prospects. Our job is to solve their needs, not make their day more difficult. Add to that, that with images increasingly used not in print but in many other formats, it’s much harder to be in compliance with Usage Fee restrictions, which may be one of the factors in so many clients asking for a buy-out pricing. Not because they need the extra flexibility, they just want to avoid the overhead and liability down the road, or have their legal departments looking over their shoulder.

There are two goals behind licensing photography via usage fees rather than simply paying a straight fee.

One is that as a photographer we want to retain ownership of the image to realize residual values via re-licensing of the image down the road. However, considering how the stock photography world has evolved, there is a real question whether relicensing is actually viable for the vast majority of photographers out there? Are we holding out for additional value that in today’s reality just doesn’t exist anymore?

The other aspect is that traditionally the value of a photograph is proportional to how the photograph is used. A small photo on a website of a local business has a different value than an image running for a year as a full-page ad of a national brand in several major magazines, even if the amount of skill and effort that has gone into both images is identical. That has lead to some rather large numbers in usage fees.

But does this model really hold, or is it another hold over from times past? It’s easy to argue that companies could easily afford 1% of the budget of a major campaign to go to the photographer who shot the image, even if that ends up being a large number in a different context / $. But that remains an abstract concept, that the market may test to see if it still holds true. The question is, does everybody else who works on that campaign (the graphic designer, the retoucher, the printer – all craftsmen and artists in their own right) also consider getting paid in a percentage, or do they get paid more in relation to prevailing wages of their industry? More than likely the latter.

On the other hand your real estate agent gets paid a percentage. But then he can influence the value of the purchase and thus has an incentive feedback loop. As a photographer in some way we have a lot of input on the success by the virtue that our image makes the visual impact, but it’s not a feedback loop between effort and campaign value, just between effort and failure.

In fact just earlier this week I heard of a big local company taking some work in-house where they could pay a photographer a salary so they wouldn’t have to track or pay considerable usage licensing fees. As long as they have regular in-house work, that may make a lot of sense to them, and photographers insisting on extensive usage may just have priced themselves out of the market. Another large local company gave their catalog business to someone who offered a flat price rather than a complex usage based quote, just to keep things simple, even though the photographer that got it didn’t traditionally shoot catalog and had to go out and buy some gear for the shoot. Those seem to be indications that the tolerance for usage licensing may be waning.

In my own endeavors of bidding jobs in my regional market I definitely have found a disparity between the total price based on industry standard usage licensing and what the market is willing to pay. And if I look at the budgets of these jobs, they certainly support a photographer working on a reasonable day rate, so I can’t say that they’re attempting to lowball everyone. I’ve heard from other professionals that they go back to a day rate and throw in various usage at next to no upsell just to close the deal.

When you calculate your day rate you keep in mind your cost of doing business, your own pay, and the number of days you’re shooting per month. In this economy most aren’t shooting as much as they’d like, but it’s a fallacy to simply change the denominator of your day rate formula. It’s not your client’s problem if you have fewer than 10 shooting days at the moment. And then I do know plenty of local shooters who are too busy attending meetings because they’re solidly booked.

So in the end – is it time to rethink usage licensing and return to a simpler model of a day rate? It would make life simpler for the clients. It would make bidding a job simpler too. Complexity is usually not a good thing, especially if it leads to obscurity or propping up values that are not grounded in physics but rather in mental models. The stock market has gone beyond dividends into derivates so complex few can understand them – one of the core causes of the mortgage crisis that’s hurting all of us today.

That said – I’m not advocating that photographers sell their rights, unless there’s no other option. Licensing has many benefits, among them making it clear who the owner of the work is. But we can retain licensing and keep a much simpler pricing model. Clients would license work they commission for a reasonable day rate for unlimited time and any media, with a reasonable premium if they do want exclusivity. Easy to understand for both sides, low administrative overhead, and a mechanism for protecting the interests of both parties.

As a case in point on the counter argument – an example of relicensing and an occasion where it did work – Andrew Hetherington had shot Bill Clinton for Newsweek, and now one of the images from that shoot was licensed for Bill Clintons latest book cover.

My own take on this: In smaller jobs, I usually quote a slightly higher creative fee but it includes all collateral and public relations use and avoid a separate usage license quote. I do state that if clients use the images for advertising in paid placements that this would require a separate usage fee. Realistically many will only use the images on their websites and small in-house print jobs. The complexity of usage licensing is a big turn-off if they have even heard of it. I still do invoice it as a licensed image with a 2 year time limit, for one because in WA royalties are not subject to sales tax, but retail sales are. And right there the client saves almost 10%. And to qualify as a royalty there have to be restrictions on the usage.

Keeping It Simple

2011-11-06T10:36:00.001-08:00

I did a reassessment of my style of shooting. Often I tend to gravitate to a full editorial style, with complex settings, wardrobe, and locations. It’s a strong style and a lot of fun to shoot. But sometimes something more simple and raw is called for when shooting things like model tests.

