Sunday, March 1, 2009 at 1:07AM One of the main reasons I became a photographer was the influence of Garry Winogrand. I could relate to walking the streets of New York taking photos of people I didn't know. Street photography has no narrative according to Winogrand, it is what on the surface it is.
Friday, February 27, 2009 at 11:11PM 
The Rocky Mountain News published its last paper on Friday, February 27, 2009.
The simple answer to why newspapers are dying is that it's being killed by the internet. The real answer is more about business practices and pricing.
It was a shock to some. But the writing has been on the wall for years. Not just for the Rocky Mountain News, but all newspapers.
Ten years ago newspapers treated the internet like a step-child to their core business. They just took the daily content and shoveled it onto their website. And only after it was published first on paper. They didn't want to scoop themselves. The one huge mistake they did was set-up a two-tiered ad base. The newspaper charged a premium for ads and the website a much, much cheaper one.
They set the bar for the CPM or cost per thousand impressions very low. So a full page ad in a big important newspaper might cost $100,000, but its website, which had wider reach, a few thousand. Which is fine if you have advertisers lining up to put ads in your paper product.
Fast forward ten years. Classified ads, a real money-maker at a newspaper, is dead, killed by free Craiglist and eBay. Display ads at newspapers are drying up. It's hard to sell a display ad when you don't have the metrics to back up its effectiveness.
On the internet you have page impressions and click-throughs. You can sell that, but at a much lower price that was set ten years ago. The internet can't save the newspaper, the cost of printing presses, delivery trucks, paper, and huge staffs can't be maintained by the humble revenues of internet ads.
It's the same problem on TV. Do you think the ad rate on a TV show on Hulu.com is the same on the network show on regular TV? Not by a long shot. Advertisers are used to paying the big bucks for ads on TV. And the ad salesman can stretch how effective the ads are, with really no hard data except for the nielsen ratings comprised of a few thousand families.
But the internet is different. You can tell how many times a video was watched on youtube and charge accordingly. Last week I could watch network shows via the internet and Hulu on my big screen TV on my Apple TV with Boxee installed. Not anymore. Hulu doesn't want you to watch its programming on your TV, just the screen on your computer. Why? Because there is a two-tiered ad rate, one for the regular TV and one for the internet.
Photographers are getting screwed too. The same photo that went for $200-300 on People magazine is $30 on People.com. The two-tiered pricing plan that was implemented 10 years ago as an incentive to get advertisers to put ads on the internet, now is coming back to cannabalize the industry. If newspapers and magazines can't generate enough revenue selling ads they have to pay less for content. That means less for photos and much smaller staffs.
Would things be different if newspapers had a better understanding of the potential of the internet ten years ago? Probably. They would of charged a lot more for those ads. Once you set a price point, its hard to raise it dramatically.
The bar now is free. Free everything. Free news on the internet, free ads on craiglist. Free pirated songs and software. You can't sustain a business on free.
Newspapers and magazines can survive. But only as a niche entity. One example is opera. It has survived even though it has a small audience of wealthy patrons. Just use the same business model as opera. Cater to a select few with a high-end product that people are willing to pay for. The trend of appealing to the masses with celebrity gossip to fill pages maybe the wrong direction.
Thursday, February 26, 2009 at 4:00PM 
The Oscars were a little different this year than previous years. The red carpet had a few less presenters so they could surprise the TV audience. Some of the presenters made it to the photo room backstage. The photographers were told not to take photos of them alone, and only with the winners. Not sure how many heeded that edict. Tell a photographer not to take a photo and that makes the desire that much stronger. The last few years I used regular studio strobes in the photo room, but this year I went strobist and brought out three Nikon SB-24's on half-power with pocketwizards. I zoomed the speedlights' heads for more efficency. Same F-stop as the more powerful Dyna-lites.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009 at 11:17PM I see a few trends among photographers recently. The first is the use of Facebook and other social media sites like Twitter. In the last six months there has been an explosion of photographers joining and networking on the internet.
The old fashion way of networking has given way to the internet. I'm not sure how effective it is as far as converting it to actual paid work, but if you are a professional photographer, it is has become important.
I was posting tweets on Twitter about photography and was contacted by a photographer marketing coach Tyler Garns. His interview with me is at http://www.thinkbigart.com/blog/interview-with-a-sports-photographer/. Our conversation is about how social media is being used by photographers to market themselves.
The other big buzz word among photographers with a website is SEO, or search engine optimization. The goal is to be the first photographer on that Google page for that specific search term. Editors and photo buyers are increasingly relying on google to find photos and photographers. Google doesn't release details about how they rank searches, so most SEO is really voodoo. The usually recipe for higher search ranks are inbound links, fresh material and meta data that the so called Google bots can search and index.
