Colour

"Colour photography is largely magic, hiding in the bellows there live dozens of hobgoblins, some good, some evil." - Norman Parkinson

That quote really resonated with me and I had to put up a blog post before it slipped my mind.  It really speaks to the struggles I have with colour images and the love I have for colour.  I feel like sometimes I just can't win, but for the most part I am frustrated looking at black and white images that are so common today that lack the soul of what they should be, filled with no purpose and lots of neutral grey.  And yet that devilish colour is so attractive and beautiful. But you can't cheat a black and white photograph.  You either have the subject and the composition or you don't.  No getting distracted with yellows and oranges and bright green.  No mistaking what is important and what isn't.  And yet a black and white image is also more forgiving.  Sometimes.  Anyway, these hobgoblins are on my mind a lot so when I read Parkinson's quote I had to put it up.

A couple of gear related things, just because I know that's what you all want to hear.  :)

I held and played with the new Pentax Q camera yesterday in the store.  It reminded me of one of those old James Bond spy cameras I used to see advertised in the back of comic books when I was a kid.  It was small.  I was shocked how small it really was in my hands.  Too small.  Way too small.  I think that if there was ever a point where we have miniaturized things too much, this is it for cameras.  I couldn't even get a grip on the little thing without feeling like an Ox.  And for a guy, I don't have large hands.  It makes my Pentax W90 point and shoot look like a tank.  To be fair, I also held onto the new Olympus E-PL3, also too small and the lack of any sort of grip was unnerving to say the least.  At least the Pentax had a nice rubbery/leathery texture to the body which felt nice, the E-PL3 had a quality metal body, but felt flat and slippery.  The E-P3 which they also had in stock felt nice though, substantial in comparison.  This is just my impressions of holding the cameras, obviously I haven't used them outside of a camera store.

I did however get a chance to bring my E5 to it's first wedding last weekend on a day that was experiencing some heavy rain.  It ended up being sunny at the last minute but I used the camera anyway and loved it very very much.  So much so that it made me consider ditching the Canon 7D but memories of last years problems carrying two sets of lenses (at the time for the Olympus E3 and Canon 5DmkII) quickly changed my mind.  The focus was reliable (I'm still at times unnerved by the 7D's lack of consistent focus) and the images were magnificent.  The 50-200 Zuiko lens performed so amazingly well, and I think I might have forgotten how much fun it was to pull out that 8mm fisheye lens on occasion.  The introduction of the E5 to my work was so refreshing I couldn't help but to use it for some business portraits the last two days using both the Leica Summilux lens and the 50-200 in the studio.  At ISO 200 and for web sized or small print publication, the camera has more than enough juice and it's screen (lcd) and viewfinder are a dream.  Oh Olympus, it's too bad you are running away from this camera.  But I understand the business sense that is forcing you to do so.

Thanks again for dropping by the blog.  I'll be back again soon, just as soon as I get through another rush of work and editing.

Oh Kirk Tuck made a post on his blog that was really wonderful a few days ago.  It was one of those posts that I thought was probably getting glossed over by most readers simply looking for gear reviews.  Yes our photographs are reflections of our own unique versions of the world, and if that doesn't leave you feeling naked in public then you aren't trying hard enough.  It's a short post, go read it if you have a minute.

The Guy Who Fixed My Garage Door

E5

My garage door has been broken for a couple of months.  It was one of those things on my 'to do' list and finally I booked the repair guy to come and fix it.  He came, he fixed, and he asked me what I did for a living.  When I told him I was a photographer he became all excited and ran to get his iPhone.  To show me his bird photos.  He had just purchased a Nikon D5000 and had been spending time at the lake with his wife taking bird photos.  Now first up, I carry a somewhat unfair dislike for bird photos.  Probably because I'm a terrible bird photographer.  The patience required for it just doesn't exist within my soul.  But what was more disturbing and reality check inducing was the comment that he thought that maybe it would be nice to one day be a professional photographer too.

I have no problem with that.  I don't.  I swear.  But (you had to know there would be a but) just because you run out, buy an entry level DSLR and get a few (admittedly really good) bird photos does not make you qualified to be a photographer.  OK, maybe it does, what the heck do I know.  But I can tell you that the romance of the digital age of photography is bringing in way too many people that buy a Canon Rebel and decide that is the only barrier to entry into what is a very challenging, time consuming, all encompassing and at times exhausting field of work.  Don't get me wrong, I love it, all the more so because of all the work I have to put into it, but knocking off a few pretty photos shouldn't be the qualifier to entry.  So I referred him to the local photo club and wished him well.

