Celebrity and Performance, a Review

First up, I'm not interested in celebrities.  I don't watch Entertainment Tonight, I don't read People magazine and I don't care who Paris Hilton is dating.  So when I bought the book 'Celebrity & Performance' by Andy Steel you are just going to have to believe me that it wasn't for the photos of the famous folks.  In fact, I should confess that I didn't know who a lot of the people in the book were, especially the music artists.  I could be riding alone in an elevator with most of them and have no idea their name wasn't Joe Bloe.  The reason I bought the book was that it interviewed ten different professional photographers whose business it was to photograph celebrities.  I had some mixed opinions about the book.

The Good:

• Some of the photographers work was amazing.  You could almost taste their passion for their craft with their images.  
• There were some good tips and pieces of information in the book if you are interested in shooting in venues with stage lights or challenging situations.  But you really have to pay attention and read cover to cover to get those tips.  They aren't obvious.
• The photographers covered aren't all using the same equipment.  Some shoot film, some digital, some Canon, some Nikon some Fuji, some medium format.  You don't feel like you are reading a commercial for Nikon gear like you do with some authors like Joe McNally.  
• The captions that are attached to each photograph are really good.  They are more than "this is a photo of Brad Pitt on his motorcycle" and get into camera settings and technique.

The Bad:

• Some of the photographers work was hard for me to appreciate.  Their shots looked a lot like snapshots to me.  Direct flash, and flat.  It seemed like they tried to explain this away as they were paparazzi and working on a rush to capture these amazing stars or they were just artists that saw the world with direct hard light.  I respect where these photographers are in life, they are far more accomplished than I, and I know nothing about chasing around celebrities but their work was really uninspiring to me.  Doubly so because I couldn't care less about the celebrities they photographed.
• The book followed a repetitive interview format where each photographer was asked the same set of questions.  I liked it at first, but it grew pretty tedious after maybe the first three interviews.
• The last page of each photographers section has a diagram and lighting setup for one shot.  Unfortunately I found this to be pretty lacking in detail or explanation.  Nice diagram, poor follow through.  

So if you are really into celebrity photography and are considering a career chasing stars across parking lots this might be a good book for you.  In addition there are some really great artists in the book that contribute genuinely thoughtful portraits of the icons of our time.   For the rest of you, I can't really recommend the book as a purchase.  Maybe borrow it from a friend.  If you know me, I'll lend you my copy.  A link to the book on Amazon is on the top right of the blog.  My next book that just arrived yesterday is David Ziser's 'Captured by the Light.'

I should say, I buy all my books.  Nobody asks me to review them and I don't just read photography books, I also love baseball and zombie books.  If my wife knew how much I spent at Amazon each year on books I'd be in really big trouble.  Lets just say it is more than I spend on camera gear.  So lets keep it between us OK?  

Before I go.  Remember, tomorrow is April Fool's Day so make sure to ignore all the forum posts about new camera news and rumours.  Don't be a sucker!  :)

Questions

So I'm reading this book right now called 'Celebrity & Performance' by Andy Steel.  It is a book about celebrity photographers.  I haven't finished it yet and when I do I'll be sure to review it here, but throughout the book there are common interview questions asked of each featured photographer.  While reading it today as I watched some spring training baseball on TV (yeah, baseball season is only one week away) and avoiding doing my spring yard work I thought it would be fun to ask these questions of myself.  Sure I'm not a celebrity photographer, and I've only been doing it (for pay) for two years.  But heck, it is a great way to discover yourself isn't it? Asking questions.  So here goes:

