Every so often I come across something that gives me the immediate and overwhelming urge to drop what I’m doing, grab my gear and create something awesome. I had this feeling today after watching this video by Austin Walsh. The piece is a great example for still photographers who are looking to dive into motion (you might not know if from watching, but Austin is a Kansas City commercial photographer not a film maker) and a reminder that following your passions can lead to amazing projects with high potential for more business.

The video was not client commission but a personal undertaking of Austin’s ahead of his presentation at a two-day photography workshop hosted by Kansas City photography retailer Digital Labrador. For more background on the video and the workshop, check out this event post-mortem by the PhotoShelter crew.

If you love this as much as I do, please share it, give a shoutout to Austin on Twitter, and check out his blog for more inspiration.

If you’ve come across something that has instantly inspired you, please share it with me in the comments or @chrisowyoung on twitter.

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At long last – the video Todd and I shot while building the Mark II edition of the “Chinatown Special,” is up. Here’s the 4 minute walk-through of how to make what Todd and I think is the best DIY beauty dish around.

For the full 10-step instructions, more photos of the design, and the complete parts list, check out the full write-up for this DIY beauty dish design.

For a sample portrait and catch light detail using the Chinatown Special, check out this example. Also, stay tuned for a full write-up about using the CS “on the ground” from my promo shoot with the My Silent Bravery.

Related posts:

1. DIY Beauty Dish Portrait example
2. Band Portraits: My Silent Bravery
3. Photoshoot: Melissa Etheridge

Since most photographers I know want to spend as much time shooting as possible and as little time on everything else, I’ve put together this overview of some of the fastest and most beneficial ways to get your photos into your wordpress blog.

An Overview

Images and flash media such as videos and slideshows can be embedded into wordpress blog posts several ways. Each method has it’s own benefits, pitfalls and implied workflow. Here the pros and cons of several different methods…

Method #1 – WordPress Upload/Insert

This method is the wordpress default. It allows you to re-size, caption, link and embed a single image file (jpeg, gif, png, etc.) into a post by uploading it directly to your website or by pasting the image url from another website.

What it’s Good For

The built in wordpress media upload is great for single “one off” images or videos. It’s easy to use and a very flexible method for posting low resolution images that don’t need to be cataloged or archived.  All of the images in this post were inserted using this method.

What’s it’s Bad For

It’s bad for dealing with lots of images over time because you can’t control how the images are organized on the server. Worse yet, it doesn’t work well for high resolution files because they’re large in file size and will kill your bandwidth when someone downloads them.

Generally speaking images uploaded using this method should be resized to a web-friendly resolution and sharpened to taste before putting them on your server. This of course means that you might need to create a separate copy of the photos specifically to upload to wordpress. The more versions of a single photo you have to manage, the harder it is to stay organized.

Method #2 – Flickr

Flickr offers huge benefits over the wordpress default. This option requires an account with Flickr (free or the $25/yr pro version) and either a matching wordpress plugin like Flickr Manager or the know-how to copy the static image URL from flickr’s image pages (instructions below).

What it’s Good For

Unlike option #1, Flickr allows you to organize and import large groups of high resolution photos as sets of images or flash embedded slideshows. If you’ve taken the time to properly tag (keyword) your photos and organize them into sets, all of that hard work will carry over straight into wordpress.

The screenshot below shows that the photo title, tags and description that were attached to the image in Flickr have all carried over into wordpress. Having this text around your photo increases the likelihood of google indexing your photos which is in turn good for SEO.

In addition to being good for organization and SEO, flickr is also good for getting traffic from flickr’s huge community of photographers to your website. If you simply include a link to your site in the description of each image, there is a more-than-good chance that interested parties will click through for a look at your other work.

Flickr also automatically makes several web-friendly versions of your images from your original file (see screenshot below). So, if your blog can take one of the sizes they create, it means that you can skip that entire process in your workflow.

Unlike the wordpress default, hosting the images with flickr doesn’t use your website bandwith.

What’s it’s Bad For

Even though professional photographers can (and most certainly should) tap into Flickr for its vibrant community base, the service remains solidly consumer level.

