images

No TwitPic, licensing grabs are not okay

Screen shot 2011-05-11 at 21.38.06

If I had a TwitPic account, which I don’t, I’d be feeling somewhat on the angry side right about now. Following a sly amendment to its terms of service and a deal it has just done with WENN news agency, if you upload an image to TwitPic, you also grant it a licence to sell your images. Charming. Oh, TwitPic is very keen to point out that you get to keep your copyright, which is all fine and dandy. But selling your work and taking all the proceeds from it is not.

In case you want some clarification on that, here’s the relevant guff from the terms of service:

However, by submitting Content to Twitpic, you hereby grant Twitpic a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the Content in connection with the Service and Twitpic’s (and its successors’ and affiliates’) business, including without limitation for promoting and redistributing part or all of the Service (and derivative works thereof) in any media formats and through any media channels.

No, that’s very, very not good.

There is, however, some hope.

A much more user-friendly Mobypicture

Have you heard of MobyPicture? No? Well you have now. It does pretty much the same thing as TwitPic – in fact it probably does more as it lets you upload pictures to FaceBook, Flickr, and a few more sites besides, in addition to Twitter – but it has a much more user-friendly terms of service:

All rights of uploaded content by our users remain the property of our users and those rights can in no means be sold or used in a commercial way by Mobypicture or affiliated third party partners without consent from the user.

Move over TwitPic, Mobypicture is heading your way.

It's Just Not Cricket. Oh Wait, Yes It Is.

scott-barbour-winner

At the end of last year, we looked at the announcement of the Cricket Photograph of the Year Competition. Entrants were allowed to submit up to three images that were linked to cricket in some way. Needless to say, I was furious to discover that my photo of a box of crickets didn’t even get a look in.

Eleven images were shortlisted, with one winner being announced (pictured here, image by Scott Barbour). Go and have a quick peek at the eleven finalists on the Lord’s website.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I just have to run out. Run out? Geddit? Sorry.

The winning image, taken by Scott Barbour.

Our April photo competition

Fingers

Portraits make great photos, but the human body can produce some of the most intriguing, inspiring, and delicious pictures, too. Hands can tell a story, hips can be sensual, and even feet can be made to look elegant. So that’s what we’re looking for this month: pictures of the human body. (Absolutely no dead ones, ya hear?) If you manage to produce the winning picture of a smouldering neckline or a marvellous macro of an eye, the super dudes over at Fracture will be giving you one of your pictures printed on glass.

We’ll accept submissions (one per person) from today – Wednesday 6 April 2011 – until Wednesday 27 April. They need to be added to the Small Aperture Flickr pool.

Any questions? No? Well you know where to find me if you do have any. And here are The Rules, in case.

The Rules

  • If you decide to enter, you agree to The Rules.
  • You can’t have written for Small Aperture or be related to either me or Haje to enter.
  • One entry per person – so choose your best!
  • Entries need to be submitted to the right place, which is the Small Aperture Flickr group.
  • There’s a closing date for entries, so make sure you’ve submitted before then.
  • You have to own the copyright to your entry and be at liberty to submit it to a competition. Using other people’s photos is most uncool.
  • It probably goes without saying, but entries do need to be photographs. It’d be a bit of strange photo competition otherwise.
  • Don’t do anything icky – you know, be obscene or defame someone or sell your granny to get the photo.
  • We (that being me and Haje) get to choose the winner and we’ll do our best to do so within a week of the competition closing.
  • You get to keep all the rights to your images. We just want to be able to show off the winners (and maybe some honourable mentions) here on Small Aperture.
  • Entry is at your own risk. I can’t see us eating you or anything, but we can’t be responsible for anything that happens to you because you submit a photo to our competition.
  • We are allowed to change The Rules, or even suspend or end the competition, if we want or need to. Obviously we’ll try not to, but just so that you know.

Version 1 of Oloneo's PhotoEngine is almost ready for release

Screen shot 2011-03-31 at 13.15.15

In July last year we featured PhotoEngine, a piece of post-production software by French company Oloneo that allows you to make adjustments to the exposure of your pictures in real-time. The production team listened to the feedback from its beta testers and have come up with a revised beta. They reckon that version 1 will be available very soon.

The new beta allows for a natural HDR processing mode, a bundle of presets that you can apply to your pictures, the ability to create your own presets, a batch processing option, EXIF preservation (that seems like a good idea), and drag-and-drop support when you’re importing images.

As a thank you to beta testers, Oloneo is offering a discount on version 1 if you sign-up to the PhotoEngine newsletter before its release. They’ve not given a release date yet, so if you are interested, you’re probably best to do so sooner rather than later. You can sign-up on the Oloneo website.