So when I had a few extra hours at the studio on Saturday morning, I caught up with Juliana who had just returned home due to the flooding in Thailand and we set up an impromptu shoot. And I really wanted to focus my shooting style on keeping it simple and raw. Just showcasing the model, not telling a whole story. A couple of different looks, two lights max (sometimes just one), and nice variety in what we shot.

And just to keep it fun, I decided to shoot the whole thing on MF film. A mix of Kodak Tri-X B&W, Kodak Porta and one role of Fuji Pro.

Credits: Juliana @ SMG / Lush (model), Nikki (make-up)

Professional Organizations

2011-10-23T22:00:00.001-07:00

This last year I have invested a lot of my energy and time not in random marketing campaigns, but by getting more deeply involved in a number of professional organizations tied to my own line of work, and that of my target clients.

There are a lot of organizations out there to get involved in. Some serve charitable causes, others represent industry segments, some are fairly young, others have a long history. Some that have a long history are still stuck in the past and are fighting to remain relevant, others remain relatively current. Some are more legit than others.

The last few weeks I had a chance to find out if the sales pitch of one of the organizations I’m involved in really holds up. I’m speaking of Fashion Group International (fgi.org), which is a fashion industry non-profit organization, which dates back to 1928, has about 5,000 members world-wide, among them many well known celebrities of the fashion world. It’s purpose is to be a networking organization of fashion professionals, and to help it’s members be more successful in their careers by providing insights and access to other professionals. One of the membership criteria is that you actually work in the industry, and aren’t simply just fascinated by all things fashion.

So when I heard (via Twitter as a matter of fact) that Nordstrom was hosting an event in town with Diane von Fuerstenberg as part of her launch of the new fragrance ‘Diane’, I took the opportunity to put this to the test. I’m on the board of our local chapter in Seattle, and currently in charge of organizing most of our events, among them the monthly Happy Hour, and had just come off putting on our ‘Made In USA’ event with the capable help of Theresa who lined up all the factories we had as speakers.

So I knew from our member directory, that Diane von Fuerstenberg was a FGI member herself, and I had access to her contact information – one of the member benefits. So I wrote her a short and polite e-mail to see if she would consider an appearance for her fellow FGI members while she was in Seattle. She replied in person 10 minutes later, saying that she loved the idea, and copied her admin Luisella to work out the details. A phone call and a couple of e-mails with Luisella, plus a few e-mails with the folks at Nordstrom to sort things out, and we were on the calendar.

So on Wednesday we started our monthly Happy Hour, which so happened to fall on the same calendar day, with a special treat. Members of our chapter got access to the VIP area at the Nordstrom store, and Diane came over and greeted us, tied one of her ribbons on each members wrist, spent a few minutes in conversations, a few photo ops, and autographed bottles of her fragrance for those that bought one right there. We had a lot of smiling faces that evening. We wrapped up the evening by going across the street and enjoying some nice food and wine, and great conversations.

FGI after all delivered on its promise of connecting industry professionals.

The moral of the story – you can spend your marketing efforts in many different ways. There are the mass e-mails, the promo cards, the cold calls, the crowded networking events to hand out business cards. Professional organizations, and building a stronger network of relationships is a time consuming but very rewarding way of marketing yourself – it takes time, you absolutely have to be authentic, you may have to invest extra effort, you have to do your research, but you get to really know people along the way, you may find access that a cold call or a business card will never get you.

Of course I also do some of these other things. But from all the marketing I do, being deeply involved in a few relevant organizations has been my most favorite and also most successful for my business.

Images courtesy of Danielle Bortone-Holt (a fellow FGI board member)

J.S. Bach–Alemande

2011-10-21T15:11:00.001-07:00

This video was a collaboration between several members of the ASMP Seattle chapter. Geoff Manasse, a musician and photographer, had the story in his mind which he wanted to tell with this video.

Geoff was the producer and director of the video. Several others came together to round out the team – I handled the photography, lighting, and editing of the video. Heidi Dillehunt handled the sound, and Raquell Dennett was on hand on set. Victoria Parker who plays the violin. The video was filmed on location in South Seattle.

As usual, every project is a source of learning of what went well, and what you want to do differently next time. Overall it was a great project, and the end result met our expectations.

Fall Menu Update

2011-10-18T08:51:00.001-07:00

One of my favorite caterers in town, Shooby Doo Catering, is working on a Fall update to their menu. Last night I worked with them to photograph the new dishes and also taste and give feedback. There were some absolute winners in the line-up, such as the tuna w/ Jalapeno, and the bacon wrapped dates filled with a blanched almond. Others needed a bit more refinement of the flavor.

IFT Seattle 2011

2011-10-15T12:22:00.001-07:00

Last night I went to IFT Seattle on behalf of FGI Seattle. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but ended up really enjoying the show. As usual some designers were better than others, but there definitely was some talent on display.

IFT was wrapped around the Filipino History Month and Safe Our Industry Act. While I sympathize with the changing times in the global economy, you can never outrun cheap labor through policies. You have to find a way to create value that cannot be replaced simply through cheaper labor. There are countless other countries and regions that had to go through this exercise, and go through it still today.

