Bookkeeping Matter

Almost nobody who reads this probably even knew I had a MySpace account, but if you were one of them, I deleted it. Follow my exciting adventures here. :)

I just have too many sites and things. Gotta streamline.

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Why I Take Pictures

I was in a bit of a funk recently. Then I just watched this video about ten times. It makes Prozac look like Tic-Tacs. It's unbelievable. And this really is why I take pictures.

Technically, this is a "commercial," in the same sense that Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is a "piece of music."



I used a YouTube version so I could embed it, but you can download a high-quality version, along with MP3's, etc, at the Discovery Channel website.

And if you liked that, don't miss the xkcd remix!

M

Lyrics, because I can:

Spoken

Astronaut 1: It never gets old, huh?
Astronaut 2: Nope. It kinda makes you want to…
Astronaut 1: Break into song?
Astronaut 2: Yup

Sung

Astronaut 1: I love the mountains
Astronaut 2: I love the clear blue skies
Astronaut 1: I love big bridges
Astronauts 1 & 2: I love when great whites fly

Nature Photographer: I love the whole world

Chorus: And all its sights and sounds

Chorus, with Highlights:

Crab Boat Crew: Boom-de-ah-dah, Boom-de-ah-dah

African Tribe, with Dancer: Boom-de-ah-dah, BOOM-DE-AH-DAH!

Surfer: I love the oceans

Mike Rowe: I love real dirty things

Test Pilot: I love to go fast

Forensic Archaeologist: I love Egyptian kings

Crowd, led by Monks: I love the whole world

Submersible pilot: And all its craziness

Singers and Crowd: Boom-de-ah-dah, Boom-de-ah-dah

Chorus and Richard "Mack" Machowicz: BOOM-de-ah-dah! Boom-de-ah-dah

Storm Chaser: I love tornadoes

Arachnologist: I love arach-a-nids

Vulcanologist: I love hot magma

Submersible Pilot: I love the giant squids

Crowd on Beach: I love the whole world, it's such a brilliant place

Adam Savage: Boom-de-ah-dah, Boom-de-ah-dah

Stephen Hawking: Boom-de-ah-dah

Cliffjumper: Boom-de-ah-daaaaaah!

Chorus: Boom-de-ah-dah, Boom-de-ah-dah,
Boom-de-ah-dah, Boom-de-ah-dah
Boom-de-ah-dah, Boom-de-ah-dah

Text: The World is Just Awesome

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Second Chances are Always Interesting.

The delightful Tiana Hunter, who I worked with many years ago, was gracious enough to let me photograph her again. Hopefully I've improved - although some of the shots I got the first time were marvelous.

Click for a larger image.

I had only just started my Towel Project then, and she didn't pose for it. This time I wasn't going to let her get away so easily.

Those interested in seeing more of Tiana, or hiring her - which I wholeheartedly recommend - can visit her site here:

http://www.tiamodel.com/

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It's Their Natural Defense

We live in the suburbs, but pretty near the edge of any kind of dense population. To the north of our subdivision is miles of Forest Preserve. To the south, until they built the Auto Mall, it was cornfields for miles once you crossed the edge of our subdivision two hundred yards away. Now it's an Auto Mall and cornfields. So we get critters. Possums. Raccoons. Deer and coyotes in the Forest Preserve. Most of them don't get too close to the house, except the possums and the raccoons. Possums I despise. Raccoons I also despise but I do admit that they are cute. And I have no objection to putting them to work.

Namely, trying to get some cute pictures of the ones who live in a nearby garage to sell for stock. A sample from tonight:



The mother had just left the babies to go and look for food and water when I took this picture. I used a 300mm zoom lens and a flash enhancer called a "Better Beamer," which was invented by the husband of a friend of mine. It's a collimator - it refocuses the light from the flash to help illuminate objects which are too far away to be illuminated by its normal dispersion pattern. Works pretty good, huh? That picture was exposed at ISO200, 1/200s (that's my camera's maximum sync speed) at f16 - essentially, a daylight exposure. It was almost full dark - I could not see the babies through the viewfinder at all. But if anything, I had a little too much oomph.

It was the first time I'd used it... I will have to play with it some more.

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Best. Species name. EVER.

Okay, it's an electric ray. And it uses suction to sift through water looking for food. That's cool. But why is it one of the Top Ten Species for this year?

