Yesterday was a whirlwind of activity here in New York as 20 photographers participated in our Shoot! On Location (SOL) event while another several hundred attended a half day Shoot! The Day symposium at Shoot Digital studios.

The 20 photographers started their day bright and early at 9am where they picked up their brand new Nikon D700s, and became the first group of users to use them en masse. Apple followed with an orientation of Aperture. And the MAC Group finished up with discussion of the Profoto lighting equipment and Pocket Wizards that were used on location.

I started my day by covering one of the SOL locations...

I've been a Nikon digital SLR shooter since the D1x in 2001, so I'm personally thrilled to have Nikon as a Shoot! The Day partner. If you haven't already heard, they are providing D700s on-site for our Shoot! On Location winners, and they're also providing a D300 kit for the winner of our Shoot! The Day content.



Recently, Nikon introduced their newest RAW processing/management software, Nikon Capture NX 2.0, and I had a chance to chat it up with Michael Rubin, a senior manager at Nikon.

Hey Michael, I picked up a D3 the day it came out, and love it! How closely do the hardware engineers work with the software engineers when developing something like Nikon Capture NX 2.0?

As of recently, more closely than ever. Our firmware and software teams are basically united at this point. However there has always been a direct relationship of software and hardware. For me the most promising thing is seeing Active D-Lighting in our cameras; this idea came from our Capture 4 software (the predecessor to Capture NX, although the cameras and software use different libraries). The key people in software all came from a very strong hardware background.


What is Active-D Lighting?

I feel like there's been a much greater emphasis on producing higher quality software than there had been in the past. I assume the transition to digital was as rocky for a company like Nikon as it was for every photographer.

I think it's hard to quantify the ease or difficulty of the transition to digital since it's been an ongoing process since the early 1980's, at least for Nikon.

Just for a quick history lesson:  Nikon developed the NT-1000 transmitter in 1983 for use at the 1984 Summer Games in Los Angeles. This marked Nikon's formal entry into electronic imaging. This transmitter allowed images to be sent to the wire services from film.

Later Nikon developed the QV-1000 Video Still Camera. The original LS-3500 and LS-3510 film scanners marked Nikon's first heavy-duty imaging software as the 1980's drew to a close. The 1990's brought the E2~E3 Digital SLR models and the end of the decade saw the dominance of the COOLPIX compact digital cameras and the seminal release of the D1 Digital SLR.

In all of that time there was software and software development. Much of the team from the days of the E2 and film scanners are still involved in some form or another.

The biggest challenge we have always faced is making sure the final image produced by software is as color-accurate and pixel accurate as it was captured in the camera-and with the same or better image quality. We then had to balance that requirement with the photographer's requirements and needs. We developed one of the earliest RAW processing programs, Nikon Capture (version 1) and it led to a series of RAW processors that later evolved, with the release of Nikon Capture 4, into an image editing program. At this point users wanted to have selective control of their images, thus Capture NX was born.

What are the main advantages of using a product like Capture NX over products like Photoshop or Lightroom?



I think it's a misunderstanding of where Capture NX 2 and Capture NX fit in the workflow. It's not a black-and-white (no pun intended) advantage or disadvantage of one program over the other. I'm by no means a "Photoshop Expert" but I've been using the software since version 2. Photoshop does remarkable things and is an evolving piece of software as it stands now. Lightroom does some incredible image management and presentation.

We see Capture NX 2 as a very effective add-on to Lightroom or Photoshop. We even try to integrate with Adobe Bridge better with Capture NX 2.

What Capture NX does so well, and even more so, Capture NX 2 lets you edit your photographs using the best tools you have: your eyes. You can basically look at a sky and decide it needs enhancement and with just a few mouse clicks it's improved. Need to add sharpening just to the eyes? A "plus" selection control point allows you to add an Unsharp Mask or High Pass filter right to the eyes without adding sharpness to any other part of the image. Plus the color accuracy and soft proofing are tops in my opinion and the RAW processing of the NEF file is superior to all other programs.

Thank you so much for automatically exploding the "Edit List" in version 2.0. That was probably my biggest complaint with 1.0!

You're welcome. We did it just for you. I like it too to be honest.

I've heard people say that they can get better conversions from their old NEFs (e.g. from the D1x) using the newer software. How does this work?

Simple really: we constantly are learning new ways to process photographs and also the computing power is so far advanced from say the days of a D1x, that we can do much more in the computer than ever before. The chance to reprocess an image is where a RAW file comes in so handy.

