mike51664877339

<p>Thanks for the link, Mikael.</p>

<p>I've to to confess: I spend a good deal of time taking pictures on the "other side of the tracks." I seek an antidote to chain fast-food places and strip malls. Sometimes people end up in my photos, and sometimes they "make" the photo. But I am really shooting "artifacts" rather than individuals.<br>

Once I saw a six- or ten-unit motel that had given itself over completely to residents on the public dole. As you can imagine, families living in a single room spread out into the parking lot. The scene was chaotic and poignant at the same time. I have to rely on my memory since I did not want to barge into their de facto living rooms and begin snapping pictures.<br>

The issue that Jon and the NY Times writer addresses is complicated, because it gets personal if you are on the other side of the lens. I do not have a mission that lets me rationalize taking photos of individuals who are experiencing a rough patch (or whose existence is rough).<br>

I am reminded of Jennifer Baichwal's documentary <em>The True Meaning of Pictures: Shelby Lee Adams' Appalachia. </em>Reviewer Kathleen Cummins quotes Adams and adds a question of her own: " 'By getting in there with the camera, by creating some distortions, I'm hoping to make everyone think.' That is a noble thought, but like the "dramatic lighting events" Adams creates in his work, at the expense of the dignity of his subjects, might that not just be part of the theater?"<br>

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0JSF/is_41_11/ai_99984457/?tag=content;col1<br>

(If the link breaks, the review is in TAKE ONE, March-May, 2003.)<br /><br /></p>

<h2><a href="http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0JSF/"><br /></a><a href="http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0JSF/is_41_11/"></a></h2>

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<p>clearbags dot com sells boxes.<br>

I sell blank cards at art fairs: a set of three sells for $7.00. I stopped using boxes, though, and now use plastic sleeves/envelopes instead, 'cause the boxes were too expensive considering the product price.<br>

I also wanted to sell cards through gift shops. My local shop already had local-interest blank cards, but would take a line of post cards. I shot a few images, but could not get an acceptable home-made print. And the low-volume prints from places like Vistaprint were too pricey: more money for them, almost none for me.</p>

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<p>That may be so but one sale is not proof of a trend which the title of the thread declares and the commentary with it suggests.</p>

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<p>The OP can chime in, of course, but when I saw the content of the post, I figured that Kevin was being facetious with his title, especially since, reading into it a bit, the post asks us to think about irony in the relationship between price and demand.</p>

<p>Congratulations on the sale, Kevin. Of course the single sale has value, 'cause it gets us thinking about pricing. I am on Etsy, and have found print sales worse than slow. Now and then, I'll sell a greeting card on Etsy. Overall, for me, the cost of being on Etsy is very low. Sales have covered my out of pocket to be there, and production and postage. However, I am a long way from covering other expenses such as labor and overhead and equipment amortization.)<br>

I also sell at art fairs. I have been to 14 over that last three years. The experience overall, without working up a P & L on it, is that the the scale is bigger than Etsy, and so are the losses. This year, my third, I am making a consious effort to minumize purchasing additional inventory to reduce costs.<br>

My prices are $30 for an 8 by 10 (matted size), $45 for an 11 by 14, and $60 for a 16 by 20. I operate on a theory that customers whose knees jerk on a particular image will then seek out the lowest-cost version of that image. So I place the $30 prints in the back of the booth, and am not replenishing them as they sell. I bring a sampling of framed prints ($110+), but have yet to sell one. In fact, I had the request to remove a print from its frame, which I accommodated.<br>

The "knee-jerk" is a big factor: a customer has to connect with the photo. I imagine that their price sensitivity is inversely related to the strength of the connection. To my way of thinking, if I dropped my 11 by 14 prices from $45 to $30, I would not see an increase in unit sales. Instead, I would just be cutting out some of my revenue.<br>

I looked at Brooks Jenson's site, and did not find any material on pricing for photo print sales through Etsy and art fairs. Maybe we could take that as a sign that he doesn't consider them to be viable distribution channels. I don't either, but I still do it.</p>

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<p>Offering a photo for sale on Etsy is not the same thing as selling the photo on Etsy. (That said, I think number of sales is reported with each listing, and I suppose the OP's comment applies to "bad" photos that are acually moving.</p>

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<p>Herma, similar arguments occur on guitar bulletin boards, about making music for the joy of music vs. being money-motivated. I did not anticipate that my post would be understood as a denial of the satisfaction (and possibly $) that non-pros might get from photography, and I won't take the bait.</p>

