Water Smorgasborg by Joseph Calev

The response though was certainly not what I expected.  A different poster basically said “yeah, that’s not bad for two months with this equipment.  Now take a look at my awesome shots! You should try taking something like this!”.

To be honest, I did not appreciate this at all.  Yes, his shots were clearly better than mine.  However he provided no constructive criticism on my own shots.  I was just a beginner hoping to shine a bit and he threw a giant gobo on top of me.

This brings back an earlier story where I was on the other side.  A photographer posted several recent shots and asked for criticism.  I wasn’t crazy about either shot and posted constructive criticism.  I offered opinions on cropping, post processing, and angles.  I did not post any of my own shots.

Another photographer also responded and included several of his own shots in the discussion.  He offered much of the same feedback that I did.  Shortly after this, the individual left the forum never to return.

I believe it is worth having a discussion about photographer etiquette.  In general I find photographers are decent in terms of etiquette when actually shooting.  When I am photographing a patch of flowers, another photographer has never sat right next to me.  Similarly, I have not yet had an issue with another photographer interrupting wildlife I was photographing.  I do often have issues with non-photographers, who thrust their point and shoots on top of me when I am photographing macros, stand in front of me when I am photographing landscapes, and scare away wildlife I am photographing.

However I am discussing photographers here.  When it comes time to online discussions though, it seems we photographers are far less knowledgeable.  Therefore I would like to present my list of dos and don’ts.  Feel free to add your own.

Never post your own photo to a thread someone started to show off his/her own photos unless it is requested.

Photographers post their photos for different reasons.  They may want to show off or they may want criticism.  The general rule is never post your own photo on the same thread.  It simply is not polite.  You are taking the opportunity from another photographer and disregarding their work.

There are exceptions of course.  Sometimes a photographer will say “show me your best x shots”.  Other times the photographer may have a question on technique.  He may show an example photo where a problem occurred and ask for remedies.  In these situations it is perfectly acceptable to post your own shots.

If you comment on someone’s photo, add a “like” if the feature exists on the site.

This is a small courtesy.  Even if you’re not crazy about the shot, if you take the time to comment then click the ‘like’ button if the site has it.  This provides a good feeling for the other photographer.  If you want to provide constructive criticism, do it in the comments and still like the photo anyways.  Few photographers want to hear “this sucks”.  Many do want constructive criticism, but would like positive comments mixed with the negative.

The way I look at it, if the photo caused me to write a comment, then it must have been a decent photo for me to notice it in the first place.

Understand what the photographer is aiming for before commenting

Different photographers have different goals.  The goals of a stock photographer and a fine art photographer are quite different.  Make sure you understand these goals before commenting.  An awesome photo for stock photography will likely suck for fine art and vice versa.  If you strongly criticize a photo using the wrong goals, your comments will not be useful to the original poster.

Be careful about posting your own photos as example shots

Say someone has a question about lighting.  You response with a photo showing the discussed lighting technique.  This is perfectly OK.  Where the line becomes grayer is when someone mentions he/she is having a difficult time taking a type of photo and you reply saying “look at these awesome photos I took using this technique.  If you were nearly as awesome as I you would do the same”.

You are trumpeting your own horn here rather than providing any constructive proof.  Try to be more modest when posting.  It is OK to post awesome (in your eyes) example shots, but simply mention them as an example of the technique.  If the shots are truly awesome, others will call them out as such.

Try to understand what the photographer is looking for in critique

I am admittedly quite difficult in my critique.  If I do not like a shot I will plainly say so.  I will also give very specific reasons why I do not like it.  Some people greatly appreciate this feedback.  Others do not like it at all.

I openly do not like FlickR.  The reason I do not is due to what I call “the FlickR syndrome”.  This syndrome is very easy to catch if you are active on FlickR, as it is extremely easy to receive a ton of very positive feedback on an otherwise awful shot.  This leads some photographers to believe that every shot that leaves their hard drive is blessed and all other photographers will be blinded by the sheer awesomeness of their photos.