I like to photograph in three main areas: 1) photojournalism, 2) portraits, 3) motion with athletes and dancers. But the PhotoShelter Collection is about shooting stock, so like many of you, I'm going through a learning curve to shoot stock. This includes poring over the School of Stock, and paying attention to as many publications as possible to understand the contexts in which stock is used.

This is my on-going story to share my experiences primarily through showing you my failures. I'm assisted by the brutal criticism of our photo editors and sales team who have been around the block a few times, and know a thing or two about what sells.

I decided to pick a relatively mundane topic of "teens using technology" for the simple reason that it's something that nearly everyone has access to. Everyone knows someone with kids, and everyone reading this has access to some sort of technology, whether it is a camera, cellphone or laptop.

After reading the School of Stock, I decided that for my shoot I wanted to:

• Place the model in a more natural situation rather than shooting against seamless
• Try to use natural light, or at least give the appearance of natural light
• I wanted to minimize the appearance of shadows
  
• I wanted to cast models who were able to do their own make-up & hair (to save money)
  
• I was resigned to the fact that I would be doing some post-production retouching
  

I looked at some of Kareem Black's work with Verizon to get the juices flowing. I didn't want to copy him per se, but I did want to take note of his production values because his work is top notch.

TAKE 1:
Mallorie is studying fashion design and  is a modern dancer. I shot some dance photos with her during the afternoon, and then asked her to do some stock photos while pretending to talk on the phone. She was wearing jeans and a black tank top, and had a pretty mod haircut, which I figured would be good to convey her youthfulness. The only direction I gave her was to "pretend that you're talking to your friend."

There is a window to her right, and a white reflector to her left to fill in some of the shadows. I wanted a pretty even lighting ratio on her face as Joel indicated in his lighting tutorial.


Photo by Allen Murabayashi

There wasn't enough energy in the face for my tastes, so I asked her to smile.


Photo by Allen Murabayashi

She has a very pixie-ish face when she's smiling, which is very different from her non-smiling face. I thought the expression might be too much, so I had her dial back the smile.


Photo by  Allen Murabayashi

Up until this point, I'd only been looking at her expression. But then I started to notice things like the chain on the wall, and the orange paint on the post behind her. Then I started to get nervous about her hand position, and whether she was slouching or not. It's really hard to judge by yourself, which is often why produced shoots have an art director on set. The light also didn't seem perfectly white balanced, and I started to get frustrated.

I'm much more comfortable shooting with strobes in the studio, so I panicked, and shot her against seamless. The set-up is 4 lights on the background to ensure that the background is truly white from top to bottom, and a single beauty dish a foot above eye level and slightly to the left of center.


Photo by Allen Murabayashi

After only 20 frames, I threw the towel in. I had too many doubts about the posing, the haircut, the clothing, etc. I felt good about the light, but that was about it. It was my first lifestyle shoot, and I really felt like a fish out of water. It was a fallacy to believe that I could create good stock without practice.

TAKE 2
Four months later, I was ready to try again. But truth be told, I hadn't really thought about what would make the next shoot successful. Sonia showed up with her mom (who was needed to sign the model release) because she's a sophomore in high school.

We started around 7pm in the evening, so the light was much lower in the sky, but I tried to go natural light plus a white reflector again, and pushed my ISO to 400 (this is about the maximum I am comfortable shooting to guarantee a noise-free image for stock). I was shooting Sonia in the same corner that I shot Mallorie.

 
Photo by Allen Murabayashi

The light was way too dark. The white reflector wasn't kicking enough light back into her face because there simply wasn't enough light at that time of day, so I pulled out a strobe and a large softbox, and tried to balance out the ambient light.

We already told you that Nikon is going to be unveiling their brand-new D700 full-frame DSLR at Shoot! The Day on Sunday, July 20th in New York City. How many more reasons do you need to attend? Well, we've got a few more.

Rob Haggart from aphotoeditor.com (and former Director of Photography from a little magazine known as Men's Journal) will present his famous "Editorial Bootcamp" presentation, and then he's going to moderate an editorial buyer panel including:

• Leslie dela Vega, Photo Editor, TIME Magazine
• Whitney Lawson, Photo Editor, Travel+Leisure
• Michael Wichita, Photo Editor, AARP Bulletin
• Ryan Schick, Photo Editor, Conde Nast Portfolio

Yeah, that's right, just a few photo editors from some of the largest and most influential magazines in the world.

