August, 2009

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29
Aug 09

Ready for your close-up

toronto sports photographer

I photographed a sports event last week for the organizers of a tennis tournament. The media relations folks were, as always, fantastic. They were friendly, helpful, accommodating and always available. They answered every question, sorted out every problem, had all necessary tournament information available, arranged every interview, and of course, the free pizza and beer at the end of the day didn’t hurt.

The media work space was perfect: air conditioned room with tables, chairs, power, Internet access, refreshments, and large comfy chairs for some folks to have a quick afternoon snooze, although one photographer just napped on the floor using his camera bag as a pillow. Did I mention that some days ran 14 hours?

The number of people in the photo pits was controlled to ensure that each photographer had enough elbow room and could get the pictures they needed.

The result: photographers were able to concentrate on photography and were able to quickly transmit tons of pictures. This meant lots of coverage for the event and its sponsors. The organizers fully understood the purpose of having media coverage.

By contrast …

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29
Aug 09

A leg to stand on

I just finished post-processing 1,017 images. Many of these (but not all) will be used for marketing and public relations, in print and online. The client is not able to do any post-processing, except to crop the pictures to fit the holes on print and web pages.

Since the client doesn’t know which images will be used in the coming year, all these photos had to be processed. About 2,300 images were originally shot and those were edited down to 1,017. Yes, I should’ve edited it down a lot more, but I wanted the client to have a good selection to cover all future possibilities.

The images included: group shots, all of which required some faces to be retouched (i.e. eyes opened, shadows lightened and eyeglass reflections removed); several presentations, where fingerprints had to be removed from the glass-framed items; building exteriors and room interiors, which needed verticals straightened and ground debris removed; food shots in which the food had to be freshened and fixed up; and few hundred pictures of people wearing baseball hats or visors and/or standing in the shade, all of which needed shadows lightened and colours warmed.

Even at a tiny one minute per picture, that would still add up to 1,017 minutes, or 17 hours, of non-stop work. Some pictures required just a quick basic tweak of crop, levels and sharpen. But others required much more work (see previous paragraph).

I spent almost 50 hours on the images. Do the math, and that still works out to an average of only three minutes per image.

Would you work 50 hours for free? Of course not. Hence the photographer’s charge for “post-processing”.

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16
Aug 09

Timing is everything

A couple of weeks ago, Editor & Publisher posted statistics from its sister company, Nielsen Online, showing the average time-on-site for the top 30 newspaper sites in the USA. These numbers compare June 2008 with June 2009. Go ahead and take a look.

Some news sites like NYTimes.com experienced a 50% drop, whereas the Boston Globe’s Boston.com enjoyed a 300% increase. With only four exceptions, all the news sites had numbers far below the average time a reader spends with a daily newspaper. According to the 2008 Readership Institute Study, the average American newspaper reader spends 27 minutes with a paper.

What does this show, if anything?

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13
Aug 09

Adding Value

The phrases “added value” and “extra value” are tossed around by many businesses these days. Some companies use these terms not because they know what they mean, but because they’re nice-sounding catch phrases that might lure in unsuspecting customers.

Value is determined by the customer and not by what a business might say. If a customer needs 24-hour service, then free parking is not an added value. If a customer wants a salad, then an “extra value” meal with large french fries has no extra value.

“Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.” – Warren Buffet

Adding value means a business goes beyond customer expectations. This is a relative scale as different customers have different expectations and needs. Customer expectations also depend on the price. Customers expect more from an expensive store than from a dollar store. However, it is important to remember that while customers who pay more expect more, customers who pay less do not expect less. Very subtle point. (If I do a post on pricing, I’ll expand on this.)

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7
Aug 09

Fortress Journalism

Three weeks ago, the BBC College of Journalism released a 92-page pdf titled “The Future of Journalism”. The information in the book is the result of a journalism conference held in London in late 2008:

Today, as technology changes the lives of both journalists and their customers, assumptions about what journalism is and how it is practiced are being re-examined.

The eight chapters include:

  • The End of Fortress Journalism
  • Introducing Multimedia to the Newsroom
  • Multimedia Reporting in the Field
  • Dealing with User-Generated Content: is it Worth it?
  • Video Games: a New Medium for Journalism
  • The Audience and the News
  • Delivering Multiplatform Journalism to the Mainstream
  • Death of the Story

If you are a journalist, this might be of interest to you. Although much of it is, ironically, old news, the booklet may serve as reminder.

If you’re a business photographer, this might worth reading or at least skimming. Your clients have news and information they want to get out to the public and the news media. Perhaps there’s something to be learned here?

(Aside: my current pet-peeve is the use of the redundant word “multimedia” rather than “multimedium”.)

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5
Aug 09

Illegal Motion

Football has a penalty termed “illegal motion” which applies when offensive players are in motion at or before the ball is snapped (I think).

Speaking of offensive, there is a contest currently being run by a Photoshop magazine (*not* affiliated with Adobe). The winner gets to play pro media photographer on the sidelines at a USA college football game. The contest is open only to amateurs.

The prize is “a dream sports assignment of a lifetime” and includes: the winner will be loaned the necessary gear (with which they probably have no experience using); they will go into the stadium’s media room to get a “big spread of all kinds of food”, “full blown buffet”; the winner will “mingle with other media folks, photographers” (photographers love to “mingle” before a game – ha!); and finally, the winner gets a media pass to shoot on the sidelines.

Maybe it’s just me, but this is insulting to pro photographers and demeaning to the sports media. This is the kind of stunt that makes people think professional sports photography is just a game or a joke: walk in from the street, stuff your face with free food, hang around on the sidelines, and then go home. This is not even close to the real thing.

Will there be a similar contest where the winner gets to play magazine editor and help lay out a few magazine pages? Maybe win the opportunity to play web designer and do a few pages of code for a magazine’s web site? How about the chance to play workshop leader at a magazine’s next workshop?

The contest organizers state that the only people eligible to enter are those who do not have access to to sidelines. That should be the tip-off right there. If they are not allowed access in the first place, then there’s probably a reason why.

Why give media passes to non-media people? It defeats the purpose.

Better idea: give the contest winner a new camera and lens, along with the chance to shoot a practice with photo tips and editing advice from a pro. Then on game day, the winner sits in a nice stadium box to enjoy the game with free food and drink. This way, the winner doubly benefits from the pro photo lessons and photo opportunity during a no-pressure, no restrictions practice. Plus, the winner will be out-of-the-way during the game, when the sidelines will be crowded with people busy working for a living.

But then again, maybe it’s just me.

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2
Aug 09

Rules of Photography

If you are an experienced, professional photographer then you probably know all of this. But if you’re just starting out, here are the rules for running a photography business (in no particular order):

Assignments always take longer than planned.

There is no such thing as a simple shoot.

If the shoot goes smoothly, you’ll have computer problems later.

The more intuitive the software, the more problems you’ll have.

The layout will change after the photo shoot is done.

The CEO always has a bad hair day.

Size of the group to be photographed varies inversely with the size of the location.

The only time you need a reshoot is when there’s no time for one.

Success occurs when no one is watching. Failure occurs when the client is watching.

Gear always works at home. Gear always fails on location.

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