Here it is:

I give you Electrolux addisoni.

Oh, that's just brilliant. The other winners - including Malo kingi, or "King's Bane," a new and lethal jellyfish named after a person it killed, and the "Michelin Man Plant," are also worth seeing. Click the pic for more.

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One WHOPPER of a Copyright Infringement Verdict

From Carolyn Wright, the Photo Attorney we learn of a photographer in Florida who just won a $12 MILLION verdict for infringement of the copyright of seven photographs. In fact, the actual award was for the infringement of just three of them.

Sadly, a little research on my own makes me believe that the judgment is probably uncollectable. The named corporate defendants appear to have been involuntarily deregistered/dissolved for failure to file various papers with the state. I'm guessing that the actual capital of the firm(s) is either safely offshore or, more likely, disappeared into the sinkhole of the real estate bust. On the other hand, the named principal got defaulted too... she can put a skiptracer on him and with the prospect of a multimillion-dollar commission, I'm betting they'll find anything that can be found.

However, whether or not this individual plaintiff ever collects, it does provide a pretty good example of just how high damages in such cases can go. Even if the particular use (advertising the sale of some high-end houses) hadn't provided such a massive gross revenues number, the court indicated that it would have been prepared to award the plaintiff over a million dollars in damages anyway. Register, register, REGISTER those works!

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Model Releases: The Subject That Will Not Die

Model releases are really pretty simple. If the law of your jurisdiction requires it, you have to obtain a release of rights (the right is usually called the "right of publicity" or the "likeness right") before you can use someone's likeness (which, depending on the jurisdiction, can include photographs, drawings, video recordings, or even audio recordings) for whatever purposes might be controlled. This is usually commercial usage, and in the US, the First Amendment protects most "editorial" or reporting usages, even without a release. If you'd like to see an example of such a law, you can click here to see Illinois' Right of Publicity Act, codified as 765 ILCS 1075.

So here's the deal:

If you offer a photograph for licensing, you have to indicate whether you have a model release. On some stock sites, such as PhotoShelter, the one I belong to, you have multiple choices - PhotoShelter's are "Have Release," "Don't Have Release," and "No Identifiable Person In Photograph." That way, the potential licensee can make decisions on whether a photograph is appropriate for their purposes - if they want an editorial illustration, they can specify that they don't care about releases, and if they want a commercial use, they can specify that they only want released images.

Pretty straightforward, right?

Well, apparently not. I was browsing through photographs on PhotoShelter today and I found several images of celebrities which were not only clearly identifiable as individuals, and famous ones at that, but in which the subjects were named in the captions, and the images were marked "No identifiable person in photograph." If you want to see some, click here and look through the results. The images in question are of a dark-haired woman wearing a green t-shirt. You'll see them, unless they get removed.

The photographer in question claims to be an experienced professional photojournalist. (Their pictures are pretty good, really.) There is NO excuse for this. None. That is outright fraud. If I were in charge, I'd kick them off the site.

Those of you who are photographers, don't do this. It will eventually come back to bite you. The legal sanctions for infringing the right of publicity can be severe, and if you license an image to a client and they use it relying on your misrepresentation, they can and will sue you for any damages that may result, as well as their money back. Damages in such cases have been, literally, in the millions of dollars. It'll take a lot of shifty sales to make up for one of those if you get nailed. Just don't do it.

If you're not familiar with model releases, you should consult an attorney licensed in your jurisdiction and familiar with the relevant law for more information.

M More after the jump - click here!

Let's Go Racin'

Well, I retouched a few of the pictures of the Sprint Car races with the idea of making some prints for my father-in-law. Rather than make you go and click on my PhotoShelter page (which you can still do, it's cool!) I thought I'd test the "jump" feature of Blogger. You have to actually twiddle the code in your layout as well as making changes in the text of your posts, but once it's set up it's not hard. John Harrington does this all the time and he rules, so it must be a good idea.


You can click on the pictures to see larger versions, by the way. Here's a nifty speed-blur shot.


Here's a picture of my father-in-law pulling away from the pack:


And here's a nifty racing-magazine style shot of a track official under the lights:

I don't think I'll be shooting for Sports Illustrated any time soon, but given what I had to work with (my lenses aren't very fast) I'm actually pretty happy with the shots.

