The $3,000 brick

The following is a true story. The names have been changed to protect the extremely innocent (and wealthy).

I will call her Belinda. Never told me her name, but sure looked like a Belinda. She came into my tent at the art fair avoiding eye contact and with an air of superiority. She scanned my images like judging them, like comparing them to an imaginary standard. Her face had a hint of dislike.

She had a camera straped around her neck. Then I noticed, it was not just any camera, but the object of my desire, a beatiful and massive Nikon D700. I approached her in an intent of disarming her. "I see you brought me my camera" - I said. She smiled. "May I?" - I further asked while I reached for the camera. I took it in my hands and it felt just as it should.

But something was wrong. I hesitated, Am I really seeing this? An "E" was flashing on the top screen.

I couldn't resist telling her: "You have no card!"

Location : 1599 Winterberry Ln, Weston, FL 33327,

The future of photography as a business

Recently, I got engaged in an online discussion on the future of photography as a profession. Well, more than engaged, I was monitoring everybody's comments.

The predominant topic of the discussion was driven by the frustration of long-time photographers whose business has eroded as a product of the technological evolution.

To be honest, the tone of many of those writing, wasn't very positive.

For many years, professional photography's high fees were based on the exploitation
throughout time of a costly asset. The business model resembled more an equipment rental than a professional service delivered by a skilled tehnitian who is also capable of infusing the final product with creative energy and visual appeal.

I have been lucky enough to work or be related to a variety of fields of work and unfortunate enough to see the competitive advantages vanish in one way or another. I will give you some examples:

The recording industry.
Recording studios used to be expensive, difficult to afford. They would be equipped with hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment. Somebody would make the investment and musicians would use their services for a fee. The quality they offered just wasn't obtainable otherwise. Talent was not necessarily what got you into the studio to record, it was more a function of how you related with the investor, willing to back your musical project.

How it changed? Recording and sound processing equipment got more and more accessible and it became part of the musician's or recording artist's gear.

How did they adapt? After this, everybody had recording gear.The primary value and differentiator became talent,creativity and professionalism in meeting deadlines. The "soft skills" like setting up microphones and blending the layers became also more valuable.


The Computing Industry
I remember when in the 70s my dad was evaluating a business proposal that involved buying a Wang computer with 4K of RAM and a 5M HDD for processing books for third parties.

How it changed? Everybody knows that. Your iPhone is more than 200 times more powerful than that machine. Nobody would hire a company because of their computing power. You can do pretty much everything in-house. That's it YOUR HOUSE.

How did they adapt? Even after all this, you still hire an accountant, and the main reason is usually that he or she should keep you out of trouble.



I am not going to join the whining, I am interested in breakthrough ideas...

* Photography is more alive than ever (look at all the DSLRs sold), it is the Photographer species that is hurting.This means there is a demand for the still image, it is just being fulfilled differently. How do we steer them back? Most people want to do them themselves, not because it is less expensive (they shed $600 out already), but because they want that sense of accomplishment. Don't you enjoy making images? Why shouldn't they!

* The Tablet/eBook reader hype as a magazine replacement: They come with a monopoly built-in. Most of this is just new media with the same hurting business model. I am not sure on how Pro Photographers can "plug-in" here...

* There will always be need for new images, stock can't win. Images wear off, customs and fashion change, you have to update the library constantly.

* Whoever shoots his once-in-a-lifetime event with somebody who cannot guarantee results is making a poor choice. It will not take very long until the market understands this. Listen to me: there will be skits about this on SNL and will become an example on what not to do.

* Video might be the answer, but it looks like just another field. I have a videographer friend complaining about "all these newcomers with their 5Ds" cannibalizing his business...

* We should look at how other industries are tackling this. Some examples:
- Phone companies: No longer selling minutes, now bundling the proverbial triple-play.
- TV and Cable: Product placement is the new revenue generator.
- Music: The CD is just a marketing vehicle to sell the live show.
- Open source software: Software IS FREE, the support costs you an arm and a leg.
- One that is still holding strong: Lots of cooking shows on TV, still, you go out and pay $16/entree. You are paying for the experience, not just the plate.

* We should move away from "thinking gear". For many years, $$$ spent on equipment is what set the Pro away from the amateur. Now, anybody can buy a decent camera. You can buy a set of clubs for $100, not everybody is Tiger (maybe I should have used a different example).

So maybe the learning is:
- Adapt and include the new stuff out there.
- Don't panic.
- Act professionally.
- Create images. Really CREATE stuff, don't just "steal the soul".
- Create an experience, by bundling with innovative services.
- Charge for the production, not for pressing the shutter. You can even invite your customer to do it (press the shutter) himself, after you set-up, lit, framed and adjusted the camera. Oh,I almost forgot, gathered all the releases.

The Photographer's New Year's Resolutions for 2010

Every year we come up with these lists that we swear we are going to live by. As symbolic and exemplary of a life of procrastination as they are, they make up an important part of our end-of-the-year reflections and, if taken seriously, they can set the vision for the future.

