Celtic Music

Posted on March 16th, 2007 by HuthPhoto.
Categories: Internet.

Just in time for St. Patrick’s Day…

I’m a ‘Live 365′ internet music station subscriber. It’s only like $40/yr and they have everything from 80’s, to Christian alternative, to an all Muppet station… how cool is that. Also, CD quality classical.

Lately I’ve been obsessing on the ‘Celtic Melt’ station and they play a wide variety, so it’s not just old folk stuff, but a wild mix.

Why not check it out for St. Patrick’s day:
HERE

And I think live 365 has a nice free trial. That’s how they hooked me.

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Proof Marking and Sharing Photos on the ‘Net

Posted on March 16th, 2007 by HuthPhoto.
Categories: Shoots, Personal, Teaching, Internet, Rants.


As Weird Al might have put it ‘Don’t Download This Photo‘


Melanie, who’s checking out the Aperture & Lightroom class asked this question:
I am just starting out to become a professional photographer and I wonder if you might answer a question. In looking at your photographs to try and learn from them, I noticed that you don’t have any kind of watermark on them. Is there a reason?

And here are my thoughts on watermaking my images on the ‘net, giving clients and subjects extra value, and how cool it is that we can easily be generous:
A quick first thought… remember why you got into photography… How fun it is to take a good shot and give it to a friend. Please don’t let business crowd out the pure fun of great images being seen by lots of people and making subjects and clients excited by your work!

Now on to the practical list:

• I don’t really do the sort of work that I’m trying to sell as stock, or resell. It’s really PR/Journalistic/Theatre work that I do.

• I always felt I make my money shooting, and while I try to make a bit extra here and there on print orders, etc… but the goal is to make enough shooting to not be pushing for sales of this or that

• I’m an open-sourcer at heart and really buy into the whole thing about the ‘net and sharing. If someone I photograph wants to snag a low-res shot I’ve posted online and put it on their Myspace or blog or whatever, I just think it’s part of the cool way the web works. I’m also a Christian, and like to be working in a positive, generous, caring way… and giving back to subjects (that often put up with a lot from us shooters!). I think photogs have always been anal about rights and reuse fees and scratching for every last cent. I realize I’m totally on the outside on this issue compared to other shooters. I remember reading a newsletter from one of the big photo associations and it was all about ‘clients pushing me for this, and they’re awful jerks because of that, and so cheap’ and I thought… ‘wow, what fun meetings they must have’ ;-)

• In a business sense, I think that looseness can be good advertising. The site gets tons of traffic. Like I’m very liberal with theatre playwrights (like Greg Coffin Convenience and Five Course Love ) and will let them post shots from plays I’ve shot that they’ve written… I just think it’s cool how we can do that now with digital: Give that extra value with minimal work on my part.

• I think watermarking usually looks tacky and ruins the look of the image. It says loudly ‘I care little about how this image looks but tons about your stealing it from me (you big nasty thief visitor to my site)’ ;-)

• Being loose with this an reuse just seems like the most justifiable position to me… it’s what I’d want if I were on the other side hiring a photographer. (For more on my reuse policy, read HuthPhoto.com’s ‘Clients Info’ area.) Related story: I caught myself scraping to save a few bucks by buying equipment online (and not like buying at B&H, but trying really to go cheapest places). I felt bad about that, and really try to give the local guys a chance now. I’ve also had some bad online buying experiences (with expensive stuff and big companies).

How’s that for a bouquet of reasons. YMMV. Every photog makes her own decisions, and if your work were one of a kind art, that needed to be posted high-res, and you were dependent on sales of prints… then you’d have to protect your images. But you also have to price reasonably for the market so that they are willing to pay it. It’s the iTunes theory of music download. Most people won’t steal stuff if it’s reasonably priced and simple/fun to get. And then there’s a hardcore percent that will steal it anyway and crop (or clone) the watermark out.

The other side of the issue:
Just to be fair, you can do a small watermark, like I have to do with my online lab Here

Also, I really don’t like when business clients try to publish photos I give them for editing and design…If you check out my client info HERE, I note that the big issue there is quality. Just using a photo that’s not been prepped is a crapshoot and makes us both look bad. I only charge $10-$20 to prep an image, and I think that’s a fair amount for a business to pay to ensure they look fantastic in print. And from a business, it’s just respectful to pay a photographer to use his images.

The same would be true of someone swiping images off of my site for any business purpose… that’s obiouvsly wrong, and if you’re in business, you should be able to pay for photos you want to use.