ArtistBe.com - selling and buying images online

Find images by subject, style, or artist/photographer

It’s a simple concept: a place where artists can display their work and people who might want to buy a photographic print, or an oil painting, or a watercolour, can, well, buy it. It’s called ArtistBe.Com (that’s artist become, of course) and it’s overstockart.com’s newest venture.

If you want to sell your photos, you can sign up for a free account, upload your images, and then assign them to the relevant galleries by subject – for example architecture, cuisine, or people – and also by style (abstract, Art Deco, pop art… ) so that buyers can find what they’re looking for. You get an individual gallery, too, with all your work in one place.

Find images by subject, style, or artist/photographer

If you’re selling an original piece, the buyer will communicate directly with you and you negotiate the deal and terms. That means you’ll be responsible for getting the piece to your buyer, but you won’t have to pay commission to ArtistBe.com; you get the entire fee.

Alternatively, you can also sell reproductions on canvas in a range of sizes. They vary in price; the cheapest I saw was around $30 and the most expensive almost $500. (Although doubtless there are more expensive ones, too.) The production and shipping of these is handled by ArtistBe.com, which removes that headache. But it does mean that you’d only take 15% of the sale. Swings and roundabouts, I suppose.

Sand Dunes Pattern by Harveys Art

It’s all new and shiny, so how well it is going to work remains to be seen. But having an easy-to-use venue to sell images can’t be that bad a start. Have a look for yourself at ArtistBe.com.

Fracture: pictures printed on glass

Screen shot 2011-01-31 at 14.16.06 How does having your photos printed on glass sound to you? A minimalist photo-and-frame-rolled-into-one deal, if you like. It’s what the guys over at Fracture can do to your pictures. No, there’s no paper involved; the image goes on the glass. No, I’ve not a clue how they do it. But I really wanted to know what they’re like, so I checked them out.

Fracture was dreamed up by Abhi Lokesh and Alex Theodore in summer 2008. They happened to be in Swaziland at the time, but they’re not anymore. Now they’re back in the US and run a very hands-on team of ten, printing, packaging, and mailing people’s photos on glass. No, no robots there. Knowing all these important details, and more – such as Abhi’s love of peanut butter – I sent three of my images for fracturing.

Hanging on the wall, they look as if they're floating

It was all rather easy. You upload your images (or you can email them), you choose the size of your prints (with a handy wineglass for comparison), you edit your pictures a bit if they need it, you select a border from about a billion options if you want one (I didn’t), and then you pay. At $12 for a 10″x8″ fracture, plus shipping, I thought it was quite reasonable. There are plenty of options, though; things start at $8 for a 7″x5″ and go up to $25 for a 14″x11″. They can be square, too. Oh, and then you wait with bated breath for your fractures to arrive.

In its packaging

Taa-dah!

Foamy protection and a hook for hanging

Did I like them? Definitely. The colours are great and when mounted on the wall, which is super-easy as the hook comes along with the picture, it looks as if it’s floating. There’s an option to have them mounted on a stand, too, and that looks pretty cool.

A stand-mounted Fracture, in the living room at the Small Aperture mansion

Would I order some more? Absolutely.

Fracture, pictures printed on glass.


Disclaimer: Fracture provided me with three prints gratis for the purposes of this review

Dodging and burning


This image has extensive burning (at the back of her head) and dodging (top right) done to it - with remarkable effect!

If you've spent any time in Photoshop editing your images, you'll have noticed a "dodging" and "burning" tools. They are used for making an image lighter and darker respectively, but why the odd icons? Why is there a lollypop and a fist as part of your Photoshop tool palette?

As you may have guessed, it's a hangover from the darkroom days - and it's a technique that is great fun to play with if you're ever printing your own images.

How a darkroom enlarger works

enlarger.jpg

A darkroom enlarger is sort of like a camera, but 'backwards'. In a camera, you have a lens that gathers light and projects it onto a film plane. A darkroom enlarger also has a lens, and the film is pretty much in the same place as in a camera, but a light bulb is placed on the opposite side of the lens. By turning the light bulb on, the lens 'projects' an enlargement of the image onto photographic paper.

You can 'focus' the lens so your image is sharply in focus on the paper, you can choose a more or less sensitive paper (analogous to picking a higher or lower ISO film), and you can choose a longer or shorter exposure (which turns the lamp on for longer / shorter). You can also select a different aperture on the projection lens, which has much the same effect as on your camera: A smaller aperture requires a longer exposure, etc.

To determine how light or dark your print is going to be, you choose an 'exposure' by choosing how sensitive the paper is you are using, you choose an aperture, and a 'shutter speed'. Just like with your camera, it's possible to over- or under-expose your image at this point.

Its worth keeping in mind that your photographic film will be negative, and the paper is negative as well - the dark portions of the film will become light on the final print, and the light areas on the film will be dark on the print.

