New ImageMaven site and blog

Hi all,

It's been awhile. I've been creating beautiful things over at ImageMaven.com and working on some online courses for you.

Check it out today, and please keep in touch on the new site. The lights may go out on this blog soon.

Marlene

Season's Greetings

Merry Christmas and Season's Greetings to all of you! Best wishes for a prosperous and happy 2010!

There will be some changes coming to ImageMaven in the new year. Stay tuned!

Remembrance Day Photo

A few years back I had the privilege of traveling through the back roads of France, Belgium, Holland and Germany with a friend who's father had served in Europe during the Second World War. We followed the route the allies took from Normandy all the way to Northern Germany along the Green Route Up as it was known. During our trip we also visited Canadian war cemeteries to document the gravestones for the Canadian Virtual War Memorial. This is a photo from the Groesbeek War Cemetery in Groesbeek, The Netherlands.

Annual Birthday Portrait

It's that time of year again, for my nephew's annual birthday portrait. Tristan is now 3 years old and he's always ready to lend a helping hand in the kitchen or with any construction projects that are going on. He is also a great photo assistant.

How to use Social Media to Boost your Business

I have mixed feelings about the value of using social media to get new business. To be honest, even blogging seems useless most of the time. I blog for the benefit of my students mostly, and to give myself a forum to express my views. Social media is all tricked-out now that large multinationals have figured out how to exploit the system. I don't do FaceBook mainly because I don't know where my information will end up, plus I spend enough box time each day. I'd rather connect with close friends and family through private channels like a personal email or a good old fashioned phone call.

So, what do I do? I am LinkedIn, as I view it as a more professional application, but again it's not something I check every day. I use it as a way to stay connected to my new and old clients plus a few of my top students. I also belong to RedBubble, which is a place where I can discuss photography with like-minded artists, and maybe sell a few prints a year, but it's not a huge revenue generator. It just keeps me connected to a creative community.

In all my years of business, all of my clients except two, have come through a referral or some form of personal connection. The ones that didn't came through an RFP for a large energy company, and the other by using SEO for my online stock photography. My social media is being-in-the-same-room social, as opposed to the box social. My most successful social media tool is actually getting out and being social at events, parties, and by simply staying personally connected with friends and acquaintances.

Doing what I do is my best method of self-promotion. People show their friends and colleagues photos I've taken. They tell a story about an experience they had while working with me or taking one of my seminars. They endorse me. That is the best way to get new business. I'm not a big star in the social media galaxy. I'm not writing for one of the top 10 photography blogs. Total strangers who read my blogs or see my web site don't know me so they probably won't hire me. I don't strive for hits, links, adwords, stumbles, or tweets. If I get them great, but I don't worry about my stats. I don't compare myself to other photographers. I don't try to steal their clients. I have a small humble business that serves a small group of really awesome clients. If I want to serve them well, I can't be too concerned about all the hype and latest tricks surrounding social media. Instead, I need to spend that time doing what I do even better.

Besides, soon enough something new will come along and then everyone will flock to it.

Here's another perspective on the whole subject of social media.
http://ittybiz.com/how-we-killed-social-media/

Stealing photos from web sites is wrong!

Do you think it's alright to take photos off web sites? Everyone does it. No harm done, right? Think again!

Since many of my readers are new to photography and very new to the business of photography, and since stealing photos off web sites is a common (and condoned) practice, I wanted to share this manifesto that is making the rounds of several photo industry blogs this week. Pay special attention to point #2.

The following manifesto comes from ASMPNY and can be found at: http://www.dontscrewus.org

1. Photographs are Intellectual Property and therefore have value to the creator. If you are tempted to steal, that is because you recognize the value of the IP and are not respectful of the value of efforts of the creator. That's not right.
2. Just because a photo is posted on the Internet, it is not free. It wasn't put there so you can simply take it. It was put there to share an idea, promote talent and gain attention. You can't walk into a museum space or a gallery space and walk out with whatever strikes your fancy. Cyberspace is no different.
3. There are laws in place that protect Intellectual Property and they come with penalties. These penalties are exponentially worse than paying to use the work and acknowledging the creator. Exponentially is a lot.
4. Professional photographers are just like you. We have families to feed and mortgages to pay. Stealing takes food off the table. Times are tough enough thank you very much.
5. If contacted directly, a professional photographer can be very accommodating, get involved and help you make your project better making you and your client look better. And who doesn't want to look better?
6. Stealing. Not cool. How did you feel last time someone pirated one of your ideas or advertising concepts. Sucks huh?
7. That photo you are thinking of stealing took time to make. Sure the shutter snapped in a fraction of a second, but there are years of hard work, education and talent invested in it. Stop for a moment and consider that please.
8. Speaking of investments. That photo wasn't taken with an iPhone or a disposable camera. Not that the iPhone isn't great for snapping pics of your BFF. Professionals have significant investments in cameras, lights, computers and software. These things are costly to own, upgrade and maintain. Remember that next time you are looking at our work.
9. We are passionate about what we do and we hope you feel the same way about what you do. Passion brings respect. We respect that you are potential clients and future collaborators. We want to work with you. We hope you want to work with us too. By the way, if the project is Work for Hire please let us know upfront. We can't respect you if you try to sneak one by us.
10. Some things were meant to be free. Human beings, primo parking spaces, unsolicited advice about your love life. And yes, even occasionally photos. Just ask.
    

Online Photography Courses

I am developing an interactive learning environment (ILE) using multimedia tools to teach photography, and am currently conducting market research. The program I am planning will focus on people fairly new to digital photography. In the future I will be developing courses for other imaging topics based on the feedback from surveys and the first round of courses. I will be launching the program sometime in the first half of 2010. It seems very far away at this point, but in reality there is still much to do!

Please take a few minutes to complete my survey, and pass it on to anyone else you know who might be interested in an online photography program.

Thank you!

Amazing Red Bubble Greeting Cards!

I've been meaning to post this for a couple of weeks now, but lesson prep and client work (yay!) have taken up all of my time lately.

So, a while back, I ordered some cards from RedBubble (RB), the place I sell my fine art prints and cards. It was a long wait to get the RB greeting cards that I ordered. I wanted to check the quality of the work before highly promoting the place, as I had never seen it before.

Well for any doubters or newcomers out there, I was very impressed with the quality of the printing, and I've done a lot of printing using various digital and photo processes over the years. The cards are on Kodak Endura paper, basically photographic paper, so the best reproduction you can get. Not laser or digital printing, but real photos. The colour also matched my own colour managed workflow.

The card stock is thick, over 1/2 mm. The photo is adhered to a writable surface. All the image info is on the back page, so people who receive the cards will know how to get more, or to see more of your work. I was wondering about that, so am happy the info is included.

So great job on the printing! The only downside is that it took so long. I ordered the cards August 16, and received them September 8. So that's over 3 weeks. If you have to order something for a special occasion, then you'll need to plan ahead or use the expedited shipping option.

Something About Flowers

This past week I took a short trip to Vancouver for a little break between my busy summer and upcoming busy fall schedules. I don't usually take my big camera on vacations, as it feels like I'm working, but I was hoping to capture some stock images as well as collect some new photos to use as teaching examples.

On one of my many walks I visited an inner city community garden. The sunflowers were in full bloom and the sky was a nice deep blue. The colour combination was just gorgeous. I know that flowers can seem like such common subjects, but I still love photographing them. They are easily accessible and naturally beautiful. Flowers make great cards and larger prints will brighten up any room.

The biggest challenge in photographing flowers is being able to capture and retain the full colour depth and saturation of the petals. This is best achieved by shooting in raw file format and post processing with those parameters in mind. In the shot above, the yellow was showing highlight clipping warnings. I had to use the recovery slider in Adobe Camera Raw to pull back the blown out areas in the red channel.

Democratizing your Portfolio

It's been about a month now since I joined RedBubble. I have 34 images on there so far including a couple of t-shirts. What is very cool about RebBubble is that certain images get viewed and favourited more than others. If you get featured, which I was lucky enough to have been, then those images also gain in popularity. When you get featured, people tend to look at the first couple pages of your thumbnails and they might click on one or two, and then maybe favourite one of them. At least that's how I do it. A similar thing happens on Flickr, but in Flickr lingo it's called interestingness.

Another thing I noticed is that if you upload only a few images at a time, you have more chance of getting noticed than if you do a bomb-load of all your work. So, I dribble in the shots as I have them ready, a couple a week. At least that's what's working for me so far. Also, joining good RedBubble groups and uploading work to the group sites is another way to get your work noticed. T-shirts seem to sell the most, so I'm working on more t-shirt designs now too.

People's style becomes really noticeable when you see a large group of their images. Strong, similar styled photos, just seem to look better together. I need to watch that aspect in my own RB gallery as well. It's tempting to put everything on there, just to get a sale. In the beginning I guess that's okay, as you're not sure what will sell or get noticed. Once you discover the duds, you can hide them from public view and upload more of the hits.

The work of painters and illustrators who use RebBubble, hangs much better together. I guess that's to be expected, as they tend to develop a signature style and stick with that for long periods of time.

The result of using sites like RebBubble and Flickr is a democratization of your portfolio. The community of viewers decides what images are worthy of praise by favouriting, and interestingness.

Good Old Fashioned Polarizer Filter

With so much emphasis on Photoshopping everything these days, it was a nice change to use a polarizer filter again. This image is straight from the camera with no Photoshop work done. It was taken at 1pm on a warm summer day, so really not the best time to get dramatic lighting.

A polarizer is one of the few filters you need for in-camera image enhancement. It can save an otherwise boring landscape image and can be used with both film and digital cameras. To read how a polarizer filter works, read this wiki page.

Another filter used for in-camera effects is a Singh-Ray neutral density (ND) filter. ND filters are generally used for getting long shutter speeds on a bright day. Check out the work of Canadian photographers Darwin Wigget and Daryl Benson to see how they master the ND filter effects. There are also lots of visual examples on the Singh-Ray blog with links to many photographers including Wigget and Benson, who are using ND filters.

SAIT Photo Essay

Imagemaven Sait Scenes

View more documents from Marlene Hielema.

Homage to the Old and New was shot on the hottest day of the summer. I was at SAIT to pick up some mail on a quiet Sunday afternoon. I was struck by the contrast of the modern student residence building with the demolition of the old glaziers shop that was in progress at the Thomas Riley building beside it. Also nearby, is the soon-to-be-demolished P6 Murdoch Parkade. I shall miss P6, as it is the closest parkade to the building I teach in.

Red Bubble

Last week I joined an art selling site called Red Bubble. Red Bubble is a great place to display and sell your photography and fine art paintings. Red Bubble is based out of Australia. You can sell greeting cards, prints, canvasses, posters and calendars through your account. There is also no limit to how much you can put on the site. Unlike Etsy, Red Bubble produces and ships the work for you, so if you are traveling or unable to fulfill your own orders, this is handy. If you live in an area of the country where there are no photo labs or high-end print facilities, Red Bubble is ideal. You can also order your own prints and cards. I'm going to place an order to check the quality of the prints, but I've heard from a couple of outside sources that it is excellent.

One of the great things about Red Bubble is the community! A few hours after uploading some images I was getting noticed by other members and many people commented on my work. Another community building aspect are the groups you can join. Groups are thematic. The groups I've joined so far are Fruit and Veg, All about Flowers, and a Photo Critiquing group. The groups hold challenges to keep people shooting interesting work. For example the Fruit and Veg group had a sliced challenge. The criteria was that your painting or photo was of a sliced fruit or veg. The prizes vary from getting a front page position of your winning work, to t-shirts and avatars.

Red Bubble keeps you updated when people comment on your work and also updates you about your group's activities. I must admit it is quite exciting to have some feedback. I also sell images and files on PhotoShelter and there isn't nearly as much interaction between photographers there. I guess because it is more commercial. Also, the big difference between Red Bubble and PhotoShelter is that Red Bubble is free.

Anyhow, check it out today. If you are a fine art photographer or painter, consider using Red Bubble to market and sell your work.

More Natural Light Photography

What do you get when you take a trip to the garden and a nice day? More natural light photos. It's the time of year when things are peaking in the veggie patch. What a great opportunity to shoot fresh produce.

This is part of my ongoing series of photos on white back grounds. After washing most of the mud off the beets, I placed them on a piece of white foam core and shot them in natural light shade. No other lighting was used. I'm quite surprised at how nice the light is.

The raw photos were custom white balanced using my WhiBal, and close cut using a layer mask in Photoshop. Nothing else was done to the shots as I wanted them to look as natural as possible. I shot this single image of a beet, and also shot some in bunches. You can find the shots on my stock image archive on Photoshelter.

Why Photographers Charge so Much, and Redefining your Practice

A couple of interesting things were sent to me by my Yukon colleague Cathie Archbould this week about pricing photography and working in a market that won't or can't support paying photographers decent rates.

The first is a post from Josh McCulloch, a Victoria based photographer, and the second is an article from the Yukon News.

Here is an excerpt from Josh's blog:

On occasion I have clients asking why my rates are what they are, and I often go into a spiel about rights, usage, copyright, etc, along with the unique creative aspect that only I can bring to the job. All of these are valid points, and I have no qualms in justifying them. The other side of this though, that I rarely explain to the client, is that I spend a large portion of my "working" time (and personal time - I do still shoot for fun!) refining aspects of my workflow in order to serve them better. I am investing financially in the hardware and software to deliver better files to them faster, and, like today, investing my time learning how to do it.

And here is what the Yukon News has to say:

While digital technology forces down the costs for amateur photographers, professionals have seen their costs rocket upwards.

Computerizing cameras has made them slaves to upgrades.

Darkrooms didn’t need yearly replacement.

Professionals generally need to spend between “10 to 20 per cent” of their income upgrading equipment, said Archbould.

“The days of buying a camera and a few lenses and using them for years are gone,” she said.

These are things to ponder if you are thinking of entering photography as a full-time profession.

So why do I bring this up? At this time of year (my year end) I also ponder whether it's worth it to stay in the photography business at this level. This year I have been hit with corporate clients who have a freeze on contract photography work, and personally wondering if I am still physically up to the challenge of running around industrial sites with 45 pounds of gear on my back.

Change of Focus. This year instead of upgrading my camera body, I upgraded my computer. (I just can't justify yet another $5,000+ purchase.) I have taken courses on InDesign, Dreamweaver, and a course for instructors on using multimedia for teaching. I learned a lot and have also increased my skills in these areas, not necessarily to become a designer, but rather to understand how software works, so I can offer better products and instruction on photography that gets used by designers using this software. I also learned how other people teach.

I have consciously diversified my market and am investigating ways to earn new streams of income. One of those ways is teaching either in institutions or by doing one-on-one training. Though I have been teaching for 5+ years, it was never my prime focus. I have also placed a couple of small ads for photography work and teaching in Uppercase magazine, which targets artists and designers. I have always done a bit of work for artists, but it's never been my main focus. I definitely see a need for artists to have good photography of their work. Many of them want to learn how to take good photographs of their own artwork, which they will later sell on sites like Etsy, or their own web sites. I teach artists how to use their cameras properly to photograph their arts and crafts. Many of them have a keen interest in photography anyhow, so it's a natural progression that they should want to shoot their own work.

An example of one of my clients who is doing this is Paige Smith. Paige makes wonderful jewelery holders out of orphaned china saucers. I worked with Paige when she was developing her ideas and creating her original portfolio. She did the art direction and styling (and did an amazing job), and I provided the location and the photography. Once her product line was fully developed, Paige hired me again to help her set up a lighting booth so she could photograph individual pieces for her Etsy store. A few months later, she hired me again to show her how to use her new camera and to shoot in raw format. By spending a little money on photography training up front, Paige is able to keep her web site and Etsy store looking good by photographing her work with professional standards in mind.

Self reflection and redefining your business is good. It's good to have a solid plan of action, rather than "seeing what happens". If you have a plan, you make measurable goals and you work towards those goals rather than worrying about, or depending on, the old clients that have cut their budgets.

Natural Light

What do you get when you have a beautiful day, some fresh produce from the market, and a hankering to take some photos? An outdoor, natural light shoot! The only lighting gear used to take these photos was a PhotoFlex MultiDisk 5-in-1, and a light stand with a clamp to hold it. Really simple.

I set everything up on my patio furniture in a shady part of the yard. I used the translucent (shoot through middle part) of the MultiDisk as the white background and placed the peel-off silver side of the MultiDisk on the table under my vase of asparagus. I just love how the reflected light fills the undersides of the asparagus shoots. This photograph is part of my "On White" gallery of stock images. Great for editorial purposes.

Simple Garden Photos

Flowers are probably one of the most photographed things. I never tire of shooting flowers, or looking at flower photographs.

This morning as I was strolling through my back yard, coffee in hand, I was struck by the simplicity and beauty of the blooming chives. There was a bit of sun filtering through the fence which adds a nice sprinkling of highlights in the shady photo. I ran in and grabbed my camera.

Typically, flower gardens are compositionally busy. There are all sorts of things coming into the frame, including shafts of light, and you need to find a way to simplify and isolate key elements. One way is by using shallow depth of field.

I shot this with my 200mm lens @ f4.0, to enhance shallow depth of field. Being really close to the subject also contributed to that. Shutter speed was 1/200 hand held and ISO 400. There was a slight breeze so the chives were bobbing a little, and so was I, crouched down in front of them. Manual focus allowed me to isolated the foreground. I just love the colours purple and green together.

I also shot some daisies. This proved to be an exposure challenge as the daisies were in full sun in front of a shady area. The goal was to keep detail in the white petals without losing the greenery to the black hole. I made about five versions of the file, using Adobe Camera Raw, before I was satisfied. This is a screen grab of my final ACR settings. As you can see, I kept the overall exposure low to retain highlight detail. I then used the brightness and the fill light sliders to bring back some of the green that was lost. This type of fine tuning could not have been done if the image was shot as a jpg, as there was just too much exposure range to capture in one shot. I also love using the clarity slider in CS4! In this case I added clarity to make the petals really stand out, but in a portrait or baby shot, I subtract clarity as it softens skin very nicely. It's like adding or removing sharpening.