Chief among its shortcomings for professional photographers are its lack of image licensing and file distribution systems – even though a portion of the Flickr archive is searchable by Getty, image buyers cannot go to flickr.com, find a photo and license it without contacting the photographer directly. Even if a license is agreed upon, Flickr doesn’t have a secure means of completing the sale.

Furthermore, I don’t see image buyers flocking to Flickr to license photos because searching for quality images is currently too difficult. For instance a search for “wedding dress” returns 130,664 results that contain mostly amateur snapshots from people’s weddings with a handful of professional grade stock photos buried like needles in a haystack. Many of the images don’t even contain a dress.

Flickr also has some systemic characteristics that make it difficult to use professionally:

• No licensing system
• No image delivery system
• No customization. By default, images link back to your flickr page therefore removing your branding

• No watermarking system. If you want to watermark the images on your blog, you need to watermark the high res file before uploading it to flickr, which completely negates using flickr as an off-site backup for your archive.
• The dimensions of the web-friendly versions of your photos are locked which, depending on your blog layout, may prevent you from having the ideal image size.
• Flickr renames your files. Yup, you read it correctly. A photo of a red tea rose with an seo-friendly file name of “red-tea-rose.jpg” would be renamed to something like this “4150384447_170b9a229b.jpg.”

Method #3 – PhotoShelter

Even though PhotoShelter has been around for years, the ability to pull photos from your PhotoShelter image archive directly into a wordpress post is brand new. The implementation is still a bit rough around the edges, but I think it’s currently the best way to connect your blog to your salable archive of images.

You’ll need a PhotoShelter account (free or paid) and a subscription to Graph Paper Press (to download the customized PhotoShelter plugin for wordpress). You can also copy and paste the links to the images directly into your blog, just like Flickr.

What it’s Good For

What you get by integrating PhotoShelter with your wordpress blog is a fast, professional-grade, and e-commerce enabled system that offers many efficiencies over importing your photos using the wordpress default, Flickr or any combination thereof.

PhotoShelter will automatically resize, watermark and sharpen your images for the web; add your copyright and contact information to the file, and embed “click-to-purchase” functionality into every image on your blog. The kicker is that it does all this without so much as touching your original high res.

To put it another way…

PhotoShelter allows viewers to license your photos or buy prints simply by clicking on an image. Better yet, the buyer sees your brand identity throughout the entire purchase process.

To put it yet another way…

I think it’s the mutt’s nuts.

Pros

• Visitors can licensing photos or buy prints by clicking on single images or slideshows
• Ever improving SEO Optimization.
• Fairly fast for single images. Very fast for gallery slideshows
• Photos retain your branding from click to purchase
• Single upload. No additional copies of files
• Resulting image retains copyright and contact information when download (also see cons)
• Photos can be resized to any dimension.
• Watermarking is automatic
• Sharpening is automatic
• Conversion to sRGB is automatic (?)
• Does not use website bandwidth
• Name of original file not changed
• Photos and slideshows create rich backlinks to PhotoShelter archive, helping SEO

What’s it’s Bad For

Right now the PhotoShelter plugin for wordpress isn’t so much bad as it is unrefined. If beautiful plugins like Flickr Manager did not exist, I might not think the current version of the PhotoShelter plugin (v1.5) was an ugly clunker. But they do and it is.

I should also mention that installing the plugin reminded me of my childhood when I would read the system requirements on the bottom of the hottest new video game only to find out that my PC didn’t have enough memory.

If you’re like me, you don’t go shopping for a new web host every year to make sure you’re getting the most up to date features for the best price. Thus, since version 1.5 of the PhotoShelter plugin requires PHP5, CURL, WordPress 2.8.6 and CHMOD server access you’ll need to make absolutely sure your website host supports those features.

Despite getting low marks for looks, the plugin actually works really well.

Cons

• Plugin works, but it’s not pretty (as of version 1.5)
• Resulting image does not contain original title or description
• Plugin requirements are very specific.
• When looking for a specific image in your archive, the plugin currently only searches the filenames of your photos.

What’s the bottom line?

If you need to add seamless e-commerce to your blog images, the PhotoShelter + WordPress integration is a good way to go. I would even go so far as to say that you should consider switching webhosts if your current host does not meet the rather specific requirements of the plugin. Chances are, the profit made from your first blog sale will be more than enough to justify the time and effort.