But it does bring up something that has been on my mind since last week.  You see last week I received an email from a local graphic design company that was designing the new visitor guide for our City.  They were looking for photography submissions for the guide and were running it a bit like a crowd sourced photo contest.  Accepted images were to be paid $50 each and $200 for the cover.  You submit your photos in the hope of getting chosen based on a list of desired images they had.  Now for me, I just can't or won't invest the time to go out and photograph these in the hope of what is really a very poor financial payment.  If I had an image in my library I thought would fit, I might submit it.  I'm more likely to spend my own time for free just doing photos like that for enjoyment than to go out trying to create them for $50.

But I decided to send the request for images out in a big chain email to all the other local photographers in town thinking that someone else might be interested.  The controversy and rather distraught emails that came back were pretty eye opening.  I guess in previous years this company had contracted out to a photographer a budget to deliver images for the guide.  Plenty of photographers are offended by this crowd sourced model.  For a while I forwarded all the concerned emails around to everyone in hopes of a spirited debate on pricing models, but then I stopped because I didn't want to be the centre of this controversy.  I was just passing on 'work.'  Right or wrong, for some jobs this appears to be the new model of getting hired.

And that is what really had me thinking.  With people like my friendly garage door repairman, and millions of other advanced amateurs out there producing good quality work, has the market for 'generic' types of stock photography dried up?  I mean why would an advertising company pay top dollar for a beach or deer or bird photograph when they could get it from iStock, a local amateur or a new 'pro' for next to nothing or free for the honour of a photo credit?  The market will pay based on supply and demand and any brief three minute browse to Flickr will show many thousands of beautiful beach sunset images.

To the photographers that are lamenting the shift in the market I have this to say, and I don't mean to be mean or even controversial.  You need to find a niche market that will pay for your art, craft and skill.  You can't expect top dollar any longer for a well exposed image of a generic subject matter.  Weddings, portraits, product, commercial and architecture photographers know this.  After all it's not like a Bride can go out and purchase a stock image off a micro stock website of her wedding.  She might be able to crowd source the job on Craig's list, but that will come with an expectation of substantially lower quality which is perfectly valid for those without the money to pay for good photographs.  But if you have been hanging your hat on providing images for publications of kayakers, kids kicking soccer balls, and kites in a blue sky I think you may be noticing a drop in business.

I feel the pain and the anguish, and I sympathize with it, but I think it's time to realize the market has moved on and we should move with it or consider another career.  Stay relevant or give up already.  You can remind me of this when I start to experience the same feelings one day.  But for now I'm doing my best to stay on the front side of the curve.

The photographers that have been doing this for much longer than I generally fall into one of a few camps.  They gripe and moan about the old days while producing stagnant work that reminds me of 1980, or they run really good businesses that are technically miles ahead of anything most of the rest of us know how to do and have kept relevant (a lot of these photographers have made very lucrative second parts of their careers teaching workshops to the rest of us) or they have given up altogether and quit.  I hate seeing anyone in the first group.  They just assumed the world would stay still.

Moving on, I'm still playing with the new Olympus E5.  Well I guess it's only new to me as it's been on the market for about a year now.  Adam, my esteemed colleague said to me that it was the nicest camera he had ever used (talking about handling I think).  I have to agree with him.  I really love holding it and using it.  It isn't without its (significant) flaws, but it is wonderful.  So wonderful I've decided to spend on a new four thirds lens and have ordered the 35-100 f2.0 lens.  Does this mean I think the four thirds cameras are going to live on forever?  Nope.  I don't.  I think Olympus has set its sights and investments squarely on micro four thirds, and will dig in deeper now that Nikon has entered the market.  But my four thirds cameras are my fun cameras.  They are the ones I bust out when I'm not working.  My Canon's are for work.  Confused yet?

You can see me swapping drives in my Drobo in the photo above while Adam plays with the E5 in the mirror.  I love my Drobo, but it did take three full days to swap out two 1 terabyte drives for two 2 terabyte drives.  The Drobo takes a long time to rebuild the RAID (or whatever technical term describes what it is) when you pull and add drives.  I had managed to fill my Drobo in only 9 months.  Amazing.

One last thing and that is a quick book recommendation.  reGeneration 2, a book which spotlights work by emerging photographers.  I find these types of books so inspiring and amazing.  I love flipping through them and an this point I dream of what it would have been like to be one of those new photographers introduced in such an amazing way.  I've written this before, but I sincerely believe that photographers also need to be consumers of the art.  It is a great way to get inspired and to support the craft.  I enjoy looking at images nearly as much as I do creating them and I hope you do too.  You can find a link to the book on the top right of the blog.