Dodging in the darkroom

dodge.jpg

To dodge means to avoid something by a sudden quick movement, or to move quickly to one side or out of the way. It's a pretty good description of how you would dodge something in the darkroom. In the darkroom, you would use a piece of black paper on a thin stick - which, when seen in silhouette, looks a little bit like a lollypop.

When dodging in the darkroom, you would traditionally select a slightly longer exposure (it gives you a bit of time to work). Then, when your paper is being exposed by the light, you could make some portions of the image lighter by moving the dodge tool between the lens and the paper. Because some parts of the paper get less light, they are lighter on the final print.

Burning in the darkroom

Burning is, as you might have guessed, the exact opposite; When burning, you would traditionally do 'half an exposure' normally (or whilst dodging, as above), followed by another exposure of the same paper. Because the enlarger head is firmly fixed and the paper doesn't move between exposures, 'stacking' exposures like this is no problem.

When burning, you would use a tool that would block some light, but let some light through.The areas you are 'burning' will come out darker: more light on the paper causes the print to be darker.

For the burning process, it is useful to have a tool where you can easily change the aperture (i.e. the size of the hole that lets the light through) - and it turns out that your hand is the perfect tool. By changing the shape of your hand, you can make a small hole for the light to pass through for fine work, or you can create quite a big hole, for darkening larger parts of the image. Hence the hand icon in Photoshop!

RedBubble: making selling pictures easy

blue wool

‘A honourable art gallery? Surely not? Well, yeah, that’s how it works!’ That was Haje’s reaction to RedBubble, an online art gallery and community, when it launched back in 2007. He was taken by the business model that a group of Aussie creatives had dreamed up that allowed artists a hassle- and risk-free means to put their work online and sell it. RedBubble set the base price for a print and the artist set the mark-up. When a print was sold, RedBubble took care of the billing, production, and postage whilst the mark-up went to the artist. Easy-peasy!

The world has moved on a touch since 2007, though, what with England seeming to be doing okay at cricket, so I thought that I’d catch up with the RedBubble crew, as well as some of its users, to see how things have changed since the heady days when they first hit the aether.

Sunrise by the sea

Speaking with Martin, RedBubble’s MD, it seems that RedBubble hasn’t changed an awful lot over the past three-and-a-bit years. Its ethos is still the same: it’s about providing artists with a community and an opportunity to sell their work, as easily as possible. The business model is still the same. RedBubble sets the base price; the artist sets the mark-up. What RedBubble has done, though, is grow.

Four months after it began, there were 30,000 images on the RedBubble site. Today, there are over 5 million, and over 2 million people visit the site every month. If you’re looking for art, you’ve a lot to choose from; if you’re selling stuff, that’s a lot of people looking at it.

Red, pink or green?

But RedBubble isn’t just about selling art, though, it’s a community, too. Richard, one of the members, told me: ‘The community is fabulous. Everybody is encouraging and supportive and willing to help people learn and improve.’

At first, RedBubble only offered prints, albeit flat, mounted, or framed. Now images are available on canvas, as postcards, greetings cards, calendars, and posters. There are even stickers and some clothing options options available for designers. As Richard says, it’s an easy way to display your work and make a little bit of money on the side.

RedBubble is focused on continuing to expand its current model, as well as the development of The Bubbler blog. Martin told me that their basic viewpoint is that they stand for artists, to help people be creative and to develop. Sounds pretty good to me!

Thanks to Richard Keech for the photos. You can check out more of his work on RedBubble!

Pennies for pictures at Tailcast

Picture 2

There are probably a few of us who wouldn’t mind making a few extra pennies from our photographs, but possibly in a hands-off, not-really-having-to-deal-with-practicalities kind of way. You know: rather than having to make and mail out greetings cards made from your photos yourself, let someone else make them and send them out. If this sounds appealing, I might have just the website for you.

It’s called tailcast and it allows members to upload images and words that they can then make into greetings cards or wall art, or allow other people to transform them into cards or canvases. If someone uses one of your images to make a card, or a piece of wall art, you get a 20% commission on the piece.

Is 20% a reasonable commission? I don’t know. But if you’ve a few images that you’re happy for other people to make into postcards or to hang in their living rooms, it’s a pretty easy way of making a bit of beer-money.

Check it out at tailcast.com.

DropMocks: Photo-sharing in its simplest form

Minimalist photo-sharing. Room enough in an already crowdedmarket?

I just came across a new photo-sharing site, and it’s so easy to use it makes navigating Facebook feel like learning quantum physics. There are no titles, no captions, no text at all. Just images. And it’s free. So, what’s this addition to the plethora of photo-sharing sites already out there?

It’s called DropMocks and it’s just as it sounds. You drag and drop your images from your computer right into the browser’s window to create a minimalistic photo gallery. You don’t even need to create an account, unless you want to keep track of your “mocks.” And if you do want to create one, it’s as simple as logging in with your Gmail address. Once you’re done dropping in your photos, you’ll be given a URL to copy and share with your friends.