Angela Natividad from adrants.com is going to lead an ad agency panel with an equally stellar grouping including:

• Belinda Lopez, Senior Art Buyer, Strawberry Frog
• Wanda Lau, Senior Art Director, Greater Than One
• Jen Santiago, Managing Art Buyer, G2 Direct & Digital
• Molly Aaker, Art Buyer, Unit7

Then Rachel Rein, Art Buyer at Hill Holiday, New York,  is going to present "From Start to Finish: Finding the Perfect Stock Photos for a Major Campaign," which will highlight an agency project that employed stock photography for a major telecommunications provider.

But we're not done.

On the photographer side of the fence, we have:

• Jazz Mandair and Gautam Pai from JaincoTech who will be discussing strategies for effective keywording.
• PhotoShelter co-founder, Grover Sanschagrin, will take you through his very popular "Killer Websites for Photographers" presentation that he's given around the country
• Apple will be presenting a workflow seminar using Apple Aperture
• and Nikon's Sam Garcia will round it out with a discussion of photography in the digital era.

And in case you get bored, you can head on over to the tradeshow room where the following companies will be presenting their wares:

• Nikon
  
• Adorama Camera
• JPG Magazine
• Apple
• MAC Group (Profoto, Sekonic, Mamiya, Pocket Wizard, and more!)
  
• JaincoTech
• Regus
• Advertising Photographers of America
• Slideluck Potshow
• and of course, PhotoShelter
  

And then when it's all done, we'll pony up to the bar and raise our glass to the new wave of photography that you're helping to create.

If you were around for our City Tour in the Fall of 2007, you know we're not joking around. This is about giving you the information you need to succeed, so don't be shy! Make sure to register if you haven't already!

There's a lot of great things about St. Louis: the Arch, the Anheiser-Busch Anheiser-Busch InBev Brewery, and our very own Emily Hickey. And right up there is Drew Selman and his intrepid team of St. Louis Shooters who have counted out locations, cast models, and stuyding the School of Stock to get all the latest information on shooting stock photography.



Why'd you do it Drew?

"I started the group because I have been a Photoshelter user for some time and was excited about the concept of a one day group effort.  No one had started a St. Louis group.  It was easy today and has now snowballed.  We will end up with 4-6 locations in close proximity and we will rotate through each of them.  The models and shooters will get a good mixture.  It will also expose shooters (newbies and vets) to a lot of different variety.  We have a good mix of people, some who have never shot stock before and some other long time St. Louis folks whose work is pretty well known.  I probably fall in the middle.  I initially started recruiting by sending a note to the St. Louis Camera Club membership (I am the photojournalism chair this year) and by posting on the St. Louis Strobist group site.  Needless to say I'm delighted at the turnout.  My stock ranges between landscape and portrait most of the time.  We are going to try and cover as much of that as we can with this shoot also."

Some people liken user-generated content to monkeys banging away on typewriters. The fallacy of this metaphor is in the way the Internet helps us to aggregate people into specific interest groups, and how these interest groups can share technique, vision, and philosophy to create something decisive and purposeful.

JPG Magazine happens to be one of these phenomena in the photo world. The premise is simple. JPG creates themes for a printed issue, and people submit images against the theme. The editors cull together the best of the best and publish a magazine six times a year that has top notch photography -- there's nothing accidental about it.



So we're psyched that JPG has joined us once again in supporting Shoot! The Day as our lead media sponsor, and not only that, but they're offering up $5 off an annual subscription.

Shoot! The Day is approaching, and we thought that we'd throw together a list of items that we find indispensable on shoots with the help from our good friends over at Adorama Camera.

Lowepro Street & Field Deluxe Padded Waistbelt
I like to use a good camera backpack when I'm traveling from place to place, but once I'm on location, there's nothing worse than fiddling into the camera bag, or leaving a lens lying around. So I dig a good belt system with some pouches. It's like Batman for photographers.

Make sure to get the right pouches for your gear.

Off-Camera Flash Cord
for Canon and for Nikon:

Step one in taking better pictures with your flash is taking the thing off your camera. By creating more directional lighting, you can control the way shadows fall in your photos and eliminate red-eye and that "deer in the headlights" look.

Permacell Gaffer's Tape
In Hollywood parlance, the gaffer is the head electrician who is responsible for wiring all the lighting gear. Mr. Gaffer didn't like Scotch or Duct, so he made his own tape. It's better, and it's built for the job. And remember how many times MacGyver saved the world with a little bit of tape...



Photek 12' Portable Background Stand
If you want to shoot people against seamless, you'll need a good stand system. And if your significant other doesn't like it when you leave the seamless up in the living room, then you'll probably need something portable. That's why I'm recommending this particular unit. I'm on my second set because I have a bad habit of tripping and tipping it over. Trust me, it's not prone to tipping, I'm just a klutz.