These photographers then post their photo someone where someone like I sees it and they simply cannot believe that something can be wrong with one of their photos.  I must clearly be an idiot for not recognizing the genius of this photo that hundreds of mindless FlickRites have proven.

The lesson of this is to try to understand what the photographer wants.  Sometimes it is OK to specifically ask what type of feedback the photographer desires.  Other times this is obvious from the original message.  If the photographer states that he took some shots he is very proud of, maybe it’s best not to comment.  If on the other hand the photographer states “give me your worst”, then absolutely do so.

If someone follows you or friends you, consider following them back

You are not above any other photographer out there and they should not be thought of as your flock.  When someone friends you they are truly interested in your work.  It does not mean they think you are better than they – just that your work interests them.  Do the right thing and take a look at their work.  Many times I have been greatly surprised that immensely talented photographers – way above me in talent – have chosen to follow me.  I use that as an opportunity to follow them as well so that I may learn more from their photography.

Be careful when commenting on photos about people

We have all seen a lot of photos of ugly people.  We have also seen photos of nice looking people in truly awful poses.  I remember one photo a photographer posted to a forum that he was quite proud of.  It was of a rather pretty girl stooped down in a way that looked like she was about to go to the bathroom.  In another I saw a very young girl posed in a way that in my opinion was completely inappropriate for the age.

You have to remember before commenting on these photos that the subject may be the daughter, spouse, or close relative of the photographer.  Also, the subject himself/herself may read the post.  If you want to provide constructive criticism, provide it on what the photographer did – not the model.  Be careful when stating what you don’t like about a shot though as many models are quite self conscious.  Remember, most of these people are not professional models at all but are simply someone who volunteered for the shoot.  If you say something about them that makes them uncomfortable, they may never volunteer for that photographer again.

Always assume your photo sucks when posting it

Few people like posts that say “see my awesome shots”.  As I said before, post your shots with humility.  Let others call out the quality of your shots.

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There are a number of stacking applications out there, but what sets Zerene Stacker apart is its ability to align photos.  This is critical for insect photography as most photos are hand held.  This means that the chances that they will perfectly align are practically nil.

Zerene Stacker is extremely easy to use, though it does contain an impressive list of options.  It also contains a very powerful retouching feature that allows one to explain from which image to take different parts of the final image.  This is extremely useful in a number of cases, though with care I have found that it is often not necessary.  Typically I use the retouching feature when I specifically do not want a particular part of the final image to be in focus.  Often this is for artistic reasons.  I want the insect to be in focus but not this part of a leaf, etc.

There’s a common expression that a picture is worth a thousand words, so without further ado I’ll show you what it can do.

The following are three unedited photos of a stink bug I took recently.

As you can see, each of these images has a different part in focus.  The image at the top has only the antenna in focus.  The image in the middle has the face and the front of the body in focus, while the one on the bottom has the top of the shell.

Also note that they are not completely aligned.  In particular the bottom image is quite a bit off.  Nevertheless, I brought all three of these images into Zerene Stacker and then stacked them using PMax.  The following is the result, which also includes some post processing to make the shot a bit more interesting.

As you can see, most of the stink bug is now in focus.  The entire post processing for this photo, including the following, took only a few minutes.

1. 1) Stack the photos using Zerene Stacker.
2. 2) Exposure and slight contrast change in Lightroom.
3. 3) Tonal contrast (to insect only) using Nik Color Efex in Photoshop CS5.
4. 4) Removed dust spots.

This shot would not have been possible to take otherwise – there is simply too much depth of field (the original shots were all taken at f11).

One other small point to note is you can see at the very bottom of the shot that there is a part that looks slightly different.  This effect is an unfortunate side effect that occurs when Zerene Stacker aligns the photos.  To combat this issue you need to try to take the shots as aligned as possible.  Also, make sure that no important visual elements are on the edges.  Usually, I just crop this part out but if I feel it is important I will just use content aware fill in CS5 – which does a good job with these.