1. What was your first ever camera?:  I don't remember what my first camera was.  I remember getting it.  It was a simple film plastic point and shoot that my father gave me for Christmas after I had asked for one.  I didn't use it much as film was pretty expensive.  We weren't exactly rich.  The first digital camera I bought was a 3 megapixel Kodak point and shoot that I can't remember the name of.  I thought I was pretty cool getting into digital before most of my friends and family.  The first serious camera I bought that I took a serious interest in was a Pentax film SLR and kit lens I bought at Costco before my wedding almost 10 years ago.  I bought it so a friend could take photos of my wedding and then I could have a cool camera while saving money on a photographer!
2. Where do your ideas for innovative pictures come from?:  I always have ideas for images in my head.  Unfortunately I rarely follow through on them.  I find that as I get more competent in my craft I am completing more of my ideas.  They just pop in my head, but I'm definitely inspired by other photographers and get lots of ideas and inspiration from watching movies.
3. Why did you choose wedding, portrait and event photography?:  I love photographing people.  When I started getting serious about photography I took images of flowers, birds and landscapes but they bored me and I didn't have an eye for it.  I had a friend I was learning with and I convinced him we could be portrait photographers.  We deluded ourselves at first, but over time it just started to really click for me.  We avoided weddings at first being afraid of 'bridezillas' and hearing other photographers that did them say how much they hated them, but once we worked up the nerve to try one (we did our first for free) we realized that they were fantastically fun, challenging and rewarding.  To me, weddings are the Superbowl of photography and photographers that do them and hate them need to find another job.  Birds and landscapes are so commonly done.  I don't have an eye for it and don't feel I have anything new to contribute to that type if photography.  But making images of people is always rewarding, challenging and new.  There is no greater reward than making an emotional and artful image of a person.  I tried sports photography early on in my career and liked it, but couldn't make money at it.  Now it is just for fun.
4. Is it fair to say, like many successful photographers, that you had a 'lucky break' at some stage?:  No.  :)
5. Do you shoot what you want or do others generally define what's required of you?:  That really depends on what I'm doing.  For corporate events I'm really just providing good solid clean images that accurately represent the client's event.  For newspapers I get a bit more latitude, but generally you learn what an editor likes and you shoot for that while trying to mix in your own look.  Weddings and portraits are where you really get to express yourself.  I like clients that trust me to deliver them a wonderful image.  I try to present each client with a variety of looks, but ideally I want them to hire me for my style, not to try and recreate someone else's style.  I once had a bride give me a binder full of wedding photos she had photocopied from magazines.  She wanted me to give her those exact images at her wedding and I wish I had told her no.  It really stifled my creativity and actually distracted me from doing my best job. 
6. Where are you mostly based?  Where are your most common locations?:  I am based on Vancouver Island and will travel anywhere on the island.  I don't feel I'm ready to be a destination photographer yet and I'm happy to stay close to home.  For specific locations I shoot mostly on location.  We don't have our own studio yet and while I want one I see a trend with weddings and portraits where people don't really want the studio look right now anyway.  They want beaches, parks, urban locations, not muslin canvases and studio strobes.
7. What things do you enjoy most about your job?:  Meeting people and having that moment when I can see they are relaxed in front of me with my camera.  I get a big charge out of positive reactions from clients when I show them their images, but I'm always hugely nervous beforehand.  If there are negative reactions I wear them and agonize over them and I think people see how passionate I am about what I do.
8. From a technical aspect, what are the most difficult things about your photography?:  I used to think that most of my shortcomings were about not having the right gear, the right camera, the right lens.  Now I've realized that only my own imagination and creativity hold me back.  Yes it would be nice to have a posh studio and a Hassleblad or Leica but that doesn't hold me back.  As I get busier and busier the biggest thing holding me back nowadays is the time it takes to process my images.  I am still learning to speed up my workflow and that I don't have to spend an hour on every image in post processing.
9. How would you describe your personal style or technique?:  I love to shoot tight on people, but I'm trying to learn to shoot wide sometimes and bring in the environment to my images.  I love eyes and to me, the images that get me the most jazzed are when I can see emotion in the eyes of the person I'm photographing.  I like to shoot both candidly and through posed planned images.  I don't keyhole myself as one or the other.  For my final images I have a real love of both retro, classical black and white images and colourful, fun and frankly highly photoshopped images.  I'm not really into straight from the camera, straight up colour images.  I like to be able to feel a life and texture to my photographs.  Whether through grain, texture or dimension through lighting or all of those things.