Hope that helps as you are making your decisions. Thanks for getting me thinking about it…

(PS: The Photos Above…that’s Mom & Dad and my Niece Alexa with boyfriend Drew from a family reunion)

Let me know your comments below.

powered by performancing firefox

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Edit Photos Online with Snipshot

Posted on March 9th, 2007 by HuthPhoto.
Categories: Photo, Internet, Blogging, PhotoJava, Photoshop.





Have you ever wanted to just do a few tweaks to a photo online… seems like a hassle to open Photoshop up just for one shot? With Snipshot.com, you can upload a photo, resize, crop rotate, enhance it all online, then save it to your computer or Flickr.

I’ll have to see how often this is handy, and I’ll keep you posted.



Snipshot: Edit pictures online




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Mars Edit

Posted on March 6th, 2007 by HuthPhoto.
Categories: Apple, Blogging.

My journey to redoing the blog has led me to Mars. I’m testing out Mars Edit’s demo now with this post to see if I like it.

It seems like it’s the most ‘Mac-like’ of the ones I’ve tried so far. Ecto is OK as well.

Honestly my favorite so far has been using the Flock browser for posting. It’s wonderful to have my Flickr photos sitting up there waiting for me…

Blog-Flock.jpg

Oh, I’ve just been writing more about Flock than Mars Edit. Well, so far it’s OK. I like that it uploads images to the server, not just pulling from Flickr, which can be slower. I’m now looking for image formatting options…

So I don’t see any options beyond alignment… no sizing or borders, so I’d have to hard-code that in.

So nice HTML inserts in a pulldown.

Like h2 for instance… and the mighty blockquote.

Alright-y, let’s upload this puppy and see who salutes ;-)

2 comments.

Now I’m Posting with Flock Baby!

Posted on March 4th, 2007 by HuthPhoto.
Categories: Apple, Internet, Blogging.

Tres’ Cool… Flock is set up to Blog from a web browser (Flock is that browser!)

Advantages of Flock:

  • WYSIWYG writing… look, there’s the bullet, not just the HTML code
  • it’s so web 2.0
  • My Flickr photos are sitting up there right now, waiting to show off my photo skill for you… look out… here one comes now:


I am the Flock fairy and I bring you stress-free blogging…Poof! (dang, I almost wrote poop) ;-)


Mmm, Flock is better than cotton candy!


Ooh, and I can easily put in different sized photos…

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Doin’ Taxes Like it’s 1999

Posted on January 25th, 2007 by HuthPhoto.
Categories: Personal, Equipment, Funny, Photo, Internet, Photoshop, Games.

I rotate my taxes boxes over a 7 year period, so I just pulled my 1999 taxes to make way for doing 2006.

How different things were just seven years ago:


• Digital Cameras—I paid $900+ for my first digital pro-sumer camera a year or so before (Kodak DC260) and was in 1999 deducting my next digital camera, the Nikon CoolPix 950 for over $1000.

• Computer RAM…anybody up for the big 128Megabyte RAM upgrade (PC100) for $138!

• Blank CD’s for my burner—$2 per blank CD (they are about 25¢ each now)… ah, and on the same invoice, I bought the first version of the


Myst Game!

• Phone Bills—Back then I had a normal phone line and long distance via Sprint. It was around $35/month for the local phone and $40-$50/month in long distance.
Today, I have Vonage for my home line for less than $20/month and my cell service with Cingular comes with free long distance.


• Film & Chemicals—I would go to RIT and buy around $300 worth of supplies every three to four weeks. And then there was process and color at labs, and my time doing this all.
Today: Digital, baby! After you plunk down the big money for the camera, upgraded Mac, Software, etc, etc…as Lisa I’m sure will tell you ;-)

• A delivery service was needed back then to deliver things from here (45 minutes from Rochester). Now clients edit online and get their images from me by convenient download.


• My Photoshop 5.5 Upgrade was bought in 1999,

and I paid $70 to renew HuthPhoto.com for two more years (I just paid around $80 to buy it till 2015.

• I photographed Meryl Streep as my first big event for the George Eastman House in 1999, and I see that Geva was going strong as a big client

• Logos—Above, you’ll see I was phasing out the ‘film and sprockets’ logo (top of page, on the right) and was moving toward the big, swoopy H logo (up there again on the left).

I bagged that after a few years of getting payments to H Photo. Is my current logo, here, too dated yet?

So, that’s the trip in the way-back machine I just took and hope you’ll get a kick out of seeing how much has changed with digital photography, the ‘net and HuthPhoto in these last amazing seven years.

Comment (from my old blog):
Joe
I think I still have notepads with both of those old logos!
Monday, February 19, 2007 - 11:17 AM

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