A whole heck of a lot, if you’re name is Getty Images. Over the last week or so, photographers have gone up in arms over Getty’s announcement that they would be offering a new price point for images used on web sites. The amount that set off this ire; $49.00….
Picture: Stormy sunrise over the La Sal Mountains and Washer Woman Arch from atop a mesa, Island in the Sky section, Canyonlands National Park, Utah I refer to the story behind this image to every single workshop client or at public speaking venue that I give. The concept I am…
I’ll admit to being pretty jaded when it comes to looking at photos, primarily due to paying attention to millions of photos since I started working for Galen Rowell back in 1990. To really get my kudos, an image has to shout out the story immediately, and be in tune…
TED (Technology, Entertainment, and Design) presents a speech by James Nachtwey. If you’re not familiar with who he is, he’s probably one of the best documentary war photojournalists on the planet. This speech touches on his belief that a good war photo should become a powerful anti-war message, and that…
Picture: Surfer riding the breaking waves below coastal rock in fog at Pfeiffer Beach, Big Sur Coast, Monterey County, California This image was chosen as photo of the month as it reminded me of our local extremes. Last month we had a pretty good heat wave, so my family and…
Preface: I isn’t no lawyer. Tonight I was reading over at StockPhotographer.info an article about Featurepics new Blog Use License. But what caught my attention was the immediate assertion of these words as a Trademark. Now, I’ve trademarked my own company name. I did that myself, so I’m at least…
You can now hear Part Two of the interview I did recently with fellow photographer Jim Goldstein. He’s gone ahead and posted the links to download either a podcast or streaming audio on his weblog. If you missed Part One, click here.
Picture: View from the window at Le Gras, France It ain’t much, but look how far we’ve come. This is a reproduction of the first ‘official’ photo, taken by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce in 1826. As the caption states, this was the view out of his window. The world was not…
Some people engaged in the Microstock arena are fond of calling us “Rights-Managed” licensing model proponents, “Dinosaurs”. But name calling aside, none of us are very good at being absolute predictors of future events. But looking backwards into time is often a little more fun, albeit nostalgic. Thanks to a…
Picture: Yoga Teacher (in red) and student practice yoga outdoors at Red Mountain Spa in Ivins, near St. George, Utah The other day, a friend of mine sent me a really nice photo of his girlfriend practicing yoga on a mountainside in the Eastern Sierra. The only chance I ever…
…thus spoke Who-a-thustra? Last week, fellow Bay Area photographer and weblogger Jim Goldstein released part one of a two-part interview with yours truly. In the interview, I discuss my background, including my work with Galen Rowell, my personal interests, and the fine art of seeing light. The entry on his…
I found a few things that I’d like to pass along for your web cruising entertainment, etc.. First up, let’s just call this Wyoming Big Sky Country. Two excellent night photos of Old Faithful and the Tetons, courtesy of Wally Pacholka (Astropics.com) and APOD (Astrononmy Picture of the Day) Next,…
Yesterday was a strange day. Never before have I been so happy to see school start. As a kid, and for mine as well, the start of school smacks us in the face with the dreaded end of summer. Yet now, as a parent, a stay-at-home working parent, life has…
Picture: Rainbow during a spring rain storm over wine vineyard and oak tree, near Booneville, Anderson Valley, Mendocino County, California For those of you familiar with the saying that rainbows herald the ending of a storm, this rainbow also signifies another type of closing. If you’ve been following this weblog,…
Picture: Bicyclist on narrow twisting road through grass hills near Mount Tamalpais, Marin County, California Last week I was giving a private workshop along the back slopes of Mount Tamalpais in Marin County. I was discussing the use of polarizers, anda common problem that happens when using them with wide…
If you tried visiting my weblog in the last day or so, chances are you saw instead of my weblog, a big WordPress Error. There was a time when I’d spent every ounce of energy trying to figure our the problem, or calling tech support every few hours. This just…
Over on one of the nature photography forums today, someone posted a link to COPYSCAPE, a web site that will help you find plagiarized web content. In otherwords, it simply scans html pages for similar words. When I checked out my home page, a good number of web sites came…
Picture: Morning light and fog over vineyard near Hopland, Mendocino County, California I just got back another batch of keyworded images; this time it was my collection of 400 photos of Mendocino County taken for my book, Backroads of the California Wine Country. This is about as fresh as it…
While catching up on some newsgroup reading, there was a thread in a forum populated by microstock shooters that was called, “Ripped Off”. It seems this photographer had seen one of his images used in an editorial publication, but credited to the wrong photographer. His apparent assumption was that this…
For the last month, I’ve had a really wonderful young woman, Kelli Saunders, assisting me several days a week. Told from the start, her job would be pure grunt work, she dove in with a great attitude, and has been a tremendous help. She’s been doing the brain-numbing task of…
I’m willing to bet that Ms. Barbara Powell lives in … (Drum roll, please) …. Nigeria. For several years, a common scam has targeted photographers for either print sales, or for photographing weddings. Long story short, and email arrives saying, “I want to by 20 prints”, or, “I want you…
Picture: Alpenglow at sunset on clouds over Half Dome and Tenaya Canyon, from Glacier Point, Yosemite National Park, California I’m getting to the point where I’m planning out which new web galleries I’ll be building this fall. Near the top of my list has been plans to redo the Yosemite…
So there’s this little news item floating around down under. An ad agency for Virgin Mobile in Australia used a bunch of photos from flickr in a current promotional campaign. The images were made available by the photographer(s) using the Creative Commons License (CC, CCL). These licenses are often used…
Picture: Those Damn Papparazzi are Everywhere; Desolation Wilderness, El Dorado County, Tahoe Sierra region, California I really like this picture. The guy in the photo (let’s call him Waldo) really didn’t want any photos taken of him. He’s just very sensitive about keeping his identity private. But since he was…