<p>You can disagree, but the details in the last paragraph of my post are fact, 'cause they apply to me (except I returned the halogen lamps to Home Depot, and use strobes instead). Without a doubt, we are mostly an equipment-obsessed group, pros and non-pros alike. Central to my statement is that capapble equipment is widely available (read as "low-cost"), so usually I can observe those with pricey gear without jealousy.</p>

<p>In two newspapers and one magazine, I read articles about business people who lost their jobs and, like me, took their unemployment as an opporunity to pursue photography. I do not know how their finances work. I made the post in the first place because Garrison Keillor came so close to describing how <em><strong>mine</strong></em> are, and I wanted to address the issue of how established photographers have to contend with serious former amateurs who are pretty desparate. It's oblique, but the issue is price competition.</p>

<p>I whine all the time, Herma, but not about the lack of a high $ camera, or about hobbyists gone obsessed, or those who somehow are "true photographers."</p>

<p><em>"I think that book publishing is about to slide into the sea. We live in a literate time, and our children are writing up a storm, often combining letters and numerals (U R 2 1derful)...The future of publishing: 18 million authors in America, each with an average of 14 readers, eight of whom are blood relatives. Average annual earnings: $1.75." </em>Garrison Keillor, in Time Magazine, June 7, 2010. Time attributed the Chicago Tribune as publisher, but the original column was published, (I think) in the Baltimore Sun on May 25, 2010.<br>

<br /> As Marios implies, very capable cameras are common. What's more, they are not sitting in camera bags, they are snapping all the time. However, the "memory-capture" portion of the photo business has been vulnerable to do-it-yourselfers for 100 years or so. What is "new" is how the web challenges conventional publishing. Economics no longer allow the conventional publishing industry to support editorial photography and advertising photography as in the past.<br>

<br /> Are portrait/wedding photographers similarly challenged? The barrier for entry may not be that a novice can acquire a capable camera. Lighting, posing, composition, make-up, stlying, the critical eye that comes from experience: these things are not found on the "modes" menu.<br>

<br /> That said, our current economic crisis has thrown a lot of people out of work, and many of us who were closet shooters in the past have set up photography businesses, trolling for anything that smells like a dollar. We click and read Zeltsman and Strobist.com, buy some halogen work lights at Home Depot and a shower curtain at Walmart, and start taking portraits, creating a revenue stream that looks alot like the one Keillor wrote about.</p>

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<p>One way or the other, we have to tame our monitors. But before we get into profiles (that is, non-sRGB profiles), it might make sense to see whether our print service even uses them. For instnace, MPIX does not use embedded profiles, except, for some reason, for proofs. It doesn't sound right, as written below, that "...that is the color space that the printers require, Before images are printed, they must be converted to sRGB," but the fact remains, they don't accommodate non-sRGB profiles.</p>

<p>This is from their FAQs:</p>

<p><a id="ctl00_contentCPH_contentRptr_ctl04_help_anchor" name="anchor_13">"Why sRGB color space?</a><br /> sRGB is the working space for all our photographic printers. Consequently, working in a larger color space does not offer any advantage from a printing standpoint. It's a similar question to the one above about bit depth. A larger color space, in theory, allows a greater range of colors and dynamic range to be captured and manipulated. We suggest sRGB as the working space because that is the color space that the printers require. Before images are printed here they must be converted to sRGB. By suggesting that clients use sRGB as their working space, they are insuring that what they see will be what they get as much as possible."</p>

<p>Sorry if I gave you the impression that I know anything, Nicole. (ha ha.) I know that what I am doing doesn't work, and I assume, like you perhaps, that color management is a way of making it better. But I have not gotten as far as you. )<br /> I Googled "color management step-by-step," and guess what site was at the top of the list?<br /> http://www.photo.net/digital-darkroom-forum/00A4LG<br /> The discussion referenced is from 2004, but two of the three links still work, and the third is broken but seems to be to Adobe, whose site is still there....</p>

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<p>Shoot your normal shoot. Print your normal print. Then re-shoot your prints with your iPhone, and process through lo mob.<br>

http://lo-mob.com/<br>

Well, not really. But they have named their effects. Take their name, and google around to see if you can find some Photoshop actions that will take you there.</p>

<p>I agree, Nicole, that trying to get a print that matches an original artwork is a challenge, especially when using an outside service for prints. Having your own printer places everything in your control, but it's still up to you to control and manage the color. It's just that, with your own printer, you can start building a library of printer profiles. (In other words, a printer gives you one more thing to calibrate/profile. Each paper type has or should have its own profile.) Here is a tip: paint for yourself a grey-scale gradation strip, and include it in your photo. (Tape it to the back of the canvas so it extends and can be seen from the front, or prop it on the easel along with the painting.) When the print comes back, the grey scale can be used to see if your lightness/darknesss/contrast is on target, and if a color cast was added somewhere in the process. Since I have a Macbeth ColorChecker, that's what I use. Please post about your experience, I'll read eagerly and learn, I hope.</p>

