An event organizer was looking over my shoulder while I was photographing a keynote speaker at a business conference last week. When I stopped for a moment, he said, “That should be a good picture. Can you upload it to our Twitter account right now?”
I replied that it wasn’t possible with my camera but I could transfer a photo to my nearby laptop and e-mail it to him. He said not to bother. His cell phone was raised, a picture was snapped, and then uploaded to his company’s Twitter account. He seemed quite pleased with himself.
I was shooting at ISO 6400 with a 500mm f4 lens. He was using an iPhone 5. You can probably guess how his picture looked.
I received an e-mail from a magazine editor looking for a Toronto photographer. He wrote that his magazine pays based on what camera the photographer uses. A “big dslr” is $400. A small camera is $200. A “pocket camera” is $100. The editor explained that this was fair because big cameras cost more.
He added that he checks a photo’s EXIF data to see what camera was used so a photographer couldn’t claim they used a bigger camera when they didn’t.
I asked why they didn’t pay based on the actual photography. That was too complicated, the editor replied.
