The Assistant’s Journal

Thanks, Ken Rockwell.

More than once while roaming the internet in search of answers, I have would up on Ken’s site and read his candid, well-written reviews. As the employee of a cheapskate, and as a semi-professional cheapskate myself, this helpful guide/rant made me smile. I may put pieces of it on a cross stitch sampler someday.

The New York Times has a neat feature up showing David Burnett’s photos of onlookers at the Apollo 11 launch. Well worth looking through, and, as he comments, proof that you should never throw anything away. Frame #14 is my favorite (but you’ve got to work for it a little) — what’s yours?

When I first started working with Joel, it struck me as a bit odd that there are so many photo contests run by professional organizations. If you win “Accountant of the Year” or “Region 6 Farmer of the Year,” you might get a plaque or a certificate, but it isn’t slathered all over the web quite the way photo contest winners are. Plus, isn’t a little ego-maniacal to enter one’s own work for Photographer of the Year? For awards like Teacher of the Year, it’s usually others doing the nominating.

So, why enter other than the thrill of tacking a superlative on your resume? It’s really good for business. The people who hire photographers for shoots and who buy stock images watch these competitions, and even an honorable mention will help your name stand out among thousands of colleagues. It’s also a chance to look over a year’s work and figure out if you’ve missed any really interesting frames or if outtakes from a story can be repackaged.

Now, the “why me” part: A few years ago, I made white-knuckle runs to FedEx to make the deadline for submitting materials to photo contests. If I didn’t hit the stoplights just right, I’d wind up pounding on the windows and making sad puppy eyes while displaying the prepaid shipping label.

In the digital era, the white knuckle drive is gone and replaced by hours of watching an upload bar tick its way to completion. ( Joel nearly had a stroke each time the ‘time remaining’ field recalculated. The final straw was his nigh-ghostly pallor when it refreshed to read 9 hours left.)

Both then and now, we try to get done early every year. It never works.

Maybe it’s the way J-schools and newspapers and magazines run: there is no reward for early completion, but whatever you turn in had better be your absolute best. This culture of deadlines turns journalists into adrenaline junkies. That’s why we’re always up against the wall at the last possible minute when it comes to contest. Joel can’t function without his adrenaline. The endorphins feed his inner aesthete, which delivers a better product in a shorter time than non-stressed Joel.

When I started this post, I was on hour fifteen of a seventeen hour work day. It’s nothing compared to the long days some people work, but I will freely admit that I’m a wimp who likes regular sleep sessions of at least seven hours in length. I postponed publishing because I wasn’t even sure I was writing in English any more. I’m no fan of reckless driving, but I think I preferred a last-minute rush to FedEx to interminable uploads.

And with those words, Joel has entered the modern age. Check it out: http://blog.joelsartore.com/

A few weeks ago I saw Sam Abell speak at UNL. He’s a member of the old guard of NG photographers — doesn’t blog, doesn’t do video, doesn’t Twitter, doesn’t even e-mail. What he does do is think about pictures, all the time. Before the event, Joel encouraged someone to go by saying, “He’s one of the best speakers around on the craft of photography,” and I agree. The talk was definitely worth attending, and if you ever have a chance to see Abell speak, go.

He opened the show talking about this book:

Abell believes the images are thoughts, just like the written word, and that they should be shown full-frame, with no text run over them, and not run out to the edge of the page. I have my quibbles with that school of thought — but that argument is another post entirely. His talk along with recent stock agency statements made me wonder how thumbnails are shaping photography.

Think about it: the way most image buyers and editors see pictures for the first time is as a thumbnail. People are usually too pressed for time to go through preview-sized images one-by-one. It takes longer for a preview to load — even at broadband speeds — than it used to for editors to loupe a slide.

I’ve been in this game long enough to know that some fabulous images don’t read well at 150 pixels wide. The ones that do are often very simple, graphic statements. How many great images are casualties of their own thumbnails?

Look at the image on the cover of Abell’s book above. At the size it’s shown, the image looks cluttered, and if I were doing a hurried edit I probably wouldn’t give it a second thought.

Now try the bigger version:

Doesn’t that look better?

I think the next big hill to climb for our site will be to put previews out there that are larger than 500 pixels. We already have some.

The argument that having larger previews available makes image theft easier is — in my opinion — outweighed by the fact that images look so much better big. Image buyers aren’t going to bite on something that looks tiny and junk, period. A bunch of newspaper websites are starting to give viewers the option to see images in their full-screen glory, and some photographers’ websites are following suit.

Lessons learned: Look at images full-frame when editing your own shoots. Make thumbnails and previews bigger on your website. Lastly and most importantly: shoot what you love, not what’s selling right now. It comes through in the pictures.

Joel’s ocelot photo from his latest article was one of the top picks on Digg today. In celebration, here’s a photo of me with an ocelot (shot at a zoo in Brazil). They’re very fuzzy, but their teeth are very sharp.

Microsoft has a spiffy new technology that made the rounds on the blogosphere a month or so ago. They asked Joel to shoot the Statue of Liberty for a Photosynth, which you can see here. (Internet Explorer only — sorry Mac users.)

