Pro Photographer Editing Workflow (TIPS)

All photography faces the challenge of scenes with a significant dynamic range. Landscape and architecture is really no different. I will capture as many frames as required to cover the entire scene’s dynamic range. For architecture and indoor 3 frames are enough for most scenes. The image above required 9 images; exposures bracketed at -2, 0 and

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Lessons in Success from a 12-Year-Old Bird Photographer

Photography: Lorenzo Rohani

It’s a cold frosty evening on the open mud flats of Boundary Bay, Canada, and bird photographer Lorenzo Rohani is quietly adjusting his camera to capture a Snowy Owl perched fifteen meters in front of him. The birds are rare this far south of the arctic and Lorenzo isn’t alone. A dozen professional wildlife photographers have also gathered nearby, their giant lenses topped by powerful flashes primed to chase away the late shadows. Lorenzo’s plan is simpler. He’ll wait, knee-deep in the wetlands, for the sun to sink below the horizon. Only then, he knows, will the dying natural light cast the owl in a beautiful orange glow. It’s the sort of knowledge that you might expect from a seasoned pro, and the photo his patience produces wins a photography contest run by Time Magazine. But the contest is organized by Time for Kids

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Video Game Photographer Shoots in Virtual Worlds

but compares the work he does in finding and capturing photogenic moments in computer gameworlds to that of a Unit Stills Photographer creating shots for a movie’s publicity material. Like the photographer, his goal too, he argues, is to reflect the flavor of a scene and its movement in a single frame. Harris has created thousands of landscape images, portraits and dramatic shots captured while exploring the giant worlds created by computer game designers and populated with animated characters.

First, Free the Camera

A journalist specializing in video games, screen captures used to be a part of Harris’s review process. Although those early gameworlds were lacking in architecture and furnishing, they presented the same challenges that Harris faces now: removing the head-up display that gamers need to play, and unlocking the camera so that he could explore the world beyond the game’s narrative to search for unusual views and attractive scenes. As games became richer and more complex so the opportunities for capturing beautiful images increased.

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Become an Independent Photographer in 2012

their current rate of sales. In 2012, that’s likely to mean a more independent approach to marketing, a move towards relying on their own efforts to reach buyers instead of hoping for stock agencies to do it for them.

The problem is most clearly seen in microstock where saturation has spread revenues among contributors and lowered returns per image. It is still possible to make sales on microstock, and enthusiasts looking for a little extra boost to their incomes with some low-cost imagery can still send in their photos and hope for a small second revenue stream from commercial photography’s biggest open gate. But even though less than two percent of market leader iStock’s photographers are said to be responsible for half the site’s sales, the trend on returns is clearly downwards. More photographers are earning, but they’re taking home smaller amounts each, making the costs of shoots harder to justify economically.

The easiest alternative isn’t great either. Getty’s deal with Flickr, which lets the stock giant negotiate and administer sales of images on behalf of Flickr members who opt into its program, moved thousands of images within months of its launch. But with royalties as low as 20 percent for the photographer, it’s little wonder that 500px chose not to follow the Yahoo-owned photo site into Getty’s arms.

Do It Yourself

The reason that Getty’s deal is so questionable for Flickr’s photographers also suggests what may be the most powerful solution in general for enthusiasts looking to make a little extra cash: why give 80 percent of your revenues to Getty when it’s possible to negotiate your own deals?

That’s not entirely straightforward, of course. Flickr photographers who want to sell their own images need to make a note in the description that their photos are available for licensing. They need to respond quickly and professionally (flaky sellers are a major reason that buyers prefer to deal with reliable middlemen like Getty) and they need to indicate that they have model releases available when appropriate. Most difficult of all, they need to know how much to charge. But Getty’s own price quotes can provide a good source of comparison, and when you’re taking home 100 percent of the sales price, you can also undercut them, making up for the lack of Getty’s reputation.

It’s that direct approach to winning clients and customers that can work for any kind of photographer.

All photographers, both amateurs looking for occasional sales and professionals who need those sales, should have their own website. There’s no shortage of easy and low-cost options, from Photoshelter’s templates (which are used by some of the world’s leading independent photographers) through services like FolioLink, which has ecommerce built in, to simple Flash-based modular sites like those offered at MoonFruit. The building and hosting is now easy, giving all photographers their own unique space on the Web to show off their style, their approach and their very best work.

No less importantly, it also gives prospects, having viewed their work, a way to contact them and enquire about pricing, commissions and sales.

Facebook for Events, Etsy for Art

But while the building is simple, bringing in the traffic won’t be. Search engine optimization is time-consuming, unreliable and difficult. Online advertising is competitive and the days when you could buy clicks for five cents each are long gone. Advertise for

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Become a Photographer Without Giving up the Day Job

and provides an example of the difficulty of maintaining a passion for photography while also building a career outside the world of creative arts.

Photography became a serious hobby for Ramsini about seven years ago, and a

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Judge a Photographer By His Book Covers

if not killing animals then at least looking the part. Cordner’s image of Bristol Palin’s former fiancé wearing a camouflage jacket and peering out from behind pine trees was later used on the cover of Johnston’s book Deer in the Headlights: My Life in Sarah Palin’s Crosshairs. It was the fifteenth book cover that Cordner had been commissioned to shoot.

Although book covers are little different to any other photography commission, the special use to which the images are put does give them an extra appeal. A book cover won’t just sell a product in the way that the result of an advertising shoot will do. It will appear in stores across the country, on bookshelves around the world and it will help to summarize a cultural product. We might be told not to judge books by their covers but we do anyway, and we certainly buy them and recognize them by their covers. A photographer whose image appears on the cover of a bestselling book can know that his image has been printed thousands, if not millions, of times, has helped to create success

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Top Microstock Photographer Pressures Agencies by Launching His Own Site

even those shot by his assistants and in-house photographers. PeopleImages, however, is not accepting outside contributors and does not pay out royalties.

Only 6,000 of the photos on the site are exclusive. Most of them can be found in the

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Freelancers Need to Be More Than a Photographer

She has a bachelors degree in Managing Information Systems, an MBA in Managing Innovation and Technology, and has worked in technology for Hewlett-Packard and Ogilvy. Since 2003 though, she has been living in Italy where she writes about food, technology and healthy living. She also sells her photographs, sometimes through Getty, sometimes through her own website and she accepts wedding jobs too. While some photographers are choosing to build their brand through specialization and a tightly-defined niche, Sara Rosso is able to live in a beautiful location and make a living with a range of freelance jobs that include and relate to photography.

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