The site’s uploader currently supports only Firefox and Google Chrome browsers. However, your gallery can be viewed by friends using any browser at all. And since it was created using HTML5, DropMocks is completely mobile friendly.

“Bleh, just another photo-sharing site,” you say? Not so quickly, my friend. What makes DropMocks different from all the others is its simple minimalistic structure. It literally took me 30 seconds to make my own gallery of 15 photos. Yes, you’re not able to add a description of the picture or view stats about how many times it was seen. But that’s not the point here.

Minimalist photo-sharing. Room enough in an already crowdedmarket?

You’ve all heard the phrase, ‘a picture is worth a thousand words.’ Well that’s what DropMocks is going for. Your images should speak for themselves, and nothing looks better than a crisp clean photo on a plain white background.

If you want to title every single picture and describe where and how you shot it, then Flickr or Smugmug or even Facebook is for you. But if you just got home from a trip to Greece and you want to show off your photos in a beautiful art-gallery style, what better way than to spend five short minutes uploading your pics and posting a link or emailing it to your friends and family?

However, keep in mind that this is not a replacement, nor should it be, for photo-sharing giants like Flickr. And while its minimalistic structure is its main appeal to photographers such as myself, I’m interested to see if DropMocks’ features will increase along with its popularity. Too many features and it becomes lost amongst all the other photo-sharing sites.

In the meantime, feel free to take a peek at my sample DropMocks gallery, or make your own and post the link in the comments section below so we can see yours.

Spending money to make money

moneys

A couple of days ago, I did an article on making money via stock photography, and one of my eagle-eyed readers pointed out that you had to pay for the service I recommended.

I had a bit of a think, and was trying to make up my mind if I should write something more about the topic, ‘if it is worth investing money into trying to make money off photography’. Obviously, in most business, you are dependent on making an investment in order to start earning anything, but can the same be said to be true for photography?

Before I had time to formulate my thoughts, one of my regular readers who is also an old friend dropped me an e-mail which pretty much sums up my opinions on the matter – I’m sure he doesn’t mind if I reproduce it here:

Yeah, you do have to pay, but the thing is, if you manage to sell a couple of images, you can make that money back easily. They seem to have one of the best systems out there, and it’s all about having faith in your product.

If you don’t think your photos are good enough that you will be able to sell them, then paying for the service is not for you. If you believe your pictures are good enough to compete, then you’ve got yourself a winner.

I’ve been able to make a profit from this website over the past 3 months, and I’ve had my account for about 7 months. In total, I’m running at a loss, but if the last 3 months are anything to go by, I’ll be running a profit overall from next month onwards.

I’m really excited, actually, it’s the first time I’m making money off my photos. Even if I end up not making much from this, I can say I’m making money of photography, which has been a life-long dream for me.

YMMV, of course, but I’ll stick with Photostockplus for as long as they’ll have me.

Thanks a lot for that, Tim.

Agree? Disagree? First, have a look at the original post, and let us know, below!


Do you enjoy a smattering of random photography links? Well, squire, I welcome thee to join me on Twitter -

© Kamps Consulting Ltd. This article is licenced for use on Pixiq only. Please do not reproduce wholly or in part without a license. More info.

Book review: 99 Ways to Make Money From Your Photos

99ways

If you’re a half-decent amateur photographer, making a few extra pennies on the side from your photos is always gratifying. It might not be enough for a holiday in the Maldives, but it’ll buy you a few sundowners on the beach when you get there. Have you considered all the different ways that you could make money from your pictures, though? Apparently, there are at least 99…

99 Ways to Make Money From Your Photos has been produced by the editors of Photopreneur. The title is fairly self-explanatory, but what did I think?

What did I like about it?

Well, most importantly for a book trying to give you ideas for making money from your pictures, some of its suggestions were things that I’d forgotten you could do, never considered, or even heard of. How about bartering your pictures or photographic services? Turning your pictures into colouring books for kiddies, anyone? What about helping people looking for love online present better images of themselves? Yep, some of these ideas were pretty original.

However, it also started in the obvious place—selling pictures to stock houses—and explaining the difference between royalty free and rights managed sales, which is fundamental, I think.

I also appreciated that each idea was laid out so clearly, with a summary box, a series of tips, and a getting started box. The book gives you practical advice and points out things you really ought to consider before taking on a project. It also allows you to judge if the elbow grease that you’ll have to plough into an enterprise will justify its overall return by rating the difficulty, earning potential, and competition for each idea. That’s all rather neat.

