I've noticed a strange trend of photographers having the worst headshots and portraits of themselves. And while I understand the trepidation that we might feel by being on the other side of the camera, it does shock me that we don't have nice photos of ourselves for our websites, Facebook profiles and for the contributors section of our magazine jobs. Don't we all know some good photographers? Do we feel the need to control our image by doing the ubiquitous self-portrait?

I thought a bit more about what I consider to be a good portrait, and to me, it's a photo that 1) the subject likes and 2) that the audience feels is somehow representative of the subject. Reason 1 probably won't stand up to most people's scrutiny of a good portrait, but since we're talking about portraits of photographers that they would use themselves, I think it is an important criteria.

So the challenge is to get a decent portrait that isn't a self-portrait shot by another photographer that fulfills the aforementioned criteria. Let's take a look.


Fiona Aboud had not one, but many! Here's one shot by Ken Schneiderman.


Photo by Ken Schneiderman

Another by Erin Korff:


Photo by Erin Korff

I love both of those. But I'm a little star struck by the one that Dan Winters shot avec weird flourescent tube in the background. Soooo Dan Winters.


Photo by Dan Winters

Key learning: it helps to be photogenic.

Brian Smith, co-founder of Editorial Photographers, sent me this one taken by his wife. Good contrast -- will definitely reproduce well (I'm talking about the photo. Get your mind out of the gutter). I like it.


Photo by Fazia Ali

I always liked Peter Yang's portrait, although I'm fairly certain that 1) he took it himself, and 2) that is not his real moustache. Let me know if I'm wrong, Peter.


Photo by Peter Yang

Clay Enos was at a workshop that VII was holding in 2005, and managed to get portraits of the attending members.


Photo by Clay Enos

I like it. I thought he captured the personalities of these iconic photojournalists pretty well. Why does Nachtwey (center) always look like a bad ass? Oh yeah, because he is.

President Bush and then First Lady Laura Bush walking down Pennsylvania Avenue to the North Grounds of the White House.

Paul Morse, nicknamed "Pablo" by President George W. Bush, is a Washington, D.C. based photographer. He worked at the White House as Deputy Director of Photography from 2001 until 2007. Prior to the White House, Paul worked  at the Los Angeles Times as a staff photographer for six years, covering sports, news, and the entertainment industry.

Today, Paul is working as a corporate and editorial photographer, and continues to produce amazing images of people famous, unknown, and somewhere in between.

I've always been curious about the job of "presidential photographer," and now that the Bush Administration is no longer in the White House, I felt it was a good time to ask Paul. The truth is, I've been wanting to ask him these questions for a while, but didn't want to cause him to break some secret oath or something.

I was also curious about making the transition into, and out of, such a role. Once it's all over, where do you go from there? How do you resume a normal career as a photographer after you've been hanging with the President for years?

Paul was super cool and agreed to answer all my questions. So I thought I'd share...

Grover: You worked for newspapers for a while. I know you interned at Newsday (like me!), and you worked at the LA Times, then spent some time working as a White House staff photographer during the Bush years, and now you're doing the freelance thing. What am I missing?

Paul Morse: I started out with a degree in Journalism from California State University Long beach and did 5 internships before getting hired on as staff photographer for the Pasadena Star-News. I took a buy out from the Star-News (sound familiar) and went freelance for a few months before the LA Times offered me a job. Eric Draper, my college buddy, asked me to come help him inaugural day 2001 and soon offered me a job at the White House as the Deputy Director of Photography. I did that till early 2006 and went out on my own to get some balance in my life.

New York Representative Peter King has introduced legislation known as the Camera Phone Predator Alert Act (HR 4.1.4) to require mobile phones with cameras to make a "tone or other sound audible within a reasonable radius of the phone." The reason? Congress alleges that "children and adolescents have been exploited by photographs taken in dressing rooms and public places with the use of a camera phone."

As Ars Technica reported, a recent survey of teens revealed that 20% of respondents had posted an image or video of themselves partially nude or nude on the Internet.

