Hmm. Photography.

So I decided I really wanted to take some pictures, studio or not. I rented a hotel suite for cheaper than I could have rented a studio space even for one day (thanks, hotwire.com!)

This is a model I'd worked with before a long time ago - her name is Angie. She was pretty young when I first worked with her, and it's really very interesting to see how her face has matured. She's going to be a very striking woman as she ages, I think. In addition to some images she wanted for her portfolio we of course had to shoot for my Girls in Towels project. Never pass up a good bathroom, that's my motto.

Is she adorable, or what?

The images don't have as much kick as they might due to the lighting and the fact that we saved this for last and it was REALLY late. But they're still fun and I feel good about 'em. More after the jump - click here!

Review of DIY Ring Flash from... DIY Lighting Kits

Okay, if you must, go ahead and get the whole "if you bought it, it's not a DIY project" out of your systems. I'll wait.

Still here? Good. This is a review of the DIY Ring Flash Kit from DIY Lighting Kits, the retail venture of DIY Photography.

The DIY Ring Flash is sold in a kit form, and ships in a flat envelope. As one commenter put it, it looks like you're assembling an oddly shaped pizza box until you're done. It has an inner section made of cardboard which has an inner reflective surface, and an outer section made out of black vinyl quite similar to the material that three-ring-binders are covered with.

It's quite easy to assemble, for the most part. You should pre-crease the folds of the cardboard bit pretty good before you start as this makes assembly easier. Also, if you're fussy like me, wear gloves so you don't get fingerprints all over the reflector. I used some cheap disposable cotton gloves I have to wear when I'm making prints. The instructions aren't clear on whether or not the center ring goes inside or outside the center aperture: the manufacturer says it's meant to go outside (which is much easier) but I put it inside because I thought that looked better. If you do that be very careful not to mess up the ring by bending it. If you bend it it will crease and you will get a dull spot. Since I didn't do that I don't know if it would be a big deal (I suspect not) but just avoid it and you won't have to care.

You will want the optional bracket. Just buy it when you buy the flash and save the aggravation. I bent mine in a vise over a round form, but that's optional. I would recommend that you bend it over something with a round edge as opposed to a square countertop, it will help avoid excessive stress on the bend. The bending template has a lot of slack in it, so don't worry if your camera's not listed or you don't get the bend in just the right place. Just use the mark for the camera closest to yours. I have a Rebel T1i (aka the EOS 500D) and I used the one for the other small dSLR's (50D, etc.) Works fine. Some people have noted that they have issues using the bracket with a gripped camera: I have the Canon grip for my Rebel and I didn't notice any issues. I did bend the bracket on the conservative side so I'd have a little more up and a little less out, but it still mounts on my tripod fine and the lens is right dead center in the aperture.

I have a 580EX flash which is one of the larger on-camera strobe units you can buy. It would not fit into the flash head aperture as-is. The manufacturer is also clear about this and the fix is easy: you just cut little slits in the corners of the aperture. I made about a half-inch cut on all four corners, and the flash slipped right in. Be careful with the rubber-bands: they are very strong but do not have a lot of stretch. I broke one trying to make the pattern the example shows with the crossovers. Fortunately two seem to hold the flash fine and rubber bands are not hard to come by.

Once it's all assembled it's pretty straightforward and works like any other ring flash. Here's a picture I took while I was messing around with it. Ironically the layered Damascene steel looks better with more directional lighting but note the nice even light with no shadows.



Pros:

Cheap, cheap, cheap. A powered ring flash is several hundred dollars, a plastic Ray Flash is around $200, this thing was $47 with shipping and bracket. No comparison.

It's fun to assemble your own stuff even if it's not "real" DIY.

It is a ring flash and appears to be a reasonably consistent and symmetric example of same. Insert standard ring flash "pros" list here. :)

Very fast service, although that's not related to the thing itself. I ordered it Sunday night after seeing it on the Strobist site and I had it Wednesday morning.

Cons:

It's not really fair to say the lightweight nature of the unit is a con, as you are getting a $30 ring flash out of this deal and frankly, it's sturdier than I thought it would be. However, the bracket really could be sturdier as the whole assembly vibrates for a few minutes if you so much as touch it. I think I may have a machinist friend of mine make me one out of a slightly sturdier metal. I got around this by putting the whole deal on a tripod and then using my camera's remote shutter release after the vibrations died down.

The device does cost you approximately two stops of flash output, maybe a little more, I would assume both from inefficiencies and from increasing the effective area of the flash output. If somebody wants to send me a Ray Flash to compare it with, I'd be happy to oblige. With the setup for the picture above, at ISO400 and manual 1/1 flash output I couldn't do better than f7.1 without pushing the shadows too far. The unit was about three feet away from the target. (I couldn't get closer because I was using a prime lens.)

Because of the way it's constructed, there's no way to fire the thing with the flash attached to your camera's hot shoe. Well, you could, but not with the camera lens in the center aperture for maximum ringlightosity. (They are very clear about this on the site, but some people apparently don't see that.) I use my wireless flash trigger. You could also use a sync cord if your flash supports that. (You can buy a sync cord adapter for your hot shoe if your camera doesn't have a sync port. They're very inexpensive.) The other thing this means that you don't necessarily anticipate is that there is a LONG arm of stuff that goes down from the unit. You can't hold it very close to your body if you want any angle at all. It gets in the way of your tripod head adjustments from many angles and would doubtless also hinder mounting it on a light stand in certain ways.

This can make it really hard to use a tripod with any sort of downward angle. Since it also makes the thing very tippy, angling your tripod to compensate can be a real headache. My tripod (a Manfrotto) has a deal where you can take the center column and make it a horizontal arm. With this and some creative tripod configuration (it looks like a big spider) I was able to point the unit, mounted on the camera, at about a 30 degree downward angle. Any more down that that would be very tricky, especially since the weight of the flash will try to pull the unit closer to vertical. There's no way you could shoot straight down with it without some additional bracing means.

Summary:

This is a fun way to experiment with a ring flash for not very much money. If you like putting things together it's fun and easy. (If you don't like that kind of thing don't buy it, period.) You get what you pay for, of course, but in this case you at least get a good value for the small amount of money involved.


More after the jump - click here!

On Camera Straps

It is a very popular discussion question 'mongst photographers: "Okay, you've bought your camera. What should you buy next?" Well, my answer is dependent on which camera you bought. If it didn't come with vertical controls/grip and that is available as an option, that is what you should buy next. But either after that, or if you don't need it or can't get it the very first thing, you should buy a new strap.

Think, everybody, think. You just spent several hundred to multiple thousands of dollars on a camera. You're going to keep the cheap, ugly, painful strap the camera came with just so you would have a strap if you had to use it RIGHT THIS SECOND? Don't be a cheapskate now.