Thanks again for visiting.

Wedding Photography: A Guide to Making Money

About a year ago I came across a website called Oliver Cameraon Publishing selling small books that were essentially guides to posing for boudoir and wedding photographers.  I ended up buying the books and quite enjoyed them.  Then they came out with a book called "Wedding Photography A Guide to Making Money" by David Pearce.  Now how could I resist that?  I'm a wedding photographer, and I love it, but making money is kind of nice too.

Canon 5DmkII with 24-70 2.8 lens 1/60 of a second, f3.5 ISO 160, natural light

So I ordered the book and read through it quickly.  Then about halfway through I realized something, I was forgetting everything.  So I took it again and just put little stars beside each part of the book I wanted to revisit.  You see, it's broken up into hundreds of little paragraphs, each of which is a specific business related tip or suggestion.  Some of them didn't apply to my business, or maybe I disagreed with them or recognized them as a poor fit for my personality.  Some of them were things I'm already doing.  But many were little ideas that I wanted to revisit.  And so I have a plan.  I'll go back to the book occasionally, pick a paragraph that I had marked and spend some time on my marketing in an organized way.  This book is my new idea book, all in one concise little paperback novel.

The book can be purchased directly from the publisher on their site for around $20.  I get no commission or royalty for recommending them, in fact I believe they asked us to submit photos once for one of their upcoming posing titles, but we never heard from them again after submitting images.  Maybe that's a bad sign?  I'll try not to take it personally.  :)

I will say this.  The advice contained in this book can pretty much be found elsewhere for free from sites on the internet and from talking to your fellow pros, but if you are isolated in your area from peers or aren't much for internet reading (thanks for reading this blog), then this is a good option.  And even if you do have access to sites like the DWF where all this information is readily available and searchable, having this book puts it all in one place for you.  You can stick it in your car, on the back of your toilet or beside the television and use it for sudden inspiration at a glance.  If you are stuck for marketing and business advice, this book is well worth it and in this economy I think we can all use all the business skills we can get.

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend.  Thanks for stopping by the blog.

an Ocean Waltz

an Ocean Waltz, a photo by Felix Aldhi on Flickr.

A perfect end of summer photo, this one caught my eye in the Photography Ramblings group on Flickr. With her back turned, the perfect composition and her staring out at a beach, this photo says goodbye to summer for me.

Taken by a photographer named Felix Aldhi who currently lives in Vancouver BC, but the image was taken in Indonesia with an Olympus E3 at f3.3 at 1/1600th of a second ISO 100 in aperture priority mode with +0.7 exposure compensation. Not sure which lens was used but it was at 38mm.

Felix wrote this below the photo:

Via Flickr:
Strange how I feel, sitting on a chair in a deep water.
The sky, the breeze and the cold wave complimenting each other.
It's quiet, just the waltzing ocean that stole our time.
I will remember today as days go by.

If you want to see more work from Felix check out his Flickr stream here. Want your image featured on the blog? Join our group and it just might be!

Panasonic GF1 Revisited (In Alaska)

GF1 with viewfinder and 20mm f1.7 lens with the Olympus OM 135mm f2.8

I was recently faced with a conundrum that many of us photographers face when we are about to go away on vacation.  Which camera equipment to take with us.  My family and I had booked a trip to Alaska on the Norwegian Star cruise ship and were going to be gone about a week.  I have a lot of Canon equipment that I use for work, but I sort of put a line in the sand between my work equipment and my play equipment so that gear wasn't considered.  I had also recently purchased the Olympus E5 and by the way I'm loving it, but I had to consider weight, that I was on vacation and with my wife and daughter, not a bunch of photographers.  I also have a Pentax point and shoot (W90) but honestly I'm not crazy about that camera's image quality except for its ability to shoot time lapse.  I figured I wasn't going to bring my film camera either, I wanted the convenience of digital.  So, it occurred to me that I should give myself a break from big DSLR's and give the micro four thirds cameras a long test as a tourist.

