Michael Freeman @ work. Copyright Benard Quek.

People often ask what it takes to go professional as a photographer. Is there some skill or technique required for something which you need to have to be a Pro? The low down on the matter is there is a little bit of both but you'd be surprised how little technical skill goes into it. 

When I was engaged as a DSLR consultant to Sony Asia Pacific, I knew very little about digital technology. I had of course been shooting with a Nikon 5700, 5 megapixel camera at that point of time but I didn't really care about what made it tick. What I could do was to take a good picture and that was what counted. Everything else was picked up over the years and my understanding of the technology that went into it grew by leaps and bounds. 

Having had the chance to work with so many professionals, you will become jaded. They seem to have all the luck in the world in getting paid for what they love doing. But the fact of the matter is that they have to sell themselves more than that lemonade stand on a hot summer's day. They pay more attention to creating opportunities for themselves than just sitting in the office waiting for people to call them up for a gig. That's what sets them apart from others. 

So if you want to set up a business being a photographer for hire. Here are some talents you must ante up on. 

#1 Run like an Entrepreneur

Its about the business stoopid! Never for one buy into the hogwash that you have to be this or that but business acumen is a very important part of the equation. You cannot succeed in a business without being business minded. Professional Photography is not about the art but your ability to run a business, taking into account things like cost control, marketing, and business sustainability. The business process is 90 percent of being Pro. The remaining 10 percent is really about the photography.

#2 Learn to be a People Person

In a service type industry, you need to be a people person to gain their trust. It makes no sense if you are hated even by your dog and are argumentative on photo briefs. It's a bit like politicians, who need to win people over for the vote. The things you say, your demeanor, actions and slick presentation will earn you enough likes to enjoy a long term business relationship. Remember that there is always a cheaper photographer out there who can steal your business so it does not matter how much is your running cost versus charges but how you lock your customer into your service portfolio. 

#3 Be a capable photographer

Watch the words I use, be capable....not excellent, that's because it doesn't take a lot to know what angle is best or how to frame a subject. Everything these days is automatic, from ISO setting and White Balance. If you fuck up and have a spiffy full frame camera, you can correct those mistakes on Adobe Lightroom and even claw back up to 2 stops of lost dynamic range using RAW files. To be capable is knowing where to place your subjects in a frame and how best to enhance that subject in a scene. Some photographers even use Photoshop to blend in a blurred background when their own cameras are incapable of performing that sort of 'bokeh'. For me that's what counts as creative as you make use of what you have and achieve a similar effect without spending a bomb on a kidney busting Leica lens. 

Digital Photography is Ultimately a Simple Process

Here is another thing the Pros don't tell you. In the digital age, all you need to do is press the shutter button. This means you have more time to concentrate and focus your mind on how to compose a picture and do it well. Everything is taken care of when you set your camera on auto. It can even calculate backlight issue and use an enhanced exposure just for that one scene. If you don't like what you get on the LCD screen, you can always take a step back and take another one to correct the first shot you made. Your mistakes are easily correctable. 

Creativity is just another means to express yourself and that can be staged for better effect. Don't like it? Take a moment to change it. Everything you want to do better in the next frame can be achieved. In any business, your success depends on you as an entrepreneur, that same rule applies to a photography business. How you lead, communicate and engage your clients determines your success. 

Why Digital is Easy

Digital photographers these days don't even need to shoot on location as they can shoot different objects & backgrounds separately and combine them into a finished picture using Photoshop. So all you need to do is compose the best possible picture to get it right and that's a hell of a lot easier than say in the analogue age. 

In film photography. There are so many things to worry about. 

White Balance was a huge concern when you get it wrong. In capture, the film has to be corrected by using a lens filter. ISO/ASA is fixed too. You do not go postal and select any ISO you want as the film ASA speed is fixed. You can push the film but a few stops by shooting it at a higher or lower ASA but not all films can handle it that way. Some will show more grain while others hold up to the development process better. Then you have the film stocks that don't handle dynamic range as well you might like. This is something you have to learn about and the idiosyncrasies of each film type has to be remembered. 

Today, anyone with an iPhone can shoot a good picture. In daylight, it looks fabulous to the point people can't tell the difference if it was shot on a full frame camera. That's why Apple can flaunt its iPhone camera capabilities to billboard size.

But this is not to say you should go pro with an iPhone in tow but that's not to say you should always start with a full frame camera. 

Studio gear is cheap. Studio lighting is even cheaper now than ever. I use to lament the cost of having studio strobes but these days, you can kit yourself out for less than US$1K. That's how cheap it has gotten over the years. 

 

You don't need a full frame DSLR to shoot something like this

Cheap strobes that are not color accurate can still be corrected in post production in Adobe Lightroom. It really does not matter! 