Of course, it can still be tricky to get several workable shots that can then be combined with Zerene Stacker.  One must pay particular attention to the parts of the insect in the shot.  As one moves in closer or farther to focus on a nearer or further part of the insect, very often part of the insect will leave the frame.  The trick is to still keep the same parts of the insect in the frame while changing the area of focus.

This technique is even more important at higher magnifications.  Due to diffraction at high magnifications, if you need a very high quality shot you will need to stop down quite a bit.  On a 5D2, the MP-E 65 does show diffraction at 5x at f11.  This can be noticed on an 8×10 shot, though not enough to overly detract from the shot.  If one needs to crop the shot though or create larger prints, then the lens will need to be stopped down to f5.6.  At this aperture, the DOF is miniscule and focus stacking is a necessity.

For these reasons, I believe Zerene Stacker is an essential tool for any serious insect photographer.

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For me, this happens in particular when I am travelling.  Typically when I travel I have one chance to get the shot.  After that, we will visit a different place or leave the area.  On some occasions when I have a good hotel location, I do receive multiple chances – but the reality is I usually have to take what I get.

Until recently, I found I would get annoyed quickly.  I would get impatient at the person with a camera cell phone attempting to photograph something that just isn’t possible with it but refusing to believe that this is the case while standing right in front of my camera.  Even more annoying was on a recent trip to China a guy sat right in front of what I was photographing and then motioned for me to get away so his wife could take his picture.  OK, I still get frustrated at these people – but I now have a new strategy.

The strategy is simply to make your enemy your strength.  Instead of getting frustrated at that which is preventing the picture you desire, look at what opportunities this opens up.

The shot above is a beginning example of this.  While we were in Beijing, the light was horrible.  Due to the strong pollution there, everything in the entire city was washed out and we did not see a single patch of blue sky while we were there.  I realized that the light was just simply not going to improve, so I chose to zoom in instead.  I rather like the shot above.  True, better light could have made it spectacular, but it would have had to come from a perfect angle and I think this shot isn’t so bad without it.  In this case, I used the poor light to push me to take more closeups that have less dependency on light.

On another trip to the Great Wall, we were stunned to wind up in a part that was literally overflowing with people.  While there are parts of the wall that have fewer people, our tour guide (ChinaTours.net – I do not recommend them) took us to one of the most crowded parts and there were so many people that we were literally packed like sardines.  It took forever just to move several feet.  Clearly I was not going to obtain the images I was hoping for.

So instead of trying to avoid people – I chose to focus the shot on them.  While I am still not completely happy with this shot – I think it needs some more post processing – it is one of my favorite shots from the Great Wall.  It clearly demonstrates what we were up against and what the Great Wall has become.

While we were in Xi’an, we decided to attend a Chinese cultural theater presentation.  The theater was very nicely decorated and the costumes and dancing were all very well done, but very often while I attempted to take pictures several guys in front of me would lift their small cameras as far in the air as possible to get a shot.  It became very annoying just when I thought I had a great shot I would find a camera in the middle of it.

Thinking about it a bit more, what would become of my shots anyways?  I couldn’t sell them, as I didn’t have the model releases.  A few of them I would show to family and friends, but that was about all.  Therefore I decided to try something different.

I really like this shot, even though my wife hates it so much she forced me to remove it from our photo album from China.  It still needs a bit more post processing, but is still my favorite shot from the evening.

In both of the cases above I deliberately made use of the thing that was annoying me to get a shot I liked better than most of the rest anyways. 

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As many of you know, one of my strongest passions is for travel photography.  Every year a great deal of time is spent determining where we will go on our next trip.  Once the next trip is decided upon, I spend a great deal of time debating which lenses and equipment to take on the trip and what types of things I want pictures of.