That left me with two choices, the Olympus EPL1 or the Panasonic GF1, both of which I own.  The Panasonic won out for two reasons.  One, I own the viewfinder for it and not the Olympus and two I have two batteries for it and only one for the Olympus (I drained the first battery after about 4 and a half days of use).  With the GF1 I took the 20mm f1.7 Lumix lens, the Olympus 14-42 kit lens from the EPL1, the plastic Holga lens and the Olympus OM 135mm f2.8  lens mounted on the MF-2 adaptor (which works seamlessly).  I also decided to take the wrist strap off the camera and put the neck strap back on.  I had decided a while ago to give up on neck straps, but I envisioned I'd be carrying (shopping) bags, holding my daughters hand, etc so I wanted my hands free.  Also I knew that my wife and daughter would have very little patience for me setting up my shots every 10 minutes.  I needed quick, easy and light gear.  The good news is that this is the biggest shake-up or test drive I have ever given this camera so now I can write about it again with a more informed impression than I first made with it.

Tracey Arm Glacier 3 shot HDR with Olympus 14-42 lens and GF1

Well here is what I learned.  There were times I missed a proper DSLR for sure.  We had a grey whale swimming beneath our balcony one day and I was trying to focus and photograph the moving subject with the GF1 with very poor result.  Same experience with a bear up in a tree.  The viewfinder on the Panasonic is nice for being able to bring the camera up to your eye and shoot it like a 'real' camera, but it has a couple of faults.  It isn't very big and bright, the focus adjustment knob on the side of it gets bumped easily each time you hit the button needed to turn it on and it goes out of focus (it turns way too easily) and the image inside the viewfinder is no match for that of a proper DSLR or that of the Olympus electronic viewfinder that I looked through in the store.  Also, the viewfinder doesn't really clip in there well in the hotshoe.  It seems to want to slide out a little at times which is worrying as it isn't a cheap accessory that you want to lose.

Also, the GF1 isn't weather sealed, and in our stop in Prince Rupert it was raining very heavily.  I left the GF1 on the ship that day.  The Pentax point and shoot or the Olympus E3 or E5 would have been welcome partners.  My daughter did bring her Olympus 850SW waterproof point and shoot that I passed down to her so that was handy.  Luckily it only rained that one day the whole trip.

The water on the way sailing to Tracey Arm, 3 shot HDR with GF1 and 14-42 lens

The good things about the camera were also pretty quickly obvious to me.  First up I stood out from the crowd.  You might think this is vain, and it is, but in a sea of point and shoots, cell phones, Canon Rebels and Nikon whatevers (whatever the bottom of the line Nikon is) I looked pretty cool with my vintage leather wrapped GF1 especially when I had the viewfinder and Olympus OM lens on it.  Yes, you can say it, I like to look awesome!  Plus people have no idea what you are carrying, I like that too.  I always take a look at others equipment, I can't help it.  Sort of a popularity survey of others stuff.  Interestingly the cruise ship must have a partnership with Olympus as they sell the waterproof point and shoots, the EPL2 and the superzoom camera right on the boat with constantly scrolling Olympus commercials (which are really quite good) and a big banner in the photo department.  Making no sense to me, the photographers on board all use the Nikon D90.  Not that that's a bad camera, it just seemed contradictory.  By the way, the photography on board was very poor.  I don't mean to say that as a snob, but if spot colouring, on camera flash and basically anything that screams 1999 is your favourite photography fashion, then you should cruise.  And you know what?  They make a lot of money selling that to happy customers.  People line up for it.  So rest assured, the bar is very low still for the general public.  In their defence I doubt they have time to deliver considered and well done photographs to 2300 cruisers, nor do they wish to pay for properly trained and interested photographers.  To finish my little informal survey, other than the sea of bottom end Canon and Nikon DSLR's that all looked shiny and new, there were a significant number of micro four thirds cameras that I saw including the EP1, EP3, EPL2, and the G3.  That surprised me.  I also saw one Samsung NX100.  There was also a lot of point and shoots, but most of them were the superzoom variety.  Of course a lot of iPhones were being used.  I saw one low end Sony DSLR.  It still had a price tag on the neck strap.  

Other good things I enjoyed about the GF1:

• It was really light.  I never noticed it around my neck or slung over my shoulder.  It never seemed in the way.  
• The viewfinder, despite my griping about it's quality, is pretty handy when its sunny or bright outside
• It's black and white jpgs look really good and contrasty right out of the camera.
• To do an HDR, all you have to do is flip a switch on the top and you are exposure bracketing.  That is the easiest camera ever for getting instantly to HDR mode.
• It isn't a fast focuser, but it isn't point and shoot slow either.  Fast enough for slow moving people and not frustrating for other things so long as they aren't a quick swimming whale.  Face detection is pretty handy and works well, but changing focus points manually isn't quick or intuitive.
• The video quality is good, certainly more than any home user could need, and it's easy to use.