No money for strobes? No problem. Borrow those Tungsten lights for outdoor use and you're on your way to shooting studio work. 

There are many niches in Photography, but you have to learn to become a jack of all trades before you can call yourself capable. In the old days, there were master photographers who shot on those huge Linhof and Sinar cameras. Today, a master photographer is routinely used and abused term to mean you just shoot photos for a living. 

So don't get caught up with the jargon and be a good photographer. Ante up on those business skills and you can count yourself to be among those who shoot pictures for a living. 

A bad day for photography as it was cloudy, learn to enhance and edit your image to save the day!

In a previous life, I was a magazine editor who had to carry a camera and take photos of cars for the print use. This was in the 90s. During that time, I was told repeatedly that shooting cars was the most difficult aspect of photography (analogue) because of how the lighting fell on the car on specific times of the day. In daylight, you can only shoot during the early hours of the rising or setting sun.

Shooting was a pain as you had to recce a suitable location in which to place the cars. That made the whole process even more difficult as it had to be done in advance, prior to getting the cars needed.

Then you have to wait for the weather of course. If that holds up, you have a shoot on your hands.

The process kept a lot of people at work. The whole photography business, even in a studio environment to shoot a car advertisement would cost in the ballpark of US$100,000. Photographers with large studios and strobe lighting were dominated by a few players. Film exposure had to be captured right and that was how the business was done.

I even met John Lamm, of Road and Track magazine once and spoke to him about his photography. He was essentially the man every guy wanted to emulate, photographing the latest cars for the hottest car magazine on the planet. This was the stuff that made college kids dream about being a professional photographer. The art, the skill and the know how was something you had to pick up over time because analogue is brutal when it comes to mistakes. There are no second chances if you fuck it up the first time.

The Great Digital Disruption

Of course when digital photography and Photoshop came along, things started to change. What made matters worst was that magazines started to cut budgets in view of the stuff you an already find on the Internet. Shooting cars wasn't a big deal anymore. Anyone could get the official pictures from the marques which look strangely like pictures taken off a digital workstation.

Looks real? Baby...this is a rendered image!

Advertising companies could even get files from the 3D modelling workstation and place that car in almost any imaginable background and blend that into photo realistic quality. Any other enhancements can be done in photoshop. Car photography, became what is later known as composite photography...where objects are added to to create an image.

But don't get me wrong, photographing cars still happen but not on the same scale as it would for shooting a Top Gear episode.

The decline of print magazines contributed to the decline of photographers working on such publications because suddenly, anyone can shoot cars. You didn't need a pro but just anyone with a camera with an eye for composition. I remember in the old days, we had to shoot covers for the magazine and this meant we had to shoot a car with the right composition to use. There must be room for text, and room for the masthead of the magazine. Heck, you don't need to do all that.

With digital, things got a lot easier. No more fussy with the photos, just ask the digital artist to render a background and drop the surgically clean official image from the car manufacturer into a blurred background. So many work arounds were available where you didn't need to incur the cost of a photographer. This meant that photographers did less specialised work.

Photographers had to play second fiddle to the digital artist who can literally create magic from the desktop.

What Can Photoshop do for You

Photoshop was a blast and it shows. Having a photographer to shoot a car of a different color didn't have to mean having three different colored cars had to be on set. Just shoot one and a digital artist will render a photo realistic color onto it.

This meant no more long hours in the photography studio. Just one shot, or one take with the perfect lighting and that's it. No more fussy around to recreate the look of the first car image of a different color. 

Better still if you have a photo realistic 3D vector of the car which you can tip around on its axis. You can have a different view by tilting the camera of the 3D program and render the image. Who needs a photographer now when everything can be done on a computer?

Digital photography suddenly didn't seem so great anymore when you have hyper realistic cars speeding around the track of a computer game. As long as a vector file of the car exist, you can have that rendered anywhere in the world and have pink elephants flying overhead for good measure. 

Digital has Levelled the Playing Field

Today, we don't need to go on location to shoot a car. You can render one by buying a cheap background image and blending the car in. Drop in the lighting shadow and you're done. 

The only thing that hasn't changed is that motor sports images still have to shot on track or in circuit. Beyond that, there is hardly anything that can't be done. I mourn the passing of a bygone era where the image was sacred. Hardly anyone notices this as many of you have never shot on analogue film. 

The decline of print journalism also contributed to the decline of automotive photography as less and less are paying attention to shooting a car that looks good. Publishers are unwilling to hire a photographer to shoot a unique image when they can already rip one off the Internet for next to nothing. Makes perfect cents doesn't it?

I wasn't born in the age of Life Magazine, an iconic emblem of its time in politics and everything else going on in the world. Instead, in my time, I grew up looking gleefully at American Photo magazine, where photojournalism and photography lifestyle was all that mattered. To me, it was an iconic magazine any budding photographer would be proud to read.

