Today many websites are joining in protest of the US Governments SOPA/PIPA bill by blacking out their content and providing links to information about the proposed bills. Among the protestors is Wikipedia which has blacked out its English language pages for the first time ever.  Flickr has also given its members a chance to join in the protest by blacking out their photos for 24hrs as you can see above.

It’s hard for me as a photographer, on one hand I’m in favour of better protection for my own IP, but the heavy handed methods and sneaky introduction of this bill worries me.  For now the bill would only affect users in the US directly, but by censoring and limiting every internet contributor in the US, we’ll all be affected.  It’s also not unforeseeable that, if passed, the US could pressure the Canadian, and in fact any other government to also enact similar laws.

I believe there should be better protection of IP on the internet, especially protection available to those who don’t have the money to bring legal action on their own, but not at the expense of unilateral government controlled censorship.  There’s plenty of ways to bring IP to the internet while minimizing your risk of piracy, Apple has proved it’s possible with iTunes.  Why should I go to the trouble of pirating music when it’s available to me at a click of a button, for a buck a track, anywhere there’s internet.  Companies like Apple and Netflicks have proven that, when offered a product at a reasonable price, people will pay rather than pirate.  The companies lobbying for this bill need to start working with the internet instead of trying to legislate it away.  Please take a second and read the Wiki article on how SOPA/PIPA will affect you, and join the protest in any way you can.

When the mirror-less cameras started coming out a couple years ago, most serious photographers said, “Meh, interesting, but no thanks”. The idea was sound, but the features just weren’t there. The smaller sensor size, and resulting crop factor kept most people sceptical, and the lack of viewfinder scared the rest away. Panasonic made some progress with their G series, but it still wasn’t a serious workhorse; at best the Micro 4/3rds cameras were considered nice snapshot tools to take on vacation when you didn’t want to lug around your Canon or Nikon gear.

The one place they did make friends was in the rangefinder community; Leica fans everywhere had been waiting for a cheap alternative to the M8 or M9 that we could use our vintage glass on but didn’t have to mortgage the house to buy. Again, though, the lack of viewfinder and crop factor was still an issue. Then along came Sony with their Nex line-up. I picked one up to complement my Leica film gear on vacation, and ended up falling in love with it. It’s small, has the same size sensor as my Canon DSLR, handles high-ISO noise very well and has great software focusing aids for when I’m using my manual focus lenses… but it was still just the lesser of evils when it came to a real companion for my rangefinder lenses. Too many of the controls where menu driven, instead of button or dial controlled, and the lack of viewfinder was still a big complaint. Yes, Sony does make a ridiculously expensive electronic viewfinder for some of the NEX cameras (not mine) but it really adds bulk to the camera and looks like it could break off very easily.

Last year Fuji introduced the Fuji X100 and really made photographers take a second look at the company. For years Fuji has been relegated to producing film and P&S cameras no one took very seriously, having abandoned its DSLR line quite a while ago. For once it looked like a camera company really listened to what photographers wanted instead of catering to the consumer “More mega-pixels is always better” mentality that a lot of companies seems to have adopted. The X100 is a large sensor camera with a fixed, fast lens and a great viewfinder. It’s got lots of nice buttons and knobs instead of putting everything in software menus and the vintage styling really sets it apart from the all-plastic cameras that look like they’ll last a year before falling apart. The only real problem was the fixed lens, we all wanted an X100 we could put our own lenses on. And Fuji listened. This week they announced the Fuji X-Pro1, and interchangeable, APS-C sensor camera with a nice line up of fast all metal auto-focus lenses to go with it.

So far the only competitor is the Sony Nex 7, which due to production difficulties is almost impossible to come by right now.  Spec wise the Nex 7 beats the Fuji in almost every way as well as being almost half the price; although the Fuji looks to have the edge in styling, ease of use and of course lens line up.  Fuji’s initial offering of what look to be affordable and fast primes is somethings a lot of professional photographers have been looking for in a mirrorless system.  It’s really going to come down to how Fuji handles the manual focus of 3rd party lenses, and how well their hybrid optical/EVF viewfinder works for me.

Personally, I’m drooling. I’m already trying to figure out what equipment I can sell off to finance one. I don’t think it will replace my Canon set-up for many jobs, but you never know. I’ll probably hold out for a month or so after release to see what the reviews say, but frankly I’m pretty much sold. As long as the auto-focus is reasonably fast and however they’re going to handle manual focusing works well I’ll be queuing up for mine in February.

Last year was a banner year for me; my photography business actually started turning a profit, I started teaching photography and art related courses at a couple different venues and I learned a lot about what it takes to survive as a photographer in the digital age. I’m not saying I’ve been able to implement all the things I’ve learned over the past 365 days, but at least I’ve identified a lot of the changes I need to make if I want to complete the transition from photographer to running a photography business. Here’s a brief rundown of some of the things 2011 taught me, along with some shots from the past year I just finished developing.

Charge What You’re Worth, or Don’t Charge at All

It can be incredibly hard for photographers to transition from hobbyist to professional; since everyone and their dog has a DSLR nowadays and many have decided to “turn pro” without thinking about whether they’re ready for it, or what it’s doing to the photographic business landscape. Before Christmas The Consumerist posted about creative ideas on how to make money for Christmas, one of which was “take your DSLR and start charging friends and relatives for portraits and parties”. Needless to say there was an outcry from professional photographers; this is a bad idea for all concerned. You wouldn’t want everyone who buys a wrench to start advertising plumbing services; jumping into turning a hobby into a business can be a disaster, both financially and personally. Do you have the skills to produce professional work consistently? Do you have the proper contracts and release forms, and know when to use them? Do you have the proper equipment and back-ups of everything if something fails? You can’t reshoot a wedding the next day if your only camera or lens fails and unless you have proper contracts for every job, I guarantee what you expected to shoot and what the client expected to receive are going to be at odds at the job’s end. This could mean loss of pay, loss of friends or even costly lawsuits.