The result of all this has been the boom of photographers blogs and websites with code that churn out search terms that hopefully will raise the rank of the page. Photographers who don't pay attention to SEO or social media risk missing key marketing opportunities.
Monday, May 28, 2007 at 4:49AM 
Cannes- The core of the Cannes Film Festival is about buying and selling films. The red carpet, the lavish parties, and the photocalls get all the attention. The real business of movie making is when producers and distributors get together and make deals.
At Cannes, buyers and seller from all over the world convene in a marketplace that help facilitate transactions. Everyone in the world needs to fill up their programming schedule. If you have a film, there is someone who will be buy it, at the right price.
Cannes is the two-week Wall Street of the film world. Most of the public really doesn't care about deals. They want the inside info on the movie stars.
Some of the stars understand Cannes as the marketplace and come to promote their project. Others think Cannes is one huge party. Those are the ones that get in trouble with photographers and gossip mongers. 
The photographic landscape that is Cannes is broken up into several areas if your looking to take photos of celebs.
First and foremost is the official premieres and photocalls that Cannes organizes. Photographers are required black-tie apparel to shoot the premieres on the steps of the Festival des Palais. Usually in the morning of the premiere the festival organizes a photocall, a less formal event with casual attire.
At night, there is an after-party for the film that is also black-tie. That gives official press photographers three chances to shoot the stars of a film. With over 200 photographers at each event, the film and its actors get a lot of carefully controlled exposure.
The real photos are taken at the other, unofficial areas of Cannes that make up the paparazzi landscape. First there is the street. Many times an actor has to run through a gauntlet of photographers and
fans to go from their car to a party.
Anything can happen and photographers hope something will. Sometimes you'll see a less well known celeb walking the streets unnoticed.
Somewhat easier is the yacht parties. Multi-million dollar yachts are docked right next to the Palais and every night someone hosts a party the celebs go to. Some are easy to spot. Robert Cavalli had his yacht with his intials on the bow where Sharon Stone stayed while she was in Cannes. You could see her on deck from the dock.
Jessica Simpson went to a yacht party sponsored by Budweiser. The pier where all these yachts are docked are in public areas where anyone can walk and rub elbows with celebs. The thing is that most of the public was unaware of it and hung out at the big premieres on the steps of the Palais.
Another watering hole for celebs were the nightclubs that spring up during the festival. They are situated in Palm Beach, about 2km from the Palais. The VIP Room is a loud tecno disco where a few celebs like Kylie Minogue and Dita Von Teese hung out into the wee hours of the morning.
The cast of Oceans 13 and the fashion house of Dolce & Gabbana held parties at Baole in the area. Celebs flocked to the D&G party as they were giving out free sunglasses, which retail in the $400 range. I saw Edge from U2, Naomi Campbell, Robert Rodriguez and his new girlfriend, Rose McGowan, Michelle Rodriguez and Jay Z among others leaving that party.
The photographers who were looking for the big score rented boats or sat on a jetty overlooking the Hotel du Cap in Eden Roc. The hotel is where the cast of Oceans 13 stayed. So if you wanted photos of Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, George Clooney, Andy Garcia, Don Cheadle, Ellen Barkin or Matt Damon, you had to stake the place out. The place is pretty well known by the paparazzi and they are in plain site so when a celeb gets there photo taken on the beach there, they are either really naive because its there first time there or hoping someone will take their photo and gain some publicity. I think its mostly the latter.
A few more random things about Cannes. An Amercain sandwich has french fries in it. Why 
do the French think Americans love french fries so much that we put them in out sandwich? We, of course don't. McDonalds is so anti-french in its food philosophy but hordes of kids flock to it at Cannes. The food there is not the same in the states, the meat patty is smaller, the bun has herbs, the mustard is dijon.
Even though its called fast-food, everyone in France doesn't work fast, expect a little longer for everything.
The supermarket in France has a whole aisle devoted to yogurt. I guess the French love yogurt. You can't get cheddar cheese in France, so don't ask. In a restaurant, the bottled water cost as much or more than anything else, about 6 eur or about $8 for a liter of Evian, more expensive than the beer or wine. They will ask if you want water, you think you are getting regular tap water, but you getting the most expensive water in the world. You can ask for tap water, sometimes they will give you it, sometimes they will not understand, or pretend not to understand. Tap water is drinkable in France.
In general the food is much better than in the US but because of the weak dollar, you will pay for it.
The thing that surprised me the most was how backwards technological France is. The internet is really slow, I have yet to pass by a store that sold computers and plasma TV's. Maybe things are different in a big city like Paris, by Cannes is like the US in 1998.
Its not that they don't have anything you can get in the US, it is just not as widespread. You see people with digital cameras, ipods and laptops, but only rarely. I guess they are too busy smoking cigarettes and hanging out in cafes, which is a stereotype but somewhat based in fact.