M

More after the jump - click here!

Go Go Sprint Racer!

My father-in-law is a racer - he's been driving in competitive auto sports longer than I've been alive. Right now he races sprint cars, which are open-wheel, cage-frame cars, usually run on small dirt tracks and very popular with hobbyists because they're not too expensive and the races are usually fun sprints as opposed to multi-hundred-lap endurance tests.


I went to the track with him Saturday night, because there was nobody else to go and it's much easier if you have a helper to go get fuel, hand you stuff, drive the van home if you break your leg, that kind of thing. I took quite a few photos. I submitted several to PhotoShelter, my stock agency. You can see them here:

http://psc.photoshelter.com/user/marcwphoto/set/A0000u5ys.4_qWXA/Sprint+Car+Racing

Comments invited. Incidentally, my father-in-law is #14 in the white car.

M More after the jump - click here!

An Auspicious Start

One of my images was licensed from PhotoShelter last month - my first stock sale. I had planned on not saying anything about it until the sale was final (which is thirty days after the buyer pays,) but I just learned that the event it was licensed for is over, so there's no possibility that it will be "returned."

How's this for a cool licensee:

Photo #PSC000643022

License Type: Negotiated Rights, Slide show Non Profit
Buyer Information World Science Festival
Client / End-user: World Science Festival
Image Usage: video for an event

After looking at the website, my best guess is that it was used in a video for this event:

The Sixth Extinction

or this one:

Seeds, Survival, Stalin

Okay, my image may have been used for a lecture by Richard Leakey.

How freaking cool is THAT?

In any event, it was seen by a LOT of people. People who like SCIENCE! My cup, it runneth over.

M More after the jump - click here!

On Interacting with the Police

While I'm not a criminal defense attorney, like any lawyer I am asked from time to time about dealing with the police. My response is always as follows:

"There is nothing you can say to a police officer that will prevent you from being detained or arrested unless the police officer has already decided that they are not going to detain or arrest you, but there is a LOT you can say that can get you detained or arrested even if the police officer hadn't originally planned on doing it. The police are not in the deal business. They are in the arrest business."

Photographers have a rocky relationship with the police at times. While how you respond to police inquiries is a matter of your discretion, if you are of the "My strength is the strength of ten because my heart is pure" school, you might want to have a look at this:


"Don't Talk to the Police" by Law Professor James Duane

The "rebuttal," which is actually a complete agreement, here:

"Don't Talk to the Police" by VBPD Officer George Bruch

By the by, it should be noted that occasionally, one sees a police officer on COPS or some such program letting somebody go with a citation, or even just letting them go, instead of arresting them "because they were honest with me."

That is pure propoganda and spin.

They can always go back and arrest them LATER if they want (you will NEVER see them do that to a suspect they don't think they'll be able to find again.) Failure to arrest on scene is not in any way admissible as evidence that the offense was not committed or a reflection of its severity. It means that the cop doesn't think he can make an arrest stick, or that it's not worth the bother. Period. End of sentence, end of story. Any exception to that principle is so rare as to be lottery-winner odds, and when it comes to your freedom (or even your LIFE) you do not want to hope you hit the Powerball.

Even if you don't get arrested, you will end up like this guy, who knew he hadn't done anything wrong, but still ended up losing his film.

Shoot First, Hand Over Film Never

When you combine the above with another attribute of the police, you will see that you will never, ever win:

"The police are like your parents. They don't want justice. They just want quiet."

Of course, most police officers are dedicated public servants, and would be aghast at the idea of putting an innocent person in jail. But work that most thankless of jobs for long, and the idea of "innocent until proven guilty" becomes a little bit of a stretch. If they think you did it, or that you did something, if you give them one tiny little iota of a reason they will stick you in jail and let the prosecutor sort it out, because at least in the meantime, they will have quiet. Maybe the case won't stick or the prosecutor won't file. That's not their problem. Their problem is not doing anything to you without at least that one tiny little iota of a reason. Don't give it to them.

M More after the jump - click here!

Photo Books

Vanity, thy name is Artist.

