For Photographers

Door-to-door Energy Scams

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(This post has nothing to do with photography).

If you received an e-mail saying you just won a million dollars, would you believe it? If an e-mail said your bank account or credit card was compromised and you needed to “click here” to verify your information, would you do it?

Someone came to my front door today saying he was with the “Ontario Energy Safety Board”. He was here to do a furnace safety inspection. Of course, he was lying. There’s no such thing as the Ontario Energy Safety Board. The company name he used was meant to be confused with real Ontario Energy Board.

Now that warmer weather has begun, many homeowners will be receiving similar knocks on their front door. This will go on for many months. Sadly, all levels of Canadian government have refused to fix the problem of door-to-door scams. We have Do Not Call and CASL but we don’t have “Do not knock” like Australia.
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Print it or lose it

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As you might know, the most archival storage medium is paper. It’s also the most common and the cheapest. (Yes, rock is more archival but paper is easier to carry around.)

Yet we still digitize almost everything in the belief that this will preserve that information. But as file formats, storage formats, software and hardware become obsolete, this information may be lost.

Vinton “Vint” Cerf, recognized as a founder of the Internet and currently vice-president of Google, this week stated:

In our zeal to get excited about digitizing, we digitize photographs thinking it’s going to make them last longer, and we might turn out to be wrong.
(…)
We are nonchalantly throwing all of our data into what could become an information black hole without realizing it. We digitize things because we think we will preserve them, but what we don’t understand is that unless we take other steps, those digital versions may not be any better, and may even be worse, than the artifacts that we digitized. If there are photos you really care about, print them out.

In 2013, the Photo Marketing Association launched its Print it or Lose it campaign to encourage consumers to print their valuable photos rather than risk accidental loss of those digital images.

 

Anybody For Nothing

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The 1969 American cult film Putney Swope, a satire about the advertising world, corporate corruption, politics and more, has horrible acting and lots of great quotes. It also has this scene which has been posted on many photography sites:

I can get anybody for nothing.

The running gag in the film is that the commercial photographer appears at inopportune times always showing his portfolio but not getting any work.

A satire is something that pokes fun at a vice, foolishness or human folly. Feel free to interpret what the photographer represents.

 

Industrial Workwear for Photographers

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Most corporate photographers and editorial photographers will, sooner or later, have to shoot in a factory or on a construction site. This means you have to wear safety gear.

I’ve photographed in factories and construction sites for many years. I did two jobs today, one at an aerospace manufacturer and the other at a hospital construction site. Here are a few suggestions to photographers who will be shooting in similar situations.

Safety Boots

They may look fashionable but do not buy safety shoes. Get 6″ or 8″ safety *boots*. Safety shoes may be allowed in some factories and warehouses but they’re not permitted on construction sites.

Safety boots must have the CSA green triangle patch which confirms that the footwear has a Grade 1 protective toe and a puncture-proof sole. It helps to also have electrical shock resistance.
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A Matter of Inches

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The more you use Photoshop, the more you find little issues with the software. For example, Photoshop lets you set the default unit of measurement for almost everything:

Almost everything.
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Business Policies for Photographers

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It’s important for every professional photographer to have a written set of guidelines to help define how they run their business. The American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP) has a blog post with a suggested list of policies.

Policies should be guidelines for your business and not carved-in-stone rules. We’ve all run into companies that hide behind policies that don’t always reflect the situation at hand. Your policies should help customers into your photography business and not push them away.

A company’s policies should also be reasonable and legal.

Some policies may be legally required (e.g. privacy policy) and some may be strongly encouraged (e.g. PCI compliance if you accept credit cards, and a refund policy).

Your business policies can be part of, or supplemental to, your Terms and Conditions. Either way, having a clear set of written policies is an absolute must for every photographer.

 

Cheap Stock Pictures Fail Yet Again

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The National Post this week pointed out that the cheap stock pictures used by the Department of Canadian Heritage are from a foreign-owned picture agency and were shot by foreign photographers.

Why does this federal agency use foreign photos to promote Canadian culture? It suggested that Canadian photographers are too expensive.

This National Post article is years behind the times. The federal government’s practice of using stock pictures from foreign photographers has been going on for a long time. The Canadian government avoids Canadian photographers and buys cheaper work from abroad.
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