Pictures told stories, the rest was up to you—the reader. How you interpreted those pictures says it all. I also grew up reading Newsweek and Time magazine, so I learned very early on what American political propaganda does to you.

For me American Photo (or just Photo Magazine) died after having a long and fruitful life in print, and now lives on in digital.

Photo Magazine was once owned Hachette Filipacchi Media of France, and it was sold to Bonnier Corporation in 2009. That probably killed it for them. The french owned Photo magazine still lives on to this day.

The Decline of American Photo

What caused the magazine to shutter? In the 80s, it was a connoisseurs' magazine. It featured great images of both photojournalism and commercial photography. It didn't have the gear-head approach to selling you stuff and camera companies advertised on it because it was highly respected by professionals and what better way to reach out to them than to use this medium.

American Photo died the way most print magazines did. It failed to compete with mainstream photography content found on the Internet. For the most part, it failed to spot real talents in waiting and concentrated too heavily on artistic photography in the US, which didn't really appeal to people wanting to know more how the industry was doing. American isn't the center of the world of photography, that title unfortunately still belongs in Europe. This is probably why Photo France magazine is still around in print.

How do you become a success as a art photographer? How do you make images that people will pay for? What is an artist doing in photography? Will you ever get famous? Apparently not.

If you follow the American example of how to get rich real quick, you can look no further than Richard Prince, the self styled artist who appropriates other people's photos, desecrates them with his splashes of color and calls it art. He has also stolen instragram photos from other people, and sold them for US$100,000.

In America, he is a huge success in photo-art. His victims are fighting back though I am not sure if that would be bring any success. The problem with suing people like Richard Prince is that he's loaded and he can afford to bankrupt you with legal appeals. Sucide girls recently stole his thunder by posting their own instagram print for sale at a fraction of the price asked by Richard Prince for his stolen art.

Would be the sort of news item American Photo would cover to show success? Of course not. American's taste for art is borderline porn with a mix of apathy and repugnant appreciation.



Respect and Value of the Profession

Photojournalism is officially dead. There is still some hope in commercial, wedding and sports photography but these folks probably are grinders and not photographic stars. Even when you talk about the professional photojournalist in the US, then third world professional soccer players make money than them.

American Photo has gotten so ahead of itself that there isn't a noteworthy pool of photographers to tap on. Editorially, they failed to make it Photo Americas rather than (North) American Photo. I am sure there heaps of talents in Latin America, brave photojournalist taking their fight to the mega corporations in the Amazon basin to the political changes of the Amazon basin. Then again, editorial content cost money so who is picking up the tab? Everyone (including magazines) want cheap content and that's not always possible unless you only want photos of hookers working down the street from the office.

Photographers need money to get funded for something they want to undertake that are non-commercial and there is a lot of marketing involved. So if you want to undertake a Brazilian journey of sorts to photograph the destruction or the animals facing extinction in the Amazon, you better save money for that.

American photography isn't going in the direction where people appreciate what they do. As a career, it is just another job. American Photo magazine failed to recognize the talent elsewhere in the English speaking world too, and that's probably one another reason why they failed. Brands that advertise with American Photo want to know the readership and print numbers (about 100,000 copies when they ceased publication) and if you command a premium for advertising, your reader profile must show that as well. It is all economics.

The glamor one thinks of, working with celebrities and shooting art that people buy, can be achieved with just Adobe Photoshop. People have photoshopped celebrities into their parties so you probably have a better chance at making a living as a Photoshop artist than a photojournalist in America.

Content is king, and we are talking quality content. American Photo Magazine....may you rest in peace.

The Petzval lens previously released by Lomo was a huge hit, but it was fixed 85mm. This is a nice focal length for portraits but the blurring, well, I think it could have been better.

The upcoming 58mm is also similar, that it allows for those swirly bokeh effects and will also be available soon thanks to its support from Kickstarter.

These are all manual lenses, for both Nikon and Canon mounts and you can be assured that it will work on digital as well as film cameras. The only problem is that aperture settings are totally manual so you won't be seeing any metadata exposure in camera.

My own feelings is this. If you can get a second hand Nikon lens (manual) at 50mm full frame lens, with a 1.5x crop factor for APS sensor cameras, you already got yourself a good portrait lens. What's more the corner sharpness of these old 50mm lenses are nothing short of legendary compared to the Petzval. This means you can place off center subjects and make them sharp.

I am not a fan of center sharp bokeh lenses. The corner sharpness of Petzvals is poor so therefore all your subject shots have to be placed in the center of the focus screen. The lens cost 500 bucks, and God knows how much it will be when it becomes available for retail in Christmas. 

Behold the Minitar from Lomo, its first foray into the Leica M-mount lens business. Now the Leica M is a classic mount for the Leica rangefinder cameras like the M3 and M7.

