At some point in your career as a Professional Photographer, you will be asked by some Art Director, PR Firm, Charity etc... to shoot Pro- Bono ( Freebie ) for their latest sad-sack cause. "Run for Glaucoma", "Restless Leg Syndrome Foundation", "Feed the Seals!", "Citizens for Carbon Offsets" or some such do-gooder cause. Let me help you with the proper response to such commonly occurring enquiries from the well meaning advertising braniacs who call you to get your free help on their latest project.
Response 1) No
Response 2) Have I got the guy for you! ( Give them another Photographer's name, preferably a close friend. This way he can call you up and curse you later.)
Response 3) Are you ( Art Director, Charity Pimp ) being paid for your services? How about the Printing Company responsible for the Ad, Poster et cetera, are they being paid for their time?
Response 4) Not this week, I'm still a little shaken up by Al Gore's Movie "An Inconvenient Truth" !
The last one will score you points with the caring set and let them know that your Globally Conscious :)
PS. No one ever asks a plumber to come and root drains for "Jerry's kids". I guess if every one took up pipe fitting as a national hobby that people would be asking plumbers to do their jobs for free! You Know........for the exposure...."Think of all the work it will bring in!"
Yeah........more Pro Bono work!
Friday, June 15, 2007
Saying No to Pro Bono...
Sunday, June 3, 2007
Editing The Raw Files...Part 2
Continuing from the 'Editing The Raw Files' post on Monday, May 28th :
9) With the DCIM folders safely backed up on multiple drives or disks ( DVD, CD etc...), its time to create the 'Editing Folders' that will be the back-bone of our 'Workflow'. To keep things organized, their must be a designated place for each edited or processed file that can be quickly accessed from your editing software and in the final stage from Adobe Photoshop. I find it easiest to create 1- 4 folders on my Computer's Desktop to hold the edited selects, before and after the software ( Conversion to Tiff ) processing. Each folder can be given a name that clearly explains what is inside. Example: ABCorp_RawEdits, ABCorp_Tif, ABCorp_WIP ( Work in progress ) and ABCorp _Final. The final folder is obviously the 8 or 16 bit PSD's or Tiff files after all color correction and manipulation. If you do anything freaky to them after that, create a new folder off the desktop for them and label it appropriately. When the job is edited , processed and delivered to the client you can move the folders off the desktop to a final 'Work Folder' with just the clients name and date.
Continued ...
APS-C Snobbery!
Some of you may be wondering why my focus seems to be exclusively on APS-C and Full frame Digital SLRs versus the medium format Hasselblads, Mamiyas and Large Format Digital Options that are currently available. The reasoning behind this is simple and partly selfish on my part. I believe that almost all my advice will easily translate to shooters who use large format capture devices or medium format digital cameras. Also, if your shooting with a Hasselblad H1, you probably have enough jack to pay someone to bring you up to speed on the whole digital thing! For the rest of us with meager budgets, the quality, clarity and file size offered by the new Canons and Nikon DSLRs is far beyond that which is needed to produce our work! Most of my images are reproduced at their largest as full page 'Magazine Covers' or the occasional 'Double Truck'. When a larger file size is required, upressing with 'Adobe Photoshop CS2' or 'Genuine Fractals' is an easy answer. 'Alien Skin Software ' has an excellent Photoshop Plug In called 'Blow Up' that will give you a more film-like-look when
upressing. The Imaging Software Gurus at 'Alien Skin' also produce several of the most useful image enhancement software programs available. I currently use a little magic from their product 'Exposure' on almost every job I shoot.
More about 'Alien Skin' in a future post!