I’m not saying you can’t take pictures for friends and relatives as a hobbyist, just don’t get money involved before you’re ready. And if you are ready, be prepared to charge what you’re worth. One mistake many photographers make is charging discounted rates or working for “exposure”. I covered this in a previous blog post: On The Job – Exposure or Exploitation, give it a read if you feel you’re in that situation. If you have a solid business plan in place and can produce quality work on demand, charge what you’re worth. Once you give a client your time on the cheap or for free, it’s going to be next to impossible to get decent money out of them in the future.

If You’re Going to Blog… Blog!

Around September of last year, I really made an effort to blog more consistently, and for about a month I did. And it worked… like a lot. In one month of posting consistently I had far more views than in almost the whole rest of the year combined, even though the total post volume of September was much lower than the total number of posts for the rest of the year. Posting consistently kept people coming back for more. Unfortunately between moving and Christmas, my posting has severely dropped off in the last few months, something I intend to remedy this year. Coming up with new and relevant posts in volume can be hard. I’ve taken to keeping a notebook on me to jot down ideas wherever I am. Coming up with a posting schedule can also be helpful; giving yourself some structure and deadlines can be motivating, and can break up what seems to be a huge job into smaller manageable chunks.  (Special thanks to Jes, of jeslacasse.com for that tip)

Blog for Others, Not Just For Yourself

Many photo/art blogs can be summed up in three words: “Look at Me!”. It’s all well and good to blog about your work in an attempt to gain exposure and market yourself online, but if all you’re posting about is your images, and asking people to come back regularly just to see more of your stuff, you may as well just stick with putting pictures up on Flickr. Unless your photos are truly amazing and ground breaking all on their own, you need to give people a reason to read your blog.

Why do you read blogs? Take a look at the sites you read the most: if you’re like me, they’re mostly tutorial sites; blogs that teach me how to do things I didn’t know or couldn’t do before. Sure I have the odd photo gallery site in my reader, but they’re few and far between. By far, the most viewed category on my site is my tutorial section, with my post about Stand Development with Rodinal being my most viewed post, accounting for 63% of all hits last year, all by itself. I found a topic I was very familiar with, that hasn’t been covered in a million other places and wrote about it, and the hits continue to roll in. Don’t be afraid to be too specific in your posts, the more niche the better. There’s a billion generic “How to Set Your Aperture” or “Taking Pictures of Pets” posts out there, and chances are at least some of them are done far better than you or I could do. The wheel’s been invented, don’t do it again, but a post about “Taking Pictures of Pets Underwater with Natural Light at Night” probably hasn’t been done. (This is only an example, J B Hildebrand Photography takes no responsibility for midnight cat drownings!) My point is, if you’ve come across a photographic problem and figured out a way to solve it, no matter how obscure, chances are many other people have had that problem too and are Googling away to find a solution right now. Once you get people to your site, they’re likely to browse around and see the other stuff you wanted them to see in the first place.

Put Your Best Foot Forward

Many photographers can get pretty post happy when it comes to their photos. It’s only natural, you’re proud of your work and you want people to look at it. The problem is, not every picture you or I take is necessarily the best we can do or interesting to everyone. By posting too much, you dilute your own talent pool, burying real gems with too many mediocre pictures. It can be very hard to edit yourself; some pictures I’m particularly fond of get very little response from others, and some I almost threw away get tons of hits. One of my goals for this year is to really trim the chaff from my Flickr. I want to make sure that no matter where someone lands in my stream, they’re presented with the best I have to offer. Take a look at the pictures you post and think: “If someone saw only these image(s), how would they judge me as a photographer?” You can’t count on a prospective client to browse your entire photo collection before hiring you, you may have to rely on just a single image, so make every one count.

Don’t Rely On Good Will To Get Paid

When I first started charging for photography I was pretty loose with my billing practices, I provided images to my clients and trusted them to pay up in a timely manner. For the most part it worked, but last year I spent a good deal of time trying to get a check in the mail; in fact I’m still waiting on an outstanding account from almost three months ago. This year I’m going to tighten up my billing practices, get low resolution proofs to the clients in a timely manner and not provide full resolution files until I get paid. I’m also going to start asking for deposits for large jobs. When I wasn’t as busy, a cancelled or rescheduled job wasn’t a big deal, but as things pick up it means I lose money by turning away another job because of a previous booking that’s no longer going to happen. I’m not saying everyone’s out there to cheat you out of a paycheck, in most cases the client fully intends to pay, but once they have their images there’s not as much motivation to hurry up the paperwork. Emails get buried, people get busy with other things and before I know it I’m sending out half a dozen reminder messages a week; and the smaller the check the longer people think you can wait for it. Bottom line is you have to treat people like people and business like business, and keep the two separate.

Above All, Keep Things Fun

It can be hard when you’re starting out not to take every single gig that comes your way, even jobs you don’t really want to do. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not always going to be all fun and games, there will be jobs you just don’t look forward to; but if you’re like me, you got into photography because you love it, not because you just saw the dollar signs. Start doing too many jobs just for the money, and one day you’ll wake up and find you hate your job just as much as the boring career you got into photography to avoid.