So let me get this straight...

We want to simulate the sound of a shutter in camera cellphones because there are many predators taking photos of the kids in dressing rooms and public places.

Thomas Hawk astutely pointed out that the bill doesn't cover cameras -- only cellphones -- so if a predator wanted to skirt the law, he could simply use a point-and-shoot camera.

But let me take it a little further in the analysis. It seems to me that while there are predators who are exploiting the kids with their silent cellphones, the larger problem are the kids who are exploiting themselves with their cellphones (just google sexting). How's about we just take the cellphones away from the kids so that they can stop texting their friends 14,528 times a month. Why not spend the money that would go to the camera phone manufacturers and cellphone networks and dump it into education about how posting pictures of yourself nude on the Internet isn't the most prudent thing to do.

I've always found the digital shutter sound to be annoying. And court and movie set photographers spend a lot of money for devices that suppress the noise coming from their cameras. Do we really need to enact a law to add more noise to the world?

In the end, Rep. King is probably overreacting. Turns out that the kids aren't having that much sex, and the crack babies are ok.

Speaking of cellphone cameras, it's common knowledge that the iconic photo of US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson was shot on an iPhone. When I first saw it, my jaw dropped. As much as I bemoan "citizen journalism," sometimes "being there" can't be beat.

Nestled deep within the cavernous confines of the PhotoShelter offices are a few individuals and small businesses who co-inhabit the space. One of these people happens to be a photographic agent -- Keiko Shimizu of Keiko Represents (more on what a photographic agent actually does in a future post).

A few weeks ago, I noticed that Keiko was hauling in some mighty fine photography into the office, and as it turns out, she was helping to organize a charity auction of some pretty bad-ass photographers from around the world like Barron Claiborne, Carlton Davis, Christian Witkin, Cleo Sullivan, Diego Uchitel, Michael Thompson, Torkil Gudnason and more! The money from the auction is going to help children in both the Phillipines and Haiti. One Image Charity was also co-founded by my high-school classmate John Kunichika (former creative director at Bergdorf Goodman) and Stephan Moskovic from Models.com.

So make a bid before time runs out.

Sports-Illustrated contributor, Bare Naked Ladies Tour Photographer and PhotoShelter user, David Bergman was down in DC for the inauguration and set up a gigapan unit. From what I can tell, this $279 unit has some sort of robotics that allows it to carefully take a series of images which can then be stitched into one huge panoramic.

In other words, this:

It's no surprise that a number of PhotoShelter users covered the Inauguration of President Barack Obama yesterday in Washington D.C. Like we did after the elections, we thought it would be cool to highlight the diverse work of this momentous occasion.

Recent Eddie Adams Workshop alumna, Melissa Golden, shot this very cool image for Rapport Press.



Rapport also has photo galleries from The Biden Ball, The Commander-in-Chief Ball, The Reaction in Kenya photographed by Zoriah Miller, The Palestinian Reaction photographed by Kate Brooks, and much more!

Paul Morse, one of President Bush's photographers, had some prime seating at the inauguration.



Stephen Voss has some nighttime set-up images of the stage in addition to Inauguration photos.



Kristoffer Tripplaar got a good one of Obama girls (Sasha is my favorite!). You can see his full gallery here.



With an estimated crowd of 1.8 million or so, there are practical considerations as Ralf-Finn Hestoft can attest.

I have many claims to fame.

For example, I have been known to drink 5 cans of Coke in a day. I also watched an entire season of "24" in a day, synchronizing the TV time with real time. But in all honesty, these events probably pale in comparison to the fact that I went to Punahou, the same high school as President-elect Barack Obama.

This past Sunday, the Trustees of Punahou held an inaugural party in Washington DC to celebrate the ascension of the first Hawaii-born President, and the first alumnus President. We had high hopes that President Obama would show, and indeed, there were police helicopters allegedly circling the residence of AOL-founder Steve Case -- the gracious host and also alumnus of Punahou.