So, why not make a list specific to your passion and favorite discipline?
Here are my ten. Let's circle back a year from now....

1.- Shoot, and shoot plenty. Even if you don't agree with those that say that even a monkey will be able to take a good photograph if we wait long enough, setting up, shooting and processing your photographs can only make you better.

2.- Publish. There is no point in shooting if you don't show your work to somebody, or even better, to a wider audience. Find your sweetspot and go for it regularly.

3.- Reign the web. Some say that if you cannot be found by Google, you are nobody. Start a blog or just have your own Flickr account where you publish your "picture of the week". Even advertising agencies are now sometimes harvesting Flickr instead of stock agencies. Get a Google Ad-Words account and dip your toes on pay-per-click, use the "Prepaid" version, having an open-ended campaign attached to a post-paid credit card is a formula to go broke if you don't know what you are doing.

4.- Be social. If you want to develop your business as a photographer, you have to be associated with good imagery in the mind of everybody who you know. Go to networking events -all kinds of them- and have a Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter strategy.

5.- Loose your obsession with equipment. Equipment is a means to an end, but you know that what counts is who's behind it. Develop your technique and your eye, instead of your equipment cabinet.

6.- Let go of comfort. Uneasy situations, bad weather, unlikely locations...they all make for potentially great photographs. Go for them, make a point of leaving the house/office when it is raining outside. Get up before dawn.

7.- Be disciplined. Backup your files, get a RAID array. Process them in a timely manner. Set your camera back to your defaults before stashing it in the bag. Keep your lenses clean, your batteries fresh and your cards empty. Just like you brush your teeth and you DO run those 5 miles everyday...

8.- Get better at producing, documenting and delivering. This is probably the greatest difference between a professional and an amateur. Check out pre-production software. Celtx (http://www.celtx.com) is an open-source alternative created for the film industry, but fits pretty well.

9.- Don't talk down other photographers. There are too many talented photographers doing nothing as well as a few mediocre working their way into the craft. Look for the positive and learn on what has worked for every individual. Make note also on what NOT to do. Offer your input in a humble way.

10.- Put your work in perspective. It is not arrogance. There is much more to crafting a great image than pressing the shutter. Countless hours go into conceiving, pre-producing, taking and then post-produce an image. That work is worth it and it cannot be done by other than a professional. I can cook, and I still go every once in a while to a restaurant that charges $20 an entree, and it never crosses my mind to say "I could do that too".

Huba Rostonics is a Florida-based Photographer. He is constantly looking for new things to put a frame around. You can check his work at http://www.rostonics.com, you can also follow Huba on twitter @ http://www.twitter.com/rostonics.

The relationship between shutter speed, aperture and ISO (again?) .... now simplified

This might sound like a topic that has been hammered enough to not even bother to publish an article on, but I can see the confusion in the eyes of my students every time this comes up. Why do we have 3 (four if you count the flash!) different adjustments for exposure in a camera?

The usual explanation goes like: "...aperture controls the ammount of light entering the lens, but it also has effect on the depth of field in the image..". So this gets even more confusing as we bring another parameter into play! I seem to have much more success with a little twist that I have given to these well-known (for a photographer) concepts.

I try to explain what are the unique effects of each of the adjustments in the camera in terms that are not related to exposure and then add, "...but it also has a collateral effect of changing the exposure.." So here is the whole explanation:
Aperture affects the depth of field. The higher the "f-stop" number, the better the depth of field. The lower the number, the shallower the depth of field. Changing the aperture has the additional effect of changing the amount of light that gets into the camera. The higher the number, the more light is blocked.
Shutter speed affects how motion is recorded in the image. Increasing the shutter speed will stop motion. Slower shutter speeds will cause blur or will make the camera more prone to record camera shake. Shutter speed also affects how long the sensor is exposed to light. The higher the number, the faster the shutter, more light is kept out of the camera.
ISO is the sensor sensitivity and the lower it is, the less noise we have in the image. But the higher the number, the more sensible the sensor is to light.
So is clear now the function of each parameter, but it is also clear that if you want to get a certain (many times referred to as the "correct") exposure, when you move one of them, either one of the other two have to change accordingly to restore balance. If you are in any of the automatic exposure modes (Aperture priority, Shutter Speed priority), this will happen automatically.
This is proving to be a much more easier to understand approach as it assigns at first a unique effect to each control and then ties them together through exposure.
Shoot away...

What would Cartier-Bresson use today?

I was pleasantly surprised when I read this month's American Photo's article on the iPhone's camera apps. It has been a long time since I saw an article on Cameraphones, besides the usual novelty note.

In my opinion, the iPhone with their camera apps is the new Leica. It has reasonable quality for web and even an 8"x10" print, is highly portable, silent and inconspicuous and -because of the audience that the iPhone and Apple in general appeals to- now in the hands of a highly creative people. Because of these reasons, i believe that the iPhone, and the cameraphone in general, is the new candid and street photography tool by excellence andwe willbe seeing a lot of art created by this craft.