10. What is in your kit bag?  Which camera system do you use and why?:  I use the Olympus E3 and several lenses for that system.  My two favourite are the Leica 25mm f1.4 Summilux lens and the 50-200 f2.8-3.5 lens.  I rented the 35-100 f2.0 lens once and would like to own it someday.  I love the Olympus system because it is rugged, gives images that are distortion free, have no vignetting and I like the 2X crop factor.  It works well with my brain.  The E3 is second nature to me, I know where everything is on that camera.  I also use the Canon 5DmkII and the 24-70 f2.8 Canon lens.  I bought it as I knew that the Olympus camera was limited at high ISO for image quality and I really needed that for wedding work.  I like that camera for images where I need big resolution or file size or need to work in low light without flash.  It is a really good camera, I just wish it was built like my E3.  Lastly I use an Olympus OM4t film camera with a 50mm f1.8 lens.  I just bought the 135mm f2.8 lens as well, but I haven't used it.  I love film, especially black and white film.  I don't want to process it myself.  I enjoy the experience of picking up my printed photos at the lab and seeing what I got without having touched them in post.  I love the raw feel of the photos, the quality and grain of them and the camera is a joy to use.  I don't ever want to rely on film entirely for professional work, but I hope it never dies.  My favourite films are the Illford ISO 400 black and white and the Kodak Professional ISO 400 black and white films that get processed through the colour processing.  
11. Do you make sure your work appeals to the widest possible audience?:  Yes.  But also no.  I think that if my work didn't appeal to anyone I'd just stop photographing.  I wouldn't want to strictly make images to please others.  I need to feel great about what I'm doing.
12. When are the busiest times of year for you?:  Weddings are busy from April to September.  Portraits are busiest in early fall when people get the idea they need to get family images for Christmas cards and such.  Events are all over the map.  
13. What types of pictures do you find the most difficult to take?:  Family formals at weddings.  I admit I try to get through them quickly and efficiently and don't generally enjoy them.  But they are necessary and I want to do a good job as moms and grandmas find those images very important.  Plus families are all together at weddings and might not all be together again for a long time, so these photos are very important documentary images for a family.  I also don't like pet photography and really don't have the patience, interest or inclination to do bird photography.
14. Which do you prefer, film or digital and why?:  With digital the capturing of the image is only 50% of the art to me.  The other half is what I get out of Photoshop and Lightroom and that is OK with me.  I enjoy it and enjoy the instant feedback of digital.  It allows me to be my most creative.  Having said that, film is naturally full of life and texture and it frees me to just relax and enjoy capturing moments without worrying about the end result.  My most favourite images have been captured by film and I don't see myself ever giving it up.
15. How much of our work do you manipulate using imaging software?:  Almost all of it.  If it was captured with film and scanned I leave it alone, but if I took it digitally I have no hesitation to alter the image anywhere from a little, to really quite a lot.  Very few of my digital images don't get at least a little attention in post, and some of them get a lot of work done.  This isn't to correct problems, it is because I feel that half of my art is what I put out after using the digital canvas of post processing.
16. What do you consider your greatest photographic achievements to date?:  Getting cold calls from clients to do work when they say they have been referred by others we have worked for.  I'm not a famous photographer, don't fly to New York for big shoots, but when someone loves my work so much that they send their friends and colleagues I look at that as an honour and a huge achievement.  I had a call from the Edmonton Sun last year after they heard about me from a local paper.  I also get calls from people for portraits when they see my images in the homes of the people I have photographed.  And of course most of the weddings we do come from people that have seen us photograph weddings in the past and have liked us.
17. What does the future hold for you?:  I'd like to work at photography full time, not part time.  I'd like to have a studio of my own though I believe that location work will always be huge for me.  As I mature as a wedding photographer I'd like to try destination weddings.  I have several people in the field that I admire and I'd like to meet them and learn from them.  I have a few personal projects that I've dreamt up and I'd like to have the guts to get started on them.  I hope one day to be interviewed by someone because my work is known.  Not to interview myself!  :)

