Blue Planet Photography

If you’re an aspiring model, male or female, and you’re not careful, you could get ripped off. This is old news to some, but there will always be a new bunch of boys and girls, men and women, who want to join the ranks of the Next Top Model. Really, it’s very simple.

Research the agency. In this day and age of the internet, why not take a few minutes and check them out? Just Google the name, followed by “reviews” and you’ll probably get several sites with comments. If you don’t, there might be something fishy about that outfit. The search will also show if they have a website, and a professional-looking one. While a professional-looking website doesn’t guarantee legitimacy, it’s a start. Look beyond the home page. If there are cracks, that’s where you’ll find them. Missing links, poor navigation, lack of information, cheap sales tactics and grand, sky-high promises will be indicators you should look elsewhere. Look for references and where models from that agency have worked. You can tell the caliber of agency by the jobs they get, local, regional, national, international, Mom’s Crochet Emporium or Vogue.

Up-front fees. If you have to pay an agency to join, walk away. Agencies make their money from the commissions they receive from the work they get you. If they think you’ll make them money, they’ll sign you up without requiring a fee. Some agencies also offer “training” classes for a fee and may charge a small membership fee. Look at these closely. Ask around. Do they provide a good service for a reasonable price? If you need some help with your posing or runway walk, these classes might be for you. But make sure you’re going to benefit from them before making a payment.

Don’t join an agency “on credit”, which would be an offer to take the initial fee out of the commissions you’d get from jobs. This could also come with an exclusivity clause that locks you from getting work elsewhere. Then, the ‘agency’ doesn’t get you work, but you still owe them their fee and must pay it to get out of the contract.

Review all contracts carefully before signing. Don’t be pressured into signing right then and there. Take the contract with you and have an attorney go over it with you before signing anything.

If you need If you are told you must pay the agency and use their photographer for headshots and portfolio images, and they won’t use the ones you already have in your book, be cautious. Many scams get you to pay $1500 or more for headshots then stop communicating with you.

Be wary of photographers, too, who make pie-in-the-sky promises and compliments. Ask for references and check them out. If you can, meet the photographer at their studio with a friend or in a neutral location like a coffeeshop before committing to anything.

Watch out for big promises and high pressure sales tactics. If you think you’re buying a used car instead of signing with a model agency, you probably are.

If you’re asked to do something you’re not comfortable with and are pressured into it, like posing topless or in lingerie or swimsuit for an unclear reason. Walk away.

If someone promises you guaranteed work, turn around and walk directly out the door and to your car. No agency can guarantee you work.

Check your Better Business Bureau website or call. If you do get taken, make a complaint to the BBB.

In the end, it’s your life and your decision. You have ample opportunity to do the research, take your time, and save your money. Take care of yourself and you’ll end up where you need to be.

This year at the fair was interesting.

On Aug 21, I held my bi-monthly PhotoCrawl at the fair, in the evening. Around 9:15pm a powerful microburst struck the fairgrounds with 70 mph winds, knocking over ticket booths, breaking tree branches, tearing up canvas tent awnings and vendor canopies. The fair was shut down at around 10:15pm and everyone was evacuated because there were still high winds blowing stuff around. Reports of 70 - 80 minor injuries (scrapes and bruises) and 4 people taken to the hospital (one person apparently the victim of a fallen branch). Around the area there were grass fires sparked by exploded transformers, massive power outages (40,000 people without power), a car fire, car accident, even a domestic shooting, all in the same relative area at the same time. It was a busy night for fire, rescue and police.

I shot some iPhone video that ended up on the local news and a request to upload to CNN: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRS2JwWYdQc

I went back again on the following Tuesday to shoot some things I wasn’t able to get on Saturday, and came up with an idea. So, I went back again last Saturday to finish up. I created a slideshow (http://www.vimeo.com/14560155) using 534 photos from those 3 days (many are time-lapse style). This show is probably a first draft; the photos (except for one) are processed very minimally.

I judged the Youth Photo Entries this year and there were a lot of really good photos. The judging was made even more difficult because the bakery good judging was going on right behind me and I was constantly smelling ginger snaps, oatmeal cookies, snickerdoodles, and chocolate chip cookies.

I also picked up 2 2nd place and 1 3d place ribbon from my photo entries. As usual, I have some issues with the judging, but that’s the way it usually goes.

