Blue Planet Photography

It almost seems like a no-brainer. A photographer, well, let me rephrase that…..a fine art photographer, should be responsible for their creation start to finish. In the “old days” that meant capturing the image on film, developing the film, then printing the image in the darkroom. The photogapher was responsible for the final product through all phases of its production. The final product was the result of his/her vision, creativity, and skill.

Because we’re in a changing environment of technologies, a transition between film and digital, the relationship of the artist to the final product can be somewhat blurred. The technology involved in preparing and producing a digital image is daunting, not to mention the potential costs involved or the learning curve for those not already techno-saavy (even for those who do know a thing or two).  What to do?

Owning your own processing (computer and software) and printing equipment allows the photographer complete freedom of access. The photographer can produce work at any time of day or night and run off any number of prints for very quick turnaround time. An individual artist can make one print at a time rather than a batch or minimum run required at a printing service. The photographer can instill their own inventions and techniques into their printing process without the intervention or possible copying by others.

Owning your own equipment can be very expensive. Replacement and upgrades can be frequent to maintain competitiveness in the marketplace, adding to the expense. Large format printers take up a lot of space, as do matting and framing areas. The learning curve is steep and doesn’t seem to level out much since there’s always something new on the market to learn or adapt. Managing your own printing takes the photographer away from photographing, which might be the biggest con to doing your own digital printing.

Finding a printer to properly handle your work can be equally as time consuming, but frees the artist to concentrate on creating art, in this case photographs. But, the photographer might lose some control over the process by outsourcing their printing. Turnaround time can be an issue, taking days or weeks to proof prints or even submit and receive print orders.

Does outsourcing your printing diminish the value of the work, or does having complete control start to finish increase the value? Do buyers know or care in this digital age? It would be an interesting survey.

Art Business News has an interesting online article this month called “To Own or Not to Own [A Digital Printing System]” that is worth a read. The article covers both angles and provides a list of considerations before choosing to buy your own equipment or go with an outside source.

For myself, I would like to have a large format printer on site. But, for the volume I currently do, outsourcing is definitely the cost-effective alternative.

Some of the products I make, coasters, cutting boards, matted prints, greeting cards, are well suited to the retail environment and I make them for that purpose. About 3 years ago I entered into a consignment agreement with a local mall retail store specializing in local local products. I supplied them with a selection of coasters, matted prints, greeting cards and cutting boards, all of these products displayed my photographs.

The agreement was they, through their monthly inventory, would check which items were sold and then send me a check minus their commission. That was agreeable. However, the reality was that after 3 months I had to go to the store (a 25 mile drive one-way), inventory my products, and let them know what was owed. I didn’t invoice at that time, but did end up having to send an invoice after a couple weeks and not receiving payment. Another month went by and a phone call was required to remind them of the amount due. By then, I had done a second inventory and included additional items sold in the new balance due.

After two months or so of badgering them for payment, I received a check. Other retail vendors I was dealing with were on a purchase order contract and paid in full for the products of mine they sold in their stores. I inquired with this store if they would like to purchase order the next lot of products. They told me no, not at this time. I waited a couple more months then inventoried again. There were some items that weren’t selling, so I removed those from the store. I wasn’t replenishing stock because the items I had there weren’t being displayed the way I thought they should be and the owner wasn’t willing to make any changes. So, this outlet, even though I was selling some products, wasn’t really working out for me.

I got busy doing some other projects and didn’t get back to the store for about a year, ready to inventory the remaining products, invoice for what was sold and remove the remaining items for good.

When I showed up at the store, it was gone. Empty. Out of business. Imagine my surprise.

Another local business owner who had product with them provided me with the owner’s home address and phone number. I called them to see what was up. The person answering the phone told me I had the wrong number. I sent a certified letter showing the last inventory and requesting full payment, payment for items sold, and return of the items not sold. The letter was returned.

I then sent a second version of the letter uncertified. A couple weeks later, I received it back in another envelope (having probably been forwarded, it had an out-of-town postmark but local PO Box return address). On the letter was written “contact such and such law office” with their phone number. When I called the law office I was informed yes, they had been retained by these people but had yet to be paid so they were no longer representing them. When I asked for a current address the law office told me they couldn’t provide it.