Take a look at the contracts you’re taking: have you become bored with jobs you used to enjoy? Are you taking money into account before enjoyment when choosing contracts? Do you just need a break from photography? When photography becomes more work than pleasure for me, I find I stop taking pictures for fun in my time off and my creativity goes out the window, that’s when my work starts to suffer. Photography is not going to be a huge money maker for most people, so if you don’t love doing it you may as well be doing something else that pays better. Try looking at a different genre of photography. If you’ve been a wedding photographer for years, try your hand at commercial work instead. You could also try cutting back on the amount of paid work you do. I have a 9-5 day job that pays the bills, and lets me be choosier when it comes to photography jobs. It allows me to choose the ones I really want to do. In the end, you have to keep your work enjoyable or when you have a day off, the last thing you want to do is pick up a camera.

Last week saw the release of yet another technical marvel in the world of photography, possibly one of the most important photographic inventions since the digital sensor. Behold the Lytro, the worlds first commercial camera capable of recording depth in a photo, allowing you to change the plane of focus after the shot. I’m not going to go into details on how this little gadget works, there’s a ton online already for those that are interested. It doesn’t really matter, let’s call it Wizards and forget about that for now.

At the moment the technology is too knew to be even considered for professional work. It hasn’t been confirmed yet as the Lytro company has been pretty dodgey about releasing actual technical specs for the camera, saying only that it has an “11 Mega-Ray” sensor, which is exactly what it sounds like… techno-babble to confuse the masses into buying into a big number in front of an “M”, because no self-respecting consumer would buy a digital camera with less than 10 M’s… M’s are good right? That’s where the Jiga-Pixels come from right? One of the pro-photogs that was given a pre-release sample said the actual resolution is somewhere between 1-2MP, so good enough for the web or a 4X6 print.  I knew something smelled fishy when actual resolution numbers where nowhere to be found in any of the press material.

As I said, the technology is still in its infancy, but it has the potential to revolutionize the way we take pictures, and as always it’s got photographers up in arms and frothing at the mouth. It’s the same progression art has always taken, as technologies improve, an artist needs less technical ability but more creativity to set them apart from the masses. Things like hipsta-matic or the Lytro seem annoying because people can “create” images that the masses find appealing without either technical skill or creativity. They just look creative because they apply techniques automatically that used to require the technical skill of an experienced photographer. Don’t get me wrong, there’s some really great stuff being created with all this new technology, but most of it is getting lost in a sea of boring snapshots made semi-interesting by some digital filters. It’s a fad like any other, people will soon get bored with the billions of software cross-processed, pseudo-HDR cartoony and vignetted shots, realize they’re not really creative because everyone’s producing the same things. Sooner or later the truly creative will re-assert themselves.

When photography became available to everyone, painters said it was the death of art. When Photoshop was first introduced, there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth by photographers as people clicked a few buttons, threw a few filters on an image and called it creative. The fad died out, people grew tired of cheesy filters and lens-flares, and those same photographers now embrace Photoshop as a necessity.

If you’re truly a creative artist, these fads shouldn’t bother you. The only people that should be worried are the “artists” with great technical skill and little creativity. Those are the people that will get put out of business as technology makes the skills they rely on to set themselves apart become obsolete or easy to perform by anyone. Until we invent a computer with true AI, that can be creative for you, no piece of technology will replace the mind of an artist as the true power behind the creative process.

Whether you shoot from the hip or bring your camera up to eye level, being able to pre-visualize a shot is one of the most important skill every photographer should learn. Unless you’re shooting in a studio with all the time in the world to play around with lighting and focal lengths, being able to know, even roughly, what your camera’s going to see ahead of time is a must. Even in the studio, time is usually money, and being able to create a shot in your mind before you even touch a camera will save you both; if you can switch focal lengths or lighting in your head you only have to do it once physically.

When shooting street it’s even more important to be able to “see” your shot ahead of time. If you’re shooting on a busy street, you might have only seconds or less to react to something interesting. As you bring the camera to your eye, if you already have the shot framed in your mind it’s just a matter of lining the camera up with the picture you’ve already taken in your head. For me, this is what makes photography an art and not simply an aptitude with some technology; the picture has already been taken before I press the shutter, after that the camera is just recording that picture. Yes, you can accidentally take a great image without thinking about what you’re doing ahead of time, just as you can operate your camera poorly and miss recording the scene you had laid out in your mind. It takes skill with hands and head to be consistently successful.

Being able to visualize the field of view of whatever lens you’re using is really just a matter of distances. Some people are great at visualizing distances, I’m terrible, so I’ve based my system around the size of the paving stones in Ottawa. It helps to have a friend along as a reference but the idea is to frame a series of shots through the viewfinder and memorize how far away your subject is in each shot. So for me, I know that with my 25mm lens, for an upper-torso shot the subject has to one paving stone away, two paving stones away is just enough for a full body shot and three paving stones away is a full body shot that will capture quite a bit of the surroundings as well.

For memorizing how wide the frame is just look through the viewfinder and find reference points at the far left and right of the frame, they should be right at the borders. Now put down the camera and extend your arms to point at the two reference points, this arc is roughly everything that will be in your shot. Do this often in different places. Your body has more than 6 senses, one of which is the often overlooked proprioception, the bodies sense of where it is. Proprioception is the reason you can touch your nose with your eyes closed or walk without looking at your feet and it’s a very strong sense. Once your body learns how far apart your arms are when you point at those landmarks on each side of the frame, you’ll be able to visualize your arms up in that position without actually raising them. Between those two exercises you’ll soon be able see the shot without using the viewfinder, it’s not 100% accurate, but it will improve your reaction time to a shot, and it’s an essential skill for shooting from the hip. I’ll remind my body of the position of my arms at the start of a day of shooting or when I change lenses and that’s usually all I need to keep a sense of that arc for the day.

