His aim is not to win Canon-carrying professionals over to the Motorola E815, already an ancient relic in the constantly churning mobile landscape. Rather, it is to escape — however briefly — what he calls the “megapixelmania” of contemporary photography, in which every aspect can be rigorously and technically controlled.

“It’s a way of preserving my artistic sanity,” Mr. Rocco said.

There used to be a time when snagging the cover of a major publication like Time was a huge achievement for a professional photographer. In addition to getting a nice payday (cover images typically get upwards of $3k) , it meant (if not fame) instant bragging rights among other professional photographers and an impressive tear-sheet for the portfolio.

Welcome to the 21st century folks… the cover photo above cost Time magazine $30 + whatever fee iStockphoto charges these days ($150 I’ve been told). Robert Lam, the photographer of the jar of coins, is having a lot of scorn heaped upon him from other photographers and bloggers on the the web for not only allowing himself to be screwed over by two large corporations… but actually being happy about it.

Frankly, it’s a sad state of affairs when Time magazine decides to turn to a micro-stock house for their cover image instead of paying a photographer a fair market rate for their work. It makes me wonder how much of the (rather forgettable) photography that I see in magazines these days comes from the stock houses… and if there’s much point to even trying to be a commercial photographer anymore.

To be certain, economic conditions are pretty awful for the publishing industry and ad rates are down… or so we are told by the billionaire owners who fret about becoming merely multimillionaires. And yes, Time magazine has the right to buy whatever photograph they want at the price that it’s offered… but Mr. Lam should get more than $30 for being on the cover of a magazine with a print run of over 3 million and we should not be outraged at him… but at the corporations that exploit his desire to be a working photographer. The fact that he seems pleased to just be on the cover goes to show what a great job our society has done to convince creative artists that being famous is more important than earning a living.

Mr. Lam’s situation is one that most creative people find themselves in these days. There is so much decent quality content being created with cheap digital cameras that in order to be able to get exposure for your photographic work… you’re forced to give it away to as many people as possible… or charge as little as you can stand to be able to get an assignment… and hope for something better. And $30 is better than $0… which might as well be the Mission Statement at iStockphoto.

While I hope that this leads to more lucrative paid work for the artist… I suspect (and hope that I’m wrong) that this cover will be the high point of a his artistic career… a memento of the time time he tried to make a living as a photographer. And I hope that he eventually gets angry about THAT, if nothing else.

Getting people to look at our work is easy these days… getting paid is the hard part.

ANOTHER one of my favorite photographers – who went by the Flickr name Reiner1 – has either left (or has been booted out of) the site. If anyone happens to know if he found a new home, drop me a note. This is a link to the google-cache of his old profile on Flickr.

While only a percentage of Reiner’s work was nude (he did mostly portraiture and fashion), he’s German, so my guess is that he grew frustrated with the German Safe-Search issue and deleted his account. I can’t say I blame him for leaving.

My pro-account on Flickr is expiring sometime in the middle of April 08 and I’m debating between junking the whole account or just letting it lapse to the lesser free account and keeping a 100 or so photos up and changing them every once in a while… just to direct people to this site.

Of course, there’s another reason (apart from driving traffic) to maintain a presence on Flickr. Even though Flickr says this won’t happen, I’d rather not have someone else grab my name on Flickr at some point in the future…  if there’s a policy change… say under new ownership by a certain company at Redmond, WA that shall remain nameless and doesn’t take no for an answer.

From Duane on Commongate.com – a collection of photos of a woman found in a makeup case at a flea market… mostly snaps taken in photo-booths. There’s something fascinating about watching the “model” change over time… not just the hairstyles and clothing… but the expressions and emotions on her face.

Some of the more amusing critiques… I’ve included links to the ports that are bing savaged…
Your port is kind of boring. You probably have better pictures but don’t even realize it. This shot in particular really stands out to the point of almost looking like someone else shot it.

Your port is boring, uninspiring, and lacks any style and imagination. The top two rows are particularly bad. Not bad in the sense that they are poorly photographed but just plain and boring. You need to find some inspiration and work with some models who can give you something special.

The good news is you have potential. The bad news is you have a long way to go. You need to find better photographers, better MUA, better locations, and use a stylist. Find a photographer who is more concerned about creating usable portfolio images than plastering his huge logo
all over your portfolio pics to promote himself. Don’t let yourself be shot from below. You can’t carry that look. Make short photographers stand on a box if you must. Make sure the photographer gets the color balance right. You look green in one of those shots. You also need to work on your expression. You look exactly the same in most of your shots.

Finally, lose this shot. This is a billboard advertising to all photographers that you will steal their images and use it without their permission. If the photographer gave you that image to use as is, he should be shot. And I don’t mean with a camera.

Ouch. I’m a little afraid to submit my port…

“When people look at my pictures I want them to feel the way they do when they want to read a line of a poem twice.” – Robert Frank

For example, I worked with this absolutely lovely model on your left on Sunday.

Vanity Ann was great fun to shoot and we’ll be shooting part two of our shoot next Saturday. She’s a gorgeous model who did an excellent job posing and was a total pro. If you’re interested in working with her, you can see more of the photos from our shoot on her Model Mayhem account.

Warning… some of them are not NSFW… but I think you might need to be a member of MM to see the nudes.
A gallery of her photos will be coming on this site just as soon as I can find some time to sit and work on them

If you’re an aspiring photographer or a model, I highly recommend Model Mayhem as a great way to meet people to work with.