So, I’m back to square one, again. I’m owed $250.00. Is it worth it to me to continue pursuing this? It would end up in small claims court for sure and even then there’s no guarantee of payment. I can’t write it off as a loss on my taxes because I operate on a cash system not accounts receivable. I’m out the money owed and the products I could resell if I had them (it’s likely the products are long gone, sold in a close of business sale or creditor’s auction).

I’m considering my next step, which will likely involve spending some money to locate them, serve papers for small claims court, and hope they pay the invoice owed plus expenses.

Another store I had products in recently closed as well. But, this store was one that purchased products, so I’m not out anything there.

So, my cautionary tale is this: be wary of consignment deals. Make sure you have a signed contract that stipulates payment schedules, consignment/commission fees, and provide an accurate inventory sheet of all the products, the quantity and price of each every time you deliver new items. Keep track of your own inventory so you can reconcile it against payments received. Make sure when you receive payment it is with an itemized list of items sold so you can mark them off your inventory list.

Better yet, make the store pay for the items like they would for any other vendor. If they want to sell your product they must think it is worth selling, so make them put their money where their mouth is. It protects you from situations like this where you could end up holding the bag.

A good resource for contracts and forms is Tad Crawford’s Legal and Business forms for Photographers. This book includes many different contract forms including wedding and portraits, gallery and consignment, stock and assignment, delivery memos, fine art sales, photo reps, and others, plus a CD of the forms in Word format that you can modify to fit your specific needs.

It’s worth it, and standard business practice, to have a signed contract. It protects you and the retailer/client and clears up any “assumption” by either party.

Other good resources are:

ASMP Professional Business Practices in Photography

John Harrington, Best Business Practices for Photographers

Tom Zimberoff, Photography: Focus on Profit (includes excellent business software for stock and assignment photographers)

More and more tools are coming available to allow the stock photographer to present images to potential buyers and attract them to your libraries of images for licensing. Photoshelter just released a new viral widget (see at right) which displays an ongoing slideshow of a Photoshelter contributor’s entire catalog of images in the Photoshelter Collection, which is a catalog of edited and approved images separate from a Photoshelter subscriber’s individual portfolio. What makes this slide show viral is that anyone can can click on the “get & share” tab at the bottom the window and receive the code to embed it into theor own blog, website, or wherever. So, theoretically, this could allow your portfolio to be “passed around” in many more places than you could on your own (the definition of viral marketing, more or less). Flickr has a similar device, but I haven’t looked at it or tried it.

I’m also looking into a new offering by Microsoft called Silverlight (www.microsoft.com/silverlight/) that is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for displaying media content on the web. I’m going to experiment with creating online slide shows using an application from Codeplex called Slide.Show. It’s open source, which can make it a bit more difficult to work with since you have to pretty much do all the tweaking yourself. But, it looks interesting, so I’ll see what it takes to get it up and running. You’ll probably see something here on the blog first before I take it to my website.

I do have a couple Flash slideshows now on my website, created with Proshow Gold, a nifty PC-only slide how creator from Photodex. The nice thing about Proshow Gold is you can easily incorporate music into the show and create multiple outputs for display on a website, projection, or even on a cell phone. You can see an example below:

Polaroid announced today it is getting out of the instant film business. Polaroid quit making instant film cameras about 2 years ago, but after 60 years is now getting out of instant film entirely. Global film sales have been decreasing 25% - 30% per year and instant film probably more than that. FujiFilm is the only other manufacturer of instant film.

Good news is Polaroid is seeking a company to acquire the licensing rights to manufacture instant film in the hopes of continuing to supply Polaroid enthusiasts. I hope that includes SX-70 film as well.

Polaroid film is great stuff, and lends a character to photographs difficult to duplicate realistically in the digital realm. Unfortunately, this is one more bastion of art down for the count. We’re losing all our options.

I’ve updated my 2008 trips list to include finalized dates and location for the Llama trek. It will be July 21 - 26 in the Pasayten Wilderness of north central Washington. In July the wildflowers should be in peak bloom and there are opportunities for varied wildlife from moose to wolves to bears as well as multitudes of bird life.

You’ll find more detailed information and registration information at www.blueplanetphoto.com/llama.htm. If you have any questions you can also contact me through my website here or call 208-466-9340. The full trip list is here.

