Single-Serving Photo

It’s a sad day for Olympus, the venerable maker of both artistic and scientific optics equipment based in Japan. Business news outlets are reporting that Olympus has allegedly covered up decades of financial losses through questionably large payments to advisers and other tricks that could only be described as “cooking the books.”

Bloomberg’s photographer Tomohiro Ohsumi captured the photo at right of Olympus president Shuichi Takayama bowing his head during a news conference. On the front page of the Olympus global site, Takayama writes:

We wish to make a profound apology for all of the distress and trouble caused due to the recent series of media reports and fall in the stock prices triggered by our recent change in President.

No business executive longs to write words like those.

Read more coverage:

• Olympus Admits to Hiding Losses, The Wall Street Journal
• Olympus Says Top Executives Hid Losses For Decades, NPR
• Olympus Hid Losses With Acquisition Fees, Bloomberg

I try not to gush too frequently over the changes and updates that I make to this blog. Especially when they don’t really impact you, my dear readers. Occasionally, though, there is a change that I feel I should explain so that you know what’s happening and what I’m up to. This is one of those times.

You’ve probably already noticed the sharing buttons at the bottom of every post. I am trying out the ShareThis platform so that you can quickly and easily send anything you see here to your social network(s) of choice, including Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ (which I adore).

If you aren’t on any social networks, or your friends aren’t, you can click the very first button, the “share” button, and send a link via normal old e-mail. Yes, we have reached the point in our technological growth where e-mail is both “normal” and “old.”

In any case, I merely wanted to point out that this new feature is in no way a scam or trick of any kind. I will not gain access to your Facebook Wall or be able to read your Google+ Stream, I will only be able to see statistics on how many people shared things and how many people clicked on your shared items, which is helpful for me to see what’s popular and what I should write more about.

If you have any questions or comments, please leave them below.

Fashion. It is not the subject of this blog. Nevertheless, those of you out there who have not been living beneath a heavy boulder, sheltered from the comings and goings of the world around you, have very likely picked up on this silicone bracelet trend.

Perhaps calling it a “trend” at this stage is an embarrassing betrayal of my actual disinterest in fashion when you consider that the silicone (or “gel”) bracelet was popularized in 2004 by Lance Armstrong’s “LIVESTRONG” campaign, for which Nike produced tens of thousands of the yellow wristbands. Still, I keep seeing new ones turn up so let’s just pretend it’s still trending.

Either way, these colorful, flexible, waterproof bands have been co-opted by countless campaigns, companies, and movements since Lance popularized them. They are inexpensive to make, comfortable to wear, and you don’t even have to take them off since they will survive just about anything your body will, which puts them high in the running for what I would consider the ideal fashion accessory, not that I’m keeping score or anything.

Finally, photographers can join the throngs of people wearing silicone bracelets and make a clever fashion statement while doing it thanks to Adam Elmakias, creator of the simply and accurately named Lens Bracelet (a stack of his bracelets is pictured above).

Show your true colors (whether they be Canon “L” red or Nikon Nikkor gold) and wear your favorite focal lengths, literally, on your sleeve with one of a variety of Lens Bracelet designs suitable for both the Canon and Nikon crowds. Sorry, no Olympus, Sony, Panasonic, or Leica Lens Bracelets yet.

Compared to bracelets made of similar material on offer from other vendors for other purposes, the $10 price tag seems a little bit high. Still, I did spend $50 on a coffee mug shaped like a 70-200 f/4L, so it is hard for me to say that I would never buy one. Or two. Or maybe three… But certainly no more than six.

Check out all of the Lens Bracelets available on Adam Elmakias’ site.

I’ve posted about Canon’s involvement in the filmmaking industry before; in my cheekily titled Canon 5D Mark II in the (Dr.) House I reported on the use of the EOS-5D Mark II to film an entire season finale episode of House M.D.

Since then, the hipster Vimeo community has been running their Converse All-Stars threadbare filming hundreds of hours of content with the 5D Mark II and thoroughly enjoying it. But the 5D Mark II remains, at its core, a still camera. I mean, that’s what it was designed to do. The ability to record video is a cute add-on, and although it works very well for small-scale filmmakers in oversized scarves and skinny jeans, it falls short on many features a crew would need to film a real movie (regardless of wardrobe). Read the rest of this entry »

Quite a few people out there seem to think that professional photography is a life of glamour, excitement, and international travel. If you make a living photographing, I don’t need to tell you how false that perception is.

This is how non-photographers (and perhaps even some casual hobbyist photographers) think pros spend their time:

Meanwhile, according to the results of a survey completed by the International Society of Wedding Photographers, this is how professional photographers actually spend their time:

These graphs and the results of the survey are from ISWP’s article, The Secret Life of Wedding Photographers, which I encourage you to read.

To go along with the above graphs, they also have some quotes from the respondents of the survey related to their non-photography responsibilities. For most independent professionals in the photography industry, success hinges on being able to perform most of the duties of an entire business, from strategic planning, marketing, billing, and fulfillment to the photography itself.

And people ask me why I don’t want to quit my job and photograph full time…