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As a freelance photographer I have the great luxury of accepting whatever jobs I want. Reasons why I might not want the job are numerous. Maybe the budget isn’t big enough. Maybe I’m already booked. Maybe I don’t want to travel that far. Maybe I don’t have a babysitter. Or maybe I have a personal reason.
But usually the truth that I tell my inquirer is, “Unfortunately, I am unable to shoot on that day. Here is a list of other photographers that I recommend. “
This isn’t the case for everyone. Some photographers will tell you exactly why they will not be shooting for you. Receiving a lot of publicity now are the vendors who are not “Gay and Lesbian Friendly.”
Recently, NPR did a story highlighting Vanessa Willock v. Elaine Photography. When Elaine received an email inquiry about shooting a wedding she replied, “We do not photograph same-sex weddings. But thanks for checking out our site! Have a great day!”
Now, I think this is a rather tacky response. But I don’t think it should have cost her $6000. The lesbian couple won the court case on the grounds of discrimination.
Personally, I am Pro Happy. I don’t care who you fall in love with. I care that you love. I care that you’re happy and I am honored when anyone enjoys my talent enough to have me present at any ceremony as eternally important as a wedding ceremony.
But it seems that as we ask for tolerance from the world for our different beliefs, perhaps we should also try practicing it ourselves.
Suing a photographer because they don’t want to shoot your wedding is pompous and trying to pose an answer without a question. I think photographers should be allowed to take whatever jobs they want, regardless of the reason. I think people should be able to marry whoever they fall in love with, regardless of their gender.
And I wait on time to bring ease and clarity and peace for those who are uneasy. You should know though, Gay is not going to go away.
Go on, Sonia, I dare you., originally uploaded by Decrepit Telephone.
Last month the New York Times ran an article entitled “Flickr as an Interior Decorating Tool.” Author Sonia Zjawinski says of the popular photo site Flickr,
“…I’ve often found stunning photographs, so much so I’ve gotten in the habit of printing faves out and framing them. If a user offers the original resolution for download, don’t let that go to waste. Download, print, frame!”
This advice garnered three updates, a comments closed and a follow up article, “Are Flickr Photos Fair Game for Home Printing?“
Because, Really? I mean, Really?!
Now, before you run off to the ever growing population of paranoid and hysterical web users, understand that the internet is a beautiful place full of beautiful people and art. Most of us don’t even need a federally mandated law to give accurate and appropriate credit where it’s due!
But the internet isn’t so different from the real world. Know your rights. My flickr photos are “all rights reserved.” My account is set so that no one is allowed to download or print any of my photos. My professional contracts outline how both I and my clients are allowed to use the work I create.
The United States Copyright Office offers lots of help as well as this great video. (*wink) Creative Commons is also a valuable resource if you want to share your work and have it used legally.
I searched for the New York Times author on flickr and discovered a fantastic virtual protest. I blogged one of the photos I found here. With credit and a link back.
People are arguing against Sonia on so many levels I can’t keep up. To put things in perspective for myself I take out the digital part. What if I came across an album in your house and found a photo that I thought would go really well with my new curtains? What if I took that photo home without asking, framed it and hung it on the wall. Is that stealing?
Yes. Yes it is.
I am an advocate of “Art for art’s sake.” Creation in itself is art and life, regardless of the purpose, outcome or if there’s anything in the end to hang or hawk. Art is a tangible fraction of your thoughts and I highly approve of thinking.
But the older I get the more I appreciate a bit of snark. For those of you are with me and whose eye sockets ache from all of the rolling, I’d like to direct your attention to, “Dear Photographer,” brought to us by the talented Paul Armstrong.
Also note that you can click any of the entries and share it via your valuable social networks.
You’re welcome.
Carissa Byers
Twice a month I get an email showing me some of my most “interesting” photos from one year ago. It’s called the Photojojo Photo Time Capsule. It gives me a good glimpse of what I was doing a year ago and how I was doing it. It serves whatever purpose you want it to serve, but for me it’s fairly motivating.
