funcrunch

<p>Photos posted to Google+ (and Picasa) albums show the account owner as being the owner of the image. It's not set up like, or intended to be used like, Pinterest (not that I have any love for that site).</p>

<p>A young guest at a wedding I shot this past weekend. I was waiting for my husband/assistant to set up the lighting for the formal portraits, and grabbed this shot of her watching us from across the way.<br /> <a href="../photo/14534296"><img src="http://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/14534296-md.jpg" alt="" /></a><br /> Canon 5D Mk II, 24-70mm f/2.8L at 70mm, f/2.8, 1/60s, ISO 1600.</p>

<p>Photographer Dan Heller had two excellent articles on model releases recently, including dispelling some myths about commercial use. Highly worth reading. http://danheller.blogspot.com/2011/09/busting-myths-about-model-releases.html and http://danheller.blogspot.com/2011/09/commercial-uses-and-model-releases.html</p>

<p>Congratulations on being offered money for your concert photos! For web site display, a low-res JPEG file should be fine. I offer mine at 960px on the long side which is optimal for Facebook currently, and is plenty large enough for most web sites. I would never send anyone my RAW files.</p>

<p>Can't help with pricing decisions, but specify in your contract that the use is limited to their web site; if they want a hi-res file for printing or use in a one sheet or promo kit, you should charge more for that.</p>

<p>I especially like James' Brew Tubes, Daniel's soccer shot, Brian's cross-country runner, and Dean's extreme DOF portrait. Nice work.</p>

<p>My contribution is from a recital this week at a local cafe, featuring (but not exclusively limited to) cellists. The cello is one of my favorite instruments.</p>

<p><a href="../photo/14442413"><img src="http://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/14442413-md.jpg" alt="" width="679" height="531" /></a></p>

<p>Canon 5D Mk II, 24-70mm f/2.8L at f/2.8, 70mm, 1/50s, ISO 1600.</p>

<p>I recommend that you also check out Zenfolio for selling prints. Both Zenfolio and Smugmug have a free trial period. I've used both, and prefer Zenfolio for better uptime and ease of use. If you decide to go with Zenfolio, my referral code will save you a few dollars: DUQ-C5J-MB8</p>

<p>One of my favorite photos from last week's Blue Bear School of Music showcases at Cafe du Nord, San Francisco. Produced 580 finished photos in all from the three night run. Nineteen acts, including two that I performed in myself (on vocals, keyboard, and electric bass). Whew!<br>

<a href="../photo/14304853"><img src="http://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/14304853-md.jpg" alt="" width="526" height="679" /></a><br>

Canon 5D Mk II, 85mm f/1.8, 1/125s, ISO 1600.</p>

<p>I use the Alamy stock agency, follow their guidelines very closely when submitting photos, and have never had a submission fail quality control. Now, actually <em>selling</em> the images on the other hand...</p>

<p>Just finished shooting three consecutive nights of my music school's quarterly band showcases in San Francisco. Also performed myself on one of the nights, singing and playing bass and keyboard and still shooting all the other bands as well... whew! This shot is from last night; this band had a very loud and enthusiastic crowd.<br>

<img src="http://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/14259152-md.jpg" alt="" /><br>

Canon 5D Mk II, 85mm f/1.8 at f/2.8, 1/50s, ISO 1600.</p>

 

<p>Last night I went to The Mint Karaoke Lounge in San Francisco, which used to be a regular hangout for me but I hadn't been there in awhile. The occasion was that Randal Schwartz of Perl programming and authoring fame (for the geeks amongst you) was in town while on the MacMania cruise. We had a blast. (Randal is a Canon shooter too!) Click through to see the rest of the set.<br /> <a title="Karaoke at The Mint by funcrunch, on Flickr" href=" src="http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6079/6150594250_e3c5fe16f1_z.jpg" alt="Karaoke at The Mint" width="640" height="427" /></a></p>

<p>Last week I went on a photo walk organized by local photographer/blogger Thomas Hawk and some people from the Google Photos/Google Plus teams. It was a nice opportunity to visit my old stomping grounds, the UC Berkeley campus. I took this photo at the base of the Campanile (clock tower) while waiting for the walk to begin. Click through for the rest of the set.</p>

<p><a title="Bear sculpture at Campanile by funcrunch, on Flickr" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/funcrunch/6107599119/"><img src="http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6202/6107599119_0fa3610377_z.jpg" alt="Bear sculpture at Campanile" width="640" height="429" /></a><br>

Canon 5D Mk II, 24-70mm f/2.8L at 51mm, f/4, 1/125s, ISO 200.</p>

<p>Robert: If you have a membership to this site (Photo.net) you qualify for discounted liability and equipment insurance through Willis. Check into it; you owe it to yourself and your business to have it.</p>

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<p>nothing stop anyone to make a backup of what you buy online.. its like havign a CD.. sometime easier to find than a CD ; )</p>

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<p>Good point, Patrick. Time Machine on the Mac makes it easy to automatically back up your entire primary drive (and others if you choose) including all applications and permissions settings, and I'm sure there are equivalents for other platforms.</p>

<p>Tim, the 6TB isn't all filled up with images; the Drobo uses a lot of that for data redundancy. The part that is used includes all of my raw files, not just finished client images, which are smaller JPEGs uploaded to the web. Every one has a unique filename with the shoot date included, so if I know the date a photo was taken it is trivial to find the file. It's all handled in Lightroom, though I do need to start creating separate catalogs as it is getting slow.</p>