After spending seventeen days travelling through Beijing and Xi’an in mainland China, then Hong Kong, the following is a post mortem of what wound up working well for me and what did not.

What went well

Having two cameras

This is the first vacation where I took both my 5D2 and my 7D.  This provided quite a few advantages over a single camera – primarily that I did not need to change lenses often and could rapidly switch between closeups and wide angle shots.

The configuration I most often used was a TS-E 24 II on my 5D2 and a 70-200/4 IS on my 7D.  I would often zoom in on details of a building with my 7D, then take the entire building with the 5D2.

I did not always have both cameras around my neck at the same time, and on some short trips I took only one camera (typically the 5D2) so as to not overly annoy my wife, but overall the combo was extremely useful.

Using tilt shifts

As I use my tilt shift lenses more and more, I really am starting to feel that autofocus is truly overrated.  Sure, it is extremely useful for action, sports, and wildlife shots – but for most travel photos it is just a convenience – not a necessity.

On this trip I brought my TS-E 17, TS-E 24 II, and TS-E 90.  By far the TS-E 24 II was the most used.  I also used my TS-E 17 for a number of situations – though for the majority of situations it was too wide.  The TS-E 90 was used sparingly – primarily from our hotel room.

I used shift far more than tilt for most shots.  I did take a few shots playing around with tilt – such as above, but the majority of shots used shift for architecture.

Arranging for private tours in Xi’an and Beijing

Mainland China can be difficult to figure out.  I chose to not bother trying and pay a local to do this for me.  This enabled us to very quickly move from site to site – whereas in other trips we would often spend a tremendous amount of time finding places.

What went OK

China Tours

We used China Tours (ChinaTours.net) to book the private tours.  The guides were cordial and we saw for the most part the places we wanted to see, but what we really did not like was that each day we had to stop at one or more shops and spend a specific amount of time there.  We paid for a tour – not to stop in shops.

For others travelling to China, I would not recommend this agency and I would instead specifically enquire whether any time would be spent in shops.  Once already there, it is generally much better to just hire a taxi – as they were OK with us not wanting to go to shop (they didn’t even ask).

What didn’t work well

Monopod

I did not use this a single time and for our next trip I will not bother to take it.  A monopod works extremely well when shooting with longer lenses such as my 300/4 or 100-400, but for the shorter lenses it is fine to just shoot hand held or when not a tripod is required.

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This particular image is a focus stack from two images.  I have been working a bit more with focus stacking using Zerene stacker and find it very useful – in particular for someone like me who does not have a lot of time.

Dandelion seeds can actually be rather tricky to photograph.  I usually find that more than 1:1 magnification is required so I use my MP-E 65 anywhere from 1:1 to 2:1.  Generally the seeds do not stay still so a flash is required.  It can be quite tricky though getting the seed in your viewfinder and in focus as they tend to sway quite a bit in the wind – causing the seed to come in and out of my viewfinder.

This swaying further complicates getting a good set of images for a focus stack.  The only way I have found to combat this so far is by taking a number of images.  After taking a good number of shots, I am able to evaluate them right on the camera so the majority of the shots never see Lightroom.

The above shot was taken closer to 1:1 so you can see the magnification difference.  It also suffered from extreme swaying and due to the number of seeds involved I was not able to take a set that worked well enough for focus stacking.  Still, I rather like the shot though my wife says I needed to ‘add’ one more seed to make it an odd number.

Using flash with dandelion seeds can also be a bit tricky.  The problem is the dandelion makes up only a small part of the image so the camera will often overexpose through the flashes.  This tends to cause the seed to be blown out.  The best way to compensate for this is to dial the flash back.  I often dial my MT-24EX back between –1 1/3 to –2.

This image I liked better as I was creating it than I like the final product.  The image I wanted was successfully executed – doing a multiple image focus stack so all of the seeds are in focus.  However in this case I believe the seed head is exceptionally ugly and really distracts from the shot.  The seed head looks rather old and stale.  Still, I think it is an idea worth exploring more – perhaps with a full head of seeds.