Joel’s trip to Bioko back in January required a pretty hefty amount of gear and pretty meticulous planning. We didn’t know what, if anything, he’d be able to get once he was there, he’d be camping most of the time, and he had to bring much of his own food. Additionally, he was bringing along a generator to run his lights and charge his camera.

Joel made a big long list of things he needed, and then I hauled it all up from the basement to the second floor so I could stage it in his office (and out of the way of the rest of the family.) My method is to lay everything out, verify that all the items on the check list are there, then pack the biggest, most awkward things first. This trip had no shortage of large, awkward items: softboxes, tripods, a lighting kit, and plexi and caulk for a makeshift aquarium. There was much shoving and no small amount of grumbling on my part.

The big lens case (lower right) holds a lens and a reflector. The Pelican case (middle bottom) held a lighting kit, the other Pelican case (behind me) held extra camera equipment, and the blue rubberized duffel bags from our friends at Cabela’s took care of everything else. I’ve finally gotten smart and learned to list the items in each bag/case on a sheet of paper, which I tape to the front.

We try to pack strategically so that the mission (getting pictures) can be accomplished no matter what happens, so Joel carries on his laptop, two bodies, and his standard set of zoom lenses. His current carry-on bag is wheeled, which is a good thing since all that gear can put it up over 50 pounds. I try to split things up evenly between checked bags so that if one bag gets lost, the others have a backup. (Joel takes at least two of everything.)

We always weigh and measure his bags to try and avoid extra fees where we can, using the good ol’ stand-on-the-scale-with-a-bag-then-subtract-your-weight method. Joel got a fancy digital scale a while back but it turns out you have to stand fairly still for those things to get an accurate reading, and it’s hard to stand perfectly still while hugging a 50-pound bag. The trusty spring scale from 1950-something works just fine, and lots faster. Once the bags are weighed, I add that to the contents tag so Joel knows where he can add in extra things.

Between trekking between multiple stories of the house multiple times and weighing bags, packing for big trips like this is one of the most physical parts of the job. It’s a great workout — wonder if I could market that….

This isn’t even close to the most gear he’s ever taken with him. On one of his trips to the Pantanal, he ended up taking something like fourteen different pieces of luggage. I think Madidi was even more than that. The amazing thing is that he manages, with the help of a cart and some crazy determination, to move this mountain of stuff around at one time.

I’ve been reading John Harrington’s blog for a while now. He gives well-written, solid, classic business advice. His book just came in the UPS, and it’s a must-read for anybody who wants to make a living in photography. Though it’s intended for an already-somewhat-established photographer, I think its contents are applicable at any point in a career, especially at the beginning. Art schools and journalism schools for the most part fail to give their students one very important tool to succeed in their chosen profession: the ability to run a business. It doesn’t require an MBA, but you do need to familiarize yourself with a few concepts like the cost of doing business, markup, and basic accounting.

You also need to learn to say “no” to projects that either don’t make business sense or don’t fit with your mission. One of the hardest things for me to learn and to practice (even to this day) is that “good causes” shouldn’t necessarily get things for free or even at a discount. Since most of our clients are non-profits, giving away work to every good cause who asks is a quick way to wind up back at the Pizza Hut. (Before I went off to college, I was a waitress/cook at Pizza Hut. It was a valuable experience and I could do it again if I needed to, but I do like having a job where I don’t go home smelling like pizza sauce and vegetable oil.)

Though it goes against my people-pleasing instincts, I must often politely turn down requests requests for free image use. Because of the nature of Joel’s work we get many such inquiries. (And by the way — if you have any kind of a photo budget at all, we’re usually willing to work with what you have.) Every time one of these requests comes along, I brace myself for the person requesting to be upset, but more often than not they’re quite understanding. Harrington’s book repeatedly stresses the notion that photographers should be paid for their work, just as the printer is paid for his or her work, and just as the hosting company is paid for the web space.

The book resonates with me because Harrington and I apparently share a background in economics. Though it fancies itself the queen of the social sciences, economics is usually treated more like the bastard child of the business school. It has little to do with the day to day reality of operating a business, but is immensely useful in decision-making, both long-term and short-term.

In summary — if you’ve ever fancied a career as a photographer, this book is worth every penny of your money and every minute of the time it takes to read it cover to cover. And yes, I am gushing over it, but I’ve been running a photo business for nine years now (gasp) and wish I could’ve read it on day one.

Best Business Practices for Photographers on Amazon.

I’ll play along, I guess: On October 3, the link/image above will re-direct you to a story James Nachtwey has been working on. It’s rolling out in multiple media channels to show how powerful news photography can be in the digital age. Bloggers, get your own badge here.

Reading about this reminded me of a trip to DC from a couple of years ago. One of my sideline jobs takes me to DC every few years, and when I’m there I try and stop by NG, (a) because it’s a thrill to be in the heart of a working magazine, and (b) to put faces with the people I work with via phone and e-mail.

After making the rounds, I had some time to kill before my plane left, so I camped out in an empty editing room. My visit happened to coincide with some house-cleaning at NG, and a few pieces of equipment were in the room, claimed by various folks:

Gotta love a salvager!