Manufacturer's straps have two things in common:

1) They're cheap.

2) They're ugly.

Now, ugly I can live with - all my straps are still plain black, although at least I'm no longer a walking advertisement for Canon - but cheap, I refuse to. Those straps are thin, so they cut your neck. They have no padding and no elasticity, so they hurt your back and can really give you a good smack if you drop the camera too hard. They have no swivels so they get tangled up easy, and they are usually too short if you're of more than average height. Not. Acceptable.

Now, at the very least you can spend twenty bucks and get a padded strap from any camera store. Get one with swivels, so it's easy to re-orient if it twists or tangles, and get one with quick-releases so you can take it off or loop it onto things if you need to. (I have been known to loop my camera strap around chair rungs and whatnot to make it impossible to snatch-and-grab. I do this with my bag, too.)

These padded straps are basically just upgrades for the standard neck strap design. If you want to really have fun, start looking at some of the more advanced strap designs and even strap systems. For instance, I have a Black Rapid RS-4. (See: http://www.blackrapid.com/product/camera-strap/rs-4/) I got it for Christmas - it was on my wishlist because I'd heard they were good. However, I hadn't got around to putting it on a body yet when I tried one on somebody else's camera at a photography workshop recently. Wow! This was a full-frame DSLR with grip, zoom and strobe rigged, but when I put that over my shoulder it was like it wasn't even there. I promptly went and dug it out and will be rigging it sometime in the next few days.

My other main strap is an OP/Tech Utility Strap. (See: http://optechusa.com/straps/utility-strap.html) It's heavily padded and has a lot of give to it, so even if the camera bounces around my neck all day, it won't chafe or dig in. I have a Calumet AirCell strap which I also like: I may keep that one on my backup body and replace the OP/Tech one with the RS-4. (See: http://www.calumetphoto.com/eng/product/calumet_aircell_curved_shoulder_strap/rm2004) I really like the curved straps as they do add a little more comfort as well as being less likely to slip and slide since they follow the curve of your neck better.

Oh, and if you just HAVE to be different, there are also any number of colored and/or decorated versions out there. OP/Tech straps come in several colors, and if you need more, just shop around. There are even hipster straps: http://www.calumetphoto.com/eng/product/tamrac_n_40_quick_release_camera_strap_red_flames/tq0041. More after the jump - click here!

Intro to Exposure Controls

This is a quick post on the three exposure controls on digital cameras and what they do so I can refer people to it when I wish to pontificate on the Interwebz. Feel free to read it: comments invited.

Digital cameras have three exposure controls. Three. That's it. That's all. Learn what they do and you've mastered exposure. At least the technical part.

They are:

1) Shutter speed.

2) Aperture.

3) ISO (Equivalent) Setting.

Those are the ONLY THREE THINGS that control the exposure of your photograph. However, they interact: changing one can make what the other ones do change as well. But fear not: it's entirely logical. There is another setting called "EV" which stands for Exposure Value, and I will talk about what that does, but it does NOT AFFECT the three settings here when you are in manual mode. It only matters when you are in an auto exposure mode such as Program, Tv or Av.

In full manual mode, you have full control over these settings and they will be whatever you set them to. That means if you tell the camera to take a thirty second exposure of the sun at noon on a clear day, it will let you, and you will burn out your image sensor. (If you are looking through the viewfinder you will burn out your personal image sensor, aka the Mark I Eyeball, too.) So don't do that.

Another technical clarification: the word "stop" is used a lot in photography, and not not just by models when Terry Richardson is on location. (Zing!) A "stop," in the generic sense, is a doubling of the exposure of the image. If you go up a stop or increase by one stop, you double the amount of light which contributes to the exposure. If you go down a stop or decrease by one stop, you halve it. Any of the three controls can be used to "stop up" or "stop down" in terms of total exposure. What really makes this maddening is that aperture is measured in "f-stops," which are related but not the same, and usually when a photographer says "stop up" or "stop down," they are specifically referring to changing the aperture value. After discussing each control, I will specify what would constitute a one-stop movement in both directions by means of that control.

Here we go.

1) Shutter speed.

The simplest and most intuitive. This is just "how long do you want me to open the shutter and let light into the camera?" It's measured in fractions of a second. Most digital cameras can shoot at fast as 1/500th of a second and many can go as low as 1/10000th of a second, which is pretty darn fast. To "freeze" a human walking at a normal pace, you want a shutter speed of 1/60th of a second or less. Any slower, and you will get "motion blur," which is just blur caused by the fact that the subject moved while the shutter was open. You should use the fastest shutter speed you can get away with to minimize both "motion blur," caused by the motion of the subject, and "camera shake," caused by moving the camera. (Nobody has perfectly still hands.) Shutter speed affects exposure linearly. Open the shutter twice as long, get twice as much light, get an image with twice as much exposure. Open it half as long, get half as much light, get an image with half as much exposure. Often, when shooting outdoors in bright sunlight, you will have no choice but to use a very fast shutter speed to keep your image from being overexposed, since there are limits to how low you can go with both ISO and aperture. Once you hit them, your only choice is to lower shutter speed. At a very high shutter speed, say 1/1000 or higher, you can shoot under almost any light you can bear to look at without overexposing your image.

Stop adjustment: Doubling your shutter speed (going from 1/30th of a second to 1/15th of a second) will increase exposure by one stop. Halving it (going from 1/30th of a second to 1/60th of a second) will decrease exposure by one stop.

2) ISO Equivalence.

This controls how sensitive your camera's sensor is to light. It usually starts at 100 (200 for most Nikon cameras) and goes up to at least 400, although some high end cameras go into the tens of thousands. It's also completely linear: take a picture at ISO100, and then take the same picture at ISO200 with all other settings the same. The second photograph will be twice as bright. Go from ISO400 to ISO200, and the image will be half as bright. The reason you don't always shoot at the highest ISO you can is that the higher the ISO setting, the "noisier" the image will be. Noise (also sometimes referred to as "grain" because it looks similar to film grain, though it's caused by a different phenomenon) can make images all but unusable at very high ISO settings, so you should always set the ISO as low as you can and still get the exposure you want, or at least at the lowest setting in which your camera has acceptable noise output. I usually have my Canon SLR's set to ISO400 as a default: when working in bright light or in a studio I lower it to ISO100. ISO100 can be pretty dim in anything but direct sunlight or under strobes, so it's safer if you leave it set up a notch or two in case you want to make some quick snapshots in unanticipated or unknown future lighting.

Stop adjustment: Doubling your ISO setting (going from ISO200 to ISO400) results in a one-stop increase in exposure. Halving it (going from ISO800 to ISO400) results in a one-stop decrease in exposure.

3) Aperture.