Or something like that. Anyway, I have a couple of long-term projects I've been working on and I'm thinking about printing some short-run books, or at least a proof, with Apple's iPhoto photo-book service. (I use a late-model Mac, and I have iPhoto '08. I also have a WXP P4 PC, but mostly I play games on that because it has a REALLY nice video card. :) )


Laying out for a book is a very new experience for me. I have lots of print portfolios, but I've never tried to lay out for any audience but a model or a photography client. A book needs to tell a cohesive story, in a way that a portfolio doesn't. (Portfolios do need to have good flow, but that's a little different.)

Just trying to pick the cover image is harder than I thought. It has to be landscape, and I almost never shoot landscape. The book's landscape too, which means I can either put multiple images on each page, or have a lot of blank space on either side. I'd really like to do this, but it's kind of intimidating. Anybody out there have any suggestions?

M More after the jump - click here!

This May Amuse You

Or it may not. From "PostSecret," a site where people send in anonymous postcards with secrets they want to tell, but can't trust anyone with:




Yeah, that's pretty much that.

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I'm Not a Hoarder, I'm Resourceful.

I am a contributor to the PhotoShelter Collection, a web-based stock photography agency (and a moderator on the forums there.) You can see my portfolio there at MarcWPhoto at PhotoShelter. They just starting issuing "Research Requests," which are calls for specific imagery requested by clients. Today I noticed that they had a request for model-released images (always get a release if you can!) of a woman painting in an art studio. Well, get this...


It so happens that I used to rent a little artist's studio on the North Side of Chicago, and the reason I rented it was that the company I worked for had gone out of business and I had no place to shoot. When it did, I also inherited a bunch of art supplies, which I put in my studio. A few times, when I was feeling artsy, I would have a model take some of the art supplies and paint or draw a picture and take pictures of her doing it. So, lo and behold, I have several pictures of women, in an art studio, painting pictures, with model releases.

It only goes to show, eventually EVERYTHING comes in handy.

I picked out ten or so and submitted them. The studio's kind of plain and they said "beautiful," so maybe it won't fly, but on the other hand, the studio had very clean white walls so they could always take the model and drop her into another picture. Both of the models I did this with were very cute and really posed well, so who knows?

M More after the jump - click here!

Desperately Seeking Style, Part I

I've been "seriously" taking pictures for about four years now, and I've got the basics more or less down. However, I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up what kind of pictures are really my "style."

Mostly I take pictures of female models, because hey, female models. (I am nothing if not forthright.) If you're at all interested in the Internet photography thing, you'll understand me when I say to date the vast majority of my shoots have been TFP. (If you don't, click here.) However, I've just gotten very tired of the flighty Internet model cliché, and now I almost always either shoot models who I already know, or models I have arranged to pay a fee. While I'm fortunate enough to make a good living, I don't have huge amounts of disposable income so this means I shoot a lot less than once I did.

I think if I had my druthers, I'd shoot a lot of Gothic models, because I really like that look, and I find it very challenging as well. It's not easy to capture images with extremes of tone, and Goth models are all about extremes of tone - pale, pale skin, black hair and clothing, lots of saturated colors. For instance:


This was a catalog shot for a friend of mine. (He makes industrial jewelry like the necklace the model is wearing.) I like everything about this shot:

1) The setting. I love shooting in strange places: this is the elevator of an old industrial building.

2) The lighting. Lots of light on the model, shows her and the product off, but fades quickly to give a little atmosphere.

3) The model. I just love exotic looks like this.

This shot went surprisingly well and the model was great, but unfortunately, most models who are "really Goths" live the sort of drama-filled lifestyle you would expect from someone who runs around looking like this all day. Not that most of them aren't absolute sweethearts, but they're not reliable, in several different ways, and I get very invested - again, in several different ways - in my shoots. If they don't show up or there's some other problem, it's hard on me. So there's the problem with shooting this kind of work.

That's "Style 1." Next up... "Style 2."

M More after the jump - click here!

Introduction

I'm Marc W., a photographer in Chicago, IL. I'm switching from an LJ account to Blogger because I wanted to "start again," blog-wise, and because lots of photographers and models I respect are on this platform.

This blog will mostly be about my photography, with the occasional witty remark or funny observation for your Amusement. I won't be posting for a few days while I wind down my other blog, but check back shortly. :)

I'll be using the "Summary/Jump" composition style - each entry will have a summary/intro paragraph or two and a link you can click to read the whole entry. Like this:

The rest of the entry magically appears! I'll also be putting most of the photographs behind the jumps.

M More after the jump - click here!