Although I primarily switched to PhotoShelter for the e-commerce and SEO juice. The simple workflow has also saved me a boatload of time.

My Old Workflow

1. Create a separate 600px copy of the image in Photoshop
2. Sharpen the image with unsharp mask
3. Watermark the image with a prerecorded action
4. Save a copy of the new low res image to my hard drive
5. Repeat steps 1-5 for each image using a batch action in Adobe Bridge
6. Open Flickr Uploader. Upload batch of images to Flickr.
7. Insert images into a new wordpress post using the Flickr Manager plugin

My New Workflow

After following the instructions to customize my PhotoShelter archive and installing the plugin, my workflow looks like this:

1. Log into PhotoShelter account in Firefox. Upload images to Photoshelter
2. Create a new Gallery from the upload
3. Insert images into a new wordpress post using the PhotoShelter plugin

Head-to-Head Taste Test

One of the images below was lovingly sharpened and watermarked by hand before it was uploaded using my labor intensive Flickr workflow. The other image was resized and sharpened by some automatic process on the PhotoShelter server. Can you tell the difference?

Click on the images for the answer.

Best Practices for Photographers

In an ideal world there would be one service for photographers that securely archived our images, was huge with social media, and made selling photos as easy as clicking a button. Of course, this service would also have to be free.

Since we work in the real world, a more diverse and strategic approach is needed to reap the same rewards.

Since it’s very clear that blogging is good for business, I currently recommend using a service like PhotoShelter to host your image archive, sell photos and provide the low resolution versions for your blog. Since the social media life of your photos needs to be tapped into as well, I would also recommend posting your a selection of your best images to flickr.

In the end, both your blog and your flickr photos should point to your image archive – this will be good for SEO and image sales.

The PhotoShelter Plugin

The screenshot below shows the results of an image search within version 1.5 of the PhotoShelter WordPress plugin. There are four image sizes to choose from. The default size is 500px wide. The other three image sizes are completely customizable (see PhotoShelter Plugin Options screenshot).

The PhotoShelter Plugin Options Panel

Other Methods?

Have a better way of posting photos or linking to your image archive? I’d love to hear it!

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New Nikon 70-200mm VR II

I’ve used the new Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 VR II for a couple of weeks now and so far, I’m impressed with the results. My short review complete with 100% crops at super slow shutter speeds after the jump.

Performance

Optical Performance and Vibration Reduction – As you can see from the 100% crop below, the lens is really very sharp at f/2.8 even when hand held down to 1/10 of a second or, depending how steady your hands are, even slower shutter speeds.

Considering that some people need shoot at a shutter speed that is roughly double the focal length in order to get sharp results (e.g. 1/400 at 200mm), that the lens can deliver at so many stops slower is real proof of the effectiveness of the Nikon VR II image stabilization system.

The VR II autofocus system is faster to acquire focus, tighter feeling and much quieter than its predecessor.

100% crop - Nikon 70-200mm VR II at 200mm. Exposure 1/10 at f/2.8 and ISO200. Nikon D3 sharpening set to 3 in camera. No sharpening in post. RAW to JPEG 10

Ergonomic Improvements

Nikon claims that the VR II system allows photographers to shoot at up to 4-stops slower than normal. While is certainly seems to be true, I believe that the changes to the physical size and ergonomics of the lens also contribute to sharper photos.

The new lens is shorter and easier to hold than the older version. In theory, a shorter lens means that the very tip of the lens (the part shaking the most) is easier to keep steady because it’s closer to the photographer’s center of gravity. Overall the lens feels heavier but also much more centered than the previous version.

The second most noticeable improvement is the addition of a stationary grip on the very front of the lens. The grip makes the lens very easy to hold on to without worrying about fouling your focus by accidentally turning the manual focus ring (I always found the manual focus ring on the old version too easy to turn while shooting).

Nikon also went one step further in this regard; the new lens features a new A/M or M/A focus mode that allows the photographer to select the sensitivity of the manual focus ring. A/M lowers the sensitivity of the manual focus ring in favor of autofocus. M/A gives a higher manual focus sensitivity for photographers who like to tweak their focus on the fly.

The old version of the 70-200mm lacks a stationary front grip.