Back in March, 2009, I gave a presentation at Ignite Boise 01 titled “The Electronic Afterlife: Digital Immortality” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v88G2PiFZ-A) in which I compared the longevity of the relatively hardy analog leave behinds of the past with the fragile digital leave behinds of the future. Essentially, the likelihood of someone finding a box of old hard drives in a dusty attic 50 years from now, and being able to plug them into a device to read them, is slim. What we do today with our digital files may not last long enough for prosperity to happily “rediscover” them down the road. While some things, like Twitter and Facebook posts appear to be destined to last forever out there in the digital aether, that’s not even certain. Plus, how would you find it or track its source? Technology may “improve” enough to make these bits and bytes immortal, but there will probably be an historical “blackout period” during the transition when a lot of digital information has gone missing due to lack of reliable storage medium or legacy equipment to read it.

I mention in the presentation an effort by Microsoft to develop equipment to document a person’s daily activities; an ongoing diary of your life (MyLifeBits) based on the ideas of Vannevar Bush. There are others working on similar projects. One I recently came across is by graphic designer Nicholas Felton who, since 2005, has produced a personal “Annual Report” of his life during the previous year. He developed a program to record entries of his daily activities, compiling them into various graphs and maps and statistics (www.feltron.com). An interview with Felton can be found (here). He’s also created a place where the average person can record their own activities (www.daytum.com). There are two levels of recording; free (public and limited data sets) and $4/month (which allows for privacy settings as well as unlimited data sets). You can track any number of things, from the number of phone calls made, daily miles run/biked/walked, how much money you spend on what, food eaten, people met, books read, relationships, etc. Access is via computer and smartphone or mobile device (m.daytum.com).

Whether you decide to have a go, the annual reports at feltron.com are well designed and interesting to look at.

I’m certain there are other sites and applications (other than Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and the like) that allow for the collection of personal datum and it begs the question regarding the debate about personal privacy. We seem to like to share everything about our lives with complete strangers, but don’t like it when “others” want to look at that same information. We can’t have it both ways.

What does it mean to you to be successful? A hundred self-help books start with that short sentence and it has, in my opinion, become a cliche often treated superficially by authors and readers alike. But, it really is a fundamental question leading to actions and beliefs by you that influence your satisfaction with your life as an artist and, ultimately, with your life in general.

Determining for yourself the criteria of success as an artist is a complex process involving both internal and external factors and obstacles, starting with the creation of a way of being and expressing, of life and living, a structure that is your own. Do you want to be a full-time artist, a part-time artist, or improve your skill as a hobbyist? Do you want to have a solo exhibit in a well-known gallery? Do you want to be published? Do you want to establish an art school? Do you only want to be personally satisfied with your work and don’t care what others think?

Creating the structure of your own life provides greater freedom and opportunities for self-expression and happiness. If you do not have control over the structure of your life, you will have to accommodate the structure created by someone else and their vision of what you should be and do, which puts you in a position of powerlessness. The people who would love to create your structure for you (and do) are friends, teachers, family, lovers, mentors, colleagues, employers, strangers, students, even enemies and rivals. When you have control, you seize the initiative and move forward confidently and deliberately. An artist’s life is made from the inside out.

Many artists (if not all, even secretly) want one (or THE) measure of success to be financial security. As artists, one of the things we look for in our audience is approval. Approval is an external factor dependent upon others liking our work and showing their approval by positive comments and/or a purchase or two. We can become slaves to approval, however, and stray from our intended path if we only create art that is approved of (purchased) or suppress our talent or experimentation because we fear risking disapproval or because the “easier” or “safer” art sells better.

The best life would be doing what you love and getting paid well for it. But, financial security isn’t a true measure of success by itself. I know of several well-known artists who are (or have been) unhappy, although very financially secure, because they lost control over their work and life for the sake of financial gain. I think a successful artist is in control of their work and their life, whether it’s making a million dollars or a thousand dollars a year as an artist. Establishing that balance is a tricky proposition. Our ego and the desire to be somebody special helps turn us into slaves of approval, which diminishes the quality and impact of our work and our overall satisfaction.

A very close relation to approval, is fear. Where approval is external, fear is internal, wreaking all kinds of havoc with our dreams and intentions. Artists are great self-doubters and second-guessers, destroying many opportunities and limiting our potential. Here is a list of the possible fears artists endure and fall victim to:

Fear of
1. Failure
2. Rejection
3. Reality
4. Losing identity
5. Pain/Sacrifice
6. Commitment
7. Making the wrong choice(s)
8. Not being in control
9. That it will never work
10. Success
11. Inadequacy
12. Being misunderstood
13. Perfection
14. Annihilation
15. Expectations

Overcoming Fear allows you to become independent, to divorce the wishes and desires of others wanting to control or influence your work, and to do the work you were meant to do.