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In truth, sand dollars look quite a bit different when they are still alive.

These two sand dollars were found at Kopachuk State Park, where it’s literally impossible to not find a sand dollar.  They can be found in the thousands there and in places it is difficult to walk without stepping on one.

This one appears to be Echinarachnius parma, or the Common Sand Dollar.  Interestingly, sand dollars are either female or male – just like other animals and insects.  Even more interestingly, sand dollars are one of the first creatures found to use cloning as a means for self defense.  The sand dollar will deliberately break of parts of itself that are small enough for predators to not bother them.

Taking a look at the sand dollars on the beach, it was very clear upon looking at them that they are truly living – as it appeared something was moving on them.  Of course I had to take a closer look.

All over each sand dollar are thousands of miniscule spines.  These spines direct food to the mouth of the sand dollar.

This is what the spines look like close to 5x.  They are constantly moving and give the sand dollar a ‘glistening’ look.

Here you can actually see that the sand dollar actually has water over it – as the spines barely touch above the thin layer of water that covers the sand dollar.  Without this water the sand dollar would likely dry up and die – becoming one of the white sand dollars we know them as.

Finally, we found some smaller sand dollars.  These ones looked like babies and were found hidden near several much larger sand dollars.

Sand dollars are found throughout the world and are very common.  Still, in just a short time at a beach I learned a lot about an animal I ordinarily do not pay much attention to.

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My goal with this shot was to emphasize the legs coming right out at you – as if they harvestman were about to grab you.  I created several versions of this shot, but this one I like the best – with the body of the harvestman just visible behind. 

For those not familiar with our friend the harvestman, they are not spiders.  They are arachnids, but are in the order Opiliones while spiders are in the order Araneae.  Of course, for the squeamish that isn’t very important.  Most people know the harvestman by the common name “daddy long legs".

In this shot, I tried to emphasize more the geometry of the harvestman.  I spent some time trying to get the legs at the correct angle to form a triangle with the two upper corners.  This is the closest I got.  This particular shot is also a focus stack of two images.  The image wasn’t taken as a panorama – but was cropped to remove some distracting elements from the picture.

This shot is a bit closer to my everyday shots of harvestmen.  I wasn’t too crazy initially with the lighting of this shot as it is one case where I would have preferred to use a tripod and a long exposure to get rid of the black background caused by the flash.  However in this case I warmed up to the lighting as I like the emphasis on the right foot.  There’s actually a very small drop at the end of it that I think is rather cool.

In the future I plan to continue to experiment with harvestmen – coming up with even more original shots.  I hope this will become a common experiment with critters that I have already photographed quite a bit – such as spiders and pill bugs.

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Not far from being back in my office I suddenly heard several loud knocks as a I passed a tree.  I’m not a birder, but neither am I an idiot.  I immediately knew what that could be.  After several moments, I located the culprit.

I must admit that I had to look up what type of woodpecker this is, and it is a Northern Flicker.  It is actually quite common everywhere in the US and I’m sure for many birders this is a rather ordinary bird – but for me at least this is the best look I have had of a woodpecker.

According to the materials I have, these particular woodpeckers actually prefer the ground and only drill in trees around this time of year to nest.  Given the size of the hole it was working on, I suspect it is building a nest.  As this is quite close to my office, I will be easily able to check on it from time to time.

For me, this is a huge achievement – managing to get this close to a bird that is not a duck.  I’m sure some day I will look back at these shots and laugh at how awful they are, but today I am quite proud of them.

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This weekend, though, I decided to do something a bit different.  Given a home I had to photograph in Monroe, I decided to take a trip to Ben Hierland’s Wildlife Park.  I took along my 100-400 and my 7D and used my monopod for stabilization.  I’ve had my 7D for a good month now, but this was the first time I had actually used it for wildlife.  The idea was that the crop factor should give me a good idea what magnification I truly needed and which lens would work the best for me.