This is the one that usually causes confusion 'mongst photography newbies. The aperture is a mechanical device in your camera (in an SLR, it's in the lens: every lens has its own aperture) which opens and closes to control how much light comes in. It's basically the size of the "hole" that the light can come through. Increasing the aperture allows more light in: decreasing it lets less light in. However, because the hole is a two-dimensional circle, it's not linear in effect. Doubling the size of the aperture increases the amount of light that hits the sensor by a factor of four. (Because the area of a circle varies as the square of its radius.) To really make things fun, aperture is measured not in absolute units like square inches or square centimeters, but as a dimensionless ratio called an "f-stop." When you hear somebody say "stopping down" or "stopping up," they are talking about decreasing or increasing the aperture.

"But that's backwards," you may say, and you are right. The ratio is the ratio of the focal length of the lens to the diameter of the aperture. So if you have a 50mm focal length lens, and a 50mm aperture, your f-stop is 1.0. If you have a 50mm focal length and a 25mm aperture, your f-stop is 2.0. So you can see that going from f1.0 to f2.0 doubles the "f-number," but as I noted above, that means that you cut the amount of light to a quarter as much. (Because a circle with a diameter of 50mm has four times the area of a circle with a diameter of 25mm.) So when you increase f-number (go to a larger f-stop) you are decreasing aperture, and therefore decreasing exposure. Because of the physics of all this, the f-numbers are not linear and tend to be very weird numbers, and range dramatically. Your average beginner lens is going to have a maximum aperture of f4 or f5 or so, and a minimum aperture of f32 or thereabouts. A really "fast" lens, so called because it has a large maximum aperture and therefore allows faster shutter speeds, might be down to f1.4, f1.2, or even f1.0 although lenses at f1.0 are both rare and insanely expensive.

Now, just as with shutter speed and ISO equivalence, there is a tradeoff when discussing aperture. The bigger the aperture (the smaller the f-number) the more light gets in. So since you're letting in more light, you can use a lower ISO and/or a faster shutter speed. O frabjous day, right? Well, no. There are two downsides (or one downside and one mixed blessing) to using large apertures.

The downside is that lenses tend to have a "sweet spot" in the middle of their aperture range where their optical performance is maximized. My 50mm f1.4 (lenses are usually described by giving their focal length and their maximum aperture) gives a much clearer, sharper image if I stop it down to f2.0 or f2.2 compared to full-open f1.4. This also applies to the smallest aperture settings, but the difference can be profound at the bottom because of the huge amount of light coming in that the lens has to collate.

The mixed blessing is that the larger the aperture, the smaller the "depth of field." Depth of field indicates how much of the image is in focus relative to the object in clearest focus. If depth of field is large, everything or most everything in the picture will be in focus. If depth of field is small (narrow) then anything any distance from the object of focus will start to blur. At a wide-open aperture, a portrait can have the subject's eyes in focus but their nose may have significant blur. Now, obviously if you want the sharpest picture possible you want to use the smallest aperture you can get away with, but if you are actively trying to blur out extraneous objects (things in the background, etc) this can be a very effective tool. Unless it's a very low-light situation (in which case you open up your aperture to allow the fastest possible shutter speed) selecting aperture is more an artistic decision than a technical one, and the other two settings then become subservient to the aperture desired.

Stop adjustment: Going up one f-stop results in a one-stop increase in exposure. Going down one f-stop results in a one-stop decrease in exposure. However, the f-stop settings on the vast majority of lenses are fractional. (Remember, the aperture is built into the LENS. If your camera can use different lenses, it will have varying aperture ranges.) For a typical SLR lens, here is a one-third F-stop chart.

1.0 1.1 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2 2.2 2.5 2.8 3.2 3.5 4 4.5 5.0 5.6 6.3 7.1 8 9 10 11 13 14 16 18 20 22

Every three increments on that chart (say, going from f1.0 to f1.4) is a full stop. Note that it is extremely nonlinear (it's based on powers of two.) So f1.0 to f1.4 is one stop, but so is f16 to f22! This is why aperture is so confusing to new photographers, especially those without a background in science or mathematics. To a mathematically oriented individual this chart is laughably simple and makes perfect sense. Everybody else basically needs to memorize it, or else just count clicks on their aperture control. (That latter is much easier. :) )

Bonus: EV Control.

EV control, also called exposure compensation or EV compensation, is a way of using auto-exposure calculation on your camera but still having some manual input. When you are in full automatic mode, the camera will select both a shutter speed and an aperture (and maybe an ISO, although most cameras use the manual ISO setting even in most auto modes.) You can set the EV to tell the camera to fudge a bit. If you increase the EV, or set it higher, you are telling the camera, "Figure out what you think is the best exposure, and then shoot a little bit brighter." The camera will decrease shutter speed (holding the shutter open longer) or increase aperture (letting in more light) or both, depending on its programming. If you decrease EV, it will do the opposite. This can be very useful both for artistic effect and because cameras, while they're pretty smart these days, don't actually know what you're shooting or what you care about in the image. If the main subject is well lit but the rest is dark, it may overexpose the subject trying to make the whole picture even, or vice versa. In that case you'd lower the EV so it would expose for the main subject properly. If the whole image area is very bright, you might actually want to increase EV so the camera doesn't make it dingy trying to even it out. (Cameras are notorious, for instance, for underexposing snowscapes because they think they're brighter than they actually are. When shooting outside in winter, always see if upping your EV doesn't brighten your snow.)

If you're in Program Mode or full-autoexposure mode, the camera will take your EV setting and do as it deems best. Might open the aperture, might lower shutter speed, whatever. You have no say in the matter. Where EV is useful to the fairly serious photographer is in the two modes known as Shutter Priority (abbreviated Tv, for Time Value) and Aperture Priority (abbreviated Av.) These are semi-automatic modes where you manually set one value (shutter speed or aperture, respectively) and ask the camera to figure out the other value according to its programming. Say I am shooting a basketball game, but the light's not even so I can't set to full manual. I could set to Tv, and tell the camera I want 1/200th of a second shutter speed (which will freeze even a fairly fast-moving athlete with no motion blur.) The camera will adjust the aperture according to the light it measures every time I take a shot. Further suppose that I like my pictures dark and broody: I could tell the camera to use an EV of -2, which translates to: "Calculate the exposure according to my set shutter speed of 1/200, and when you pick an aperture, then stop it down two more EV values so the picture is darker than you think it should be." Contrarily, suppose I am shooting a portrait and I want a soft, dreamy picture with a very narrow depth of field. I can set to maximum aperture in Av mode, and then up my EV so my picture is bright and cheerful compared to the neutral exposure the camera would otherwise try to achieve.

EV is usually in fractional stops, but varies, you'll have to read your manual to know how your camera does it. Mine does it, as do most SLR's, as a third of a stop per EV point. On full-manual, it does nothing, because there is nothing for the EV to "adjust." The camera is going to shoot at the shutter speed and aperture you programmed. But it can be very useful in the semi-auto modes.

