Photowalk 19 of 52 (Vancouver)

While I still have lots of photos to edit from this trip (over 300 from Minter Gardens alone) I have a few that are done that I want to share. Some are some photos taken from my wife’s aunt’s house in Abbotsford area.

The next few are a couple of samples from the Minter Garden’s trip.

Hope you enjoyed these. More editing being done all the time. I took a photowalk tonight, so I’ll try and get those ones done soon. I also have the interim photowalks I’ve been promising.

In other news I got a fancy new reflector today – it arrived in the mail. It’s a 42 inch reflector, so it’s actually kind of gigantic. I have some new business cards coming as well – can’t wait to see them!

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Photowalk 20 of 52 (Photographing People Workshop)

Last night I went to a workshop run by Northern Persona Photography, called Photographing People. It was excellent! 6 hours of learning, combined with some fun exercised to break up the pure lecturing time and a photoshoot at the end.

Samantha came to be my model and we had an hour at an awesome property. Her outfit was stellar and worked with so many backgrounds there. My favourites were the old wood buildings though, by far. Here are a couple of the images we took as my 20th photowalk.

By the way, I realize I’m out of order – but I wanted to get back on track. I have a more photowalks done that need to be posted so expect some catchup in the upcoming days.

I loved the wall texture and colour in this one.

Black and White crop and edit of the previous. I wanted to pull in tighter and focus on her eyes.

Her favourite of the shoot. I love the composition and mood of this photo.

My favourite of the shoot. I like her body shape and pose, and the mood evoked here as well.

I hope you enjoy!

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I need your help! (Reposted from jclossphoto.com)

I need your help. See – I’m really indecisive – I guess it’s part of being a Libra.

I’m entering the Photolife Emerging Photographer of the Year contest – open to Canadian photographers only. I’m going to need to submit 3 of my photographs for judging – they of course, should be my “best of the best”.

I’m thinking of using my photograph “Trust – Split Toned” as one of my submissions. “Frostflowers” has gotten good reviews as well, it’s my photograph that has been published in Snapixel Magazine.

I’m torn for what my 3rd choice should be. Any suggestions?

While you’re at it, feel free to suggest any of my other photographs for my first two submissions as well – these are not set in stone yet.

~Cheers!

Jeff

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New Website

My new website is up. I now own jclossphoto.com, jeffclossphotography.com and jclossphotography.com

I’m using wordpress hosted on my own domain with the Photocrati theme. It’s pretty awesome, and gives me alot of customization options. I like that I’m familiar enough with the backend that I can make the blog software behave like a content management system.

I’d love for any of you to go to my site and take a look around. Keep in mind that although things are a bit rough right now, I’m working on them. My slideshow is up on my front page with three images as a test, more will be added shortly. My galleries are not up yet, but should be within a day or two. I’m thinking of running a contest/poll to choose which images make the cut – let me know what you think.

I’m off to bed with sinus medication – see you soon!

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Must Do Updates!

I’m currently 2 weeks behind! I have both photowalks shot – that’s the easy part. The older one, 2 weeks ago, is a selection of the Easter pictures I took of the kids searching for treats and eggs.

Last weeks photowalk just got shot last night when Sam and I took the kids to a school playground with a pizza. The sun was setting, the light was amazing and I got quite a few good shots – at least I hope I did – I took almost 400 captures!

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Photowalk 11 of 52 (Zoom Effect)

With the zoom effect done, our 6 Image Expressions classes are over. I have two double workshops coming up as well, one on composition and one on people. However, here are the images from my most recent photowalk. This may end up being a two-part post if my HDR shots of a creek this morning work out, I bracketed 6 exposure values of the same shot and am hoping I can create something cool out of them in Photomatix or something similiar. We’ll see whether it ends up looking natural or comic-book inspired.

Today’s zooming shots were inspired by lyrics – “Worker Bees” by Billy Talent – here is the chorus:

And we’ll march… along, with our blindfolds on
And we’ll ride… the rails, with our pistols drawn
Can the Lord… above, forgive what we’ve done?
Can we fight to save our souls?

So, here are the images. This is titled “Ride the Rails” and is inspired in part by the quote above, take from that what you will.

Original:

And edited to BW with some adjustments:

As always, feel free to chime in via the comments!

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Terms of Service, Copyright etc.