What didn’t quite do it for me

A great gift, but probably not a book you'd buy for yourself

There’s a bit of a difference between selling the odd photo that you take in your spare time, and embarking on a career as a professional photographer. This book doesn’t draw that distinction, and mixes up quirky small-time stuff, like selling on Etsy, with serious photographic challenge, for example becoming a forensic photographer. For me, making it a bit clearer for whom each idea is intended would improve the book’s usability.

Obviously, 99 ways to make money is far more enticing than 45 ways to make money from your photos. However, I thought that some of the ideas were scraping the barrel. I wasn’t convinced that using doctors’ surgeries, local cafes and restaurants, and hair-dressing salons as potential sales venues for your photos warranted three individual entries. How about combining taking school photos with dance school photos? What about one entry for the different types of stock photos? The title might not be quite so exciting, but the book will be easier to navigate.

The final thing that I found very odd: for a book about photos, it doesn’t contain a single one, save for the front cover image. Curious.

So what do I really think?

I think it’s a great book to buy as a gift for someone you know who takes great pictures and could make some money from them. It has creative ideas and is honest about how much you can expect to make turning your photos into greetings cards. But at £21.87 (US$34.95), I’m not sure I could justify it for myself.

99 Ways to Make Money From Your Photos, by the editors of Photopreneur. Published by New Media Entertainment Ltd and available in lots of places that sell books.

Your pictures; your rights

I've turned this one into a card. Pretty, no?

I have to admit, I’ve been giggling to myself at some of the comments that are popping up on the sites that have covered the Vampire Weekend image controversy. There seems to be confusion in monumental proportions regarding who owns the rights to a picture, to people’s images in a picture, and what you can—or can’t—do with a picture that you own. Confused much? We’ve put together the Small Aperture Quick and Dirty Guide to Photographs, People’s Images, and Rights. Just remember that we’re not lawyers.

Copyright

This one's mine!

If you shoot a picture, you own the copyright to it*. No one can reproduce it or otherwise make use of it without your permission.

*) The only exception is if you have explicitly signed away your rights. This might be part of your job contract at work – for example if you are taking photos for work, during work hours. In the UK at least, you can only sign away your copyright in writing, and you have to sign the document where you do so. Ticking a box on a website wouldn’t be sufficient.

Moral rights

You also own the moral rights to pictures that you take. In short, that means that your pictures should be attributed to you, and you can ‘protect their integrity’, or stop people from manipulating and distorting them.

Images of people: commercial, editorial, and personal use

If the picture features a person or people who are easily identifiable, you will require a model release, which is essentially that person’s or people’s consent, to use the picture for commercial purposes. If the picture of a yak farmer leading his herd down the mountain is just going to sit on your Flickr stream as part of your holiday snaps from Outer Mongolia, you don’t have to worry. Sell the picture to the publishers of the Encyclopaedic Guide to Mountain Yak Rearing, you’ll need a model release.

But, there are some exceptions to this. Inevitably.

Caveat number 1: Crowd scenes and itty-bitty people on the horizon whom you can’t make out properly (or similar)

You’re standing amongst the crowd at the London Marathon and you manage to snap the perfect shot of hundreds of spectators standing at Canary Wharf, cheering on the runners. It’s so perfect that Nike wants to use it in a commercial campaign. Do you need model releases from everyone in it? Not if they aren’t recognisable individually (even if someone says ‘But I knew I stood right next to that lamp-post all day’), in this instance it wouldn’t be reasonable.

These guys manning a laminating stand (in the middle of the street in Fez, at about 10pm) are probably obscure enough for me to get away with this shot. Probably.

Caveat number 2: Famous people doing famous-people things

It’s pretty much a given that famous people’s pictures taken when they are doing famous-people things, such as tripping the light fantastic up the red carpet at film premieres, opening yet another megalithic shopping centre with a false smile affixed to their faces, or taking an amazing catch at a cricket match, are fair game. But that’s only for personal (i.e. Flickr or your portfolio site) or editorial (i.e. news reporting or reviewing related to the picture) use.

You couldn’t use a photo of Tom Cruise attending a movie premiere to advertise toothpaste—no matter how shiny his teeth are—without a specific model release. And as far as Tom Cruise is concerned – good luck getting one of those.

Caveat number 3: Famous people doing stupid-people things

You’re out having a quiet meal with your best friend when you spot Cruella Manningly-Kneesup, Secretary of State for Juggling, Air Guitar, and Space Cadets locked in a passionate embrace with someone definitely not her husband. In fact, it’s Marco Poloco, whose company was recently awarded the government contract to supply rocket launchers and hover cars to the Space Cadet programme. Hmm. Is something fishy going on? Maybe! Obviously neither of these two is going to give you a model release for the picture that you snap with your ever-handy compact camera, but publishing it would be in the national interest – so you wouldn’t have to worry about privacy or libel too much.

Still the same applies as above: you couldn’t use the same picture of Manningly-Kneesup and Poloco in an advert for birth control. As much as you would like to.