Stop adjustment: It depends on your camera's settings. Most cameras allow a one-stop increase or decrease in EV, with both directions having three fractional stop adjustments. If this is the case, every click you move the EV up from zero increases exposure by a third of a stop, with movement to the end of the range (usually three clicks) resulting in a one-stop increase in exposure from the camera's calculated target exposure. Note that this is a relative change, unlike the other three stop adjustments: it changes it relative to what the camera thinks it should be. If the lighting changes, so will what the camera thinks the exposure should be, but you will still always get the same relative adjustment to that calculation. More after the jump - click here!

A Little Google Fodder for auction house Guernseys

Here is a post by well-known photographer Ctein at The Online Photographer's blog. (The Online Photographer is Mike Johnston: Ctein is a frequent guest poster there.)

How To Make a Small Fortune In the Art Business

Summary: Ctein tried to have Guernseys (Guernsey's? Guernseys'?) auction off several rare photographs from his collection. The auction didn't go well, which was disappointing but understandable, and they returned several of the prints which didn't sell. However, they were returned with sufficient damage to reduce their collector's value to essentially zero. Guernseys refused to discuss the matter with Ctein and referred him to the insurance company, which settled fairly reasonably but told him he'd have to seek the deductible from Guernseys despite the fact that their release mentioned Guernseys as a released party. Guernseys of course refused to pay anything and has exhibited the most reprehensible conduct during the entire affair.

Obviously, we're only hearing one side of this, but having dealt with insurance companies before, I have absolutely no trouble believing this. Personally, I find this absolutely deplorable. I really have to wonder, even being a lawyer, if Guernseys really didn't buy themselves more than five thousand dollars worth of bad publicity (not to mention bad karma) by their actions. The Internet is forever, guys. More after the jump - click here!

My Advice to the Minions of Satan

Here is a comment I wrote to a radical leftist complaining that radical leftists are unrepresented in the blogosphere. (http://lhote.blogspot.com/2011/01/blindspot.html for original post.) It Amused me, so I thought I'd record it for posterity. Comments welcome.

Explanatory note:

One of the earlier comments to the post read: "This entire post can be reduced to "I didn't get the memo that Communism failed." There's no hyper-left blogosphere in America because there's no hyper-left in America, as you so keenly observed in noting that we alone in the west lack a serious socialist party. What you have failed to observe in tandem is that there is a very good reason for that." The response by the original poster was, "I am not a Communist."

Now, my comment:

I find your tossaway answer above to the "didn't get the memo" comment intriguing. You're not a Communist. Fine. If you don't mind a little advice from the Loyal Opposition, here's a suggestion:

Communism was the bogey of American politics, except for Marxist campus types, for decades. The world's largest Communist power had nuclear missiles pointed at all our heads, fought us in proxy wars that killed tens of thousands of Americans, and said it would bury us all in the name of the People while its actual, non-capitalized people lived in obvious squalor (compared to Americans) which was denied laughably. Eventually, it collapsed utterly and caused even more chaos. Americans don't like the word Communist. They don't like being threatened (nobody does,) they don't like being told they're evil (ditto) and they don't like a loser, and Communism is the biggest loser most Americans can think of since the Confederate States.

They don't like the idea of Communism, is what I'm trying to say here. And then here you come, saying, "Oh, no, I'm not a Communist, I'm a $WHATEVER," but saying basically the same things American Communist apologists spouted the whole time all this was going on.

Don't point me at Wikipedia. Don't tell me to read some dense tome. Tell me in a hundred words or less why you're not a Communist, what the difference between you and Communists is, and why we wouldn't end up where the Communists did if you were in charge instead of the murderous leaders they started out with or the bureaucraticly inept apathetic tyrants they ended up with. That's your job. That's your burden, that's your cross. Drop her, Jack, and all be lost.

But do it, and somebody, somewhere, over the age of twenty-five who's ever had to work for a living may actually listen to what you say. I won't, because I think that you are an agent of the Adversary. But somebody might. Probably more people than would ever listen to me, because parts of what you say are much more appealing than anything I have to offer. Fail, and the right-wing sleazeballs will continue to rule populist opinion and you will stay right where you are.

And if you challenge any of my assertions about historical Communism above, you've lost already. They lost. Demonstrably. Provably. Utterly. And what I said is the common understanding of How The S**t Went Down. You will NOT change it. Ever. Defending it only brands you with the Loser Brand. You can only make progress if you make yourself distinct from it. If you can't do that, you lose.

More after the jump - click here!

Hiya.

It occurred to me yesterday that I hadn't posted anything on this blog in quite some time. Other than more family photos for a co-worker, I haven't had the gumption for photography.

Eventually I'm sure my cameras will guilt me into taking some pictures, but I don't know when.

M More after the jump - click here!

And Yet More Transitioning

I got an email from my studio partner yesterday...

...well, I should say, my former studio partner. She hasn't been able to keep up her apartment/studio since she broke up with her boyfriend, and she's moving next month ("next month" starts tomorrow, but I think she means she has to be moved by the end of August.) Her parents help her with her rent and she wanted to get a cheaper apartment, as well as a smaller one which she thinks will help her be less messy. So I went today and cleared out all of my stuff.

She's not in the best of health, so I had to carry it all up the stairs to the living room and form a staging area, then carry it around to my truck in the alley. There was a U-Haul on one side (July is the biggest moving month in Chicago) and then once I was loaded I discovered some dipstick had parked his car right in the only other way out of the alley. So I had to wait for him to come out and move it, and he gave me a look like, "What's your problem?" and only the fact that I was tired and hot and didn't feel like getting out saved him some pretty extensive bodily injury. I was about five minutes away from demonstrating that a V-8 Ford F-150 can move a Hyundai sedan even if it's in park and has the parking brake set. No, I wasn't. That would be illegal. I would never do that.

I got it all home, and brought a few things inside and the rest are in the garage waiting to be sorted. So far as I know all my lights work, and I found my tripods and my light stands and my background system and all the other expensive stuff. However, due to either a leak or just excessive condensation, several boxes and one plastic crate had been compromised by moisture*. I have enough crap I need to get rid of without hauling home moldy stuff which I'll probably never use again anyway, so I just left it in the basement. I told her father (her parents are helping her move) to just have the junk guys take it, since I'm sure they'll have to call someone to take the stuff of hers that got wet or that she just doesn't want.

Absent winning the lottery, that's probably pretty much the end of my studio photography career. It's kind of sad, but it's not like I don't have enough to do that I should be doing anyway.