<p>I rarely use or burn CDs or DVDs anymore myself; I purchase and install most software online, and my customers download their licensed images from my Zenfolio site (I do offer a disc for an extra charge). But after reading the latest edition of The DAM Book by Peter Krogh, I am considering buying a Blu-Ray drive for archiving purposes. He makes a strong argument for including write-once media in his recommended 3-2-1 backup strategy. Hard disk space is indeed cheap - I have 6TB and growing in my Drobo - but write-once optical media is arguably more stable long term. (Backing up all of my terabytes of raw image data to the cloud is not currently an option for me; the available DSL upload speed at my apartment is too slow, despite living only a mile from downtown San Francisco!)</p>

<p>Fifteen percent seems rather high. I use Zenfolio and they have a tiered charge for client orders: 12% for prints, 8% for digital, 4% for self-fulfilled (free with the top-end premium plan). Self-fulfilled can be used to charge for services, though I use PayPal or checks for this myself.</p>

<p>If you decide to check out Zenfolio (they have a free trial), my referral code will save you a few bucks: DUQ-C5J-MB8 <br>

<br /></p>

<p>Tom - I'm using it with Firefox 5.0 on Ubuntu and it works fine for me...</p>

<p>John - did you start the search from <a href="http://images.google.com/">http://images.google.com/ </a>? If so and it still didn't work, you might have Javascript disabled or an incompatible browser. It's even easier if you install Google's extension for Chrome or Firefox (<a href="http://www.google.com/insidesearch/searchbyimage.html">linked from here</a>); then you can just right-click and "Search Google with this image".</p>

<p>Great tip - I just found one of my (copyrighted) images used on two Chinese blogs. Trying to decide whether it's worth trying to get compensation.</p>

<p>I haven't shot sports but I do shoot other events, and I too sometimes get sales over a year later. However, I've recently decided to add some time pressure by archiving galleries after 30 days, and requiring an additional fee to be paid for orders placed after that point. I'm just in the beginning process of making this change so I cannot tell whether or not it will be successful. I'd be interested to hear from other photogs who have tried expiring galleries and/or archive fees. (Whenever I participate in a major footrace like Bay to Breakers, I get several follow-up e-mails from the photo company with a warning that my photos will expire and an archive fee added after a certain amount of time.)</p>

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<p>Yes, good point, and the article I linked to has two step by step articles on how to do the entire process linked in it.........</p>

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<p>The ASMP has another good <a href="http://asmp.org/content/registration-counts">step-by-step copyright registration guide</a>.</p>

<p>The author's statement in the 10 rules article that you can register unlimited images online for $35 is technically correct, but somewhat misleading. Online registration is for unpublished images or for images published on a single date. Unless I'm mistaken, group registration for images published on different dates is not yet available online, though it is in testing.</p>

<p>Also, at this time you can only register as many images as you can upload in an hour. For many photogs this will not be an issue, but I shoot events and sometimes register several hundred photos from a single shoot. I size them down to 800 px on the long side, but it still takes awhile to upload (my slow DSL speed is partly to blame here).</p>

<p>When I go to a social event with friends and bring my camera, I generally put up low-res photos on Flickr and/or Facebook, usually with a small watermark at the bottom. I don't ask people to pay for these, but I don't provide free hi-res images or prints either.</p>

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<p>the best bet is to treat it as a truly social event and leave the camera at home, as difficult as that may be.</p>

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<p>Agreed; I rarely bring my pro kit to social events anymore. My cell phone does fine for casual snaps.</p>

<p>Yes, find out the specific usage needed first. If they are only putting photos on their web and social networking sites then they don't need high-res. If they need high-res for a promo kit then charge them more for that.</p>

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<p>Julie,<br /> I think you're fooling yourself if you think your clients won't print from the low-res files. The will and when asked who took the picture, they will pass along your name. No one will ever ask them what file size they used or where they had it printed. You may want to rethink this.</p>

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<p>I know I cannot prevent clients from printing my low-res photos, but as my license specifically forbids this, it's a matter of trust, a compromise I'm willing to make. And I've heard some places like Costco do sometimes check for a print license, though I'm certainly not counting on that. Believe me, I've put plenty of thought into this decision.</p>

<p>ETA: My name can be spread a lot faster through photos posted to Facebook than through prints! That's why my low-res files are sized specifically for Facebook.</p>

<p>Adding a follow-up note on my thread from a couple months back to say that my concerns were quite easily resolved. I used the <a href="http://www.photographers-toolbox.com/products/lrtransporter.php">LR/Transporter plug-in</a> to copy the filenames (minus .jpg extension) to the IPTC Title field (and put in more identifying information while I was at it, though my copyright and e-mail address were already embedded in the EXIF of all files). Then I copied the filenames from the Finder and pasted into a text document. Edited the text to remove the extensions and separate the filenames with semicolons. Copied fifty lines a time from the text file into the "Contents Title" fields in the online copyright submission form.</p>

<p>So a little more work than before, but not nearly as onerous as I feared. Just got my first registration back from the copyright office with the individual titles listed (77 for this particular shoot). Another, multi-day shoot had over 700 files in the submission, so that's going to be one fat envelope!</p>