Ownership of rights vs ownership of an artefact

I've turned this one into a card. Pretty, no?

Selling a copy of a picture is different to selling the rights to a picture. I use some of the photos that I take to make greetings cards. Mostly, I make them to send to my friends and family, but every now and then a misguided soul will ask me if they can buy one to send to their great aunt Marjory. I might’ve sold this person a copy of one of my pictures, but that’s it. All they own is the physical artefact, nothing else. They can’t reproduce it or make derivative works from it. Come to think of it, the same goes for the people to whom I give these cards.

Selling rights

Selling the rights to a picture means selling the rights to use a picture. There are different ways of selling the rights to use your pictures, because the number of times it can be used, and how, and where, will be dependent on the contract you agree, and that’s not really for this post. But the simple explanation is that if anyone wants to use a picture that you took, they have to at the very least ask your permission first. Then you can ask them for some money to do so. Okay?

And finally

Remember that you’re allowed to take pictures in UK public places without let or hindrance, and that we’re not solicitors, so all of this is for general guidance only, mkay?

It ain't the camera...

fstoppers

So you think your camera isn’t good enough? You’re probably wrong. No, seriously – you’re about as wrong as you can possibly be. I know I keep droning on about this, but here’s the proof, once and for all.

The awesome guys over at Fstoppers.com have done a video showing off how they were able to do a photo shoot with the worst camera they could think of.

“To prove this, I’m going to shoot an entire fashion shoot with the worst camera possible… Any Olympus SLR camera”… Of course, that wasn’t bad enough… And they shot the whole thing on an iPhone 3GS instead.

Check out the video:

As Lee Morris says: “I posted a few of the images and asked people to critique them (never exposing that they were shot on my cell phone). I couldn’t help but laugh when a few of our readers claimed that these were ‘the best images I had ever taken.’ Nobody ever claimed that they were too grainy, too soft, or lacked detail.”

Oh snap. Check out the full article with a load of sample photos over on Fstoppers.

Tips for winning photography competitions

Be prepared!

Have you ever entered a photography competition and not won a bean?

Don’t worry, it happens to all of us. To help you along, we’ve collected together some of the best tips from some top judges to see if we can’t help you lay your hands on that so-far elusive first prize!

  • Edit ruthlessly and only submit your best shot — don’t be sentimental and don’t submit an almost-shot, submit your best one.
  • Be original — you want something that will make the judges go ‘Oooh!’, with your approach, your technique, and your interpretation. And don’t try to imitate another photographer.
  • Know your craft — ensure that you are seen as in control of the image: you shot it in black and white for a reason; the lighting is just right; its focus is exactly how you wanted it; you get the best out of shooting on film or digital.
  • Seek the opinions of others — don’t be too hard on yourself and don’t be too sentimental about your images.
  • Evoke emotion — be personal and be powerful.
  • Know the rules — you don’t want to be disqualified because you didn’t do it properly. And don’t forget to put your name and the name of the image on your files!
  • Finally: persevere — you might not win this time around, but there is always next time and you’ll have learned from the process.

If you want some more insight, including tips from some competition judges, why not have a look at what Photocritic and PhotoRadar have to say, too?

Now, go forth and conquer!

Portraiture: Borrow their soul!

mika31

A few years ago, I was part of a creative arts project in Arizona and southern Utah, where we did a lot of work with Native American people — a ‘world through our eyes’ type thing. One of the things that was brought up when we were dealing with more traditional tribes, was that we weren’t to take any photos. Perhaps surprisingly, some people believe that when you take photos of them, you steal a part of their soul.

Religions and superstitions aside, I think it’s a good way to look at portraiture. Stealing souls is a bit harsh, but if your photographs don’t at least borrow a little bit of soul from your subjects, I believe you may have failed as a photographer.

For this article, I’ve chosen to do a critique some of the photos submitted to me by Isaac – an USC film student with a passion for photography. His images illustrate very well how adding a touch of feel (or soul, if you will) can lift your portraiture.  

 

With his photos, Isaac included a note. Now, normally, I don’t pay much heed to what people say about their photos: if they can’t stand on themselves, they aren’t worth critiqueing. In this case, I made an exception: Essentially, Isaac is begging to be kicked to the kerb:

Compliments are nice, but for someone in my position they are useless – I’m a newb and I need people to tear my work apart so that I can improve. Please, please, I beg you, be as harsh as you possibly can. Thanks.

… Which I would have done, if his pictures were actually bad. Luckily, they aren’t. Without any further ado…

Isaac’s first photo has is titled ‘arms’:

arms.jpg

At first, I wasn’t quite sure what to feel about this photo. It’s terribly messy, and you can’t actually see anything of what is going on. I’m also not a big fan of the photographer being reflected in the camera, on a general basis. In this one, however, the expression of the photo comes together in a wonderful way.