I must say I was completely shocked at what the answer turned out to be.

Over the period of the day, I came to realize two very painful things.

First, I know almost nothing about photographing wildlife other than insects.  I spent a great portion of my time there traipsing around and proceeded to scare away a great number of very interesting looking birds.  Heck, even an 800mm would not have helped me.  I need to learn some serious technique.

The shot above is one of the few shots I did not delete.  I should have deleted it along with every other shot from the trip, but I felt sorry for myself.

The second thing I realized is that the 7D really sucks for low light.  I had already been aware of this but this was the first time where I was forced to truly see it.  To date I had mainly used the 7D during the day and hadn’t really been forced to go above ISO 400 for anything I truly cared about.  The extra stop of a 500 or a 600 will not help here.  With my 5D2, I feel fully confident in shooting at ISO 3200.  Beyond that the shot may look interesting on FlickR  – but commercially will be unusable.  With the 7D, I would not go above ISO 400.

The simple fact is that when it comes to taking early light photos of birds and other wildlife, the 7D will not cut it for me.  At some time before I truly get into wildlife photography I will need to look into a 1D Mark IV.

However, to be honest the real limitation here is my abilities as a wildlife photographer.  A 1D4 will just help with the low light solution.  It will not help me learn how to get close to many of these birds and many other techniques of wildlife photography.  To learn those, the best way for me to improve is to keep using the 7D with the 100-400 and hope for good light.

The result of this entire escapade is I concluded that I am not yet ready for a large telephoto.  I remembered back to how I started in macro.  The MP-E 65 was not my first macro lens.  I started out with the Canon 500D diopter and used it for a year – slowly improving my macro techniques.  After some time I hit a wall with the 500D.  I knew I needed more magnification and after a great deal of research I concluded (correctly) that the MP-E 65 paired with the MT-24EX was the answer to my problems.

For that reason I am now learning towards investing the money originally aimed for a large telephoto into more macro equipment.  I haven’t yet come to an exact conclusion on what I will purchase, but I will certainly move towards taking more tripod based macros as today pretty much everything is hand held.  However, given my experience with shooting macros I am fully confident I will make the right choice when I do purchase something.

Sometimes, you just need to take a step back and realize that better equipment will not help you.  The real difference maker in photography is technique.  It is certainly true that sometimes equipment will allow you to do something that is otherwise not possible, but unless you’re fully able to use that equipment it still will not make a difference.

That is the case with me and a large telephoto right now.  I will need to spend some time practicing and studying before I can truly say that I am limited by not having a large telephoto lens.

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There has recently been a growing chatter about the rise of the amateur photographer and the threat this poses to professional photographers making a living today.  The claim goes that, since these photographers offer their photos for free or for pennies on the dollar, true professional photographers can no longer make a living.

This argument has grown quite heated at times.  One the one side, you have professional photographers trying to convince good amateur photographers to sell their photos for a good rate.  On the other side you have amateur photographers complaining that professional photographers are trying to control the market.

There is no denying that the market has changed.  Places like Shutterstock and IStockphoto have certainly changed the equation and people on FlickR giving their photos away for free are also changing it.  Journalism has also significantly changed, meaning many once employed photographers are now looking for jobs as newspapers fold and news organizations look for amateur photographers on the ground.

However, just because the market changed does not mean professional photography is going the way of the dodo – far from it.

Case 1: Event photographers

Nine years ago my wife and I needed to find a professional photographer for our wedding.  We eventually found a place that charged $2200 for both photography and video.  This wasn’t a guy who happened to own a camera, but involved photographers using medium format cameras, very expensive video cameras, and involved three photographers and some work done in their own studio.

