rant

Fade to Blacks

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Every Canadian news outlet today reported that Blacks, a 67-year-old Canadian retail chain of 59 photography stores, will shut down within two months.

[Update: It didn’t completely shut down. See end of post].

(To be accurate: In 1930, Eddie Black opened a Toronto radio and appliance store, “Eddie Black’s Limited,” which later sold a few cameras. In 1947, his sons opened a section in the store that sold guns, fishing tackle and cameras. The following year, in 1948, the sons took over the business and launched “Eddie Black’s Camera Store.”)

Today’s news stories repeatedly mentioned that the increased use of cell phone cameras has killed the photo store. The irony is that Blacks is owned by a cell phone company.
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On your marks

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Earlier today, I received an e-mail that read:

Good morning!

I am looking for a photographer that has the equipment to remove watermarks from a school proof photo. I have a letter from lifetouch giving me permission to do so.
Is this something that your studio is able to do?
If not, are you able to refer me elsewhere?

With sincere appreciation,

(name redacted)

A school portrait business like Lifetouch or for that matter, any other type of photography business would not give permission to remove a watermark. It doesn’t make any sense.

This is like asking, “Can you shoplift a jacket for me? I have a letter from the store giving me permission to do so.”

As all professional photographers should know, it’s illegal (and here) to remove, alter, or hide, a watermark or copyright notice from a picture of which you don’t own the copyright.

As every consumer should know, the easiest way to remove a watermark from a photo is to pay for it.

 

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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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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The not so deep freeze

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Today in Toronto, it was about -8˚C. A normal winter day. My cameras worked just fine outdoors. My flashes worked as normal. After less than an hour outside, I reached into an inside coat pocket to retrieve my cell phone and my iPhone 5 said:

Of course, it probably meant to say that it needed to warm up. The phone was completely useless. Thank goodness it wasn’t an emergency.

It turns out that an iPhone doesn’t like to work below 0˚C. Not even this will help.

I know that cold weather affects all batteries and can freeze LCDs. But I don’t recall having any previous cell phone freeze on me. My digital cameras have never failed even at -20˚C. The iPhone seems to be my only electronic device that fails when the temperature is less than ideal.

Perhaps today’s smartphones are wimps or maybe they’re just turning us into wimps.

 

Lasting photo memories

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Last week, I went to a funeral. As is common these days, the family had a photo gallery on their son’s online obituary page. The pictures covered almost the last half of their son’s life.

Many of the photos were either out-of-focus, badly exposed, had heads partially cut off, or the boy was so far in the background he was barely visible. Most of the recent photos appeared to have been shot with a cell phone due to the obvious low resolution and low quality.

Pictures are important, especially personal pictures.

If you’re a parent with young children, please buy a real camera and learn how to use it.
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Mission Creep

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A potential commercial client e-mailed to say they needed “a few product shots” and they’d do all the post-production work on the images. Their budget for “a four hour photo shoot” was quite small but it could be doable if there was only a few products and the production value was kept low (no assistant, no big lights).

I called the company to get more information.

Yes they wanted a few product shots. In fact, they wanted all of their products photographed with full studio lighting. Since some products were big and heavy, the lighting would have to be moved from location to location within the building (i.e. at least one assistant would be needed).
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