From the six designers that showed their collections, I was most impressed by Vania Romoff and Chris Jasler of Jail Jeans. Jail jeans showed both womens and mens looks, and with a consistent but broad range and nice attention to detail. A few fit issues on the back of the mens jeans but those were minor overall. And some unique shoes for the female models (see above), that didn’t quite make walking easy.

Here are some out takes:

Images above for Vania Romoff.

Images above for Kenneth Chua.

Images above for Jail Jeans.

A more complete set of images from all the designers is on my FB profile: IFT Seattle 2011 Album

Website Imagery

2011-10-12T09:41:00.001-07:00

Yesterday I had the pleasure of working with Tannya Bernadette – a personal stylist and wardrobe stylist. We’ve worked together on numerous occasions over time, from photo shoots to videos.

Tannya is updating her website and needed more up to date images. We picked The Finerie as the location for most of the images, since that is one of the boutiques Tannya works with closely for her sourcing. And we also brought along a model for some of the shots to give Tannya someone to interact with and to portray settings of a typical styling and shopping session.

Thanks to Tanya Friberg at The Finerie to let us shoot there again.

Portland Fashion Week 2011

2011-10-10T16:21:00.001-07:00

Last Friday I traveled South to enjoy Portland Fashion Week and get a sense of how it differs from the show fare we get here in Seattle. A super cool venue in a working ship yard on Swan Island, pretty decent production, and a sold out house. Now the fashion side of it was unfortunately a bit more of a mixed bag.

Here are some takes from the runway.

And since we hung out back stage before the show, here are some pairings of several of the models in hair & make-up and the final runway look:

And sometimes it’s easy to spot who is a model backstage – just look for the tallest people in the room…

Cupcakes

2011-09-27T20:50:00.001-07:00

Taking shots of a variety of cup cakes for a promotion. Somehow I gravitate to the low angle product composition as more interesting, brining the subject up close and personal, instead of the everyday angles.

Volorean

2011-09-23T06:59:00.001-07:00

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of another collaboration with Banchong, a Seattle menswear designer. We talked about various concepts and quickly settled on wanting to shoot two male models representing each other’s alter ego.

Banchong was able to source wardrobe for the second model from Parisian designer Ashon Sylvester, who works under the Volorean logo. An incredible set of leather pants and jackets with shoulder embellishments representing face masks. It was the perfect fit for the darker personality, and we matched it with an appropriate location.

The full editorial can be seen on my website: Alter Egos.

Credits: Banchong (styling), Banchong & Volorean (wardrobe), Brian Dean (hair & make-up), Jared Putnam @ SMG and Vedran Jankovic @ SMG (models)

Sometimes You Have To Fake It

2011-09-16T20:53:00.001-07:00

That is professionally of course, and within the integrity rules of the genre you’re working in.

In this case we needed to shoot some swimsuit images on the beach. Difficult enough in Seattle since the beaches don’t look quite like what most people would pick for a beach shot. And then there’s the weather. We actually had a streak of outstanding weather (breaking the record for consecutive days above 80 degrees in Seattle, a somewhat unique record one would only track in this sun-deprived city). But alas, on the day we were shooting the cloud layer refused to burn up.

So time for Plan B. Go into the studio instead and shoot on the green screen. The advantage is that this way we can bring a real beach feel into the shot. But it restricts some of the poses we had in mind (without significant increase of complexity), and it adds to retouch time.

Here’s the original camera capture of this shot. The beach in the picture is from a trip down Malibu beach two years ago. Always helpful to just take some environmental pictures, you never know when they come in handy down the road.

Interactive Business Card

2011-09-09T12:58:00.001-07:00

As I mentioned in my earlier post, I’m updating my business card. Many thanks to all of you who gave me feedback on their favorite photo.

Apart from the photo on the front, the other change was the addition of a QR code, which I had been planning for a while. A few months ago I’ve experimented with QR codes as sticker on the back of my business card and was blown away by the response it created. QR codes are hip right now, and many folks have the scanners on their smart phones and are eager to scan.

In my earlier experiments I used a code that simply linked to my website. But for this round I wanted to do something more elaborate. While my website is designed to work well with smart phones, it’s still kind of smallish when viewed on an iPhone.

To address this I created a custom landing page on my website for the QR code. It senses that the visitor is coming from an iPhone or Android device and displays my contact info in a format specifically designed for the screen size of the iPhone.

That page also has my key contact info in the form of links. So if you want to to add me to your iPhone contacts, all you have to do is hit the link after you scanned my card, and you’re phone knows me.

Try it out – here’s a bigger picture of the QR Code:

New Shoe Images

2011-09-06T06:53:00.001-07:00

It’s not hard to twist my arm when it comes to beautiful shoes – or taking photos of them. That’s obvious from the fact that my business card is built around the photo of a shoe close-up.

Last week we bought some classic and beautiful shoes – a pair of Louboutin pumps and a pair of Prada pumps. And I spent a day with them before they started getting any street wear, giving me an opportunity to upgrade my business card – along with some other changes that have been in the waiting.

I also took the opportunity for a little social poll. I finished six versions of my card with different photos and different layouts, then posted it to my website and asked people to tell me which one they liked most. It’s been interesting to watch the responses.

Here are some of the other versions: