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How To Protect Yourself From The War on Photography

scottbourne — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 15:00:45 +0000

It’s a done deal. The war on photography is in full swing. Mindless, mind-numbing attacks on all sorts of photographers and their photography occur world wide. Even here in the USA where we are supposedly a “free” people, we’re not THAT free if we have a camera in our hand.

Whether it’s just badge-heavy cops who want to throw their weight around, or poorly-trained security forces who think that a camera means there is a terrorist nearby, it really doesn’t matter. The consequences are the same. It’s harder than ever to get the picture.

I’ve tried to fight it. I’ve written to politicians, filed civil rights lawsuits, you name it, but the bottom line is that the war is in full swing and it’s going to take extraordinary methods to win.

So I have decided to take the easy road. I don’t like it, and it might not be something everyone can or will want to do, but after a few years of this I know it works. The answer? Good old fashioned grease. I’m not talking bribes mind you, but the reality is, money is the best way to get the access you need and the best way to do it hassle free. The fact that it works also proves that almost none of this madness has anything to do with security and everything to do with power.

Want to get the best shot you can of the Seattle fireworks from the Space Needle, find a Capital Hill resident who will let you use their property for a fee. Need to go shoot pictures of airplanes at the airport? Offer to pay the airport management for access and security so your camera pointed at airplanes doesn’t end up in having you visited by the FBI.

Whether it’s special access in national parks or regular opportunity to shoot in public places, if you have a police escort, nobody will bother you. If you call your local police agency and ask who to speak to about hiring private security, you’ll be put in touch with local police unions who arrange off-duty police security for your event. So while these officers are off-duty, they still have all the power and connections of any cop and having them by your side will eliminate any pesky, nosy, busybody who has nothing better to do than to harass anyone with a “professional-looking camera.”

This works at all levels. Need early access to a park or refuge? A $50 bill given to the guy/gal who works the gate usually allows for early access. Sometimes the answer is just to rent access for a “private event” and make that event your photography.

For example, I wanted to make some stock shots of the Las Vegas strip years ago. I knew which hotel would provide me with the best shot, but the hotel policy regarding photography, combined with overzealous security guards made getting that shot impossible. My solution? I rented the suite with virtually the same view and got the shot. I also paid one of the bouncers at the hotel (er, excuse me “security people”) to come up and run interference for me. What is “impossible” under most circumstances becomes “no problem” with a few bucks placed into the right pocket.

Even if you don’t have the cash, you can save yourself some trouble by sometimes just taking an extra minute to notify authorities of your intentions. When I go to any national park, despite the fact that I have an absolute, complete right to photograph as long as I don’t go off road or cause the park to provide security and staffing for my access, I still stop in the ranger station and let them know who I am and what I am doing. It sometimes even yields free advice on where to find the best wildlife or best scenics.

I hate the fact that my country has become a place where everyone is suspicious of everyone else, but that’s the way it is. So you can either run from it or deal with it. These ideas are how I deal with it. They may not be your cup of tea but they have certainly kept me out of trouble. Hopefully they will help some of you too.

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Don’t Banish the Trashing of the Dress, Elevate It

scottbourne — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 13:20:13 +0000

Guest Post by Catherine Hall – Follow Catherine on Twitter

In wedding photography, the “Trash the Dress” trend has veered increasingly toward shock-and-awe novelty, rather than artistry. The phenomenon all too often leaves me feeling squeamish.

You know the drill: A beautiful bride in her lovely white dress gets convinced by a well-meaning photographer to trash her gorgeous gown for art’s sake. She ends up with food dumped on her head or is induced to take part in a mud-wrestling match. Whatever the scenario, her once-pristine gown is not only soiled, but irrevocably besmirched. The images, for the moment, might strike viewers as edgy because of the stark contrast between purity and perversion. Fast-forward 10 years into the not-so-distant future: You will find something amiss.

The current slippery slope of “Trashing the Dress” has lately become an empty gimmick and might even be an utter disservice to a wedding photographer’s clients. It first really exploded in the mid-2000s. At first, I even found it intriguing. It didn’t take long, however, until I grew entirely fed-up and disenchanted with the majority of the movement’s output. Images with no real content, no discernible message, and no artistic vision are not tolerated in our cutthroat and competitive industry but, somehow, trashing-the-dress has gotten off scot-free for far too long.