I have been a seller on snapixel.com for a while. While I’ve yet to make a sale, so far I’ve been reasonably happy with how they seem to do business. They’re open, they respond to emails, and they seem like good people.

I like sites that seem like good people. Flickr gets my traffic, and my suggestions and references to other people. I print through moo.com and I love them, mostly because of their public attitude, but also because of their behind the scenes emails etc. that I’ve exchanged with various people working for them etc.

So today on flickr, I was surprised to see this post (retweeted by @snapixel):
RT @abstracts: RT @lazytweet: [from @kevwil] is @snapixel a rights grab? not sure what to think of their TOS & Licence Thoughts?

So, I of course replied, my interest piqued.

I don’t see @snapixel as a rights grab, I think the TOS and Licence are fair. I’m intrested to know concerns @abstracts @lazytweet @kevwil

I got the following response:

RT @suprspi: I don’t see @snapixel as a rights grab, I think the TOS and Licence are fair. — Have you read para 2.1? — @lazytweet @kevwil

So, I dutifully trotted off and read the offending paragraph. Warning, legalese ahead!

“2.1 Licensor hereby grants to Snapixel the non-exclusive, worldwide sub-licensable right and license, with respect to all intellectual property rights, to make, use, sell, copy, market, distribute, modify, create derivative works, and publicly perform and display all Content uploaded by Licensor through any and all modes of distribution now known or hereafter existing. Licensor further grants to Snapixel a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free and sub-licensable license to use Licensor’s trademarks, names, and likeliness along with associated goodwill in connection with the Content and its promotion; such usage shall inure to Licensor’s benefit.”

Hmm. It doesn’t seem to bad to me. Non-exclusive, gives them a bunch of rights, but hey, they need them to pass them on right? And, what if they want to do something with my photos to benefit me, for instance putting them on the front page, watermarked with a link to my portfolio and a cool saying plastered across.

But, in the interest of interesting (to me) conversation and discussion I figured I’d keep the discussion going.

@abstracts 2.1 seems fairly boilerplate for any img sharing/selling site – non excl, I’m not sure how they could sell/display w/o @snapixel

And the reply:

@suprspi Its not the exclusive part – what about the right to create derivitive works for example?

Hmm. True. Do they need that right to sell it? I’m not a lawyer, I don’t know. Do they need to to modify an image to promote you? For instance, like I mentioned above, Snapixel quite often features images that link back to a seller or sharer’s portfolio, sometimes with a word or phrase on it to attract interest. Is that needed? I really don’t know but I kept the discussion flowing:

@abstracts here is a page comparing facebook to flickr et al. http://alturl.com/8mbx @snapixel seems similiar – what am I missing?

Then, I suggested moving the discussion to blogs, so it’s in one place with more than 140 characters. Twitter is fun and viral, but it’s not really a good forum for in depth discussions.

I did get these responses though:

@suprspi @snapixel I know – they all do the same but doesn’t mean it’s right! Each must make own choice and decide if price worth paying

and

@suprspi @snapixel @lazytweet @kevwil also too late now in UK – leave you all to discuss 😉

Snapixel also posted a response that looked like this:

@kevwil @abstracts We have licenses for photographers sharing and selling. Two specific agreements. We’re not a .. http://bit.ly/bajHbn

So – we get to this point. Does Snapixel, or any image provider, need these rights? Is it a rights grab? My gut says no, but then, I’m not a lawyer, just a photographer interested in copyright law.

I’d like to invite @abstracts and @snapixel to comment on this post, or to send a followup email with their points and arguments which I will post as it’s own post with a link back to your site/blog etc. I find this to be a very interesting and pertinent discussion topic in these modern days of social media, image sharing and all the web 2.0 (or is it 3.0 now?) stuff going on.

There is some interesting followup discussion going on here: http://www.lazytweet.com/post/10324633800 Especially the paragraph by @snapixel:

@abstracts We have licenses for photographers sharing and selling. Two specific agreements. We’re not a rights grab. Plan on selling photos? See our content submission agreement: http://bit.ly/ag7btp 1. Ownership. Except as otherwise mutually agreed upon, Licensor will remain the exclusive owner of all rights, titles and interests, including copyright, in and to all Contents. Except as otherwise provided in this Agreement, no title or copyright is granted or transferred to Snapixel or any third party. Snapixel shall obtain Licensor’s prior written approval before Snapixel distribute the Content for the purposes of resale or re-license.