Canon 5DmkII Does Hockey

So if you read my earlier blog post on the Olympus E3 and 35-100 f2.0 lens and the hockey game I photographed with it, you might be interested in a comparison to the 5DmkII and Sigma 70-200 f2.8 lens I used last night to again photograph hockey.

The photos can be found in this gallery I shot with the Canon setup. The Olympus photos can be found through the link in that post.

I did the game last night with the Canon. It was in a brighter rink. One full stop brighter actually, so I was able to get 1/500th of a second at ISO 3200 and f2.8. I did the exact same thing as I did with the Olympus:

• Did a gray card white balance and used eyedropper tool in Lightroom for colour.
• Shot in manual mode for consisent exposures as I find the cameras get confused by ice sheets
• used a monopod

The white balance in the camera looked good, but when I loaded it into the computer it was way off. But the eyedropper and batch editing saves time. The exposures were all pretty good as this is a newer rink with more consistent lighting than I had with the Olympus in the older rink.

I had three friends playing in the game. I used noise reduction on images with them in it but not the others. I found the noise to be very apparent at ISO 3200 with the Canon, but not objectionable so I decided only my buddies deserved the effort of exporting to Nik's Dfine. See if you can spot the noise reduced and not noise reduced. At full sized you should be able to if you look at the black hockey pants. Compared to the E3 at ISO 1250 I found it about the same for noise though in my experience the E3's noise unravels pretty quick after ISO1250 whereas the Canon is usable up to ISO6400 though noisy. The Nik software does a nice job of killing the noise at ISO 3200. I exposed both games for a nice histogram, not overexposing for the sake of noise reduction.

I used AI servo or continuous autofocus centre point on the 5D just like I did on the E3. It seemed to be tracking much better than the Olympus did and I was impressed and feeling confident. However when I looked at the images on the computer there were a lot of just slightly out of focus images. The Olympus seemed to have excellent focus or very badly out of focus. Not much in between. It was like the Canon was almost keeping up, but not quite. The images were helped though by being able to keep my shutter speed up with the higher ISO.

The Canon has a slower frame rate, which actually was fine. I don't machine gun it much anyway as a general rule. But for a serious sports shooter the Olympus definitely has the edge in frame rate. The viewfinder on the Olympus is also much better.

The high megapixel Canon 5D mkII is actually pretty useful when you want to crop in. You have miles of detail in an image even cropped 50% or more. I did eat through an 8GB card though in short order with about 250 images.

The Canon didn't seem troubled by the very cold rink, much like the Olympus didn't miss a beat. I was curious if it would fog up or have issues but it didn't.

The keeper rate for me was about 50% which was 10% higher than the day with the Olympus. About half of the Canon images that were thrown away as they were boring and another half due to bad focus which is actually a higher percentage than the Olympus. Though most of the blurry images of the Canon were just annoyingly slightly blurry as compared to the massively blurry from the Olympus. You can take user error or technique as a wash as I was the one who used both cameras and I used similar techniques and I know hockey well. The higher shutter speed due to better lighting and better ISO ability really helped the Canon, though I think in this rink I would have been able to shoot at about 1/400th of a second at f2.0 and ISO 1250 on the E3 which would have been just as clean for noise and given the nature of the hockey (beginner adult league) would have produced sharp images.

I shot from the bench in this game so I didn't have to worry about shooting through scratched up hockey glass.

I was curious of the depth of field would be too narrow at f2.8 on the full frame but it wasn't. In fact I found it just right. The DOF is also nice (though maybe not quite as shallow) on the f2.0 Olympus lens, and I prefer the blurry areas or bokeh to that of the Sigma lens. I tried the old Canon 70-200 f2.8 in the store and found it to be actually a slower focusing lens than the Sigma. I borrowed the Sigma from a friend, but plan on buying the new image stabilized version for my Canon once it is released instead of the newer and more expensive Canon one.



Anyway, the Canon isn't built to be a sports camera, but it performed well. I also like using the E3, especially with SHG glass. When I bought the Canon for my wedding work I was hopeful it would perform well enough for the 'fun photography' that I like to do in my spare time like hockey and newspaper work. It did fine and made me feel better about passing over the much more expensive 1DmkIV.

Step by Step Wedding Photography, a Review

A friend loaned me a book by Damon Tucci titled 'Step by Step Wedding Photography; Techniques for Professional Photographers,' and I finished it today polishing off the last third of the book in one sitting.  The book is described on the back as follows: "In wedding photography, there are few second chances.  Coming home with professional quality images requires more than just a good eye, it takes a solid plan of action - and the ability to improvise on the spot when things don't go as planned.  In this book, acclaimed wedding photographer Damon Tucci takes you through the process he uses to maximize his efficiency, achieve dazzling results with natural light, make the most of even lack-luster scenes and backgrounds, and come home with the "money shots" every time.  From pre-ceremony  preparations to the last moments of the reception, Tucci walks you through each step of the day, telling you where to be, what to look for, and how to ensure client-pleasing results."

Now that I've totally given the back description of the book in an unimaginative way I will give the excuse that I thought it was a good descriptor of the book and what you are getting.  Unlike some of my competition I really enjoy going beyond the typical 6 hour coverage and fully documenting a wedding day from morning to the wee hours of the night.  It is exhausting, but highly rewarding as well and in my opinion is the only way to truly tell the story of the day.  This book lays it all on the line, telling you what to expect on a full day of coverage.