M

*I kept a lot of my props and stuff in the basement, which it's pretty unusual for an apartment to have, but it did. They couldn't be kept in the main space because she and, until last year, her boyfriend lived in it. The beginning of the end, really, was when he put up a big ol' mirror on the wall facing the area where she and I liked to shoot. It was either cover it or deal with weird-ass reflections, and covering it meant you still couldn't shoot in the corner because there was a sheet hanging on the wall. More after the jump - click here!

Transitioning Yet Again/Still

So, we're theoretically moving in two weeks or so. (I'll believe it, as I tell everyone who asks, when I'm standing in front of the place with my keys in my hand.) So haven't done diddly other than work and deal with that for a while. But I thought I'd pass along two little things which may Amuse you.

First, iTunes has the pilot of "Double Exposure," the show about Markus Klinko and Indrani, as a freebie. It's certainly worth watching if you are interested in photography or fashion, mostly to show you that it's not exactly rocket surgery. (Editor from Women's Health: "We want the shot to be about beauty, and fashion, and strong women." Well, gosh, lady, good thing you were here to provide direction. He might have done a shot themed on bumblebees eating cheese or something.) Markus and Indrani are possibly the least sympathetic stars of a reality show I've ever seen, although Markus was totally in the right about being peeved when Eve brought her own photographer to the shoot. Not only is that incredibly rude, he had an on-camera strobe and he could have been stepping on Markus' light. I've had that happen and it is not happy-making.

Second, also available as a freebie is the pilot of "Work of Art: The Next Great Artist." It's like America's Next Top Model or The Shot, only the subject is artists generally. There are two photographers, as well as sculptors, painters, etc, etc. Several of the artists are abstract artists and I can't tell you how much I enjoyed the dressing-down they got when they submitted totally abstract works for the first challenge, which was to do a portrait of one of their fellow competitors. I am a petty person. But anyway, also interesting if you're into art and things like that.

M More after the jump - click here!

The World Is a Strange Place, Part 1,349

The otherwise unameliorated suckiness of today was slightly mitigated when the kid talked me into going to Barnes and Noble. Why, I don't know, because she didn't want to buy anything. I suspect it was a trick to get me to take her to Burger King. Well, I wasn't going to drive that far just for Burger King, so I told her we'd go to Half Price Books and get Burger King from the one in their parking lot.

Now here's the mitigating part...

What I really wanted was an out-of-print CD which is VERY hard to get, or even the original LP of the album (which was released in, IIRC, 1972. It's not much younger than I am, at any rate.) We have a USB record digitizer so I'd settle for that.

Well, they didn't have it, but my usual quick shufty through the photography section produced a book which for some reason sounded vaguely familiar.

"Wait," I thought, "Isn't this the book that one of my favorite models talked me into giving some publishing rights to her pictures? It was going to be published in England, I never saw it nor heard if it actually went to press."

Check the book - published in England. Publisher sounds right. Check the index. There's the model's name. Turn to her section...

... there are the photos. Credits, weblink, the whole shebang.

Well, how about that? I'm in a real book. In a real bookstore. Okay, yeah, it's a publisher's remainder. But still, that means it GOT published. There were two copies on the shelf and they both looked brand new, so it pretty much has to be a publisher's remainder and not a used book.

Sucker wasn't cheap - marked GBP18.99, USD37.95. It's an oversized art photography book, perfect binding, spot-glossy cover. The quality of the printing is really quite good. Pity it didn't do better. I bought 'em both - I'll give one to the model if I can find her again.

M

More after the jump - click here!

Up to Nothing Much

Still trying to buy a new house (and sell the old one.) Still not doin' a lot of photography.

All I can do is keep on keepin' on. Back later.

M More after the jump - click here!

Burst Mode On

Quiet again, I know. Life keeps getting in the way. I went through a little spasm of photographin' there for a minute, then we decided to try to buy a new house. For various reasons I won't get into this is kind of hard on me. I doubt I'll have time or energy for photography until at least a few months after this is done (which with any luck will be sometime in July.)

But I did manage to take a few pictures.

This is an aspiring model named Brittany. (Not Britney. Brittany is a fine old name. Britney is... not.) Yet again, high-ISO fast-lens madness.



The backlighting is a streetlight: it was absolutely pitch-black outside other than streetlights. Here's a picture I took of her where I literally could not see her through the viewfinder.



Here's me gettin' all Ryan McGinley, except that it was kind of cold to ask her to run around naked. But it's Cute Young Person In Hip Yet Unstaged Circumstance With Direct Flash Lighting, so that should at least get a C for effort.



M More after the jump - click here!

On Inspiration, Theft, and the Doctrine of Unclean Hands

As you may know, I am not a fan of "mashup" art. Incorporating pre-existing things into imagery in an ironic, amusing, or artistic way, sure. One of my favorite artsy photos is a fun picture I took of a model staring into a dry-cleaner's window at night, with the neon sign and the tattered flyers posted all over it framing her and providing interesting visual and textual elements.

But mere collages, y'ask me, are not particularly creative. They can be artistically arranged and esthetically pleasing, but they are not new works. At best, they are highly derivative works. At worst (and at usual) they are mere rearrangements.

And so we come to the case of one Mr. Thomas Allen.

Mr. Allen, whose work is visible at Thomas Allen Online has as one of his major photographic interests clever little pastiches he makes by cutting up the covers of pulp novels and arranging and lighting the bits.

Mr. Allen feels that he has been wronged (actually using the phrase "copyright infringement" at one point) by an ad agency which more or less admits that it used his technique as inspiration for some dummy ads they made to enter a contest. See more information at: Thomas Allen Online: Theft.

Now, there are two problems with this. First, Mr. Allen hasn't, so far as I can tell, posted any examples of a blatant copy of any of his images. You cannot copyright style. (You might patent a method, but to my knowledge Mr. Allen has not done so.) Absent a direct copy, or a copy which rises to the level of derivative work, there is no copyright infringement here. His use of the term indicates he does not understand what it means. That's not a failing on his part in and of itself: lots of people, even lots of lawyers, don't understand what copyright infringement requires. But if you do not know what something is you should not accuse people of doing it. I hope the logic of that is evident to all.

The second and far greater problem is that Mr. Allen's hands are not clean: his moral outrage is fatally tainted by the fact that he himself is merely repurposing the work of other creative minds. Somebody sat and painted that picture, putting far more work into it (not relevant for legal purposes but, I think, morally relevant) than mere scissorwork and lighting. Somebody owns the copyright to it. Mr. Allen, absent any demonstration to the contrary, is using it without permission, without color of right. Nothing has been done to Mr. Allen that he has not already done to someone else, only more so. In the law we have a principle called the Doctrine of Unclean Hands: it states that he who comes to court seeking equitable treatment must himself have acted equitably. In other words, his own hands must be clean.