For more garden shots check out this gallery.

Your Next Lens

I got this question today from a former SAIT Basic Photo 200 student of mine, Lisa Freeston.

"I was trying to find a really good book on flash techniques, any ideas? Or should I just go buy a 50mm f1.4 or f1.8 and forget about the flash thing? And again talking about lenses, which one of those I mentioned would you go for, mainly for indoor photography?"

Great questions Lisa, and really relevant for someone at your stage of photography.

At some point after you've purchased that entry level sub $1000 dSLR kit with a couple of consumer grade zoom lenses, you're going to want a faster, sharper lens. By faster I mean one with a larger f-stop than the typical f3.5 you're getting at the wide angle setting of the lens in the kits. Remember, a faster lens lets in more light, so you can you can use a faster shutter speed. That's where the term comes from.

Thinking about using flash? Try this blog. http://strobist.blogspot.com Photographer David Honl the blog's author, has some lessons on the right sidebar titled: Lighting 101 archive and Lighting 102 archive. A good place to start. If you are beyond the basics, check out Joe McNally's new book: Hot Shoe Diaries. It's in the left sidebar.

As far as the lens goes, it will come down to price. You could probably pick up a 50mm f1.8 prime lens for ~$125, but for the f1.4 it might cost you ~$400. You could even go crazy and get the f1.2 for $1600 and change. A prime lens is one that has a fixed focal length such as 50mm. A zoom lens on the other hand has a range of focal lengths, for example 24-70mm. Prime lenses tend to cost less and are better quality and faster than zoom lenses. However, they take up space in the camera bag if you need several different focal lengths.

The best way to decide, go to a camera retailer with your own camera and pop each lens on, take a few shots outside and inside with both lenses, plus your own zoom lens set at 50mm. Go home and compare the three. Open each file in Photoshop and view at 100% or more. You want to check edge to edge sharpness at the largest, middle (f8) and smallest f-stop. Use a low ISO to minimize noise and set your camera on Aperture priority.

Even the f1.8 is going to seem like a bright ray of sunshine compared with the consumer grade zoom lenses you've been using so far. My main concern is that without a full frame sensor, it might not be wide enough for you. Remember, unless you are using a full frame sensor, you need to multiply the focal length by approximately 1.5 to get the effective focal length with your entry level camera. So 50mm optically becomes 75mm. If you are shooting indoors, you'd have to have a fairly large room so you get step back far enough to get things in the shot. For portraits, you'll be fine. If you do need a "normal 50mm looking" lens, you may have to consider purchasing a 35mm lens instead. For wide angle, you will have to go to a 20mm or shorter focal length.

You need to consider your long term plan for photography? What types of photography do you see yourself doing? Do you have money set aside to finance your future needs and desires? If you have the budget and want top quality, it will cost more. You will probably want to upgrade your camera body at some point too, but building a lens collection is something that will outlast your camera bodies. I've been using the same lenses for 10 years but have had four different camera bodies in that time, starting with a film camera.

You may also want to look for used lenses. Try places like kijiji or the Buy and Sell. Sometimes people sell packages of film camera gear not realizing they can use the lenses on their digital cameras. Just make sure its the right kind of lens mount. Some older Nikon lenses work on new Nikon bodies, but Canon FD lenses do not work on Canon digital cameras (nor on EOS Canon film cameras). And of course with anything used, take some test photos using your own camera and check them out carefully before plunking down your money.

For reference, in my kit I have:
17-40mm L f4.0 - needed this before I had the full frame sensor
24-70mm L f2.8 - my main and most used lens
70-200mm L f4.0 - for portraits of 1 or 2 people. Keeps you a nice distance away and compresses features nicely. All are Canon L series lenses - good glass!

I'm mainly a fair weather shooter and the f2.8 is fine for what I do, but I'm also keeping my eyes open for a nice 85mm f1.8 prime lens so I can get lovely shallow depth of field when it's wide open.

I also just found a great video on lenses on Scott Kelby's DTownTV. Check out Episode 16 - Lenses Part 1.

Negotiating Your Photo Rates

Found out about this piece from John Harrington's blog. Read the full post there.

You don't have to steal images anymore

Found this great post today on DesignM.ag which highlights 12 blogs to get freebies that can be used for commercial purposes. Many assets are out there that can be used for personal use, but often we can't use them for anything else. On these blogs you can find:

• brushes
• lots of patterns
• skies
• splatters
• spray paint
• lots and lots of textures
• concrete
• barnwood
  
• tool icons
• and Wordpress themes

Thanks everyone for sharing.