I go through a lot of books and a high percentage of them are photography related.  While I subscribe to online tutorial sites like Kelby Training, I find that books are my best source of learning as I can have them on hand for inspiration, I can review them at a thoughtful pace, and I can appreciate the images in them in print.  The images in Tucci's book range from technically proficient and somewhat standard wedding fare to jaw dropping and inspirational.  His style of photography isn't a perfect fit for mine, but nor should it be. We all need our own style and he points that out a few times in the book.  The type of gear you use, the lighting you prefer and your photographic art should be your own.

Where Damon's book excels is in laying out the typical schedule, to and fro and goings on of a wedding and the job of photographing that wedding.  He brings you from the beginning to the end of a day in the life of a wedding photographer and drops a lot of tips and hints that are time saving, helpful and will get you organized for the task at hand.  This is really an essential guide for a photographer considering their first wedding job.  But it is also extremely helpful for those that have been doing weddings and are looking to refine their workflow to better handle the very tasking job of documenting a wedding day.  The latter really describes me.  I'm in my second full year as a wedding photographer and some of the pointers in the book will be used in my next wedding.  In particular my struggles with getting through family formals quickly  have been helped tremendously with tips from this book.  While Damon isn't a big proponent of posing (and neither am I) he does give tips around guiding brides and grooms that will help speed things along and get you reliable shots over and over again.

I enjoyed this book.  Thankfully the person that loaned it to me was the other photographer from my studio that I work with so we can revisit it together.  If wedding photography is your gig, or your potential gig, you will be thanking yourself for picking up this book and following some of the tips within it.  Books may not excel at being current, they may not be free, but they are great for reference and idle inspiration and this one fits the bill well.  You can find it in the Amazon link on the top right of this blog.  As Damon would say, this book is the thirteenth donut in a bakers dozen, and that is how we roll.

Olympus Torture Test

So I had rented the 35-100 f2.0 for a wedding and since I had the lens for a week I decided I'd see how it was with indoor sports. And I decided to be brutal, so I chose hockey.  The rink I shot in is the darkest in town.  It has old, bad lighting.  Shadows on the ice and bad scratched up glass to shoot through.

The gear I used:

• Olympus E3 with battery grip
• Manfrotto Monopod with Manfrotto hinge on it for tilting the setup
• Olympus 35-100 f2.0 lens
• Gray Card for white balance

The camera settings:

• Did a white balance by placing the gray card on top of the hockey boards and taking a shot of it. Used the eyedropper tool in Lightroom later and did a batch process.
• Shot wide open at f2.0
• Took one shot in Aperture priority mode to get a base shutter speed setting at ISO 1000 then turned to manual mode
• Set camera on ISO 1250 to keep up shutter speed
• set shutter speed of 1/200th of a second and checked histogram
• Image stabilization off, CF focus mode centre spot

I usually like to shoot sports at at least 1/500th of a second but this is an adult mens casual novice league so the skating wasn't blazingly fast so I could get away with 1/200th. The rink is a very dark one. By shooting in manual mode I get a consistent output without the camera getting confused by shadows on the ice and white jerseys etc. The most I had to up any exposure in Lightroom was by half a stop, and that was when I caught action by the nets where it was generally darker. This, and using a gray card (or sometimes I use an Expodisc but mine doesn't fit this huge lens) are real time savers in post processing.

In post I did crops and any exposure adjustments. I then ran each photo through Nik Software's Dfine 2.0 for noise removal. Generally I found the noise to be acceptable for the shots, but you really see it especially in black hockey pants. I think the guys I gave the photos too would not have noticed the noise not being photo geeks themselves.

I'm super familiar with my E3 (I've had two) so I know what it can do. Generally I like my ISO to be 1250 or less, but I've seen others get ISO 1600 shots that look great. I wish the E3 had better tracking in Continuous Autofocus mode. I ended up with about a 40% keeper rate with the other 60% being tossed due to either blurriness or just being a boring shot. I'd say about 20% of all shots were blurry. Generally the E3 was slow and I knew I could get a higher success rate by going to Single Autofocus and feathering the button, but I took this as an experiment day. A note on the batteries in the battery grip. They were fresh charged before the wedding I just did and lasted the whole wedding, the whole hockey game and one portrait shoot and still have a charge as I type this.