Artists have many obstacles, external and internal, to overcome on the road to success. Creating a structure to your life around your art, overcoming fear, understanding and taming the desire for approval, and a host of other barriers, milestones, and rewards make up your criteria for success.

In the end, though, you are the only one that can determine whether you’ve reached your goal and met your measure of success.

Good Luck!

The Government of Tanzania has approved the building of a major commercial highway across the northern part of the Serengeti, home to the world’s last great migration and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The road will adversely affect the world-renown wildlife migrations in that region, tourism, and local economy. An alternate proposal is to build a road in the southern part of the Serengeti, an area less sensitive and where a road would be more beneficial to the local residents.

For more information, go to www.savetheserengeti.org/issues/stop-the-serengeti-highway/

So, you want to be an artist? You want to live the carefree, Bohemian life of a painter, writer, poet, photographer, sculptor, working in your downtown loft and hanging out at the local coffeeshop, showing your work in galleries and just doing your thing? If so, a 2009 survey conducted by the nonprofit artist-support group Leveraging Investments in Creativity (www.lincnet.net) will be a hard slap in the face.

The survey (summarized here) showed artist income rode the tails of the bell curve. A bit over 40% of artists earned very little of their total income from their art while only 28% earned almost all their income from their art. Visual artists and writers were most likely to earn less than 20% of their total income from their art.

“But”, you say, “I have a college degree (or I’m getting one) and that will put me ahead of all those non-educated slackers trying to live my lifestyle”. Interestingly enough, from the survey, the majority of artists have college degrees yet only 6% earn annual incomes of $80K or more. Most (2/3rds) reported incomes of less than $40K.

The recession hasn’t helped anyone and artists are no exception. Art is, for the most part, a luxury item purchased by individuals and others when there’s extra cash to throw around. In a recession, that faucet dries up speedy quick. More than half the 5300 respondents to the survey reported a drop in income, and 18% said their income fell 50% over the previous year (2008). The remainder apparently are just going along, experiencing the same low income they always enjoy from their art, so the recession really hasn’t impacted them much.

I read some other information about the prospects of grants and other “free” funding opportunities for 2010 and 2011. Don’t get your hopes up. Foundations and other granting organizations are cutting back the number and amount of their awards and generally sticking to the individuals and others they have relationships with rather than taking on new grantees. There are way more artists than there are grants, so the odds are not in your favor.

So, if you’re thinking romantic, Bohemian, thoughts of that carefree, do-as-you-will, lifestyle, because you don’t want to work a regular job, wake up. Artists do what they do because they are compelled to do it, rain or shine, boom or bust. And, it’s not easy. It’s work. If art isn’t your passion, your calling, you won’t be able to handle it. Get a job with regular hours, regular wages, health insurance, vacation and sick days, and “art” on the side. I’m not being mean, I’m being honest. Someone I respect told me about the same thing some years back and I can attest to its truth.

Artists, though, are a resilient lot, and tough times breeds more art. And, without the demands a funded project might have on an artist’s time there is some freedom afforded to experiment and explore more personal projects.

But remember this; even when we’re taking handouts from the government we remain productive contributors to a stable, healthy, and vibrant society by continuing to create works of art that inspire, cause us to think, and call us to action. We find a way. It’s what we do.

Back in the “Old Days” of computers, the mantra “Save Frequently and Often” was a hedge against the common system hangs and crashes of the day. While operating systems and software are much more stable these days, the mantra is still worth hanging onto and practicing for two main reasons:

1. Technology is not infallible
2. Human beings are not infallible

Computer operating systems and programs will crash and hang. Hard drives will crash and fail. Humans will format hard drives and memory cards thinking they’ve downloaded or saved the information stored on those devices. Humans will drop things they shouldn’t be dropping and misplace things they should be paying better attention to. It’s natural. It happens. However, if you can avoid that knot in your stomach when you’ve lost 250GB, 500GB, 1TB, or even 2GB of image files due to a hardware crash or other mishap, that’s a lot of stress and woe energy you can redirect to restoring that data instead of looking for the nearest window to leap out of.

Your job, if you value your digital photographs, is to make a practice of Saving Frequently and Often. There’s much more to this than I can squeeze into this little space, but let me point out some options (there are many) that can relieve the pain if such a disaster strikes you.

