Single-Serving Photo

Stock photography has officially achieved critical mass in the absurdity department. I grant you, stock photographers are as much instruments of the marketplace as any other professional service provider and are therefore subject to the whims of the focus groups, the advertising big wigs, the ebb and flow of the dollars that keep them knee-deep in lenses and strobes. But when was the last time you saw a product advertised by a stock photograph and thought to yourself, That could totally be me in that picture?

There you are, holding a slice of kiwi in front of each eye, like any normal Tuesday, right? You look so happy about this kiwi you could make a coke addict jealous. The look on your face is one of such unbridled joy, such boundless euphoria, it would be hard for any bystander not to want your life at that moment.

Dear stock photographers… Quit it! (more…)

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

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…

$random:right$

In his latest blog post, Chase Jarvis mentions Wired editor Chris Anderson’s new book, FREE, which is more or less about the effects that digital media has had on the cost of distribution of creative works.

I haven’t read the book so I don’t claim to know what Anderson’s conclusions might be, though I have spent a lot of time ruminating on this whole free content movement that is slowly developing and I think it deserves some discussion. More of my ramblings after the jump. (more…)

Back in June I wrote an article about the Creative Commons project, Creative Commons: Good Idea?, in which I advocated the use of their licenses for promotional purposes and how that approach ties in with socially-driven sites like Wikipedia and Flickr.

This month the debate over Creative Commons licenses in photography flared up once more, with Jim Goldstein declaring that he would never use CC licenses, and Brian Auer retorting that he had before and would most certainly continue to in the future. Underscoring the points made by both of these fine fellows was an interview I read with author Cory Doctorow about giving away free electronic versions of books that brought many relevant points into play.

I’m revisiting the topic here today, not simply to agree or disagree with anything Goldstein, Auer, or Doctorow said, but rather to paint a picture of why I think the Creative Commons plays a very valuable role in photography in today’s copy-and-paste culture and why you should be thinking very seriously about how it can help you. (more…)