Pricing and Negotiating: In-Store Display for National Retailer

Shoot Concept: Beauty shots of professional talent in a studio

Licensing:  Use of three images in any media (excluding Outdoor and Broadcast) in North America for 2 years. Although we avoid vague language whenever possible, the client insisted on using this language, effectively conveying Advertising, Collateral and Publicity use of the images as defined in our T&C.

Location: A studio in New York

Shoot Days: 1

Photographer: Up-and-coming beauty and fashion specialist

Agency: Mid-sized, based in the Midwest.

Client: Prominent retailer with approximately 2,000 stores in North America.

Here is the initial estimate:

 

You should all probably bookmark this as well. These types of examples are priceless.

Source: http://www.aphotoeditor.com/2013/06/26/pri...

Rick Rubin Interview

I never decide if an idea is good or bad until I try it. So much of what gets in the way of things being good is thinking that we know. And the more that we can remove any baggage we’re carrying with us, and just be in the moment, use our ears, and pay attention to what’s happening, and just listen to the inner voice that directs us, the better. But it’s not the voice in your head. It’s a different voice. It’s not intellect. It’s not a brain function. It’s a body function, like running from a tiger.

 

“There’s a tremendous power in using the least amount of information to get a point across.”

Great stuff here for anyone in the arts.

Source: http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2013...

Adobe Photoshop CC Has Already Been Pirated In Just One Day | Fstoppers

Now that Photoshop Creative Cloud went live just the other day, we didn’t know what to expect. However, news is out that just a day after the release, Photoshop CC has already been pirated and available.

 

So much for that stopping pirating.  Another great example of how DRM just annoys the honest customers of your product while doing nothing to stop the pirates. I will not be updating to CC until I have to this time around. I'm sure they will stop upgrading the CS version of Adobe Camera Raw any day now and I'll see how long I can get by with Capture One for that side of the business.  

I say this as someone who has been a first day release buyer for the past ten years.  Way to go Adobe.

Source: http://fstoppers.com/adobe-photoshop-cc-ha...

Vogue/Condé Nast Contest Attempts To Secure Free Images For Unlimited Use

The core problems we see are that:

The sponsors have the perpetual, unlimited use of all contest entries. There is neither compensation for contest participants nor is there credit given for their work. Participants are required to sign a liability release and copyright assignment, and to indemnify Botega Veneta and Condé Nast against any lawsuits that may arise as a result of the usage of the photographs. Every entrant is required to waive any right to sue in the event of misuse of the photographs entered. The winner is being offered $10,000 for a shoot that would normally command several times that amount. The winner will be required to grant copyright ownership of all photographs from the shoot.

 

Source: http://www.aphotoeditor.com/2013/06/17/vog...

Annnnnd did it again! On AdWeek.

Once again we are featured on AdWeek!  This was a awesome project we worked with Remco Vloon at Nike on.  Lots of fun on this one.

Weekend Personal work

Been busy as all get out here so I have not been posting as much, many apologies.  But in trade have some images I made this weekend.  

Most shots are from a hike at Wahclella Falls on Saturday with a dead phone booth on Alberta on the same day and a 3d render test from Sunday night. The render is noisy and unacceptable but I still enjoy the direction it is heading.

Art Producers Speak: Kenji Aoki

All of my inspiration comes from geometry. When you have an object that needs to be photographed with a certain concept, you always come across complex visual problems that need to be solved. By thinking of the object as a pure geometric shape such as a circle or square, the speed required to visually communicate the concept of the image and the object itself is accelerated. The space that it’s in, the color, the shadows — balancing all of these elements allow these sensations to penetrate a deeper place.

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​Via: A PhotoEditor in the links on the left.

Nike Air Max ‘Sunset’ collection goes live.

A project we worked on with Photographer Ryan Unruh, ADs Brian Foster and Remco Vloon at Nike just went live and is getting some press.  We were asked to go for a very "real in studio" vibe on this project and I do quite like the outcome.  Read up more on it at Size Blog.

Fun project, thanks all!​

Harddrive not on desktop or Finder but visible to Disk Utility in 10.8.3

​Work up to a odd little bug this morning.  Booted up the Mac and one of my drives was not showing up on the desktop or in the Finder window.  So first thing I do is launch Disk Utility and I see it sitting there all fine a dandy.  Odd, me thinks.  So I run some repairs, fix permissions, sfae boot, zap pram and everything is all good but no hard drive on desktop still.  Perplexing. So then I right click on it to reveal in Finder and this happens.

I get a "Ghosted" version there with all my files there and I can browse just fine (I just greyed out the file names in the screen cap).  So it turns out that the Preferences somehow got scrambled and set this drive to invisible and repairing permissions will not fix it. Off to the googles where I found this page on how to fix it. Basically open terminal and enter this:

​chflags nohidden /Volumes/YOUR DRIVE NAME HERE/

And there you have it. Apple seems to have a lot of bugs at start up and with permissions these days.  If you keep losing connection to your PC look into this hack to fix that glitch as well.