The 35-100 lens is heavy and large which for me at least was a bit of a deal breaker for wedding work, but for hockey it wasn't a problem. I found the focal length to be just fine for indoor sports where you can shoot right up front. I tended to leave it at 100mm as I find zooming during the action is just a way to miss shots. I did not use the focus limiter (I forgot), but the lens was adequate or generally fast to focus. I would think that it would benefit tremendously as a sports lens to have the SWD motor in it, but even in low light it was reasonably snappy.

At f2.0 with a four thirds sensor you really get the light you need in the camera. If I had been using a 70-200 f2.8 lens on a Canon or Nikon for example, I would have needed ISO 2560 to keep the same shutter speed (and the depth of field is similar as you get more depth with the smaller sensor which can be helpful). Having said that, to get to my desired shutter speed of 1/500th of a second at f2.0 I would have needed ISO 3200 which to me at least is really unacceptable on the Olympus E3 and highlights the benchmark that the next camera (the E5 or whatever) would need to achieve to be a competitive camera for indoor sports. It needs to be as clean at ISO 3200 as it is now at ISO 1250, or one and a third stop better. Certainly that has to be attainable. That and put the SWD motor in the f2.0 lenses and you'd be cooking with the setup for sure.

You can find the rest of the images I shot that night here. 

I find hockey to be a lot of fun to photograph. The challenges in these community rinks are dark spots on the ice, bad lighting and scratched up glass to shoot through. It is like putting a really bad cheap filter on the front of your lens which is a shame as in my limited time with the 35-100 Olympus lens I can sincerely say it is as sharp as my Leica 25mm f1.4 lens, and is distortion and vignette free.  It is a gorgeous lens.  In this rink you can shoot with no glass between the benches which is nice (until you get hit by an errant hockey stick which I have before) but I moved around and did a fair amount through the glass. I'm familiar enough with the rink to know which glass panels are the least scratched and which corners of the rink have the best light (least shadows). 

Anyway, the lens was fantastic. I'd love to try the 150mm f2.0. It would likely give you good full body length shots across the rink and nice close up head shots for expressions on your side of the rink.

I'm Famous, oh and Pentax Gets Cool

First up I saw my mug (ok can hardly see it) on the Oak Bay Marine Group site.  I attended the 'Photographers at Painters' event last year and it was lots of fun.  This wast taken of me I think playing with a vaseline smeared piece of plastic stretched on a cardboard frame.  It was a fun class, I recommend going to anyone looking to escape for a weekend of fun.

Secondly and completely not related to photography, I scored my first goal tonight in hockey.  I just started playing last year, learned to skate about 3 years ago and was beginning to think that I wouldn't make it happen, but tonight I scored and it was the game winner!  Ok, now back to photography and thanks for indulging me (it's the little things in life right?)

Lastly, and quickly did you catch the release of the Pentax 645 medium format for $10,000?!?!?  Man, talk about aggressive price, awesomeness from Pentax.  They just became highly relevant again.   Good for them.   Olympus you are next.  

I used my new Canon 5DmkII at a wedding last weekend.  Planning on releasing a video where I packed my gear and another were I review it and compare it to real world use against the Olympus E3.  Have all the footage, just have to edit it.  Plus I rented the 35-100 f2.0 lens for the E3 so I've got to talk about that experience as well.  

Hope everyone has a great weekend.  I'm off tomorrow to scout out the location for our next wedding as it is at a resort I haven't been to yet (I hate surprises).  

Did I mention I scored a goal tonight?  

You are Arrested

Remind me never to bring a camera to the UK if I go there on holiday! Check this out!  I thought the police tried their best, but in the end just couldn't tolerate someone refusing to buckle to their request. 

Just in case you think its isolated, here is another.

Vision Mongers (A Review)

I was playing around today getting ready for our first wedding job of 2010 this weekend.  Charging batteries, making sample prints, etc and I was testing a lens I rented (35-100 Olympus f2.0).  Anyway, doesn't every photographer have to have the cliche black and white photograph of themselves in the mirror with their big camera?  Well there is mine.  Cliche completed.

I just finished reading David duChemin's book "Vision Mongers" this morning.  The first thing that struck me about the book when I took it out of the box Amazon shipped it in was how gorgeous it was and how great the images were in it.  When I first started reading it David was talking about following your passion, and doing photography as a career only because you couldn't imagine doing anything else.  I nearly gagged.  I thought, "man I already know this stuff.  I love photography, why do you think I bought your book?"  Well as I began to go further (I wasn't looking forward to it) I started to get into it.  Sure David wasn't telling me something I didn't already know about my "passion" but he was reaffirming it.  The further you get in, the more you realize that he is sharing some really great marketing tips, some sound business advice and at the same time giving you a reality check about getting into the business of balancing art and commerce.  There are several inserts in the book where David interviews other working pros about their business.  These break up the book well and provide some great information to every type of working photographer.  