A second mantra is the 3-2-1 Rule:

3. You should keep 3 copies (at least) of any important files - a primary and 2 backups
2. Your backup files should be on 2 different media types (i.e. hard drive and optical media - DVD/Blu-Ray) to protect against different types of hazard
1. 1 backup copy (at least) should be stored offsite

The 3-2-1 Rule is really a guideline (like most “rules” in photography) and should be understood to be a minimum recommendation. You can never have too many backups (versus having no backup).

There are many more backup options now than just a few years ago and they range in price from around $5 to several thousand, depending on your needs. Let’s run through a general list:

1. DVD and Blu-Ray. The least expensive but probably the most time-consuming backup tool. DVD capacity is 4.7GB and Blu-Ray is 25GB (50GB for dual layer). The cost per GB is nearly the same for each with DVD at an average of $0.299/GB ($0.60 - $0.90 each) and Blu-Ray at $0.213/GB (about $5.00 each). The $300 cost of a Blu-Ray drive might offset any small cost-savings for now, until prices come down.

2. External Hard Drive Dock. These devices are relatively new, dispensing with the difficult-to-access enclosure for a simple “drop slot” for the bare drive. The BlacX SATA dock by Thermaltake connects using Firewire or USB and can read 2.5″ and 3.5″ drives and costs between $35 - $55 depending on the vendor. You do have to be careful handling the hard drive since it is bare, but the dock is a convenient way to quickly backup or transfer information.

3. External Hard Drive units. Large drive enclosures like the Seagate FreeAgent Pro or Western Digital MyBook are more for ‘permanent’ use as backup space or storage. Connecting via USB or Firewire, they range in price from $90 for 500GB to $200 for 2TB.

4. External Hard Drive enclosures. Sometimes called JBODs (Just a Bunch Of Disks), these enclosures are simply extensions of the disk capacity of your main computer, with from 2 to 6 or 8 or more hard drive bays. Some enclosures have removable hard drive carriers for “easy” replacement while others require the hard drives to be attached in the bay (like in your computer). Connecting via Firewire or USB, they can also be set up in a RAID, individual volumes, or as a large volume. Other enclosures are used for single drives and can be purchased with a drive or empty.

5. RAID and BeyondRAID. RAID is an acronym for Redundant Array of Independent (or Inexpensive) Disks and allows for the division and replication of data among multiple drives. Some cons for RAID is it’s difficult for the unitiated to set up and maintain (I think) and the volume is set by the smallest capacity. So, if you have a 250GB drive and a 500GB drive, the capacity is driven by the 250GB and you “waste” the 250GB from the 500GB drive. Also, if you upgrade capacity, you have to backup and reload all your data. Systems such as the Buffalo Terastation (2TB $730 - $900 empty, 4TB $1150 - $1400 empty) use RAID. A system called BeyondRAID, used by Data Robotics in their Drobo line, allows the use of multiple capacity drives and easy upgrading of capacity without the need to reload data. Drobo products range from the 4-bay Drobo (up to 8TB capacity, starts at $310 empty) to the 8-bay DroboPro and DroboElite (up to 16TB capacity, starts at $1250 empty).

6. Solid State Drives. This technology is very promising but still expensive. These drives have no moving parts and are very durable, like your Compact Flash memory cards. They use less power than conventional hard drives, run cooler, are smaller, and are faster. The downside is the price. A 64GB solid state drive is $200 and a 256GB solid state drive is $700. As with all new technology, the price will come down as the devices enter the mainstream.

7. Personal (or Portable) Storage Devices. These palm-sized devices are primarily for backing up memory cards. Epson, Hyperdrive, JoBo, Wolverine, are some of the brands that manufacture PSDs. They come in various configurations and capacities. Epson PSDs tend to be the most expensive, but feature rich. However, upgrading capacity requires the purchase of a new device and battery life is low. Hyperdrive makes a PSD with smaller color screen, but faster upload and longer battery life for about 1/3 the cost of the Epson. These devices are great in the field for backing up memory cards. They connect to your desktop or laptop via USB just like an external hard drive.

In addition to the backup devices, a regular program and procedure to backup your data is needed. Whether you backup every day, once a week, or once a month, doing so on a regular basis will save you a ton of grief if you ever have a crash.

Some people know what direction they’re heading in their life and business. I think most people have an idea of where they’d like to be. But achieving that goal is what separates dreamers from doers, as many “advisors” will tell you. The goal and the deadline for achieving that goal is, however, mostly set by you. You set the pace. It’s not up to someone else to determine how successful you are or say when you’ve finally reached the point at which you can claim to be successful. You are the judge of your own success.