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On the Constant Moment- Clayton Cubit.

Imagine an always-recording 360 degree HD wearable networked video camera. Google Glass is merely an ungainly first step towards this. With a constant feed of all that she might see, the photographer is freed from instant reaction to the Decisive Moment, and then only faced with the Decisive Area to be in, and perhaps the Decisive Angle with which to view it. Already we've arrived at the Continuous Moment, but only an early, primitive version.
Evolve this further into a networked grid of such cameras, and the photographer is freed from these constraints as well, and is then truly a curator of reality after the fact. "Live” input, if any at all, would consist of a “flag” button the photographer presses when she thinks a moment stands out, much like is already used in recording ultra-high-speed footage. DARPA has already developed acamera drone that can stay aloft recording at 1.8 gigapixel resolution for weeks at a time, covering a field as large as 5 miles wide, down to as small as six inches across, and it can archive 70 hours of footage for review. This feat wasn't achieved with any new expensive sensor breakthroughs, but rather by networking hundreds of cheap off-the-shelf sensors, just like you've got in your smartphone.

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Fuji X100s Review - Fallin'in Love All Over Again

Because this is a romance-rekindled kind of article, a lot of what follows focuses on improvements on shortcomings over the X100, and things I would still like to see improved.  All of that might give the impression that the X100s isn't a great camera in it's own right. It ain't so.  If this were a stand-alone review of a brand-new machine, without a rich family history, the bottom line would be this: the X100s is the best rangefinder-style camera Fuji has made.  It produces superb images, focuses fast, processes fast and breaks every meaningful barrier to working in low light.  All-around it is all good.  That said, my detailed review follows.

 

Source: http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/...

Photo Project: Tattoo Machines

Portland Tattoo Artist Jason Leisge, owner of OddBall Tattoo asked me to photograph some of his hand built Tattoo Machines before he left for a convention in NY.  Here are the results of a two hour shoot. ​I hope to continue this project with the title, "Machines of Ink and Blood:  Images of custom built Tattoo Machines."

Photo nerd notes: Shot with a Canon 5dm2 with the 90mm tilt shift lens and lit with a few Dedolights. I love my Dedolights!  Shot a few frames for focus stacking then made the background in Modo.  

​Sweep, gun block model and lights in Modo.

Composited it all together and there you have it.  Fun stuff.  If you build your own Tattoo Machines please drop me a line, I'd love to photograph them.​

Adobe Creative Cloud: It is RansomeWare.

So with the news yesterday that Adobe is going to a Subscription model I find myself thinking that it is now RansomeWare.

“Ransomware (also referred to in some cases as cryptoviruses, cryptotrojans, cryptoworms or scareware) comprises a class of malware which restricts access to the computer system that it infects, and demands a ransom paid to the creator of the malware in order for the restriction to be removed. Some forms of ransomware encrypt files on the system’s hard drive, while some may simply lock the system and display messages intended to coax the user into paying. Modern ransomware attacks were initially popular within Russia, but in recent years there have been an increasing number of ransomware attacks targeted towards other countries, such as Australia, Germany, and the United States among others.”
— http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ransomware_(malware)

​So if I don't pay Adobe 50 bucks (or 20 just for Photoshop) a month forever I can kiss my 15 year old archive goodbye.  Or whats that you say?  "You can edit those files in the Gimp! Stop being so dramatic!  You own your files!"  Like hell I can edit them and like hell I own them.  Adobe does now.  All of our collective Archives are wholly owned and controlled by Adobe. Sure the flattened final tiffs are not but can I open PSB files in any other program?  (No, I won't call Photoshop an "App" DIAF) Can I open a PSD in any other program with adjustment layers, smart objects and any number of other odd effects? Not without losing half of the effects that make up the look of that file. This is a horrible turn of events for anyone who is a serious image maker.  

​I find it really interesting that it is announced just after there was a call for a standard layered image format on May 1st. That article got my head to thinking of the,  "What If's" and now here we are. 

>Cue Godfather music<​

"Hey there.  Those are some really fine looking imagers ya gots there.  That one of those fancy Panowhoramics?  Nice, real nice.  Bet that could be one of those 16 bit files too?  You like those smooth gradients do ya?  Ya, those are purty.  Be a real shame if you could not, I dunno, let's say, open it. Maybe you want to print it? Maybe edit it down the road.  Ya,  hate to see something "happen" where you could not do that. O, hey buddy, why ya sweating?  We ain't gonna hurt ya.  Tell ya what.  Pay me and Vinne here, I dunno, lets say 20 bucks a month and we will protect those files for ya.  Oh, what's that? You have a Illustrator file as a Smart Object in there? Well, ain't you mister freaking fancy pants! Smart boy here Vinne!  Well, we can help ya out for, eh, let's say 50 a month. Payable, let me think here... Vinne what sounds like a good payment plan to you?  Forever you say?  It does have a nice ring to it don't it?  Forever it is then, It's our way of helping ya out, capice'?  No, don't thank us, you are very welcome.​"