Some wedding photographers, no matter how well-intentioned, are relying not on genuine creativity, but instead a clever “hook.” Rather than an image that uniquely and originally reflects the true essence of a bride’s character and personal history, she ends up posing for a pre-fabricated rendering that has nothing to do with her. Just because something is “gritty” doesn’t make it art.

I do not advocate outright banishment of the trashing-the-dress trend, but I am making a stand against rash artistic impulses that are not thought-through to their fullest completion. I understand that there is some great photography that illustrates this theme, but as a whole have not found this to be the norm.

What about you? What is your opinion about Trash-the-Dress shoots?

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What Photographic Tools & Technology Will We Use Today And Lose Tomorrow?

scottbourne — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 14:10:41 +0000

I used to make photographs with film that I developed and printed in a wet dark room. When I started photographing art for painters I used polarized lights to provide non-reflective illumination on the art work.

When I first switched to digital, I scanned all my photos on a drum scanner, then stored them on floppy disks or magnetic tape drives.

These are but a few of the examples I can think of that point to technology and tools that are for me at least, gone by. I know there are people still using all of these tools. But I am not and nobody else I work with is either.

With the exception of a few die-hards, most people have moved on to newer technologies. This caused me to think about this looking forward.

What technology and tools do we use today that 15 years into the future we will barely remember? Send me your answer via Twitter – http://www.twitter.com/scottbourne

P.S. This is not an invitation for you to let me know you still use the technology and tools mentioned in this post. I get that one percent of you like older tech. I get it. But this is an invitation for you to tell me what you think you’ll be missing in the future – in any event. Thanks for staying on topic.

Aperture 4.0

scottbourne — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 13:50:09 +0000

UPDATE: My pal Joseph says my dates are off. That may be – I went with a source that I considered reliable. In any event, he’s used Wikipedia, which may or may not be reliable – but it doesn’t really matter. We end up with roughly the same conclusion. I say between now and October. Joseph is bolder and says June. I don’t care when – as long as it happens! Thanks Joseph.

When will Apple release Aperture 4.0? Don’t get your hopes up. I have no insider information. I do have a great deal of experience and that experience leads me to believe it will be soon.

If you look at the typical release cycles for different companies, it becomes easier to predict what they will do. Adobe typically releases a new version of Photoshop about every 18 months. Apple’s cycles are longer.

Aperture was released in November, 2005. Six years ago last month, I taught the first ever public Aperture class at MacWorld. Shortly after I went to Los Angeles and sat for the first ever Aperture certification classes. I’ve used the program or taught the program or written about the program nearly every day since. And since those early days, Aperture has seen a major update cycle as follows…

1. Version 1 to Version 2 / 38 months
2. Version 2 to Version 3 / 24 months
3. Version 3 to Version 3.22 current / nine months

My prediction is that version four will come out sometime between February 2012 and October 2012.

Now that Adobe has tipped its hand with Lightroom 4 BETA, Apple knows what it needs to do to stay relevant. That said, the current version is stable, fast, powerful, affordable and useful. If Apple didn’t upgrade for another two years I can still see myself using Aperture.

With the move away from what Apple used to call “pro apps” to an App Store environment, one has to ponder what Apple will do with Aperture. I can’t see them abandoning it unless they have something totally new under wraps. Steve Jobs was one of the program’s biggest advocates. I suspect it might not have survived those early years without his intervention. Now that he’s gone, it could face changes. Only time will tell.

At $79 in the App Store, I think it’s the best deal in photo software. I think Lightroom is a great program and more people use it than will ever use Aperture, but I’m the guy who prefers the Jaguar to the Aston Martin so I don’t mind not being part of the cool kids club. I happen to love Aperture.

For six years, ever since I taught that first MacWorld class, I’ve been told Apple will abandon Aperture. For six years people have predicted it’s on its last legs. So far, I see no evidence to support that. If you predict the failure of ANYTHING long enough, you will eventually be right. But so far, Aperture is still being updated. I think that will continue. In fact, I am so confident I’m getting the outline ready for the new Aperture 4.0 book I plan to write with my pal Rich Harrington. So stay tuned. It could be any day!

By the way if you’re a Mac person and never tried Aperture, you can do so free of charge for 30 days with the Aperture Free Trial link.