Pocket Wizard MultiMAX
If you're dealing with multiple strobes or are just fed up with wires, the Pocket Wizard is the de facto solution. I have three of these bad boys and they are beat to hell, but they keep on ticking, and have saved me hours of frustration running zip cord to power my strobes.



SanDisk 4GB Extreme IV Compact Flash Card
Echoing my sentiments from "10 Pieces of Photo Gear Under $50 You Should Own," I'm calling out this CF card again because you can never have too many. I hate it when I'm shooting RAW and I run out of cards, and begrudgingly have to switch to JPG...Don't forget, SanDisk has some great rebates right now, so stock up!

When we created the PhotoShelter Collection, we aimed to change the face of the stock photography industry by fundamentally altering the dynamics of how photographers were treated, and in turn, providing visual diversity to buyers that simply didn't exist. Tens of thousands of photographers from over 130 countries signed up and started uploading their images to PhotoShelter, and the buyers have followed. Each month we have stolen sales with major clients away from Getty and have become an increasingly large thorn in their side.

So it's flattering to hear that Getty Images is validating our approach and recognizing our success by reaching into the flickr community.  No other competitor in their history has forced Getty to change their model. This is a great sign of encouragement for us. Getty's CEO Jonathan Klein describes this new endeavor as "the best imagery from a fresh collection of high-quality images chosen by us from Flickr's diverse and prolific community." If it sounds familiar, it should be, something very similar is printed on our homepage.

But rather than compare lexicon, let's clarify some of the key points and differences of this announcement.

Klein stated in a Seattle Times piece that the deal "for us is not significant, but it's strategically extremely important." Flickr GM Kakul Srivastava corroborated this by saying, "From our perspective, on the Flickr side, we're not expecting this will be a huge stream of monetization for our members...The relationship, in the licensing piece, is purely between the photographer - the Flickr member - and Getty Images itself."

So, if it's not really about making money, what is it about? Why would the market leader (which is now held by a private equity firm whose sole goal is to make money) strike a deal in such a public fashion if they didn't intend for it to make money? Why would flickr consent to not taking a transaction fee? What is of such "strategic importance" to Klein?

The answer is in Getty's historical moves. It's about locking out competition from the industry to ensure a continued, virtual monopoly. Getty pays flickr for an "exclusive" deal to be their preferred stock content distributor because they are threatened by an open platform like PhotoShelter. Consider that if PhotoShelter succeeds, not only does Getty lose market share, but they invariably will have to give back more of the profits to photographers because they will need to compete for content.

As much as Getty would like to position this move as an open embrace of the community, it's not. Instead, it's a way to lock out competition, and allow them to continue with status quo. They're hopeful that this infusion of content can somehow staunch the flat/declining growth of their traditional licensing revenue, and why not? Their growth has historically been predicated on acquisition of boutique agency content until they bought virtually everyone up, and alienated thousands of photographers and buyers in the process.
 

Yesterday, the American Academy of Pediatrics issued a new recommendation to treat childhood obesity with statins -- the drugs used by millions of adults worldwide to reduce cholesterol. Irrespective of your feelings about whether this course of treatment is prudent or safe, the result has been a cascade of news articles with images of childhood obesity.

With only 31 entries to win 4 prizes, this was probably the easiest contest in the world to win! We would have preferred having more choice, but that's ok, we're happy to give away prizes to the community for participating!

"Most salable" is an elusive concept, so we picked the winners by consulting with our sales team. Part of the decision is being able to conceptualize how an image could be used commercially, and some of the essays were interesting because many people have very literal or stereotypical conceptions of their images. Scenics were often described as "calm" or "peaceful," and yet our sales people were hard pressed to think of how such an image would be pitched to a client.

Some images had obvious problems with production values -- Blurry, poor contrast, unnatural color cast, objects coming out of people's heads (i.e. not paying attention to your backgrounds). Remember that you need to look objectively look at the elements that make up the photo while divorcing yourself from the emotions that you feel looking at the photo. Training yourself to have a critical eye is one of the most important attributes you can have as a visual artist.

Some people believed that having something "quirky" equated with most salable. Although it's common to see quirky images on a greeting card some times, quirky images are usually more associated with a "feature" image in a newspaper -- i.e. an image that isn't about news, pe se, but rather something that's visually interesting. On slow news days, photographers often are tasked with finding a "feature" image to run on page 1. But enough chatter...

The Winners

Michelle Lane
JPG Magazine Subscription