Tag Archives: photographer

My Former Life as a Fashion Photographer

I bet most of you didn’t know that my first career was as a photographer, shooting for Corbis née The Stock Market and Pacific Stock. I also had the honor of having Willow Chang as my best model — but shooting her was cheating.

She is the most vivacious, creative, playful, and beautiful subject imaginable. She also made all her own costumes.

There was noone easier to shoot. She has always been kinetic, playful, energetic, eccentric, fun, playful, and game. Plus, she designed and made her own stellar outfits. Amazing.

Maybe I should return to the world of photography.

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Make money slow: why stock photography residuals rock

Image via CrunchBase

My dad, Bob Abraham, was a very successful photographer who moved into stock photography early on. He also got me into it in a big way and I shot for Corbis née The Stock Market and Pacific Stock actively until 2003. I have over 100,000 images somewhere working for me. If I were to do it again today, I would add Fotolia to my list.

Why? Because I don’t want to carry around expensive digital SLRs and all the associated glass but I still want to shoot and an agency like Fotolia meets my needs as a second job, second profession, second income, only requiring a good eye, a passion to shoot, a good enough modern digital camera and a commitment to following Fotolia’s uploading, labeling, and business processes.

I have not been shooting for stock in ten years; however, I still receive stock photography royalty checks from both Corbis and Pacific Stock to this day. While I am not able to live full-time on what I make, there has also been a fallow decade.

My residuals for stock photography almost completely petered out until my agencies offered me options to make my images royalty free and to partial-pay to convert decades of slides into high-quality scans that can be sold digitally.

If I were to re-kindle my past life as a shooter and gear up with some top-of-the-line digital SLRs to replace my Nikon N90s then I would surely put all of my chips in on an easy-to-use, royalty-free, still photo and video stock media agency like Fotolia.

Fotolia’s a client of Abraham Harrison and I have a feeling that I am probably just a royalty check away from getting myself a gorgeous Canon or Nikon DLSR and some expensive glass — or maybe just add a Canon S95 to the mix — and start uploading and labeling the best of them to Fotolia — I already upload every snappy photo known to man to Flickr as it is!

Too many shooters don’t want to choose the royalty free model of stock photo selling; however, most photographers also over-value their ability to shoot, the quality of their images, and also the desirability and marketability of what they have to license and rights managed can get very expensive, both in terms of tracking licenses and also in missed sales.

Be honest, are you as good, consistently, as you think you are? Also, are you as productive and as serious as you perceive yourself? Also, if you’re interested in holding out for 100% of the fees for your images, you’re a fool because 100% of nothing is nothing.

Let other people who are invested in selling, marketing, promoting, and delivering do the heavy-lifting for you. When I shot, I didn’t even like complying with all of the slide-labeling requirements that my agencies demanded. If it were up to me, I would shoot and just leave all that Fuji 100, Velvia, Kodachrome 64 and Kodachrome 25 in a box, undeveloped.

I wanted to shoot, not label; I wanted to shoot, not file, promote, market, and sell. There’s the rub.

I have made only between 40% and 50% from my stock. I am making 40% now. But I am grateful because Pacific Stock does an amazing job of tracking down copyright infringements and also doing the business of stock and sending me monthly checks. I hate that stuff! But, Pacific Stock also will only take image that are a minimum 10MP+ through a professional digital SLR like a Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III or Nikon D3x. No way! I am a PR executive of sorts now and would be happy to keep a Canon S95, Canon G12, or a Panasonic Lumix on me at all times, shoot in RAW, and even do some post-production work on Photoshop, however, I will no longer gladly schlepp a Domke F-2 filled with Nikon bodies, Speedlights, battery packs, and an assortment of 2.8 AF Nikkor glass from 24mm-200mm.

Forget it!

Also, don’t be naive — if your stock photo agency doesn’t hold an exclusivity contract over your head, be sure to spread your love — and images — around to as many online digital stock photo agencies you have the time to do right. And when I mean doing it right, I mean that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush — cliche #1 — and garbage in, garbage out: don’t do any of this half-assed. Too many people make nothing in their pursuit on making money slow in stock photography because they:

Don’t shoot enough (stock is a numbers game)*
Don’t edit enough (do not upload anything but your best)*
Don’t label well or accurately
Don’t caption well and accurately
Don’t tag well or accurately
Aren’t honest about their ability

(* Yes, the combination of #1 and #2 is a paradox but you really do need to upload loads and scads on only your best images. Just because you can fit 10,000 images into your new card doesn’t mean you have 10,000 stellar images, sorry to say, even if your mother loves them. She’s lying. You have a fragile ego and she’s afraid of you a little because you tend to rage.)