Photo by Allen Murabayashi

Obama White House photographer recently shot the official Presidential portrait -- you know, the one that will appear on the walls of the post office and other federal buildings.

I am in the blogging mood.

Truth be told, I'm sitting in a Manhattan courthouse fulfilling my civic duty to potentially serve on a jury. So it's not much about being in the blogging mood as it is about sheer boredom. Last time I was called for jury duty was probably 2000, and the only major difference since then is the free WiFi in the building. Hooray!

What hasn't changed:
- Diane Sawyer intro to jury duty video: check
- Comfortable looking, but ergonomically bad chairs: check
- The motley looking crew of my peers on the coldest day of the year: check

But I digress.

It's times like these where you find yourself looking at stuff you don't normally look at, and since those adult sites are blocked at the courthouse (I kid, I kid), I found myself perusing racked.com, which is part of a conglomerate of sites that report on different aspects of city life. Racked is a blog about shopping and fashion, but they've also tapped a photographer with whom I wasn't familiar to do an on-going series of portraits on the street.

Daniel Krieger, who isn't Daniel S. Krieger, also told me that if you need some one to shoot your wedding, please contact him.

Although he modestly claims to be "just starting out" in the photo business, Alex Cena, a retired Wall Street Research Analyst, sure is busy. As a full-time freelance sports and action photographer, his customers are organizations, schools, and athletes as well as newspapers and magazines.

Alex's steady stream of print orders caught my attention, so I thought I'd ask if he would be willing to answer my nosey questions about his business. I wanted to figure out how he is able to sell so many prints!

He's a busy guy, but he was able to carve out some time and pound out some answers for us.

Alex is also making full use of the PhotoShelter website customization templates, using them to power a large portion of his customer-facing website.

In today's sluggish economy, Alex seems to have found a nice comfortable niche.

Search Engine Optimization (aka "SEO") is more than just a hot buzzword. For many, mastering it will help take a photography business to new levels. For others, it could be a painful strain on precious time that's better spent shooting. The good news is, you don't need to face the SEO monster alone - if you are a PhotoShelter user, we've got your back.

SEO: What We're Doing

1.    The PhotoShelter site map is designed to be indexed especially well with Google because we tailored it to Google's exact specifications.

2.    We allow photographers to name/rename images without breaking any of the links that may already exist with the search engines. This way, a photographer can continue to safely tweak and fine-tune their image file names to achieve the best rankings possible. This is significant for Google Image Search.

3.    We're using text links, not just images, which provide deep linking throughout site. Search engines follow these links, indexing pages that may be several layers away from the front page.

4.    Your name appears in the title of every PhotoShelter page that features your work.  This means better search engine indexing for your name.  

5.    The photographer directory is heavily optimized with photographer name and specialty. This will help the search engines associate a photographer with a specialty (for example: "Wedding Photographer") and provide a direct link to their homepage and example images for that specialty.

Remain calm. This whole recession thing just may be a great opportunity in disguise. Here are 10 things you can do to help power your photography business through these stormy economic seas:

1.    Sell Personal Use downloads instead of prints. There's a cost associated with prints like the paper, ink, shipping and handling. None of these apply when your customer only downloads the image and makes a print of their own. People will even pay more for a download because they see value in having a digital file. So give them what they want - a lower resolution file for one price, a higher resolution file for a much larger price. Many photographers are afraid of doing this, but Personal Use downloads can give you a competitive advantage. Several photographers enjoy Personal Use sales almost daily through PhotoShelter, like Alex Cena and Aaron Kupferman. (kudos guys!).

2.    Incorporate embedded galleries and single images into your marketing strategy. Look for as many creative places that you possibly can to embed your PhotoShelter images online. Client's websites; online communities; local newspaper websites; community organization websites; sports team websites (pro, amateur, kids); anywhere you possibly can.

3.    Create a few "special edition" prints that are signed and numbered by you. Price these higher. If you can match the right image with the right audience, you may be sitting on a revenue opportunity. People will pay for something if they see value, so show them. When the subject matter of your image taps into their passion, and you provide excellent support and treat your product like it is worth something (a numbered print with a signature tends to do just that), price isn't such a major concern.  Jimmy Williams has a beautiful collection of limited edition prints.
 