So readers – any thoughts? Feel free to chime in!

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Photowalk 9 of 52 (Stopping Motion)

Last week’s lesson was stopping motion with fast shutter speeds, and the minishoot included a trip to an icy park, some sports and dancing equipment and my teacher and her brother being models.

Dave was a champion – he dived into the frozen earth over and over as Tineke threw a frisbee to him to catch. We got lots of great actions shots, some are below.

He changed over to a soccer ball and we got some shots of that. Earlier we got some shots of Tineke skipping rope and dancing on top of a hill with a scarf.

Our project was to use the word “Fun” to interpret as a photograph using stopped motion as a technique. I came up with lots of ideas but settled on shooting at Gymnastics. That meant I was shooting my assignment merely hours before it was due – not enough time for a re-shoot if things went wrong.

Well – things went wrong. More lights than ever were out (burnt out?) at my daughters gymnastics club. I was shooting as wide as I could (18mm @f3.5) and still couldn’t get enough light. ISO bumped up to a very ugly 1600 and I just managed to eke out 1/200th of a second.

I turned in an assignment I’m not happy with. However, my grace is that I know I can do better. I understand the technique, I just chose a poor way to try and show it – and what’s better, Tineke knows I know the technique as well. I may get a low mark for poor implementation, but she will know I have the info in my head and that I can do it better.

That said, below are my shots, hope you enjoy.

Tineke Skipping – I love her face! *grin*

Tineke Dancing. It’s hard to see how much motion there really was here – you need to pay attention to the scarf and the skirt blowing out around.

Frisbee Toss. I got this sort of by accident, but I like it.

Got It!

Ultimate Frisbee catch!

Way to do one armed pushups! Dave was champ, throwing himself at the frozen ground over and over for us.

Hovering Football. In black and white even.

Dylan running on tramp. My second submission for my assignment.

Fun! Dylan running down the tumble track tramp. This was my (not very good) submission for my assignment.

There we go, hope you enjoyed.

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Help (Brainstorming) Needed

I have an assignment for my photography course. I don’t need help with the assignment, but I do need help getting my mind to a creative place.

I need to submit two shots by sunday. One with a singular focus depth of field (IE, subject in focus, background/foreground lost in out of focus blur/bokeh) and one with a storytelling depth of field (IE. whole scene in acceptable focus shot at a high aperature – beginning/middle/end of depth of focus should contribute to the story.)

So – two images. I have two words to interpret into these images. One image per word, I have to use both techniques, so one for each.

The words are: Hurt and Excitement One positive word and one negative one. I could flip them though, a good sort of hurt (mommy fixing my hurt) and a bad sort of excitement (happy boy with balloon/dream burst, rain on my parade etc….)

What I need help with is … thinking deeper. What do these words mean – what kind of imagery do they create in your head? I don’t need suggestions for what to shoot – although I’ll consider them, but that’s something I need to do myself.

So far my mind has gone:

hurt: disappointment, pain, mental or physical, demoralized. Harder ideas include: rape, torture, mental anguish, impossible choice.

excitement: fun, looking forward, anticipation.

Any ideas? Want to help me brainstorm? Leave comments and I’ll read and respond ASAP.

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Photowalk 6 of 52 – Image Expressions Lesson 1

So, from the beginning I planned on using my required shooting for my Image Expressions course as my photowalks for those weeks. That totally gives me 6 free walks plus 2 workshops. I’m pumped.

Below are images from my first assignment – proper exposure. The goal is to make an exposure in manual mode using the light meter to tell us if the image is properly exposed. Center weighted metering. We had to make 5 exposures to hand in, and they had to be edit free. We were allowed to submit edits as well as long as we submitted originals. (We are allowed to crop or re-size) The images had to be of a subject that told the viewer something about us. I’ll leave the interpretation up to you dear reader.

You may notice there are only four below. One has a subject that may be NSFW-ish – and Sam didn’t want me sharing it with the world. So it’s getting submitted for assignment only. I hope you enjoy.

Car and Wedding Ring

Shaving Set on Blue

Knife on Board

Sam Red Apple

As always, let me know what you think.

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