“An artist cannot fail; it is a success to be one”
– Charles Horton Cooley

“They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea”
– Francis Bacon

“Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up”
– Thomas Edison

The career of an artist goes through many stages and often we are changing gears, much like you would downshift and upshift in a car. We downshift when we run into difficulties and need the lower ranges to power through a difficult time, when we’re dealing with a steep learning curve or complex issue, when we need to slow down a bit or maintain a steady pace coming off a rapid rise, or perhaps for a burst of power to swiftly overtake a competitor. We upshift when times are good, reaching a comfortable cruising speed when we’re working efficiently and effectively. But, like driving a car, the road ahead is variable, sometimes steep, sometimes rocky or muddy, sometimes curvy, sometimes straight and flat, and skill is required to know when and how to properly shift gears to stay on the road and keep moving forward.

It all started with Ansel Adams. Or did it? The concept of visualization, or pre-visualization, is discussed by Edward Weston in 1921 when he states, “Get your lighting and exposure correct at the start and both developing and printing can be practically automatic.” Adams describes his first visualization of the final print, in 1927, when he placed a red filter over his lens to darken the sky when he photographed Half Dome; the resulting print being the famous “Monolith, The Face of Half Dome”. His definition of visualization was published in Modern Photography, 1934-35: The Studio Annual of Camera Art:

The camera makes an image-record of the object before it. It records the subject in terms of the optical properties of the lens, and the chemical and physical properties of the negative and print. The control of that record lies in the selection by the photographer and in his understanding of the photographic processes at his command. The photographer visualizes his conception of the subject as presented in the final print. He achieves the expression of his visualization through his technique—aesthetic, intellectual, and mechanical.

In his Autobiography, Adams further explains

Visualization is not simply choosing the best filter. To be fully achieved it does require a good understanding of both the craft and aesthetics of photography…The visualization of a photograph involves the intuitive search for meaning, shape, form, texture, and the projection of the image-format on the subject. The image forms in the mind–is visualized–and another part of the mind calculates the physical processes involved in determining the exposure and development of the image of the negative and anticipates the qualities of the final print. The creative artist is constantly roving the worlds without, and creating new worlds within.

Edward Weston is generally credited, though, with the term pre-visualization in an essay written in 1932 and, given my current research, might be considered the “Father of the Publicized Concept of Visualization”, if such a title should be bestowed on anyone, because his 1921 statement is the earliest reference I can find. In 1933, Adams explained his concept of visualization to Alfred Stieglitz, who replied with his own definition of creative photography:

I have a desire to photograph. I go out with my camera. I come across something that excites me emotionally, spiritually, aesthetically. I see the photograph in my mind’s eye and I compose and expose the negative. I give you the print as the equivalent of what I saw and felt.

This quote by Stieglitz is very similar to Weston’s 1930 quote

I can, and have taught a child of seven to expose, develop, and print creditably in a few weeks, thanks to the great manufacturers who have so simplified and made fool-proof the various steps in picture making: which accounts for the flood of bad photography by those who think it is an easy way to “express” themselves. But it is not easy! - not easy to see on the ground glass the finished print, to mentally carry that image on through the various processes of finishing to a final result, and with reasonable surety that the result will be exactly what one originally saw and felt.

I’m not saying Stieglitz, or anyone, copied or re-worded concepts already defined by others. The early 30s was an active time of discovery and innovation in photography and many of the leading photographers of that era were “on the same page” as it were. But, in my opinion the meaning of these terms (visualization, pre-visualization, equivalent), that the photographer selects an exposure based on a prior intent and appearance of the final print rather than creating the work after the exposure, are the same and are interchangeable in that context. Much later, pre-visualization did take on a similar, but different, meaning.

What about earlier photographers such as Eugene Atget, whose photographs from the late 1800s are described by others as having been pre-visualized? Or Edward Curtis and his iconic photographs of Native American Indians? Or even Louis Daguerre? Did these photographers not have any idea or forethought of how their final images were to look as prints? I find that hard to believe. Adams never claimed any ownership to the concept of visualization and pointed out there wasn’t anything secret or magical about the process. In my opinion, I think photographers like Atget and Curtis understood the need to visualize the finished product, but it was such an integral part of the photographic process at the time (and who else at that time besides other photographers would understand?) they didn’t need to try and teach that understanding to other photographers or the general public. Perhaps Adams and Weston were just the only ones to discuss the concept in the permanent record of the printed page when photography became more readily available to the public and the need arose to instruct others how it was done (to preserve the art of straight photography?). History favors those who make permanent records of their activities.