To me, it seems as if this photo is taken in a changing room. The girls are performers, preparing to go on stage, perhaps. The girl on the left is showing a slightly worried expression, and is looking at the photographer through her hand in the mirror, while the other model is completely obscured in what seems like a dancer’s pose. Is she snapping her fingers? Is she fixing her hair?

The tension in this photo — and much of its soul — comes from the tension in the photograph. The photographer is intruding into a world where he doesn’t belong, and the way the models obscure their own face almost seems as a defensive gesture, even though the body language of both girls are very open.

Along with the tension and the colour repetition (there is only one accent colour, and it’s pink. It’s reflected in the light source, on the photographer’s shirt, in the left girl’s hair band and the right girl’s top), the thing that intrigues me about this photo is that you can follow the path of the light. Take the left model, for example, you can see her head, then her head in the mirror. You can then follow the light beam through the hand which is obscuring her face, which you can also see in the mirror, and then into the photographic lens. As a photographer, this multi-layered self-referential image is very appealing and exciting to me.

On a technical level, I would probably have tidied the image up a little bit. Darken the background more, black out the writing (on the mirror? On the photographer’s shirt?), and get rid of everything to the left of the left model, and to the right of the right model. Once that has been done, it will increase the focus of the photograph.

The final thing which makes this image really work for me, is that if anyone has had their soul ‘stolen’ in this image, it’s the photographer himself. The models are obscured, and the only person who you can connect with (despite the camera stuck in front of his face), is the person taking the photo.

A powerful, cheeky, and inventive photo indeed.

In Isaac’s second photo, entitled Mika, he’s using a different set of techniques:

mika.jpg

In a way, I really wanted to read a lot of meaning into this photo, but there’s something about it which doesn’t quite allow that for me. The car in itself is delightfully dilapidated, and the dirt, decay and entropy it and the background represents makes a fantastic backdrop for telling a story.

The model is beautiful, and very well captured on your behalf. The problem I have with the image, however, is that she just doesn’t look quite right in her circumstances. The way she is dressed and posed gives the photo an impression of ‘look! an old car! let’s take a picture on it’. If she was dressed differently, there would have been an opportunity for a whole series of different stories worth telling. Dressed very beautifully and glamorously, it could be a story of being lost / being out of ones element. With more frizzy hair, perhaps a scruffy, stained t-shirt, and with dirty, bare feet, it could be a story of despair, loss, and hopelessness. Open the bonnet and make her a spanner monkey, with some creative lighting and perhaps with a streak of oil on her cheek, and you have a classic ‘sassy mechanic’ shot. Sat in the car, perhaps in a bikini, or even nude, it’s a different story again.

I think this photo is an excellent counter-example of the above. All the elements are there: The model is attractive and sultry, the background looks bloody amazing and is well cropped, and the lighting is quite beautiful. However, you haven’t captured the ‘soul’ of the photo, and we’re left with an image that, whilst interesting to look at and quite pretty, doesn’t move me at all.

That doesn’t meant that the photo is beyond saving, of course — technically, it’s close to perfect (the only thing I’d address is the lighter area in the top right of the image. Getting someone to stand in the way of the sunlight, setting up a screen, or just cropping / editing it out in Photoshop would take care of that), and as I say, both the model and the setting have a lot of potential.

… Which semi-elegantly leads me to the last image of today’s critique. Another photo of Mika:

mika3.jpg

This photo fills me with wonder. What’s going on? Why is she stood in the sunshine in front of a half-pointed wall? Her eyes are kind of closed. Is she tired? Is she reacting to the sun? Is she on drugs? She does look sort of suspicious. Is she trying to hide from something or someone? Is she suspicious herself, of does she mistrust the photographer? Is she angry at the photographer?

With an initial impression like that, you’re bound to catch the attention of onlookers, which is a great start in the battle towards getting a photo noticed.

On a technical level, I think I’m not too fond of the sharp side-light. The shadow of her eyelashes on her nose is not particularly flattering, and while it does look as if you’ve used a reflector to lighten up the ‘dark’ side of her face (did you? Or is it merely light reflected back off the wall? It doesn’t look as if there is enough wall surface for that amount of light reflection), it isn’t quite enough. The main thing I have a problem with from a technical point of view, is that even in this photo, it’s possible to see that the model has absolutely gorgeous eyes. We want to be able to see them properly! A fill-flash would definitely have come in handy here. While you’re at it, perhaps a little bit more light on the wall behind the model as well — the sharp contrast between the white and the light olive colours carry this image — use it!