Being able to visualize depth of field is much trickier. Depth of field not only changes from lens to lens, it also changes depending on your focal distance. Each lens also renders the out of focus areas, or bokeh, differently making it even more difficult to imagine how a scene will render at large apertures. For me, it’s enough to know what areas are going to be in focus and which aren’t, relying on lenses I trust to have a pleasant boken if I’m shooting wide open. If you’ve got a distance scale on your lens it’s just one more distance estimation, if you don’t, it’s a bit trickier. Most modern cameras without distance scales will have a DoF Preview button that will stop down your lens and show you what your film or sensor will see, remember that by default what you see through the viewfinder of an SLR is the lens wide open. You can also carry a DoF chart that shows how much is in focus for a particular focal length and aperture combination; just remember most autofocus systems don’t focus in the middle of the depth of field, most systems place a third of the focus area in front of where you focus and two thirds behind it.

Once you’ve got a handle on visualizing how your lens will capture a static scene you can go one step further and practice visualizing a dynamic one. In the studio you get to control everything but one of the things that makes street photography so exciting is the randomness and lack of control; on a busy street you can’t dictate where people walk, where cars stop, when the crosswalk is going to change, and you have to be able to flow with it.

Street photography can be a lot like hunting, you don’t aim directly at a moving target, you lead the target aiming for it will be, but in order to do that you have be able to play out the scene in your head. You have to look at all the moving elements around you and guess where they’re going to be, find your shot in this future arrangement of players and then move yourself so that you’re in position, waiting for the pieces to fall into place. Sometime you guess wrong and the pieces move in a way you couldn’t predict, and you have to be flexible enough to adapt as the scene unfolds.

Example: as you’re walking down the street, you see an interesting subject about a block ahead of you walking your way. There are quite a few people in between the two of you so you’re going to have to wait for the shot. Most of the scene is out of your control, you can wing it and hope that when you’re the right distance away your subject just happens to be in a good spot, but you can increase your chances by paying attention to the things you can control.

First thing to decide is where you’d ideally like to take the shot, what the backdrop of the photo is going to be. You know how far away your subject should be given your lens, you can’t control how fast the subject is approaching, but you can speed up or slow down to influence when they’ll be in range. There are other people walking both ways as well, so you have to guess where they’re going to be and guess where and when you’ll have a clean line of sight to your subject. What’s the lighting like where you want to take the shot? Part of deciding where you want to take the shot must be guessing if the light will fall on your subject in a flattering way. Make sure your exposure is set for where the shot will be, not where you are now, aperture priority can be handy in times of harsh light and shadows, and rapidly changing exposure values. And remember, you’re not just trying to record your subject on film, you’re trying to create an appealing photograph which captures all the static and dynamic elements around the subject. Being able to frame the future shot in your mind will increase your success rate tremendously.

Visualizing our shot ahead of time is probably one of the hardest skills to learn. Many areas of photography can be learned from books, the internet or other photographers; visualization is one of those skills that can only be mastered by doing. Luckily you can do it absolutely anywhere, at it doesn’t even require a camera. As you walk around every day, try looking for interesting shots, guess where people walking around you are going to move or pick out a person coming towards you try manoeuvring for a clear shot at a random distance. The nice thing about visualization is that once you get good at it, it become second nature, almost instinctual.

<- Street Photography Tutorial #2: Tools of the Trade

Working in the nightlife industry as a photographer can be a lot of fun, but it can also be unnecessarily stressful and difficult dealing with the business side of things. I’ve talked about the technical difficulties of shooting bars and nightclubs before but I’ve never really touched on the logistic side of things. Of all the different types of photography gigs I’ve had, dealing with bars and clubs has been my biggest challenge as a business.

A lot of this applies to any kind of event photography, but shooting clubs and bars has it’s own subset of quirks and problems. It’s chaotic, fast paced and extremely unorganized. The turnover rate on of employees from bouncers right up to management is so fast that the people you dealt with last week may not be there this week. As soon as you develop a relationship with someone it seems they’re out the door and you have to start all over.

There’s always one person you officially work for; this could be yourself as a freelancer, a 3rd party promotions magazine or website, the venue owner, the venue manager, the promoter for that nights event and possibly the manager of some performer or celebrity if there’s one attending. The easiest situation is for you to shoot as a freelancer and then sell the shots to one or all of these people. By shooting for yourself you retain the commercial rights to the shots and can sell them to whoever you want. Sounds easy enough but this could mean a lot of leg work getting invites, press-passes, photo permissions etc. and freelancers are usually on the bottom of the list when it comes to getting any of these things done. It can take a lot of time and effort to build up the reputation and connections to grease the wheels and get yourself into an event worth shooting by yourself, and afterwards you still have to worry about turning those photos into a paycheck. If an event is big enough that people want pictures they’re probably going to send their own photog instead of hoping a freelancer shows up and gets the shots they want. 

This is the other way to get into the nightlife business: shoot for one of the interested parties I mentioned. Being hired to shoot an event for either the venue, a 3rd party, a manager or promoter will really help get you into the event with permission to shoot. I say help, and I mean it… you’d think being hired by someone involved with an event would guarantee you access and permission, sadly this is where the chaos starts and a rock solid contract becomes your lifeline.

Say you’re hired by a magazine, they’re paying you, they have shots they want and by default they’re going to have the rights to them. When you’re hired by a person or company to shoot an event, they automatically have the exclusive rights to those shots, if you want to sell your pics to anyone else you have to put it in your contract that you retain rights as well. Some people will be ok with a stipulation like that, others won’t.

