National Geographic Traveler's Tweet of the Month

When I found out that this image had been selected for the cover of the October 2011 issue on Real Food Experiences I was, of course, thrilled, (and blogged about it earlier), but it’s nice to know that other people are willing to put their thoughts about the image on Twitter.  The tweet was from Jessica, WhyGo Italy @italylogue.  This image has always been one of my favorites not only because it celebrates one of the many things I love about Oregon, but it features one of my favorite wineries, the Brick House Vineyard in Dundee.  Our goal when we were producing this image was to make it inviting – as though one would want to walk into the picture, sit down, pour a nice glass of pinot noir then sit around and visit with friends in Oregon Wine Country.  Thank you Jessica for your nice comment, and thank you National Geographic Traveler for using the image to illustrate your issue about food.  Cheers!

It’s always thrilling to be assigned such wonderful stories.  However, when pictures from those assignments receive singular recognition, particularly when the image is culled from thousands of others that were submitted or published over the year, the excitement is even greater.  It’s also an honor to be included among the other 8 fantastic photographers, including Frans Lanting, Catherine Karnow and Chris Rainier.  Thank you National Geographic Traveler!!!

National Geographic Traveler Magazine's Top 10 Photos from 2011 includes the opener from my story about Barbados.

For me, self promotion has never been easy, but I’ve always tried to keep it simple.  Staying in touch with people who I’ve worked with by means of in-person visits, asking for references, following up on those with phone calls and printed promo cards has been my modus operandi for years.  For the last two years I’ve stared doing quarterly email blasts and following up with a printed promo card for those persons who’ve clicked through the site.  The sum of these efforts has led to a certain amount of success.  However, the main problem is doing this on top of running a business that is mostly out-of-town. (I also hand address all of my promo cards. Tedious, but it makes more sense than just slapping a sticker on a card.  I am confident the person on the other end should see my work.)  Now Wonderfulmachine has posted my printed portfolio online!  It’s nice to see it there, and although it’s not the same as flipping through a book, it’s a nice showcase of recent work and I think they did a good job.  You can watch the video here:

Click here to be taken to the Youtube video

If you’d like to see a printed portfolio, you can contact me directly, or you can contact Wonderfulmachine and they can send one to you.  Thank you for reading and have a great day!

Niqab, wet-plate ambrotype, 5x4", 2011 on display at Miami Aqua at the Froelick Gallery

This image was made using the traditional wet-plate collodion process where a glass plate is coated in collodion, then soaked in a bath of silver nitrate, exposed using a high powered strobe system and then developed, dried and finished with sandarac varnish.  They are then framed using glass mats and hand made wooden 8×10″ frames.  All the pieces from the series, ” r e s t r a i n t,” are 5×4″ in image size.  This piece is now SOLD.

This adventure into the volcano was a test of both my technical and physical capabilities.  My assistant and I covered approximately thirty miles of rough terrain, dealing with gusty winds, yellowjackets and the occasional passing rain shower.  We spent three days and two nights shooting as much of the landscape and volunteer work as possible.  We also shot video and collected audio as we simultaneously tried to shoot stills and keep up with the volunteer group, who had allowed us to tag along and stay with them in two of the three cabins located within the crater.

The eastern flank of this erosional depression is a cloud forest, essentially the top of Hana, an area famous for its rainforests and waterfalls.  If time had allowed, we would have hiked farther into the Kaupo Gap, a lush area filled with native Ohia trees and the chirping of native birds such as the I’iwi and the Apapane.  We saw plenty of Nene, the Native Hawaiian Goose, mostly around the cabins.  Although it’s illegal to feed them, they clearly understand that humans are a source of food, as they would brazenly approach anyone eating a snack.  At the end of the three day hike, we faced climbing out of the volcano up the Halemau’u trail that has an elevation gain of just over 1,000 feet in under 3 miles.  That was a difficult task as we were pretty exhausted by that point, having covered so much ground in such a short period of time.  The most challenging part of photographing was attempting to visually describe the vast landscape.  This was indeed an assignment of a lifetime.  I encourage anyone, who is ambulatory enough, to take the shorter 11 mile hike down the Keonehe’ehe’e, (Sliding Sands), trail.  It’s physically challenging, but to partake in this landscape is to witness the earth at its most primal.  A hui ho!

The Keonehe'ehe'e (Sliding Sands) trail, as seen from near the top of Haleakala, below the visitor's center, featured on the cover of the December 2011 issue of Smithsonian

Pele's Paintpot, located within the crater of Haleakala, features several different colors of lava rock. Off in the distance, in the far left-hand corner of the image on the crater rim, you can barely make out the Visitor's Center.

All the images and video were shot with Canon 5D Mark II Cameras, the Canon 24-105 F4L IS USM lens, the Canon 70-200mmL IS USM lens, (plus various others), all the images were processed using Adobe’s Lightroom software.  The audio was captured using a Zoom H4n Handy Recorder with an Audiotechnica condenser mic covered with a dead-cat windscreen.