Pre-visualization, I believe, is used to refer more to commercial photography than to art photography, and started probably around the 1950s or later. With pre-visualization, photographers imagine a scenario or it’s told or shown to them via storyboard or sketch by a client and the photographer then endeavors to replicate the parameters in nature or, typically, in a controlled studio environment.

Pre-visualization can be a negative barrier to the art/landscape/travel photographer. Pre-visualization to this group of photographers might be a set of expectations regarding weather conditions, access to subjects, etc. When pre-formed expectations are not met by existing conditions (rain instead of sunshine, or the medieval cathedral is under renovation and surrounded by scaffolding, for example) it can be a frustration leading to the shutting down of awareness and receptivity, thus blocking the photographer’s ability to photograph or even be aware of other opportunities. A photographer acquaintance once remarked how a trip to Australia was a “waste” because the conditions were not as he expected them (pre-visualized) so there “was nothing to shoot.”

Post-visualization is a concept pioneered by photomontage photographer Jerry Uelsmann in 1967 as a response to the rigid requirements laid out by the “straight” photographers such as Adams. Post-visualization encourages photographers to re-visualize the final image at any point in the photographic process; it’s the creative process that’s important, not adherence to a particular notion of beauty, realism, or process used to reach a final image. Uelsmann found the visualization concept promoted by Ansel Adams to be restrictive and impractical but agreed the quality of work Adams, Weston, Stieglitz, and others produced set the standard for future photographers to aspire to. However, I believe even the post-visualists need to look ahead, however near or far in the creative process, to eventually envision a final image and engage the knowledge, skill, and technology to reach that final result.

Arriving on the heels of the digital age is a new application of post-visualization among the masses. It is the “fix it in post” or “fix it in Photoshop” mentality of creating photographs. A plethora of one-button tools exist allowing the digital photographer to create infinite variations literally without thinking. The ‘machine-gun approach’ lamented by Ansel Adams is now the normal operating procedure for many digital photographers. This concept of post-visualization makes an erroneous assumption that because it is digital anything can be fixed, added, removed and improved, when it is still easier to get the majority of work done in-camera. The mantra of the “old masters” still applies; get the lighting and exposure correct in the camera and the rest almost takes care of itself.

Technology will no doubt eventually prove that final statement wrong, but regardless of the process employed or aesthetic ascribed to, it will always be the photographer’s eye, emotion, planning, and vision that creates the photograph attracting the viewer’s eye. Digital technology today offers a huge range of options, more than were available to film photographers. For best results, the principle of visualization and post-visualization described by Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Alfred Stieglitz, Jerry Uelsmann (and many, many, others) still applies: know your equipment and the options technology offers, understand and be able to engage the processes involved to reach the final result, and create the print that most appeals to you (or whatever end product it might be).

For a couple years now, but recently in just the past several months, the pressure for still photographers to enter into video production has been increasing in step with the addition of high definition video capability to digital SLR bodies like the Canon 5D. A big question for still photographers is, “Should I get into video production now?” While a competent still photographer has the basic technical and artistic skills to transition to video, it’s not just a matter of turning on the video feature and shooting away. Transitioning (or adding) video production to your repertoire is a costly endeavor (remember, you can’t shoot video with strobes) requiring expensive new lighting equipment, movement dollies, tracks, stabilization, gimbles, platforms, etc. and a large crew. Video (quality video) is not something you can do by yourself or with a single assistant. For reference, read recent issues of PDN Magazine for overviews of video production and comments about the pitfalls, costs, and pressure from clients to shoot video in conjunction with a stills shoot (for the same rate even). It’s going to be a bit of a messy transition period until the industry gets this bastard child sorted out. Vincent LeForet & Chase Jarvis are the well-knowns (or most prominent in the video-sphere) jumping full force into the video genre, but they’ve got the cash, notoriety, and resources to do it relatively painlessly (I’m sure they might have some words to say about that, but compared to the rest of us I think that assessment is accurate). The still photography industry is entering another trying time while it’s still trying to deal with the flood of digital technology, ease of entry into the market by anyone, pricing issues, over-supply and under-demand, etc.

Anyway, take a look at this video showing how Canon 5D’s are used to create second unit driving plates for the TV series 24. Very interesting behind the scenes kind of stuff:

Shooting Driving Plates for 24 from Stargate Studios on Vimeo.