I have always been excited about the possibilities a Camera Phone brings to the table and I did some early experiments in 2003 and early 2004 when I used to work for Nokia. They released one of their first cameraphones, the 3650, and I got one of these in my hands early enough with all its then mind-blowing 640x480 resolution.
The result of these experiments are captured in a flash gallery that you can check out at http://www.rostonics.com/files/TravellingImages.swf

Digital Crayola

I just read this article on the future of photography on PopPhoto on how photography will look like in 2006.

The author goes into every possible hi-tech gadget possibility, ranging from photo-gloves and eye implants. In my personal opinion the article looks, in the best case like a 3-D visual effect sensationalist Sci-Fi with a crappy storyline, sometimes childish.

It totally misses the point of photography as an expression -and I am presuming you are on my side of the discussion on whether photography is art-. If you reduce photography to its simple, snapshot-taking, everyday-event-documenting simplicity, the article might be somewhat on target on predicting the future.

If we are going to be so evolved by 2060, Why not think about a world that is constantly surveyed by hi res cameras and every inch of our existence is documented by automatic picture-takers? We could then get any possible picture just by downloading the image from a giant "world-stock" database, making any gadget absolutely pointless.

With all due respect to the never-to-be-released-cool-factor-technology-creating (remember the 3-D manipulator? or the Human-face-shaped CRTs for video conferencing?) guys at the Media Lab at MIT, having a photograph that can be modified by the viewer depending on the mood he is in, well...that is so 1960s...I used to do it in pre-K....with crayola. While it can be fun, it is also insulting for someone who is intending to express a message and a mood and somebody is "interpreting it" differently. I know a lot of people who would be upset if I did this just with one of their phrases, let alone admiring the "guernica" and "interpreting it" as a bachelor's party.

Claudio lovo melts SoBe

How do you define yourself as a Photographer?
As I capturer of dimensional light & space

Was it that way ever? When did you first pickup a camera?
Yes, since my early years living in Michigan, I had a darkroom in the basement of my house and experimented with distortions and dodging prints and negatives. I loved the magic of the darkroom, as much as I did capturing.

What made you move to South Florida? What makes it special for the photography business in general?
I’m originally from Nicaragua, studied in Paris and have lived in Louisiana, Michigan and Washington D.C where I came from 21 years ago from, where I was a media consultant/producer for government and private companies.
I arrived January 1st of 1988 and worked for PBS as an independent Director-Producer of a documentary series “Consuming Passions, origins & adaptation of food in America*. That took me 4 years of production and editing.
I was here when the photographers and models from Europe discovered SoBe and it was wonderful, no traffic, just a quiet location with beautiful morning light and vibrant colors.

You do commercial photography, and then there is your work with Photoshop, giving images fluidity. How do you reconcile these? Which one is the real Claudio?
I say that the “real” Claudio is both, since I enjoy them equally. I love the process of shooting the pictures but then I love sitting in my computer with A/C and begin the workflow. Sometimes I see a photo that I feel connected and instead of being commercial it becomes art.

For your fine-art pieces, what is the process that you follow and where do you get your inspiration?
The process involves 10 to 20 layers in Photoshop with a myriad of filters. Many are home made (custom filters). I think that “filters” gives you the “signature”, like in the case of music, when you hear the sound of Carlos Santana playing, the sound of his guitar its unmistakable. Edison said once that his work was “10% inspiration and 90% perspiration” and he’s absolutely right I think of the possibilities and have a concept of my final intention but to get there it might take me 20 hours of work, that’s where you need the inspiration: work. I wish I had that “Muse” all the time!

What is Claudio’s "Secret Sauce”? Can you tell us about your lighting style?
My “secret sauce” has to be my wife, Lisa Mae; she’s my muse and inspiration. She let’s me create and be myself. I think that’s the most important part, to have the freedom to do your thing, like working until 7:00 am and waking up a 5:00 pm to continue working… She takes care of the management/financial affairs and that gives me the freedom that I need to create.
My lighting style hmm? Well I’m obsessed with light as much as I am with shadows. I feel the light, and feed from it too. I spend considerable time playing with it, be it with flashes, bouncers and natural light.

With ubiquitous access to digital cameras and editing software, where do you see professional photography going?
I think that now they’re so many digital photographers that its tough to compete for the younger generation in certain fields, like adventure, extreme sports, etc.
The cameras are getting better and more affordable, this makes it harder to succeed, I have a name and most of my work is from word of mouth and referrals and thank God, keeps me busy.
I think that the key is to find a “niche” in the marketplace and do whatever but do it good and with passion.


Check out Claudio's website, http://www.mysurrealestate.com and more of his selected work.

For more info: Huba Rostonics is a Florida-based Photographer. He is constantly looking for new things to put a frame around. You can check his work at http://www.rostonics.com, you can also follow Huba on twitter @ http://www.twitter.com/rostonics.