Sometimes I get bogged down in work and have the urge to throw my hands up, change my phone number and send a mass email to all my clients noting my retirement and increase in naptime.
But then I get this time capsule and I remember that even though I got lost on the way to one of those shoots and I forgot a cord at another and it was blooming hot for the last—-it was really an honor to meet all of those people. I’m not just saying that.
Which makes me think about all of the people and places I have to shoot this week and how fantastic they will be.
Trudging through is hard and tedious, sometimes, and the details and paperwork grow into annoying piles, sometimes. But being a photographer is worth it. All times.
“The greatest oak was once a little nut who held its ground.”
~Author Unknown
I shot this from the top of One Arts Plaza. Just an aside while I waited on people to get ready. When I posted it to Flickr someone asked if I had used photomerge to put the photos together. I had no idea what they were talking about. No, I painstakingly pasted this sonofa together and blended the seams, etc.
I am just getting around to investigating this photomerge business. I’ve only done one panorama with it, but that one photo took one click.
Here is your 4 step quickie tutorial: (Or you can click over to Adobe’s fancier version.)
- Stand in one spot, start at the left and keep taking photos until you get to the right. Download.
- Click File -> Automate -> Photomerge
- Click “Browse” and add the photos you want to merge together. Stick to “Auto” since we’re newbies at this.
- Wait, wait, wait…..Ta Da!
It joined some my photos of the Oak Cliff Art Crawl together pretty well considering I wasn’t really planning on joining them up.
And suddenly I start coming up with new ideas. I think the real beauty of any tool or gadget, painting or musical piece, is that it gives you new ways to think.
Carissa Byers – guest blogger
When I was commissioned to do this baby portrait I spent some time talking them out of doing it in the studio. Then I spent some time talking them out of going to the Arboretum or any other gardenish places. All are fine and typical locations to take a family photograph but they can also be so overused that everything starts to look and feel alike. And 20 years from now no one in the photo even remembers where they were.
I like going into the subject’s environment for a portrait. Seeing “their world” lends so much more to the story than any seamless paper and softbox. I feel a real sense of success when I’m able to go into that world and shoot it “as is.” I might manipulate the available light or put in or remove an object from the frame, but by and large it’s their home where their memories are made and where their life is lived. So much more important than any “location.”
Often a client says something along the lines of, “But my house isn’t pretty enough. There are no flowers.”
My response is, “That’s okay, you’re not hiring me to take pictures of flowers.”
When I asked this family to crawl into their bed for a shot they really couldn’t imagine why. They had never heard of “Lifestyle Photography.” I’m not really fond of that vocabulary word once it’s let loose into the mainstream world, but it’s what we have to work with at the moment and certainly my style probably falls a bit into this category.
I like the advice given on this blog by Amy Horlwitz.
Recently I’ve had to put on the metaphorical wading boots and sludge through a murky pool of portfolios sent to me. The first sort is easy and I’m about to give you the first four reasons I’m not calling you back.
So as not to call anyone out in public, I’ve taken the liberty of very badly editing a few of my own photos to give you a good example of what you should never ever do to your photographs ever. Ever.
#1 I HATE SELECTIVE COLOR
First off, while “desaturating” your photo does technically void it of color, if that’s all you’re doing you might as well get your black and whites from a photo copy machine. It’s going to be that flat. There are a million good ways to get a good digital black and white photo. And if you want easy, try something like Totally Rad Actions.
But I was talking about Selective Color. I don’t get it. It’s ugly. It distracts from the actual photo. Stop it.
Wikipedia says, “Selective coloring is generally regarded as cheap or tacky by higher end clientèle and professional photographers.” #
This is a technique, and I use that term loosely, that seems to be very popular on green eyed cats and wedding bouquets and it makes me throw up in my mouth a little every time I see it.