Membership is free… you just have to apply by sending samples of your work and then wait for for an admin to approve you. I’ve met a lot of wonderful and talented people through this site… some who have become my friends… and I’ve also seen quite a few portfolios that have made me ask “why? WHAT are you thinking!?!”… but I keep those thoughts to myself… and you can’t beat the lively forum for drama, overreaction, and snarky rejoinders.

The only caveats are that the site limits you to 20 photos on your portfolio. 20! A ridiculously low number… and sometimes the site can be slow, especially when everyone hits it at the same time… but outages are sporadic enough that it’s easy to live with.

But I was forgetting about some fairly obvious things…

1. Buy Extra Batteries -  This is a no-brainer. I’ve always had two batteries for my Canon DSLR (Rebel XT) because I use a hand-grip (which requires two batteries) and I can generally take about 1500 photos before I need to recharge them. I always considered that more than enough for a days shoot… but one of my batteries failed to charge on a day that I had a long shoot with two models and technical glitch forced me to take periodic breaks to charge up the remaining battery. And even if both batteries worked flawlessly, it was still a day that I shot nearly 2,000 photos. And what about those days when I’m shooting models back to back and have no time to recharge? So now I have two sets of two batteries on hand and no longer have to worry about running out of power at a critical time. This leads nicely into…

2. Buy An Extra Charger – The charger for my battery will fully charge an empty battery in about an hour… so with two sets of batteries, I’d have to spend 4 hours charging up before a shoot instead of the usual 2. With two chargers, I can always have a set charging up while I’m shooting… or an extra charged set when I’m out and about. It sounds like an obvious and mundane thing… but it will make your life easier. It’s too bad I can’t find a dual charger for my particular kind of batteries.

3. Buy the biggest memory card or stick you can afford. The price of memory is coming down all the time, so there’s no reason not to go big. I recently upgraded to an 8 gig card which means no more having to stop in the middle of a shoot, swap out my 2 gig card for another 2 gig card and go back to what I was doing before. Stopping to unload photos is a good way to ruin the mood and momentum of your shoot.

I often shoot a mix of RAW and jpeg so those 2 gig cards fill up more quickly than I imagined they would when I bought them. With an 8 gig card, I’d have to shoot nearly 1000 raw photos or nearly 3000 jpegs at highest resolution before I run out of room. The only drawback is the counter on my card only goes up to 999… but it’s a good problem to have. The 2 gigabyte cards will be used for my non-model shoots so I don’t have to worry about mixing model and non-model shots. I shoot a LOT of nude work and wouldn’t want accidentally “flash” someone if I take my camera to my day job or to a wedding shoot

4. If you have the option to buy a hand-grip for your camera, I encourage you to get one. Not only will it make your camera look more professional, but you’ll have more battery power and a safer hand-hold on your equipment… especially if you have bigger hands like I do. It’s just easier and more comfortable to shoot for a long time. Plus, if you’re using a heavier zoom lens, the camera will be better balanced and your work is sure to benefit from that. I bought one about a year ago and it NEVER comes off. I would consider my camera incomplete without it.

“I prowled the streets all day, feeling very strung-up and ready to pounce, ready to ‘trap’ life.”

I think the article will inspire you to buy a Leica and skulk around the streets of Paris looking for something to pounce… or at least pretend that your name is Henri.
The Leica is still around in both digital and analog form… the digital version is kind of expensive… but the price of the analog version makes me wince… and that’s just the body!

The origins of my Leica lust are not hard to pinpoint… I’ve wanted one ever since I read about the brilliant war photographer Robert Capa… who captured some astounding images with his little camera. Fortunately you can pick up an old but functioning Leicia on ebay for a price that’s quite reasonable… but I’m a digital kid at heart. While I often get curious about old-school cameras and developing my own film… I know that I’m not going to do it and it’s just going to sit there, collect dust, and remind me of how much money I spent on something that I rarely use.

Fortunately, while I’m very easily seduced by cool technology, my lack of cash acts as a very effective superego. Still there had to be a way to sate the Leica lust and my old Sony was starting to jam up… so did my research and I found out that Leica partners with Panasonic to produce the Lumix line of digital cameras. These stylish cameras lack the trademark Leica body and red circular logo… but they DO take photos that are indistinguishable from the digital Leica when you shoot in RAW. I’ve read that there the two lines have different default presets when you’re shooting jpeg… but it’s the same sensor and lens so RAW photos are the same. In the end it’s results that matter and not what your camera looks like.
The Lumix DMC-LX2, which I settled on and bought for a very reasonable $299 (I had a credit), has a Leica lens… but fortunately lacks the Leica price. Apart from brand name, I specifically chose this camera because it’s small, shoots RAW, and it doesn’t feel like it’s going to slip out of my massive hands when I hold it. I actually hate teeny skinny cameras. There’s nothing to hold on to and they feel so flimsy and I tend to drop them.

There’s a retro feel to this camera… it actually has physical switches for different aspect modes and macro mode… and you can even manually focus which is unusual for a digital pocket camera… especially at this price point. There’s even a lens-cap… which I haven’t managed to lose yet. The manual pop up flash is charmingly old-school although it’s quite underpowered… but who uses on-board camera flash? This is a camera to capture light and shadow and trap life… preferably French life