Step One: get into the venue. Now hopefully whoever’s employing you will handle getting you on the guest list with a media pass, make sure of this ahead of time. Make sure it’s in your contract that it’s taken care of and follow up on the day of to make sure it’s done. If you show up and you’re not on the list and can’t get your shots, you want to make sure your ass is covered and you can still bill for the night. Double check your photo permission and any restrictions too, just because you’re on the guest list doesn’t mean you’ve got permission to take photos. And even if you have permission, there could be restrictions as to when, where and for how long you can shoot.

Step Two: figure out who to shoot. You’re either going to be shooting the crowd, the performer/celebrity/VIPs or both. I have no hard and fast rules for shooting the crowd, they’re different every time. My only advice is: don’t try to take someones picture if they obviously aren’t receptive and don’t take “crowd shot” jobs if you don’t have business cards. The first piece of advice is pretty self explanatory, taking pictures of people that don’t want it is a one way ticket to a bloody nose in a nightclub. As for business cards, I’ve tried doing it without and it’s not worth it, trust me. Most people won’t want their picture taken if they don’t know where the picture’s going to end up and/or they don’t get a copy. It’s almost impossible to give out website or email in a loud club, and writing it down on a napkin is going to make you look at best unprofessional and at worst like some creep who just goes to clubs to snap pics of girls. Having business cards to hand out, whether your own or from your employer shows you’re taking pictures in a professional capacity and gives your subject someway to track down their photo the next day. If you’re there to shoot the performer/celebrity/VIPs, get a shot list so you know who you have to shoot. The shot list should also be part of your contract, agreed to ahead of time. There’s nothing worse than handing in your pictures and hearing “Oh, you didn’t get a shot of what’s-his-face?”. It probably won’t block your paycheck (hopefully) but you don’t lose points for professionalism if you can say: “No, what’s-his-face wasn’t on my list”.

Step Three: figure out when and where to shoot. This is a must, if possible have an event timeline well in advance so you know when things are happening and again, confirm it when you arrive. Scout out good locations, ahead of time, if possible, where you can get the shots you need. Check your light levels, line of sight and possible shot obstructions. You want to be where you want to shoot well in advance of anything happening, you may only have minutes or even seconds to get your shot and you need to be prepared.

Step Four: Be where you need to be. You’ll probably be competing for space and time with other photographers so you want to stake your claim to shooting territory as early as possible and park yourself there. You may be there a while with nothing to do, bring a bottle of water and something to do; I love my E-Reader for times like this. It helps to have an assistant or a friend with you that can save your spot if you need a bathroom break or need to grab shots elsewhere, but whatever do make sure you have your spot. Pee on it like a wolf, I don’t care, but be prepared; every other photographer there needs their shots too and it’s a cut-throat business. At the same time, be professional, there’s going to be photogs pushing and shoving to get in your way and the ever-present last minute arrivals that think they deserve a spot at the front too. And unless the event actually has tiered priority for photographers, don’t fall for the “I’m shooting for BLAH Magazine, so I can boot you out of where I want to shoot”. Unless they actually have a special pass that gives them priority placement, every photographer’s equal. I’ve had photogs try to bully and intimidate their way the the front after showing up five minutes before showtime, be firm and polite, but stand your ground. Not everyone’s like this, and by staying professional I’ve been able to form loose alliances with the other prominent nightlife photogs in the area. We watch out for each other’s spot, trade off shooting times and even share shots afterwards if any of us miss something; doing what we can to protect each other from the less considerate and amateur photogs that don’t know how to behave at an event yet.

Step Five: everything goes to hell. This isn’t a maybe. Every event I’ve ever shot has had something go wrong that was completely out of my control. It seems like events have a certain critical mass at which the number of organizers, managers and staff start tripping over each other and hurting more than they help keep things running smoothly. It’s like a horrible, horrible game of telephone, at the top you have hopefully one person, but most often a “committee” that’s in charge of the night. The committee doles out instructions to the next layer down, sometimes the instructions are just worded different but sometimes they completely contradict one another. By the time word gets down to the people you end up dealing with everyone’s got a different idea of how to run things and they all think they’re the ones who have it right. The bigger the event the bigger the SNAFU, this is where your rock solid contract comes in. The wording is going to change from event to event, but basically you want it spelled out for everyone that you’re going to do what’s reasonable for you to get your shots, outside of which it’s not your problem.

One biggy is the times you’re contracted for. You got a timeline ahead of time, throw that out, it’s going to be useless. The event is delayed in starting, it always is, you’ve now lost time in which to get your shots or it means more standing around time. You were told the event would be from 10pm-midnight and quoted, say $200 for two hours work, but the celebrity who was supposed to show up at 11pm doesn’t get there till 1am and it takes you till 2am to get your shots. You’ve now worked double the time you thought you would and your hourly rate is only half what you expected. Your contract should specify how long you’re paid to shoot, if things take longer either you’re going home or getting paid for the extra time. Otherwise you’re going to be stuck working a lot of unpaid hours.

Another thing that’s going to throw a wrench in your plans is any celebrity management or agent. The venue can set whatever photography rules, restrictions or permissions it wants, but the celebrities themselves usually have a veto in their appearance contract. I’ve waited in my spot for hours only to be told “sorry, not pictures tonight” from an agent when the celebrity finally shows up. Not much you can do except have it in your contract that you get paid whether you’re allowed to shoot or not.

