Last-place Finish

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During the past few weeks, there’s been much criticism over some portraits of US Olympic athletes shot by an AFP photographer. Let’s just say that these portraits won’t win any medals. All of the pictures can be seen here on the Getty Images site. While some of the pictures are okay, many are definite last-place finishers.

To be fair, these types of portrait sessions are usually done in an assembly-line fashion whether it’s Olympic athletes or players on a pro sports team. A number of photographers will each set up their own mini-studio, all in the same room. The athletes will rotate from one mini-studio to the next, spending only a minute or two with each photographer.
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Air Ball

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Last year, Ranaan Katz, a minority co-owner of the NBA’s current championship team, the Miami Heat, filed a lawsuit against a blogger who was critical of Katz’ commercial real estate business.

Two weeks ago, Katz filed a copyright infringement suit against the same blogger for publishing an unflattering picture of him. The photo was apparently taken while Katz was standing courtside at a Miami Heat game. He’s also suing Google for refusing to remove the photo from the Web.

Katz is claiming that he owns the copyright to the picture without any further proof.
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Bottom of the ninth

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Some photo assignments can be challenging in one way or another. But a professional photographer should welcome such assignments as an opportunity to help build customer trust and enhance the photographer’s reputation.

Any corporate photographer can arrive, set-up, shoot a few business portraits and then deliver the finished photos a few days later. Hopefully, the customer receives a professional level of competence and quality but beyond that, the photographer didn’t really “prove” anything to the customer.

But if. . .
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Spray and Pray

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On a sports photography forum, photographers were discussing the best ways to handle the thousands of pictures they each shoot during a game.

On a wedding photographers forum, one person said he usually shoots over 3,000 pictures per wedding. Another said he often does 5,000 pictures.
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Annual Report Failure

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Here’s another example of corporate stupidity caused by the shortsighted desire to save a buck.

Earlier today, I was looking through the 2010 annual report from Ontario’s Toronto-based Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB). The 2011 annual report is not yet available.

The annual report contains one business portrait of its chairman and one of its president. All the other executives, managers and employees shown in the other photos are fake. None of those people work for this agency. The offices shown in those pictures are also fake.
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That’s Not Cricket

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Here’s an example of what happens when an organization cuts corners and goes cheap. The Chartered Institute of Management Accountants is promoting its Toronto cricket tournament which benefits school cricket teams. Good for them.

But by looking at the promotional poster for the event, it’s painfully obvious that the organizers didn’t bother to hire a professional photographer or designer. Is this poster supposed to be taken seriously or is it meant as a joke?
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Basket Of Eggs

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Another example to show that it’s not wise to put all your eggs in one basket or all your digital files on one hard drive:

According to a CBC story, a lawyer in British Columbia is suing Apple Canada after his backup hard drive, an Apple “Time Capsule”, failed after three years of use. All of his data were lost.

The hard drive included pictures of the birth of his first child.

A sad fact of our digital lives is that all digital storage is inherently unstable. Hard drives will fail. Discs will become unreadable.

There’s a reason why most professional photographers back up their work at least in triplicate. A backup for the backup of the backup. There’s a reason why most top-end cameras allow for duplicate recording of pictures as they’re being shot.

Photographs are very valuable, especially irreplaceable family pictures. So why not spend a few cents and make extra backups? Blank CDs and DVDs are about 40¢ each and external hard drives might run 25¢ per gigabyte. It’s cheap insurance.

When, not if, your basket falls to the ground, will you lose all your eggs?

 

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