#2 BORDERS ARE AWFUL
Borders are so insanely bad I don’t know why I have to say anything about them at all. I don’t know who’s out there making them. Borders are bad. All of them. Unless you have big dreams of selling your bordered photograph airbrushed on the back of an acid washed denim jacket at the carnival for 5 coupons a pop, just stop it.
#3 BAD FILTERS AND ACTIONS = BAD PHOTOS
Photoshop comes with some default actions and filters. I personally don’t think you need any of them. If the filter falls under “artistic” know that it’s not and stop using it. What bad actions and filters will do is garble and over process everything so much that it doesn’t remotely resemble what you were trying to shoot in the first place, and then, what’s the point?
#4 I CAN’T EVEN SEE YOUR PHOTO TO KNOW IF I’D WANT TO STEAL IT
Stealing is bad and watermarking isn’t, but excessive watermarking and copyrighting and logo use is just obnoxious. Stay classy, kids.
All of that to say I just want to see your photograph. I want to see what you saw. I want to see what you love and care about. I want to see what is important. I want you to make me think.
Don’t distract me with your software and your toys. Make me feel something.
There is a small human being kicking around inside of me. I can’t think of anything else. I have photos to edit and clients to call back and contracts to double check and assistants to update and paperwork to file and posts to blog, but my concentration… it wanders.
I decided early on that I would not be booking any weddings after May. I’m already shooting two (maybe three?) weddings in May and then I’m going to plop down somewhere comfortable and watch myself grow.
With ten hour days on my feet not on the schedule, I wondered, “What will I put in my camera? What will I put in my bank account?”
And then magically, the babies started coming. It makes perfect sense. Of course I should be shooting babies right now!
I am often asked by budding shutterbugs how a freelancer actually fills their calendar. My answer is about as concrete as a bowl of green jello. I think if it’s really what you’re supposed to be doing, the work will come.
I’m also gaining serious inspiration from the belly pics at Pacing the Panic Room. It seems American Apparel did too.
“People make way too much out of the digital versus film. The challenges in photography—focus, crop, shutter, aperture, and of course the biggest ones of all, the ones that really matter: what you actually point the camera at, and with what intelligence you use it…are all still there, completely unchanged.”
This is a quote concerning the digital versus film debate and I agree with Graham completely. But I want to take it a step outside of the box in the more general direction of what we’re making out of photography regardless of the medium and why I don’t point my camera at everything…anymore.
I used to be [sigh] Girl With Camera. I had a newly adopted Nikon Baby and she was needy and hungry. I was in love. I was obsessed. We did everything together. But eventually came the feeling I was missing something. Like, maybe the actual event I was attending. When Nikon baby wasn’t slung across my shoulder to grab timely shots of bathroom stalls on a random moment of relief people asked me, “Where is your camera?”
They didn’t ask me how my day was. They didn’t even notice my new shoes. But I guarantee if I had showed up wearing a new lens we would have talked of nothing else.
And I thought, crap. “Because somewhere along the way I was too busy snapping around to notice just how much of my identity had gotten sucked into a piece of machinery.
I cut the cord, so to speak, and gave the machine some space. Somewhere in that space I found balance. I am a professional full-time photographer but when it comes to personal art I don’t pick up the camera until I have some intelligence with which to use it with.
When I was Girl With Camera I ran down the street slinging pictures and obnoxiously whooping with digital joy and scanning for reflective surfaces to grab a self portrait. I probably got in the way of people who came to actually see a show or hear a speaker. In trying to “bring that moment home” so I could flickr, tweet, blog and otherwise spread that sucker as far across the internets as possible I compromised another’s experience. Mostly my own. And I’m not sure what the payoff was. Worth it?
Now I seek to interpret the moments around me with my art in a more thoughtful way. Now I have an opinion about the difference between art and a snapshot and I’m rather captivated when someone can do this so perfectly and with such consistency. There is still a better balance to be had but in the meantime, I confess,I feel far more content taking my camera to work and taking myself to play.
-Carissa Byers
carissabyers.com
photopol.us guest blogger
www.photopolus.etsy.com