Step Six: You’ve got your shots, now what? Assuming everything goes well enough that you get your shots, you’ve now got to deal with delivering the shots and getting paid. If you’re hired by someone they’re the ones that get the shots and they’re the ones that pay you, but everyone else is going to want a piece. Like I said before, unless you specify otherwise, your employer is the only one with rights to the shots, and the only person you can take money from. Other people will try and get you to send them shots: the venue, the celebrity, the promoter and even other people attending and they’re not going to understand why you can’t just give them the photos. It’s hard enough to get a pay check out of someone who legitimately needs your photos and you need to be able to politely explain: A) yes my photos are “just computer files” but they have a monetary value and B) someone else already has paid me and has the rights to them, so I can’t just give you them… I especially can’t take money for them. Selling images that someone else owns the rights to is not just unprofessional, it can land you in a lot of legal trouble or industry black lists.

I’ve also adopted a policy of not submitting my shots until a check is in hand or on the way. This isn’t because I’m convinced that everyone’s going to stiff me, but holding out on delivering the photos can light a fire under the butts of whoever’s in charge of making your payment happen. Once they’ve got the shots there’s a lot less incentive to getting you a check quickly and it can be put on the back burner. I’ve had to badger companies for months to even find out if someone’s looked at my invoice. Sometimes there’s legitimate reasons for delayed payment; some companies only issue checks to freelancers once a month. I’ll relax this rule if an employer’s dealt fairly with me for quite a while, but over all it’s just a good business practice to get into.

Nightlife photography sounds like a lot of trouble, but a well written contract is your shield. Venue managers can be your biggest source of headache. Like I said, the turnover rate is pretty high, you can be dealing with people that are pretty new to their job and the turnover rate is high for a reason, they’re not always the most organized or professional people. Look for places where the manager’s been around a while, I’ve got a few I keep going back to because I know they’re on top of things. It can be a very rewarding experience and you can make some great contacts if you plan ahead and keep your ass covered.

Last tutorial I talked about the two main types of street photographer: Hunter or Gatherer. This time I’m going to go into the tools of the trade. My street photography kit is very different from my working kit in many ways; my usual working kit contains everything I think I’m going to need for a job, a lot of things I’ll probably need and many things I’ll never need but feel better for bringing. My street photography kit however is usually only about half of what I would like to bring on a given day. The reason for this is simple, on a job I have to be ready for any possibility I can think of and be prepared for the fact I didn’t think of everything. Less is more however when it comes to street photography; I could be walking around for hours so the less I’m carrying the better, and the fewer lenses I bring the less I’ll be inclined to focus on lens selection instead of watching what’s going on around me. There’s many reasons to keep your street photography kit small, which I’ll get into as I go, but first things first, lets talk about the foundation of any kit: your camera and lens(es).

There’s many great choices for the basis of a street photography kit, some people favour fixed lens rangefinders like the Olympus XA or Yashica Electro 35 others prefer an interchangeable lens kit like the Leica M or Contax G systems. In recent years there’s even been quite a few digital cameras released that are suitable for street photography; in the end, fixed lens or interchangeable, digital or film it doesn’t really matter but there’s certain features that will make your life much easier or significantly harder.

First biggy is manual contols. Being able to control and set your exposure settings and focus before you even lift your camera is a must in many situations. It’s true that autofocus can be faster than manual focus, especially in good light, but in low light when autofocus can hunt around to grab focus, a rangefinder is much faster and easier to focus. And faster than both auto and manual focus is not having to focus at all. One of the best tricks in the street photographers arsenal is preset focusing. Having a distance scale on your lens will make this easier, but the basic concept is to have your camera pre-focused at the distance where you expect your subject to be. Using as small an aperture as possible will give you a decent margin of error on your guess as well, giving you an entire zone of focus. Now you’ve got one less thing to think about when it’s time to snap a shot off.

Another important thing to look for in any street photography camera is ease and speed of use. Whatever camera you decide on, make sure it’s user friendly, there’s plenty of cameras out there that will take amazing shots but are really fiddly to use. Timing is absolutely critical in street photography; when you see a shot , you’ve often got only a fraction of a second to take it before it’s gone forever. If you have to spend time fiddling with buttons or menus, waiting for sluggish autofocus or shutter lag you’re going to loose the shot. Ideally almost all the technical aspects of a shot should already be dealt with before your finger even touches the shutter release.

I also recommend using fixed lens cameras, or primes on your interchangeable system; zooms are convenient at times, but they’re usually of lower optical quality, have more distortion and slow you down mentally. Zooms make you too comfortable; you stop thinking about position and framing and rely on your zoom to do your thinking and moving. They also slow you down physically; again, you have milliseconds to respond to a shot, if you have to zoom your lens you’ve lost time and possibly the shot. I recommend starting with one fixed focal length and learn it inside and out. Your goal is to get to the point where you can frame the shot in your mind, see what’s going to be inside and outside the frame without looking through the viewfinder. It takes practice, lots and lots of practice, but there are exercises that can speed up the process that I’ll talk about in an upcoming tutorial.

Most street photographers prefer their lenses on the wide side. Street photography is about capturing people interacting with their environment. Longer lenses tend to separate your subject from the background, cutting out the environment; go too wide and you run the risk of the opposite, too much environment, not enough people. The sweet spot most photographers fall into is between 20mm-50mm; I’m not saying it’s impossible to use lenses outside this range, but those are the most versatile. Remember, you want to avoid switching lenses as much as possible, so you want one that can be used to frame any shot where you plan to shoot.