Mr. Allen's hands are as stained as those of his alleged offenders, and therefore a moral person must simply say, "Live by the mash-up, die by the knock-off," and walk away with a weary smile at the foolishness of the world.

It is interesting to note that Mr. Allen's blog requires comment approval: he approved my comment asking to see some of his copyright licenses, but then removed it a few hours later (presumably when he figured out I was making fun of him.) Mr. Allen, should you happen to read this, you are welcome to comment here and so long as your post is not mere invective, rest assured it will remain.

M More after the jump - click here!

High ISO Madness

Have a look at this photograph I shot Sunday night.



Oh, wait. That's pretty boring, isn't it? That's because that's the photograph as it would have been shot on 100 speed film. (I'm not sure what Blogger did, but the picture is actually a little brighter on my blog than it is in my image editor.)

Let's try that again.

Maybe you'll like this one better?



Actually, that is sort of cool, but it's not really much of a photograph of the subject. (The subject, by the way, is an aspiring model who wanted some interesting pictures for a portfolio page.) That's what the image would have looked like shot on 800 speed film, which is about the fastest you can buy unless you're really hooked up.

But wait!

I actually shot this at ISO12,800 on a Rebel T1i. What did that look like?



That is with no exposure adjustment in post.

Holy Toledo.

Handheld, no flash, ambient lighting - and it was so dark that even with my human eyes, which are far more sensitive than any camera, I could barely see the model. (My eyes don't have such a good focal range but I have excellent night vision.) And this is the cheap model, with a slow lens - aperture was f5.6, the maximum aperture of the lens at this focal length. The newer high-end dSLR cameras will go up to four times faster than this. And even sticking with the T1i, I have a lens that has a maximum aperture two stops larger.

The US Army has as one of its mottoes, "We own the night." Digital photographers are about to start trespassing on the Army's territory. When I think of the amazing photographs I could have taken with this technology in my former studio, or at Goth clubs and fashion shows, it just about makes me want to cry.

True, this is a little noisy, but I could have gone down a stop on sensitivity and that would have gotten rid of a lot of it. With a faster lens I could have gotten two stops down in sensitivity, gotten the same exposure, and the noise would have been scarcely noticeable especially with a little post.

More after the jump - click here!

A Word of Advice for those of you with Canon Equipment

First of all, a very Happy New Year to anyone who reads this. (No comments for a long time - it may just be me and myself.) I regret to say that my family situation did resolve itself over the holidays, and not in a happy way. But it is good that it is finished and life, as always, goes on.

Anyway, here's the advice, if it helps. Canon's newer DLSR's allow separate setting of second curtain sync for onboard flash and external flash. However, you have to have a new enough flash to allow this to work. Otherwise the flash's setting overrides the camera's. (Or the camera may not allow you to set external flash curtain sync at all.)

Here's the kicker.

Although it's not readily apparent from the manual, if your flash can be a master flash (has a setting for "Off/Master/Slave," typically on the 500 series of Canon flashes) you cannot set second curtain sync on the flash if you are in anything except "Off" mode.

This is actually quite logical in that with multiple flash units it would be problematic to ensure that you got the result you wanted, but it's not obvious. At least, it wasn't to me. I haven't checked to see if this is true for slave-only flashes (mainly the 400 series) but it very well may be.

Edit: It is in fact true, at least on the 430EX.

M More after the jump - click here!

Placeholder.

And so I pause on a very grey and icy Christmas Eve morn to say two words. I've been busy with work and family matters and even when I'm not "busy" with them, it's hard to concentrate on other things that seem a bit frivolous, such as photography. I got a "lateral" promotion at my day job - same title, but additional responsibilities, a new office, and a minion. Never had a minion before. It's actually kind of worrisome. I know *I* can look busy, but now I have to either make sure another person also looks busy or I look bad. We'll see how that goes.

Anyway, as soon as this family thing is resolved - which, sadly, probably won't be much longer - I really do want to try to get back into photography. It's just that scheduling things in advance is a bit of a fool's game at the moment.

Anyway anyway, I gave my father and my grandmothers digital photo frames for Christmas and preloaded them with several hundred family photos. They were a huge hit.

You can give these to even non-techie types if you a) preload them and b) make sure that they are such that if they get turned off or unplugged, all you have to do is turn them back on and they go into slideshow mode. I don't know what kind of industrial design school dropouts they've got designing the interfaces for these things - half of them don't even have a shuffle feature - but you can find acceptable ones if you shop around a little. They've gotten quite reasonably priced, too. I got 15" ones for not much more than a hundred dollars! That's big enough even for older people whose eyesight isn't the best and/or larger rooms.

M More after the jump - click here!

I Don't Get It, I Never Will Get It, And Apparently I'll Never Be An Artist

I am following with moderate interest www.aphotostudent.com, the blog of one James Pomerantz, a student in the MFA (Photography) program at the School of Visual Arts in New York. My interest is moderated not by any failing of Mr. Pomerantz - who writes well and obviously cares very much about photography - but rather because it is mainly about being a student in a modern fine arts program and, well, "modern," "fine," and "art" to me largely comprise a tripartite oxymoron.

Here's his latest entry:

Roger Ballen in Conversation with Darius Himes Monday November 9th, 7pm

As might be apparent it is about an event where in a modern fine art photographer will be discussing his work with someone. In this case Roger Ballen, the photographer, will be publicly discussing his work with Darius Himes, an editor at an art press. It should be noted that both are quite successful in their respective fields, with Ballen having had a book recently accepted for publication by Phaidon Press and Himes being labeled as one of the 15 most influential people in photography publishing by PDN, the industry trade journal.

So why do I care?

Because if you read the post linked above, you will come across such gems as:

"His most recent work (to be published by Phaidon Press in the Spring of 2009) has pushed this further still, often eradicating the human figure altogether to create intense and loaded subjective spaces that produce intense arenas of disease."

What does that even mean? "Intense arenas of disease?" Used to describe black and white pictures of plates of apples and somebody's feet? (Said apples not being particularly unwholesome-looking, nor said feet particularly ravaged by pathology, just a bit grimy.) How much Kool-Aid do you have to drink to come up with that kind of stuff? Also, five demerits for multiple uses of the word "intense" in a single sentence. Somebody has Grammar Check turned off.

I hasten to add that Mr. Pomerantz did not write that - it was a quote from Robert Cook, Associate Curator of Contemporary Art, at the Art Gallery of Western Australia. And if I may wax stereotypical for a moment, how does somebody who can write things like that even survive to adulthood in Australia? Perhaps he's an immigrant. But I digress.

The point being, Mr. Ballen, who is certainly a fine technical photographer and beyond question more experienced and able than I, chooses to use his skills to produce things like photographs of people who look a little genetically questionable wearing scrap wire helmets and holding cats. And for this, he is celebrated, nay, lionized, in much the same way that Michelangelo or Bach might have been in an earlier, less sophisticated time. (Or, to tip the con, much the same way that Picasso or Pollack were not so very long ago.)