Kodak Files For Bankruptcy – Thanks For The Memories

scottbourne — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 13:35:49 +0000

In the mid 1990s I had a studio in the Seattle area. I took a meeting with some Kodak executives about the new “digital cameras.” They gave me a Kodak DCS 420 to play with. It was a 1.5 MP camera with a 2.6x crop factor. It fired at two frames a second for two and one half seconds before the buffer filled. This camera was incredibly expensive and it was a huge affair – it was like carrying a tank. It used Nikon lenses. I thought it was very cool. When paired with my Iris printer I was able to make images that turned into lovely prints at a staggering rate of up to three prints per day :)

But what went wrong? The Kodak company was certainly of two minds when it came to digital photography. On the one hand they had a bunch of digital patents in their portfolio, but if the digital cameras took off, then Kodak’s main line film business would suffer. The old guard that ran the company didn’t want to give up on their legacy – film. In fact, the people I was talking to clearly hated digital. They said film was the future and that this digital camera fad would die down but they felt the need to play in the space just in case.

This forms the basis for the personality split that left the aging behemoth on the wrong side of so many important business decisions.

In the late 1990s Kodak began to play second fiddle in the digital space to many of its early digital partners. Nikon began building its own digital cameras. The D1H/D1X dominated over Kodak’s digital offerings. In my opinion, this was the turning point that eventually led to Kodak filing for bankruptcy protection last week. Lots of things happened in between but I think that is when it started.

Because of the dual nature of the company, i.e., film/digital, Kodak wasn’t able to serve either side well. Film sales began to drop off and Kodak had made the incredibly silly decision not to build their own digital camera body.

I remember having my Kodak representative Mike call on my studio. He was the nicest guy in the world and I always loved seeing him but I didn’t see any future in film. He was always trying to devise different strategies to get me to buy film. It was all very creative but it couldn’t work. One of the reasons was that all the local labs were seeing the writing on the wall much better than Kodak and they simply shut their doors. I didn’t have a local place to get the film processed so I went 100% digital.

As I look back on the days when I shot film, Kodak was king when it came to portrait film. I used Fuji Velvia for landscape work but the rest of my “workflow” was mostly Kodak. Some of those films were lovely. I actually look back on that time with fond memories BUT…

I absolutely do not miss shooting film. It’s too much work and in my opinion – the new digital cameras simply out perform the film cameras and their film – at least in the 35mm world.

As I grow older, the good old days when I shot Tri-X 400 fall further and further in the rear view mirror. For those who never shot film, I do think you should try it – just to appreciate how good you have it now. But no matter how you feel about it – I can’t help but think that those of you who were there in the old days are – like me – are a bit sad to hear the news about Kodak’s failure.

Kodak did a great deal for our industry. They sponsored just about everything that was important for photographers. They marketed photography to the rest of the world on our behalf. They wanted to make photographic images the most important images in the world. It was an admirable goal.

I will always remember that period when Kodak was trying to sell film instead of developing their own digital SLR body and wonder – was that the beginning of the end? Did Kodak’s decision to let the digital market run ahead of them cause the death knell to sound?

10 Signs You Might Be A Bad Photographer

scottbourne — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 13:53:22 +0000

(With a hat tip to Jeff Foxworthy!)

You might be a bad photographer if:

1. You think that merely owning a Leica means your images will hang in a museum.

2. You know nothing about and care nothing about your subject.

3. You need to get drunk or stoned before you think making pictures is fun.

4. You think that paying extra for the “PRO” account on Flickr makes you a professional photographer.

5. You spend more time explaining your photographs than you do making them.

6. You think that picking up your camera once a year during a national holiday means you’re avoiding getting rusty.

7. You spend more time on camera forums belittling other people’s photographs than you do trying to figure out how to make your own better.

8. You spend ANY time complaining that your pictures don’t get enough LIKES on Facebook or Flickr.

9. You’re more interested in making photographs that cause the cool kids to promote you on Google+ than you are telling stories with your camera that matter to your subjects.

10. You think that pixel-peeping and measure-beating will cause you to be a successful and famous artist – or – to get that girl you met in college to like you.

Five Things You Can Do To Improve Your Photography In A Week

scottbourne — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 12:18:19 +0000

1. Learn to use your flash – Read the flash manual. Read the camera manual pages that talk about using flash. Practice making a photo of a person, place and a thing with the flash. Then get (or make) a 3′x3′ white bounce card and practice making those same images by pointing the flash at the bounce card and the bounce card at the subject. Note the difference.

2. Get small! Well not small in size – small in details. Make pictures of your usual favorite subjects but instead of your usual approach, drill down on to details. If you usually shoot pictures of horses, try just making some shots of their faces, or their eyes, or their tails or someone’s foot in the stirrup.