Lens choice will also be greatly influenced by your style: do you like to get up close and personal, or do you prefer to keep some distance. There are advocates of both schools but it’s mostly a question of how comfortable you are shooting around strangers. I prefer the 25mm-35mm range, depending on where I’m shooting. I like my lens to be on the wide side so I can get fairly close to my subject, and the added DoF on the wider lens means I can keep everything the shot in focus. If you’re having trouble deciding on a lens/camera brand, model or focal length try browsing around Flickr; it’s an amazing resource for researching what images are possible with the a piece of gear. Take a look at sites like Rangefinder Forum as well, there’ s tons of great online resources to pour over.

Finally, don’t forget about ergonomics and usability. It can be very easy to lose yourself in reviews, lens sharpness charts and technical comparisons but at the end of the day you have to remember your camera is just a tool. No matter how good a tool is for a job in theory, if it’s not easy to use it’s going to stay in your bag or on a shelf at home. Make sure to give your potential camera a spin at the store, or better yet borrow one from a friend. Make sure the camera is comfortable to hold and your fingers fall naturally on the controls, I’ve got big sausage fingers and find some smaller cameras a PITA to use.

If you plan on shooting from the hip, make sure the camera is comfortable to use hanging from a strap. Cameras are designed to be held up to your eye and the controls are positioned for that. A lot of cameras are terrible hip shooters; either they don’t hang nicely on a strap or their controls aren’t positioned for easy access while hanging. Ideally you want the camera to hang with the lens pointing perpendicular to your body; many cameras hang with the lens pointing down or at an angle and it’s going to look awkward and unnatural if you have to hold the lens perpendicular while you’re walking around. And pay attention to how the controls are laid out; make sure they’re intuitive.

Ideally you should be able to operate the camera without looking at it, but especially with newer digital cameras, important controls are being buried in menus and touch screens. If you’re going to go digital make sure all the important controls are on an external button or control wheel and at the very least on the top level of an on screen menu. There’s nothing worse than constantly fiddling with menus and controls; it’s a left brain process that I find interferes with the right brain creativity you want to be focusing on, plus it’s one more thing to slow you down and make you miss shots.

At the end of the day though, a camera is only as good as the photographer behind it. Don’t try to get too caught up in the technical aspects at the start, it’ll just take up time better used for creativity and will lead to a serious case of GAS (Gear Acquisition Syndrome). I’ve seen amazing shots taken with a cell phone and I’ve seen people drop thousands on a kit expecting it to take great pictures for them. Skill, practice and creativity will trump gear any day of the week, so just grab a camera, get out there and shoot.

Street Photography Tutorial #3: Visualizing the Shot ->

<- Street Photography Tutorial #1: Hunter or Gatherer?

Hello, my name is Jesse, I suffer from GAS but it’s been over 6 months since my last purchase. It’s been a hard road, but I’m fighting, one day at a time. I know I’ll never be free of GAS, but I’m finally controlling it, instead of letting it control me.

For those of you new to the group, GAS or Gear Acquisition Syndrome, is an epidemic sweeping the photographic community, you’re not alone in this. Although it started in a very small subset of the population, mostly professionals and collectors, it has spread into the general populace at a staggering rate. Besides the fact that cameras are awesome, as electronics have become the de facto status symbols of our generation the urge to have bigger, better, more than our friends and neighbours is increasing. This creates a fertile breeding ground for GAS. GAS is highly infectious, highly contagious, expensive to treat and will lead to many hours of internet browsing. Although not sexually transmitted, it can be repellent to non-sufferers.

GAS can be most easily treated if caught early, left untreated it becomes entrenched and nearly impossible to overcome.  Some of you may not have developed full blown GAS but could have some of the early onset symptoms:

-Do you spend more time on camera forums than behind a camera?
-Does your fridge contain more film than food?
-Do you have gear you’ve bought but haven’t used?
-Have you used rent money for camera gear?
-Does your post office no longer ask you for ID when you pick up a package?
-Is your house infested with Styrofoam peanuts?
-Do you have a different 50mm lens for each day of the week?
-Has your local camera store hung a picture of you behind the cash?
-Do you spend more time talking about you gear than your images?

After developing full blown GAS, it’s almost impossible to cure but it can be managed. First thing to do in order to curb bad GAS habits is to ask yourself one simple question before any purchase: “Am I buying X because I want it, or because it will help me create images I couldn’t before?” It’s very easy to start treating your gear as a Pokemon collection, remember you don’t “gotta catchem all”. And if you really have to buy something new, take a look at your current gear and see if there’s anything you’re not using anymore. Once a year I compare the EXIF data of my Flickr images with my gear. Any gear that wasn’t used to create an image worthy of posting to Flickr that year goes on the chopping block. There might be special circumstances why something didn’t get used, but in general, if you didn’t use it all year you probably don’t need it. While some gear holds its value fairly well or even gains value, lenses usually fall into this category, most gear devalues over time. Digital bodies are especially prone to this. Even if you think you’ll need something in the future it might make more economic sense to sell it now, you can always buy it back later, possibly at a lower price than you sold for or rent the item the few times it’s needed. Selling gear is a great way to raise funds and makes for a more guilt free GAS purchase.

It’s very easy to let cameras transition from tools into status symbols, one of the leading causes of GAS. It can be hard to be honest with one’s self, but if you find you’re more excited about showing off your new purchase to your friends than going out and shooting with it, it may have been a status purchase. Let your images be your status symbols, it’s much easier on the wallet and a great motivator to actually go out and shoot.

Impressing people with gear is a hollow pursuit and hard to maintain; in order to continue impressing people you have to continually sink more and more money into status purchases. Spending a lot of money on a new lens isn’t an accomplishment, but creating a truly unique and interesting image is something to be proud of. You can’t buy your way to creativity and skill, part of it is innate, but it needs to be cultivated, practiced and exercised. And impressing people with your images is self-sustaining; it will make you want to go shoot even more, giving you more images to impress with. In the end a camera is only as good as the person behind it and a lens left on a shelf takes no pictures.

