The business side of photography
Remember the old days when soft drinks came in glass bottles? After the drink was gone, you could return the bottle to the store and get a few cents back. When you were young, you might have collected a handful of bottles and returned them to a store to get your “reward”: three bottles returned = one free Popsicle; five bottles returned = one free chocolate bar.
What do you do with old compact flash memory cards – 256MB, 512MB, 1GB, etc?
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It’s common to shoot business portraits against a seamless background. Photographers will often add a tonal gradient instead of using this flat-toned background. This gradient helps create depth, making the subject stand out more distinctly from the background.
But when the final image is saved as a JPEG, the file compression can cause the gradient to posterize, especially if the gradient was steep. Posterization occurs when the smooth transition of tones is replaced by abrupt colour shifts or banding. A small amount of posterization won’t be noticeable to the customer and won’t be visible in print or online images.
Low JPEG settings (high compression) make posterization more apparent, while the highest JPEG settings can minimize it. But if a customer needs a small file size, using a high-quality JPEG setting may not be feasible.
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As reported by The Globe and Mail (and here), CTV, Toronto Star, Macleans and others, the Canadian federal government (or probably more accurately, the Prime Minister’s Office) is planning to amend Canada’s Copyright Act so that the government can freely use any “news” content for any of its political advertising without the permission of the copyright holder(s).
“News” is in quotes because it’s only vaguely defined as being any published content that features any politician acting in their capacity as a politician or anyone who might be seeking a political position, or relates to any political issue. News content can include video, photographs, text, audio and music.
“Published” seems to be defined as being published, broadcast or otherwise made available, in any media, to the public. This includes any TV news broadcast or any other news program, news radio programs, newspapers, news periodicals, and news web sites including everyone’s favourite “news” site, Youtube.
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I photographed a press event in Toronto yesterday that was poorly organized, with bad lighting, terrible staging, and a bad media team. It was run by the Prime Minister’s Office.
The media had to undergo security searches by both police and sniffer dogs. The audience simply walked in.
There were strict rules for journalists: where to stand, where not to go, and what not to shoot. Reporters were barred from asking questions or conducting interviews. The audience had free rein to move about and stand anywhere.
The event’s setup was chaotic. Three political VIPs, the Canadian Prime Minister and two European Union presidents, were seated on a low stage at one end of a cramped, narrow room. The audience had to stand because there were no chairs. Photographers were confined to a low riser behind the audience.
This arrangement meant the three seated leaders were barely visible to the photographers or TV cameras, and they were spaced too far apart to capture a group shot.
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(You may want to do yourself a favour and skip this absurdly long post.)
Each year I write about covering the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) hoping that it’ll be my last post on the subject. But each year, TIFF finds new ways to mess things up even more than the previous year.
First, the good things about the 2014 film festival:
• It’s over. :-)
• When picking up media accreditation, TIFF no longer gives photographers a shopping bag full of useless promotional material. Sadly though, photographers still don’t get the information they need to do their job – a full schedule with dates and times. More on this later.
• WiFi was added at one venue. Considering that the country’s largest ISP is the main sponsor of the event, it’s a wonder why it took so long. Sadly though, photographers still have to sit on the ground to work.
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On the Web, in magazines and in newspapers, there are an infinite number of articles with titles like, “10 things you need to know about . . .”, “12 tops tips for . . .”, “24 best ideas for . . .”, ad nauseam.
In keeping with this silly trend, here are the top seven things you need to know about meaningless lists of things you need to know:
1. Magazine readership studies, going back to at least the 1990s, have shown that using numbers on cover blurbs increases readership. Using a non-round number such as “Top 12” rather than “Top 10” will increase readership even more. An odd non-round number is even more effective: “Top 11” will attract more attention than “Top 12.”
The next time you’re in a supermarket checkout line, look at all the magazine covers and note the numbers in their cover blurbs: “47 Ultimate Summer Fashion Tips”, “63 ways to boost your love life”, “21 foods you must avoid”, etc.
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[Added December 2016: the company mentioned in this post seems to have gone out of business.]
A newspaper article in The Province reports on a new Vancouver-based company offering customers the chance to book last-minute photo sessions at discounted prices. The idea is simple: photographers are, in theory, willing to offer discounts to fill empty slots in their schedules, and the company acts as a middleman, connecting customers with these last-minute deals.
At first glance, this might seem like a win-win situation. The customer gets a discount, and the photographer fills an empty slot. However, a closer examination suggests that the real winner here might be the company itself. (For fun, check out who’s behind this business.)
While last-minute discounts might work for amateur photographers, part-time photographers with day jobs, and those who practice dump-and-run photography (more on this later), it’s a poor strategy for professionals. In fact, it’s similar to why discount platforms like Groupon can be bad for photographers.
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