rant

Voting For A Business Headshot

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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?

 

Liberal Party

Liberal leader Justin Trudeau’s headshot was cropped from a five-year-old picture. It uses window light and some type of reflector to give it a natural look. The image on the Liberal site is low resolution and was upsampled to give it visible blur and jpeg artifacting. Why would they do this?

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Toronto Film Festival 2019 Review

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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.

 

The red carpet area at Roy Thomson Hall has seen several changes over the past few years. This was probably due to all the complaints from photographers like me :–)

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).

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Leftover Thoughts

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A few leftover thoughts for the end of the month:

Blue water can look nice in a bathtub depending on the design of the bathroom. But it would probably look very strange in a sink or laundry tub.

What they didn’t teach you in photo school is the value of blue food colouring.
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The De-skilling of Photography

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De-skill: to reduce the level of skill needed for a job.

– Merriam-Webster

Many tasks today require less skill to perform due to advancing technology. But when something requires less skill, some people wrongly assume that it also requires less creativity, less expertise and less talent. A good example of this is photography.

For the third time in seven weeks, a company sent me business headshots they wanted fixed. It was plainly obvious that all of these companies had used amateur photographers (or a really bad professional).

Fixing Cheap Photography

A small law firm today sent two business portraits and a list of what they wanted fixed:

– fix the uneven brightness of the faces

– make skin colour better

– the eyes are too dark. Make brighter.

– replace the [office] background with a plain background

– add shoulders to each person and make the pictures square

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Photo Gear Purchases 2018

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If you’re like me, you probably buy too much photo gear. Not so much cameras and lenses but things like bags, light modifiers and various accessories. Here are some of my purchases in 2018:

Rock-n-Roller cart

I’ve been meaning to get a half-decent cart for some time. A homemade dolly-style cart with a bright yellow mat ($55 in parts and plywood from Home Depot in 1985) has served me very well. An over-priced Tri-Kart 800 is something I regret buying about 18 years ago because it was of limited use to me. But many local TV crews use the Tri-Kart.

This year I bought a RocknRoller R12RT. It’s pretty good but it takes up extra space because it’s not small and it weighs 33 lb. Fully extended, the R12RT won’t fit in some elevators.

A RocknRoller R12RT Multi-cart is shown in its smallest configuration. (Photo source: rocknrollercart.com)

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Stock Photo Stupidity

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A TV news article reports on a Canadian photographer who didn’t bother to read the contract when submitting one of his favourite photos to a cheap, royalty-free, stock agency. Apparently he was only thinking about the easy money.

His photo was used on 500,000 calendars and greeting cards.

He earned US$1.88.

Other photographers would probably laugh at this person because this is not news. It’s well known that cheap stock photo agencies have been taking advantage of unsuspecting photographers for 20 years.
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A Losing Opportunity

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A well-known stock photo company is currently hiring for many positions including human resources, sales and marketing, numerous tech positions, product directors, business development, photo editors and photographers.

All of these jobs are salaried and come with “first-rate Apple gear, generous vacation plan, health benefits, solid compensation/bonuses and a company culture that values empowerment, passion, integrity, courage and transparency.”

In fact, the company states that their employees enjoy “Stellar medical, dental, and vision insurance”, “Generous vacations. Game rooms”, “Competitive pay”, “Tuition reimbursement. Holiday parties”, “Fully-stocked beverage fridges. Complimentary breakfast, lunch, and snacks”, and “Subsidized gym memberships and fitness plans.”
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