Julian Love (one of my fellow travelers sponsored by Chase Jarvis to attend the ASMP SB2 conference/seminar) has a wonderful post over on his blog about компютриbreaking into the travel photography business.
How many times can you take the same picture? I have a gorgeous view out my window of the Boston skyline. Whenever there’s a beautiful sunrise or sunset, I grab my camera and shoot a photo of Boston. Here’s the result, at least the Boston images I’ve scanned so far: a 16 image photos of Boston gallery over at PhotoShelter. All scanned film–Fuji Velvia 50.
“Hackers put up 130 humorous “DANGER” signs around the Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus on May 18, 2008 to amuse students getting ready for final exam week. The signs included “DANGER: DO NOT make paper airplanes” over a newspaper stand, “DANGER: DO NOT frolic” under a sign directing visitors to the grassy Killian Court, and a series of signs with the words to Rick Astley’s ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’ song in reference to the ‘Rickroll’ internet meme.”
The location of the Rickroll signs in Building 16 was a reference to the Rickroll hack, where hackers modified the Media Test Wall at the junction of Buildings 16 and 56 to rick-roll passerby every 16 minutes. (When Rick Astley’s ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’ wasn’t playing, the void was filled with a film of someone peeling an onion. The hackers apparently judged this to be incomprehensible enough that nobody could tell the difference between it and the art-house film that usually played on the Media Test Wall.)
More photos over at the PhotoShelter Danger Sign hack photo gallery. In other news, this hack (and my pictures) made the MIT homepage…
Looking for MIT photos? I’ve got a library’s worth. Those touristy ‘MIT campus picture’ shots–standing in the middle of Killian Court, looking up at 77 Mass Ave–I’ve got hundreds. It comes with the territory, honestly. If you have pictures of Killian Court, 77 Mass Ave, and the Stata Center, then you have all the ‘MIT images’ people hold in their minds. I just happen to be the kind of person who can’t resist taking the shot when the light is perfect even if it is an MIT image that thousands of people have taken before (and sometimes an ‘MIT photo’ that I have duplicated a couple hundred times myself).
So how do you take a classic MIT photo without being another boring tourist?
If you haven’t heard of Orphan Works legislation and you’re interested in the photography industry, time to start learning.
To make a long story short, the bills are predicated on the idea that people like libraries should be able to make use of copyrighted works that no longer have a copyright owner standing watch over the rights — books that were written by long-dead authors and published by long-gone publishers with no next-of-kin to rake in the cash. The problem that exists now is that people making use of these works really don’t know whether said next-of-kin aren’t just waiting to come out of the woodwork to slap the user with an infringement lawsuit, and so using that work means incurring a terrible risk. The Orphan Works bills were written to assure the world that no, you won’t be liable for massive damages as long as you’ve done a diligent search.
At least, the best post on the state of the stock photo industry I’ve read yet.
From A Photo Editor (Rob Haggart)’s interview with Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia Merchandising Director of Photography Keren Sachs (whew, that’s a long title):
I think the value of product photography goes up as buying decisions go to the web because photography is all you have to grab consumers. Has that become a factor yet in the photographers you hire?
Definitely. Our photography a key aspect of our brand online and in print. However, our products must still remain hero while we build brand equity in our merchandise lines. The images have to be strong enough to instantly grab the consumers and make them stop before clicking through to something else. One way we increase the value is by making sure the imagery is lit beautifully and with purpose. You’ll notice this in the photography for our new line at 1-800-flowers.com shot by Travis Rathbone. Too many times I have seen images with beautiful lighting but the product is in shadow. That doesn’t help us sell products and it certainly doesn’t work on the web.
Get that? Product photography for the web has been “stick it in a light tent” for years now. It’s interesting to see that an enormously brand-focused organization like Martha Stewart Living has recognized the potential for photography to distinguish their products from the rest even in a low-res, relatively low-fidelity medium like the web. (If I was focused on product photography right now, I would start making sure that my vision came through even in small thumbnail-size web-store images—not just in gorgeous high-res prints and large-size web portfolio images.)
Something else I’ve been meaning to link to… the Women of the East Side Calendar is a project that took about 26 photo shoots in 36 locations with 48 models and seven months to realize. It’s a benefit calendar to raise money for the James E. “Big Jimmy” Roberts Memorial Scholarship Fund at MIT.
Turns out that fellow MIT student Biyeun ‘10 is building her own 8×10 view camera. From scratch. How cool is that?
After I wrote about the effect of digital technology on advertising photography and came to the conclusion that digital was pushing advertising towards a more narrative mode, the logical next step was to ask how that narrative was being implemented. This essay is my attempt at answering that question.