The business side of photography
It’s easier to photograph a large bathroom than a small bathroom and large bathrooms always look better.
A large bathroom can be photographed in a single shot so minimal photo magic is required. There’s usually no need to blend or stitch multiple photos together.
Photographing small bathrooms is usually a challenge. It can be difficult to get the camera into the best position and your reflection is visible in mirrors and glass doors. Plus, a wide-angle lens creates lots of distortion in a small room.
A shift lens can sometimes be used to prevent your reflection appearing in a mirror or glass door. But getting all or most of a tiny bathroom in a picture usually requires some photo magic.
There are three types of colour photographs: those with bad colour, those with accurate colour and those with pleasing colour.
If the skin tones in your business portrait don’t look good or if your pictures have an overall colour cast, then your photos have a bad colour balance.
Accurate colour is required when the colours in a photo must match the real-life colours. For example, clothing colours in a catalog should match the actual colours.
Pleasing colour is for pictures that have to look nice rather than be absolutely accurate. Portraits often have pleasing colour because a nice skin tone is usually preferred over accurate skin colour.
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Guessing a job based on its description is a game used for helping people learn English or just for fun.
Can you guess this job based on this real description:
• Repetitive and frequent standing, seeing, sitting, walking, and driving up to eight hours per day.
• Holding five pounds in one hand for five minutes.
• Repetitive hand and arm movements needed to type and write.
• Occasional bending, stooping, squatting, lifting, twisting and carrying are necessary to perform job functions.
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Most of this year’s Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) is being held online due to the ongoing SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. There are in-person screenings at a few temporary drive-ins in downtown Toronto and at the indoor theatres in the TIFF building.
I spent one day at the film festival yesterday and that was, according to TIFF, one day too many. No photographers or TV are allowed this year. Reporters are also not allowed at any location.
If your organization or business was facing its worst year due to the pandemic, would you want free publicity to help mitigate the situation? If your event was open to the public, was funded by all three levels of government and was held at some government-owned properties, would you feel somewhat obligated to allow news coverage?
Not the Toronto Film Festival.
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Does a camera have a speedometer?
I received a request a few days ago to photograph a Toronto conference later this month. The event organizer said they expected the photographer to deliver a minimum of 125 pictures per hour. Huh?
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Someone emailed earlier this week to say they needed a photographer to cover a business workshop in Toronto. Seven guest speakers will each be giving a presentation and then there will be a panel discussion with all seven.
The event wanted pictures of just the panel discussion because it’ll be the only time that all seven speakers are onstage together. The panel discussion is expected to last an hour depending on how many questions are asked by the audience.
The event person said they needed “only a few” photos of each speaker, the overall stage and the audience. They asked for a quote for “just 15 minutes of your time.”
Where to begin?
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