A bit of noise

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It’s common to shoot business portraits against seamless background paper. It’s also common practice for a photographer to create a tonal gradient on that background rather than having a flat tone. A gradient adds a bit of depth to the photo by separating the subject from the background.

The problem with a tonal gradient is that when the finished photo is saved as a jpeg, the file compression can cause the gradient to posterize. The amount of posterization also depends on how “steep” the gradient is.

A small amount of posterization won’t be noticed by most customers nor will it be visible in print or online. But many photographers want to deliver the best possible image to the customer.
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Lasting photo memories

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Last week, I went to a funeral. As is common these days, the family had a photo gallery on their son’s online obituary page. The pictures covered almost the last half of their son’s life.

Many of the photos were either out-of-focus, badly exposed, had heads partially cut off, or the boy was so far in the background he was barely visible. Most of the recent photos appeared to have been shot with a cell phone due to the obvious low resolution and low quality.

Pictures are important, especially personal pictures.

If you’re a parent with young children, please buy a real camera and learn how to use it.
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Mission Creep

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A potential commercial client e-mailed to say they needed “a few product shots” and they’d do all the post-production work on the images. Their budget for “a four hour photo shoot” was quite small but it could be doable if there was only a few products and the production value was kept low (no assistant, no big lights).

I called the company to get more information.

Yes they wanted a few product shots. In fact, they wanted all of their products photographed with full studio lighting. Since some products were big and heavy, the lighting would have to be moved from location to location within the building (i.e. at least one assistant would be needed).
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Electing a photographer

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In less than two weeks, the province of Ontario will have municipal elections. Here in Toronto, there are 65 candidates running for mayor, (19 others dropped out). In my area, there’s also eleven candidates for councillor and seven for school board trustee. With so many candidates, how do you choose?

Maybe it becomes a Paradox of Choice [and here]: the more choices you have, the less likely you are to make a choice. And if you do make a choice, it tends to be based on irrelevant criteria such as how a candidate looks rather than, for example, their economic policies.

Deciding on which candidate you should vote for can be like deciding on which photographer you should hire for an upcoming photo assignment.
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An Open Letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper

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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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A Photo Opportunity Without Any Opportunity

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Yesterday I photographed a press event / photo op / reception in Toronto. It had bad lighting, bad staging and bad media flaks. It was run by the Prime Minister’s Office.

For “security reasons,” the media had to be searched both by police and by sniffer dog. The audience? They just walked in.

There were lots of rules for the media: where to stand, where not to go, what not to shoot. Reporters weren’t allowed to ask any questions nor interview anyone. The audience? They could do anything they wanted.

The audience was standing and the three political VIPs (Canadian Prime Minister and two European Union presidents) were seated on a low stage. This meant that when the three were seated, (far enough apart to prevent a group picture), they could barely be seen by the photographers and TV cameras who were on a riser at the back of the room:
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Toronto Film Festival 2014

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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.

The Good

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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