Now, here's the thing. I am well aware that a metaphor can be framed in almost any fashion. But if you do not use contextual elements to anchor the metaphor, you are not framing a metaphor, you are throwing things at the wall and hoping something sticks. To impose my own unsophisticated metaphor on the situation, any intelligent preschool child can tell you that if you have to explain a joke, it's not funny. Granted there are many things I might find funny (or insightful) that a preschool child would not. It's entirely possible that I am but a Preschooler of Art. But if so, that is a mighty high bar to set: I have two college degrees, a postgraduate degree, am ridiculously well read and altogether too clever by half, and I still look at most of these things and say, "Yes? And?"

I can go from dirty feet with apples to "arenas of disease," with a little prodding. But I can just as easily go from dirty feet with apples to "the dignity of poverty in epicurean repose." It's the Emperor's New Art: "Only a foolish person cannot see the idea inherent in the work!" Well, human beings are really smart and really good at rationalizing, so there's no pile of dreck that can't have some meaning tormented out of it ex post facto. However, at that point "art" becomes deliberate obfuscation: if you want to tell me something, use symbols we both associate with the basic concept you are trying to discuss. Making up new words when there is already a perfectly good word that means exactly what you are trying to say is pretentious at best and dictatorial at worst.

Now, that doesn't meant that abstraction or surrealism can't be perfectly valid artistic metaphors. One could create an "arena of disease" with a photograph showing nothing but smiley, happy people sitting round, say, a dinner table on which a young child has been laid out as the main course. (*eyes up and to the left*) But the key to such communication is the discontinuity. A picture of a feeble-minded person wearing a scrap-wire helmet and holding a cat is nothing but discontinuity. Other than, "The world is a strange place, innit?" it does not consistently communicate anything in a common symbology. (Not that that's not a valid observation, but it never stops there.)

I have Mr. Pomerantz's blog on my bloglist, but I tend to save up and read it every week or two rather than daily (he doesn't post daily, but I don't read as often as he posts.) This is because I have to be in the right headspace to deal with the topics that he discusses. Again, this is no disrespect to Mr. Pomerantz, who appears at times to have a bit of fish-out-of-water feeling about the process himself and who chronicles it with integrity and merit. In my normal mindset, as soon as such is put in front of me, I merely dismiss it with boredom. I need to be a little introspective - at least willing to grant the benefit of the doubt. So far the benefits are unclaimed, but from time to time it is good to stretch one's mind even on topics one finds intrinsically suspect.

M More after the jump - click here!

It Really Is A Shame

Here is a link to a post on the Copyright Action forum called, "The Real Cost of Being Sued By Getty [Images]."

http://copyrightaction.com/forum/the-real-cost-of-being-sued-by-getty

A small company used one unlicensed image "about the size of a postage stamp" on its website. Getty sent them a bill for unlicensed usage for £1,700 (the image could probably have been licensed for a tenth of that, or a similar image licensed royalty-free for a hundredth of it.)

They relied on advice from "experienced business people," Internet lawyerin', and all the old tired arguments we hear when such issues are discussed 'mongst the crowd.

Net result?

They paid the license fee, they paid lawyers, and they paid Getty's legal bills. They won't disclose the final amount but it is surely north of £25,000, or roughly Forty Thousand US dollars.

It was a small company, the error was inadvertent (and made by a third party web developer) and... it cost them a significant portion of their operating revenue. It could very well end up bankrupting them. Not to mention the enormous stress it placed on multiple employees of the firm as well as diverting time and resources from operation of the business.

Bottom line?

If it isn't yours, don't take it.

If you do, and somebody calls you on it, 'fess up, pay up, and move on. If you admit fault (when you're clearly caught) and offer to negotiate, they'll probably work with you. Start relying on Internet Lawyerin', and, well, you end up where these poor folks did. And that doesn't really help anybody.

M More after the jump - click here!

Little Ways to Change the World

Today I read the obituary of one Marty Forscher, a repairman.

Of course, I read it in the New York Times.

Why was a repairman memoralized in the Gray Lady?

Here's why...

Mr. Forscher opened a professional camera repair shop in New York City right after the Second World War. He had been working on cameras to make money before the war, and during it worked in the Navy photography shop (run by the famed Edward Steichen!)

Mr. Forscher was a native genius and inventor - see the obituary for a small sampling of examples - but in the 1960's, he started collecting discarded cameras from magazines, fixing them, and sending them to aspiring photojournalists in the South for use in documenting the Civil Rights movement. When they were soaked by fire hoses, or smashed by police, he would fix them right up and send them right back. The images produced by the cameras were published all over the world.

The pen is mightier than the sword, but the camera is also a fearsome weapon for truth: by arming these men and women, Mr. Forscher played a small but vital role in their dangerous work. As the evil and the furtive have been learning since Leopold's day, the evil that flourishes in darkness and ignorance will not survive the light. Well done, Mr. Forscher, well done.

See: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/11/nyregion/11forscher.html?_r=1&ref=obituaries

Link courtesy of James Pomerantz at http://www.aphotostudent.com/.

M More after the jump - click here!

Licenses, Releases, Copyrights and Contracts: Let's Review

I get a lot of emails about model releases and various confusions about what they are. Herein, a brief refresher on the four Intellectual Property issues that are of the most importance to photographers, models, and other people in the industry.

Please be advised that while I am a licensed and experienced intellectual property attorney (I have been admitted to the bar of the state of Illinois, the Northern District of the Illinois Federal Circuit Court, and to practice before the United States Patent and Trademark Office, as well as appearances before the United States Copyright Office) I may or may not be licensed to practice in any jurisdiction where the reader may reside or have business, and nothing herein is meant to constitute specific legal advice. Always consult a lawyer licensed in your jurisdiction and familiar with the relevant law before making legal decisions.

There are two sets of rights which may attach to any photograph showing a recognizable human being. The first we will collectively refer to as the right of publicity, although in some jurisdictions it is also referred to as the right of privacy, even though technically they are two different things. For purposes of our discussion, the right of publicity (or, for brevity, the RoP) is the right to control the use of your own likeness. This right belongs to the recognizable human being depicted, to whom we shall refer as the model. It is governed by state law.

The other right which may attach to the photograph is copyright. Copyright attaches to the photograph the moment is fixed in tangible form (including either a film negative or an electronic image file in a digital camera's memory.) It is granted by the Copyright Act in the United States, and by similar laws in other countries. In the US, the copyright belongs to the creator of the work. For a photograph, that's the person who pushed the shutter release, whom we shall call the photographer. It is governed by Federal law.