I seem to be more or less obsessed with the notion of the origin and nature of creativity. Where does it live? How is it nurtured? Can it be taught? Where did it come from? Can it be defined?

It’s an obvious question, I think, for anyone who is “creative”. Not that I’m saying I’m more creative than anyone else. Obvious, even, for those who think they are not, though they are perhaps asking the question “why not me?” in response to some outside influence or internal doubt that has informed them that they have no talent when they truly wish to be so. In that case, maybe they are wanting to be something they aren’t, envious of another’s talents and not looking inward to their own. I often wish I could play guitar or piano or violin, and made attempts at those instruments. I played Saxophone in High School, but I admit I was not that good. I’m not as good at drawing as I’d like to be, but I think I could be a decent painter if I dedicated the time to it.

While there may be people who are truly uncreative, I believe they are in the super minority. Rare. I think everyone exhibits some form of creativity. We may not all “get it”, but anytime a person translates their thoughts, feelings, and other senses into some visual, auditory, olfactory, or written form (even, dare I say it, intrapersonal experiences like daydreaming), they are being creative.

Defining where creativity comes from, I find, is like catching smoke. It seems obvious that creativity comes from the soul, from our collective individual life experiences, from our minds. Yeah, I think you get the picture. Some would even say creativity comes from the heart, which is even more difficult to define than soul or mind.

Our collective individual life experience is easier to get our heads around because we can personally relate to what’s happened to us in the past, what is happening to us in the present, and what we would like to happen in the future. Being able to identify any given experience, past, present or future, or any collection of experiences, and relate it to a specific creation, except in some circumstances (What comes to mind is therapeutic art or art derived from traumatic or exhilirating experiences that the artist is specifically addressing in their work. Even then, I believe there’s more at play in the creation of that kind of art than we realize) is pretty much impossible to specify or define.

Being creative is a moment-by-moment, near-thoughtless act, a collaboration of internal and external forces, interactions and communications subtle and obvious, an energy perhaps all its own, coming and going, ebbing and flowing like a breeze or the tide.

Recently, I was browsing in a local used book store and ended up buying a photo book, Some Women by Robert Mapplethorpe. I’m not a fan of all of Mapplethorpe’s work, but I respect his creativity and spirit to, as an artist, explore and not be afraid of where his creative vision was taking him. In what could be called the forward of the book (called “An Annotation”), Joan Didion writes

Some years ago I had a job, at Vogue, which involved going to photographers’ studios and watching women being photographed. These were photographs meant not for the fashion but for the “feature” pages…portraits of women celebrated for one reason or another…”Anything at all you’re comfortable in”, we were instructed to say if the subject ventured to ask what she should wear for the sitting; “We want you to be yourself.”

After the “anything at all” in which the subject had apparently believed herself comfortable had been seen in the Polaroids and declared not what was wanted, I lent the subject my own dress, and worked the rest of the sitting wrapped in my raincoat.

Here, then, was an early lesson: There would be in each such photograph a “subject”, the woman in the studio, and there would also be a subject, and the two would not necessarily intersect.

Mapplethorpe says, in the same Addendum: “You don’t know why it’s happening, but it’s happening.”

As a photographer, I can say for myself that Mapplethorpe’s statement is mostly true and Joan Didion’s description of a form of photographic process, the interaction between subject and artist and the expectiation of results, is also true. The immediate environmental conditions (location, temperature, mood, smells, emotions, etc.) influence the tone and direction of what and how I’m photographing a given subject. So, some of the why can be explained. But, the rest “just happens”. I trust the “creative flow” and go with it. Fighting it, trying to identify what it is or its origins is the quickest path to its destruction. The artist is unable to articulate, in the moment, exactly what he/she wants the subject/model to do, and if an attempt is made, this also destroys the “flow”. And, because of the flow and its unpredictability, the original intention (or subject, the characteristics of the perceived end product by various individuals, including the photographer), once in interaction with the “subject”, the model, may not come together as planned and a new direction arises “spontaneously” from the events of the moment to create something new.

When all the pieces are working together, that’s when we enter what is often called the “zone”, a state of being when concentration and focus on our task is at the highest and all other distractions are ignored. Time seems to pass differently, more slowly or more quickly. We are in our own world for a few moments or many minutes. It’s during these times that I have the greatest success with my photographs.

So, where does creativity come from? Everywhere and nowhere.