Additionally, if you do your homework, you’ll be able to find cheap ways to scan your old slides and negatives into a viable digital format. You don’t need to over-sample if your agency doesn’t require it.

Finally, last time I looked, I think there might be applications or intermediary services that allow you to upload your images once and have the images and videos uploaded to all or most of your online photo agencies — but, again, don’t be naive — if your agency does insist on keeping an exclusive on you, on your particular images, and on their similars, you can get in a lot of trouble over that as well. So, ask questions and be careful. I don’t know if there’s a stock photo agency wide black-balling process, but stock agencies are supposed to be your friend, your business partner, and your advocate so please show them all due respect.

I think Fotolia is the answer.

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My Trusty Filson Original Briefcase

I bought an “otter green” Filson Original Briefcase a few years ago and use it every day to carry around my laptop and all of my stuff. While the case is made of canvas, the outside of the case is getting better-looking.

The bridle leather and brass parts are top-quality and while the leather has darkened and stretched and gotten shiny with use and age, it is just starting to look lived-in. I am very comfortable carrying the bag anywhere and also bough medium and large otter green duffel bag as well, so I have an entire set.

I do see, in comparison to my newest large duffel, that my bag is very well-used.

That said, everyone knows the bag is high-quality. In fact, there is a cult of Filson and you will meet other Filson owners and they will say hello to you.

I was looking for a bag that was at least as durable as my Domke F-2 Bag (I used to be a photographer) but with more fit, finish, and executive polish, and the Filson Original Briefcase is surely the right bag for that.

A buddy of mine just bought one out in Silicon Valley because they’re becoming the cool bag to own. I don’t know how the bag will wear in 10 years but I know for a fact that Filson stands behind their bags so if anything goes wrong or if there’s any “bag failure” I think they’ll do right by me, so you’re not just getting an excellent bag but a strong company with exceptional customer support.

Inside, there are a few places for pens, two larger pockets for business cards or small gadgets, and, in total, there are two dividers so there are three places to place things in the bag.

An Ode to Slides and Kodachrome 64

An Ode to Slides and Kodachrome 64, originally uploaded by Chris Abraham.

Stevie Wilson didn’t know that I shot pro for Corbis and Pacific stock for well over ten-years, doing editorial and travel photography for one of the two biggest stock photo houses on the planet. Back in the day, Corbis was called The Stock Market, and I shot hundreds of thousands of slides through an assortment of Nikon bodies and Nikkor glass and onto lots of my favorite film: Velvia, Fuji 100 (not Provia, just regular Sensia), and my most beloved Kodachrome 64.

While Fuji Ektachrome tended to be bright and brassy and a little green, K64 was always warm and rich and the favorite film of National Geographic shooters the world over for its grain. Well, Kodachrome is no more, which is a Kodacrime; however, if you can grab any of it anywhere, please grab as much of it as possible. Here’s a little known fact: Kodachrome gets better with age. It doesn’t get more predictable, but it gets better and in its age, magic happens.

In fact, lots of shooters used to keep K64 in the trunks of their cars in order to make it “better, quicker,” which has resulted in some of the most creative work I have musters, pre-Photoshop. Anyway, for those of you who don’t know, I was a photographer.

Also, the above photo was made by my dad, Bob Abraham, who was a shooter from the day I was born until the day he died. He collected all of these discarded slides forever until the day he made this image. There is a photo of him rolling around in the slides and I will post that one when I find it.

It is Illegal to Photograph a Bobby (or a Building) in the UK

Cory Doctorow talks about the new law in the UK that makes in a crime to take a picture of a police officer or a building, Britain’s no-photographing-cops law: even the cops hate it — and the US isn’t very far behind, to be sure — and be sure to listen to the CBC article about this law in As It Happens (MP3):

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s radio show As it Happens did a great job covering the new British law that makes it a crime to take a picture of a police officer or a building, where that picture might be useful in “planning an act of terrorism.” First, they interviewed Peter Murray, Vice-President of the National Union of Journalists, who, predictably, worries that his members will find themselves with arrest-records as terrorists for violating the law. But then, they talked to Peter Smyth, Chairman of the Metropolitan Police Federation, who also thinks the law is ridiculous — and this is just stupendous. Smyth says that there’s no evidence that terrorists use photographs to plan attacks, admits that this is an invitation for scared officers to abuse the law, and says that it will needlessly create conflict with journalists and the public.
The program tried to locate someone — anyone — who supported the law, but no one was forthcoming.