(Use the embedded single-image feature - remember, from tactic #2 - to let these images market themselves by going viral. A passionate customer is more likely to pass it on to another like-minded passionate customer.  So make it easy for them to share and admire your images. And, it will increase the images' perceived value.)

4.    Set a minimum price on print sales. This won't make you a ton of money, but it will keep you from losing a few bucks here and there. (Hey, every little bit helps, right?) You can set a minimum price per order in the "Sales Configuration" area. If you're selling images via EZ Prints, there are costs associated in doing so, so make sure your add an appropriate markup. Prevent revenue loss by using this handy little setting.

5.    Recession stock. This recession is affecting everyone. Conducting a search on Yahoo! News for "recession" returns 126,000+ stories. Do you see the opportunity here yet? If you don't have any keyworded images in your archive that could illustrate "recession," you may be missing out on potential sales. Create some, and price them for Rights Managed or Royalty Free licensing.

Truth be told, three things inspired this blog entry: 1) Rachel's blog on the subject, and 2) New York Magazine, and 3) my hunger.

Like travel photography, the goal of food photography is to make you want to eat the food you're looking at. I first saw this Hannah Whitaker photo from a new pizza joint called "Co." (pronounced "Company" they tell me), and I thought I must go there. Her photo made me very hungry.

A huge congratulations to PhotoShelter user, photojournalist, and educator Pete Souza who was named White House Photographer for President-elect Barack Obama this weekend.


Photo by Pete Souza

Happy New Year!

One of my on-again-off-again traditions is a movie marathon around Christmas. This year was a bit unusual in that I started the day before and continue on the day after because I just can't get enough. Here's the run down:

I started the Christmas Eve evening with a quick bite at Momofuku Ssam, a famous foodie restaurant by David Chang in New York City, and by golly, there was a theatre a block away.

Let the Right One in
I had no idea what this movie was about -- I just happened to have some time to burn before movie #2 started, so I walked in, and from the opening frame, I was enthralled. The story and acting were amazing, but equally as impressive was the cinematography. It's easy to be impressed by the cinematography of an epic adventure, but for a "quiet" movie, the camera work really blew me away, and made me reconsider how I'd like to approach my own photography in 2009.

Two thumbs up. (I'm Siskel and Ebert)

JCVD


Photo by Peace Arch Entertainment

Yes, JCVD, as in "Jean Claude Van Damme." I know what you're thinking -- JC peaked with Timecop in the 90s. So you might be surprised to find him starring in a parody about himself -- a down-and-out, washed up actor who returns to Belgium after losing out on an acting part to Steven Seagal, only to wind up in a case of mistaken identity during  a post office heist.

Two thumbs up.

Valkyrie
One of my biggest pet peeves is Scientology, but I'm a sucker for action movies. This particular movie had a slow start, but picked up in the end. I also like how the History Channel tries to come out with programming that coincides with blockbuster movie releases. Perhaps you caught "42 Ways to Kill Hitler" or the upcoming armageddon movie "2012."

One thumb up.

Seven Pounds
When I first saw a preview for this Will Smith movie, I thought that it had the potential to be pretty good. Then some plot busting details started to come out like how he plays an IRS agent in the movie. My skepticism started to build. But I'm a Will Smith fan, and I'm also a fan of his dog, Luigi, from The Dog Whisperer. So I sucked it up and watched it. And it was ok, but in truth, just load it in your Netflix queue.

No thumbs.

The Wrestler
I have two words for you: The Wrestler. If there is one movie you see all year -- nay, all decade, go see The Wrestler starring Mickey Rourke. Mickey plays a washed up professional wrestler, whose hayday was in the 80s, but is no relegated to backwater, local wrestling venues. Rourke apparently put on 30 lbs for the role, and brother, the guy can flat out act.

Two thumbs emphatically up.