Copyright is the first of the four IP issues when dealing with the question of who may and may not use a photograph. Copyright trumps all other rights: if the holder of the copyright has not granted permission to make any particular use of the photograph, it is almost certainly unlawful to make such use. The oft-misunderstood doctrine of "Fair Use" will almost never apply to any matter relevant to our discussion. If a professional photographer took a picture of a professional model, almost no use the model could want to make of it is a Fair Use. Put it from your minds.

It is interesting to note that in Canada, if a model hires and pays a photographer to take pictures of them, the model owns the copyright. This is a very unusual rule. In the US, the photographer owns the copyright, even if the model is paying the photographer. The only exception would be if the photograph was a "work for hire," a very misleading term which requires far more than that the photographer is being paid. Again, in almost no situation you are likely to run across will the photograph be a work for hire. Put it from your minds.

So. The photographer has a copyright. The model has a right of publicity. They wish to allow each other to make various uses of photographs subject to these mutual rights. What to do?

If the photographer wants to use the model's likeness, he needs a release. A release is just permission to use someone's likeness in a way which otherwise they might be able to prevent as a breach of their right of publicity. Here is the text of the release that Norma Jeane Mortenson, later known as Marilyn Monroe, signed at her first session with the incomparable Bruno Bernard, greatest of the Hollywood glamour photographers:

"Release 7/24/46
I hereby permit Bernard of Hollywood to use the pictures he has taken of me for exhibition and commercial use.

Signature: /Norma Jeane Mortenson/"

With one minor exception, that release would stand up in court in any jurisdiction of which I am aware. You will note, however, that it does not say anything about payment, nor does Bernard's signature or any obligation or promise by Bernard appear. Why? Because a release is not a contract. A release is a release. A release can be consideration ("Consideration" is the legal word for "payment," but it does not mean the same thing as "money.") for a contract. A release can be included in a contract. But a release is not a contract, nor must a model receive any payment whatsoever for a release in the vast majority of cases. You give the permission, the permission is given. It should also be noted that unless the release contains limiting terms, such as a time limit, it is generally held as unlimited in time and space. Releases need to be written in many jurisdictions, but not all. When in doubt, releases should always be written.

Similarly, the photographer may give the model the right to use the copyrighted image for any particular purpose by granting the model a license. Here is the text I use to grant models a license to use photographs for their portfolios:

"I, Marc Whipple, by my signature below grant [MODEL] a license to use the copyrighted photographs I have provided for them on [DISC, EMAIL, ETC] for the purpose of self-promotion. The photographs may not be used for any commercial purpose other than promoting [MODEL]. This license shall be perpetual and throughout the world, but is not transferrable.

Signature: /Marc Whipple/"

You will notice again that this does not talk about money, nor does it require any promise from the model. Why? Because a license is not a contract. A license is a license. A license may be consideration for a contract. A license may be included in the text of a contract. But a license is not a contract, nor must a photographer receive any payment whatsoever for a license in the vast majority of cases. You give the permission, the permission is given. (Note, however, that while whether a release has to be written, and what format it requires, varies widely by jurisdiction, the requirements for a copyright license are standard throughout the US.) Like releases, licenses must contain any limiting terms at the moment they are granted: limits cannot be imposed later. You will note that my license does not allow the model to commercially exploit the images or to allow others to do so.

So again. The photographer can grant a copyright license. The model can grant a release of RoP. Excellent well, excellent well... but what if the parties are not quite this straightforward for some reason? Suppose the model is concerned they will not get the photographs they were promised by the photographer in consideration for posing? What if the photographer is worried the model will not pay for the photographs after they review them?

The parties, wishing to bind each other, must now enter into a contract.

A contract is a mutual exchange of promises, nothing more, nothing less. The promises may be executed immediately upon entering into the contract (such as when you pay cash at the store for goods) or may be delayed until future events occur or do not occur (such as when your insurance company promises to pay you if your car is stolen.) But for a contract to exist, both parties must make a promise, either to do something they are not otherwise obliged to do, or not to do something they would otherwise be entitled to do. Contracts generally do not have to be written (in some cases the copyright law does require written documents,) although of course it can be difficult to prove the terms of a contract that was never written down. An oral contract which contains a promise to later execute a written document (such as a license or release) is perfectly enforceable, if the party seeking to enforce it can prove it existed at all.

Interestingly, it's that latter formulation (the parties promise not to do something that they would otherwise be entitled to do) that governs contractual use of both releases and licenses. The model could use a promise not to sue a photographer for infringement of the model's RoP as consideration for something they want from the photographer (like prints or digital image files.) The photographer could likewise promise not to sue a model for infringement of copyright in exchange for something they want from the model (such as posing time, or a RoP release.)

So, let's take our oft-repeated situation where a model is trading posing time for images they can use to promote their modeling career. The parties should, of course, discuss what they expect (how many images, when they will be delivered, limits on usage by both parties) before the shooting even begins. When the session is over, the model usually signs a release. When the photographer delivers the images, they usually include a license. But if they have concerns that problems may ensue, they should enter into a contract. For instance, here is a short example of a contract which would govern the above sort of exchange:

"Marc Whipple (hereafter, "Photographer") and Jane Doe (hereafter, "Model,") by their signatures below, hereby enter into this Agreement for Photographic Services:

1) Photographer agrees to provide Model with six good-quality digital image files within thirty days of the signing of this Agreement. These files shall be suitable for use on Model's Internet portfolio site and comparable to the other images located there. Photographer also agrees to provide Model a reasonable copyright license allowing her to use the image files for reasonable self-promotional purposes.

2) Model agrees to provide Photographer with a reasonable likeness release which will allow him to make commercial usage of any and all photographs of Model which Photographer has produced.

Signatures: /Marc Whipple/, /Jane Doe/"

Now, this is a highly simplified contract. But it ties back in to our earlier examples. The photographer has to give the model her images as he's agreed, and a license to use them. If he does neither of these things, he's in breach of contract, and the model is not obliged to sign a release. In fact, she can sue him for her photographs, or for damages!

Similarly, the model has to sign the release, if the photographer lives up to his end of the bargain. If she doesn't, she's in breach (she's broken a legally enforceable promise,) and the photographer can sue her to get damages (money) or even specific performance. In other words, the court could order her to sign the release, and find her in contempt - possibly even jailing her! - if she refuses. If she were to try to sue him for breach of her RoP, he could use the unfulfilled contract as a defense, and her suit would likely fail.

A "real world" contract of this sort might have both the release and the license "built in," so that the terms are specified in advance, and just make them conditional upon everybody doing what they're supposed to do. In fact, that's usually how it's done in commercial photography. But this example shows the process as a series of discrete parts.

I hope those interested in the subject find this a useful and hopefully not too-intense introduction to these topics. Interested parties are invited to comment (I will respond here) or email me with questions or comments.

M More after the jump - click here!