<p>Here is a shot with a digital P & S, notorious for having very long depths of field. The sharp background would not do, so Photoshop's layers and blur came to the rescue. Without looking too hard, you can see how I forgot to erase the mask between the tripod legs. Would software allow the gradual transition between sharp and unsharp that we see in the ground on Richard's shots? I don't know.</p>

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<p>Insurance or gamble? Maybe synonyms in the case of extended warranty. If I absolutely can't do without the equipment, and if repairs can be time-consuming or costly, and if I don't have two bodies or have cash for an instant replacement in the case of failure, then the extended warranty may make sense. I buy insurance to protect me from the bad, or gamble that the bad won't happen. When I was adding a Canon 5D to my wish list, I seem to remember a cost of the extended warranty in the $250 neighborhood. The camera is still on my wish list, but the quantity is to be one, not two. Without a back-up, I will be considering the warranty extension seriosly.</p>

<p>Be ready to break the rules. But one rule to keep in mind, expecially when working with blur, is to make sure the forground is in focus. Overall, considering the three links, the mechinics of depth of field seem to be working. But try to make sure that blur contributes rather than detracts. And the contribution we usually seek is isolation from the surroundings. The strong vertical in the flower shot, for instance, distracts me. Making it blur does not make it go away, and since it is "connected" to the flower, and it looms so much, it overwhelms the shot and the subject. </p>

<p>I don't have hands-on experience, but I think adjustable-height photo stools will help you get there. Church directories don't have a lot of acreage, so seated shots are probably what's called for, so that the faces don't get too tiny. The small-group equivalent of a head shot might be waist-up.</p>

<p>Seek out places that sell vintage clothing. Goodwill, Salvation Army, and consignment stores tend to have a pretty "contemporary" inventory, so the chances of finding what you need are lower, but then, so are the prices. Generally speaking, specialty shops like vintage cothing store tend to be a bit pricy, but you will save a lot of time if you find one that covers your era. Also, '50s stuff is pretty collectible, so you might find some things on e-bay.</p>

<p>Thanks for the photo. I am gonna give it a try,</p>

<p>My Sekionic 358 has an "Auto Reset Cordless Flash" mode. When set, the meter stays in ready-to-measure mode, waiting for light to come its way. I use this mode with my hotshoe flashes, but have not tried it with bulbs.</p>

<p>Great tip. Do you have a photo?</p>

<p>I recognize "back in the day" with 35 mm SLRs. But now, B&H does not offer a "kit" option for the Canon 7D or 5D or 1D or 1Ds. Likewise on the Nikon page. Other cameras from both Canon and Nikon are available both as a body only and as a kit with a lens. But for those models, in the B&H catalog, there is no kit, and there is no kit lens. Body only. I'm not making it up. I looked.</p>

<p>Sarah, it looks good to me. When I work up a price, I examine the project in as much detail as I have, resolve as many unknowns as possible, figure out time and out-of-pocket, and then see if the price I have to charge is so high that I will not have any takers. (It usually is.) Then, especially if it is the first time, I am likely to go anyway even if the numbers don't add up, so that I can resolve the unknowns. I end up refining and trying again, or saying "never again." </p>

<p>Off Topic: Craig says: " almost every camera sold comes today comes with a kit zoom that covers 50"<br>

I am still a film shooter, but I look very closesly at digital, mulling over how high or low to go. When I open the B&H catalog to the Canon DSLR page, I see the 7D and the 5D and the 1D and the 1DS offered with body-only prices. Want the Nikon D300 or D700 or D3 or D3x instead? Body only at B&H.<br>

I have added a digital camera and two lenses to my B&H wish list, and guess what? I don't have 50 mm covered.</p>

<p>I am building a portrait portfolio. My portrait sessions are a bit inefficient, and so far I use up my session time shooting with my "Classic Manual Cameras" (Bronica ETRsi), which keeps me experimenting with "Alternative Cameras and Lenses." But the thing you suggest, taking serious portraits with toy cameras, is on my radar for sure.<br>

<p>Nice stunt, to travel light by buying cameras at your destination. Good score on the XAs, too. I prefer the original XA, so if you are considering a trade or sale....</p>

<p>My experience is a little different, mainly 'cause I don't have the discipline to leave cameras home. I carry a lot of them with me, and bunches of film, and I stop at every thrift store I pass and a lot of the yard sales.</p>

<p>Here is a tutorial I bookmarked a couple of weeks ago:</p>

<p>http://retouchpro.com/tutorials/?m=show&id=209</p>