Monday, May 28, 2007
Editing The Raw Files
Continuing from the 'Plan Ahead...Part Four' post on Sunday, May 27th:
8) Now that you have the DCIM folders copied to your Desktop, its time to back up all the folders to another Hard-Drive. This will guarantee that you won't get in a rush and delete any important images or lose the job due to a Hard-Drive failure. The likelihood that both of your computer's Hard Drives would fail at the same time is very slim, but it is certainly within the realm of possibility. Also remember, because you copied the files over, you still have the entire job ( back-up # 3 ) safely stored on your Card Media! This will make it nearly impossible to screw up and delete important files. And with digital, you don't always know what files will be needed until after you do your first edit and process the selects. Better to be safe than sorry!
To be continued...
Sunday, May 27, 2007
Plan Ahead...Part 4
Continuing from the 'Plan Ahead...Part 3' post on Thursday, May 24Th:
7) After your very successful assignment is finished and in the bag so to speak, it's time to get those stunning images backed up and on your Hard-Drive. If you use a Portable Digital Storage Device to back up CF/SD cards on location, the images should now be on at least one, if not both media. I like to copy the complete folder, labeled DCIM in Canon Cameras, with all images directly from the original source ( The Card ) to my main Hard-Drive. I use my computer's built in card reader ( which is slow as hell! ) to copy the images from my CF cards to the Desktop (Pc).
This gives me time to make more coffee. If you are not a Coffee Drinker, a High Speed USB 2.0 Card Reader will do the job much faster. My Workflow is pretty straightforward, so I know I'm not going to be at the computer too long. Whatever transfer device you end up using, do not copy the images directly from your camera! Remove the media (CF/SD) and transfer the images with a card reader. The camera is for taking photographs, not for transferring images to other storage. Keep that camera ready to go with a fresh formatted card before you leave the job site. You never know when a good opportunity for a great pic is going to pop up. Be prepared.
Once the first card has been copied to your Desktop, its time to rename the DCIM folder to something with the abbreviated job name followed by an underscore and the number 1. EXAMPLE: ABCorp_1. Now its important to remember that you are not moving the files from card to computer, you are copying the files from the card to the computer, leaving the original raw files still on the card! Repeat the above steps for every card with images, adding a new number to each new DCIM folder transferred to the Desktop ( ABCorp_2, ABCorp_3, ABCorp_4 etc...) until all cards have been copied. Don't forget to rename DCIM immediately after the copy to your Desktop. If you forget, the computer will not let you download the new DCIM folder to the desktop, or worse, it will ask you to over-write.
To be continued...
Saturday, May 26, 2007
A Little Guilty Humor...
So here it is............ as best as I can remember, or at least as it was told to me by one of my Photographer buddies, a Little Story about a Pain- in- the- Ass- Art Director who got a little too involved in the shoot!
So this Art Director/Buyer, a notorious, low budget, line- item- please, Estimate Slayer comes to a friends studio to oversee a tabletop setup for a company Ad. She wants every angle under the sun shot of this set, just in case! The large format Polaroids are flying and the camera stand is going higher and higher to get yet another angle.......... "Could we shoot one here too? " "How about here?" "No....... that's not it........much higher! ". So, at some point, this not-too-petite gal decides that she's going to take matters into her own hands and position the camera herself. She climbs the 12 ft ladder to get a better look at the set from camera position and gets the bright idea to lean out and try to see the image on the Ground Glass. A millisecond later she was diving head first onto the set, crashing thru the Formica covered 4x6 plywood, bouncing once and back again for the final ride to the floor. No screams, no yelps. One second shes climbing the ladder, the next shes a Human Wrecking Ball falling from the ceiling! For a few unbearably long seconds............silence! No one can speak, no one knows what to say. After a few moments the Photographer and his assistant spring into action, reaching down to offer any help and assess the severity of the situation. With no words and no explanation, the Canon Ball Art Director rises to her feet, brushes herself off and without speaking a word, starts walking toward the front door of the studio. Following close behind, my friend the Commercial Photographer continues to inquire about her injuries and state of mind, the standard questions when you witness someone ' Bust Ass ' so badly. No answer, Just nods and mumbling as she walks out the door.
My friend says that he nearly pushed out a hemorrhoid trying to stop himself from laughing.
This was a true story...
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