Other things I didn't like:

• at ISO 800 it really isn't enjoyable any longer for noise unless you are black and white.  ISO 1600 should be reserved for black and white grainy images which some will hate, but I don't mind.  ISO 3200 is unusable, which will matter to some people, but for me, with this type of camera, it isn't an issue.

GF1 with Olympus OM135mm f2.8 lens

Of the lenses I brought I can say this.  I used the 20mm pancake f1.7 lens the least.  That surprised me, but in retrospect I was outside most of the time and didn't need the fast aperture.  The Olympus 14-42 kit lens isn't fast (3.5-5.6), but it has a useful range and I used it the most.  It is plenty sharp and is small enough not to be a bother to carry.  Both of those lenses weigh next to nothing.  I only used the Holga lens a few times.  It is very soft and kinda junky, but that's why we love it right?  I used the Olympus OM 135mm f2.8 a lot actually and it balances nicely on the camera when you are holding it.  It is noticeably larger when you are just leaving the camera strapped around your neck because the lens barrel will knock into things, but it isn't too bad.  I found it really hard to manually focus it with the viewfinder or screen I think because it is effectively a 270mm lens and that is hard to do manually especially considering the viewfinder is really not that bright.  The lens itself focuses smoothly and is a dream to use on my film camera but I found on this trip I pretty much just put it on infinity focus and prayed.  The whale shots I took and the bear shots were out of focus.

Olympus 135mm f2.8 OM lens

When the lens did work, it was a dream to use.  Very sharp and had wonderful compression.

Olympus 135mm f2.8 OM lens

For this trip, for the most part I shot in jpg.  I'm on vacation after all, and these aren't critical shots.  I did switch to raw a couple of times if I knew I was in a tricky spot, but I was able to use the same 8gig SD card the whole trip and never used my backup card.  I uploaded the photos to my iPad each night and shared them with the family using the camera connector kit.  That was pretty easy and convenient to use, and viewing photos on the iPad is really nice.

Olympus 14-42 kit lens

Pike Place Market in Seattle, where we left on the cruise.  20mm f1.7 Lumix pancake lens, out of camera b/w jpg.

Overall, I really enjoyed my in depth relationship with the GF1.  The out of camera jpg's were fun to use and I especially like the dynamic black and white setting (seen above).  The art filters aren't quite as nice as in the Olympus cameras, but they are still fun.  The camera tends to underexpose a little bit in aperture priority, but I'm OK with that, better than blowing out the highlights.  It seemed to do a better job in 'Intelligent Auto' mode which I used when I gave the camera to my 9 year old. The camera is a wonderful street camera and a really good vacation camera.  It isn't perfect, but it is very very good.  I was glad I left my DSLR's at home in the end.  The biggest compliment I can give the GF1 is that it never got in my way and delivered excellent quality images when I wanted them.  If I could add anything to the wish list for this type of camera it would be to build in the viewfinder (or at least make it clip in securely), make it brighter, add weather sealing to the camera and some of the lenses and that's about it.  I think with the newer GF2 and GF3 it seems like Panasonic is going more towards the consumer point and shoot market and that isn't a good thing to me.  I'll keep the GF1 thank-you.

Olympus 14-42 Kit lens.  Mail box in the famous Creek Street Ketchikan Alaska

My daughter on the pier in Ketchikan,  Plastic Holga lens for micro four thirds

Bicycles in Pike Place Market in Seattle, Lumix 20mm f1.7 lens

The only 5Dmk II I saw on the trip, in Pike Place Market

One of the few traditional point and shoots I saw, but Pike Place was full of people with cameras

Pike Place Hearse Shoot

I'm not sure if I'm the only person doing this, but I'm always stalking and checking out other photographers.  The one guy that really caught my attention is the fellow in the photo above who parked a big white hearse across the street in Pike Place Market, put a camera on a tripod and tethered it to his Macbook Pro for a photo.  Not sure if he had a permit (doubt it, I'm sure they would have made him have traffic flag people) but it was incredibly interesting for me anyway.  He was working fast I'm sure trying to get done before a police officer came by.

Missed Grey Whale Shot

Thanks again for dropping by the blog.  I appreciate your visit!  Before I go I should mention that I came across a really cool magazine in the market in Seattle called Shots which I bought and love.  Grab one if you enjoy independent fine art photography.  Look for my in depth report on the Olympus E5 at some point.  Just going to warn you, I do love it, though having said that, I had the chance to play with a large format film camera on Sunday and that my friends was really really amazing.