Reasons Why Professional Photographers Cannot Work for Free

Dear potential photo buyer,

If you have been directed to this page, it is likely that you have requested the use of an image or images for free or minimal compensation. As professional photographers, we receive requests for free images on a regular basis. In a perfect world, each of us would love to be able to respond in a positive manner and assist, especially with projects or efforts related to areas such as education, social issues, and conservation of natural resources. It is fair to say that in many cases, we wish we had the time and resources to do more to assist than just send photographs. Unfortunately, such are the practicalities of life that we are often unable to respond, or that when we do, our replies are brief and do not convey an adequate sense of the reasons underlying our response. Circumstances vary for each situation, but we have found that there are a number of recurring themes, which we have set out below with the objective of communicating more clearly with you, and hopefully avoiding misunderstandings or unintentionally engendering ill will. Please take the following points in the constructive manner in which they are intended. We certainly hope that after you have had a chance to read this, we will be able to talk again and establish a mutually beneficial working relationship.

Photographs Are Our Livelihood

Creating compelling images is the way we make our living. If we give away our images for free, or spend too much time responding to requests for free images, we cannot make a living.

We Do Support Worthy Causes With Images

Most of us do contribute photographs, sometimes more, to support certain causes. In many cases, we may have participated directly in projects that we support with images, or we may have a pre-existing personal relationship with key people involved with the efforts concerned. In other words, each of us can and does provide images without compensation on a selective basis.

We Have Time Constraints

Making a leap from such selective support to responding positively to every request we get for free photographs, however, is impractical, if for no other reason than the substantial amount of time required to respond to requests, exchange correspondence, prepare and send files, and then follow-up to find out how our images were used and what objectives, if any, were achieved. It takes a lot of time to respond to requests, and time is always in short supply.

Pleas of “We Have No Money” Are Often Difficult to Fathom

The primary rationale provided in nearly all requests for free photographs is budgetary constraint, meaning that the requestor pleads a lack of funds. Such requests frequently originate from organisations with a lot of cash on hand, whether they be publicly listed companies, government or quasi-government agencies, or even NGOs. Often, it is a simple matter of taking a look at a public filing or other similar disclosure document to see that the entity concerned has access to significant funding, certainly more than enough to pay photographers a reasonable fee should they choose to do so. To make matters worse, it is apparent that all too often, of all the parties involved in a project or particular effort, photographers are the only ones being asked to work for free. Everyone else gets paid. Given considerations like this, you can perhaps understand why we frequently feel slighted when we are told that: “We have no money.” Such claims can come across as a cynical ploy intended to take advantage of gullible individuals.

We Have Real Budget Constraints

With some exceptions, photography is not a highly remunerative profession. We have chosen this path in large part due to the passion we have for visual communication, visual art, and the subject matters in which we specialise. The substantial increase in photographs available via the internet in recent years, coupled with reduced budgets of many photo buyers, means that our already meager incomes have come under additional strain. Moreover, being a professional photographer involves significant monetary investment. Our profession is by nature equipment-intensive. We need to buy cameras, lenses, computers, software, storage devices, and more on a regular basis. Things break and need to be repaired. We need back-ups of all our data, as one ill-placed cup of coffee could literally erase years of work. For all of us, investment in essential hardware and software entails thousands of dollars a year, as we need to stay current with new technology and best practices. In addition, travel is a big part of many of our businesses. We must spend a lot of money on transportation, lodging and other travel-related costs. And of course, perhaps most importantly, there is a substantial sum associated with the time and experience we have invested to become proficient at what we do, as well as the personal risks we often take. Taking snapshots may only involve pressing the camera shutter release, but creating images requires skill, experience and judgement. So the bottom line is that although we certainly understand and can sympathise with budget constraints, from a practical point of view, we simply cannot afford to subsidise everyone who asks.

Getting “Credit” Doesn’t Mean Much

Part and parcel with requests for free images premised on budgetary constraints is often the promise of providing “credit” and “exposure”, in the form or a watermark, link, or perhaps even a specific mention, as a form of compensation in lieu of commercial remuneration. There are two major problems with this. First, getting credit isn’t compensation. We did, after all, create the images concerned, so credit is automatic. It is not something that we hope a third party will be kind enough to grant us. Second, credit doesn’t pay bills. As we hopefully made clear above, we work hard to make the money required to reinvest in our photographic equipment and to cover related business expenses. On top of that, we need to make enough to pay for basic necessities like food, housing, transportation, etc. In short, receiving credit for an image we created is a given, not compensation, and credit is not a substitute for payment.

“You Are The Only Photographer Being Unreasonable”

When we do have time to engage in correspondence with people and entities who request free photos, the dialogue sometimes degenerates into an agitated statement directed toward us, asserting in essence that all other photographers the person or entity has contacted are more than delighted to provide photos for free, and that somehow, we are “the only photographer being unreasonable”. We know that is not true. We also know that no reasonable and competent photographer would agree to unreasonable conditions. We do allow for the fact that some inexperienced photographers or people who happen to own cameras may indeed agree to work for free, but as the folk wisdom goes: “You get what you pay for.”

Please Follow-Up

One other experience we have in common is that when we do provide photographs for free, we often do not receive updates, feedback or any other form of follow-up letting us know how the event or project unfolded, what goals (if any) were achieved, and what good (if any) our photos did. All too often, we don’t even get responses to emails we send to follow-up, until, of course, the next time that someone wants free photographs. In instances where we do agree to work for free, please have the courtesy to follow-up and let us know how things went. A little consideration will go a long way in making us feel more inclined to take time to provide additional images in the future.

Wrap Up

We hope that the above points help elucidate why the relevant photographer has sent you to this link. All of us are dedicated professionals, and we would be happy to work with you to move forward in a mutually beneficial manner.