So next time you feel a GAS attack coming on, grab something off your shelf you haven’t used in a while and get out there and shoot. You’ll either rediscover the joy of some forgotten gear, or realize you already have gear you don’t need.

Street photography is probably one of the most miss-understood genres, not every photo taken on a street falls into the category and not all street photography actually happens there. Street photography is just as much photojournalism as it is art, in its simplest form, the goal is to capture people being people. There’s almost as many schools of street photography as there are photographers doing it, everyone has their own methods, preferences and visions but what unites us is our passion for recording the time in which we live. This series of tutorials, tips and essays will hopefully shed some light on what I’ve learned in the years I’ve been practicing.

First thing you need to decide is what type of street photographer you are. Almost all street photographers fall under one of two categories: I call them the Hunters and the Gatherers. Hunters get their photos by actively seeking out and hunting their subjects. Bruce Gilden, of Magnum fame, is a great example of this type of street photographer. Armed with his Leica and a small off camera flash he looks for interesting people and gets right up close for the shot, sometimes less than a few feet away. This style has a few advantages but to my mind, one huge disadvantage. By selecting his subjects and getting right up close and personal, Bruce is able to capture striking and tightly framed portraits. He also has the ability to choose when and where to take his shot. The main downside, for me anyways, is that by basically ambushing his subjects a lot of his pictures show looks of anger or surprise, emotions generated by his style and therefor unnatural. The use of flash adds yet another unnatural element to the shot, it’s entirely possible to use the Hunter method without a flash, but it makes things harder as your subjects may not always be in the most flattering light when they’re where you want to take the shot. On the plus side though, using a flash lets you use a fast enough shutter speed to eliminate most motion blur.

There’s also a sub-category of Hunters I like to call Snipers, these are the guys with 100mm or longer lenses picking out shots from a distance. This can help the photographer get more natural expressions be keeping some distance from the subject, but longer lenses by design tend to separate the subject from the background and don’t lend themselves well to showing the environment; what you get falls more into the area of candid portraits rather than street photography.

Overall, I don’t favour the Hunter method for the reasons stated as well as the fact that it’s intrusive and potentially frighting to the subject. It’s not technically illegal, as at least in many countries, you’re allowed to take pictures of anything or anyone in a public space, but I feel it gives street photography a bad name. I have no problem with someone taking my picture in public, but I wouldn’t appreciate being ambushed with a flash mere inches from my face.

I fall firmly in the Gatherer pool of street photographers. Gatherers don’t always get to choose the time, place or subject of their photos, it chooses them. I tend to stay stationary or walk around slowly, allowing my subjects to come to me instead of hunting them. My goal is to blend in with the crowd, ideally so much so that no one realizes I’m taking pictures. I use a small unobtrusive camera and most often shoot from the hip without raising the camera to my eye. A well known scientific principle is that observing an experiment can itself affect the outcome, I try to minimize this as much as possible. I usually try to find an interesting place or area of good lighting and wait to see what I get. The advantage is that I can capture people acting completely naturally. On the downside I often see interesting potential shots that I can’t take because I’m not willing to run after a subject or interfere with what they’re doing. I’m also limited as to when and where I can shoot, there’s many times when it’s just not possible to be inconspicuous with a camera. The Hunter can take pictures pretty much anytime, anywhere because they don’t care if the subject notices their picture being taken, while the Gatherer usually has to stick to crowds to blend in.

The Gatherer can also have a hard time practicing at night. Shooting from the hip usually requires small apertures and preset focus, which necessitates a decent amount of light. Even if you don’t shoot from the hip, night photography requires more careful focus because of the narrow depth of field that comes with large apertures, it can be hard to remain unnoticed if you spend too much time focusing on your subject. Many Gatherers, myself included, favour wide angle lenses; they’re easier to use when shooting from the hip because of their larger depth of field and because they capture more of the scene it give some leeway when framing your subject. You can always crop out distracting elements, but you can’t add details you didn’t capture. Unfortunately most wide angle lenses aren’t as fast as their 50mm and longer brothers which can also limit low-light use.

I also prefer the Gatherer method because I’m not a fan of confrontation, I have no desire to explain why I shoved a camera in some angry guys face and took his picture. While many people enjoy looking at street photography, they don’t always appreciate being its subject and I value both my camera and my face too much to endanger either. Although if I had to choose one, I’d save my camera, faces heal, cameras don’t Both methods have advantages and disadvantages and you’ll have to pick the one that best suits your style and desired images. You can see more of my Street Photography on Flickr and stay tuned for more tips and tutorials. Next lesson will be: Knowing Your Equipment.

Street Photography Tutorial #2: Tools of the Trade ->

Last weekend was the private launch party for Ottawas newest hot spot for drinks and debauchery, Overkill (aka OK). Conceptualized by Guy Berube, owner of La Petite Mort gallery, Overkill looks to set itself apart from the usual Irish Pub flavored watering holes that dominate the capital.  The best description I can think of was written over 40 years ago by one of my favorite bands; I give you, Dr. Hook:

Well there’s gonna be a freakers ball
 Tonight at the freakers hall
 And you know, you’re invited one and all

Come on babies grease your lips
 Grab your hats and swing your hips
 Don’t forget to bring your whips
 We’re going to the freakers ball

Blow your whistle and bang your gong
 Roll up something to take along
 It feels so good it must be wrong
We’re freakin at the freakers ball…

- Dr. Hook (1972)

You can check out more pics from the private launch of Overkill on my Flickr.