New Nikon 70-200mm VR II

Build Quality

The new 70-200mm has a beautiful finish and an overall build quality that puts it on par with the newer Nikon 24-70mm and 14-24mm zooms. The shutlines are tight and the action of the autofocus and zoom rings are smooth and nicely geared. The toggle switches for the various AF and VR modes are very stiff and would seem to resist accidental movement during use. The switches are not so stiff that they couldn’t be used with light gloves on.

More Nikon 70-200 VR II Image Samples

These images were taken quickly and casually by aiming the camera at the wall, focusing and firing off two consecutive shots with a manual exposure of 1/10 at 200mm and f/2.8 and ISO200.

Since I wanted to show as close to real world results as possible, no extra effort was made to hold the camera steady. In addition, the autofocus mode was set to AF-S on “release” priority. Since I never use “focus” priority when I’m actually shooting I did not feel the need to turn it on even though it might have produced a sharper photo.

Given that my personal settings are biased towards taking photos quickly instead of focusing accurately, the sharper of the two images was chosen in all cases.

Additional settings – the samples were shot in RAW with the Nikon D3 using an in-camera sharpening setting of 3. The RAW files were converted to JPEG in Capture NX2 and saved for web without any further sharpening or processing.

As you can see below, my copy of the lens appears to backfocus very slightly out-of-the box.

100% crop - Nikon 70-200mm VR II at 200mm. Exposure 1/10 at f/2.8 and ISO200. Nikon D3 sharpening set to 3 in camera. No sharpening in post.

100% crop - Nikon 70-200mm VR II at 200mm. Exposure 1/10 at f/2.8 and ISO200. Nikon D3 sharpening set to 3 in camera. No sharpening in post.

100% crop - Nikon 70-200mm VR II at 200mm. Exposure 1/10 at f/2.8 and ISO200. Nikon D3 sharpening set to 3 in camera. No sharpening in post.

Conclusion

Considering my quick and dirty shooting technique and the extremely slow shutter speed, the 70-200mm VR II produces great results in terms of image stabilization and overall sharpness. In the hand, the lens is very sturdy and significantly nicer to hold than it’s predecessor. I have no doubt that the lens will be a pleasure to use for years to come.

You may note that I have not covered lens vignetting or the actual field of view at 200mm; this is because neither of these factors matter to much for my work. Firstly, I tend to add more vignetting in post regardless. Secondly, whether the lens is a real 200mm or a 180mm as others have claimed, isn’t so big a drawback that it outweighs the big improvements in image stabilization and overall handling.

For a few real world sames from the lens, check out my photos of Marie Digby performing at Joe’s Pub.

Update

Another sample after more microadjustment of the lens on the D3. 200mm f/3.2 and 1/60 handheld.

100% crop from the Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 VR II lit by the "Chinatown Special" DIY Beauty Dish

Here is an image sample after a -8 microadjustment to the lens. Nikon D3, f/3.5 and 1/60 at ISO200 handheld. In-camera sharpening set to 3. Saved for Web in Adobe Photoshop CS4 with no additional sharpening.

100% crop from the Nikon 70-200mm VR II after -8 microadjustment

Related posts:

1. DIY Beauty Dish Portrait example
2. Prime Lenses
3. Nikon D3 Official High ISO Samples

Perry Farrell (Jane's Addiction, Porno For Pyros) performs at the 2009, Road Recovery Benefit Concert. Nokia Theater, NYC.

Given the recent comments on my concert photography article and the A Photo Editor blog regarding the Jane’s Addiction photo release, I thought the topic of rights grab contracts deserved some attention. The full text of the JA release and my overall strategy for dealing with these predatory documents after the jump.

Rights grab photography releases are a fairly recent evil of the concert photography business. Whether you want to make a living from shooting or not, all music photographers should actively resist these predatory documents and have a clear strategy for doing so. I don’t have all of the answers but I have had some success.

How to deal with Rights Grab Photography Contracts

1) Do not sign them. Every time you do, you’re making it harder for yourself and every other photographer to make a living. Isn’t it hard enough already? (If you do sign them, it’s like saying you hate Freedom.)

2) Let  your editors know that you don’t sign them and make sure they are aware of the issues. Every single one of your editors should support you and your continued ability to buy groceries.