Sold as add on manual lenses for both digital and film cameras, it cost US$350. For those who wishes to use this, you will need to have an M mount camera or get an M mount adapter for your Nikon or Canon camera. These cost in the ball park of US$100 each.

Now we all know that Rangefinders, even the digital ones from Leica, do not have AF capability. The Minitar is Zone focus. So you get three choices of distance choices.

The Minitar is also a 32mm lens, with a f/2.8 aperture. It should be relatively easy to use but don't expect razor sharp results with wide open apertures. The lens is a fun lens and from the looks of the sample photos, has pretty decent vignetting.

For now, the lens is only on pre-order. Head down to the Lomo website to book now.

This just in. Alamy has revised its contributor agreement after receiving stinging criticism in regard to how it pursues copyright infringements. The original terms were sent in February and was all ready to go live in April, 2015. But photographers started to protest some of the amendments to the previous terms and this started the ball rolling for a change. Shooting stock is a very difficult trade. You can spend thousands shooting images which you hope to sell only to see a similar offering for Royalty Free licensing. 

Contacting the customer to check on copyright usage was one of the critical issues that led to an amendment. On the left hand side is the original usage and contributor agreement terms and on the left, you have the amendment. 

In the original revised terms sent to contributors in February, 2015. Alamy wanted photographers to stay the hell away from customers. I mean, who wants their customers hounded by photographers? Unfortunately, this didn't go well with contributors who say that Alamy just wants to protect copyright abusers by buying the least costly license for a photo and using it verbatim on every single imaginable print and web collateral. 

The problem is still Alamy's stand is on its own pursuant of the copyright infringer. Here, it is closely worded to imply that if they do take action, the nett amount recovered from the offender will be first used to pay of its own legal team before handing any residual amount due to you. 

In other words, if you spend most of your time combing the net for people who use your photos without paying, then you could ranking a huge bill of your own. Apparently, Alamy will have to determine if the offending party was a client or customers of Alamy when this all happens. No where does it say that it will pursue the offender for leaked images. 

How does a Photo Leak into the Mainstream?

Alamy has a distributor network, who in turn help to market your photos to countries where it is not reaching out to. It is through here that the leaks will happen. High resolution images could be passed on for customer validation and rejected, and later used in customers collaterals. But Alamy also has its own preferred client list, who may in turn have those photos picked out, paid for and later used in other marketing collaterals where the original licensing does not cover. 

For example, for print use and for web use. People can easily scale a web quality for use on print. It's not rocket science. This is done on a everyday basis for photos which do not have the resolution to meet the demands of the print industry. 

Just because someone buys a medium quality image for use does not mean it can't be upscaled to print use. 

Print is very difficult to pursue. Unless you have a printed copy of the offending collateral, chances are you don't have a chance in court regardless of where you sold your license. 

How can I protect My Images from such Infringements?

Technically, you can't. If you find one on the web, you could issue a DMCA on a web host where the site resides. It won't work if the offending server or web host in located in a country that have very different copyright laws than the one found in the US of A. 

When an image leaks onto the Internet, chances are it's a done deal. Your only hope is to petition Google with a DMCA to take down photos which appear on their search engine so that the you have some control over the spread of the wildfire. 

Google images can be your best buddy if you want to find stolen pictures but you have to be Internet savvy to know how to issue a take down. 

For example, a Fortune 500 company residing in Europe might use your stolen image in a slider, you can have that offending site taken off the Google search results. This will impact the offending party's capability to have a page rank and this is probably your best bet. 

Those mom and pop stores? Well you could do the same if you have the time but you have to show that you own those pictures (having a stock image agency link to the stolen photos can help). To know more about how DMCA works on the Internet, you can go to Chilling Effects to get a better picture. 

Lomography is a cool  place to start for budding analogue photographers but their latest LCA-120 is kinda like a shot in the dark. You know how expensive 120 films are these days and if you are going to shoot Instagram like images for keeps, you're better off with Instagram.

The LCA is a quirky camera. I have one, and I loved using it. Making use of 35mm film is cool as they are available everywhere. But 120 film?

The camera is going to be released soon for US$430 a pop. Has the same zone focus and light metering as the older LCA and nothing else to match. Made it China of course.

The image quality is kinda iffy for me.

Not a fan of vignetting on the four corners of the lens but hey, some will sell their souls for it.
Sharpness and color reproduction is decent, not great but it looks like something you'd get out of a digital camera.

One thing that most people misses out on is that the square format is ideal for learning composition. It is what made Instagram great and this is where you can pick up some good habits on how to place your subject on the viewfinder.

Zone focusing is a bitch. Never quite liked it but for artistic merit, those blurry photos could make you famous....like the one they took of Bigfoot.