Right, with all that out of the way, let me say that this image is bloody good. Just like the first image, it harbours a lot of emotion and it tells (or rather, hides) a story. The light is low on the horizon, which to me says ‘evening’ or ‘morning’. Based on the make-up, I want to think evening. Or is it morning? Is her tiredness because she’s been out all night? But she doesn’t sweaty or messy enough to be out all night…

Obviously, I haven’t got the faintest idea who the model is, nor what her relationship to the photographer is, nor what her personality is like. Conflicting images of misspent youth, worry, intelligence, drug abuse, perhaps. Whatever it is, this photo oozes feeling, emotion, and — yes — soul.

Right, I do realise that this is the least useful critique I’ve done on here in a long time. There’s just something that really works in this image, and it drives me spare that I can’t put my finger on what it is. I have an idea I’ll come back to this image many times in the future, and every time, I’ll be left wondering. It’s a sign of unbridled greatness. Sort out the technical details, and you’re on to a proper winner. Thank you so much for sharing this.

Can anybody else add anything to the critiques? Do you agree? Not sure? Do you completely disagree? Well that’s what the comments are for.


Do you enjoy a smattering of random photography links? Well, squire, I welcome thee to join me on Twitter -

© Kamps Consulting Ltd. This article is licenced for use on Pixiq only. Please do not reproduce wholly or in part without a license. More info.

Be careful what you sign!

useragree.jpg

We’ve talked about how photo licencing works before, but it seems as if people are just not learning their lessons. So, as the newest instalment in our Photography Business article series, an important reminder…

The newest horror story comes from a website called UK Expert. If you sign up to their website, and click ‘ok’ on the terms as conditions (Let’s face it – when did you last read the terms and conditions to anything), they are trying to get you to sign over the copyright to your photos. Yikes!

The lesson today?

Read the terms and conditions
before you upload any photos.
Seriously.

Today, Geir tipped me about the problem with UK Expert, a photo competition website. While they aren’t the only ones doing that out there, they are among the naughtiest I have come across. In their terms and conditions portion of their Registration process, they’ve got the following to say about copyright:

useragree.jpg

By submitting images and messages and other material to ukexpert.co.uk you warrant that you are the copyright owner and that you grant ukexpert.co.uk permanent copyright ownership equal to your own for all materials uploaded.

I can understand the reasoning for part 1 of this: If you don’t have the right to use a photo, you are committing breach of copyright if you upload the material. (However, there are situations where copyright owners are not allowed to use material — such as when the material is already under exclusive licence — and there are situations where it is perfectly fine to upload material, even if you don’t own the copyright)

It’s the second part that is scary though: “you grant ukexpert.co.uk permanent copyright ownership” is a sneaky, nasty way of trying to steal the copyright to an item from a photographer. They are a competition website, and it’s fair to think that people would upload their best photos, in order to try and win the competitions. Imagine losing the copyright to all your best photographs — how would you feel?

You’re in luck, though, because they also write the following in their terms and conditions: “ukexpert is based in England, and English law applies.” What they are doing is, in fact, unlawful under UK copyright law: It is impossible to re-assign the ownership of copyright without an explisit, written contract. Checking a box on a website doesn’t constitute such a contract, so you haven’t given away anything.

However, if you do have any photos uploaded on UK Expert, I’d remove them as soon as you can. Don’t let them get away with trying to steal your photos from you!

So — yet again — make sure you know what you are signing up for, know your rights, and if you believe the licensed use for the material you upload is too broad, just walk away. Guys like this don’t deserve your photos.

Getting your photos removed

So, what do you do when you’ve already uploaded your photos, and want to take them down?

Over on Pixalo, a poster is lamenting the fact that it’s nearly impossible to remove your own photos from the site. To check this out for myself, I set up an account and uploaded a photo, and was unable to figure out how to remove it. If there is a way, there’s no easy way, which sounds a little bit on the shady side to me.

The best tip I can give you, is to report your own photo for a violation, and write “I revoke the licence for the use of this photo, effective immediately. Please remove it within 24 hours”.

24 hours later, if the photos aren’t gone, write a NTD (Notice and Take Down). This is a legal request in which you are demanding a website to remove the copyrighted material from their site. The fact that you own the copyright means that you can revoke the license for the use of the photos. In fact, you already did (when you warned them 24 hours ago), so now, they are in breach of copyright!

If they still don’t take the photos down within a ‘reasonable time’ (which I would say is about 1 working day, but that’s a bit fluid), you are actually legally entitled to go after the ISP or hosting company of the website in question. Serve them the ‘notice and take down’, and the hosting company will pull the plug on the website.

A lot more information about how this all works is available on the Cambridge University website (scroll down to Copyright and other laws, but make sure to read the rest of the page as well). Examples of NTDs, and more information on how to write one, are available on-line.

Important notice: I not use any information on this web site as actual legal advice. If you do find yourself in a situation where you need to turn to the law to protect your intellectual property rights, get a solicitor involved. And make sure to file a claim against the company involved for any costs incurred (in the small claims court if you have to) — including the cost of your solicitor.