In a few years we will need to find another professional photographer to photograph our sons’ Bar Mitzvahs.  It is true that there are now many amateur photographers charging $500 or even less to photograph an event.  However, if we want it photographed well, we’re talking between $3000-$4000 – and that does not include video.

How can a photographer make a living when there are other individuals undercutting him/her by several thousand dollars?  The simple answer in this case is you get what you pay for.  This doesn’t seem to be lost on their clients either – as many of them are booked very far in advance.

Are economics killing these photographers?  Far from it.  Consider also that with the rise of digital – costs have come down significantly for many of these photographers.  If you have the skills and equipment, you can make a lot more in event photography today than ten years ago.

Case 2: Amateur ‘advisers’

For a more modern example, look at sites like Strobist.  I like this blog and try to read it every day.  This is a guy who started out as a low paid newspaper photographer who I suspect is not hurting for cash today.  Could he have done what he does today ten years ago?  I severely doubt it.

There is a new market for professional photographers today and that is telling amateur photographers what to do with their equipment.  With the rise of the amateur photographer there is now a huge market today of photographers too busy or clueless to figure things out for themselves.  They want to know what equipment to buy, how to take a picture, why their pictures suck, and how to post process.  They are willing to pay money to do this.  They may click an ad on a blog, click a link that gives a kick back to the blog owner, buy a book by an author, or attend a class from the photographer.

There are quite a few people these days other than Strobist who make their living doing exactly this.  This is an entire market that barely existed ten years ago.

Case 3: The stock photographer

“OK”, you may say.  “I’ll give you the above two, but what about the stock photographer?”.  What about the stock photographer?  In the old days, many photographers made money by selling many of their shots through stock agencies.  Some photographers did this exclusively, while others did it in addition to their normal photographic duties.

What many do not realize is the traditional stock market is not dead.  Images are still being licensed for thousands of dollars.  Images are also being licensed for a few cents today and are also given away for free.

There are still companies that are very specific about the images they need.  They will spend a significant amount of effort in finding the image that perfectly suits them and have no problem spending several thousands of dollars for the rights to that image once they find it.  Often, the image is not possible to find at any stock agency and they pay a photographer to take it.

Other companies are less particular about the image they need.  They may need a photo of a particular location or of someone doing something.  For these companies, the microstock sites work well.  For professional photographers, microstock sites offer the ability to make something from the shots that didn’t make it.  Even for the top photographers, stock sites typically take only 5% of their photos.  The microstock sites offer an avenue to sell the other 95%.

It is true that it takes a lot more savvy these days to make it as a stock photographer.  A professional photographer needs to market himself today more than ever before.  Companies will not just find you – or will they?

There is a growing trend of companies finding images on FlickR and then offering licenses.  Some of these companies offer little to nothing but there is a sizable contingent of companies willing to pay good prices because a particular image fits their needs exactly.  There now exists a growing base of photographers who even make a living selling photos through these methods.

Case 4: Amateurs giving their photos away for free

So what to make of amateur photographers giving their photos away for free?  Is this hurting the photography market?  My argument is this is far from the case.

Most professional photographers these days make the majority of their income from paid assignments.  The client needs something very particular – something that cannot be found through FlickR or any stock site.  This is how I make the majority of my photo income and these photographers are not really affected by those giving images away for free.

It is true that some companies rely on finding photographers who do give their photos away for free.  However there are even more companies out there willing to pay a fair price for something they need.  With the international nature of the web, a company in Japan can now find a photographer from Mexico who happens to have the photo they need and sign a license agreement with him/her.  This was not possible before.

So who are photographers who give their images away for free really hurting?  They are not hurting the professionals.  They are hurting themselves.  Many of these photographers argue that they take photos for the love of taking photos and seek no monetary rewards.  For the companies out there looking to profit from their images, this works out for the better.

In today’s market, the line between a professional photographer and an amateur photographer is very blurry.  However the line between photographers who are taken advantage of and those who are not is as strong as it ever was.

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