3. Practice photographing birds – gulls to be exact. Now hold on – I’ll explain. This isn’t advice I am giving because I am a bird photographer. It’s advice related to the fact that it’s just good practice. Photographing fast moving objects improves your aim if you will. And most people reading this live somewhere the common “sea gull” can be found. Try it – you might just have fun and it works.

4. Practice the big three – if you follow me regularly you’ve heard this advice but I share it over and over for a reason. It helps. EVERY DAY you should read a page of your manual, make at LEAST one photograph and look at as many published, professional photographs as you can. This will improve your photography every day you do it.

5. Think background/foreground. Try making pictures that START with an interesting background. Reverse the typical process. THEN find something interesting in the foreground to complete the picture. This vision exercise will help you “see” better right away.

Improving your photography almost always just starts with a camera in your hand, so stop reading this post and go shoot. And have fun too!

The Effects of White Balance on RAW Photo Files

scottbourne — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 13:33:03 +0000

Kent asked me a question.

“What effect does a camera’s white balance setting have on a raw file? Why should I bother with a white balance setting in camera when shooting raw?”

When you shoot RAW you can in effect change the white balance you shot with in post. So at first blush it might seem that there’s no reason to mess with white balance if you shoot RAW. But there is at least one reason to reconsider that position.

If you are shooting in a high production environment and you are making lots of exposures, then you have to think about the time you can save in post.

If you have the white balance right in camera, and don’t have to reset it when you import the image, and work on it in post, you save time. How much time depends on how many photos you’re making. If you’re in a high production environment such as a commercial shoot, a sports shoot or maybe a serious of portraits for a school yearbook, and you’re making hundreds or even thousands of photos, resetting the white balance in post – even with batch processing, can take more time than you’d spend just properly setting the white balance in camera.

10 of the Things Beginners Should Know About Photography

scottbourne — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 09:54:54 +0000

It’s okay to be new. Everyone is new at one time or another. If you’re new, there are some things that those of us who are not want you to know. These aren’t the only things you need to know. This list could be 1000 times longer. But you have to start somewhere so here are just a few things to consider.

1. A great camera will NOT make a great photograph unless it’s operated by a great photographer.

2. Beginners are absolutely capable of making great photographs if they have passion.

3. Read your camera manual – several times. The answers to most of your early questions are in there.

4. Take pictures of things that you know or care about.

5. Don’t try to learn everything all at once. You don’t have to become an expert photographer, post-processor and printer all in the same week.

6. If you’ve got less than a year under your belt don’t spend too much time fretting over your portfolio. It will change and when you’ve got more experience.

7. Don’t get hung up on things like “workflow.” Spend most of your time looking for light, learning to see and making photographs that matter.

8. Study the work of the true photographic masters. I am talking about people like Margaret Bourke-White, Alfred Stieglitz, Man Ray, Paul Strand, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Edward Weston NOT the cool kids who have lots of “likes” on Facebook or Flickr.

9. Great photographs are as much about feelings as anything else.

10. Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst – so stick with it.

Why Prime Lenses?

scottbourne — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 13:59:26 +0000

Many of you contacted me after I wrote my post about the Olympus EP3 and my excitement over their addition of two stellar prime lenses, the 12 and the 45 respectively. The questions often revolved around why I wasn’t more excited about zoom lenses.

For those who are new, a prime lens is merely a fixed focal length lens. It just means that unlike your 70-200 mm lens that allows you to use focal lengths between 70mm and 200mm, a prime lens will only shoot at a fixed length. Some common prime lens lengths are 24mm, 35mm 50mm, 85mm, 100 mm, 200mm, etc.

Here’s a rundown of some of the advantages prime lenses have over zooms from my point of view.

1. Prime lenses tend to be “faster” than zooms. What I mean by that is that they have a larger aperture (lower f-stop number) and allow more light into the camera.

2. Prime lenses tend to be sharper because they tend to have fewer optical compromises. Zooms require more lens elements and moving parts which could impact sharpness.

3. Prime lenses are typically smaller and lighter than their zoom-lens equals.

4. Prime lenses force you to think more about composition since you can’t just zoom your way out of a problem.

5. Prime lenses (at least the great ones) sometimes offer you more control with features like depth-of-field scales (used for hyper focal distance calculations) or aperture rings.

There are disadvantages to all these features. You have less flexibility, you have to buy and carry more lenses to achieve coverage of the same focal lengths, and good prime lenses can be expensive.

For me, it’s all worthwhile.