This book is the perfect companion to "Best Business Practices for Photographers" by John Harrington.  John's book gives you the contracts, nuts and bolts business advice and ins and outs of the 'bizz' of photography.  David's book gives you the rest.  It reminds you why you are here in the first place.  It coaches you on debt, vision, marketing, and at the same time doesn't let you off the hook for slacking at your craft.  If you suck, you shouldn't hang a shingle.  I loved this book, and if you are interested, check out the Amazon link on the top right of the blog.

So why a photo of a doorknob?  Well as I mentioned above I rented the 35-100 f2.0 Olympus lens.  It arrived today delivered in a Pelican case from Lens Lenders.  I of course immediately opened it and stuck it on my E3.  I needed to know what all the fuss was about with this lens.  First up, it is big, heavy and pretty serious looking.  The constant f2.0 aperture gives a full stop advantage over the equivalent full frame Nikon and Canon 70-200 f2.8 lenses (which you need to try and keep your ISO down on the 4/3rds sensor).  And it is sharp wide open.  One of the first shots I took with it was of my bathroom doorknob (hey I'm naturally lazy and the door was 5 feet from where I was standing).   The bokeh on this lens is smooth!  Very smooth!  It focuses pretty fast.  Not as fast as my 50-200 SWD lens, but even in my dark hallway it was snappy.  I'll know more after I use it on a job, but already I'm feeling like a doorknob for not buying this lens earlier.  As for Lens Lenders, well, they sent me the lens a day early.  It was well packaged, and everything arrived as promised.  Renting expensive lenses like this makes some sense to me in tight times.  If you live in Canada and want to rent Canon, Nikon or Olympus lenses I'd suggest giving them a try.

Excuse Me Sir

Just read another blog post by photographer Rob Smith from Australia about being questioned by police while taking photographs (you can see several notes about this kind of thing in older blog posts here), and this time it seems at least to me that the police were even handed and fair.   Turns out Rob was taking photos at a local beach trying to gather images for a local photography art show.  Someone complained that there was a 'man with a camera' taking photos of children.  Indeed Rob was taking pictures of children amongst other things, and they were really fine photos too.  Of course his intentions were innocent, but being a parent myself I can understand the concerns of parents.  To me this story is a reflection of our society and where it is at right now.

The first problem was Rob should have been telling parents why he was photographing their children.  If I take photos of people in public, even at first if they are unaware, I go up to them and introduce myself, offer a copy of the photo and ask permission to take or keep the photo.  This applies to children and adults.  I sense Rob didn't mean any harm though.  The second problem occurred when whoever complained didn't take it upon themselves to just go chat with Rob instead of calling police.  You can solve a lot of questions and allay a lot of fears by just talking to people.  I bet those people that complained still feel that they averted a predator.  The police arrived, and in my opinion handled themselves very well.  Politeness from Rob and the policeman ruled the day and everything was fine.

Go over to his blog and check out his images, they are superb and you should be able to tell right away they are not meant for predatory purposes.  I'm sure Rob was humiliated, and that is unfortunate.  We really need to come up to a place in our world where we don't automatically assume everyone is a predator and we can all just start talking to each other again.  I say this as a parent who's eight year old daughter just received her first unwelcome message on the internet on a site called Moshi Monsters.  Someone (not so innocently in my opinion) posted her a message asking if she was pretty and that he was a boy.  I wanted to reach through that computer and pound the living daylights out of him.  But I communicate with my kid about telling me when things aren't right.  I'm not afraid to talk to the grownups in my community about how they interact with my kid and she is not afraid to tell me.  I reported the guy on the internet, and I would talk to a photographer face to face if I saw him take a photo of my kid.  If I didn't like his answer, you bet I'd call the police.  If it was Rob, I'd ask for a signed copy of the photo to hang on my wall.

 Bravo to the police for a reasonable response.  I'm sure Rob learned some lessons that day and will reconsider is approach the next time he is at the beach.

Also check out this related story of another photographers recent brush with the law.