The business of photography and retouching
I do real estate photography for construction companies that build or renovate homes in the greater Toronto area. Often I photograph a home before construction has begun and then return weeks or months later to picture the finished work.
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This is another view-from-my-office photo.
It was obvious while photographing some of the federal election campaigns over the past two weeks that news media turnout has drastically dropped over the past three federal elections.
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Canada is currently in the middle of a federal election campaign. Let’s take a look at the business headshots of the party leaders and all the candidates. (Note that political party web sites change from time to time especially with regard to information about their leader.)
If you have a few minutes, click on the links to each party’s candidate page and browse the portraits. Which ones do you like, which ones do you ignore? Why? Is it the lighting, the smile (or lack of), the eyes (or lack of eye contact), the background, or maybe something else? Which ones get your vote based only on their business portrait?
A CBC video shows how political parties stage campaign photo opportunities. Canada is currently in the middle of a federal election.
The most important part of any political campaign event is the visuals, specifically the photographs. Visuals are the easiest and fastest way for people to see and understand what’s happening. Sound and text may help fill out the message but the image is noticed first and remembered most.
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My very long, annual rant about the recent Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) from a photographer’s point of view. If you’re not somehow involved with TIFF then you might be advised to skip this post.
The point of this is not only to vent my frustrations with the 44-year-old film festival but also to make suggestions to the folks that run TIFF. It seems that someone at the film festival reads this blog because some of my suggestions get implemented the following year. Thank you very much.
After the film festival, TIFF sends out a survey asking for journalists’ thoughts about the event. There’s no such questionnaire for photographers. This post provides my answers to a nonexistent questionnaire.
TL;DR: As always, some things got better, some got worse and a few things haven’t changed. You’d think that after four decades the event would be a smooth running, polished machine. But no.
Changes have included an actual red carpet, three sets of lights, blue gels for some of those lights, a clear roof on the media tent, white-only barricade covers and letting photographers wait under the tent before an event if it’s raining. All of these necessities were obvious to everyone except TIFF.
But the covered photo area is still too small and too narrow and there are no photo risers (at any venue).
A few leftover thoughts for the end of the month:
What they didn’t teach you in photo school is the value of blue food colouring.
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Someone this week asked for a quote to photograph “a one day corporate business event” they were hosting on a specific date “at a downtown Toronto location.” No further information was provided.
The person used a Gmail address with a rather silly username instead of a business email address. Surely an organization big enough to host a “corporate business event” would have its own company address.
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