The more you use Photoshop, the more you find little issues with the software. For example, Photoshop lets you set the default unit of measurement for almost everything:
Almost everything.
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Business Policies for Photographers
It’s important for every professional photographer to have a written set of guidelines to help define how they run their business. The American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP) has a blog post with a suggested list of policies.
Policies should be guidelines for your business and not carved-in-stone rules. We’ve all run into companies that hide behind policies that don’t always reflect the situation at hand. Your policies should help customers into your photography business and not push them away.
A company’s policies should also be reasonable and legal.
Some policies may be legally required (e.g. privacy policy) and some may be strongly encouraged (e.g. PCI compliance if you accept credit cards, and a refund policy).
Your business policies can be part of, or supplemental to, your Terms and Conditions. Either way, having a clear set of written policies is an absolute must for every photographer.
Cheap Stock Pictures Fail Yet Again
The National Post this week pointed out that the cheap stock pictures used by the Department of Canadian Heritage are from a foreign-owned picture agency and were shot by foreign photographers.
Why does this federal agency use foreign photos to promote Canadian culture? It suggested that Canadian photographers are too expensive.
This National Post article is years behind the times. The federal government’s practice of using stock pictures from foreign photographers has been going on for a long time. The Canadian government avoids Canadian photographers and buys cheaper work from abroad.
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The not so deep freeze
Today in Toronto, it was about -8˚C. A normal winter day. My cameras worked just fine outdoors. My flashes worked as normal. After less than an hour outside, I reached into an inside coat pocket to retrieve my cell phone and my iPhone 5 said:
Of course, it probably meant to say that it needed to warm up. The phone was completely useless. Thank goodness it wasn’t an emergency.
It turns out that an iPhone doesn’t like to work below 0˚C. Not even this will help.
I know that cold weather affects all batteries and can freeze LCDs. But I don’t recall having any previous cell phone freeze on me. My digital cameras have never failed even at -20˚C. The iPhone seems to be my only electronic device that fails when the temperature is less than ideal.
Perhaps today’s smartphones are wimps or maybe they’re just turning us into wimps.
If it’s on the Internet…
Let’s say a photographer owns the copyright to a photo. Without any other agreement in place, if that photo was published in a newspaper, would the photographer still own the copyright to that picture? Of course they would.
What if the photo was used in a book, on a billboard or on TV? Would the photographer still own the copyright? Yes they would. The medium in which the picture is used doesn’t affect copyright. Surely this is obvious.
So why do some folks think that a picture “found” on the Internet would have no copyright?
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Negotiating from the get-go
You might think that negotiating is about the client and photographer haggling over price. But negotiating involves much more than that.
Earlier today, I went shopping for a new suit. At a clothing store, the salesperson didn’t ask what kind of suit I wanted but instead she asked why I needed a suit – at what type of events would I be wearing the suit. [Help the customer get what they need and don’t just sell to them.]
Instead of letting me choose suits from the long racks of clothing, the salesperson selected just two suits for me. [Make it easy for the customer to decide and avoid overwhelming them.]
“I think you’d look great in either of these two. Which do you prefer?” she asked.
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In The Bag
When shopping for a decent light stand bag, you might find that most stand bags are too small, don’t have wheels or are very expensive.
If you carry just a couple of stands and umbrellas, this may not be an issue for you. But if you need to carry a trunkful of stands, an armful of softboxes or umbrellas, a few rolls of 52″ background paper and more, there is a solution.
Go to a golf store or sporting goods store and check out golf travel bags. These bags are designed to transport a golf bag full of clubs and, in some cases, even a small golf cart. They often have big outside pockets to hold various golf accessories.
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