3) When negotiating be polite, rational and professional but stand your ground. It’s very likely that the person you are talking to is not the one responsible for enforcing the release. They are probably just the messenger (and you don’t want to piss off the person in the best position to help you).

4) Avoid bashing the band. Perry Farrell did not make me sign a release to take the image above. These “contracts” often come from the machine (management/legal/label/pr) and not necessarily the artist.

5) No matter who you’re talking to, explain that:

You make your living from concert photography.

Your livelihood depends on your ability to resell your archive of work.

Your images would be used for future editorial pieces that mean more exposure for the artist. (Imagine what the news stands would look like if no one was able to license concert photography of Michael Jackson.)

You love music and the band and that you’re not interested in making mousepads, coffee mugs, or any other commercial product that would hurt the artist’s income or public image.

6) Threaten to walk away from the assignment and see what happens. Mention that you have the support of your editor to do so. You’re providing the band with publicity. If they want the publicity your photos generate they’ll need to negotiate.

7) Remove yourself from the equation. The person with the most power to negotiate is probably your editor. Call your editor and ask her/him to speak to the on-site representative. Ideally your editor will be willing to pull coverage of the story entirely on the grounds that the publication depends on unique content (articles and photos) to stay relevant. Who wants to see the same press photo over and over anyways?

Before I depress you with the full text of the Jane’s Addiction release, I have a couple of success stories;

One: I was asked to sign away the copyright to images of a multi-platinum-selling rock band before one of their shows. I politely declined and called my editor to explain the situation. As soon as the assignment was in jeopardy, I was allowed permitted to complete the assignment AND keep my copyright.

Two: I was faxed a rights grab before the performance of a well known singer. I was told I needed to send it back signed in order to pick up my photo pass. I called my contact directly and explained that since a single assignment fee wasn’t enough to make a living on, I need to have the option of reselling my work for future editorial use.

I further explained that I had no interested in selling mousepads or t-shirts with of the artist on them. I stated that my publication would support my decision to walk away from the assignment if need be. At the end of conversation my contact called the band’s management. 5 minutes later I was allowed to shoot.

How do you deal with rights grab contracts?

JA-Photo-Release –

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1. Cover Your Ass
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3. Batch Process Everything

July 13, 2009 – The wait is over. My concert photography article is now live over on the PhotoShelter blog. The article is part of their new LEARN series (a totally sick collection of business resources for photographers).

Thank you to everyone who submitted topics for the piece on my previous post and on twitter. Even at 7-pages and 3,300 words, the article still doesn’t cover everything that you all asked for and that I wanted. I’ll be writing about everything I left out in the weeks to come. In case the article creates more questions than it answers, drop me a line over on my contact page.

Related posts:

1. Your Concert Photography Tutorial
2. Concert Photography Questions & Answers
3. Dealing with Rights Grab Photo Releases

05.14.09 – Most external flash units like the Canon 580 EX and the Nikon SB-900 have the ability to move the flash head forward and backward effectively zooming the flash. In normal situations having a flash zoom setting that matches the focal length on your lens is ideal. (When the settings match, the flash spreads the light over as much of the frame as possible.)

In some instances you might want to set the flash zoom to a longer focal length than your lens. This will darken the corners of the photo and enhance anything in the center of the frame.The Canon 580 EX II has a zoom range of 24mm – 105mm. The Nikon SB-900 has range of 12mm – 200mm.

For the most powerful output, speedlights should be set to the maximum zoom when using lighting modifiers like softboxes and umbrellas. For a largest light source possible, make sure the zoom setting on the speedlight is wide enough to cover the entire surface of the modifier.

Related posts:

1. Prime Lenses
2. Using P&S Cameras In Low Light
3. Shout to Talk @ Galapagos Art Space – 13.09.2007

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At $20 a photo, the entry fees for only 1,500 images would be $30,000 – a profit margin that exceeds your average lottery ticket with far less return the winner even after any expenses are deducted. Speaking of expenses, it gets worse.

These contests often contain small print that gives the sponsoring company rights to perpetually publish, modify and even sell your work as their own without compensation or consent. Licensing fees for this type of use would normally cost a corporation thousands of dollars per image. Photographers beware.

Related posts:

1. Your Concert Photography Tutorial
2. Shoot More than you Need
3. Concert Photography Questions & Answers

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